Lectures on Russian literature

succession of masks.

Mask One: 'Grigori kept a grocery, but that was only for the sake of appearances: in reality he dealt in vodka, cattle, hides, grain, and pigs; he traded in anything that came to hand, and when, for instance, magpies were wanted abroad for ladies'

hats, he made thirty kopeks on every brace of birds; he bought timber for felling, lent money at interest, and altogether was a resourceful old man.' This Grigori will also undergo a very interesting metamorphosis in the course of the story.

Old Grigori has two sons, a deaf one around the house, married to what seems a pleasant, cheerful young woman but in reality a malicious devil of a woman; the other son is a detective in town, a bachelor as yet. You will notice that Grigori is immensely appreciative of his daughter-in-law Aksinia: we shall see why in a minute. Old Grigori, a widower, has married again, a new wife named Varvara (Barbara): 'No sooner had she moved into a little room in the upper story than everything in the house seemed to brighten up as though new glass had been put into all the windows. The oil lamps burned brightly before the sacred pictures, the tables were covered with snow-white cloths, flowers flecked with red made their appearance in the windows and in the front garden, and at dinner, instead of eating from a single bowl, each person had a separate plate set for him.' She also seems, at first, a good woman, a delightful woman, and, anyway, she has a kinder heart than the old man. 'When on the eve of a fast or during the local church festival, which lasted three days, Grigori's store palmed off on the peasants tainted salt meat, smelling so strong it was hard to stand near the tub of it, and took scythes, caps, and their wives' kerchiefs in pledge from the drunken men; when the factory hands, stupefied with bad vodka, lay in the mud, and degradation seemed to hover thick like a fog in the air, then it was a kind of relief to think that up there in the house there was a quiet, neatly dressed woman who had nothing to do with salt meat or vodka. '

Grigori is a hard man, and though now in the lower middle class is of direct peasant descent—his father was probably a well-to-do peasant—and naturally he hates peasants. Now comes:

Mask Two : Under her gay appearance Aksinia is also hard and that is why old Grigori admires her so much. This pretty woman is a swindler: 'Aksinia attended to the shop, and from the yard could be heard the clink of bottles and of money, her laughter and loud talk, and the angry voices of customers whom she had cheated, and at the same time it could be seen that the illicit sale of vodka was already going on in the shop. The deaf man sat in the shop, too, or walked about the street bareheaded, with his hands in his pockets looking absent-mindedly now at the log cabins, now at the sky overhead.

Six times a day they had tea; four times a day they sat down to meals. And in the evening they counted their takings, wrote them down, went to bed, and slept soundly.'

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Now comes a transition to the calico-printing mills of the

place and to their owners. Let us call them collectively the

Khrymin family.

Mask Three (adultery): Aksinia not only deceives customers

in the store, she also deceives her husband with one of

those mill owners.

Mask Four: This is just a little mask, a kind of self-deception.

'A telephone was installed in the rural administration, too,

but it soon went out of order when it started to harbor

bedbugs and cockroaches. The district elder was

semiliterate and wrote every word in the official

documents with a capital. But when the telephone went

out of order he said: 'Yes, now we shall find it hard to be

without a telephone.' '

Mask Five: This refers to Grigori's elder son, the detective

Anisim. We are now deep in the deception theme of the

story. But Chekhov keeps back some important information

about Anisim: 'The elder son, Anisim, came home very

rarely, only on great holidays, but he often sent by a

returning villager presents and letters written by someone

else in a very beautiful hand, always on a sheet of foolscap

The opening page of Nabokov's lecture on 'In the Gully.'

that looked like a formal petition. The letters were full of

expressions that Anisim never made use of in conversation: 'Dear papa and mamma, I send you a pound of orange pekoe tea for the satisfaction of your physical needs.' ' There is a little mystery here that will be gradually cleared up, as in the

'someone else in a very beautiful hand.'

It is curious that when he arrives home one day and there is something about him suggesting that he has been dismissed from the police force, nobody bothers about it. On the contrary, the occasion seems festive, encouraging ideas of marriage.

Says Varvara, Grigori's wife and Anisim's stepmother:

'How is this, my goodness!' she said. 'The lad's in his twenty-eighth year, and he is still strolling about a bachelor. . . .' From the adjacent room her soft, even speech continued to sound like a series of sighs. She began whispering with her husband and Aksinia, and their faces, too, assumed a sly and mysterious expression as though they are conspirators. It was decided to marry Anisim.'

Child Theme : This is the transition to the main character of the story, the girl Lipa (pronounced Leepa). She was the daughter of a working widow, charwoman, and helped her mother in her various chores. 'She was pale, thin, and frail, with soft, delicate features, tanned from working in the open air; a shy, melancholy smile always hovered about her face, and there was a childlike look in her eyes, trustful and curious. She was young, still a child, her bosom still scarcely perceptible, but she could be married because she had reached the legal age [eighteen]. She really was beautiful, and the only thing that might be thought unattractive was her big masculine hands which hung idle now like two big claws.'

Mask Six: This refers to Varvara, who though pleasant enough, is but a hollow shell of superficial kindness beneath which there is nothing.

Thus Grigori's whole family is a masquerade of deceit.

Now comes Lipa, and with Lipa a new theme starts —the theme of trust, childish trust.

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Vladimir Nabokov: Lectures on Russian literature

The second chapter ends with another glimpse of Anisim. Everything about him is false: there is something very wrong, and he conceals it not too well. 'After the visit of inspection the wedding day was fixed. Anisim kept walking about the rooms at home whistling, or suddenly remembering something, would fall to brooding and would look at the floor fixedly, silently, as though he would probe to the depths of the earth. He expressed neither pleasure that he was to be married, married so soon, the week of St. Thomas [after Easter], nor a desire to see his bride, but simply went on whistling through his teeth. And it was evident that he was only getting married because his father and stepmother wished him to, and because it was a country custom to marry off the son in order to have a woman to help in the house. When he went away he seemed in no haste, and behaved altogether not as he had done on previous visits; he was unusually jaunty and said the wrong things.'

In the third chapter observe Aksinia's green and yellow print dress for the wedding of Anisim and Lipa. Chekhov is going to describe her consistently in the terms of a reptile. (A kind of rattlesnake is found in eastern Russia called the yellow belly.)

'The dressmakers were making for Varvara a brown dress with black lace and glass beads on it, and for Aksinia a light green dress with a yellow front, and a train.' Although these dressmakers are described as belonging to the Flagellant Sect, this did not mean much by 1900—it did not mean that the members actually whipped