teaching in the school; she had by degrees succeeded in gathering round her a circle of people sympathetic to her who made a strong party, and at the last election had turned out Balagin, who had till then had the whole district under his thumb. About Genya he only told me that she did not live at home, and that he did not know where she was.
I am beginning to forget the old house, and only sometimes when I am painting or reading I suddenly, apropos of nothing, remember the green light in the window, the sound of my footsteps as I walked home through the fields in the night, with my heart full of love, rubbing my hands in the cold. And still more rarely, at moments when I am sad and depressed by loneliness, I have dim memories, and little by little I begin to feel that she is thinking of me, too -- that she is waiting for me, and that we shall meet. . . .
Misuce, where are you?
NOTES
title: 'The House with a Mezzanine: An Artist's Story'
patience: a card came
Amos stoves: Amosov stoves were invented in 1835 by Nicholas Amosov (1787-1868)
privy councillor: 3rd grade, typically reserved for very distinguished members of the Civil Service
Zemstvo school: a school created by the local district council
Misuce: a mispronunciation of 'Miss Hughes'
oleographs: imitation oil paintings
intellectual family: the word should be translated as 'family of the intelligentsia'; that is, a family of culture
Buriat girl: the Buryats were a Mongol people living in southeastern Siberia
Chinese canvas: a coarse cotton material
tunic:
Annas, Mavras, Pelageas: typical Russian peasant names
Rurik: founder of the first of the ruling houses in Russia, that lasted from 862 until 1598
Gogol's Petrushka: the servant in the novel
Vichy: spa in France
cheese: the first line of a well-known Russian fable is: 'A crow picked up a piece of cheese'
* * *
My Life
THE STORY OF A PROVINCIAL by Anton Chekhov
I
THE Superintendent said to me: 'I only keep you out of regard for your worthy father; but for that you would have been sent flying long ago.' I replied to him: 'You flatter me too much, your Excellency, in assuming that I am capable of flying.' And then I heard him say: 'Take that gentleman away; he gets upon my nerves.'
Two days later I was dismissed. And in this way I have, during the years I have been regarded as grown up, lost nine situations, to the great mortification of my father, the architect of our town. I have served in various departments, but all these nine jobs have been as alike as one drop of water is to another: I had to sit, write, listen to rude or stupid observations, and go on doing so till I was dismissed.
When I came in to my father he was sitting buried in a low arm-chair with his eyes closed. His dry, emaciated face, with a shade of dark blue where it was shaved (he looked like an old Catholic organist), expressed meekness and resignation. Without responding to my greeting or opening his eyes, he said:
'If my dear wife and your mother were living, your life would have been a source of continual distress to her. I see the Divine Providence in her premature death. I beg you, unhappy boy,' he continued, opening his eyes, 'tell me: what am I to do with you?'
In the past when I was younger my friends and relations had known what to do with me: some of them used to advise me to volunteer for the army, others to get a job in a pharmacy, and others in the telegraph department; now that I am over twenty-five, that grey hairs are beginning to show on my temples, and that I have been already in the army, and in a pharmacy, and in the telegraph department, it would seem that all earthly possibilities have been exhausted, and people have given up advising me, and merely sigh or shake their heads.
'What do you think about yourself?' my father went on. 'By the time they are your age, young men have a secure social position, while look at you: you are a proletarian, a beggar, a burden on your father!'
And as usual he proceeded to declare that the young people of to-day were on the road to perdition through infidelity, materialism, and self-conceit, and that amateur theatricals ought to be prohibited, because they seduced young people from religion and their duties.
'To-morrow we shall go together, and you shall apologize to the superintendent, and promise him to work conscientiously,' he said in conclusion. 'You ought not to remain one single day with no regular position in society.'
'I beg you to listen to me,' I said sullenly, expecting nothing good from this conversation. 'What you call a position in society is the privilege of capital and education. Those who have neither wealth nor education earn their daily bread by manual labour, and I see no grounds for my being an exception.'
'When you begin talking about manual labour it is always stupid and vulgar!' said my father with irritation. 'Understand, you dense fellow -- understand, you addle-pate, that besides coarse physical strength you have the divine spirit, a spark of the holy fire, which distinguishes you in the most striking way from the ass or the reptile, and brings you nearer to the Deity! This fire is the fruit of the efforts of the best of mankind during thousands of years. Your great-grandfather Poloznev, the general, fought at Borodino; your grandfather was a poet, an orator, and a Marshal of Nobility; your uncle is a schoolmaster; and lastly, I, your father, am an architect! All the Poloznevs have guarded the sacred fire for you to put it out!'
