Desdemona felt for Othello's? Can this really be my wife Varya who once bore me a son?
I stare intensely at this fat, clumsy old woman's face, seeking my Varya, but of her old self nothing remains except her anxiety over my health, together with her habit of calling my salary 'our salary', and my cap 'our cap'. She's a painful sight to me, . so I let her say what she likes to give her what comfort I can, and I don't even answer when she criticizes others unfairly, or nags me for not taking up pri- ..te practice and publishing textbooks.
Our conversation always ends in -the same way—my wife suddenly remembers that I haven't had my tea, and panics.
'But what am I doing here?' she asks, standing up. 'The samovar's been on the table ever so long, and here I am chattering. Dear me, how forgetful I'm becoming.'
She moves off quickly, but stops by the door.
'You know we owe Yegor five months' wages?' she asks. 'We shouldn't let the servants' wages run up, I've told you that again and again. It's far easier to pay them ten roubles a month than fifty every five months.'
She goes through the doorway and stops again.
'Poor Liza's the one I'm sorry for,' she says. 'The child studies at the Conservatory and moves in good society, but her clothes aren't fit to be seen. Her fur coat is—well, she's ashamed to go out in it. If she was just anyone's daughter it wouldn't matter, but of course everyone knows her father's a distinguished professor, one of the heads of his profession.'
Having reproached me with my rank and reputation, she goes out at last. This is the start of my day. Nor does it improve as it proceeds.
While I'm drinking tea, my daughter Liza enters in her fur coat and little cap—carrying some music, and all ready to go off to the Conservatory. She's twenty-two years old, but seems younger. She's pretty, and looks a bit like my wife when young. She kisses me affectionately on temple and hand.
'Good morning, Father,' she says. 'Are you well?'
She was very fond of ice-cream as a child, and I often used to take her to a cafй. Ice-cream was her yard-stick of excellence. 'You're ice- creamy, Daddy,' she would say ifshe wanted to praise me. We used to call one ofher fingers 'pistachio', another 'cream', a third 'raspberry', and so on. When she came in to say good morning I would usually put her on my knee and kiss her fingers.
'Cream, pistachio, lemon,' I would say.
I still kiss Liza's fingers for old time's sake. 'Pistachio, cream, lemon,' I mutter—but it doesn't come off at all, somehow. I feel as cold as ice myself, I'm embarrassed. When my daughter comes in and touches my temple with her lips, I start as ifstung by a bee, givea forced smile and tum my face away. Ever since I first contracted insomnia, a single question has been nagging at me. My daughter often sees me, a distinguished elderly man, blushing painfully because I owe my servant money, she sees how often worry over petty debts stops me working and has me \if.llking up and down the room for hours on end brooding. Then why has she never come to me without telling her mother and whispered: 'Here are my watch, bracelet, car-rings and dresses, Father. Pawn them all, you need the money' ? When she sees her mother and me trying to keep up appearances by concealing our poverty—why doesn't she give up the expensive pleasure of music study? I wouldn't accept her watch, her bracelet or any other sacrifices. God forbid, that's not what I need.
I also happen to remember my son, the officer stationed in Warsaw. He's an intelligent, honest, sober fellow, but that's not good enough for me. Ifl had an old father, and ifl knew that he had moments when he felt ashamed of his poverty, I think I'd give someone else my officer's commission, and take a job as an ordinary labourer. Such thoughts about my children poison me. What good are they? To harbour ill-will against ordinary mortals for not being heroes—only a narrow-minded or embittered man can do that. But enough!
At a quarter to ten I have to go aaH lecture to my dear boys. I dress and walk along the road which I've known for thirty years, and which has a history of its own for me. There is the large grey house containing the chemist's shop. Here was once a small house with an ale bar where I thought out my thesis and wrote Varya my first loVe letter—in pencil, on a page headed Historia Morbi. Next comes the grocery once kept by a little Jew who sold me cigarettes on credit, and then by a fat countrywoman who loved students because 'each ofthem has a mother'. Its present occupant is a red-headed shopkeeper, a very stolid man who drinks his tea out of a copper teapot. Now come the gloomy university gates so long in need of repair, the bored janitor in his sheepskin coat, the broom, the piles of snow.
On a bright boy fresh from the provinces with the idea that a temple oflearning really is a temple, such gates cannot produce a salutary impression. By and large the university's dilapidated buildings, its gloomy corridors and grimy walls, the dearth of light, the melancholy vista of steps, coathooks and benches, have played an outstanding part as a conditioning factor in the history of Russian pessimism.
Here is our garden—it seems neither better nor worse than it was in my student days. I don't like it. Instead of these wizened limes, that yellow acacia and the skimpy pollarded lilac, it would be far more sensible to have some tall pines and fine oaks growing here. Most students' moods depend on their environment, and their place oflearn- ing should confront them exclusively with loftiness, strength and elegance at every hand.
God preserve them from scraggy trees, broken windows, grey walls and doors upholstered in tattered oilcloth.
When I reach my ownwn entrance, the door is flung open and I'm greeted by my old colleague, contemporary and namesake—the porter Nicholas. He lets me in and clears his throat.
'Freezing weather, Professor,' says he.
Or, if my fur coat is wet he says: 'A bit on the rainy side, Professor.'
Then he runs ahead, opening all the doors on my way. In my study he solicitously removes my fur coat whilst contriving to purvey some item of university news. Such is the close fellowship between all university porters and caretakers that he knows all about what goes on in the four faculties, the registry, the vice-chancellor's study and the library. He knows pretty well everything. For instance, when the vice- chancellor's retirement is in the air, or a dean's, I hear him talking to the young door-keepers—listing the candidates for the vacancy, and immediately explaining that So-and-so won't be accepted by the Minister, and Such-and-such will turn it downwn. Then he goes into fantastic details about certain mysterious papers which have turned up in the registry and concern an alleged secret dilcussion of the Minister's with the County Education Officer, and so forth. These details apart, he's practically always right. His sketches of each candidate's character have their peculiarities, but they're dependable too. Should you need to know the year when So-and-so was vivaed for his thesis, took up academic work, retired or died—then enlist this old soldier's portentous memory, and he'll not only tell you year, month and date, he'll also furnish the details attending this or that circumstance. No one can have a memory like this unless he loves his subject.
He's a custodian of academic tradition. From his predecessors as porter he has inherited many university legends, to which treasures he has added stocks of his o^n amassed in the course of his career. Many are the tales, long and short, which he'll tell you should you wish. He can speak of fantastic pundits who knew everything, about tremendous workers who went without sleep for weeks on end, about scholarship's many victims and martyrs. In his stories good triumphs over evil, while the weak, the wise, the modest and the young always vanquish the strong, the stupid, the proud and the old.
There's no need to take all these legends and fantasies at face value, but sift them carefully and you'll be left with something vital—our fine traditions and the names of real paragons who are generally recognized.