“What kind of law is that?” he replied, again pushing away my aunt’s hand with the money. “Don’t profit from another’s misfortune … There’s no need! Good-bye!”
And he got up to go back to his maligned little inn, but my father wouldn’t let him: he took him to his study, locked himself in with him, and an hour later ordered a sleigh hitched up to take him home.
A day later this incident became known in town and all around it, and two days later my father and aunt went to Kromy, stopped at Selivan’s, had tea in his cottage, and left a warm coat for his wife. On the way back they stopped by again and brought him more presents: tea, sugar, flour.
He accepted it all politely, but reluctantly, and said:
“What for? It’s three days now that people have begun stopping here … money’s coming in … we made cabbage soup … They’re not afraid of us like they used to be.”
When I was taken back to boarding school after the holidays, things were again sent with me for Selivan, and I had tea at his place and kept looking in his face and thinking:
“What a beautiful, kind face he has! Why is it that for so long he looked to me and others like a spook?”
This thought pursued me and would not leave me in peace … Why, this was the same man whom everyone had found so frightening and considered a sorcerer and an evildoer. And for so long it had seemed that all he did was plot and carry out evil deeds. Why had he suddenly become so good and nice?
XX
I was very lucky in my childhood, in the sense that my first lessons in religion were given me by an excellent Christian. This was the Orel priest Ostromyslenny9—a good friend of my father’s and a friend to all of us children, who was able to teach us to love truth and mercy. I told my comrades nothing of what had happened to us on Christmas Eve at Selivan’s, because there was nothing in it all that flattered my courage, while, on the contrary, they might have laughed at my fear, but I revealed all my adventures and doubts to Father Efim.
He stroked me with his hand and said:
“You’re very lucky. Your soul on Christmas Day was like a manger for the holy infant, who came to earth to suffer for the unfortunate. Christ lit up for you the darkness in which the empty talk of dark-minded folk had shrouded your imagination. It was not Selivan who was the spook, but you yourselves—your suspiciousness of him, which kept all of you from seeing his good conscience. His face seemed dark to you, because your eye was dark.10 Take note of that so that next time you won’t be so blind.”
This was intelligent and excellent advice. In later years of my life I became close with Selivan and had the good fortune to see how he made himself a man loved and honored by everyone.
On the new estate which my aunt bought there was a good inn at a much-frequented point on the high road. She offered this inn to Selivan on good terms, and Selivan accepted and lived there until his death. Then my old childhood dreams came true: I not only became closely acquainted with Selivan, but we felt full confidence and friendship for each other. I saw his situation change for the better—how peace settled into his house and he eventually prospered; how instead of the former gloomy expressions on the faces of people who met Selivan, everyone now looked at him with pleasure. And indeed it happened that, once the eyes of the people around Selivan were enlightened, his own face also became bright.
Among my aunt’s servants, it was the footman Borisushka who disliked Selivan the most—the one whom Selivan had nearly strangled on that memorable Christmas Eve.
This story was sometimes joked about. That night’s incident could be explained by the fact that, as everyone suspected that Selivan might rob my aunt, so Selivan himself had strong suspicions that the coachman and the footman might have brought us to his inn on purpose in order to steal my aunt’s money during the night and then conveniently blame it all on the suspicious Selivan.
Mistrust and suspicion on one side provoked mistrust and suspicion on the other, and it seemed to everyone that they were all enemies of each other and they all had grounds for considering each other as people inclined towards evil.
Thus evil always generates more evil and is defeated only by the good, which, in the words of the Gospel, makes our eye and heart clean.
XXI
It remains, however, to see why, ever since Selivan left the baker, he became sullen and secretive. Had anyone back then wronged and spurned him?
My father, being well disposed towards this good man, nevertheless thought that Selivan had some secret, which he stubbornly kept to himself.
That was so, but Selivan revealed his secret only to my aunt, and that only after he had lived for several years on her estate and after his ever-ailing wife had died.
When I came to see my aunt once, already as a young man, and we started recalling Selivan, who had died himself not long before then, my aunt told me his secret.
The thing was that Selivan, in the tender goodness of his heart, had been touched by the woeful fate of the helpless daughter of the retired executioner, who had died in their town. No one had wanted to give this girl shelter, as the child of a despised man. Selivan was poor, and besides he didn’t dare to keep the executioner’s daughter with him in town, where everyone knew them both. He had to conceal her origin, which was not her fault, from everyone. Otherwise she could not avoid the harsh reproaches of people who were incapable of mercy and justice. Selivan concealed her, because he constantly feared she would be recognized and insulted, and this secretiveness and anxiety pervaded his whole being and partly left their mark on him.
Thus everyone who called Selivan a “spook” was in fact far more of a “spook” for him.
* Kuliga—a place where the trees have been cut down and burned, a clearing, a burn. Author.
† A “tavousi stone”—a light sapphire with peacock feather reflections, in olden times considered a lifesaving talisman. Ivan the Terrible had such a stone in a ring. “A gold finger-ring, and in it a tavousi stone, and in that a look of cloudiness and a sort of effervescence.” Author. (Tavousi is Persian for “peacock.” Trans.)
The Man on Watch
1839
I
The event an account of which is offered to the reader’s attention below is touching and terrible in its significance for the main heroic character of the piece, and the denouement of the affair is so original that its like is even hardly possible anywhere but in Russia.
It consists in part of a court, in part of a historical anecdote, which characterizes rather well the morals and tendencies of the very curious, though extremely poorly chronicled, epoch of the thirties of the current nineteenth century.
There is no trace of fiction in the following story.
II
In the winter of 1839, around Theophany, there was a big thaw in Petersburg. The weather was so sodden, it was as if spring were coming: the snow melted, drops fell from the roofs all day, and the ice on the rivers turned blue and watery. On the Neva, there were deep pools just in front of the Winter Palace. A warm but very strong wind was blowing from the west: it drove the water back from the sea, and warning cannon were fired.
The guard at the palace was mounted by a company of the Izmailovsky Regiment, commanded by a young officer of brilliant education and very good standing in society, Nikolai Ivanovich Miller (later a full general and director of the lycée).1 He was a man of the so-called “humane” tendency, a fact which had long been noted by his superiors and which had been slightly detrimental to his career.