I rose and stood by him, and we looked at Russia, whirling past. Then I left him. When I returned, the General was still lying on the sofa, but his melancholy had vanished and he was spitting at the ceiling, probably for want of anything better to do.
On we went. Two days before we had left Irkutsk. The train rushed and roared and rattled. It was a weather that breeds pessimists. I stood looking out upon the steppes, these immense, monotonous Siberian plains, dull and melancholy in the rain, when Zina came to me and said her mother wished to see me privately. As I entered her coupé the old lady was drinking tea. She bade me sit down.
“It’s about Uncle Kostia,” she began. She sighed, and there was a prolonged pause. “Cleverness! Wisdom! … Oh, I don’t know, Andrei Andreiech. God in heaven knows”—she crossed herself—“that we are groping in the dark and none of us know what we are about or what’s what, and I am an old ignorant, sinful woman. But if you ask me, Andrei Andreiech, I’d just as soon have a fool as a wise man. Take Uncle Kostia. Such a clever man—and what’s the good of it? I am stupid, dotty in my old age, but really I don’t see where all his cleverness is leading to. And I say it is time he did something and gave up living upon others. Zina tells me she can’t keep on asking Nikolai Vasilievich for money, and I really do think it is time Uncle Kostia began to work … and published something. I thought perhaps you could get the Admiral to place him on some paper—propaganda of some sort. It isn’t that one is sorry to keep Uncle Kostia. He is clever, they all say. Heaven knows he has lived on his brother long enough, and one was never sorry to give him all he wanted since the man is clever, you understand, and writes. But now there is nothing to give … since there is nothing, you see? I don’t want to appear obdurate or unfeeling; but I thought perhaps you could talk it over with Uncle Kostia. I know he likes you and he might listen to you.”
I went, promising to do what I could.
When I knocked at the door of Uncle Kostia’s coupé it was late in the afternoon. The train rushed, and the dreary monotonous steppes receded, whirling past. Twilight was falling within and without. The candles had not yet been lit. Then the door of the coupé was pulled open and revealed Uncle Kostia sitting on the sofa, laboriously rubbing his eyes. I inquired if I had disturbed him. He assured me that I had not. He sprinkled some eau de cologne on his hands and rubbed his face—a substitute for washing—then made room for me on the sofa, and rubbing his eyes with his fists he yawned widely and looked at the window. The melancholy of the Siberian plain must have communicated itself to both of us. For a time we sat in silence, contemplating the unspeakable disorder of the coupé. I was about to frame an adequate sentence to open conversation when he preceded me.
“There!” he said, and struck his forehead with his palm. “And I am called a clever man. Andrei Andreiech, I have been thinking. I have been thinking a good deal these last days.” He stopped abruptly.
“What have you been thinking about, Uncle Kostia?” I asked.
“That’s just the trouble,” he said, “I can’t tell you.”
I waited.
“I don’t know myself,” he explained.
I still waited.
“I have been thinking of this and that and the other, in fact, of one thing and another—precious but elusive thoughts, Andrei Andreiech. Beautiful emotions. A kaleidoscope of the most subtle colours, if I may so express myself. And, Andrei Andreiech, it has taught me a great truth. It has taught me the futility of writing.”
“But now really, Uncle Kostia,” I remonstrated.
“Don’t interrupt me,” said Uncle Kostia. “It is a truth that only ten percent, if that, of the substance of our thoughts and feelings can be transferred on paper. It can’t be done, Andrei Andreiech—and that’s all there is to it.
“And when I think what a fool I have been, writing all these years, toiling, slaving at a desk like a clerk—when I ought to have been thinking, only thinking.”
“But, Uncle Kostia—” I began.
“Andrei Andreiech, it’s no use. How can I write down what I think? The subtlety, the privacy, the exquisite intimacy, the thousand and one inexplicable impulses that prompt and make up thought and stir emotion. … Andrei Andreiech, how can I? Think! how can I? Oh, you are hopeless … hopeless! … Today I have been thinking. It will seem nothing to you if I tell you; it will seem nothing to me if I tell it; but, believe me, it was something infinitely deep, infinitely complex, infinitely beautiful just when I thought of it—without the labour of exertion.”
“What was it, Uncle Kostia?” I inquired.
“It was vague,” he said evasively.
“Oh, come, Uncle Kostia?”
“How can I tell? I know too much.”
I was aware of the unpleasant shrinking of ideas when set down on paper. So I persisted:
“Come on, Uncle Kostia! out with it!”
“Well,” said Uncle Kostia, and his face became that of a mystic. “I thought, for instance—I wonder if you will understand me?—I thought: Where are we all going?”
“Hm,” I said significantly.
“I thought: Why are we all moving?”
“You have not far to seek for
