Selected early short stories 1887

creaking of his wheelbarrow . . . and soon afterwards he heard the lowing of the cows and the sounds of the shepherd's pipe. The sunlight and the sounds told him that somewhere in this world there is a pure, refined, poetical life. But where was it? Volodya had never heard a word of it from his maman or any of the people round about him.

When the footman came to wake him for the morning train, he pretended to be asleep. . . .

'Bother it! Damn it all!' he thought.

He got up between ten and eleven.

Combing his hair before the looking-glass, and looking at his ugly face, pale from his sleepless night, he thought:

'It's perfectly true . . . an ugly duckling!'

When maman saw him and was horrified that he was not at his examination, Volodya said:

'I overslept myself, maman. . . . But don't worry, I will get a medical certificate.'

Madame Shumihin and Nyuta waked up at one o'clock. Volodya heard Madame Shumihin open her window with a bang, heard Nyuta go off into a peal of laughter in reply to her coarse voice. He saw the door open and a string of nieces and other toadies (among the latter was his maman) file into lunch, caught a glimpse of Nyuta's freshly washed laughing face, and, beside her, the black brows and beard of her husband the architect, who had just arrived.

Nyuta was wearing a Little Russian dress which did not suit her at all, and made her look clumsy; the architect was making dull and vulgar jokes. The rissoles served at lunch had too much onion in them -- so it seemed to Volodya. It also seemed to him that Nyuta laughed loudly on purpose, and kept glancing in his direction to give him to understand that the memory of the night did not trouble her in the least, and that she was not aware of the presence at table of the 'ugly duckling.'

At four o'clock Volodya drove to the station with his maman. Foul memories, the sleepless night, the prospect of expulsion from school, the stings of conscience -- all roused in him now an oppressive, gloomy anger. He looked at maman's sharp profile, at her little nose, and at the raincoat which was a present from Nyuta, and muttered:

'Why do you powder? It's not becoming at your age! You make yourself up, don't pay your debts at cards, smoke other people's tobacco. . . . It's hateful! I don't love you . . . I don't love you!'

He was insulting her, and she moved her little eyes about in alarm, flung up her hands, and whispered in horror:

'What are you saying, my dear! Good gracious! the coachman will hear! Be quiet or the coachman will hear! He can overhear everything.'

'I don't love you . . . I don't love you!' he went on breathlessly. 'You've no soul and no morals. . . . Don't dare to wear that raincoat! Do you hear? Or else I will tear it into rags. . . .'

'Control yourself, my child,' maman wept; 'the coachman can hear!'

'And where is my father's fortune? Where is your money? You have wasted it all. I am not ashamed of being poor, but I am ashamed of having such a mother. . . . When my schoolfellows ask questions about you, I always blush.'

In the train they had to pass two stations before they reached the town. Volodya spent all the time on the little platform between two carriages and shivered all over. He did not want to go into the compartment because there the mother he hated was sitting. He hated himself, hated the ticket collectors, the smoke from the engine, the cold to which he attributed his shivering. And the heavier the weight on his heart, the more strongly he felt that somewhere in the world, among some people, there was a pure, honourable, warm, refined life, full of love, affection, gaiety, and serenity. . . . He felt this and was so intensely miserable that one of the passengers, after looking in his face attentively, actually asked:

'You have the toothache, I suppose?'

In the town maman and Volodya lived with Marya Petrovna, a lady of noble rank, who had a large flat and let rooms to boarders. maman had two rooms, one with windows and two pictures in gold frames hanging on the walls, in which her bed stood and in which she lived, and a little dark room opening out of it in which Volodya lived. Here there was a sofa on which he slept, and, except that sofa, there was no other furniture; the rest of the room was entirely filled up with wicker baskets full of clothes, cardboard hat-boxes, and all sorts of rubbish, which maman preserved for some reason or other. Volodya prepared his lessons either in his mother's room or in the 'general room,' as the large room in which the boarders assembled at dinner-time and in the evening was called.

On reaching home he lay down on his sofa and put the quilt over him to stop his shivering. The cardboard hat-boxes, the wicker baskets, and the other rubbish, reminded him that he had not a room of his own, that he had no refuge in which he could get away from his mother, from her visitors, and from the voices that were floating up from the 'general room.' The satchel and the books lying about in the corners reminded him of the examination he had missed. . . . For some reason there came into his mind, quite inappropriately, Mentone, where he had lived with his father when he was seven years old; he thought of Biarritz and two little English girls with whom he ran about on the sand. . . . He tried to recall to his memory the colour of the sky, the sea, the height of the waves, and his mood at the time, but he could not succeed. The English girls flitted before his imagination as though they were living; all the rest was a medley of images that floated away in confusion. . . .

'No; it's cold here,' thought Volodya. He got up, put on his overcoat, and went into the 'general room.'

There they were drinking tea. There were three people at the samovar: maman; an old lady with tortoiseshell pince-nez, who gave music lessons; and Avgustin Mihalitch, an elderly and very stout Frenchman, who was employed at a perfumery factory.

'I have had no dinner to-day,' said maman. 'I ought to send the maid to buy some bread.'

'Dunyasha!' shouted the Frenchman.

It appeared that the maid had been sent out somewhere by the lady of the house.

'Oh, that's of no consequence,' said the Frenchman, with a broad smile. 'I will go for some bread myself at once. Oh, it's nothing.'

He laid his strong, pungent cigar in a conspicuous place, put on his hat and went out. After he had gone away maman began telling the music teacher how she had been staying at the Shumihins', and how warmly they welcomed her.

'Lili Shumihin is a relation of mine, you know,' she said. 'Her late husband, General Shumihin, was a cousin of my husband. And she was a Baroness Kolb by birth. . . .'

'Maman, that's false!' said Volodya irritably. 'Why tell lies?'

He knew perfectly well that what his mother said was true; in what she was saying about General Shumihin and about Baroness Kolb there was not a word of lying, but nevertheless he felt that she was lying. There was a suggestion of falsehood in her manner of speaking, in the expression of her face, in her eyes, in everything.

'You are lying,' repeated Volodya; and he brought his fist down on the table with such force that all the crockery shook and maman's tea was spilt over. 'Why do you talk about generals and baronesses? It's all lies!'

The music teacher was disconcerted, and coughed into her handkerchief, affecting to sneeze, and maman began to cry.

'Where can I go?' thought Volodya.

He had been in the street already; he was ashamed to go to his schoolfellows. Again, quite incongruously, he remembered the two little English girls. . . . He paced up and down the 'general room,' and went into Avgustin Mihalitch's room. Here there was a strong smell of ethereal oils and glycerine soap. On the table, in the window, and even on the chairs, there were a number of bottles, glasses, and wineglasses containing fluids of various colours. Volodya took up from the table a newspaper, opened it and read the title Figaro. . . There was a strong and pleasant scent about the paper. Then he took a revolver from the table. . . .

'There, there! Don't take any notice of it.' The music teacher was comforting maman in the next room. 'He is young! Young people of his age never restrain themselves. One must resign oneself to that.'