Stories (44 page)

“What made you so poor?” asked the coroner.

“My sons are hard drinkers. They drink so hard, so hard, I can’t tell you, you wouldn’t believe me.”

Lyzhin listened and thought that while he, Lyzhin, would sooner or later go back to Moscow, this old man would stay here forever and keep on walking and walking; and how many of these old men he would meet in his life, tattered, disheveled, “worthless,” in whose hearts a fifteen-kopeck piece, a glass of vodka, and the profound belief that you cannot live by injustice in this world were somehow welded fast together. Then he became bored with listening and ordered some hay brought for his bed. There was an iron bed with a pillow and blanket in the visitors’ side, and it could have been
brought over, but the deceased had been lying next to it for almost three days (had, perhaps, sat on it before he died), and now it would be unpleasant to sleep on it …

“It’s only seven-thirty,” thought Lyzhin, glancing at his watch. “How terrible!”

He did not want to sleep, but having nothing to do and needing to pass the time somehow, he lay down and covered himself with a plaid. Loshadin, as he cleared the dishes away, came in and out several times, smacking his lips and sighing, kept shuffling about by the table, finally took his lamp and left; and, looking at his long gray hair and bent body from behind, Lyzhin thought: “Just like a sorcerer in the opera.”

It grew dark. There must have been a moon behind the clouds, because the windows and the snow on the window frames were clearly visible.

“Hoo-o-o!” sang the blizzard. “Hoo-o-o!”

“Oh, Lo-o-ord!” a woman howled in the loft, or so it seemed. “Oh, my Lo-o-ord!”

“Bang!” Something hit the wall outside. “Crash!”

The coroner listened: there was no woman, it was the wind howling. He was chilly and covered himself with his coat as well, on top of the plaid. While he was making himself warm, he thought of how all this—the blizzard, and the cottage, and the old man, and the dead body lying in the next room—how all this was far from the life he wanted for himself, and how foreign it all was to him, how petty and uninteresting. If this man had killed himself in Moscow or somewhere near Moscow, and he were conducting the investigation there, it would be interesting, important, and perhaps
even frightening to s
leep next to the corpse; but here, a thousand miles from Moscow, all this seemed to appear in a different light, all this was not life, not people, but something that existed only “on formality,” as Loshadin had said, all this would leave not the slightest trace in his memory and would be forgotten as soon as he, Lyzhin, left Syrnya. The motherland, the true Russia, was Moscow, Petersburg, and this was a province, a colony; when you dream of playing a role, of being popular, of being, for instance, an investigator in cases of special importance or a prosecutor for the district court, of bei
ng a social lion, you inevitably think of Moscow. To live means to live in Moscow, whereas here you wanted nothing, easily became reconciled with your inconspicuous role, and hoped for only one thing from life—to leave, to leave soon. And Lyzhin mentally raced about the Moscow streets, entered familiar houses, saw his family, his friends, and his heart was wrung sweetly at the thought that he was now twenty-six years old, and if he escaped from here and got
to Moscow in five or ten years, even then it would not be too late and there would still be a whole life ahead of him. And as he fell into oblivion, when his thoughts were already becoming confused, he imagined the long corridors of the Moscow court, himself giving a speech, his sisters, an orchestra which for some reason kept howling:

“Hoo-o-o! Hoo-o-o!”

“Bang! Crash!” came again. “Bang!”

And he suddenly remembered how once in the zemstvo office, when he was talking with an accountant, a gentleman came over to the desk, dark-eyed, dark-haired, thin, pale; he had an unpleasant look in his eyes, as people do when they have taken a long after-dinner nap, and it spoiled his fine, intelligent profile; and the high boots he wore were unbecoming and seemed crude on him. The accountant introduced him: “This is our zemstvo agent.”

“So that was Lesnitsky … this same one …” Lyzhin now realized.

He remembered Lesnitsky’s soft voice, pictured his way of walking, and it seemed to him that someone was now walking around him, walking in the same way as Lesnitsky.

He suddenly became frightened, his head felt cold.

“Who’s there?” he asked in alarm.

“The biddle.”

“What do you want here?”

“To ask your permission, Your Honor. Earlier you said there was no need for the headman, but I’m afraid he may get angry He told me to come. So maybe I’ll go.”

“Ah, you! I’m sick of it…” Lyzhin said in vexation and covered himself up again.

“He may get angry … I’ll go, Your Honor, you have a good stay.”

And Loshadin left. There was coughing and half-whispered talk in the front hall. The witnesses must have come back.

“Tomorrow we’ll let the poor fellows go home earlier …” thought the coroner. “We’ll start the autopsy as soon as it’s light.”

He was beginning to doze off when suddenly there came someone’s steps again, not timid this time, but quick, loud. The slamming of a door, voices, the scrape of a match …

“Are you asleep? Are you asleep?” Dr. Starchenko asked hurriedly and angrily, lighting one match after another; he was all covered with snow, and gave off cold. “Are you asleep? Get up, let’s go to von Taunitz. He’s sent horses to fetch you. Let’s go, you’ll at least get supper there, and sleep like a human being. You see, I came for you myself. The horses are excellent, we’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“And what time is it now?”

“A quarter past ten.”

Sleepy and displeased, Lyzhin put on his boots, fur coat, hat, and hood, and went outside with the doctor. It was not too freezing, but a strong, piercing wind was blowing, driving billows of snow down the street, which looked as if they were fleeing in terror; high drifts were already piled up by the fence and near the porches. The doctor and the coroner got into the sleigh, and the white driver leaned over them to button up the flap. They both felt hot.

“Drive!”

They went through the village. “Turning up fluffy furrows …”
³
the coroner thought listlessly, watching the outrunner working his legs. There were lights in all the cottages, as on the eve of a great feast: the peasants had not gone to bed for fear of the dead man. The driver was glumly silent; he must have grown bored standing by the zemstvo cottage, and now was also thinking of the dead man.

“When they learned at Taunitz’s that you were spending the night in the cottage,” said Starchenko, “they all fell on me for not bringing you along.”

As they drove out of the village, at a bend, the driver suddenly shouted at the top of his lungs:

“Clear the way!”

Some man flashed by; he had stepped off the road and was standing knee-deep in the snow, looking at the troika; the coroner saw the crook-topped stick, the beard, the bag at his side, and it seemed to him that it was Loshadin, and it even seemed to him that he was smiling. He flashed by and disappeared.

The road first ran along the edge of the forest, then down the wide forest cutting; old pines flashed by, and young birches, and tall, young gnarled oaks, standing solitarily in the recently cleared openings, but soon everything in the air became confused in the billows of snow; the driver claimed he could see the forest, but the coroner could see nothing but the outrunner. The wind blew in their backs.

Suddenly the horses stopped.

“Well, what now?” Starchenko asked crossly.

The driver silently got down from the box and began running around the sleigh, stepping on his heels; he made wider and wider circles, moving further and further from the sleigh, and it loo
ked as if he were dancing; finally he came back and began turning to the right.

“Have you lost the way, or what?” asked Starchenko.

“Never mi-i-ind …”

Here was some little village with not a single light. Again the forest, the fields, again they lost the way, and the driver got down from the box and danced. The troika raced down a dark avenue, raced quickly, and the excited outrunner kicked the front of the sleigh. Here the trees made a hollow, frightening noise, it was pitch-dark, as if they were racing into some sort of abyss, and suddenly their eyes were dazzled by the bright light of a front entrance and windows, they heard loud, good-natured barking, voices … They had arrived.

While they were taking off their coats and boots downstairs, someone upstairs was playing
Un petit verre de Cliquot
⁴
on the piano, and the stamping of children’s feet could be heard. The visitors were immediately enveloped in warmth, the smell of an old manor
house, where, whatever the weather outside, life is so warm, clean, comfortable.

“That’s splendid,” said von Taunitz, a fat man with an incredibly thick neck and side-whiskers, shaking the coroner’s hand. “That’s splendid. Welcome to my house, I’m very glad to meet you. You and I are almost colleagues. I was once the assistant prosecutor, but not for long, only two years; I came here to look after the estate and I’ve grown old on the place. An old coot, in short. Welcome,” he went on, obviously controlling his voice so as not to speak loudly; he and the guests were going upstairs. “I have no wife, she died, but here, let me introduce my daughters.” And turnin
g around, he shouted downstairs in a thunderous voice: “Tell Ignat there to have the horses ready by eight o’clock!”

In the reception room were his four daughters, young, pretty girls, all in gray dresses and with their hair done in the same way, and their cousin with children, also a young and interesting woman. Starchenko, who was acquainted with them, immediately started asking them to sing something, and two of the girls spent a long time assuring him that they could not sing and that they had no music, then the cousin sat down at the piano and in trembling voices they sang a duet from
The Queen of Spades.
⁵
Un petit verre de Cliquot
was played again, and the children started hopping, stamping their feet in time with the music. Starchenko started hopping, too. Everybody laughed.

Then the children said good-night before going to bed. The coroner laughed, danced a quadrille, courted the girls, and thought to himself: was all that not a dream? The black side of the zemstvo cottage, the pile of hay in the corner, the rustling of cockroaches, the revolting, beggarly furnishings, the voices of the witnesses, the wind, the blizzard, the danger of losing the way, and suddenly th
ese magnificent, bright rooms, the sounds of the piano, beautiful girls, curly-headed children, merry, happy laughter—it seemed to him like a fairy-tale transformation; and it was incredible that such transformations could take place in the space of some two miles, in one hour. And dull thoughts spoiled his merriment, and he kept thinking that this was not life around him, but scraps of life, fragments, that everything here was accidental, it was impossible to draw any conclusions; and he even felt sorry for these girls who lived and would end their lives here in this backwoods, in the provinces,
far from any cultivated milieu where nothing was accidental,
everything made sense, was right, and where every suicide, for example, could be understood and one could explain why and what its significance was in the general course of life. He supposed that if the life hereabouts, in this backwater, was incomprehensible to him and if he did not see it, that meant that it was not there at all.

Over dinner the conversation turned to Lesnitsky.

“He left a wife and child,” said Starchenko. “I would forbid neurasthenics and generally people whose nervous system is in disorder to get married; I would deprive them of the right and opportunity to breed more of their kind. To bring children with nervous ailments into the world is a crime.”

“An unfortunate young man,” said von Taunitz, quietly sighing and shaking his head. “How much one must think and suffer before finally taking one’s own life … a young life. Such misfortunes can happen in any family, and that is terrible. It’s hard to endure it, unbearable …”

And all the girls listened silently, with serious faces, looking at their father. Lyzhin felt that, for his part, he also ought to say something, but he could not think of anything, and said only:

“Yes, suicide is an undesirable phenomenon.”

He slept in a warm room, in a soft bed, covered by a fine, fresh sheet and a blanket, but for some reason he did not feel comfortable; perhaps it was because the doctor and von Taunitz spent a long time talking in the neighboring room, and above the ceiling and in the stove the blizzard made the same noise as in the zemstvo cottage, and howled just as pitifully:

“Hoo-o-o!”

Taunitz’s wife had died two years ago, and he was still not reconciled to it, and whatever the talk was about, he always came back to his wife; and there was nothing of the prosecutor left in him.

“Can it be that I, too, will reach such a state some day?” thought Lyzhin as he was falling asleep, hearing the man’s restrained, as if orphaned, voice through the wall.

The coroner slept restlessly. It was hot, uncomfortable, and it seemed to him in his sleep that he was not in Taunitz’s
house and not in a soft, clean bed, but still in the zemstvo cottage, on hay, hearing the witnesses talking in half-whispers; it seemed to him that Lesnitsky was nearby, fifteen steps away. Again in his sleep he remembered the zemstvo agent, dark-haired, pale, in tall, dusty
boots, coming up to the accountant’s desk. “This is our zemstvo agent …” Then he imagined Lesnitsky and the beadle Loshadin walking over the snow in the fields, side by side, holding each other up; the blizzard whirled above them, the wind blew in their backs, and they walked on and sang:

“We walk, walk, walk.”

The old man looked like a sorcerer in the opera, and they were both indeed singing, as if in the theater:

“We walk, walk, walk… You live in warmth, in brightness, in softness, and we walk through the freezing cold, through the blizzard, over the deep snow … We know no rest, we know no joy … We bear the whole burden of this life, both ours and yours, on ourselves … Hoo-o-o! We walk, walk, walk …”