Smoke (Alma Classics) Page 20

  Litvinov would have been angered had it not been for the dead weight which lay on his heart. He looked at Bindasov and turned away in silence.

  “We’re telling you, Gubaryov’s here!” Sukhanchikova exclaimed, her eyes almost popping out of her head.

  Litvinov did not stir.

  “Listen, Litvinov,” Bambayev began finally. “Not only is Gubaryov here, but a whole phalanx of the most excellent and cleverest of young people, Russians, and they are all studying natural science and have the noblest of convictions. Please stay, if only for them. For instance, there’s someone here – oh, I’ve forgotten their name – but they’re a genius!”

  “Leave him alone, leave him alone, Rostislav Ardalionovich,” Sukhanchikova interposed. “Leave him alone! You can see what sort of man he is; his whole clan is like that. He’s got an auntie; at first she seemed sensible to me, but the day before yesterday I was travelling here with her; she had just arrived in Baden and behold, there she was already flying back. Well, sir, I was travelling with her and began to question her. Would you believe it, I couldn’t get a word out of the snooty woman. A revolting aristocrat!”

  Poor Kapitolina Markovna. An aristocrat! Could she have expected such vilification?

  But Litvinov continued his silence, turned away and pulled his cap down over his eyes. At last the train moved off.

  “At least say a parting word, you man of stone!” Bambayev shouted. “You can’t behave like that!”

  “You good-for-nothing! You simpleton!” yelled Bindasov. The carriages were rolling along quicker and quicker, and he could curse with impunity.

  “Miser! Slug! Police spy!”*

  Whether Bindasov had invented this last appellation on the spot or whether it was second-hand, it was obviously very pleasing to two extremely well-born young people who were standing nearby and were studying natural science, because several days later it appeared in a Russian periodical which was published in Heidelberg at the time under the title À tout venant je crache* or Whom God Helps No Man Can Harm.*

  Litvinov began to repeat his earlier words: “Smoke, smoke, smoke. Here in Heidelberg,” he thought, “there are more than one hundred Russian students. They’re all studying chemistry, physics or physiology and don’t want to know anything else. But when five or six years have passed the same eminent professors won’t have fifteen people on their courses;* the wind will change, the smoke will stream in another direction. Smoke, smoke, smoke.”

  Towards nightfall he passed through Kassel. Together with the darkness an intolerable languor descended on him like a kite and he began to weep, huddled in the corner of the carriage. His tears flowed for a long time, without relieving the burden on his heart but tearing him apart with bitter, corrosive pain. At the same time, at one of the hotels in Kassel, Tatyana lay on her bed in a fever; Kapitolina Markovna sat beside her.

  “Tanya,” she was saying, “for Heaven’s sake let me send a telegram to Grigory Mikhailovich. Let me, Tanya.”

  “No, Auntie,” she replied, “that’s not necessary. Don’t be afraid. Give me some water. This will soon pass.”

  And indeed, after about a week, her health mended and both women continued their journey.

  27

  Without stopping in either Petersburg or Moscow, Litvinov returned to his estate. He took fright on seeing his father, so feeble and frail had the latter become. The old man rejoiced in his son as much as any man can rejoice who has already reached his twilight years. He at once handed all his affairs, which were in a state of considerable disorder, over to Litvinov and, having staggered on for a few more weeks, quit this earthly realm. Litvinov remained alone in the decrepit wing of the manor house and, with a heavy heart and bereft of hope, passion and money, began to manage his estate. Managing an estate in Russia is a thankless task, familiar to many; we will not expatiate on how difficult it was for Litvinov. Naturally, there could be no question of reforms and innovations. The application of knowledge acquired abroad was put off indefinitely; necessity forced him to exist from day to day and to agree to all kinds of compromises, both material and moral. The New was poorly received; the Old had lost all power; incompetence clashed with unscrupulousness; the whole tottering edifice was as unreliable as a quagmire and only the great word “freedom” moved like the spirit of God over the waters. Above all, patience was required, not long-suffering patience, but active, insistent patience, which was not without skill or cunning. In his current state of mind Litvinov found things doubly difficult. He had very little will to live left in him. Where would he have found the will to take trouble and work?

  But a year passed; then another; a third began. The great idea was slowly coming about, was becoming flesh and blood. A shoot emerged from a shattered seed and already neither overt nor covert enemies could do him down. Although Litvinov finished up by giving away the greater part of his land on a half-and-half basis, that is, he resorted to poverty-stricken, primitive farming methods, he did, however, succeed in one thing: he renovated the factory, set up a tiny farm with five hired labourers – he had had forty of them at various times – and paid off his major personal debts. His spirits rose and he once again began to resemble the old Litvinov. Admittedly, a deeply buried feeling of sadness never left him and the quietude into which he had fallen belied his years; he locked himself in his own narrow circle and severed all previous relationships. But his deathly indifference had disappeared and among living souls he again stirred and acted like a living soul. The last traces of the spell which had overcome him also disappeared. Everything that had happened in Baden appeared dreamlike to him. And Irina? She, too, had paled and vanished, and Litvinov had only a dim sensation of something dangerous beneath the fog which enveloped her image. News of Tatyana occasionally reached him; he knew that she and her aunt had settled on her estate some one hundred and thirty miles away. She did not go out much and did not receive guests, and yet she was serene and in good health. Once, on a fine May day, he was sitting in his study, listlessly turning the pages of the latest number of a Petersburg journal, when a servant came in and announced the arrival of Litvinov’s aged uncle. This uncle was cousin of Kapitolina Markovna and had visited her recently. He had bought a neighbouring estate to Litvinov’s and was making his way there. He stayed with his nephew for a whole day and night and told him a great deal about Tatyana’s everyday life. The day after his departure Litvinov sent a letter to her, the first since their separation. He asked for permission at least to renew their epistolary friendship and also wished to know whether he must abandon for ever the idea of meeting her sometime. With some excitement he awaited her answer. Tatyana responded in friendly fashion to his question. “If you think you would like to visit us,” she concluded, “please do come. They say sick people are happier together than apart.” Kapitolina Markovna also sent her regards. Litvinov rejoiced like a child; his heart had not beaten so happily on any account for a long time. Life suddenly became happy and bright, just as, when the sun rises and disperses the darkness of the night, a light breeze runs over the face of the resurrected earth. All that day Litvinov kept laughing, even when he was walking round his farm and issuing instructions. He at once began to make arrangements for the journey and two weeks later was already on his way to Tatyana’s.

  28

  He travelled fairly slowly by back roads, without undue adventure. Just once the tyre on a rear wheel broke; a blacksmith tried to weld it, cursing both it and himself, then gave up. Fortunately it turned out that in Russia it is possible to make good progress even with a broken tyre, especially “over the soft”, that is to say, through the mud. On the other hand Litvinov had two or three curious encounters. At one post station he found a Congress of Arbitrators,* headed by Pishchalkin, who impressed him as a Solon or a Solomon;* such elevated wisdom did his utterances exude and so limitless was the respect with which he was treated by both peasants and landowners. In appearance too Pishchalkin had
begun to resemble an ancient sage; the hair on his crown had fallen out and his pudgy face had completely frozen into a kind of majestic jelly of unbridled virtue. He congratulated Litvinov on his arrival “in my – if I may be so bold as to use so solemn an expression – my own district.” Thereupon, however, he was overcome with an access of well-intentioned emotions. He was able to convey one piece of news, namely about Voroshilov. The Honours Board Champion had again entered military service and had already managed to deliver a lecture to the officers of his regiment on “Buddhism” or “dynamism”, or something like that – Pishchalkin could not rightly remember what. At the next post station Litvinov had to wait a long time for the horses to be harnessed. It was dawn and he dozed as he sat in his carriage. A voice which seemed familiar woke him up. He opened his eyes.

  Good Lord! If it wasn’t Gubaryov, standing and cursing on the porch of the post station; he was wearing a grey jacket and sagging pyjama trousers. No, it wasn’t Gubaryov. But what a striking similarity! Only this gentleman had an even broader and toothier mouth, the look in his dull eyes was even wilder, his nose bigger, his beard thicker and his whole appearance even heavier and more repulsive.

  “Scou-oundrels! Scou-oundrels!” he repeated slowly and spitefully, opening wide his vulpine mouth. “Peasant rubbish! This is it – the much vaunted freedom – and you can’t get horses. Scou-oundrels!”

  “Scou-oundrels, scou-oundrels!” came the sound of another voice and out onto the steps this time came – also wearing a grey jacket and sagging pyjama trousers – what was actually and indubitably the real Gubaryov, Stepan Nikolayevich Gubaryov. “Peasant rubbish,” he continued, in imitation of his brother (it turned out that the first gentleman was his older brother, a “bruiser” of the old school, who ran Gubaryov’s estate). “You need to beat them, beat their heads. I’ll give them freedom – in their teeth. The way they talk: ‘district headman’. I’d give them what for!” But where’s that Monsieur Roston? What’s he gawping at? It’s his job, the parasite, to keep us away from trouble.”

  “I’ve told you, brother,” said the elder Gubaryov, “he’s good for nothing, a real parasite. But you, for old times’ sake… Monsieur Roston! Monsieur Roston! Where’ve you got to?”

  “Roston! Roston!” shouted the younger Gubaryov, the great Gubaryov. “Yell for him good and proper, brother Dorimedont Nikolayevich.”

  “I am yelling for him, brother Stepan Nikolayevich. Monsieur Roston!”

  “Here I am! Here I am! Here I am!” came a hurried voice, and, from behind the corner of the post station sprang – Bambayev.

  Litvinov gasped. The hapless enthusiast was wearing a shapeless hussar jacket with holes in the sleeves. His features had not so much changed as grown contorted and pinched; his over-anxious little eyes expressed servile fear and hungry submissiveness, but his dyed moustache still protruded above his puffy lips. The Gubaryov brothers at once began to upbraid him in unison from the top of the steps. He halted in the mud, in front of them and below them, tried to mollify them with a timid little smile, crumpled his cap in his red fingers, shuffled his feet and muttered that he’d been told the horses would soon appear. But the brothers did not leave off until the younger one finally looked up at Litvinov. Whether he recognized him or whether he was embarrassed by the presence of an outsider, he suddenly turned on his heels like a bear and, biting his beard, hobbled into the post station. His brother also fell silent and, also turning round in bearlike fashion, set off after him. The great Gubaryov had clearly not lost his influence, even in his native country.

  Bambayev was about to wander off after the brothers… Litvinov called him by name. He looked round, raised his eyes and, recognizing Litvinov, hurled himself towards him with outstretched arms; however, having got as far as the carriage, he grabbed hold of the doors, fell with his chest against them and burst into floods of tears.

  “There, there, Bambayev,” Litvinov kept repeating, bending over him and patting his shoulder.

  But he continued sobbing.

  “This, this is what…” he mumbled, sobbing.

  “Bambayev!” roared the brothers from the post station.

  Bambayev raised his head and hastily wiped away his tears.

  “Hello, my dear,” he whispered. “Hello and goodbye. They’re calling me, as you can hear.”

  “What brings you here?” asked Litvinov. “And what does all this mean? I thought they were summoning a Frenchman.”

  “I work as a house steward, a butler, for them,” replied Bambayev, jabbing his finger towards the post station. “And I’ve turned into a Frenchman, for a joke. What can you do, brother? You see, I had nothing to eat. I’d lost the last of my money, so one puts one’s neck in the noose willy-nilly. I can’t stand on my dignity.”

  “But has he been in Russia long? And how’s he settled his account with his former comrades?”

  “Ah, brother! That’s all forgotten now. The wind’s changed, you see… Sukhanchikova, Matryona Kuzminishna, he simply threw out on her ear. She went to Portugal in her grief.”

  “Why Portugal?”

  “To Portugal with two Matryonovites?”

  “With whom?”

  “With Matryonovites; that’s the nickname of people in her party.”

  “Matryona Kuzminishna has her own party? Is it big?”

  “Just those two people. But he will soon have been back here for six months. The others have had their ace trumped, but he was all right. He lives with his brother in the country, and you should listen to him now.”

  “Bambayev!”

  “Coming, Stepan Nikolayevich, coming! And you, my dear, are flourishing and enjoying life. Well, thank the Lord for that. Where are you bound for now? I never thought, I never guessed. Do you remember Baden? Ah, that was the life! By the way, do you remember Bindasov? Just imagine, he’s dead. He became an excise man and got into a fight in a tavern. He got his head broken with a billiard cue. Yes indeed, hard times have come. Yet I still say: what a country Russia is! Just look at that pair of geese; you know there’s nothing like that in the whole of Europe. Real Arzamas geese!”*

  And, after paying this last tribute to his indestructible enthusiasm, Bambayev ran off into the post station, where his name was being uttered once more, and not without a certain amount of fisticuffs.

  Towards the end of that same day Litvinov was already approaching Tatyana’s estate. The house where his former fiancée lived stood on a hill above a small river, in the midst of a recently planted garden. The house was newly built and was visible from a distance, across the river and fields. The view of the house, with its steeply raked mezzanine and row of windows glowing red in the evening sun, opened up to Litvinov about a mile away. Already at the last post station he had felt a secret anxiety, but now agitation – joyful excitement, not without a certain apprehension – overwhelmed him. “How will they greet me?” he wondered. “How shall I present myself?” In order to take his mind off things somehow, he struck up a conversation with the coachman, a middle-aged peasant with a grey beard, who charged him for twenty miles when it was not even fifteen. Litvinov asked him whether he knew the Shestova ladies.

  “The Shestovas? How could I not! They’re kind ladies, no question. They treat us peasants when we’re ill. I’m telling it like it is. They’re lady doctors! People go to them from all around. It’s true. They even crawl there. If someone gets ill, for instance, or cuts themselves or whatever, they go to them at once and immediately hand out a poultice here, powders or a ‘flaster’ there, and it’s all right, it helps. And you can’t show any gratitude. They say they won’t agree to that and that they don’t do it for money. They’ve also set up a school. But that’s a waste of time.”

  While the coachman was talking, Litvinov did not take his eyes off the house. Then a woman in white came out onto the balcony, stood for a while, then disappeared. “Is it not her?” His heart leapt wi
thin him. “Faster! Faster!” he shouted to the coachman, who urged the horses on. A few more seconds… and the carriage rolled into the open gates. Kapitolina Markovna was already standing on the porch, completely beside herself with joy, clapping her hands and shouting: “I recognized him! I was the first to recognize him! It’s him! It’s him! I recognized him!”

  Litvinov leapt out of the carriage without giving the pageboy who ran up time to open the doors and, after hastily embracing Kapitolina Markovna, he rushed into the house, through the hall and living room. Before him stood Tatyana, overcome with bashfulness. She looked at him with her kindly eyes (she had grown somewhat thinner, but it suited her) and gave him her hand. But he did not take her hand; he fell on his knees before her. She had not expected this at all and did not know what to say or do… Tears welled up in her eyes. She was fearful, but her whole face was suffused with joy. “Grigory Mikhailovich, Grigory Mikhailovich, what’s this?” she said, but he continued to kiss the hem of her dress, and he remembered with tenderness how he had been on his knees like this before her in Baden. But then – and now!

  “Tanya,” he repeated, “Tanya. You’ve forgiven me, Tanya?”

  “Auntie, Auntie, what’s this?” said Tatyana, turning to Kapitolina Markovna, who had come in.

  “Don’t stop him, don’t stop him, Tanya,” answered the kind old lady. “You can see: he’s acknowledging his guilt.”

  However, it is time to finish, and there is no point in adding anything. Readers will guess for themselves. But what about Irina?

  She is as delightful as ever, in spite of her thirty years; countless young men fall in love with her and even more would have done if only… if only…

  Readers, will you care to come with us for a few moments to Petersburg, to one of the major buildings there. Behold: before you is a spacious room decorated – we won’t say richly, the expression being too low – but grandly, impressively, imposingly. Do you feel a certain tremor of servility? Know then that you have entered a temple, a temple dedicated to the highest decorum, to loving virtue, in a word, to the unearthly. A secret – actually secret* silence will envelop you. The velvet portières, the velvet curtains on the windows, the thick, fluffy carpet on the floor – everything is intended and adapted to mute and soften all coarse sounds and strong sensations. The carefully hung lamps inspire moderate feelings; a decorous aroma suffuses the stuffy air. Even the samovar on the table hisses in a restrained and modest fashion. The lady of the house, an important personage in the world of Petersburg, speaks barely audibly; she always speaks like this, as if there is a person with a serious, almost life-threatening illness in the room. Other ladies, in imitation of her, scarcely whisper, and her sister, who is dispensing tea, moves her lips completely silently, with the result that a young man sitting in front of her, who has found his way by chance into this temple of decorum, is baffled as to what she wants of him, while she, for the sixth time, hisses to him: Voulez-vous une tasse de thé?* In the corners can be seen fine-looking young men; quiet obsequiousness illuminates their eyes; serene but ingratiating are the expressions on their faces; many tokens of excellence gleam on their breasts. The conversation is also quiet, touching on spiritual and patriotic subjects, F.N. Glinka’s Mysterious Drop, missions in the East and fraternities in Belorussia.* Occasionally, moving noiselessly over the soft carpet, liveried footmen pass by. Their huge calves, encased in light silk stockings, tremble silently with every step. The deferential rippling of their hefty muscles merely increases the general impression of dignity, solemnity and sanctity. This is a temple, a temple!