The Complete Short Novels

school where old Laptev was a trustee came to him for his salary, he even changed his voice and gait and behaved like the teacher’s superior.

After dinner there was nothing to do, so they went to the study. They talked about the decadents, about The Maid of Orleans, and Kostya recited a whole monologue; it seemed to him that he had done a very successful imitation of Ermolova.¹⁷ Then they sat down to play vint. The girls did not go to their wing but, pale and sad, sat both in one armchair, listening to the noise in the street: was it their father coming? In the evening, in the dark and with candles, they felt anguish. The conversation over cards, Pyotr’s footsteps, the crackling in the fireplace irritated them, and they did not want to look at the fire; in the evening they no longer even wanted to cry but felt eerie and heavyhearted. And they could not understand how it was possible to talk about something and laugh, when their mama was dead.

‘‘What did you see today through the binoculars?’’ Yulia Sergeevna asked Kostya.

‘‘Nothing today, but yesterday the old Frenchman himself took a bath.’’

At seven o’clock Yulia Sergeevna and Kostya went to the Maly Theater. Laptev stayed with the girls.

‘‘It’s time your papa came,’’ he kept saying, glancing at the clock. ‘‘The train must be late.’’

The girls sat silently in the armchair, huddled together like little animals in the cold, and he kept pacing the rooms, looking with impatience at his watch. The house was quiet. Then, towards nine o’clock, someone rang the bell. Pyotr went to open the door.

Hearing the familiar voice, the girls cried out, sobbed, and rushed to the front hall. Panaurov was wearing a luxurious fur coat, and his beard and mustache were white with hoarfrost.

‘‘One moment, one moment,’’ he muttered, but Sasha and Lida, sobbing and laughing, kissed his cold hands, his hat, his coat. Handsome, languid, pampered by love, he unhurriedly caressed the girls, then went into the study and said, rubbing his hands:

‘‘But I won’t stay with you long, my friends. Tomorrow I’m off to Petersburg. I’ve been promised a transfer to another town.’’

He stayed at the Dresden.

X

YARTSEV, IVAN GAVRILYCH, frequently visited the Laptevs. He was a healthy, robust man, black-haired, with an intelligent, pleasant face; he was considered handsome, but lately he had begun to put on weight, and that spoiled his face and figure; another thing that spoiled his looks was his close-cropped, almost shaven head. At the university, owing to his good height and strength, the students used to call him the ‘‘bouncer.’’

He took a degree in philology, along with the Laptev brothers, then studied natural science and now had a master’s degree in chemistry. He never counted on having a chair, and did not even work in any laboratory, but taught physics and natural history in a technical high school and in two girls’ schools. He was delighted with his students, especially the girls, and said that a wonderful generation was growing up. Besides chemistry, he was also occupied at home with sociology and Russian history, and his brief articles occasionally appeared in newspapers and magazines over the initial Y. When he talked about something from botany or zoology, he resembled a historian; when he discussed some historical question, he resembled a natural scientist.

Another familiar man at the Laptevs’ was Kish, nicknamed the eternal student. He had spent three years studying medicine, then had switched to mathematics and had sat through each course there twice. His father, a provincial pharmacist, sent him forty roubles a month, and his mother, in secret from his father, sent another ten, and this money was enough for his expenses and even such luxuries as an overcoat with Polish beaver, gloves, scent, and photography (he often had himself photographed and gave his portraits to acquaintances). Clean, slightly bald on top, with golden side-whiskers at his ears, modest, he had the look of a man ever ready to be of service. He always bustled about on other people’s business: ran around with a subscription list, froze by the theater box office from early in the morning to buy a ticket for a lady of his acquaintance, or went at someone’s request to order a wreath or a bouquet. All they said of him was: ‘‘Kish will go, Kish will do it, Kish will buy it.’’ For the most part, he performed his errands badly. Reproaches were showered on him, people often forgot to repay him for their purchases, but he never said anything and on embarrassing occasions only sighed. He was never especially glad or sorry, always told long and boring stories, and his witticisms provoked laughter each time only because they were not funny. Thus, one day, intending to make a joke, he said to Pyotr: ‘‘Pyotter, you’re not an otter,’’ and this provoked general laughter, and he himself laughed a long time, pleased to have made such a successful joke. Whenever some professor was buried, he walked in front with the torchbearers.

Yartsev and Kish usually came in the evening for tea. If the hosts were not going to the theater or a concert, the evening tea stretched till suppertime. On one February evening, the following conversation took place in the dining room:

‘‘A work of art is significant and useful only when its idea includes some serious social problem,’’ Kostya said, looking angrily at Yartsev. ‘‘If there is a protest against serfdom in the work, or the author takes up arms against high society with all its banality, such a work is significant and useful. While novels and stories where it’s ‘Oh’ and ‘Ah,’ and she falls in love with him but he falls out of love with her—these works, I say, are worthless, and to the devil with them.’’

‘‘I agree with you, Konstantin Ivanych,’’ said Yulia Sergeevna. ‘‘One describes a lovers’ tryst, another a betrayal, the third a meeting after the separation. Are there really no other subjects? A great many people who are sick, unhappy, worn out by poverty must find it disgusting to read all that.’’

Laptev was displeased that his wife, a young woman who was not yet twenty-two years old, should reason about love so seriously and coldly. He could guess why it was so.

‘‘If poetry doesn’t resolve the questions that seem important to you,’’ said Yartsev, ‘‘turn to works on technology, criminal and financial law, read scholarly articles. Who wants to have Romeo and Juliet talk not about love but, let’s say, about freedom of instruction or prison sanitation, if you can go to special articles and handbooks for that?’’

‘‘That’s going to extremes, uncle!’’ Kostya interrupted. ‘‘We’re not talking about giants like Shakespeare and Goethe, we’re talking about a hundred talented and mediocre writers who would be much more useful if they abandoned love and occupied themselves with bringing knowledge and humane ideas to the masses.’’

Kish, slightly nasally and rolling his R’s, began to recount the content of a short novel he had read recently. He recounted it thoroughly, unhurriedly; three minutes went by, then five, ten, and he still went on, and nobody could understand what it was all about, and his face grew more and more indifferent, and his eyes went dim.

‘‘Tell it more quickly, Kish,’’ Yulia Sergeevna could not stand it, ‘‘this is really torture!’’

‘‘Stop, Kish!’’ Kostya yelled at him.