“Well, God willing, you’ll marry again!” the deacon muttered.
1883
READING
An Old Coot’s Story
ONCE THE IMPRESARIO of our theater, Galamidov, was sitting in the office of our bureau chief, Ivan Petrovich Semipalatov, and talking with him about the art and the beauty of our actresses.
“But I don’t agree with you,” Ivan Petrovich was saying, signing some budget documents. “Sofya Yuryevna has a strong, original talent! She’s so sweet, graceful…Such a delight…”
Ivan Petrovich wanted to go on, but rapture kept him from uttering a single word, and he smiled so broadly and sweetly that the impresario, looking at him, felt a sweet taste in his mouth.
“What I like in her…e-e-eh…is the agitation and the tremor of her young breast when she recites monologues…How she glows, how she glows! At such moments, tell her, I’m ready…for anything!”
“Your Excellency, kindly sign the reply to the letter from the Khersonese Police Department concerning…”
Semipalatov raised his smiling face and saw before him the clerk Merdyaev. Merdyaev stood before him, goggle-eyed, and held out to him the paper to be signed. Semipalatov winced: prose interrupted poetry at the most interesting place.
“This could have waited till later,” he said. “You can see I’m talking! Terribly ill-mannered, indelicate people! See, Mr. Galamidov…You said we no longer have any Gogolian types…But here, you see! Isn’t he one? Scruffy, out at the elbows, cross-eyed…never combs his hair…And look how he writes! Devil knows what it is! Illiterate, meaningless…like a cobbler! Just look!”
“M-m-yes…,” mumbled Galamidov, having looked at the paper. “Indeed…You probably don’t read much, Mr. Merdyaev.”
“It’s not done, my dear fellow!” the chief went on. “I’m ashamed for you! You might at least read books…”
“Reading means a lot!” Galamidov said and sighed for no reason. “A whole lot! Read and you’ll see at once how sharply your horizons change. And you can get hold of books anywhere. From me, for instance…It will be my pleasure. I’ll bring some tomorrow, if you like.”
“Say thank you, my dear fellow!” said Semipalatov.
Merdyaev bowed awkwardly, moved his lips, and left.
The next day Galamidov came to our office and brought along a stack of books. With this moment the story began. Posterity will never forgive Semipalatov for his light-minded behavior! A young man might perhaps be forgiven, but an experienced actual state councillor—never!1 When the impresario came, Merdyaev was summoned to the office.
“Here, read this, my dear fellow!” said Semipalatov, handing him a book. “Read it attentively.”
Merdyaev took the book with trembling hands and left the office. He was pale. His crossed eyes shifted anxiously and seemed to be looking for help from the objects around him. We took the book from him and cautiously began to examine it.
The book was The Count of Monte Cristo.2
“You can’t go against his will!” our old accountant, Prokhor Semyonych Budylda, said with a sigh. “Give it a try, force yourself…Read a little, and then, God grant, he’ll forget and you can drop it. Don’t be afraid…And above all, don’t get involved in it…Read but don’t get involved in this clever stuff.”
Merdyaev wrapped the book in paper and sat down to work. But this time he was unable to work. His hands trembled and his eyes crossed in different directions: one towards the ceiling, the other towards the inkstand. The next day he came to work in tears.
“Four times I began,” he said, “but I couldn’t make anything of it…Some sort of foreigners…”
Five days later Semipalatov, passing by the desks, stopped at Merdyaev’s and asked:
“Well, so? Have you read the book?”
“Yes, Your Excellency.”
“What is it about, my dear fellow? Go on, tell me!”
Merdyaev raised his head and moved his lips.
“I forget, Your Excellency…,” he said after a minute.
“Meaning you didn’t read it, or…e-e-eh…you read it inattentively! Me-chaa-nically! That won’t do! Read it over again! In general, gentlemen, I recommend that. Kindly read! Read, all of you! Take books from my windowsill over there and read. Paramonov, go, take a book for yourself! You step over, too, Podkhodtsev, my dear fellow! You, too, Smirnov! All of you, gentlemen! Please!”
They all went and took books for themselves. Only Budylda ventured to voice a protest. He spread his arms, shook his head, and said:
“No, excuse me, Your Excellency…I’d sooner take my retirement…I know what comes of these same critiques and writings. On account of them my older grandson calls his own mother a fool right to her face and gulps milk all through Lent.3 Excuse me, sir!”
“You understand nothing,” said Semipalatov, who usually forgave the old man all his rude words.
But Semipalatov was mistaken: the old man understood everything. A week later we already saw the fruits of this reading. Podkhodtsev, who was reading the second volume of The Wandering Jew,4 called Budylda “a Jesuit”; Smirnov started coming to work in an inebriated state. But no one was so affected by the reading as Merdyaev. He lost weight, became pinched, began to drink.
“Prokhor Semyonych!” he begged Budylda. “I’ll pray to God eternally for you! Ask his excellency to excuse me…I can’t read. I read day and night, don’t sleep, don’t eat…My wife’s worn out from reading aloud to me, but, God strike me dead, I understand nothing! Do me this great service!”
Budylda ventured several times to report to Semipalatov, but he only waved his hands and, strolling around the department with Galamidov, reproached everybody for their ignorance. Two months went by like that, and this whole story ended in the most terrible way.
One day Merdyaev, arriving at work, instead of sitting at his desk, knelt in the midst of those present, burst into tears, and said:
“Forgive me, Orthodox Christians, for making counterfeit money!”
Then he went into the office, knelt before Semipalatov, and said:
“Forgive me, Your Excellency, I threw a baby down a well yesterday!”
He beat his head on the floor and sobbed…
“What’s the meaning of this?!” Semipalatov asked in astonishment.
“It means, Your Excellency,” said Budylda with tears in his eyes, stepping forward, “that he’s lost his mind! His wits are addled! This is what your silly Galamidov achieved with these writings! God sees everything, Your Excellency. And if you don’t like my words, then allow me to take my retirement. It’s better to die of hunger than to see such things in my old age!”
Semipalatov turned pale and paced from corner to corner.
“Don’t receive Galamidov!” he said in a hollow voice. “And you, gentlemen, calm yourselves. I see my mistake now. Thank you, old man!”
And since then nothing has gone on in our office. Merdyaev recovered, but not completely. And to this day he trembles and turns away at the sight of a book.
1884
THE COOK GETS MARRIED
GRISHA, a chubby seven-year-old, was standing by the kitchen door, eavesdropping and peeking through the keyhole. In the kitchen something was going on which, in his opinion, was extraordinary, never seen before. At the kitchen table, on which meat was usually cut and onions chopped, sat a big, burly peasant in a cabby’s kaftan, red-headed, bearded, with a big drop of sweat on his nose. He was holding a saucer on the five fingers of his right hand and drinking tea from it, biting so noisily on a lump of sugar that it sent shivers down Grisha’s spine. Across from him, on a dirty stool, sat the old nanny Aksinya Stepanovna, also drinking tea. The nanny’s face was serious and at the same time shone with some sort of triumph. The cook Pelageya was pottering around by the stove and looked as if she was trying to hide her face somewhere far away. But on her face Grisha saw a whole play of lights: it glowed and shimmered with all colors, beginning with reddish purple and ending with a deathly pallor. Her trembling hands constantly clutched at knives, forks, stove wood, rags; she moved about, murmured, knocked, but in fact did nothing. Never once did she glance at the table where they were drinking tea, and to the questions the nanny put to her she replied curtly, sternly, without turning her face.