But if she, or any of them, began to eat meat on a Fast-day, then my father (who never fasted himself) would shake his head sorrowfully and say : 'Do you really think it worth while, Anna Yakimovna, to give up the ancient custom, when you have so few years still to live ? I, poor sinner, don't fast myself, because I have many diseases ; but you may thank God for your health, considering your age, and you have kept the fasts all your life ; and now all of a sudden - think what an example to them -' pointing to the servants. And the poor old woman once more fell upon the kvass and the salad.
These scenes filled me with disgust, and I sometimes ventured to defend the victim by pointing out the desire of conformity which he expressed at other times. Then it was my father's custom to get up and take off his velvet skull-cap by the tassel : holding it over his head, he would thank me for my lecture and beg me to excuse his forgetfulness. Then he would say to the old lady : 'These are terrible times 1 Little wonder that you neglect the Fast, when children teach their parents ! What are we coming to ? It is an awful prospect; but fortunately you and I will not live to see it.'
1 )
After dinner m y father generally lay down for a n hour and a half, and the servants at once made off to the taverns and teashops. Tea was served at seven, and we sometimes had a visitor at that hour, especially my uncle, the Senator. This was a respite for us ; for he generally brought a budget of news with him and produced it with much vivacity. Meanwhile my father put on an air of absolute indifference, keeping perfectly grave over the most comic stories, and questioning the narrator, as if he could not see the point, when he was told of any striking fact.
The Senator came off much worse, when he occasionally contradicted or disagreed with his younger brother, and sometimes even without contradicting him, if my father happened to be
N U R S E R Y A N D U N I V E R S I T Y
specially out of humour. In the serio-comic scenes, the most comic feature was the contrast between my uncle's natural vehemence and my father's artificial composure. 'Oh, you're not well today,' my uncle would say at last, and then snatch his hat and go off in a hurry. One day he was unable in his anger to open the door. 'Damn that door ! ' he said, and kicked it with all his might.
My father walked slowly up to the door, opened it, and said with perfect calmness, 'The door works perfectly : but it opens outwards, and you try to open it inwards and get angry with it.' I may mention that the Senator, being two years older than my father, always addressed him as 'thou,' while my father said
'you' as a mark of respect for seniority.
When my uncle had gone, my father went to his bedroom ; but first he always enquired whether the gates of the court were shut, and expressed some doubt when he was told they were, though he never took any steps to ascertain the facts. And now began the long business of undressing : face and hands were washed, fomentations applied and medicines swallowed ; the valet placed on the table near the bed a whole arsenal of phials, nightlights, and pill-boxes. For about an hour the old man read memoirs of some kind, very often Bourrienne's Memorial de Ste Helene. And so the day ended.
16
Such was the life I left in 1834. and such I found it in 1 840, and such it remained down to my father's death in 1846. When I returned from exile at the age of thirty, I realised that my father was right in many respects, and that he, to his misfortune, knew the world only too well. But did I deserve that he should preach even the truth in a manner so repulsive to the heart of youth ?
His intelligence, chilled by a long life spent in a corrupt society, made him suspicious of all the world ; his feelings were not warm and did not crave for reconciliation ; and therefore he remained at enniity with all his fellow-creatures.
In 1839, and still more in 1842, I found him feeble and suffering from symptoms which were not imaginary. My uncle's death had left him more solitary than ever ; even his old valet had gone, but he was just the same ; his bodily strength had failed him, but his cruel wit and his memory were unaffected ; he still carried on the same petty tyranny, and the same old Sonnenberg still
C H I L D H O O D, Y O U T H A N D E X I L E
pitched his camp i n our old house and ran errands as before.
For the first time, I realised the sadness of that life and watched with an aching heart that solitary deserted existence, fading away in the parched and stony desert which he created around him by his own actions, but was powerless to change. He knew his powerlessness, and he saw death approaching, and held out jealously and stubbornly. I felt intense pity for the old man, but I could do nothing - he was inaccessible.
I sometimes walked past his study and saw him sitting in his deep armchair, a hard, uncomfortable seat ; he had his dogs round hir.l and was playing with my three-year-old son, just the two together. It seemed to me that the sight of this child relaxed the clutching fingers and stiffening nerves of old age, and that, when his dying hand touched the cradle of infancy, he could rest from the anxiety and irritable strife in which his whole life had been spent.
C H A P T E R VI
The Kremlin Offices - Moscow University - The Chemist - The Cholera - Filaret - Passek
1
In spite of the ominous prognostications of the one-legged general, my father entered my name for service at the Government offices in the Kremlin, under Prince Yusupov. I signed some document, and there the matter ended. I never heard anything more about my office, except once, three years later, when a man was sent to our house by Yusupov, to inform me that I had gained the first step of official promotion ; this messenger was the court architect, and he always shouted as if he were standing on the roof of a five-storeyed house and giving orders from there to workmen in the cellar. I may remark in passing, that all this hocus-pocus was useless : when I passed my final examination at the University, this gave me at once the promotion earned by service ; and the loss of a year or two of seniority was not serious.
On the other hand, this pretence of office-work nearly prevented me from matriculating ; for, when the University authorities found that I was reckoned as a Government clerk, they refused me permission to take the examination.
N U R S E R Y A N D U N I V E R S I T Y
For the clerks in public offices there were special afternoon lectures, of an elementary kind, which gave the right of admission to a special examination. Rich idlers, young gentlemen whose education had been neglected, men who wished to avoid military service and to get the rank of assessor as soon as possible - such were the candidates for this examination ; and it served as a kind of gold-mine to the senior professors, who gave private instruction at twenty roubles a lesson.
To pass through these Caudine Forks to knowledge was entirely inconsistent with my views, and I told my father decidedly that unless he found some other method I �hould retire from the Civil Service.