Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (97 page)

“Ah, here is Yevgraf Larionitch! Talk of angels!” cried my uncle, genuinely delighted. “Well, brother, have you come from the town?”

“Queer set of creatures! They seem to have been collected here on purpose!” I thought to myself, not yet understanding fully what was passing before my eyes, and not suspecting either that I was probably adding another to the collection of queer creatures by appearing among them.

CHAPTER V

YEZHEVIKIN

THERE walked or rather squeezed himself into the room (though the doors were very wide ones) a little figure which even in the doorway began wriggling, bowing and smirking, looking with extraordinary curiosity at all the persons present. It was a little pockmarked old man with quick and furtive eyes, with a bald patch at the top of his head and another at the back, with a look of undefined subtle mockery on his rather thick lips. He was wearing a very shabby dress-coat which looked as though it were second-hand. One button was hanging by a thread; two or three were completely missing. His high boots full of holes, and his greasy cap, were in keeping with his pitiful attire; he had a very dirty check pocket-handkerchief in his hand, with which he wiped the sweat from his brow and temples. I noticed that the governess blushed slightly and looked rapidly at me. I fancied, too, that there was something proud and challenging in this glance.

“Straight from the town, benefactor! Straight from there, my kind protector! I will tell you everything, only first let me pay my respects,” said the old man. And he made straight for Madame la Generate, but stopped half-way and again addressed my uncle.

“You know my leading characteristic, benefactor — a sly rogue, a regular sly rogue! You know that as soon as I walk in I make for the chief person of the house, I turn my toes in her direction first of all, so as from the first step to win favour and protection. A sly rogue, my good sir, a sly rogue, benefactor. Allow me, my dear lady, allow me, your Excellency, to kiss your dress, or I might sully with my lips your hand of gold, of general’s rank.”

Madame la Générale to my surprise gave him her hand to kiss rather graciously.

“And my respects to you, our beauty,” he went on, “Miss Perepelitsyn. There is no help for it, Madam, I am a sly rogue. As long ago as 1841 it was settled that I was a rogue, when I was dismissed from the service just at the time when Valentin Ignatyevitch Tihontsev became ‘your honour’. He was made an assessor; he was made an assessor and I was made a rogue. And, you know, I am so open by nature that I make no secret of it. It can’t be helped. I have tried living honestly, I have tried it, but now I must try something else. Alexandra Yegor-ovna, our little apple in syrup,” he went on, going round the table and making his way up to Sashenka, “let me kiss your dress; there is a smell of apples and all sorts of nice things about you, young lady. Our respects to the hero of the day; I have brought you a bow and arrow, my little sir. I was a whole morning making it, my lads helped me; we will shoot with it presently. And when you grow up you will be an officer and cut off a Turk’s head. Tatyana Ivanovna . . . but oh, she is not here, my benefactress! Or I would have kissed her dress too. Praskovya Ilyinitchna, my kindest friend, I can’t get near you or I would kiss your foot as well as your hand, so there! Anfisa Petrovna, I protest my profound respect for you. I prayed for you only to-day, benefactress, on my knees with tears I prayed for you and for your son also that God might send him honours of all sorts — and talents too, talents especially! And by the way, our humblest duty to Ivan Ivanitch Mizintchikov. May God send you all that you desire for yourself, for you will never make out, sir, what you do want for yourself: such a silent gentleman. . . . Good-day, Nastya! All my small fry send their love to you, they talk of you every day. And now a deep bow to my host. I come from the town, your honour, straight off from the town. And this, no doubt, is your nephew who is being trained in a learned faculty? My humble duty, sir; let me have your hand.”

There was laughter. One could see that the old man played the part of an amateur clown. His arrival livened the party up. Many did not even understand his sarcasms, and yet he had made slight digs at them all. Only the governess, whom to my surprise he called simply Nastya, blushed and frowned. I was pulling back my hand, but I believe that was just what the horrid old man wanted.

“But I only asked to shake it, sir, if you will allow me; not to kiss it. And you thought I meant to kiss it? No, my dear sir, for the time being I will only shake it. I suppose you took me for the clown of the establishment, kind sir?” he said, looking at me mockingly.

“N — o, no, really, I . . .”

“To be sure, sir! If I am a fool, then someone else here is one too. Treat me with respect; I am not such a rogue yet as you imagine. Though maybe I am a clown too. I am a slave, my wife is a slave, and so there is nothing for it but flattery. That’s how it is! You get something by it anyway, if only to make sop for the children. Sugar, scatter as much sugar as you can in everything, that will make things more wholesome for you. I tell you this in secret, sir; maybe you will have need of it. Fortune has been hard on me, that is why I am a clown.”

“He-he-he! The old man is a comical fellow! He always makes us laugh!” piped Anfisa Petrovna.

“My dear madam and benefactress, a fool has a better time of it in this world! If I had only known that, I would have enlisted among the fools in early childhood, and I dare say by now I might have been a wise man. But as it is, I wanted to be a clever man at first, so now I am a fool in my old age.”

“Tell me, please,” interposed Obnoskin (he probably was not pleased by the remark about talents), lolling in a particularly free and easy way in his arm-chair and staring at the old man through his eyeglass as though at an insect, “tell ine, please ... I always forget your surname . . . what the deuce is it? ...”

“Oh, my dear sir! Why, my surname, if it please you, is Yezhevikin; but what does that matter? Here I have been sitting without a job these nine years, I just go on living in accordance with the laws of nature. And my children, my children are simply a family of Holmskys. As the proverb goes, The rich man has calves, the poor man has kids/”

“Oh, yes . . . calves ... but that’s beside the point. Come, listen, I have been wanting to ask you a long time: why is it that when you come in, you look back at once? It’s very funny.”

“Why do I look back? Why, I am always fancying, sir, that someone behind me wants to slap me on the back and squash me like a fly. That is why I look round. I have become a monomaniac, sir.”

Again there was laughter. The governess got up from her seat as though she would go away, but sank back in her chair again. There was a look of pain and suffering on her face in spite of the colour that flooded her cheeks.

“You know who it is, my boy?” my uncle whispered. “It’s her father, you know!”

I stared at my uncle open-eyed. The name of Yezhevikin had completely slipped out of my mind. I had been playing the hero, had been dreaming all the journey of my proposed bride, had been building magnificent plans for her benefit, and had utterly forgotten her name, or rather had taken no notice of it from the first.

“What, her father?” I answered, also in a whisper. “Why, I thought she was an orphan.”

“It’s her father, my boy, her father. And do you know, a most honest, a most honourable man and he does not even drink, but only plays at being a fool; fearfully poor, my boy, eight children! They live on Nastya’s salary. He was turned out of the service through his tongue. He comes here every week. He is such a proud fellow — nothing will induce him to take help. I have offered it, many times I have offered it — he won’t take it. An embittered man.”

“Well, Yevgraf Larionitch, what news have you?” uncle asked, and slapped him warmly on the shoulder, noticing that the suspicious old man was already listening to our conversation.

“What news, benefactor? Valentin Ignatyitch made a statement about Trishin’s case yesterday. The flour under his charge turned out to be short weight. It is that Trishin, madam, who looks at you and puffs like a samovar. Perhaps you graciously remember him? So Valentin Ignatyitch writes of Trishin: ‘If,’ said he, ‘the often-mentioned Trishin could not guard his own niece’s honour — she eloped with an officer last year —

‘how/ said he, ‘should he take care of government property?’ He stuck that into his report, by God, I am not lying/’

“Fie! What stories you tell!” cried Anfisa Petrovna.

“Just so, just so, just so! You’ve overshot the mark, friend Yevgraf,” my uncle chimed in. “Ate! your tongue will be your ruin. You are a straightforward man, honourable and upright, I can say that, but you have a venomous tongue! And I can’t understand how it is you can’t get on with them. They seem good-natured people, simple ...”

“Kind friend and benefactor! But it’s just the simple man that I am afraid of,” cried the old man with peculiar fervour.

I liked the answer. I went rapidly up to Yezhevikin and warmly pressed his hand. The truth is, I wanted in some way to protest against the general tone and to show my sympathy for the old man openly. And perhaps, who knows? perhaps I wanted to raise myself in the opinion of Nastasya Yevgrafovna! But my movement led to no good.

“Allow me to ask you,” I said, blushing and llustered as usual, “have you heard of the Jesuits?”

“No, my good sir, I haven’t; well, maybe something . . . though how should we! But why?”

“Oh ... I meant to tell you something apropos. . . . But remind me some other time. But now let me assure you, I understand you and . . . know how to appreciate ...”

And utterly confused, I gripped his hand again.

“Certainly, I will remind you, sir, certainly. I will write it in golden letters. If you will allow me, I’ll tie a knot in my handkerchief.”

And he actually looked for a dry corner in his dirty, snuffy handkerchief, and tied a knot in it.

“Yevgraf Larionitch, take your tea,” said Praskovya Ilyinitchna.

“Immediately, my beautiful lady; immediately, my princess, I mean, not my lady! That’s in return for your tea. I met Stepan Alexyevitch Bahtcheyev on the road, madam. He was so festive that I didn’t know what to make of it! I began to wonder whether he wasn’t going to get married. Flatter away, flatter away!” he said in a half whisper, winking at me and screwing up his eyes as he carried his cup by me. “And how is it that my benefactor, my chief one, Foma Fomitch, is not to be seen? Isn’t he coming to tea?”

My uncle started as though he had been stung, and glanced timidly at his mother.

“I really don’t know,” he answered uncertainly, with a strange perturbation. “We sent for him, but he ... I don’t know really, perhaps he is indisposed. I have already sent Vidoplyasov and . . . Perhaps I ought to go myself, though?”

“I went in to him myself just now,” Yezhevikin brought out mysteriously.

“Is it possible!” cried out my uncle in alarm. “Well, how was it?”

“I went in to him, first of all, I paid him my respects. His honour said he should drink his tea in solitude, and then added that a crust of dry bread would be enough for him, yes.”

These words seemed to strike absolute terror into my uncle.

“But you should have explained to him, Yevgraf Larionitch; you should have told him,” my uncle said at last, looking at the old man with distress and reproach. “I did, I did.”

“Well?”

“For a long time he did not deign to answer me. He was sitting over some mathematical problem, he was working out something; one could see it was a brain-racking problem. He drew the breeches of Pythagoras, while I was there, I saw him myself. I repeated it three times, only at the fourth he raised his head and seemed to see me for the first time. ‘I am not coming,’ he said; ‘a learned gentleman has arrived here now, so I should be out of place beside a luminary like that!’ He made use of that expression ‘beside a luminary’.”

And the horrid old man stole a sly glance at me.

“That is just what I expected,” cried my uncle, clasping his hands. “That’s how I thought it would be. He says that about you, Sergey, that you are a ‘learned gentleman’. Well, what’s to be done now?”

“I must confess, uncle,” I answered with dignity, shrugging my shoudders, “it seems to me such an absurd refusal that it is not worth noticing, and I really wonder at your being troubled by it. . . .”

“Oh, my boy, you know nothing about it!” he cried, with a vigorous wave of his hand.

“It’s no use grieving now, sir,” Miss Perepelitsyn put in suddenly, “since all the wicked causes of it have come from you in the first place, Yegor Ilyitch. If you take off your head you don’t weep for your hair. You should have listened to your mamma, sir, and you would have had no cause for tears now.”

“Why, how am I to blame, Anna Nilovna? Have some fear of God!” said my uncle in an imploring voice, as though begging for an explanation.

“I do fear God, Yegor Ilyitch; but it all comes from your being an egoist, sir, and not loving your mother,” Miss Perepelitsyn answered with dignity. “Why didn’t you respect her wishes in the first place? She is your mother, sir. And I am not likely to tell you a lie, sir. I am a majoi’s daughter myself, and not just anybody, sir.”

It seemed to me that Miss Perepelitsyn had intervened in the conversation with the sole object of informing us all, and me in particular as a new-comer, that she was a major’s daughter and not just anybody.

“It’s because he ill-treats his own mother,” Madame la Genirale herself brought out at last in a menacing voice.

“Mamma, have mercy on us! How am I ill-treating you?”

“It is because you are a black-hearted egoist, Yegorushka,” Madame la Générale went on, growing more and more animated “Mamma, mamma! in what way am I a black-hearted egoist?” cried my uncle, almost in despair. “For five days, for five whole days you have been angry with me and will not speak to me. And what for? what for? Let them judge me, let the whole world judge me! But let them hear my defence too. I have long kept silent, mamma, you would not hear me; let these people hear me now. Anfisa Petrovna! Pavel Semyo-nitch, generous Pavel Semyonitch! Sergey, my dear! You are an outsider, you are, so to speak, a spectator. You can judge impartially. ...”