"Vavila [the young man] got into the cart with the barrel and the old man and Lipa got into the other. They moved at a walking pace, Vavila in front.
" 'My baby was in torment all day,' said Lipa. 'He looked at me with his little eyes and said nothing; he wanted to speak and could not. Lord God! Queen of Heaven! In my grief I kept falling down on the floor; I would be standing there and then I would fall down by the bedside. And tell me, grandfather, why should a little one be tormented before his death? When a grown-up person, a man or woman, is in torment, his sins are forgiven, but why a little one, when he has no sins? Why?'
" 'Who can tell?' answered the old man.
"They drove on for half an hour in silence.
" 'We can't know everything, how and why,' said the old man. 'A bird is given not four wings but two because it is able to fly with two; and so man is not permitted to know everything but only a half or a quarter. As much as he needs to know in order to live, so much he knows.' . . .
171
Vladimir Nabokov: Lectures on Russian literature
" 'Never mind,' he repeated. 'Yours is not the worst of sorrows. Life is long, there is good and bad yet to come, there is everything to come. Great is mother Russia,' he said, and looked round on either side of him. 'I have been all over Russia, and I have seen everything in her, and you may believe my words, my dear. There will be good and there will be bad. I went as a messenger from my village to Siberia, and I have been to the Amur River and the Altay Mountains and I emigrated to Siberia; I worked the land there, then I got homesick for mother Russia and I came back to my native village. . . .And when I got home, as the saying is, there was neither stick nor stone; I had a wife, but I left her behind in Siberia, she was buried there. So I am a hired man now. And I tell you: since then I have had it good as well as bad. I do not want to die, my dear, I would be glad to live another twenty years; so there has been more of the good. And great is our mother Russia!' and again he gazed on either side and looked back. . . .
"When Lipa reached home the cattle had not yet been driven out; everyone was asleep. She sat down on the steps and waited. The old man was the first to come out; he understood what had happened from the first glance at her, and for a long time he could not utter a word, but only smacked his lips.
" 'Oh Lipa,' he said, 'you did not take care of my grandchild. . . .'
Varvara was awakened. She struck her hands together and broke into sobs, and immediately began laying out the baby.
" 'And he was such a pretty child . . .' she said. 'Oh dear, dear. . . . You had the one child, and you did not take enough care of him, you silly thing. '
In her innocence Lipa never thought of telling people it was Aksinia who had killed her baby. Apparently the family believed that Lipa had just been careless and had accidentally scalded the child by overturning a pot of hot water.
After the requiem service "Lipa waited at table, and the priest, lifting his fork on which there was a salted mushroom, said to her: 'Don't grieve for the babe. For such is the kingdom of Heaven.'
"And only when they had all left Lipa realized fully that there was no Nikifor and never would be, she realized it and broke into sobs. And she did not know what room to go into to sob, for she felt that now her child was dead there was no place for her in the house, that she had no reason to be there, that she was in the way; and the others felt it, too.
" 'Now what are you bellowing for?' Aksinia shouted, suddenly appearing in the doorway; because of the funeral she was dressed up in new clothes and had powdered her face. 'Shut up!'
"Lipa tried to stop but could not, and sobbed louder than ever.
" 'Do you hear?' shouted Aksinia, and stamped her foot in violent anger. 'Who is it I am speaking to? Get out of the house and don't set foot here again, you convict. Get out.'
" 'There, there, there,' the old man put in fussily. 'Aksinia, don't make such an outcry, my dear. . . . She is crying, it is only natural . . . her child is dead.
" 'It's only natural,' Aksinia mimicked him. 'Let her stay the night here, and don't let me see a trace of her tomorrow! "It's only natural" . . .' she mimicked him again, and, laughing, went into the shop."
Lipa has lost the frail link that connected her to the household and leaves the house for ever.
172
Vladimir Nabokov: Lectures on Russian literature
In all cases, except Aksinia's, the truth gradually comes out.*
The mechanical quality of Varvara's virtues is nicely exemplified by the jams she keeps making; there is too much of it, it goes sugary and uneatable. We recall that poor Lipa had been so fond of it. The jam turned against Varvara.
The letters from Anisim still come in that beautiful hand—evidently his friend Samorodov is doing time with him in the mines of Siberia, so that here too the truth comes out. "I am ill here all the time; I am wretched, for Christ's sake help me!"
Old Grigori, half-crazy, wretched, unloved, is the most vivid representative here of truth coming into its own.
"One fine autumn day toward evening old Grigori was sitting near the church gates, with the collar of his fur coat turned up and nothing of him could be seen but his nose and the peak of his cap. At the other end of the long bench sat Yelizarov the contractor, and beside him Yakov the school watchman, a toothless old man of seventy. Crutch and the watchman were talking.
" 'Children ought to give food and drink to the old. . . . Honor thy father and mother . . .' Yakov was saying with irritation,
'while she, this woman [Aksinia] has turned her father-in-law out of his own house; the old man has neither food nor drink, where is he to go? He has not had a morsel these three days.'
" 'Three days!' said Crutch, amazed.
' 'Here he sits and does not say a word. He has grown feeble. And why be silent? He ought to prosecute her, they wouldn't praise her in court.'
" 'Who praised whom in court?' asked Crutch, who was hard of hearing.
" 'What?' from the watchman.
" 'The woman's all right,' said Crutch, 'she does her best. In their line of business they can't get on without that . . . without cheating, I mean. . . .'
" 'Kicked out of his own house!' Yakov went on with irritation. 'Save up and buy your own house, then turn people out of it!
She is a nice one, to be sure! A pla-ague!'
"Grigori listened and did not stir. . . .
" 'Whether it is your own house or others' it makes no difference so long as it is warm and the women don't scold . . .' said Crutch, and he laughed. 'When I was young I was very fond of my Nastasya. She was a quiet woman. And she used to be always at it: "Buy a house, Makarych! Buy a house, Makarych! Buy a horse, Makarych!" She was dying and yet she kept on saying, "Buy yourself a racing droshky, Makarych, so that you don't have to walk." And all I did was to buy her gingerbread.'
"'Her husband's deaf and stupid,' Yakov went on, not listening to Crutch; 'a regular fool, just like a goose. He can't understand anything. Hit a goose on the head with a stick and even then it does not understand.'
"Crutch got up to go home. Yakov also got up, and both of them went off together, still talking. When they had gone fifty paces old Grigori got up, too, and walked after them, stepping uncertainly as though on slippery ice."
*
VN prefaces this section by the following remark to his class : "There is again a time gap between chapters 8 and 9. You will observe the delightful Chekhovian detail when the Khrymins, one of whom, if not all, is or are on intimate terms with his wife have 'presented the deaf man with a gold watch, and he is constantly taking it out and putting it to his ear.' " Ed.