“But you are contradicting yourself,” Leda said. “You keep talking about science while denying the need for literacy.”
“What is the good of literacy when men have nothing to read but the signs on public houses and occasional books which they don’t understand? We have had that kind of literacy since the days of Rurik.2 Gogol’s Petrushka has been reading for a long time now, but the villages haven’t changed since the time of Rurik. What is needed is not literacy, but freedom for the full development of men’s spiritual faculties. What we need is not schools, but universities.”
“So you are opposed to medicine too?”
“Yes, medicine should be required only for the study of diseases as natural phenomena, not for their cure. It is no use treating diseases, unless we treat the causes. Remove the chief cause, physical labor, and there will be no diseases. I don’t admit the existence of a science that cures diseases!” I went on excitedly. “True science and true art are not directed toward temporary or partial ends, but they are directed toward the eternal and the universal— they seek the truth and the meaning of life, they seek after God and the soul, and when they are harnessed to our everyday evils and necessities—when they are harnessed to dispensaries and libraries—then they only complicate and burden life! We have plenty of doctors, chemists, lawyers, and we have plenty of literate people, but we have no biologists, mathematicians, philosophers, and poets. All our intelligence, all our spiritual energy is wasted on temporary passing needs.… Scientists, writers, and painters are hard at work, and thanks to them the comforts of life are increasing daily. The demands of the body multiply, but the truth is still far away, and man continues to be an entirely rapacious and filthy animal, and everything is tending toward the degeneration of the greater part of mankind and the decay of human vitality. Under such conditions the life of an artist becomes meaningless, and the more talented he is, the stranger and more incomprehensible becomes the role he plays in society, for he would appear to be working only for the amusement of rapacious and filthy animals while he supports the established order. I have no desire to work, and I won’t work!… Nothing is any use! Let the world go reeling to hell!”
“Missy, leave the room,” Leda said to her sister, apparently thinking my words would have a bad effect on a young girl.
Zhenia looked sadly at her mother and sister, and went out.
“People usually say these charming things when they want to justify their own callousness,” Leda said. “Denying the usefulness of hospitals and schools is easier than curing diseases and teaching.”
“True, Leda, true,” her mother agreed.
“You were threatening to give up working,” Leda went on. “Apparently you place a high value on your works of art. Let us give up arguing, for we shall never agree on anything, and I regard the most imperfect library or dispensary as of infinitely greater value than all the landscapes in the world.” Suddenly she turned to her mother and began speaking in an entirely different tone of voice. “The prince is very thin, and he has changed a lot since he was last here. The doctors are sending him to Vichy.”
She went on talking to her mother about the prince to avoid talking to me. Her face was burning, and to conceal her agitation she bent low over the table as though she were nearsighted, and made a show of reading the newspaper. My presence was distasteful to her. I took my leave and went home.
IV
It was very quiet outside. The village on the further side of the pond was already asleep, and there was not a light anywhere to be seen. Only on the pond lay the pale reflection of the glimmering stars. At the gate with the lions Zhenia was waiting to accompany me on my walk.
“They’ve all gone to sleep in the village,” I said, trying to make out her face in the darkness. I could see her dark mournful eyes gazing at me fixedly. “The innkeeper and the horse thieves are fast asleep, at peace, while we, who should know better, quarrel and antagonize one another.”
It was a melancholy August night—melancholy because there was already a breath of autumn in the air. The moon was rising behind a purple cloud, shedding scarcely any light along the road and the dark fields of winter wheat stretching away on both sides. At times a shooting star would fall. Zhenia walked beside me, and she avoided looking up at the sky so as not to see the falling stars, which for some reason frightened her.
“I think you are right,” she said, trembling in the damp night air. “If all the people were to devote themselves to spiritual activities, they would soon come to know everything.”
“Of course. We are higher beings, and if we really realized the full power of human genius and lived only for higher things, then we would ultimately become like gods. But it will never happen. Mankind will degenerate and no traces of that genius will ever be found.”
When we could no longer see the gates, Zhenia paused and hurriedly pressed my hand.
“Good night,” she said, trembling. She had nothing but the thin blouse over her shoulders, and she was shivering with cold. “Come tomorrow.”
I felt wretched at the thought of being left alone in a mood of irritation and annoyance with myself and others, and I too tried not to look at the falling stars.
“Please stay with me a little longer,” I said. “Please.”
I was in love with Zhenia. I must have loved her because she met me when I came and always walked with me a little way when I went home, and because she looked at me with tender, admiring glances. Her pale face, her slender neck, her thin hands, her delicacy and her laziness and her books—all these held a wistful appeal for me. And her intelligence? I surmised she had a remarkable intelligence and I was fascinated with the breadth of her views, perhaps because she thought differently from the austere and beautiful Leda, who had no love for me. Zhenia liked me because I was a painter. I had conquered her heart with my talent, and I longed passionately to paint only for her, and I dreamed of her as my little queen who would one day inherit with me all these trees, fields, mists, and dawns, all those miraculous and enchanting scenes from nature where until now I had felt so hopelessly lonely and unwanted.
“Please stay a little longer,” I begged her. “Only a little longer.”
I took off my overcoat and covered her shivering shoulders; and becase she was afraid of looking funny and ugly in a man’s coat she laughed and threw it off, and then I put my arms round her and began to cover her face, her shoulders, her hands, with kisses.
“Until tomorrow,” she whispered, and gently, as though afraid of breaking the silence of the night, she embraced me. “We have no secrets from each other now. Quickly I must tell everything to Mama and my sister.… I’m so afraid! I’m not afraid of Mama, for she loves you, but my sister …”
