His happiest days were Sundays and holidays, when he stayed at home from morning till evening. On these days he shared an unsophisticated but most agreeable life reminiscent of pastoral idylls. Constantly watching the sensible, practical Masha as she wove her nest, he too wanted to show that he was some use about the house, and would do something pointless like pushing the chaise out of the shed and inspecting it from all sides. Masha had set up a regular dairy and kept three cows. Her cellar and. larder contained many jugs of milk and pots of sour cream, all of which she kept for butter. Nikitin woul.d sometimes ask her for a glass of milk as a joke, and she would take fright at this breach of discipline, while he laughed and put his arms round her.
'There, there, it was only a joke, my treasure—just a little joke.'
Or he would laugh at how strict she was when she found an old stone-hard piece of salami, say, or cheese in the cupboard and solenmly said that 'they can eat that out in the kitchen'.
He would tell her that such a scrap was fit only for a mousetrap, while she hotly contended that men know nothing of housekeeping, and that you could send food out to those servants by the hundred- weight and you still wouldn't get any reaction from them. He would agree and embrace her ecstatically. When she said something sensible he found it unique and astounding, and whatever contradicted his own sentiments was deliciously unsophisticated.
Sometimes, in philosophical vein, he would discourse on an abstract theme, while she listened and looked inquiringly into his face. 'I'm infinitely happy with you, darling,' he would say, playing with her fingers, or plaiting and unplaiting her hair. 'But I don't regard my happiness as a windfall or manna from heaven. My felicity is a wholly natural, consistent and impeccably logical phenomenon. I believe that man makes his o\wn happiness, so I'm now enjoying something I myself created. Yes, I can say so without false modesty: I created this bliss, and I have every right to it. You know my past.. Having no mother and father, being poor, an unhappy childhood, a miserable adolescence— all that was a struggle, a road to happiness built by myself.'
In October the school suffered a grievous loa when Hi ppolytus succumbed to erysipelas of the head and died. He was unconscious and delirious for nvo days before dying, but even when rambling he rambled only platitudes.
'The Volga flows into the Caspian Sea, horses eat oats and hay '
There was no school on the day of his funeral. Colleagues and pupils carried coffm-lid and coffm, and the school choir sang the anthem 'Holy, holy, holy' all the way to the cemetery. The procession included three priests, nvo deacons, all the boys' high school and the bishop's choir in their beM cassocks. Seeing so sole^ a cortege, pawers-by crossed themselves and prayed to God to 'grant us all such a death'.
Nikitin went home from the cemetery very moved, and took his diary from the desk.
Today Mr. Hippolytus Ryzhitsky was consigned to his grave (he wrote). Rest in peace, thou humble toiler. Masha, Varya and the other ladies at the funeral all wept sincerely, perhaps because they knew that no woman ever loved So unattractive, so do^trodden a man. I wan:ted to say a word of appreciation at my colleague's grave, but was warned that the Head might take exception since he disliked the deceased. I think this has been the first day since the wedding that I've felt de- pressed.
There was no other event of note during the school year.
\Vinter was a half-hearted affair—sleety, without hard frosts. All Twelfth Night, for instance, the wind howled piteously as in autu^, the roofs dripped, and during the Consecration of the Waters in the morning the police stopped people walking on the frozen river because they said the ice had swollen up and looked dark. Despite the dismal weather Nikitin was just as happy as in summer, though, and had even acquired a new hobby—he had le^t to play bridge. There' only seemed to be one fly in the ointment, only one thing that got on his nerves and riled him—the cats and dogs which he had acquired as part of the dowry. The house smelt like a zoo, especially in the mornings, and there was no getting rid of the stench. The cats often fought the dogs. That spiteful Bluebottle was fed a dozen timcs a day, but still wouldn't accept Nikitin, still treated him to her liquid, nasal-guttur.il growls.
One midnight in Lent Nikitin was on his way home from the club after cards. It was raining, dark and muddy. Things felt unsavoury, somehow. Was it the twelve roubles he had lost at the club? Or was it that when they were settling up one of the players had remarked that Nikitin had pots of money—a clear hint at that dowry? The twelve roubles didn't matter to him, and there had been nothing offensive in the man's words. Still, it was distasteful, and he didn't even feel like going home.
'Oh, how awful,' he said, halting by a street lamp.
The reason he didn't care about the twelve roubles was that he had got them for nothing, it struck him. Now, ifhe had been a labourer he would have valued every copeck, he would not have been so casual about winning or losing. But then, all his good fortune had come to him free and gratis, he reasoned—it was a luxury, really, like medicine to a healthy man. Had he been harassed like the great majority by worrying about his livelihood, had he been struggling for existence, had his back and chest ached from hard work, then his supper, his warm, snug quarters and his domestic bliss would be a necessity, a reward, an adomnent of his life. As it was the significance of all that was oddly blurred, somehow.
'Oh, how awful,' he repeated, knowing full well that these very broodings were a bad sign.
Masha was in bed when he arrived home. Her breathing was even, and she smiled, obviously relishing her sleep. Next to her curled the white cat, purring. While Nikitin was lighting his candle and cigarette Masha woke up and thirstily drank a glass of water.
'I ate too muchjam,' she laughed, and asked after a pause whether he had been visiting her family. 'No.'
Nikitin knew that Captain Polyansky, on whom Varya had been counting heavily of late, was being posted to the west country, and was now making his farewell visits in to^wn for which reason there was an air of gloom at his father-in-law's.
Masha sat up. 'Varya called this evening. She didn't say anything, but you can see from her face how depressed she is, poor thing. I can't stand Polyansky. He's so fat, so (rowsty, and his cheeks wobble when he walks or dances. He's not my type. Still, I did think he was a decent person.1
'Well, I still do think he is a decent person.'
'What, after he's treated Varya so badly?'
'Badly in what sense?' Nikitin was irked by the white cat stretching and arching its back. 'To the best of my kiowledge he never proposed or made any promises.'
'Then why did he visit our house so often? He shouldn't have come if he didn't mean business.'
Nikitin put out the candle and lay down. But he did not feel like sleeping or lying there. His head seemed like some vast, empty bam with new, rather weird thoughts drifting about it like tall shadows. Away from the soft icon-lamp beaming on their quiet family happiness, away from this cosy little world in which he and that cat both lived in such delectable serenity, there was a very different world, he reflected. And for that other world he felt a sudden pang of anguished longing. He wanted to toil in some factory or big workshop, to lecture to audiences, to write, to publish, to make a splash, to exhaust himself, to suffer. He craved some obsession to make him oblivious of self and indifferent to personal happiness with its monotonous sensa.tions. And then suddenly, in his mind's eye, the living image of dean-shaven Shebaldin arose and spoke in horror.
'Who hasn't even read Lessing? How backward you are—God, how you have gone to seed.'