Fyodorovich asks pitifully. 'It's me, your wife pulling you, because you're a bell.' 'No, I'm not a bell, I'm Ivan Fyodorovich!' he cries. 'Yes, you're a bell,' says the colonel of the
In fear and beside himself, Ivan Fyodorovich woke up. He was streaming with cold sweat.
As soon as he got up in the morning, he at once appealed to the fortune-telling book, at the end of which one virtuous bookseller, in his rare kindness and disinterestedness, had placed an abbreviated interpretation of dreams. But there was absolutely nothing in it even faintly resembling such an incoherent dream.
Meanwhile, in the aunt's head a totally new plot was hatching, which you will hear about in the next chapter.
Old World Landowners
I like very much the modest life of those solitary proprietors of remote estates who in Little Russia are usually known as the old world and who, like decrepit, picturesque little houses, are so nicely mottled and so completely the opposite of a new, smooth building whose walls have not yet been washed by rain, whose roof is not yet covered with green mold, and whose porch does not yet show its red bricks through missing plaster. I like sometimes to descend for a moment into the realm of this remarkably solitary life, where not one desire flies over the paling that surrounds the small yard, over the wattle fence that encloses the garden filled with apple and plum trees, over the village cottages surrounding it, slumped to one side, in the shade of pussy willows, elders, and pear trees. The life of their modest owners is quiet, so quiet that for a moment you forget yourself and think that the passions, desires, and restlessness produced by the evil spirit who troubles the world do not exist at all, and that you saw them only in a splendid, shining dream. From here I can see a low house with a gallery of small, blackened wooden posts running all the way round it, so that it would be possible in time of hail and thunder to close the shutters without getting wet by rain. Behind it, a fragrant bird cherry, whole rows of low fruit trees drowning in the purple of cherries and the ruby sea of plums covered with a leaden bloom; a branching maple in the shadow of which a rug has been spread for resting on; in front of the house, a vast yard of low, fresh grass, with a beaten path from the barn to the kitchen and from the kitchen to the master's quarters; a long-necked goose drinking water with her young, downy-soft goslings; the paling hung with strings of dried pears and apples and with rugs airing out; a cart full of melons standing by the barn; an unharnessed ox lying lazily beside it-all this has an inexplicable charm for me, perhaps because I no longer see it, and because everything we are parted from is dear to us. Be that as it may, even as my britzka drove up to the porch of this little house, my soul would assume a remarkably pleasant and calm state; the horses would trot merrily to the porch, the coachman would most calmly climb down from the box and fill his pipe as if he had come to his own house; the very barking set up by the phlegmatic Rustys, Rovers, and Fidos was pleasant to my ears. But most of all I liked the owners of these modest corners themselves, the little old men, the little old women who came solicitously to meet me. Their faces come back to me even now, in the noise and crowd, amid fashionable tailcoats, and then suddenly I am overcome by reverie and have vision^ of the past. On their faces there was always written such kindness, such cordiality and pure-heartedness, that you would unwittingly renounce all your bold dreams, at least for a short while, and pass imperceptibly into lowly bucolic life.
To this day I cannot forget an old couple from times past, who, alas, are no more, yet my soul is still filled with pity and my feelings are strangely wrung when I imagine myself coming again some day to their former, now- deserted dwelling and seeing a cluster of tumbledown cottages, an untended pond, an overgrown ditch in the place where the little low house used to stand-and nothing more. Sad! I feel sad beforehand! But let us turn to the story.
Afanasy Ivanovich Tovstogub and Pulkheria Ivanovna, the Tov-stogub wife, as the neighboring peasants called her, were the old folk I was beginning to tell about. If I were a painter and wanted to portray Philemon and Baucis 1 on canvas, I would never choose any other original than them. Afanasy Ivanovich was sixty years old, Pulkheria Ivanovna fifty-five. Afanasy Ivanovich was tall, always went about in a sheepskin coat covered with camlet, sat hunched over, and almost always smiled, whether talking or merely listening. Pulkheria Ivanovna was rather serious, she hardly ever laughed, but there was so much kindness written in her face and eyes, so much readiness to treat you to the best of everything they had, that you would surely have found a smile much too sugary on her kind face. The pattern of light wrinkles on their faces was so pleasant that an artist would surely have stolen it. By it one seemed able to read their whole life, the serene, calm life led by old, native-born, simple-hearted and yet wealthy families, who are always such a contrast to those low Little Russians who push their way up from tar- makers and dealers, fill the courts and government offices like locusts, rip the last kopeck out of their own compatriots, flood Petersburg with pettifoggers, finally make some fortune, and to their last name, which ends in o, solemnly add the letter v. 2 No, like all the ancient and native-born families of Little Russia, they bore no resemblance to these despicable and pathetic creatures.
It was impossible to look at their mutual love without sympathy. They never spoke to each other informally but always with respect, as Afanasy Ivanovich and Pulkheria Ivanovna. 'Was it you who went through the seat of the chair, Afanasy Ivanovich?' 'No matter, don't be angry, Pulkheria Ivanovna, it was me.' They never had children, and therefore all their affection was focused on themselves. Once, when he was young, Afanasy Ivanovich had served in the volunteer cavalry, later he became a staff major, but that was very long ago, a bygone thing, Afanasy Ivanovich himself hardly ever recalled it. Afanasy Ivanovich had married at the age of thirty, when he was a fine fellow and wore an embroidered uniform; he had even abducted Pulkheria Ivanovna rather adroitly when her relations refused to give her to him; but of that, too, he remembered very little, or at least never spoke.
All these long-past, extraordinary events were replaced by a quiet and solitary life, by those drowsy and at the same time harmonious reveries which you experience sitting on a village bal- cony overlooking the garden, when a wonderful rain makes a luxuriant splashing on the leaves, pouring down in bubbling streams and casting a drowsy spell over your limbs, and meanwhile a rainbow steals from behind the trees and like a half-ruined arch shines with its seven muted colors in the sky. Or when you are rocked by a carriage bobbing between green shrubs, and a steppe quail throbs, and fragrant grass together with wildflowers and ears of wheat poke through the doors of the carriage, striking you pleasantly on the hands and face.
He always listened with a pleasant smile to the guests who came to see him, and sometimes spoke himself, but mainly to ask questions. He was not one of those old people who make a nuisance of themselves, eternally praising the old days or denouncing the new. On the contrary, in questioning you, he showed great curiosity and concern for the circumstances of your own life, its successes and failures, which always interest all kindly old men, though it somewhat resembled the curiosity of a child who, while talking to you, studies your watch fob. In those moments his face, one might say, breathed kindness.
The rooms of the house in which our old folk lived were small, low, such as one meets among old world people. In each room there was an enormous stove that took up almost a third of it. These rooms were terribly warm, because Afanasy Ivanovich and Pulkheria Ivanovna were both very fond of warmth. The fireboxes were all in the front hall, which was always filled nearly to the ceiling with the straw customarily used instead of wood in Little Russia. The crackling of this burning straw and its light made the front hall very pleasant on a winter evening, when ardent youths, chilled in the pursuit of some swarthy beauty, came running in clapping their hands. The walls of the rooms were adorned with several paintings, big and small, in old-fashioned narrow frames. I'm certain that the
