life consists only of this: oh and oh! you weep and sob and make love and do no work .... how am I to break you of all that ? . . . . If s a difficult task.'
' I will try, uncle, to adapt myself to the ideas of the time. Already to-day while gazing at the immense edifices, and the ships that bring us gifts from far away lands, I thought of the achievements of humanity in this age, I grasped the significance of this multitude moving in brain-directed activity, and was ready to flow with it.'
Piotr Ivanitch during this monologue contracted his brows expressively and looked steadily at his nephew. The latter stopped.
'The fact is simple enough, I fancy,' said his uncle; 'but these country-people—goodness knows what ideas they take into their heads .... brain-directed activity indeed! Certainly you had done better to remain in the country. You would have had a splendid life there: you would have been the cleverest of all of them, and have been looked on i as a poet and an eloquent talker, you would have believed in eternal and unchanging love and friendship, in the family , and in happiness, you would have married and have reached old age without noticing it, and you would have been in
A COMMON STORY 43
reality happy after your own fashion; but you will not be happy after our fashion; here all these ideas must be turned upside down.'
' How, uncle, are love and friendship—these sacred and lofty emotions, not the same here as at home ? '
' We have love and friendship here of course—they are cheap enough to be plentiful everywhere; only it is not the same as those in your home; in time you will see for yourself. . . . But before everything you must forget these sacred and heavenly emotions and look at facts more simply as they are, indeed it would be better, then you will talk more simply too. However, it is not my business. You have come here and will not go back. If you don't find what you looked for, you have only yourself to blame. I will advise you what is good in my opinion and what is bad, and then do as you please. /We will try—perhaps—something may be made of you. Ah! your mother asked me to provide
you with money You understand what I say to you;
don't come to me for money; that always destroys a good understanding between honourable people. However, don't imagine that I have declined to help you; no, if it should come to there being no other resource, then there is no help for it, come to me. Any way, it is better to borrow from an uncle than from a stranger, especially as you would get it without interest. But you ought not to let yourself be driven to this extremity, I will qu ickly find you a place so that you can earn s ome moneyV well, good bye for the pr'WJWlt. CoinG'm again in 'the morning, we will talk of what and how to begin.'
Alexandr Fedovitch was going to his room.
'Oh , don't you want some supper?' Piotr I vanitch called after him.
n YeSg'uhcle—I should—perhaps.'
' I nave nothing to offer you.
Alexandr was TiTfnr 'Why this nsffiltrss prnpmal then?' h e tho ught.
'** I fl ohTTiave my meals p repared at home, and the shops ar e closecT dv now/ cont inueg ^TTmcte: •^ ' Il e ie irrr tesson fo f you at the very first turn—a ccustom yourself fo'itT 'At h6me you go to bed ana get up With the SUn,~eat'and drink when nature bid you; if it is cold, you put on a cap with lappets and no one wants to know anything about it; when
+'
44 A COMMON STORY
it is light, it is. day, when it is dark, it is night. At your home all are asleep, but I am still sitting at work; at the end of the month one has to balance one's accounts. You breathe the fresh air there all the year round, but here even that enjoyment costs money, and the same with everything. It's a complete antipodes! Here they do not even eat supper, especially at their own cost, or at mine either. This, perhaps, will be an advantage to you; you will not toss and groan at night, and I haven't the time to turn you over!'
'That one can easily get accustomed to, uncle.'
' Good, if it is so. But with you everything is still in the old style ; you can still I suppose arrive at a friend's at midnight; and they will begin to get supper ready for you directly.'
'Why, uncle, I should think you could not find fault
with that in us. The kindheartedness of Russians '
/ il Stop ! what sort of kindheartedness is there in it? You are so bored that you are glad of any creature who turns up:—you are welcome, eat as much as you like, only employ our idleness in some way, help us to kill time, and let us look at you; any way it is something new; and we don't grudge you your entertainment; it costs us nothing here. A poor sort of kindheartedness!'
So Alexandr went to bed and tried to conjecture what sort of a man his uncle was. He remembered the whole conversation; much of it he did not understand, and the rest he did not altogether believe.
' I don't talk properly ! ' he thought: ' love and friendship are not undying ! surely my uncle must be laughing at me? Can this be the way they live here? What was it Sophia liked so specially in me, but the gift of eloquence ? But is her love really not undying? .... And is it possible they really don't have supper here.'
He lay tossing uneasily in his bed for a long time : with his head full of disquieting thoughts, and his stomach empty, he could not get to sleep.
Piotr Ivanitch became every day more contented with his nephew.
' He does not intrude,' he said to one of his partners at the factory—'never comes to see me without an invitation ; and when he notices that he is de trop> he goes away
directly; and he does not ask for money; he is a well-behaved boy. He has his peculiarities .... sidles up to kiss you, and talks in a high-flown style; well he will get out of that; and what a good thing it is he does not come to me for everything.'
Alexandr considered it his duty to love his uncle, but he could never get used to his character and ways of thinking.
' My uncle seems a good-hearted man,' he wrote one I morning to Pospyeloff, 'very intelligent, only he is utterly prosaic, for ever absorbed in business, in calculations. His soul seems chained to earth and is never lifted up into the pure ether far remote from earthly sordidness, and we shall never, I fancy, be altogether one in heart. When I came here, I imagined that as my uncle he would give me a place in his heart, that in the midst of the cold world here he would cherish me with all the warmth of affection and friendship ; and friendship, you know, is a second providence. But he is nothing else than this world individualised. I expected to spend my time with him, never to be away from him for a minute, but what was my welcome ?—cold advice, which he calls common sense; but I would rather it were not common sense but full of warm, heartfelt interest.. He is not exactly proud, but he is averse to all sincere outbursts of feeling. We do not dine nor sup together, and go out nowhere together. On my arrival he n^ver told me how he was or what he was doing and he never tells me even where he is going and why, who are his acquaintances. . what are his likes and dislikes and how he spends his time. He is never specially angry, nor affectionate, nor sad, nor cheerful. His heart is a stranger to all transport of love and friendship, all yearnings after the sublime. . . . He does not believe in love, &c, says that there is no such thing as happiness, that nobody has guaranteed it to us, and that life is a simple matter, which is divided equally into good and bad, into pleasure, success, health and ease, and then into pain, failure, anxiety, disease and so on; that we ought to look at all this simply, and not to fill our heads with useless matters. And what do you suppose are useless matters ? Why the problems of why we were created and to what we are striving—that that is not our business and that it hinders us from seeing what is before our noses and from minding
our business. He is always talking about business! One sees no difference in him whether he is absorbed in some enjoyment or in prosaic business at his accounts, and at the theatre he is exactly the same; he receives no powerful impression from anything and I think does not care for art; it is foreign to his nature; I fancy he has not even read Pushkin.'
Piotr Ivanitch unexpectedly appeared in his nephew's apartment and came upon him writing a letter.
' I came to see how you were settled in here,' said his uncle, ' and to talk a little of business.'
Alexandr jumped up, and quickly covered something with his hand.
' Hide it, hide your secret,' said Piotr Ivanitch; ' I will turn my back. Well, have you put it away ? But what is it
