-v
A COMMON STORY 35
should have been in your way and you in mine. ButT
h ave found aJ Hgfoff Wo far ynii in frh* hniigo
* w Ah! deaPuncle!' said Alexandr, ' how can I thank you for this kind service ? ' v >
And he leaped up again from his seat with the intention ' I
of showing his gratitude both in word and deed.
' Gently, gently, don't touch me ! ' said his uncle, ' the razors are very sharp,' I'm afraid of your getting cut, or cutting me.' ^
Alexandr perceived that in spite of all his efforts he would | , n , not succeed that day in even once embracing and pressing ! ^-. to his heart his adored uncle and put off this project for a ^ future occasion.
'The room is pretty cheerful,' began Pictr Ivanitch; ' the look-out from the windows is rather on to walls, but of course you won't want to be always sitting at the window; when you are at home, you are always busy with something and haven't time to be gaping at a window. And it is not dear—forty roubles a month. There is an ante- room for vour maTT ' You must accustom yourself from the very be-1 ginning to live alone, without a nurse; to conduct your own little household, I mean to board at home, in a word to have a corner of your own— un chez sot, as the French say. There you will be able to entertain whom you please. However, when I dine at home, you are welcome, but o n other days—young men herejgenerally dine at an eating* houSl but I adviae yuiTtb send out for you7'3Tnher; at home you will be quieter and you won't be exposed to mixing with God knows who. Eh ? '
' I am very grateful, uncle.'
' What is there to be grateful for ? Aren't you a relation ? I am only fulfilling my duty. Well, I will leave you now, I v am going out, I have my official work and also & factory .'
' I didn't know you had a factory, uncle.'
' Yes, glass and porcelain works : but I am not the sole proprietor, mere are three of us partners.'
' Is business good ?'
' Yes, fairly so; our sales are chiefly at the markets in the inland provinces. The last few years have been far from bad! If we have five years more like this, well and good. One partner to be sure is not very trustworthy—he does nothing but spend money, but I know how to keep
^
36 A COMMON STORY
him in check. Well, good-bye for the present. You go now and take a look at the town, stroll about, and dine somewhere, but come and have tea with me in the evening. I shall be at home, then we can talk a little. Here! Vassili, you show the room and help to get it ready.'
'So this is how it is here, in Petersburg,' thought Alexandr, sitting down in his new dwelling. ' If my own uncle is like this, what will others be ? '
Young Adouev paced up and down his room deep in thought, but Yevsay talked to himself as he set the room to rights.
•' It's a queer way of living here,' he muttered, in Piotr Ivanitch's kitchen. ' I hear there's a baking once a month, the servants have their meals out. Ugh! my word, what people! A pretty thing, and they call themselves Peters-burgers ! Among us every dog has his own saucer to lap out of.'
!^Alexandr seemed to share Yevsay's opinion though he was silent. He went up to the window and looked out upon a view of water-pipes, roofs, and brick walls of houses, black and filthy, and he compared it with what he had seen, just a fortnight before, from the window of his home in the country. His heart sank. - He went out into the street ; all was confusion, every one running in different directions, occupied only with his own affairs, scarcely glancing at those who passed. He remembered the little town which was the capital of his province, where a meeting with any one, whoever it might be, was always interesting in one way or another. Here Ivan Ivanitch would be going to see Piotr Piotrovitch—and every one in the town knows the reason why. Here is Maria Martinova coming home from vespers, and there Afanasy Savitch going out to fish. There a gendarme from the governor's would gallop past like mad for the doctor, and every one knew that Her Excellency's confinement was expected, though in the judgment of the various gossips and old women it was not proper to be aware of this fact too soon. Every one would be asking ' boy or girl ?' and the ladies were all making caps worthy to celebrate the occasion. Here Matvai Matvyitch would come out of his house with his thick stick, at six o'clock in the evening, and every one knew that he was going to take his evening constitutional, without which
his digestion would suffer; and that he would infallibly stop at the window of the old councillor, who, they also knew, would be drinking his tea at this hour. If you met any one —no matter who—there would be a bow and a word or two, and even if there is any one you don't salute, at least you know who he is, and where he is going and why, and in his face is written : I too know who you are and where you are going and why. And if it should ever happen that two people meet who don't know each other, directly they see one another, the faces of both assume an expression of inquiry; they stand still and look round twice, and when they get home they describe the dress and appearance of the unknown personage, and conjectures and discussions will follow as to who. he is and where he comes from, and what is his object. But here with scarcely a glance they push along the way as though they were all enemies. ~ To begin with, Alexandr gazed with provincial curiosity at every one he met, and every respectably dressed man he took for either a minister, or an ambassador, or an author, ' isn't he/' he thought, ' and isn't that one ? ' But soon he was weary of this—ministers, ambassadors, authors met him at every step.
He looked at the houses and grew still more gloomy, he
was depressed by the monotonous piles of stone, which
stretch like colossal tombstones one after another in one
unbroken mass. Here the street will end^' and there will
be open space to rest my eyes—he thought—or a hill or
greenness, or a broken-down wall. No, there the stone
ramparts begin again of houses all identical, with four rows
of windows. And that street ended, again there was some-
^ thing to shut one in, another row of the same houses. You
look to the right, to the left—on all sides/nemming you in
like ranks of giants, houses, houses and houses, stone and
stone, all the same and the same again; no freedom, no
; outlet for the eyes ; cramped in on all sides. It seemed as
; though men's thoughts and feelings too must be cramped
yit.
^^The first impressions of a provincial in Petersburg are disagreeable. It is all strange and depressing to him; no one notices him; he feels lost here; even the novelty, the variety of the crowds fail to please him. His provincial egoism is up in arms against everything he sees here, and
7
has not seen at home. He grows meditative and is carried back in thought to his own town. What a soothing vision! A house standing alone with sharp-pointed wall and a small avenue of acacias. Against the wall a kind of shed, a pigeon-house—the merchant Izumin is a devoted pigeon fancier; this was his reason for taking the house and building the pigeon-house against the wall; and every morning and evening he stands under the wall in his nightcap and dressing-gown^ a stick in his hand with a rag tied to the end 'oTTt, ana whistles and waves the stick in the air. The house is exactly like a lighthouse : on all four sides it is all windows flush with the walls, a house of ancient construction ; it seems as though it were always going to fall down. Next it, is the small gray house of the surgeon spread out in semicircle with two wings like sentry-boxes, and all hidden away in the green foliage; the next house has turned its back on the street, the next is shut in by a mile of fence, from behind which rosy-cheeked apples peep from the trees and tempt the schoolboys. The houses all stand back from the church at a respectful distance, and all round it the fresh grass is springing up, between the tombstones. The Government offices are such that there is no mistake about their being Government offices; no one dare come near them except on business. But here in the capital you cannot distinguish them from private houses, and what's more, shameful to say, they even have shops in the same building. And there in the provincial town you need only walk through two or three streets and you feel the fresh air of the country and the hedges begin and the market-gardens and then open fields of spring corn. And the peace, the unchanging monotony—even in the street and in the people you find this same
