"She's always like that when her legs are swollen—ill, you know," she whispered to Shatov, still studying him with the same extreme curiosity, especially his lock of hair.
"Are you military?" the old woman, to whom I had been so mercilessly abandoned by Liza, addressed me.
"No, madam, I am in the civil service..."
"Mr. G——v is a great friend of Stepan Trofimovich's," Liza echoed at once.
"You serve at Stepan Trofimovich's? But isn't he a professor, too?"
"Ah, maman, you must even dream about professors in your sleep," Liza cried in vexation.
"There are quite enough of them in reality. And you are eternally contradicting your mother. Were you here when Nikolai Vsevolodovich came four years ago?"
I replied that I was.
"And was there some Englishman here with you?"
"No, there wasn't."
Liza laughed.
"Ah, you see, there wasn't any Englishman, so it's all a pack of lies. Varvara Petrovna and Stepan Trofimovich are both lying. And everyone else is lying, too."
"That's because yesterday auntie and Stepan Trofimovich found some resemblance between Nikolai Vsevolodovich and Prince Harry from Shakespeare's Henry the Fourth, and in answer to that maman says there was no Englishman," Liza explained to us.
"If there was no Harry, then there was no Englishman either. Nikolai Vsevolodovich was playing pranks all by himself."
"I assure you that maman does it on purpose," Liza found it necessary to explain to Shatov, "she knows perfectly well about Shakespeare. I myself read her the first act of Othello; but she's suffering very much now. Maman, do you hear, it's striking twelve, time for you to take your medicine."
"The doctor is here," a chambermaid appeared in the doorway.
The old woman raised herself and began calling her dog: "Zemirka, Zemirka, you come with me at least."
The nasty little old dog Zemirka did not obey and hid under the sofa where Liza was sitting.
"You don't want to? Then I don't want you either. Good-bye, dearie, I don't know your name," she turned to me.
"Anton Lavrentievich..."
"Well, it makes no difference, it goes in one ear and out the other. Don't see me out, Mavriky Nikolaevich, I was only calling Zemirka. Thank God, I can still walk by myself, and tomorrow I shall go for a drive."
She angrily walked out of the drawing room.
"Anton Lavrentievich, talk for a while with Mavriky Nikolaevich. I assure you, you'll both gain from a closer acquaintance," Liza said, and she gave a friendly smile to Mavriky Nikolaevich, who simply beamed all over from her look. There was no help for it, I was left to talk with Mavriky Nikolaevich.
II
The business Lizaveta Nikolaevna had with Shatov turned out, to my surprise, to be indeed only literary. I don't know why, but I had been thinking that she had summoned him for something else. We—that is, Mavriky Nikolaevich and myself—seeing that they were not concealing anything from us and were talking quite loudly, began to listen; then we, too, were invited to join the council. The whole thing was that Lizaveta Nikolaevna had long since conceived of publishing a—in her opinion useful—book, but being completely inexperienced, she needed a collaborator. I was even amazed at the seriousness with which she began to explain her plan to Shatov. "Must be one of the new sort," I thought, "it's not for nothing she was in Switzerland." Shatov listened attentively, his eyes fixed on the ground, not surprised in the least that an idle society girl should undertake affairs seemingly so unsuitable for her.
The literary undertaking was of the following sort. A multitude of metropolitan and provincial newspapers and other journals is published in Russia, and these report daily on a multitude of events. The year goes by, the newspapers are everywhere stacked up in bookcases, or turned into litter, torn up, used for wrapping things or for hats. Many of the facts published produce an impression and remain in the public memory, but are then forgotten over the years. Many people would like to refer to them later, but what an effort it is to search through that sea of pages, often without knowing the day, or the place, or even the year when the event occurred. And yet, if all these facts for a whole year were brought together in one book, with a certain plan and a certain idea, with a table of contents, an index, a classification by month and day—such a combined totality could present a whole characterization of Russian life for that whole year, notwithstanding the extremely small portion of facts as compared with all that had happened.
"Instead of many pages there will be a few fat books, that's all," observed Shatov.
But Lizaveta Nikolaevna hotly defended her project in spite of its difficulty and her inexperience in talking about it. There should be one book, and not even a very fat one, she insisted. But even supposing it were a fat one, still it would be a clear one, because the main thing was the plan and the way the facts were presented. Of course, not everything was to be collected and reproduced. Government decrees and acts, local directives, laws—all facts of that sort, though important, could be entirely omitted from the proposed volume. A great deal could be omitted, and the choice could be limited only to events that more or less expressed the personal moral life of the people, the personality of the Russian people at a given moment. Of course, anything could be included: curiosities, fires, donations, all sorts of good and bad deeds, all sorts of pronouncements and speeches, perhaps even news about flooded rivers, perhaps even some government decrees as well, but with the choice only of those things that portrayed the epoch; everything would be included with a certain view, a direction, an intention, an idea, throwing light on the entire whole, the totality. And, finally, the book should be interesting even as light reading, to say nothing of its being an indispensable reference work! It would be, so to speak, a picture of the spiritual, moral, inner life of Russia over an entire year. "Everyone should want to buy it, the book should become a household item," Liza kept affirming. "I realize that the whole thing depends on the plan, and that is why I'm turning to you," she concluded. She was quite flushed, and though her explanations were obscure and incomplete, Shatov began to understand.
"So the result would be something with a tendency, a selection of facts with a certain tendency," he muttered, still without raising his head.
"Not at all, there's no need to select with a tendency, there's no need for any tendency. Just impartiality—that's the only tendency."
"But there's nothing wrong with a tendency," Shatov stirred, "and it's impossible to avoid, as soon as at least some selection reveals itself. The selection of facts will in itself indicate how they are to be understood. Your idea isn't bad."
"So that means such a book is possible?" Liza rejoiced.
"We'll have to see and think. It's a huge matter. One cannot invent something all at once. Experience is necessary. Even when the book is published, we'll still hardly know how to publish it. Maybe only after many trials; but the idea is nearly there. A useful idea."
He finally raised his eyes, and they even shone with pleasure, so interested he was.
"Did you think it up yourself?" he asked Liza, gently and as if bashfully.
"But it's not hard to think it up, it's the plan that's hard," Liza smiled. "I don't understand much, and I'm not very smart, I only pursue what is clear to me ..."
"Pursue?"
"Maybe not the right word?" Liza inquired quickly.
"It's a possible word; never mind."
"It seemed to me even abroad that I, too, could be useful in some way. I have my own money, and it just sits there, so why couldn't I, too, work for the common cause? Besides, the idea came somehow suddenly, by itself; I didn't sit thinking it up, and I was very glad when it came; but I saw at once that I couldn't do it without a collaborator, because I don't know how to do anything myself. The collaborator will, of course, become co-editor of the book. We'll go half and half: your plan and work, my original idea and the means for publishing it. The book will pay for itself, won't it?"