Having said that, he hastily grabbed his dressing gown and ran to hide in the carriage shed, supposing he would be completely safe there. But, after installing himself in a corner of the shed, he saw that even there he might somehow be visible. "Now, this will be better," flashed in his head, and he instantly folded down the steps of a nearby carriage, jumped in, closed the doors, covered himself with the apron and the rug for greater safety, and became perfectly still, crouched there in his dressing gown.
Meanwhile the carriages drove up to the porch.
The general stepped out and shook himself, followed by the colonel, straightening the plumes on his hat. Then the fat major jumped down from the droshky, holding his saber under his arm. Then the slim lieutenants who had been holding the sublieutenant on their laps leaped down from the bonvoyage, and finally the horse-prancing officers dismounted.
"The master's not at home," said a lackey, coming out to the porch.
"How, not at home? But, in any case, he'll be home by dinnertime?"
"No, sir, he's gone for the whole day. He may be back around this time tomorrow."
"Well, look at that!" said the general. "How can it be?…"
"Some stunt, I must say!" the colonel said, laughing.
"Ah, no, it isn't done," the general went on with displeasure. "Pah… the devil… If you can't receive, why go inviting?"
"I don't understand how anyone could do it, Your Excellency," said one young officer.
"What?" said the general, who was in the habit of always uttering this interrogative word when speaking with his officers.
"I said, Your Excellency, how can anyone act in such a way?"
"Naturally… Well, if something's happened, let people know, at least, or don't invite them."
"So, Your Excellency, there's no help for it, let's go back!" said the colonel.
"Certainly, nothing else to be done. However, we can have a look at the carriage even without him. He surely hasn't taken it with him. Hey, you there, come here, brother!"
"What's your pleasure?"
"You're a stable boy?"
"I am, Your Excellency."
"Show us the new carriage your master acquired recently."
"It's here in the shed, sir."
The general went into the shed together with the officers.
"If you wish, I'll move it out a little, it's a bit dark in here."
"Enough, enough, that's good!"
The general and the officers walked around the carriage, thoroughly examining the wheels and springs.
"Well, nothing special," said the general, "a most ordinary carriage."
"Most ungainly," said the colonel, "absolutely nothing good about it."
"It seems to me, Your Excellency, that it's hardly worth four thousand," said one of the young officers.
"What?"
"I said, Your Excellency, that it seems to me it's not worth four thousand."
"Four thousand, hah! It's not even worth two. There's simply nothing to it. Unless there's something special inside… Be so kind, my good fellow, as to undo the cover…"
And before the officers' eyes Chertokutsky appeared, sitting in his dressing gown and crouched in an extraordinary fashion.
"Ah, you're here!…" said the amazed general.
Having said which, the general at once slammed the doors, covered Chertokutsky with the apron again, and drove off with the other gendemen officers.
The Portrait
PART I Nowhere did so many people stop as in front of the art shop in the Shchukin market. This shop, indeed, presented the most heterogeneous collection of marvels: the pictures were for the most part painted in oils and covered with a dark green varnish, in gaudy, dark-yellow frames. Winter with white trees, a completely red evening like the glow of a fire, a Flemish peasant with a pipe and a dislocated arm, looking more like a turkey with cuffs than a human being-these were their usual subjects. To them should be added a few engraved prints: the portrait of Khozrev-Mirza 1 in a lambskin hat, the portraits of some generals in three-cornered hats, with crooked noses. Moreover, the doors of such a shop are usually hung with sheaves of popular prints on large sheets, which witness to the innate giftedness of the Russian man. On one was the tsarevna Miliktrisa Kirbitievna, 2 on another the city of Jerusalem, whose houses and churches were unceremoniously rolled over with red paint, which invaded part of the ground and two praying Russian peasants in mittens. These works usually have few purchasers, but a heap of viewers. Some bibulous lackey is sure to be there gaping at them, holding covered dishes from the restaurant for his master, who without doubt will sup a none-too-hot soup. In front of them there is sure to be standing a soldier in an overcoat, that cavalier of the flea market, with a couple of penknives to sell, and an Okhta 3 market woman with a box full of shoes. Each admires in his own way: the peasants usually poke their fingers; gentlemen study seriously; lackey boys and boy artisans laugh and tease each other with caricatures; old lackeys in frieze overcoats look on only so as to stand somewhere and gape; and young Russian market women hasten there by instinct, to hear what people are gabbing about and look at what they are looking at.
Just then the young artist Chartkov, passing by, stopped involuntarily in front of the shop. His old overcoat and unstylish clothes showed him to be a man who was selflessly devoted to his work and had no time to concern himself with his attire, which always has some mysterious attraction for the young. He stopped in front of the shop and at first laughed to himself at these ugly pictures. In the end, an involuntary pondering came over him: he began thinking about who might have need of these works. That the Russian populace should stare at Yeruslan Lazarevich, at the big eaters and big drinkers, at Foma and Yerema, 4 did not seem surprising to him: the subjects portrayed were easily accessible and understandable for the people; but where were the purchasers for these motley, dirty daubings in oil? Who needed these Flemish peasants, these red and blue landscapes, which displayed some pretense to a slightly higher step of art, while showing all the depths of its humiliation? They seemed not altogether the works of a self-taught child. Otherwise, for all the insensitive caricature of the whole, some sharp impulse would have burst through in them. But here one could only see dull-witted, impotent, decrepit giftlessness arbitrarily placing itself among the arts, when it belonged among the lowest crafts-a giftlessness which was faithful to its calling, however, and introduced its craft into art itself. The same colors, the same manner, the same practiced, habituated hand, belonging rather to a crudely made automaton than to a man!… He stood for a long time before these grimy paintings, finally not thinking about them at all, and meanwhile the owner of the shop, a gray little man in a frieze overcoat, with a chin unshaved since Sunday, had long been talking to him, bargaining and setting a price, before even finding out what he liked and wanted.
"For these peasants here and this little landscape, I'm asking twenty-five roubles. What painterliness! It simply hits you in the eye. We just got them from the exchange; the varnish is still wet. Or there's this winter, take this winter! Fifteen roubles! The frame is worth a lot by itself. Look, what a winter!" Here the shop owner gave the canvas a light flick, probably to show how good a winter it was. "Shall I have them tied up together and taken along with you? Where do you live? Hey, lad, fetch me the string!"
"Wait, brother, not so fast," the artist said, coming to his senses and seeing that the nimble shop owner had seriously started tying them up together. He felt a bit ashamed not to take anything after standing in the shop for so long, and he said:
"Wait, now, I'll see if there's anything here for me," and, bending down, he started going through some shabby, dusty old daub-ings piled on the floor and evidently not held in any respect. There were old family portraits, whose descendants were perhaps not even to be found in this world, pictures of total strangers on torn canvases, frames that had lost their gilding-in short, all sorts of decrepit trash. But the artist began to examine them, thinking secretly, "Maybe something will turn up." More than once he had heard stories of great master paintings occasionally being found among the trash sold by cheap print dealers.