“If it’s too much, don’t take any, merchant. Nobody’s forcing you.”
When the travelers went to get into the cart and go, they were detained for a minute by one circumstance. Kuzka’s hat had disappeared.
“Where’d you put it, little swine?” Matvei Savvich shouted angrily. “Where is it?”
Kuzka’s face twisted in terror, he rushed around the cart and, not finding it there, ran to the gate, then to the shed. The old woman and Sofya helped him to look.
“I’ll tear your ears off!” shouted Matvei Savvich. “You rascal, you!”
The hat was found at the bottom of the cart. Kuzka brushed it off with his sleeve, put it on, and timidly, still with a look of terror on his face, as if afraid of being hit from behind, climbed into the cart. Matvei Savvich crossed himself, the young fellow jerked the reins, the cart started moving and rolled out of the yard.
JUNE 1891
THE FIDGET
I
All of Olga Ivanovna’s friends and good acquaintances were at her wedding.
“Look at him: there’s something in him, isn’t there?” she said to her friends, nodding towards her husband, as if she wished to explain why she had married this simple, very ordinary and in no way remarkable man.
Her husband, Osip Stepanych Dymov, was a doctor and held the rank of titular councillor.1 He worked in two hospitals: as an intern in one, and as a prosector in the other. Every day from nine o’clock till noon he received patients and was busy with his ward, and in the afternoon he took a horse-tram to the other hospital, where he dissected dead patients. His private practice was negligible, some five hundred roubles a year. That was all. What more could be said of him? And yet Olga Ivanovna and her friends and good acquaintances were not exactly ordinary people. Each of them was remarkable for something and of some renown, already had a name and was considered a celebrity or, if not yet a celebrity, held out the brightest hopes. An actor in the theater, a big, long-recognized talent, a graceful, intelligent, and humble man and an excellent reader, who taught Olga Ivanovna recitation; an opera singer, a fat, good-natured man, who sighed as he assured Olga Ivanovna that she was ruining herself: that if she stopped being lazy and took herself in hand, she would become an excellent singer; then several artists, chief among them the genre, animal, and landscape painter Ryabovsky, a very handsome young man of about twenty-five, who was successful at exhibitions and whose last picture had sold for five hundred roubles; he corrected Olga Ivanovna’s studies and said that something might come of her; then a cellist, whose instrument wept and who confessed sincerely that, of all the women he knew, Olga Ivanovna alone was able to accompany him; then a writer, young but already known, who wrote novellas, plays, and stories. Who else? Well, there was also Vassily Vassilyich, squire, landowner, dilettante illustrator and vignette painter, who had a strong feeling for the old Russian style, heroic song and epic; he literally performed miracles on paper, porcelain, and smoked glass. Amidst this artistic, free, and fate-pampered company, delicate and modest, true, but who remembered the existence of all these doctors only when they were sick, and for whom the name Dymov sounded as nondescript as Sidorov or Tarasov—amidst this company Dymov seemed foreign, superfluous, and small, though he was a tall and broad-shouldered man. It seemed as if he were wearing someone else’s tailcoat and had a salesman’s beard. However, if he had been a writer or an artist, they would have said his little beard made him look like Emile Zola.
The actor told Olga Ivanovna that in her wedding dress, and with her flaxen hair, she very much resembled a slender cherry tree in spring, when it is covered all over with tender white blossoms.
“No, listen!” Olga Ivanovna said to him, seizing his hand. “How could this suddenly happen? Listen, listen … I must tell you that my father worked in the same hospital as Dymov. When my poor father fell ill, Dymov spent whole days and nights watching at his bedside. Such self-sacrifice! Listen, Ryabovsky … And you, writer, you listen, too, it’s very interesting. Come closer. So much self-sacrifice and genuine sympathy! I also stayed up nights, sitting by my father, and suddenly—hello! the fine fellow’s conquered! My Dymov is smitten and head over heels in love. Really, fate is sometimes so whimsical. Well, after my father’s death he called on me occasionally, or I’d meet him in the street, and one fine evening suddenly—bang!—he proposed … like a ton of snow on my head … I cried all night and fell infernally in love myself. And so, as you see, I’ve become a wife. There’s something strong, brawny, bear-like in him, isn’t there? His face is turned three-quarters to us now, and poorly lit, but when he turns this way, look at his forehead. Ryabovsky, what do you say of that forehead? Dymov, we’re talking about you!” she called out to her husband. “Come here. Give your honest hand to Ryabovsky … That’s it. Be friends.”
Dymov, with a naive and good-natured smile, gave Ryabovsky his hand and said:
“Delighted. I finished my studies with a man named Ryabovsky. Is he a relation of yours?”
II
Olga Ivanovna was twenty-two years old, Dymov thirty-one. They started life excellently after the wedding. Olga Ivanovna hung all the walls of the drawing room with her own and other people’s studies, framed and unframed, and around the grand piano and furniture she arranged a beautiful clutter of Chinese parasols, easels, colorful rags, daggers, little busts, photographs … In the dining room she covered the walls with folk prints, hung up bast shoes and sickles, put a scythe and rake in the corner, and thus achieved a dining room in Russian style. In the bedroom, she draped the ceiling and walls with dark cloth to make it look like a cave, hung a Venetian lantern over the beds, and placed a figure with a halberd by the door. And everybody found that the young spouses had themselves a very sweet little corner.
Every day, getting out of bed at around eleven, Olga Ivanovna would play the piano or, if it was sunny, would paint something in oils. After that, between noon and one, she would go to her dressmaker. Since she and Dymov had very little money, barely enough, she and her dressmaker had to be very clever if she was to appear frequently in new dresses and amaze people with her outfits. Often an old, re-dyed dress, some worthless scraps of tulle, lace, plush, and silk, would be turned into a wonder, something enchanting, not a dress but a dream. From the dressmaker’s, Olga Ivanovna usually went to see some actress she knew, to find out the theater news and incidentally try to get a ticket for the opening night of a new play or for a benefit performance. From the actress, she would have to go to an artist’s studio or a picture exhibition, then to see some celebrity—to make an invitation or return a visit, or for a simple chat. And everywhere she was met gaily and amiably, and was assured that she was nice, sweet, rare … Those whom she called famous and great received her like one of themselves, like an equal, and in one voice prophesied that with her talents, taste, and intelligence, she would have great success if she did not disperse herself She sang, played the piano, painted, sculpted, took part in amateur theatricals, and all of it not just anyhow, but with talent; whether it was making lanterns for a fete, or putting on a disguise, or tying someone’s tie—everything she did came out extraordinarily artistic, graceful, and pretty But nothing showed her talent so strikingly as her ability to become quickly acquainted and on close terms with celebrities. The moment anyone became the least bit famous and was talked about, she made his acquaintance, became his friend that same day, and invited him to her house. Every new acquaintance was a veritable feast for her. She idolized
