Part 8

He followed me always and everywhere. He took a thousand human shapes, and did not shrink--shameless creature--to dress in women's clothes upon occasion. He took the guise of my relative, my dear friend, colleague, good acquaintance. He could dress to look any age except that of a child (as a child he only failed and looked ridiculous). He has filled up my life with himself, and poisoned it.

What has been most dreadful was that I have always foreseen in advance all his words, gestures and actions.

When I met him he would drawl, crushing my hand in his:

"Aha! Whom--do--I--see? Dear me! You must be getting on in years now. How's your health?"

Then he would answer as for himself, though I had not asked him anything:

"Thank you. So so. Nothing to boast of. Have you read in to-day's paper...?"

If he by any chance noticed that I had a flushed cheek, flushed by the vexation of having met him, he would be sure to croak:

"Eh, neighbour, how red you're getting."

He would come to me just at those moments when I was up to the neck in work, would sit down and say:

"Ah! I'm afraid I've interrupted you."

For two hours he would bore me to death, prattling of himself and his children. He would see I was tearing my hair and biting my lips till the blood came, and would simply delight in my torments.

Having poisoned my working mood for a whole month in advance, he would stand, yawn a little, and then murmur:

"Lord knows why I stay here talking. I've got lots to do."

When I met him in a railway carriage he always began:

"Permit me to ask, are you going far?" And then:

"On business or ...?"

"Where do you work?"

"Married?"

Oh, well do I know all his ways. Closing my eyes I see him. He strikes me on the shoulder, on the back, on the knees. He gesticulates so closely to my eyes and nose that I wince, as if about to be struck. Catching hold of the lappet of my coat, he draws himself up to me and breathes in my face. When he visits me he allows his foot to tremble on the floor Under the table, so that the shade of the lamp tinkles. At an "at home" he thrums on the back of my chair with his fingers, and in pauses of the conversation drawls, "y-e-s, y-es." At cards he calls out, knocks on the table and quacks as he loses: "What's that? What? What?"

Start him in an argument, and he always begins by:

"Eh, neighbour, it's humbug you're talking."

"Why humbug?" you ask timidly.

"Because it is nonsense."

What evil have I done to this man? I don't know. He set himself to spoil my existence, and he spoiled it. Thanks to him, I now feel a great aversion from the sea, the moon, the air, poetry, painting, music.

"Tolstoy"--he bawled orally, and in print--"made his estate over to his wife, and he himself.... Compared with Turgenief, he.... He sewed his own jack-boots ... great writer of the Russian earth.... Hurrah!...

"Pushkin? He created the language, didn't he? Do you remember 'Calm was the Ukraine night, clear was the sky'? You remember what they did to the woman in the third act. Hsh! There are no ladies present, do you remember?

"'In our little boat we go, Under the little boat the water.'

"Dostoevsky ... have you read how he went one night to Turgenief to confess ... Gogol, do you know the sort of disease he had?"

Should I go to a picture gallery, and stand before some quiet evening landscape, he would be sure to be on my heels, pushing me forward, and saying to a girl on his arm:

"Very sweetly drawn ... distance ... atmosphere ... the moon to the life.... Do you remember Nina--the coloured supplement of the _Neva_[1]--it was something like it...."

[1] A popular Russian journal.

I sit at the opera listening to "Carmen." He is there, as everywhere. He is behind me, and has his feet on the lower bar of my fauteuil. He hums the tune of the duet in the last act, and through his feet communicates to my nerves every movement of his body. Then, in the entr'act, I hear him speaking in a voice pitched high enough for me to hear:

"Wonderful gramophone records the Zadodadofs have. Shalapin absolutely. You couldn't tell the difference."

Yes, it was he or someone like him who invented the barrel organ, the gramophone, the bioscope, the photophone, the biograph, the phonograph, the pathephone, the musical box, the pianino, the motor car, paper collars, oleographs, and newspapers.

There's no getting away from him. I flee away at night to the wild seashore, and lie down in solitude upon a cliff, but he steals after me in the shadow, and suddenly the silencers broken by a self-satisfied voice which says:

"What a lovely night, Katenka, isn't it? The clouds, eh, look at them! Just as in a picture. And if a painter painted them just like it, who would say it was true to Nature?"

He has killed the best minutes of my life--minutes of love, the dear sweet nights of youth. How often, when I have wandered arm in arm with the most beauteous creation of Nature, along an avenue where, upon the ground, the silver moonlight was in pattern with the shadows of the trees, and he has suddenly and unexpectedly spoken up to me in a woman's voice, has rested his head on my shoulder and cried out in a theatrical tone:

"Tell me, do you love to dream by moonlight?"

Or:

"Tell me, do you love Nature? As for me, I madly adore Nature."

He was many shaped and many faced, my persecutor, but was always the same underneath. He took upon occasion the guise of professor, doctor, engineer, lady doctor, advocate, girl-student, author, wife of the excise inspector, official, passenger, customer, guest, stranger, spectator, reader, neighbour at a country house. In early youth I had the stupidity to think that these were all separate people. But they were all one and the same. Bitter experience has at last discovered to me his name. It is--the Russian _intelligent._

If he has at any time missed me personally, he has left everywhere his traces, his visiting cards. On the heights of Barchau and Machuka I have found his orange peelings, sardine tins, and chocolate wrappings. On the rocks of Aloopka, on the top of the belfry of St. John, on the granites of Imatra, on the walls of Bakhchisari, in the grotto of Lermontof, I have found the following signatures and remarks:--

"Pusia and Kuziki 1908 year 27 February."

"Ivanof."

"A. M. Plokhokhostof (Bad-tail) from Saratof."

"Ivanof."

"Pechora girl."

"Ivanof."

"M.D. ... P.A.P.... Talotchka and Achmet."

"Ivanof."

"Trophim Sinepupof. Samara Town."

"Ivanof."

"Adel Soloveitchik from Minsk."

"Ivanof."

"From this height I delighted in the view of the sea.--C. NICODEMUS IVANOVITCH BEZUPRECHNY."

"Ivanof."

I have read his verses and remarks in all visiting books, and in Puskhin's house, at Lermontof's Cliff, and in the ancient monasteries have read: "The Troakofs came here from Penza, drank kvas and ate sturgeon. We wish the same to you," or "Visited the natal ash-tray of the great Russian poet, Chichkin, teacher of caligraphy, Voronezh High School for Boys," or--

"Praise to thee, Ai Petri, mountain white, In dress imperial of fir. I climbed up yesterday unto thy height, Retired Staff-Captain Nikoli Profer."

I needed but to pick up my favourite Russian book, and I came upon him at once. "I have read this book.--PAFNUTENKO." "The author is a blockhead." "Mr. Author hasn't read Karl Marx." I turn over the pages, and I find his notes in all the margins. Then, of course, no one like he turns down corners and makes dog-ears, tears out pages, or drops grease on them from tallow candles.

Gentlemen, judges, it is hard for me to go on. This man has abused, fouled, vulgarised all that was dear to me, delicate and touching. I struggled a long while with myself. Years went by. My nerves became more irritable I saw there was not room for both of us in the world. One of us had to go.

I foresaw for a long while that it would be just some little trifle that would drive me to the crime. So it was.

You know the particulars. In the compartment there was a crush; the passengers were sitting on one another's heads. He, with his wife, his son, a schoolboy in the preparatory class, and a pile of luggage, were occupying four seats. Upon this occasion he was wearing the uniform of the Department of Popular Education. I went up to him and asked:

"Is there not a free seat here?"

He answered like a bulldog with a bone, not looking at me:

"No. This seat is taken by another gentleman. These are his things. He'll be back in a minute."

The train began to move.

I waited, standing, where I was. We went on about ten miles. The gentleman didn't come. I was silent, and I looked into the face of the pedagogue, thinking that there might yet be in him some gleam of conscience.

But no. We went another fifteen miles. He got down a basket of provisions and began to eat. He went out with a kettle for hot water, and made himself tea. A little domestic scandal arose over the sugar for the tea.

"Peter, you've taken a lump of sugar on the sly!"

"Word of honour, by God, I haven't! Look in my pockets, by God!"

"Don't swear, and don't lie. I counted them before we set out, on purpose.... There were eighteen and now there are seventeen."

"By God!!"

"Don't swear. It is shameful to lie. I will forgive you everything, only tell me straight out the truth. But a lie I can never forgive. Only cowards lie. One who is capable of lying is capable of murdering, of stealing, of betraying his king and his country...."

So he ran on and ran on. I had heard such utterances from him in my earliest childhood, when he was my governess, afterwards when he was my class teacher, and again when he wrote in the newspaper.

I interrupted.

"You find fault with your son for lying, and yet you yourself have, in his presence, told a whopping lie. You said this seat was occupied by a gentleman. Where is that gentleman? Show him to me."

The pedagogue went purple, and his eyes dilated.

"I beg you, don't interfere with people who don't interfere with you. Mind your own business. How scandalous! Conductor, please warn this passenger that he will not be allowed to interfere with other people in the railway carriage. Please take measures, or I'll report the matter to the gendarme, and write in the complaint book."

The conductor screwed up his eyes in a fatherly expression, and went out. But the pedagogue went on, unconsoled:

"No one speaks to you. No one was interfering with you. Good Lord! a decent-looking man too, in a hat and a collar, clearly one of the _intelligentia._ ... A peasant now, or a workman ... but no, an intelligent!"

Intel-li-gent! The executioner had named me executioner! It was ended.... He had pronounced his own sentence.

I took out of the pocket of my overcoat a revolver, examined the charge, pointed it at the pedagogue between the eyes, and said calmly:

"Say your prayers."

He turned pale and shrieked:

"Guard-d-d!..."

That was his last word. I pulled the trigger.

I have finished, gentlemen. I repeat: I do not repent. There is no sorrow for him in my soul. One desolating doubt remains, however, and it will haunt me to the end of my days, should I finish them in prison or in an asylum.

He has a son left! What if he takes on his father's nature?

IX

THE WHITE POODLE

I

By narrow mountain paths, from one villa to another, a small wandering troupe made their way along the southern shore of the Crimea. Ahead commonly ran the white poodle, Arto, with his long red tongue hanging out from one side of his mouth. The poodle was shorn to look like a lion. At crossways he would stop, wag his tail, and look back questioningly. He seemed to obtain some sort of sign, known to him alone, and without waiting for the troupe to catch up he would bound forward on the right track, shaking his shaggy ears, never making a mistake. Following the dog came the twelve-year-old Sergey, carrying under his left arm a little mattress for his acrobatic exercises, and holding in his right hand a narrow dirty cage, with a goldfinch, taught to pull out from a case various coloured papers on which were printed predictions of coming fortune. Last of all came the oldest member of the troupe, grandfather Martin Lodishkin, with a barrel organ on his bent back.

The organ was an old one, very hoarse, and suffering from a cough; it had undergone, in the century of its existence, some scores of mendings. It played two things: a melancholy German waltz of Launer and a galop from "A Trip to China Town," both in fashion thirty to forty years ago, but now forgotten by all. Beyond these drawbacks it must be said that the organ had two false tubes; one of them, a treble, was absolutely mute, did not play, and therefore when its turn came the whole harmony would, as it were, stutter, go lame and stumble. The other tube, giving forth a bass note, had something the matter with the valve, which would not shut, and having once been played it would not altogether stop, but rolled onward on the same bass note, deafening and confusing the other sounds, till suddenly, at its own caprice, it would stop. Grandfather himself acknowledged the deficiencies of his instrument, and might sometimes be heard to remark jocosely, though with a tinge of secret grief:

"What's to be done?... An ancient organ ... it has a cold.... When you play it the gentry take offence. 'Tfu,' they say, 'what a wretched thing!' And these pieces were very good in their time, and fashionable, but people nowadays by no means adore good music. Give them 'The Geisha,' 'Under the Double-headed Eagle,' please, or the waltz from 'The Seller of Birds.' Of course, these tubes.... I took the organ to the shop, but they wouldn't undertake to mend it. 'It needs new tubes,' said they. 'But, best of all, if you'll take our advice, sell the rusty thing to a museum ... as a sort of curio....' Well, well, that's enough! She's fed us till now, Sergey and me, and if God grant, she will go on feeding us."

Grandfather Martin Lodishkin loved his organ as it is only possible to love something living, near, something actually akin, if it may be so expressed. Having lived with his organ for many years of a trying vagabond life, he had at last come to see in it something inspired, come to feel as if it were almost a conscious being. It would happen sometimes at night, when they were lying on the floor of some dirty inn, that the barrel organ, placed beside the old man's pillow, would suddenly give vent to a faint note, a sad melancholy quavering note, like an old man's sigh. And Lodishkin would put out his hand to its carved wooden side and whisper caressingly:

"What is it, brother? Complaining, eh!... Have patience, friend...."

And as much as Lodishkin loved his organ, and perhaps even a little more, he loved the other two companions of his wanderings, Arto, the poodle, and little Sergey. He had hired the boy five years before from a bad character, a widower cobbler, promising to pay him two roubles a month. Shortly afterwards the cobbler had died, and Sergey remained with grandfather, bound to him for ever by their common life and the little daily interests of the troupe.

II

The path went along a high cliff over the sea, and wandered through the shade of ancient olive trees, The sea gleamed between the trunks now and then, and seemed at times to stand like a calm and mighty wall on the horizon; its colour was the more blue, the more intense, because of the contrast seen through the trellis-work of silver verdant leaves. In the grass, amongst the kizil shrubs, wild roses and vines, and even on the branches of the trees, swarmed the grasshoppers, and the air itself trembled from the monotonously sounding and unceasing murmur of their legs and wing-cases. The day turned out to be a sultry one; there was no wind, and the hot earth burnt the soles of the feet.

Sergey, going as usual ahead of grandfather, stopped, and waited for the old man to catch up to him.

"What is it, Serozha?" asked the organ-grinder.

"The heat, grandfather Lodishkin ... there's no bearing it! To bathe would be good...."

The old man wiped his perspiring face with his sleeve, and hitched the organ to a more comfortable position on his back.

"What would be better?" he sighed, looking eagerly downward to the cool blueness of the sea. "Only, after bathing, one gets more hungry, you know. A village doctor once said to me: 'Salt has more effect on man than anything else ... that means, it weakens him ... sea-salt....'"

"He lied, perhaps," remarked Sergey, doubtfully.

"Lied! What next? Why should he lie? A solid man, non-drinker ... having a little house in Sevastopol. What's more, there's no getting down to the sea here. Wait a bit, we'll get to Miskhor, and there rinse our sinful bodies. It's fine to bathe before dinner ... and afterwards to sleep, we three ... and a splendid bit of work...."

Arto, hearing conversation behind him, turned and ran back, his soft blue eyes, half shut from the heat, looked up appealingly, and his hanging tongue trembled from quick breathing.

"What is it, brother doggie? Warm, eh?" asked grandfather.

The dog yawned, straining his jaws and curling his tongue into a little tube, shook all his body, and whimpered.

"Yes, yes, little brother, but it can't be helped," continued Lodishkin. "It is written, 'In the sweat of thy face,' though, as a matter of fact, it can hardly be said that you have a face, or anything more than a muzzle.... Be off! Go off with you.... As for me, Serozha, I must confess I just like this heat. Only the organ's a bit of a nuisance, and if there were no work to do I'd just lie down somewhere in the grass in the shade, and have a good morning of it. For old bones this sunshine is the finest thing in the world."

The footpath turned downward to a great highway, broad and hard and blindingly white. At the point where the troupe stepped on to it commenced an ancient baronial estate, in the abundant verdure of which were beautiful villas, flower-beds, orangeries and fountains. Lodishkin knew the district well, and called at each of the villas every year, one after another, during the vine-harvesting season, when the whole Crimea is filled with rich, fashionable, and pleasure-loving visitors. The bright magnificence of southern Nature did not touch the old man, but it enraptured Sergey, who was there for the first time. The magnolias, with their hard and shiny leaves, shiny as if lacquered or varnished, with their large white blossoms, each almost as big as a dinner-plate; the summer-houses of interwoven vines hanging with heavy clusters of fruit; the enormous century-old plane trees, with their bright trunks and mighty crowns; tobacco plantations, rivulets, waterfalls, and everywhere, in flower-beds, gardens, on the walls of the villas, bright sweet-scented roses--all these things impressed unceasingly the naïve soul of the boy. He expressed his admiration of the scene, pulling the old man's sleeve and crying out every minute:

"Grandfather Lodishkin, but, grandfather, just look, goldfish in the fountain!... I swear, grandfather, goldfish, if I die for it!" cried the boy, pressing his face to a railing and staring at a large tank in the middle of a garden. "I say, grandfather, look at the peaches! Good gracious, what a lot there are. Look, how many! And all on one tree."

"Leave go, leave go, little stupid. What are you stretching your mouth about?" joked the old man. "Just wait till we get to the town of Novorossisk, and give ourselves to the South. Now, that's a place indeed; there you'll see something. Sotchi, Adler, Tuapse, and then, little brother, Sukhum, Batum.... Your eyes'll drop out of your head.... Palms, for instance. Absolutely astonishing; the trunks all shaggy like felt, and each leaf so large that we could hide ourselves in one."

"You don't mean it!" cried Sergey, joyfully.

"Wait a bit and you'll see for yourself. Is there little of anything there? Now, oranges for instance, or, let us say, lemons.... You've seen them, no doubt, in the shops?"

"Well?"

"Well, you see them simply as if they were growing in the air. Without anything, just on the tree, as up here you see an apple or a pear.... And the people down there, little brother, are altogether out of the way: Turks, Persians, different sorts of Cherkesses, and all in gowns and with daggers, a desperate sort of people! And, little brother, there are even Ethiopians. I've seen them many times in Batum!"

"Ethiopians, I know. Those with horns," cried Sergey, confidently.

"Well, horns I suppose they have not," said grandfather; "that's nonsense. But they're black as a pair of boots, and shine even. Thick, red, ugly lips, great white eyes, and hair as curly as the back of a black sheep."

"Oi, oi, how terrible!... Are Ethiopians like that?"

"Well, well, don't be frightened. Of course, at first, before you're accustomed, it's alarming. But when you see that other people aren't afraid, you pick up courage.... There's all sorts there, little brother. When we get there you'll see. Only one thing is bad--the fever. All around lie marshes, rottenness; then there is such terrible heat. The people who live there find it all right, but it's bad for new-comers. However, we've done enough tongue-wagging, you and I, Sergey, so just climb over that stile and go up to the house. There are some really fine people living there.... If ever there's anything you want to know, just ask me; I know all."

But the day turned out to be a very unsuccessful one for them. At one place the servants drove them away almost before they were seen even from a distance by the mistress; at another the organ had hardly made its melancholy beginning in front of the balcony when they were waved away in disgust; at a third they were told that the master and mistress had not yet arrived. At two villas they were indeed paid for their show, but very little. Still, grandfather never turned his nose up even at the smallest amounts. Coming out at the gate on to the road he would smile good-naturedly and say:

"Two plus five, total seven ... hey hey, brother Serozhenka, that's money. Seven times seven, and you've pretty well got a shilling, and that would be a good meal and a night's lodging in our pockets, and p'raps, old man Lodishkin might be allowed a little glass on account of his weakness.... Ai, ai, there's a sort of people I can't make out; too stingy to give sixpence, yet ashamed to put in a penny ... and so they surlily order you off. Better to give, were it only three farthings.... I wouldn't take offence, I'm nobody ... why take offence?"

Generally speaking, Lodishkin was of a modest order, and even when he was hounded out of a place he would not complain. However, on this day of which we are writing, he was, as it happened, disturbed out of his usual equanimity by one of the people of these Crimean villas, a lady of a very kind appearance, the owner of a beautiful country house surrounded by a wonderful flower-garden. She listened attentively to the music; watched Sergey's somersaults and Arto's tricks even more attentively; asked the little boy's age, what was his name, where he'd learned gymnastics, how grandfather had come by him, what his father had done for a living, and so on, and had then bidden them wait, and had gone indoors apparently to fetch them something.

Ten minutes passed, a quarter of an hour, and she did not appear, but the longer she stayed the greater became the vague hopes of the troupe. Grandfather even whispered to Sergey, shielding his mouth with his palm the while:

"Eh, Sergey, this is good, isn't it? Ask me if you want to know anything. Now we're going to get some old clothes or perhaps a pair of boots. A sure thing!..."