“Don’t torment them, Lenochka. Let the people recover from the trip.”
“Now here’s what interests me. List for me, please, the kinds of magnifying glasses and what images they produce in each case: actual, inverted, direct, or imaginary.”
“Where did you get such a knowledge of physics?”
“We had an excellent mathematician here in Yuriatin. He taught in two schools, the boys’ and ours. How he explained things, oh, how he explained things! Like a god! He’d chew it all and put it in your mouth. Antipov. He was married to a teacher here. The girls lost their minds over him, they were all in love with him. He went to war as a volunteer and never came back. He was killed. It’s alleged that our scourge of God and punishment from heaven, Commissar Strelnikov, is Antipov come back to life. A legend, of course. And it’s not like him. Who knows, though. Anything’s possible. Another little cup?”
VARYKINO
1
In the winter, when there was more time, Yuri Andreevich began to take various kinds of notes. He noted for himself:
“How often during the summer I wanted to say together with Tyutchev:1
What a summer, ah, what a summer!
In truth it’s something magical.
And how, I ask, was it given to us,
Just so, for no reason at all?
“What happiness to work for yourself and your family, from dawn to dusk, to construct a shelter, to till the soil for the sake of subsistence, to create your own world like Robinson Crusoe, imitating our Maker in creating the universe, following your own mother in bringing yourself again and again into the world!
“So many thoughts go through your consciousness, you think so much that is new, while your hands are busy with the muscular, corporeal work of digging or carpentry; while you set yourself reasonable, physically solvable tasks, which reward you at their completion with joy and success; while for six hours in a row you trim something with an axe or dig the earth under the open sky, which scorches you with its beneficent breath. And that these thoughts, surmises, and juxtapositions are not set down on paper, but are forgotten in all their passing transience, is not a loss, but a gain. You city recluse, whipping up your sagging nerves and imagination with strong black coffee or tobacco, you don’t know the most powerful drug, which consists in unfeigned need and sound health.
“I go no further than what I’ve said, I do not preach Tolstoyan simplification and return to the earth, I do not invent my own amendment to socialism on agrarian questions. I merely establish the fact and do not erect our accidentally befallen fate into a system. Our example is questionable and not suitable for drawing conclusions. Our housekeeping is of too heterogeneous a composition. We owe only a small part of it—the store of vegetables and potatoes—to the work of our hands. All the rest comes from another source.
“Our use of the land is illegal. It is arbitrarily concealed from the accounting established by the state authorities. Our cutting of wood is theft, not excusable by the fact that we are stealing from the state pocket— formerly Kruger’s. We are protected by the connivance of Mikulitsyn, who lives by approximately the same means; we are saved by the distances, by being far from the city, where for now, fortunately, they know nothing of our tricks.
“I have given up medicine and keep quiet about being a doctor, so as not to trammel my freedom. But some good soul from the back of beyond always finds out that a doctor has settled in Varykino, and drags himself from twenty miles away for advice, one with a chicken, another with eggs, another with a bit of butter or something else. No matter how I dodge the honoraria, it’s impossible to fend them off, because people don’t believe in the effectiveness of unpaid-for, freely given advice. And so my medical practice brings me something. But our main support, and Mikulitsyn’s, is Samdevyatov.
“It is inconceivable what opposites this man unites in himself. He is sincerely for the revolution and fully deserves the trust that the Yuriatin City Council has vested in him. With his almighty powers, he could requisition and transport the entire forest of Varykino without even telling us and the Mikulitsyns, and we wouldn’t bat an eye. On the other hand, if he wished to steal from the state, he could most calmly pocket whatever and however much he wanted, and nobody would make a peep. He has no one to divide with and no one to butter up. What, then, induces him to look after us, help the Mikulitsyns, and support everybody around, such as, for example, the stationmaster in Torfyanaya? He’s on the go all the time, fetching and bringing things, and he analyzes and interprets Dostoevsky’s
2
A little later the doctor noted:
“We’re settled in the back part of the old manor house, in the two rooms of the wooden extension, which in Anna Ivanovna’s childhood years was intended for the select among Kruger’s servants—the live-in seamstress, the housekeeper, and the retired nanny.
“This corner was fairly decrepit. We repaired it rather quickly. With the help of knowledgeable people, we relaid the stove that heats the two rooms in a new way. With the present position of the flue, it gives more heat.
“In this part of the park, the traces of the former layout had disappeared under the new growth that filled everything. Now, in winter, when everything around is dormant and the living does not obscure the dead, the snow-covered outlines of former things stand out more clearly.
“We’ve been lucky. The autumn happened to be dry and warm. We managed to dig the potatoes before the rain and cold set in. Minus what we owed and returned to the Mikulitsyns, we have up to twenty sacks, and it is all in the main bin of the cellar, covered above, over the floor, with straw and old, torn blankets. Down there, under the floor, we also put two barrels of Tonya’s salted cucumbers and another two of cabbage she has pickled. The fresh cabbage is hung from the crossbeams, head to head, tied in pairs. The supply of carrots is buried in dry sand. As is a sufficient amount of harvested black radishes, beets, and turnips, and upstairs in the house there is a quantity of peas and beans. The firewood stored up in the shed will last till spring. I like the warm smell of the underground in winter, which hits your nose with roots, earth, and snow as soon as you lift the trapdoor of the cellar, at an early hour, before the winter dawn, with a weak, ready to go out, barely luminous light in your hand.
“You come out of the shed, day has not broken yet. The door creaks, or you sneeze unexpectedly, or the snow simply crunches under your foot, and from the far-off vegetable patch, where cabbage stumps stick up from under the snow, hares pop up and go pelting off, scrawling tracks that furrow the snow around far and wide. And in the neighborhood, one after another, the dogs set up a long barking. The last cocks already crowed earlier, they will not start now. And it begins to grow light.
