Strolling on the front late one afternoon, l met Shamokhin who was carrying some large parcels of delicatessen and fruit.
'Prince Maktuyev's here!' he said delightedly. 'He arrived yesterday with her spiritualist brother. Now I see what she was writing to him about. My God!' he went on, looking at the sky and pressing the parcels to his chest. 'If she and the prince hit it off, I'm free, don't you see! I can go back to the country, to Father.'
He ran off".
'I'm beginning to believe in spirits,' he shouted, looking back. 'Grandfather Ilarion's prophecy seems to have come true. God, I hope so !'
The day after this meeting I left Yalta and how Shamokhin's story ended I do not know.
A DREARY STORY
from an old man's memoirs
I
There is in Russia an eminent professor, a Nicholas Stepanovich Such-and-such—a man of great seniority and distinction. So many medals, Russian and foreign, does he possess that when he wears them his students refer to him as an icon-stand. He knows all the best people, having been on terms of intimacy with every celebrated Russian scholar of the last twenty-five or thirty years at least. His present life offers no scope for friendship. But if we speak ofthe past the long list of his famous friends ends with names like Pirogov, Kavelin and the poet Nekrasov, who all bestowed on him an affection sincere and warm in the extreme. He is a member of all Russian and three foreign universities, and so on and so forth. All this, and a lot more that might be said, makes up my so-called name.
It is a popular name. It is kno^n to every Russian who can read and write, and is invoked in foreign lecture-rooms with 'famous and distinguished' appended. It's one of those few lucky names—to abuse it, to take it in vain in public or in print, would be a sign of bad taste. And this is as it should be. My name is, after all, closely linked to the image of an illustrious, brilliant and unquestionably useful man. I work hard. I have the stamina ofan ox, which is important, and I have flair, which is a great deal more important. I'm also a well-behaved, modest, decent sort of chap, incidentally. Never have I poked my nose into literature and politics, or curried favour by bandying words with nitwits—nor have I ever made after-dinner speeches or orated at my colleagues' funerals.
My name as a scholar is free from blemish, by and large. It has nothing to grumble about. It is a fortunate name.
What ofthe bearer ofthis name—ofmyself, in other words ? I present the spectacle of a sixty-two-year-old man with bald head, false teeth and an incurable nervous tic. I'm every bit as dim and ugly as my name is brilliant and imposing. My head and hands tremble with weakness. Like one of Turgenev's heroines, I have a throat resembling the stringy neck of a double bass, my chest is hollow, my shoulders are narrow. When I speak or lecture, my mouth twists to one side. When
I smile, senile wrinkles cover my whole face, and I look like death. There is nothing impressive about my wretched figure, except perhaps that, when I suffer from my nervous tic, a special look comes over me— one bound to provoke in those who observe me the grim, arresting thought that 'the man will soon be dead, obviously'.
I still lecture quite well, I can still hold my audience for two hours. My enthusiasm, the skill with which I deploy my theme, and my humour almost hide the defects of my voice, which is dry, harsh and sing-song, like that of some snivelling preacher. But I write badly. The bit of my brain which controls the writing faculty has ceased to function. My memory is going, my ideas lack consistency, and when I put them down on paper I always feel I've lost all feel for their organic links. My construction is monotonous, my language is poverty- stricken and feeble. I often write things I don't mean, and by the time I reach the end of what I'm writing, I've forgotten the beginning. I often forget ordinary words, and I always have to waste a lot ofenergy avoiding unnecessary sentences and superfluous parentheses in my writing. These things are clear evidence ofdeclining intellectual activity. The simpler the subject the more agonizing the effort, oddly enough. I feel more at ease and more intelligent writing a learned article than when composing a congratulatory letter or memorandum. Another thing—I find it easier to write German or English than Russian.
As to my present mode of life, I must first mention the sleeplessness from which I've been suffering lately. If anyone should ask me what constitutes the essential core ofmy life at the moment, I should answer inso^mia. From force of habit I still undress and go to bed at midnight exactly. I fall asleep quickly, but I wake up between one and two o'clock feeling as if I hadn't slept at all. I have to get up and light the lamp. I walk up and down the room for an hour or two, and look at long-familiar pictures and photographs. When I tire of walking I sit at my table—sit motionless, thinking no thoughts, experiencing no desires. If there's a book in front of me I pull it towards me mechanically and read listlessly. Not long ago I read an entire novel in one night in this mechanical way—it had an odd title: The Song the Swallow Sang. Or I make myself count a thousand to occupy my mind. Or else I imagine a colleague's face and start recalling when and how he took up academic work. I like to listen for sounds. My daughter Liza sometimes mutters rapidly in her sleep two rooms away. Or my wife walks through the drawing-room with a candle—and never fails to drop the match-box. A warping cupboard squeaks, or the lamp burner gives a sudden buzz. All these sounds excite me, somehow.
To miss one's sleep of a night is to feel abnormal every minute, which is why I yearn for dawn and the daytime when I have the right not to sleep. Much exhausting time passes before the cock crows outside—my first herald of good news. At cock-crow I know that the house-porter downstairs will awake within an hour and come up on some errand, angrily coughing. Then the air beyond the windows will gradually grow pale and voices will be borne in from the street.
The day begins for me when my wife comes in. She arrives in her petticoat with her hair in disarray—but washed, smelling of flower- scented eau-de-Cologne, and looking as if she has dropped in by accident. She always says the same thing.
'Sorry, I'll only be a minute. Had another bad night?'
Then she turns out the lamp, sits by the table and starts talking. I'm no prophet, but I can predict her theme, which is the same every morning. After anxious inquiries about my health, she'll suddenly mention our son—an officer stationed in Warsaw. We always send him fifty roubles after the twentieth of the month, and this is our chief topic of conversation.
'We can't afford it, of course,' my wife sighs. 'But we're bound to help the boy till he finds his feet. He's abroad, and his pay's not much. Anyway, we'll send him forty roubles next month instead of fifty if you like. How about that?'
Daily experience might have taught my wife that constant talk about our expenses does nothing to reduce them, but having no faith in experience, she regularly discusses our officer son every morning, and tells me that the price of bread is down, thank God, but sugar has gone up two copecks—all this with the air ofone communicating matters of moment.
I listen and grunt encouragement mechanically, while strange, unsuitable thoughts obsess me, probably because I had such a bad night. I look at my wife and feel a childlike wonder. This elderly woman, very stout and clumsy, with her stupid look of petty anxiety, her fear of falling on evil days, her eyes clouded by brooding on debts and poverty, her capacity for harping on the price of things, and for smiling only when it comes do^n^<an this woman, I wonder in amazement, reaUy be the slim Varya with whom I once fell so deeply in love because of her good, clear brain, her pure heart, her beauty, and because she felt the same 'sympathy' for my profession which