“Makar Ivanovich, first of all, is not a peasant, but a household serf,” he pronounced with great readiness, “a former household serf and a former servant, born a servant and from a servant. Household serfs and servants shared a great deal in the interests of their masters’ private, spiritual, and intellectual life in the old days. Note that Makar Ivanovich to this day is interested most of all in the events of life among the gentry and in high society. You don’t know yet to what degree he’s interested in certain recent events in Russia. Do you know that he’s a great politician? He’d give anything to know who is at war, and where, and whether we’ll go to war. In former times I used to bring him to a state of bliss with such conversations. He has great respect for science, and of all sciences he likes astronomy the most. For all that, he has worked out something so independent in himself that he won’t be budged from it for anything. He has convictions, firm ones, rather clear . . . and true. For all his perfect ignorance, he’s capable of astounding you by being unexpectedly familiar with certain notions you wouldn’t suppose him to have. He delights in praising the hermitic life, but not for anything would he go to a hermitage or a monastery, because he is in the highest degree a ‘vagrant,’ as Alexander Semyonovich nicely called him—with whom, to mention it in passing, you needn’t be angry. Well, what else, finally: he’s something of an artist, has many words of his own, but also not of his own. He’s somewhat lame in logical explanations, at times very abstract; has fits of sentimentality, but of a completely popular sort, or, better, has fits of that generally popular tenderness that our people introduce so broadly into their religious feeling. Of his purity of heart and lack of malice I won’t speak: it’s not for us to get started on that theme . . .”
III
TO FINISH WITH the characterization of Makar Ivanovich, I shall tell one of his stories from his own private life. His stories had a strange character, or rather, they had no general character at all; it was impossible to squeeze any moral or any general trend out of them, unless it was that they were all more or less moving. But there were also some that were not moving, that were even quite merry, that even made fun of wayward monks, so that he directly harmed his idea by telling them—which I pointed out to him; but he didn’t understand what I meant to say. Sometimes it was hard to make out what prompted him to this storytelling, so that I even wondered at such loquacity and ascribed it in part to old age and to his ailing condition.
“He’s not what he used to be,” Versilov once whispered to me, “he used to be not at all like this. He’ll die soon, much sooner than we think, and we must be prepared.”
I forgot to mention that something like “evenings” had been established among us. Besides mama, who wouldn’t leave Makar Ivanovich’s side, Versilov always came to his little room in the evenings; I, too, always came, and couldn’t be anywhere else; during the last few days, Liza almost always came, though later than everyone else, and almost always sat silently. Tatyana Pavlovna also came sometimes, though rarely, and sometimes the doctor. It suddenly happened somehow that I became friends with the doctor; not very much, but at least there were none of my former outbursts. I liked his simplicity, as it were, which I finally discerned in him, and the certain attachment he had to our family, so that I finally ventured to forgive him his medical arrogance and, on top of that, taught him to wash his hands and clean his fingernails, if he was incapable of wearing clean linen. I explained to him directly that it was not at all for the sake of foppishness or any sort of fine arts, but that cleanliness was a natural part of a doctor’s profession, and I proved it to him. Finally, Lukerya often came to the door from her kitchen and, standing behind it, listened to Makar Ivanovich’s stories. Versilov once called her out from behind the door and invited her to sit with us. I liked that; but from then on she stopped coming to the door. Their ways!
I include one of his stories, without choosing, solely because I remember it more fully. It’s a story about a merchant, and I think that in our towns, big and small, such stories occur by the thousand, if only we know how to look. Those who wish to can skip the story, the more so as I tell it in his style.
IV
AND IN THE town of Afimyevsk, I’ll tell you now, here’s what a wonder we had. There lived a merchant named Skotoboinikov, 8Maxim Ivanovich, and there was nobody richer than he in the whole region. He built a calico factory and employed several hundred workers; and he became conceited beyond measure. And it must be said that everything walked at a sign from him, and the authorities themselves didn’t hinder him in anything, and the abbot of the monastery thanked him for his zeaclass="underline" he donated a lot to the monastery, and when the fancy took him, he sighed greatly for his soul and had no little concern for the age to come. He was a widower and childless; about his wife, rumor had it that he sweetened her away in the first year and that since his youth he had always liked making free with his hands; only that was a very long time back; he never wanted to enter the bonds of matrimony again. He also had a weakness for drink, and when the time came on him, he would run drunkenly around town, naked and yelling; the town was nothing grand, but still it was a shame. When the time was over, he’d get irate, and then everything he decided was good, and everything he ordered was wonderful. And he settled accounts with people arbitrarily; he’d take an abacus, put his spectacles on: “How much for you, Foma?” “Haven’t had anything since Christmas, Maxim Ivanovich, there’s thirty-nine roubles owing to me.” “Oof, that’s a lot of money! It’s too much for you; the whole of you isn’t worth such money; it doesn’t suit you at all; let’s knock off ten roubles, and you’ll get twenty-nine.” The man says nothing; and nobody else dares to make a peep, they all say nothing.
“I know how much he should be given,” he says. “It’s impossible to deal with the people here any other way. The people here are depraved; without me they’d all have died of hunger, however many there are. I say again, the people here are thieves, whatever they see, they filch, there’s no manliness in them. And again take this, that he’s a drunkard; give him money, he’ll bring it to the pot-house and sit there naked, not a stitch left, he goes home stripped. Again, too, he’s a scoundreclass="underline" he’ll sit on a stone facing the pot-house and start wailing: ‘Mother, dear, why did you give birth to me, bitter drunkard that I am? It would be better if you’d smothered me, bitter drunkard that I am, at birth!’ Is this a man? This is a beast, not a man; he should be eddicated first of all and then be given money. I know when to give it to him.”
So Maxim Ivanovich spoke about the people of Afimyevsk; though it was bad what he said, all the same it was the truth: they were slack, unsteady folk.