Dead Souls (37 page)

Gradually, therefore, Tientietnikov grew more at home in the Service.
Yet never did it become, for him, the main pursuit, the main object in
life, which he had expected. No, it remained but one of a secondary
kind. That is to say, it served merely to divide up his time, and
enable him the more to value his hours of leisure. Nevertheless, just
when his uncle was beginning to flatter himself that his nephew was
destined to succeed in the profession, the said nephew elected to ruin
his every hope. Thus it befell. Tientietnikov's friends (he had many)
included among their number a couple of fellows of the species known
as "embittered." That is to say, though good-natured souls of that
curiously restless type which cannot endure injustice, nor anything
which it conceives to be such, they were thoroughly unbalanced of
conduct themselves, and, while demanding general agreement with their
views, treated those of others with the scantiest of ceremony.
Nevertheless these two associates exercised upon Tientietnikov—both
by the fire of their eloquence and by the form of their noble
dissatisfaction with society—a very strong influence; with the result
that, through arousing in him an innate tendency to nervous
resentment, they led him also to notice trifles which before had
escaped his attention. An instance of this is seen in the fact that he
conceived against Thedor Thedorovitch Lienitsin, Director of one of
the Departments which was quartered in the splendid range of offices
before mentioned, a dislike which proved the cause of his discerning n
the man a host of hitherto unmarked imperfections. Above all things
did Tientietnikov take it into his head that, when conversing with his
superiors, Lienitsin became, of the moment, a stick of luscious
sweetmeat, but that, when conversing with his inferiors, he
approximated more to a vinegar cruet. Certain it is that, like all
petty-minded individuals, Lienitsin made a note of any one who failed
to offer him a greeting on festival days, and that he revenged himself
upon any one whose visiting-card had not been handed to his butler.
Eventually the youth's aversion almost attained the point of hysteria;
until he felt that, come what might, he MUST insult the fellow in
some fashion. To that task he applied himself con amore; and so
thoroughly that he met with complete success. That is to say, he
seized on an occasion to address Lienitsin in such fashion that the
delinquent received notice either to apologies or to leave the
Service; and when of these alternatives he chose the latter his uncle
came to him, and made a terrified appeal. "For God's sake remember
what you are doing!" he cried. "To think that, after beginning your
career so well, you should abandon it merely for the reason that you
have not fallen in with the sort of Director whom you prefer! What do
you mean by it, what do you mean by it? Were others to regard things
in the same way, the Service would find itself without a single
individual. Reconsider your conduct—forego your pride and conceit,
and make Lienitsin amends."

"But, dear Uncle," the nephew replied, "that is not the point. The
point is, not that I should find an apology difficult to offer, seeing
that, since Lienitsin is my superior, and I ought not to have
addressed him as I did, I am clearly in the wrong. Rather, the point
is the following. To my charge there has been committed the
performance of another kind of service. That is to say, I am the owner
of three hundred peasant souls, a badly administered estate, and a
fool of a bailiff. That being so, whereas the State will lose little
by having to fill my stool with another copyist, it will lose very
much by causing three hundred peasant souls to fail in the payment of
their taxes. As I say (how am I to put it?), I am a landowner who has
preferred to enter the Public Service. Now, should I employ myself
henceforth in conserving, restoring, and improving the fortunes of the
souls whom God has entrusted to my care, and thereby provide the State
with three hundred law-abiding, sober, hard-working taxpayers, how
will that service of mine rank as inferior to the service of a
department-directing fool like Lienitsin?"

On hearing this speech, the State Councillor could only gape, for he
had not expected Tientietnikov's torrent of words. He reflected a few
moments, and then murmured:

"Yes, but, but—but how can a man like you retire to rustication in
the country? What society will you get there? Here one meets at least
a general or a prince sometimes; indeed, no matter whom you pass in
the street, that person represents gas lamps and European
civilisation; but in the country, no matter what part of it you are
in, not a soul is to be encountered save muzhiks and their women. Why
should you go and condemn yourself to a state of vegetation like
that?"

Nevertheless the uncle's expostulations fell upon deaf ears, for
already the nephew was beginning to think of his estate as a retreat
of a type more likely to nourish the intellectual faculties and afford
the only profitable field of activity. After unearthing one or two
modern works on agriculture, therefore, he, two weeks later, found
himself in the neighbourhood of the home where his boyhood had been
spent, and approaching the spot which never failed to enthral the
visitor or guest. And in the young man's breast there was beginning to
palpitate a new feeling—in the young man's soul there were
reawakening old, long-concealed impressions; with the result that many
a spot which had long been faded from his memory now filled him with
interest, and the beautiful views on the estate found him gazing at
them like a newcomer, and with a beating heart. Yes, as the road wound
through a narrow ravine, and became engulfed in a forest where, both
above and below, he saw three-centuries-old oaks which three men could
not have spanned, and where Siberian firs and elms overtopped even the
poplars, and as he asked the peasants to tell him to whom the forest
belonged, and they replied, "To Tientietnikov," and he issued from the
forest, and proceeded on his way through meadows, and past spinneys of
elder, and of old and young willows, and arrived in sight of the
distant range of hills, and, crossing by two different bridges the
winding river (which he left successively to right and to left of him
as he did so), he again questioned some peasants concerning the
ownership of the meadows and the flooded lands, and was again informed
that they all belonged to Tientietnikov, and then, ascending a rise,
reached a tableland where, on one side, lay ungarnered fields of wheat
and rye and barley, and, on the other, the country already traversed
(but which now showed in shortened perspective), and then plunged
into the shade of some forked, umbrageous trees which stood scattered
over turf and extended to the manor-house itself, and caught glimpses
of the carved huts of the peasants, and of the red roofs of the stone
manorial outbuildings, and of the glittering pinnacles of the church,
and felt his heart beating, and knew, without being told by any one,
whither he had at length arrived—well, then the feeling which had
been growing within his soul burst forth, and he cried in ecstasy:

"Why have I been a fool so long? Why, seeing that fate has appointed
me to be ruler of an earthly paradise, did I prefer to bind myself in
servitude as a scribe of lifeless documents? To think that, after I
had been nurtured and schooled and stored with all the knowledge
necessary for the diffusion of good among those under me, and for the
improvement of my domain, and for the fulfilment of the manifold
duties of a landowner who is at once judge, administrator, and
constable of his people, I should have entrusted my estate to an
ignorant bailiff, and sought to maintain an absentee guardianship over
the affairs of serfs whom I have never met, and of whose capabilities
and characters I am yet ignorant! To think that I should have deemed
true estate-management inferior to a documentary, fantastical
management of provinces which lie a thousand versts away, and which my
foot has never trod, and where I could never have effected aught but
blunders and irregularities!"

Meanwhile another spectacle was being prepared for him. On learning
that the barin was approaching the mansion, the muzhiks collected on
the verandah in very variety of picturesque dress and tonsure; and
when these good folk surrounded him, and there arose a resounding
shout of "Here is our Foster Father! He has remembered us!" and, in
spite of themselves, some of the older men and women began weeping as
they recalled his grandfather and great-grandfather, he himself could
not restrain his tears, but reflected: "How much affection! And in
return for what? In return for my never having come to see them—in
return for my never having taken the least interest in their affairs!"
And then and there he registered a mental vow to share their every
task and occupation.

So he applied himself to supervising and administering. He reduced the
amount of the barstchina
^[40]
, he decreased the number of working-days
for the owner, and he augmented the sum of the peasants' leisure-time.
He also dismissed the fool of a bailiff, and took to bearing a
personal hand in everything—to being present in the fields, at the
threshing-floor, at the kilns, at the wharf, at the freighting of
barges and rafts, and at their conveyance down the river: wherefore
even the lazy hands began to look to themselves. But this did not last
long. The peasant is an observant individual, and Tientietnikov's
muzhiks soon scented the fact that, though energetic and desirous of
doing much, the barin had no notion how to do it, nor even how to set
about it—that, in short, he spoke by the book rather than out of his
personal knowledge. Consequently things resulted, not in master and
men failing to understand one another, but in their not singing
together, in their not producing the very same note.

That is to say, it was not long before Tientietnikov noticed that on
the manorial lands, nothing prospered to the extent that it did on the
peasants'. The manorial crops were sown in good time, and came up
well, and every one appeared to work his best, so much so that
Tientietnikov, who supervised the whole, frequently ordered mugs of
vodka to be served out as a reward for the excellence of the labour
performed. Yet the rye on the peasants' land had formed into ear, and
the oats had begun to shoot their grain, and the millet had filled
before, on the manorial lands, the corn had so much as grown to stalk,
or the ears had sprouted in embryo. In short, gradually the barin
realised that, in spite of favours conferred, the peasants were
playing the rogue with him. Next he resorted to remonstrance, but was
met with the reply, "How could we not do our best for our barin? You
yourself saw how well we laboured at the ploughing and the sowing, for
you gave us mugs of vodka for our pains."

"Then why have things turned out so badly?" the barin persisted.

"Who can say? It must be that a grub has eaten the crop from below.
Besides, what a summer has it been—never a drop of rain!"

Nevertheless, the barin noted that no grub had eaten the PEASANTS'
crops, as well as that the rain had fallen in the most curious
fashion—namely, in patches. It had obliged the muzhiks, but had shed
a mere sprinkling for the barin.

Still more difficult did he find it to deal with the peasant women.
Ever and anon they would beg to be excused from work, or start making
complaints of the severity of the barstchina. Indeed, they were
terrible folk! However, Tientietnikov abolished the majority of the
tithes of linen, hedge fruit, mushrooms, and nuts, and also reduced by
one-half other tasks proper to the women, in the hope that they would
devote their spare time to their own domestic concerns—namely, to
sewing and mending, and to making clothes for their husbands, and to
increasing the area of their kitchen gardens. Yet no such result came
about. On the contrary, such a pitch did the idleness, the
quarrelsomeness, and the intriguing and caballing of the fair sex
attain that their helpmeets were for ever coming to the barin with a
request that he would rid one or another of his wife, since she had
become a nuisance, and to live with her was impossible.

Next, hardening his heart, the barin attempted severity. But of what
avail was severity? The peasant woman remained always the peasant
woman, and would come and whine that she was sick and ailing, and keep
pitifully hugging to herself the mean and filthy rags which she had
donned for the occasion. And when poor Tientietnikov found himself
unable to say more to her than just, "Get out of my sight, and may the
Lord go with you!" the next item in the comedy would be that he would
see her, even as she was leaving his gates, fall to contending with a
neighbour for, say, the possession of a turnip, and dealing out slaps
in the face such as even a strong, healthy man could scarcely have
compassed!

Again, amongst other things, Tientietnikov conceived the idea of
establishing a school for his people; but the scheme resulted in a
farce which left him in sackcloth and ashes. In the same way he found
that, when it came to a question of dispensing justice and of
adjusting disputes, the host of juridical subtleties with which the
professors had provided him proved absolutely useless. That is to say,
the one party lied, and the other party lied, and only the devil could
have decided between them. Consequently he himself perceived that a
knowledge of mankind would have availed him more than all the legal
refinements and philosophical maxims in the world could do. He lacked
something; and though he could not divine what it was, the situation
brought about was the common one of the barin failing to understand
the peasant, and the peasant failing to understand the barin, and both
becoming disaffected. In the end, these difficulties so chilled
Tientietnikov's enthusiasm that he took to supervising the labours of
the field with greatly diminished attention. That is to say, no matter
whether the scythes were softly swishing through the grass, or ricks
were being built, or rafts were being loaded, he would allow his eyes
to wander from his men, and to fall to gazing at, say, a red-billed,
red-legged heron which, after strutting along the bank of a stream,
would have caught a fish in its beak, and be holding it awhile, as
though in doubt whether to swallow it. Next he would glance towards
the spot where a similar bird, but one not yet in possession of a
fish, was engaged in watching the doings of its mate. Lastly, with
eyebrows knitted, and face turned to scan the zenith, he would drink
in the smell of the fields, and fall to listening to the winged
population of the air as from earth and sky alike the manifold music
of winged creatures combined in a single harmonious chorus. In the rye
the quail would be calling, and, in the grass, the corncrake, and over
them would be wheeling flocks of twittering linnets. Also, the
jacksnipe would be uttering its croak, and the lark executing its
roulades where it had become lost in the sunshine, and cranes sending
forth their trumpet-like challenge as they deployed towards the zenith
in triangle-shaped flocks. In fact, the neighbourhood would seem to
have become converted into one great concert of melody. O Creator, how
fair is Thy world where, in remote, rural seclusion, it lies apart
from cities and from highways!