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Title: The Old House and Other Tales Author: Feodor Sologub Release Date: March 10, 2015 [EBook #48452] Last updated: November 15, 2019 Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OLD HOUSE AND OTHER TALES *** Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org (Images generously made available by the Internet Archive.) cover frontispiece The Old House and Other Tales by Feodor Sologub AUTHORISED TRANSLATION FROM THE RUSSIAN BY JOHN COURNOS SECOND IMPRESSION LONDON MARTIN SECKER NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET ADELPHI 1916 Acknowledgments are due to the Editor of “The New Statesman” for permission to republish The White Dog and The Hoop, which first appeared in that periodical. Contents INTRODUCTION THE OLD HOUSE THE UNITER OF SOULS THE INVOKER OF THE BEAST THE WHITE DOG LIGHT AND SHADOWS THE GLIMMER OF HUNGER HIDE AND SEEK THE SMILE THE HOOP THE SEARCH THE WHITE MOTHER INTRODUCTION “Sologub” is a pseudonym—the author’s real name is Feodor Kuzmich Teternikov. He was born in 1863. He completed a scholastic course at Petrograd. His first published story appeared in the periodical “Severny Viestnik” in 1894, but it was not until about a dozen years later that he came into his fame, which he has since then further enhanced. This is all the biographical knowledge we have of a living novelist whose place in Russian literature is secure beyond all question; the scantiness of our knowledge is all the more amazing when we consider that the author is over fifty, and that his complete works are in their twentieth volume. These include almost every possible form of literary expression—the fairy tale, the poem, the play, the essay, the novel, and the short story. Sologub’s place as a poet is hardly less assured than his place as a novelist. How little importance Sologub attaches to personal réclame may be gathered from his answer to repeated requests for a nutshell “autobiography” a type of document in vogue in Russia; Maxim Gorky’s impressive model, I believe, is quite familiar to English readers. “I cannot give you my autobiography,” Sologub wrote to the editor of a literary almanac, “as I do not think that my personality can be of sufficient interest to any one. And I haven’t the time to waste on such unnecessary business as an autobiography.” At the beginning of his Complete Works, however, there is a poem in prose, a kind of spiritual autobiography in which he insists that all life is a miracle, and that his own surely is also. “I simply and calmly reveal my soul ... in the hope that the intimate part of me shall become the universal.” After such an avowal the reader will know where to look for the author’s personality. In studying his work, one finds that he has both realism and fantasy. But while he is sometimes wholly realistic, he is seldom wholly fantastic. His fantasy has always its foundations in reality. His realism is as grey as that of Chekhov, whose logical successor he has been acclaimed by Russian criticism. But it is his prodigious fantasy that makes the point of his departure from the Chekhovian formula. When he combines the two qualities, the strange reconciliation thus effected produces a result as original as it is rich in “the meaning of life.” Sologub himself says somewhere: “I take a piece of life, coarse and poor, and make of it a delightful legend.” This sentence establishes the distinction between the two writers. Life for Chekhov may contain its delightful characters, life itself is seldom a delightful legend. Actually, Sologub sees life more greyly than Chekhov; perhaps it is this sense of grief “too great to be borne” that compels him to grope for an outlet, for some kind of relief. Already in his earliest novel one of the characters gives utterance to the significant words: “Once you prove that life has no meaning, life becomes impossible.” This relief is to be found within oneself in the “inner life”; that is in the imagination, “imagination the great consoler” as Renan has said. Imagination is everything; it is, indeed, the invoker of all beauty; and admiration of beauty is the one escape out of life. The author, “with whatever words he can find, speaks of one thing. Patiently calls towards the one thing....” Writing of the sadness of life, he envelops this sadness in the beauty evoked by his imagination as in a flame, and withers it up. One finds him rejoicing that there is a life other than “this ordinary, coarse, tedious, sunlight life,” that there is a life that is “nocturnal, prodigious, resembling a fairy tale.” It may sound like a startling antinomy to say that at his happiest Sologub is a compound of Chekhov and Poe. It could be put in another way: if Poe were a Russian, he might have written as Sologub writes. This is to say that the mystery with which Sologub endows his tales is never there for its own sake, but as a most intense symbol of reality. Consider a story like “The Invoker of the Beast.” As a story of reincarnation it is a masterpiece of mystery. The reader, anxious for a good tale merely, may let the matter rest there. But can he? Can he listen to Gurov, who, while living through, in his delirium, his previous existence, is so insistent about the “invincibility of his walls”—and yet remain unmoved to the deep meaning of Gurov’s cry? Are not the seemingly imperishable walls, within which Gurov thought himself secure from the Beast, a symbol of our own subtle insecurity? Is not our own Beast—be it some unexpected latent circumstance, or some unlooked-for yet inevitable consequence of a past action, on the part of our ancestors or of ourselves—ready to pounce upon us and ravage our hearts, after a long and relentless pursuit, from which in the end there is no escape? Again, to one who has read most of Sologub’s productions, the story of the Beast is interesting, because it contains, as it were, a synthesis of the author’s tendencies. Its separate motifs are repeated in variation in many of his other stories. There is the boy Timarides, whom the author loves. Why? Because Timarides is a child, because he is beautiful, trustful, and ready to do daring deeds. Timarides perhaps stands for the young generation reproaching the old for its neglect, its forgetfulness of its promises, its settling in a groove, its stripping itself of its happiest illusions. And throughout his work, Sologub reiterates his affection for children and the childlike. When he loves or pities an older person, he endows him with childlike attributes. He does this in the little story, “The Hoop.” Does the old man seem absurd to us? If so, it is to be inferred that the fault is with ourselves. We have grown too sophisticated. Here, again, Chekhov and Sologub meet. Chekhov loves the unpractical people, because they are usually more lovable personalities than the successful, practical ones; Sologub loves the absurd, the childlike, the quixotic, for the same reason. Rather than have them grow up and therefore become unlovable, Sologub makes some of his children die young. There is, for example, in one of his stories, sweet Rayechka, who died in a fall, and upon whom the boy, Mitya, recalling her, muses in this fashion: “Had Rayechka lived to grow up, she might have become a housemaid like Darya, pomaded her hair, and squinted her cunning eyes.” In “The Old House” it is the children once more who are the revolutionaries— trustful, adorable, and daring. In “The White Mother” the bachelor, Saksaoolov, is redeemed through the boy, Lesha, who resembles his dead sweetheart. Schoolmasters and schoolchildren are among the characters who frequent the pages of Sologub’s books. Sologub, it should be remembered, began life as a schoolmaster. The story “Light and Shadows” is, perhaps, a reflection upon our educational system which crams the young mind with a multitude of useless facts and starves the imagination; we see the reaction of the system on the delicate organism of a sensitive and imaginative child. Mothers share the author’s affection for their children; but, like schoolmasters, mothers, unfortunately, are of two kinds. The world has its “black mammas” as well as its “white mammas.” There are few writers who are so subtle, so insinuating, and so seductive, in their power to make the reader think; few writers who give so great a stimulus to the imagination. With Chekhov, Russian fiction turns definitely to town life for its material; nevertheless, the changes which the modern industrial system has brought about have in no wise weakened the mystic force of Russian literature. Sologub is a mystic, a mystic of Russian tradition; and Sologub is a product of Petrograd. JOHN COURNOS THE OLD HOUSE[1] I It was an old, large, one-storied house, with a mezzanine. It stood in a village, eleven versts from a railway station, and about fifty versts from the district town. The garden which surrounded the house seemed lost in drowsiness, while beyond it stretched vistas and vistas of inexpressibly dull, infinitely depressing fields. Once this house had been painted lavender, but now it was faded. Its roof, once red, had turned dark brown. But the pillars of the terrace were still quite strong, the little arbours in the garden were intact, and there was an Aphrodite in the shrubbery. It seemed as if the old house were full of memories. It stood, as it were, dreaming, recalling, lapsing finally into a mood of sorrow at the overwhelming flood of doleful memories. Everything in this house was as before, as in those days when the whole family lived there together in the summer, when Borya was yet alive. Now, in the old manor, lived only women: Borya’s grandmother, Elena Kirillovna Vodolenskaya; Borya’s mother, Sofia Alexandrovna Ozoreva; and Borya’s sister, Natalya Vasilyevna. The old grandmother, and the mother, and the young girl appeared tranquil, and at times even cheerful. It was the second year of their awaiting in the old house the youngest of the family, Boris. Boris who was no longer among the living. They hardly spoke of him to one another; yet their thoughts, their memories, and their musings of him filled their days. At times dark threads of grief stole in among the even woof of these thoughts and reveries; and tears fell bitterly and ceaselessly. When the midday sun rested overhead, when the sad moon beckoned, when the rosy dawn blew its cool breezes, when the evening sun blazed its red laughter—these were the four points between which their spirits fluctuated from evening joy to high midday sorrow. Swayed involuntarily, all three of them felt the sympathy and antipathy of the hours, each mood in turn. The happiness of dawn, the bright, midday sadness, the joy of dusk, the pale pining of night. The four emotions lifted them infinitely higher than the rope upon which Borya had swung, upon which Borya had died. [1] In collaboration with Anastasya Chebotarevskaya. II At pale-rose dawn, when the merrily green, harmoniously white birches bend their wet branches before the windows, just beyond the little patch of sand by the round flower- bed; at pale-rose dawn—when a fresh breeze comes blowing from the bathing pond— then wakes Natasha, the first of the three. What a joy it is to wake at dawn! To throw aside the cool cover of muslin, to rest upon the elbow, upon one’s side, and to look out of the window with large, dark, sad eyes. Out of the window the sky is visible, seeming quite low over the white distant birches. A pale vermilion sunrise brightly suffuses its soft fire through the thin mist which stretches over the earth. There is in its quiet, gently joyous flame a great tension of young fears and of half-conscious desires; what tension, what happiness, and what sadness! It smiles through the dew of sweet morning tears, over white lilies-of-the-valley, over the blue violets of the broad fields. Wherefore tears! To what end the grief of night! There, close to the window, hangs a sprig of sweet-flag, banishing all evil. It was put there by the grandmother, and the old nurse insists on its staying there. It trembles in the air, the sprig of sweet-flag, and smiles its dry green smile. Natasha’s face lapses into a quiet, rosy serenity. The earth awakes in its fresh morning vigour. The voices of newly-roused life reach Natasha. Here the restless twitter of birds comes from among the swaying damp branches. There in the distance can be heard the prolonged trill of a horn. Elsewhere, quite near, on the path by the window, there are sounds of something walking with a heavy, stamping tread. The cheerful neighing of a foal is heard, and from another quarter the protracted lowing of sullen cows. III Natasha rises, smiles at something, and goes quickly to the window. Her window looks down upon the earth from a height. It is in three sections, in the mezzanine. Natasha does not draw the curtains across it at night, so as not to hide from her drowsing eyes the comforting glimmer of the stars and the witching face of the moon. What happiness it is to open the window, to fling it wide open with a vigorous thrust of the hand! From the direction of the river the gentlest of morning breezes comes blowing into Natasha’s face, still somewhat rapt in sleep. Beyond the garden and the hedges she can see the broad fields beloved from childhood. Spread over them are sloping hillocks, rows of ploughed soil, green groves, and clusters of shrubbery. The river winds its way among the green, full of capricious turnings. White tufts of mist, dispersing gradually, hang over it like fragments of a torn veil. The stream, visible in places, is more often hidden by some projection of its low bank, but in the far distance its path is marked by dense masses of willow-herb, which stand out dark green against the bright grass. Natasha washed herself quickly; it was pleasant to feel the cold water upon her shoulders and upon her neck. Then, childlike, she prayed diligently before the ikon in the dark corner, her knees not upon the rug but upon the bare floor, in the hope that it might please God. She repeated her daily prayer: “Perform a miracle, O Lord!” And she bent her face to the floor. She rose. Then quickly she put on her gay, light dress with broad shoulder-straps, cut square on the breast, and a leather belt, drawn in at the back with a large buckle. Quickly she plaited her dark braids, and deftly wound them round her head. With a flourish she stuck into them horn combs and hairpins, the first that came to her hand. She threw over her shoulders a grey, knitted kerchief, pleasantly soft in texture, and made haste to go out onto the terrace of the old house. The narrow inner staircase creaked gently under Natasha’s light step. It was pleasant to feel the contact of the cold hard floor of planks under her warm feet. When Natasha descended and passed down the corridor and through the dining-room, she walked on tip-toe so as to awaken neither her mother nor her grandmother. Upon her face was a sweet expression of cheerful preoccupation, and between her brows a slight contraction. This contraction had remained as it was formed in those other days. The curtains in the dining-room were still drawn. The room seemed dark and oppressive. She wanted to run through quickly, past the large drawn-out table. She had no wish to stop at the sideboard to snatch something to eat. Quicker, quicker! Toward freedom, toward the open, toward the smiles of the careless dawn which does not think of wearisome yesterdays. IV It was bright and refreshing on the terrace. Natasha’s light-coloured dress suddenly kindled with the pale-rose smiles of the early sun. A soft breeze blew from the garden. It caressed and kissed Natasha’s feet. Natasha seated herself in a wicker chair, and leant her slender rosy elbows upon the broad parapet of the terrace. She directed her gaze toward the gate between the hedges beyond which the grey silent road was visible, gently serene in the pale rose light. Natasha looked long, intently, with a steady pensive gaze in her dark eyes. A small vein quivered at the left corner of her mouth. The left brow trembled almost imperceptibly. The vertical contraction between her eyes defined itself rather sharply. Equal to the fixity of the tremulous, ruby-like flame of the rising sun, was the fixed vision of her very intent, motionless eyes. If an observer were to give a long and searching look at Natasha as she sat there in the sunrise, it would seem to him that she was not observing what was before her, but that her intent gaze was fixed on something very far away, at something that was not in sight. It was as though she wished to see some one who was not there, some one she was waiting for, some one who will come—who will come to-day. Only let the miracle happen. Yes, the miracle! V Natasha’s grey daily routine was before her. It was always the same, always in the same place. And as yesterday, as to-morrow, as always, the same people. Eternal unchanging people. A muzhik walked along with a monotonous swing, the iron heels of his boots striking the hard clay of the road with a resounding clang. A peasant woman walked unsteadily by, softly rustling her way through the dewy grass, showing her sunburnt legs. Regarding the old house with a kind of awe, a number of sweet, sunburnt, dirty, white-haired urchins ran by. Past the house, always past it. No one thought of stopping at the gate. And no one saw the young girl behind that pillar of the terrace. Sweet-briar bloomed near the gate. It let fall its first pale-rose petals on the yellow sandy path, petals of heavenly innocence even in their actual fall. The roses in the garden exhaled their sweet, passionate perfume. At the terrace itself, reflecting the light of the sky, they flaunted their bright rosy smiles, their aromatic shameless dreams and desires, innocent as all was innocent in the primordial paradise, innocent as only the perfumes of roses are innocent upon this earth. White tobacco plants and red poppies bloomed in one part of the garden. And just beyond a marble Aphrodite gleamed white, like some eternal emblem of beauty, in the green, refreshing, aromatic, joyous life of this passing day. Natasha said quietly to herself: “He must have changed a great deal. Perhaps I shan’t know him when he comes.” And quietly she answered herself: “But I would know him at once by his voice and his eyes.” And listening intently she seemed to hear his deep, sonorous voice. Then she seemed to see his dark eyes, and their flaming, dauntless, youthfully-bold glance. And again she listened intently and gave a searching look into the great distance. She bent down lightly, and inclined her sensitive ear toward something while her glance, pensive and motionless, seemed no less fixed. It was as though she had stopped suddenly in an attitude, tense and not a little wild. The rosy smile of the now blazing sunrise timidly played on Natasha’s pale face. VI A voice in the distance gave a cry, and there was an answering echo. Natasha shivered. She started, sighed, and then rose. Down the low, broad steps she descended into the garden, and found herself on the sandy path. The fine grey sand grated under her small and narrow feet, which left behind their delicate traces. Natasha approached the white marble statue. For a long time she gazed upon the tranquil beauty of the goddess’s face, so remote from her own tedious, dried-up life, and then upon the ever-youthful form, nude and unashamed, radiating freedom. Roses bloomed at the foot of the plain pedestal. They added the enchantment of their brief aromatic existence to the enchantment of eternal beauty. Very quietly Natasha addressed the Aphrodite. “If he should come to-day, I will put into the buttonhole of his jacket the most scarlet, the most lovely of these roses. He is swarthy, and his eyes are dark—yes, I shall take the most scarlet of your roses!” The goddess smiled. Gathering up with her beautiful hands the serene draperies which fell about her knees, silently but unmistakably she answered, “Yes.” And Natasha said again: “I will plait a wreath of scarlet roses, and I will let down my hair, my long, dark hair; and I will put on the wreath, and I will dance and laugh and sing, to comfort him, to make him joyous.” And again the goddess said to her, “Yes.” Natasha spoke again: “You will remember him. You will recognize him. You gods remember everything. Only we people forget. In order to destroy and to create— ourselves and you.” And in the silence of the white marble was clear the eternal “Yes,” the comforting answer, “Yes.” Natasha sighed and took her eyes from the statue. The sunrise blazed into a flame; the joyous garden smiled with the radiations of dawn’s ever-youthful, triumphant laughter. VII Then Natasha went quietly toward the gate. There again she looked a long time down the road. She had her hand on the gate in an attitude of expectation, ready, as it were, to swing it wide open before him who was coming, before him whom she awaited. Stirring the grey dust of the road the refreshing early wind blew softly into Natasha’s face, and whispered in her ears persistent, evil and ominous things, as though it envied her expectation, her tense calm. O wind, you who blow everywhere, you know all, you come and you go at will, and you pursue your way into the endless beyond. O wind, you who blow everywhere, perchance you have flown into the regions where he is? Perchance you have brought tidings of him? If you would but bring hither a single sigh from him, or bear one hence to him; if but the light, pale shadow of a word. When the early wind blows a flush comes to Natasha’s face, and a flame to her eyes; her red lips quiver, a few tears appear, her slender form sways slightly—all this when the wind blows, the cool, the desolate, the unmindful, the infinitely wise wind. It blows, and in its blowing there is the sense of fleeting, irrevocable time. It blows, and it stings, and it brings sadness, and pitilessly it goes on. It goes on, and the frail dust falls back in the road, grey-rose yet dim in the dawn. It has wiped out all its traces, it has forgotten all who have walked upon it, and it lies faintly rose in the dawn. There is a gnawing at the heart from the sweet sadness of expectation. Some one seems to stand near Natasha, whispering in her ear: “He will come. He is on the way. Go and meet him.” VIII Natasha opens the gate and goes quickly down the road in the direction of the distant railway station. Having walked as far as the hillock by the river, one and a half versts away, Natasha pauses and looks into the distance. A clear view of the road is to be had from this hillock. Somewhere below, among the meadows, a curlew gives a sharp cry. The pleasant smell of the damp grass fills the air. The sun is rising. Suddenly everything becomes white, bright, and clear. Joyousness fills the great open expanse. On the top of the hillock the morning wind blows more strongly and more sweetly. It seems to have forgotten its desolation and its grief. The grass is quite wet with dew. How gently it clings to her ankles. It is resplendent in its multi-coloured, gem-like, tear-like glitter. The red sun rises slowly but triumphantly above the blue mist of the horizon. In its bright red flame there is a hidden foreboding of quiet melancholy. Natasha lowers her glance upon the wet grass. Sweet little flowers! She recognizes the flower of faithfulness, the blue periwinkle. Here also, quite near, reminiscent of death, is the black madwort. But what of that? Is it not everywhere? Soothe us, soothe us, little blue flowers! “I will not pluck a single one of you; not one of you will I plait into my wreath.” She stands, waiting, watching. Were he to show himself in the road she would recognize him even in the distance. But no—there is no one. The road is deserted, and the misty distances are dumb. IX Natasha remains standing a little while, then turns back. Her feet sink in the wet grass. The tall stalks half wind themselves round her ankles and rustle against the hem of her light-coloured dress. Natasha’s graceful arms, half hidden by the grey knitted kerchief, hang subdued at her sides. Her eyes have already lost their fixed expression, and have begun to jump from object to object. How often have they walked this road, all together, her little sisters, and Borya! They were noisy with merriment. What did they not talk about! Their quarrels! What proud songs they sang! Now she was alone, and there was no sign of Borya. Why were they waiting for him? In what manner would he come? She did not know. Perhaps she would not recognize him. There awakens in Natasha’s heart a presentiment of bitter thoughts. With a heavy rustle an evil serpent begins to stir in the darkness of her wearied memory. Slowly and sorrowfully Natasha turns her steps homeward. Her eyes are drowsy and seem to look aimlessly, with fallen and fatigued glances. The grass now seems disagreeably damp, the wind malicious; her feet feel the wet, and the hem of her thin dress has grown heavy with moisture. The new light of a new day, resplendent, glimmering with the play of the laughing dew, resounding with the hum of birds and the voices of human folk, becomes again for Natasha tiresomely blatant. What does a new day matter? Why invoke the unattainable? The murmur of pitiless memory, at first faint, grows more audible. The heavy burden of insurmountable sorrow falls on the heart like an aspen-grey weight. The heart feels proudly the pressure of the inexpressibly painful foreboding of tears. As she nears the house Natasha increases her pace. Faster and yet faster, in response to the growing beat of her sorrowful heart, she is running over the dry clay of the road, over the wet grass of the bypath, trodden by pedestrians, over the moist, crunching, sandy footpaths of the garden, which still treasure the gentle traces left by her at dawn. Natasha runs across the warm planks, as yet unswept of dust and litter. And she no longer tries to step lightly and inaudibly. She stumbles across the astonished, open- mouthed Glasha. She runs impetuously and noisily up the stairway to her room, and throws herself on the bed. She pulls the coverlet over her head, and falls asleep. X Borya’s grandmother, Elena Kirillovna, sleeps below. She is old, and she cannot sleep in the morning; but never in all her life has she risen early; so even now she is awake only a little later than Natasha. Elena Kirillovna, straight, thin, motionless, the back of her head resting on the pillow, lies for a long time waiting for the maid to bring her a cup of coffee —she has long ago accustomed herself to have her coffee in bed. Elena Kirillovna has a dry, yellow face, marked with many wrinkles; but her eyes are still sparkling, and her hair is black, especially by day, when she uses a cosmetic. The maid Glasha is habitually late. She sleeps well in the morning, for in the evening she loves to stroll over to the bridge in the village. The harmonica makes merry there, and on holidays all sorts of jolly folk and maidens dance and sing. Elena Kirillovna rings a number of times. In the end the unanswering stillness behind the door begins to irritate her. Sadly she turns on her side, grumbling. She stretches her dry, yellow hand forward and with a kind of concentrated intentness presses her bent, bony finger a long time on the white bell-button lying on the little round table at her head. At last Glasha hears the prolonged, jarring ring above her head. She jumps quickly from her bed, and anxiously gropes about for something or other in her narrow quarters under the stairway of the mezzanine; then she throws a skirt over her head, and hurries to her old mistress. While running she arranges somehow her heavy, tangled braids. Glasha’s face is angry and sleepy. She reels in her drowsiness. On the way to her mistress’s bedroom the morning air refreshes her a little. She faces her mistress looking more or less normal. Glasha has on a pink skirt and a white blouse. In the semi-darkness of the curtained windows her sunburnt arms and strong legs seem almost white. Young, strong, rustic and impetuous, she suddenly appears before her old mistress’s bed, her vigorous tread causing the heavy metal bed with its nickelled posts and surmounting knobs to rattle slightly, and the tumbler on the small round table to tinkle against the flagon. XI Elena Kirillovna greets Glasha with her customary observation: “Glasha, when am I to have my coffee? I ring and ring, and no one comes. You, girl, seem to sleep like the dead.” Glasha’s face assumes a look of astonishment and fear. Restraining a yawn, she bends down to put a disarranged rug in order, and puts a pair of soft, worn slippers closer to the bed. Then assuming an excessively tender, deferential tone which old gentlewomen like in their servants, she remarks: “Forgive me, barinya,[2] it shan’t take a minute. But how early you are awake to-day, barinya! Did you have a bad night?” Elena Kirillovna replies: “What sort of sleep can one except at my age! Get me my coffee a little more quickly, and I will try to get up.” She now speaks more calmly, despite the capricious note in her voice. Glasha replies heartily: “This very minute, barinya. You shall have it at once.” And she turns about to go out. Elena Kirillovna stops her with an angry exclamation: “Glasha, where are you going? You seem to forget, no matter how often I tell you! Draw the curtains aside.” Glasha, with some agility, thrusts back the curtains of the two windows and flies out of the room. She is rather low of stature and slender, and one can tell from her face that she is intelligent, but the sound of her rapid footsteps is measured and heavy, giving the impression that the runner is large, powerful, heavy, and capable of doing everything but what requires lightness. The mistress grumbles, looking after her: “Lord, how she stamps with her feet! She spares neither the floor nor her own heels!” [2] Means “gentlewoman,” and is a common form of salutation from servant to mistress. XII At last the sound of Glasha’s feet dies away in the echoing silence of the long corridor. The old lady lies, waiting, thinking. She is once more straight and motionless under her bed-cover, and very yellow and very still. Her whole life seems to be concentrated in the living sparkle of her keen eyes. The sun, still low, throws a subdued rosy light on the wall facing her. The bedroom is lit-up and quiet. Swift atoms of dust are dancing about in the air. There is a glitter on the glass of the photographic portraits which hang on the wall, as well as on the narrow gilt rims of their black frames. Elena Kirillovna looks at the portraits. Her keen, youthfully sparkling eyes carefully scrutinize the beloved faces. Many of these are no longer upon the earth. Borya’s portrait is a large one, in a broad dark frame. It is a young face, the face of a seventeen-year-old lad, quite smooth and with dark eyes. The upper lip shows a small but vigorous growth of hair. The lips are tightly compressed and the entire face gives the impression of an indomitable will. Elena Kirillovna looks long at the portrait, and recalls Borya. Of all her grandsons she loved him best. And now she is recalling him. She sees him as he had once looked. Where is he now? Before long Borya will return. She will be overjoyed, her eyes will have their fill of him. But how soon? It comforts the old woman to think, “It can’t be very long.” Some one has just run past her window, giving a shrill cry. Elena Kirillovna, turning in her bed, looks out of the window. The white acacia trees before the window, gaily rustling their leaves, smile innocently, naïvely and cheerily. Behind them, looming densely, are the tops of the birches and of the limes. Some of the branches lean toward the window. Their harsh rustle evokes a memory in Elena Kirillovna. If Borya were but to cry out like that! He had loved this garden. He had loved the white bloom of the acacia trees, and he had loved to gather the little field flowers. He used to bring her some. He liked cornflowers specially. XIII At last Glasha has come with the coffee. She has placed a silver tray on the little round table near the bed. Above the broad blue-and-gold porcelain cup rises a thin bluish cloud of steam. Elena Kirillovna draws her scant body higher upon the pillows, and sits upright in her bed; she seems straight, dry, and thin in her white night-jacket. With trembling hands she very fastidiously rearranges the ribbons of her white ruffled nightcap. Glasha, with great solicitude and skill, has placed a number of pillows at her back, and these piled up high make a soft wall of comfort. The little silver spoon held by the old dry fingers rings with fragile laughter as it stirs the sugar in the cup. Afterwards out of a small milk-jug comes a generous helping of boiled milk. And Glasha, having shifted somewhat to the side in order to catch a stealthy look of herself in the mirror, goes out. Elena Kirillovna sips her coffee slowly. She breaks a sugared biscuit, throws half of it in the cup, and leaves it there for a time. Then, when it is completely softened, she carefully takes it out with the little spoon. Elena Kirillovna’s teeth are still quite strong. She is very proud of this; nevertheless she has preferred of late to eat softer things. She munches away at the wet biscuit. Her face expresses gratification. Her small, keen eyes sparkle merrily. When the coffee is finished Elena Kirillovna lies down again. She dozes for half an hour on her back, under the bed-cover. Then she rings again and waits. XIV Glasha comes in. She has had time to comb her hair and to put on a pink blouse, and this makes her seem even thinner. As she is in no haste her footfalls sound even heavier than before. Glasha approaches her mistress’s bed and silently throws the bed-cover aside. She helps Elena Kirillovna to sit on the bed, holding her up under the arm. Then, getting down on her knees, she helps her mistress to put on her long black stockings and her soft grey slippers. Elena Kirillovna holds on to Glasha’s shoulder with her trembling, nervous hands. She envies Glasha’s youth, strength, and naïve simplicity. Grumbling under her breath at her unfortunate lot, Elena Kirillovna imagines in her dejection that she would be willing to sacrifice all her comfort to become like Glasha, a common servant-maid with coarse hands and feet red from rough usage and the wet—if she could but possess the youth, the cheerfulness, the sang-froid, and the happiness attainable upon this earth only by the stupid. The old woman grumbles often at her fate, but is quite unwilling to give up a single one of her gentlewoman’s habits. Glasha says, “All ready, barinya.” “Now my capote, Glasha,” Elena Kirillovna says as she gets up. But Glasha herself knows what is wanted. She deftly puts on Elena Kirillovna’s shoulders a white flannel robe. “Now you may go, Glashenka. I will ring if I want you again.” XV Glasha goes. She hurries to the veranda staircase. Here she washes herself a second time in a clay turn-over basin, which is attached by a rope to one of the posts of the veranda; she quickly plunges her face and hands in the water that had been left there overnight. She splashes the water a long way off on the green grass, on the lilac-grey planks of the staircase and on her feet, which are red from the early morning freshness and from the tender contact with the dewy grass in the vegetable garden. She laughs happily at herself—because she is a young, healthy girl, because the early morning freshness caresses the length of her strong, swift body with brisk cool strokes; and finally, because not far away, in the village, there is a lively and handsome young fellow, not unlike herself, who pays attention to her and whom she is rather fond of. It is true that her mother scolds her on his account, because the young man is poor. But what’s that to Glasha? Not for nothing is there an adage: “Without bread ’tis very sad, Still sadder ’tis without a lad.” Glasha laughs loudly and merrily. Stepanida cries at her from the kitchen window: “Glash, Glash, why do you neigh like a horse?” Glasha laughs, makes no reply, and goes off. Stepanida puts her simple, red face out of the window and asks: “I wonder what’s the matter with her.” She receives no answer, for there is no one to reply. Out of doors all is deserted. Only somewhere from behind the barn the languid voices of working-men can be heard. XVI In the meantime Elena Kirillovna kneels down with a sigh before the ikon in her bedroom. She prays a long time. Conscientiously she repeats all the prayers she knows. Her dry, raspberry-coloured lips stir slightly. Her face has a severe, concentrated expression. All her wrinkles seem also austere, weary, callous. There are many words in her prayers—holy, lofty, touching words. But because of their frequent repetition their meaning has become, as it were, hardened, stereotyped and ordinary; the tears which appear in her eyes are habitual tears wrung out by her antique emotion, and have no relation to the secret trepidation of impossible hopes which have stolen into the old woman’s heart of late. Diligently her lips murmur prayers each day for the forgiveness of sins, voluntary and involuntary, committed in deed, in word, or in thought; prayers for the purification of our souls of all defilement; and again words concerning our impieties, our evil actions, our disregard of commandments, our general unworthiness, our worldly frailty, and the temptations of Satan; and again concerning the accursed soul and the accursed body and the sensual life; and her words embrace only universal evil and all-pervading depravity. Surely these prayers were composed for Titans, created to reconstruct the universe, but who, out of shamefaced indolence, are attending to this business with their arms hanging at their sides. And not a word does she utter of her own, her personal affliction, of what is in her soul. The old, dried-up lips mumble of mercy, of generosity, of brotherly love, of the holy life —of all those lofty regions pouring out their bounty upon all creation. And not a word of the miracle, awaited eagerly and with trepidation. But here are words for those who are in prison and in exile; it is a prayer for their liberation, for their redemption. Here is something at last about Borya. Freedom and redemption.... But the prayer runs on and on, and it is again for strangers, for distant people, for the universal; only for an instant, and then lightly, does she pause to put in something for herself, for her desire, for what is in her heart. Then for the dead—for those others, the long since departed, the almost forgotten, the resurrected only in word in the hour of these strangers, prayed for in this easy, gliding way all the world over where piety reigns. The prayers are ended. Elena Kirillovna lingers for a moment. She has an air of having forgotten to say something indispensable. What else? Or has she said all? “All”—some one seems to say simply, softly and inexorably. Elena Kirillovna rises from her knees. She goes to the window. Her soul is calm and self-contained. The prayer has not left her in a mood of piety, but has relieved her weary soul for a brief time of its material, matter-of-fact existence. XVII Elena Kirillovna looks out of the window. She is returning, as it were, once more from some dark, abstract world to the bright, profusely-coloured, resonant impressions of a rough, cheery, not altogether disagreeable life. Small white clouds tinged with red float slowly in the heights and merge imperceptibly in the vivid blue. Ablaze like a piece of coal at red heat their soul seems to fuse with their cold white bodies, to consume them as well as itself with fire, and to sink exhausted in the cold blue heights. The sun, as yet invisible behind the left wing of the house, has already begun to pour upon the garden its warm and glowing waves of laughter, joy and light, animating the flowers and birds. “Well, it’s time to dress,” Elena Kirillovna says to herself. She rings. Soon Glasha appears and helps Elena Kirillovna to dress. At last she is ready. She casts a final look in the mirror to see that everything is in order. Elena Kirillovna’s hair is very neatly combed, and lightly brushed down with a cosmetic. This makes it shine and appear as though it were glued together. At her every movement in the light there is visible, from right to left, a slender silver thread, due to the reflection of light at the parting of the smoothed coiffure. Her face shows slight traces of powder. Elena Kirillovna’s dress is always of a light colour, when not actually white, and of the simplest cut. The small soft ruffle of the broad collar hides her neck and chin. She has already substituted for her dressing slippers a pair of light summer shoes. XVIII Elena Kirillovna enters the dining-room. She looks on as the table is being laid for breakfast. She always notes the slightest disorder. She grumbles quietly as she picks up something from one place on the table and puts it in another. Then she goes into the large, unused front room, with its closed door on to the staircase of the front façade. She walks along the corridor to the vestibule and to the back staircase. She stops on the high landing, wrinkles up her face from the sun, and looks down to see what is going on in the yard. Small, quite erect, like a young school-girl with a yellow, wrinkled face which expresses at the moment a severe domestic concern, she stands, looks on, and is silent; she is, it seems, unnecessary here. No one pays her the slightest attention. “Good morning, Stepanida,” she calls out. Stepanida, a buxom, red-cheeked maid in a bright red dress, under which is visible a strip of her white chemise and her stout sunburnt legs, is attending to the samovar at the bottom of the stairs, and is vigorously blowing to set the fire going. Upon her head is a neatly-arranged green kerchief, which hides her folded braids of hair like a head-dress. The bulging sides of the samovar glow radiantly in the sun. Its bent chimney sends out a curl of blue smoke, which smells sharply, pungently, and not altogether disagreeably, of juniper and tar. In answer to the old mistress’s greeting Stepanida raises her broad, cheerfully- preoccupied face, with its small, dark brown eyes, and says in prolonged caressing tones, sing-song fashion: “Good morning to you, matushka barinya.[3] It’s a fine morning, to be sure. How warm it is, by the grace of God! And you’re up early, matushka barinya!” Her words are indeed honeyed, and above in the sweet air an early, shaggy bee hovers, with a thick buzzing, tremulously golden in the clear, fluid haze of the early, gentle sun. Silent again, Stepanida is once more busy with the samovar; the disenchanted bee flies away, its buzzing growing less and less audible behind the fence. The pungent smell of tar causes Elena Kirillovna to frown. She says: “What makes the thing smell so strongly? You had better leave it for a while, or you will get giddy.” Stepanida, without moving, answers languidly and indifferently: “It’s nothing, barinya. We are used to it. It’s but a slight smell, and it is the juniper.” Through the blue, curling smoke of juniper her sweet voice seems dull and bitter. There is a tickling at Elena Kirillovna’s throat. There is a slight giddiness in her head. Elena Kirillovna makes haste to go. She descends the staircase, and proceeds upon her customary morning stroll. [3] Literally: “Little mother—gentlewoman.” XIX Glasha soon overtakes her. With an exaggerated loudness she runs stamping down the stairs, showing a wing-like glimmer of her strong legs from under the pink skirt, set a- flutter by her vigorous movement. She calls out in a clear, solicitously joyous voice: “Barinya, you have come out! The sun will scorch you. I’ve fetched your hat.” The yellow straw hat, with its lavender ribbon, glimmers in Glasha’s hands like some strange, low-fluttering bird. Elena Kirillovna, as she puts the hat on, says: “Why do you run about in such disorder! You ought to tidy yourself—you know whom we are expecting.” Glasha is silent, and her face assumes a compassionate expression. For a long time she looks after her strolling mistress, then she smiles and walks back. Stepanida asks her in a loud whisper: “Well, is she still expecting her grandson?” “Rather!” Glasha replies compassionately. “And it’s simply pitiful to look at them. They never stop thinking about him.” In the meanwhile Elena Kirillovna makes her way across the vegetable garden, past the labourers and the servants in the stockyard, and then across the field. Near the garden fence she enters the road. There, not far from the garden, in the shade of an old, spreading lime, stands a bench —a board upon two supports, which still shows traces of having been once painted green. From this place a view is to be had of the road, of the garden, and of the house. Elena Kirillovna seats herself upon the bench. She looks out on the road. She sits quietly, seeming so small, so slender, and so erect. She waits a long time. She falls into a doze. Through the thin haze of slumber she can see a beloved, smooth face smiling, and she can hear a quiet, dear voice calling: “Grandma!” She gives a start and opens her eyes. There is no one there. But she waits. She believes and waits. XX There is a lightness in the air. The road is radiant and tranquil. A gentle, refreshing breeze softly passes and repasses her. The sun is warming her old bones, it is caressing her lean back through her dress. Everything round her rejoices in the green, the golden, and the blue. The foliage of the birches, of the willows, and of the limes in full bloom is rustling quietly. From the fields comes the honeyed smell of clover. Oh, how light and lovely the air is upon the earth! How beautiful thou art, my earth, my golden, my emerald, my sapphire earth! Who, born to thy heritage would care to die, would care to close his eyes upon thy serene beauties and upon thy magnificent spaces? Who, resting in thee, damp Mother Earth, would not wish to rise, would not wish to return to thy enchantments and to thy delights? And what stern fate shall drive one who is aflame with life-thirst to seek the shelter of death? Upon the road where once he walked he shall walk again. Upon the earth, which still preserves his footprints, he shall walk again. Borya, the grandmother’s beloved Borya, shall return. A golden bee flies by. It seems to say, the golden bee, that Borya will return to the quiet of the old house and will taste the fragrant honey—the sweet gift of the wise bees, buzzing under the sun upon the beloved earth. The old grandmother, in her joy, will place before the ikon of the Virgin a candle of the purest bees’-wax—a gift of the wise bees, buzzing away among the gold of the sun’s rays—a gift to man and a gift to God. Women and girls of the village pass by with their sunburnt, wind-swept faces. They greet the barinya and look at her with compassion. Elena Kirillovna smiles at them, and addresses them in her usual gentle manner: “Good morning, my dears!” They pass by. Their loud voices die away in the distance, and Elena Kirillovna soon forgets them. They will pass by once more that day, when the time comes. They will pass by. They will return. Upon the road, where their dusty footprints remain, they will pass by once more. XXI Elena Kirillovna suddenly awoke from her drowse and looked at the things before her with a perplexed gaze. Everything seemed to be clear, bright, free from care—and relentless. Inevitably the triumphant sun rose higher in the heavens’ dome. Grown powerful, wise and resplendent, it seemed indifferent now to oppressive earthly melancholy and to sweet earthly delights. And its laughter was high, joyless, and sorrowless. Everything as before was green, blue and gold, many-toned and vividly tinted; truly all the objects of nature showed the real colour of their souls in honour of this feast of light. But the fine dust upon the silent road had already lost its rose tinge, and stirred before the wind like a grey, depressing veil. And when the wind calmed down, the dust slowly fell back upon the road, like a grey, blind serpent which, trailing its fat, fantastic belly, falls back exhausted, gasping its last breath. All monotony had become wearisome. This inevitable recurrence of lucid moments began to torment Elena Kirillovna with the grey foreboding of sadness, of bitter tears, of unanswered prayers, and of a profound hopelessness. XXII Glasha appeared at the garden gate. She glanced cheerfully along both sides of the road. Walking more slowly she approached Elena Kirillovna deferentially. Glasha looked quite ordinary now, stiff-mannered and stupid. There was nothing to envy in her. Her dress too was quite common-place. Her braids were arra...