The Kiss and Other Stories/The Privy Councillor
THE PRIVY COUNCILLOR
THE letter received at the beginning of April, 1870, by my widowed mother, Claudia Arkhipovna — my late father was an army lieutenant — came from her brother Ivan, a Privy Councillor in St. Petersburg. “Kidney disease,” ran this letter, “compels me to spend all my summers abroad; but this year I have no ready money to spend on a visit to Marienbad, and it is very likely, dear sister, that I shall spend this summer with you at Kotchnefka . . .”
When she had read the letter my mother turned pale and trembled. But her expression showed joy as well as grief. She wept, and she smiled. This combat of tears and laughter always reminded me of the hiss and sputter of a lighted candle when some one splashes it with water.
Having read the letter yet again, my mother summoned the whole household; and, her voice broken with emotion, explained that there had been four brothers Gundasoff — the first died a child, the second served in the army, and died also, the third — more shame to him — went on the stage, and the fourth . . .
“The fourth is at the top of the tree! . . .” sighed my mother. “My own brother, we grew up together, yet I fear to think of him! . . . He is a Privy Councillor, a general! How shall I meet my angel? What shall I say to him — I, an uneducated fool? For fifteen long years I haven't seen him once! Andriushenka!” My mother turned to me. “Rejoice, donkey! God has sent you your uncle for your future welfare!”
Her detailed history of the Gundasoff's heralded a household revolution hitherto witnessed only at Christmas. Only the river and the firmament were spared. Everything else within reach was scoured, scrubbed, and painted, and had the sky been smaller and nearer, had the river's course been slower, they too would have been rubbed with brick-bats and scoured with bast-ribbons. The walls, already whiter than snow, were whitewashed again; the floors already shone and sparkled, but they were re-washed thenceforward every day. The old cat Kutsi, so nicknamed after I had docked his tail with a sugar-knife, was exiled to the kitchen and handed over to Anisya, and Fedka was warned that “God would punish him” if the dogs came near the stairs. But the worst sufferings were reserved for the helpless carpets and arm-chairs. Never were they beaten so fiercely as on the eve of my uncle's advent. My pigeons, hearing the swish of the beaters' sticks, shuddered, and disappeared in the sky.
From Novostroefka came Spiridon, the only tailor within reach who could make clothes for gentlemen. As a man, Spiridon was sober, laborious, and capable, not devoid of imagination and a certain plastic sense; as a tailor he was beneath contempt. His lack of faith spoiled everything. From fear that his suits were not in the latest fashion, he took them to pieces as often as five times; he tramped miles into town to study the local fops; yet despite all his strivings, we were dressed in clothes which even a caricaturist would find pretentious and exaggerated. We spent our youth in such impossibly tight trousers and such short coats that the presence of girls always made us blush.
Spiridon spared no pains in measuring me. He measured me vertically and horizontally, as if he were about to hoop a barrel; he noted the details with a fat pencil; adorned his note-book with triangular signs; and, having done with me, seized hold of my tutor, Yegor Alekseievitch Pobiedimsky. My unforgotten tutor was then at the age when sprouting moustaches are a serious question and clothes are a problem of gravity, so you may imagine Spiridon's sacred terror as he began his measurements. He forced Pobiedimsky to throw back his head and spread his legs in an inverted V, to raise his arms on high, and again to lower them. Spiridon measured him again and again, marching round him as a love-sick dove round its mate; and then fell upon his knees, and doubled himself into a hook. My exhausted mother, tortured by the noise, red from prolonged ironing, watched the endless measuring, and said with gravity —
“Be careful, Spiridon, God will punish you if you spoil the cloth! If you make a failure you will never be happy again!”
Spiridon got red in the face and sweated, because he was firmly convinced already that he would make a failure. For making my suit he charged one rouble and twenty kopecks, for Pobiedimsky's two roubles, we supplying cloth, lining, and buttons; and this seems moderate enough when you learn that Novostroefka was ten versts away, and that the tailor came to try on at least four times. When during these operations we dragged on the tight trousers and skimpy jackets, still decked with basting threads, my mother frowned critically, and exclaimed —
“God knows what the fashions nowadays are like! They're painful even to look at! If it weren't for your uncle's visit, I'd ignore the fashion,” And Spiridon, rejoiced that the fashions, not he, were guilty, shrugged his shoulders, and sighed as if to say —
“What are you to do? It's the spirit of the age.”
The tension in which we waited our guest can be compared only with the emotion of spirit-rappers expecting a ghost. . . . My mother complained of headache, cried all day, and, as for me, I could neither eat nor sleep; and I neglected my lessons. Even in dreams I thirsted to see a general, that is, a man with epaulets, a braided collar up to his ears, and a naked sword — just such a general as hung above the drawing-room sofa, and glared from his threatening black eyes at all who dared to face him. Alone Pobiedimsky felt at ease. He showed neither fright nor elation; and sometimes, listening to mother's history of the Gundasoffs, said indifferently—
"Yes; it will be nice to have a new man to talk to."
All of us looked on my tutor as an exceptional man. He was young — about twenty — pimpled and untidy, and he had a small forehead and an extraordinarily long nose. His nose indeed was so long that to look intently at anything he had to turn his head aside, as a bird. Despite these defects, the household believed that the whole province could not produce an abler, more cultivated, more gallant man. He had been through all six classes of the gymnasium, but was expelled from a veterinary institute before he had been there half a year. As the cause of his expulsion was carefully concealed, those who liked him regarded him as a martyred, somewhat mysterious man. He spoke little, always on serious themes, ate meat during fasts, and looked with hauteur and contempt on the society around. This, indeed, did not hinder him accepting presents of clothes from my mother, or painting on my kites ugly faces with red teeth. My mother condemned his pride, but respected him for his brains.
Our guest arrived soon after his letter. At the beginning of May two carts laden with portmanteaux came from the railway station. So majestic were these portmanteaux that, unloading the carts, the drivers mechanically doffed their caps.
"I suppose," I reasoned, "all these are full of uniforms and powder." My conception of a general was indissolubly bound with cannons and powder.
On the morning of the 10th of May my nurse informed me in a whisper that uncle had come. I dressed quickly, washed myself recklessly, and without saying my prayers, rushed out of the room. In the hall I nearly collided vvith a tall, stout gentleman with fashionably trimmed whiskers and a smart overcoat. Frozen with sacred terror, and remembering the ceremony of greeting taught by my mother, I shuffled my feet, bowed deeply, and bent over his hand. But the gentleman refused to allow me to kiss his hand, and added that he was not my uncle, but only his servant, Piotr. The sight of this Piotr, who was better dressed than I or Pobiedimsky, caused me intense surprise, which survives indeed to this day, for I cannot understand how such solid, representative men with clever, severe faces, can serve as valets. Piotr told me that my uncle was in the garden with my mother. I rushed into the garden.
Nature, being unconscious both of the Gundasoff pedigree and of uncle's official rank, was much freer and more at ease than I. The tumult in the garden reminded me of a fair. Innumerable starlings clove the air, hopped on the paths, and with noise and cries hunted the May-flies. Sparrows rustled in the lilac trees, whose delicate, perfumed blooms stretched out at my face. On all sides orioles sang, hoopoes and hawks flew. On any other occasion I should have hunted the dragon-flies or thrown stones at the crow on the hayrick close by the aspen, and bent its blunt nose, but now I was in no mood for such pranks. My heart palpitated; I felt a chill in my stomach; I prepared to see an epauletted hero with a naked sword and terrible menacing eyes.
Imagine my disappointment! By the side of my mother walked a little, slender fop in white jacket and trousers and white forage cap. With hands in pockets, head thrown back — sometimes almost running in front — he had the air of a mere youth. His figure showed extreme briskness and life, and treacherous age was betrayed only behind by a patch of silver-grey hair under the edge of his cap. Instead of a general's solidity and stiffness, there was a boyish nimbleness; instead of a collar stiff to the ears, an ordinary blue necktie. My mother and my uncle walked down the path and talked. I followed them, waiting patiently till one or the other should turn.
“What a ravishing little home you have, Claudia!” said my uncle. “How sweet! How charming! Had I known that you lived in such a paradise, nothing would have induced me to spend my summers abroad in past years.”
My uncle bent in two and smelt a tulip. Everything that met his eyes inspired, it seemed, interest and delight; it was as if for the first time in life he had seen a garden and a sunny day. The strange man walked as if on springs and chattered without cease, so that my mother never spoke a word. At a corner of the path from behind an elder-bush suddenly appeared Pobiedimsky. His appearance was unexpected. My uncle started and took a step to the rear. My tutor wore his best cloak, in which, viewed from behind, he closely resembled a windmill. His air was solemn and dignified. Pressing, as a Spaniard, his hat to his breast, he took one step towards uncle and bowed, as marquises bow in melodramas — forward and a little on one side.
“I have the honour to introduce myself to your Excellency,” he said loudly. “I am a pedagogue, the tutor of your nephew, an ex-veterinary student, and a noble, Pobiedimsky!”
My tutor's polished manners pleased my mother intensely. She smiled and waited expectantly, hoping that Pobiedimsky would say something brilliant. But my tutor, who expected that his impressive greeting would be received equally impressively — that is, that my uncle, like a true general, would answer “H-m-m-m!” and extend two of his fingers — lost his self-possession when my uncle smiled at him genially and warmly pressed his hand. He muttered incoherently, coughed, and turned aside.
“He's too delightful for words,” said my uncle, smiling. “Just look at him! He's put on his best manners, and finds himself a very clever man! I like it, I swear to God! What youthful aplomb, what realism in this droll magniloquence! And who is this little boy?” he asked, turning suddenly and catching sight of me.
“That is my Andriushenka,” said my mother, blushing. “My only treasure!”
I shuffled my feet on the gravel and bowed low.
“And a fine little fellow . . . a first-rate boy,” muttered my uncle, taking his hand from his lips and stroking my head. “So you're called Andriushenka. Indeed. . . . A fine little boy! I swear to God! . . . You learn your lessons?”
My mother, boasting and exaggerating, described my progress in learning and manners, and I walked beside my uncle, and, remembering the protocol, never ceased to bow to the ground. My mother hinted that with such remarkable talents I should enter the Cadets' Corpus at the State's expense; and I, still observing the protocol, was about to weep and beg my kinsman's protection, when suddenly my uncle started and opened his arms with a look of intense surprise.
“Lord in heaven, what is that?” he asked.
Down the path came Tatiana Ivanovna, wife of Feodor Petrovitch, our steward. She was carrying a white, well-starched petticoat, and a long ironing board. When passing she looked timidly at the guest through her long eyelashes, and blushed.
“Still more miracles!” cried my uncle, through his teeth, looking genially after her. “One can't walk a yard with you, sister, without a fresh surprise. . . . I swear to God!”
“That is our local beauty,” said my mother. “She was courted for Feodor in town, a hundred versts from this.”
Few would have found Tatiana Ivanovna beautiful. She was a little plump woman of about twenty, black-browed, and always rosy and pleasing. But neither face nor figure contained one striking trait, one bold stroke to catch the eye; it seemed as if Nature, creating her, had lost inspiration and confidence. Tatiana Ivanovna was timid, confused, and well-mannered; she walked quietly and smoothly, spoke little, and seldom smiled; her whole life was as flat and eventless as her face and her smoothly dressed hair. My uncle looked after her and smiled; and my mother looked earnestly at her smiling face, and became serious.
“And you, brother ... so you never married!” She sighed.
“Never!”
“Why?” asked my mother softly.
“It's hard to explain. Somehow it worked out that way. When young I worked hard, and thought little of such things; and when I began to feel the desire to live, I suddenly remembered that I was over fifty. . . . I never, somehow, managed to get married. But that is a tiresome subject.”
My mother and my uncle both sighed, and went on. I remained behind and sought my tutor to exchange impressions. Pobiedimsky stood in the middle of the yard and looked solemnly at the sky.
“You can see that he is a cultivated man,” he said. “I hope we shall get on with him.”
An hour later my mother returned to us.
“What a pity, my dears!” she began. “My brother has brought a servant; and a servant, God love him, whom I can't put in the kitchen, or the hall. He must have a room to himself. I don't know how to manage. The two of you must remove into the wing with Feodor, and give up your room to the valet.”
We consented readily. There was more freedom in the wing than under my mother's eyes.
“But that's not the worst!” continued my mother. “Your uncle says he will dine late, at seven o'clock, as at St. Petersburg. I'll go out of my mind! At seven the dinner will be cooked to death. In spite of their big brains, men never understand house-keeping. We must have two dinners. You, my dears, will dine early as before; I, old woman, will wait till seven for my brother's sake.”
My mother sighed deeply, advised me to please my uncle, whom God had sent for my welfare, and ran into the kitchen. Pobiedimsky and I migrated to the wing, where we made ourselves cosy in a room with two doors, between the hall and the steward's bedroom.
My uncle's arrival and our migration made little difference in our lives. Contrary to expectation, things remained as of old, drowsy and monotonous. Pobiedimsky, who read no books and had no interests in life, sat hours on his bed, moved his long nose, and thought. Occasionally he rose, tried on his new suit, and again sat, silent and thoughtful. The flies alone worried him, and he slapped them ruthlessly. After dinner when he usually “rested,” his snores caused agony to the whole household. As for me, morning to night I ran wild about the garden or sat in the wing and glued my kites. For the first few weeks we seldom even saw my uncle. All day long, ignoring the flies and the heat, he sat in his room and worked. His capacity for sitting still at his desk smacked of magic; and for us, idlers with no regular occupations, his industry was a miracle. Rising at nine o'clock, he sat at once at his desk, and worked steadily till dinner. After dinner he resumed his work, and continued it till late at night. Sometimes I peered through the keyhole; and always saw the same scene: my uncle sat at his desk and worked; and his work seemed always the same: with one hand he wrote, with the other he turned over the pages of a book; and — what seemed strangest to me — his body moved without cease; he swung his leg as a pendulum, whistled and nodded his head in time. His face expressed levity and abstraction, as if he were playing noughts and crosses. He always wore the same short, smart jacket and the same well-tied necktie, and even through the keyhole I could smell his delicate, feminine perfumes. He left his room only to dine, and then ate hardly anything.
“I can't understand your uncle,” complained my mother. “Every day for him alone we kill a turkey and pigeons, and I make compotes with my own hands; but all he touches is a plate of bouillon and a piece of bread, and then goes back to his desk. He'll die of starvation. When I argue with him about it he only smiles and jokes. No, he doesn't like our food!”
Evening was pleasanter than day. At sunset when long shadows lay across the road, Tatiana Ivanovna, Pobiedimsky, and I sat on the steps of the wing. Till dark, we kept silence — indeed, what was there fresh to say? — the one new theme, my uncle's visit, had been worn threadbare. Pobiedimsky kept his eyes on Tatiana Ivanovna's face and sighed unceasingly. At that time I misinterpreted these sighs, and missed their real meaning; afterwards they explained much.
When the long shadows merged in the general gloom, Feodor, the steward, returned from shooting or from the farm. Feodor always impressed me as a savage, terrible person. The son of a Russianised gipsy, swarthy, with big black eyes and a curly ill-kept beard, he was nicknamed "devilkin" by the Kotchuefka peasants. His ways were as gipsy as his face. He was restless at home; and whole days wandered about, shooting game, or simply walking across country. Morose, bilious, and taciturn, he feared no one and respected no authority. To my mother he was openly rude, he addressed me as “thou,” and held my tutor's learning in contempt. Looking on him as a delicate, excitable man, we forgave him all this; and my mother liked him, because, notwithstanding his gipsy ways, he was ideally honest and hard-working. He loved his Tatiana Ivanovna with a gipsy's love, but his affection expressed itself darkly, as if it caused him pain. Indeed, in our presence he showed no regard for his wife, but stared at her steadily and viciously and contorted his mouth.
On returning from the farm he set down his gun noisily and viciously in the wing, came out to us on the stairs, and sat beside his wife. After a minute's rest, he put a few questions about housekeeping, and relapsed into silence.
“Let us have a song.”
My tutor played the guitar, and, in the thick, bass voice of a church clerk, sang “Among the level valleys.” All joined in. The tutor sang bass, Feodor in a hardly audible tenor, and I soprano, in one voice with Tatiana Ivanovna.
When the sky was covered with stars and the frogs ceased croaking, supper was brought from the kitchen. We went indoors and ate. My tutor and the gipsy ate greedily and so noisily that it was hard to judge whether they were eating bones or merely crunching their jaws. Tatiana Ivanovna and I barely finished our portions. After supper the wing sank to deep sleep.
Once—it was at the end of May—we sat on the steps and waited for supper, when a shadow fell across us, and suddenly as if sprung out of the ground appeared Gundasoff. For a second he looked at us steadfastly, then waved his hands, and smiled a merry smile.
“An, idyll!” he exclaimed. “They sing; they dream of the moon! It's irresistible, I swear to God! May I sit with you and dream?”
We exchanged looks, but said nothing. My uncle seated himself on the lowest step, yawned, and looked at the sky. At first silence reigned; and it was Pobiedimsky, long watching for an opportunity to speak with some one new, who broke it. For such intellectual conversation Pobiedimsky had only one theme—epizooty. As a man who has been in a crowd a thousand strong sometimes remembers one face in particular, so Pobiedimsky, of all he had read at the Institute during his six months' studies, retained only one phrase:
“Epizooty is the cause of untold loss to agriculture. In combating it the public must itself walk hand in hand with the authorities.”
Before saying this to Gundasoff, my tutor thrice cleared his throat, and pulled his cloak nervously around him. When he had heard about epizooty my uncle looked earnestly at Pobiedimsky, and emitted a queer sound through his nose.
“I swear to God! . . .” he stammered, looking at us as if we were manikins. “This is indeed the real life. . . . This is what life should really be. And you, why are you so silent, Pelageya Ivanovna?” he said, turning to Tatiana Ivanovna, who reddened and coughed.
“Talk, ladies and gentlemen; sing . . . play! Lose no time! Time, the rascal, is flying . . . he won't wait. I swear to God — before you've had time to turn your head, old age is on you. . . . It's too late then to live! Isn't that so, Pelageya Ivanovna? On no account sit still and keep silence. . . .”
Supper was brought in from the kitchen. Uncle followed us into the wing, and, for company's sake, ate five curd-fritters and a duck's wing. As he ate he looked at us. We seemed to inspire nothing but rapture and emotion. The worst nonsense of my tutor, every act of Tatiana Ivanovna, he found charming and entrancing. When after supper Tatiana Ivanovna sat quietly in a corner and knitted away, he kept his eyes on her fingers and chattered without cease.
“You, my friends, hurry up; make haste to live! God forbid that you should sacrifice to-day for to-morrow! The present is yours; it brings youth, health, ardour—the future is a mirage, smoke! As soon as you reach the age of twenty you must begin to live!”
Tatiana Ivanovna dropped a knitting-needle. My uncle hopped from his seat, recovered and restored it, with a bow which told me for the first time that there were men in the world more gallant than Pobiedimsky.
“Yes,” continued my uncle. “Love, marry! . . . Play the fool! Follies are much more vital and sane than labours such as mine, saner far than our efforts to lead a rational life. . . .”
My uncle spoke much, in fact at such length that we soon grew tired, and I sat aside on a box, listened, and dreamed. I was ofiended because he never once turned his attention on me. He stayed in the wing until two in the morning, when I, no longer able to resist my drowsiness, slept soundly.
From that day on, my uncle came to the wing every night. He sang with us, supped with us, and stayed till two in the morning, chattering incessantly of one and the same subject. His night work was forgotten, and at the end of June, by which time he had learnt to eat my mother's turkeys and compotes, his daily occupation was also neglected. He tore himself from his desk, and rushed, so to speak, into “life,” By day he marched about the garden, whistled, and hindered the workmen, forcing them to tell him stories. When Tatiana Ivanovna came within sight, he ran up to her, and if she carried a load, offered to help her, causing her endless confusion.
The longer summer lasted the more frivolous, lively, and abstracted grew my uncle. Pobiedimsky was quickly disillusioned.
“As a man—one-sided,” was his verdict. “No one would believe that he stands on the high steps of the official hierarchy. He doesn't even speak well. After every word he adds ‘I swear to God!’ No, I don't like him.”
From the night of my uncle's first visit to the wing, Feodor and my tutor changed noticeably. Feodor gave up shooting, returned early from his work, and his taciturnity increased; and, when my uncle was present, looked still more viciously at his wife. Pobiedimsky ceased to speak about epizootic diseases, frowned, and sometimes smiled ironically.
“Here comes our mouse-foal!” he growled once, as uncle approached the wing.
Searching for an explanation, I concluded that both had taken offence. My uncle confused their names, and to the day of his departure had not learnt which was my tutor and which Tatiana Ivanovna's husband. As for Tatiana Ivanovna, he called her indiscriminately “Nastasya,” “Pelageya,” and “Yevdokia.” In his emotion and delight he treated all four of us as young children. All of which, of course, might easily be taken as offensive by young people. But the cause of the change of manner lay not in this, but, as I soon understood, in subtler shades of feeling.
I remember one evening I sat on a box and fought my desire to sleep. My eyelids drooped, my body, fatigued with a day's hard exercise, fell on one side. It was nearly midnight. Tatiana Ivanovna, rosy and meek, as always, sat at a little table and mended her husband's underclothes. From one corner glared Feodor, grim and morose; in another sat Pobiedimsky, hidden behind his high collar, and angrily snoring. My uncle, lost in thought, walked from corner to corner. No one spoke, the only sound was the rustling of the cloth in Tatiana's hands. My uncle suddenly stopped in front of Tatiana Ivanovna, and said—
“There you are; all so young, so good, living so restfully in this refuge that I envy you! I have got so used to this life that my heart sinks when I think I must leave you. . . . Believe in me; I am sincere.”
Slumber closed my eyes, and I lost consciousness. I was awakened by a noise, and saw that my uncle still stood before Tatiana Ivanovna, and looked at her with rapture. His cheeks burned.
“My life is past,” he said. “I have never lived. Your young face reminds me of my vanished youth. I should rejoice to sit here and look at you till the day of my death! With what joy could I take you back with me to St. Petersburg!”
“What is the meaning of this?” asked Feodor hoarsely.
“I should set you down on my desk under a glass case, and admire you, and show you to my friends. Pelageya Ivanovna, such as you we have none! We have wealth, distinction, sometimes beauty! But never this living sincerity . . . this healthy restfulness.”
My uncle sat down before Tatiana Ivanovna and took her by the hand.
“So you don't want to come to St. Petersburg,” he continued caressingly. “In that case give me here your little handy! Adorable little handy! You won't give it? Well, miser, at least let me give it a kiss ! . . .”
A chair moved noisily. Feodor leaped up, and with measured, heavy footsteps, went up to his wife. His face was pale grey, and trembled. With his whole force he banged his fist on the table, and said in a hoarse voice—
“I will not tolerate this!”
And at the same moment Pobiedimsky jumped from his chair. As pale as Feodor and looking equally vicious, he strode up to Tatiana Ivanovna, and banged his fist on the table.
“I will not . . . tolerate this!” he exclaimed.
“I don't understand. What is the matter?” asked my uncle.
“I will not tolerate this!” repeated Feodor. And again he banged his fist noisily on the table.
My uncle rose from his seat and blinked timidly. He tried to say something, but astonishment and fright prevented him uttering a word; and, leaving his hat behind, he tottered with old-man's steps out of the wing. When a little later my terrified mother ran into the wing, Feodor and Pobiedimsky, like a pair of blacksmiths, were banging their fists on the table and roaring, “I will not tolerate this!”
“What on earth has happened?” asked my mother. “Why have you insulted my brother? What is the matter?”
But seeing Tatiana Ivanovna's pale, frightened face and the glare of her raging husband, my mother quickly guessed what was the matter. She sighed and shook her head.
“Don't bang the table again! Feodor, stop! And why are you banging the table, Yegor Alexeievitch? What has this to do with you?”
Pobiedimsky staggered back in confusion. Feodor gave him a piercing glance, then looked at his wife, and walked up the room. But the moment my mother left I witnessed what at first I thought must be a dream. I saw Feodor seizing my tutor, lifting him high in the air, and flinging him violently against the door.
When I awoke next morning my tutor's bed was empty. My nurse whispered that he had been taken to hospital that morning and that his arm was broken. Saddened by this news, and with my mind full of the scandal of the night before, I went into the yard. The weather was dull. The sky was veiled with clouds, and a strong wind blew, carrying before it dust, papers, and feathers. I foresaw rain. The faces of men and animals expressed tedium. When I returned to the house I was ordered to walk on tip-toes as my mother had a bad headache and was lying down. What was to be done? I went out to the gate, sat on a bench, and tried to pierce to the meaning of all that I had seen and heard. From our gates ran a road, which, passing the smithy and a pond which never dried up, converged with the post-road. I looked at the telegraph posts and the clouds of dust around them, and at the sleepy birds perched on the trees, and felt so oppressed by tedium that I began to cry.
Down the post-road drove a dusty double droschky full of townspeople, probably on a pilgrimage. When the droschky disappeared a light victoria drawn by a pair came in sight. In this victoria, holding the coachman's belt, stood the police commissary, Akim Nikititch. To my amazement, the victoria turned up our road, and flew past me to the gate. While I was seeking the reason of the commissary's visit a troika came in sight. In the troika stood the inspector of police, and showed the coachman our gate.
“What does it all mean?” I asked myself, looking at the dust-covered inspector. Pobiedimsky, I guessed, had complained, and the police had come to arrest and carry off Feodor.
But I solved the riddle wrongly. The commissary and inspector were only heralds of another, for five minutes later yet another carriage arrived. It flashed so quickly by me that I could see only that the occupant had a red beard.
Lost in astonishment and foreboding evil, I ran into the house. I met my mother in the hall. Her face was white, and she looked with terror at the door from which came the voices of men. The visitors had caught her unawares when her headache was at its worst.
“What is it, mother?” I asked.
“Sister,” came my uncle's voice. “Let the governor have something to eat.”
“It's easy enough to say,” whispered my mother. “I have no time to get anything done. I am disgraced in my old age!”
With her hands to her head, my mother flew into the kitchen. The governor's unexpected arrival turned the whole house upside down. A merciless massacre began. Ten chickens, five turkeys, eight ducks were slaughtered at once; and through carelessness the servants decapitated an old gander, the ancestor of our flock, and the beloved of my mother. To prepare some miserable sauce perished a pair of my pigeons, which were as dear to me as the gander to my mother. It was long before I forgave the governor their death.
That evening, when the governor, his son, and his suite, having dined to repletion, took their seats in their carriages and drove away, I went into the house to survey the remains of the feast. In the drawing-room were my uncle and my mother. My uncle walked excitedly up and down the room and shrugged his shoulders. My mother, exhausted and haggard, lay on a sofa, and followed my uncle's movements with staring eyes.
“Forgive me, sister, but this is impossible!” groaned my uncle, with a frown. “I introduced the governor to you, and you didn't even shake hands with him. . . . You made the poor man uncomfortable! Such things are impossible. I swear to God! . . . And then this dinner? For instance, what on earth was that fourth course?"
"It was duck with sweet sauce," answered my mother softly.
"Duck! . . . Forgive me, sister, but . . . I have got heartburn . . . I am unwell!"
My uncle made a sour and lachrymose grimace, and continued—
"The devil brought us this governor! A lot I wanted his visit! . . . Heartburn! I can't sleep and I can't work. . . . I am altogether out of sorts. . . . I cannot understand how you exist without work . . . in this tiresome place! And I have got a pain beginning in the lower part of my chest!"
My uncle frowned, and walked still more quickly.
"Brother," asked my mother timidly, "how much would it cost you to go abroad?"
"At least three thousand," answered my uncle tearfully. "I should have gone, but where can I get the money? I have not a kopeck. . . . Heartburn!"
My uncle stopped, looked with disgust at the big, dull window, and resumed his walk. My mother looked earnestly at the ikon, broke out into tears, and said with an effort—
"I will let you have the three thousand, brother!"
Three days afterwards the majestic portmanteaux were sent to the railway station, and away after them whirled the Privy Councillor. Taking leave of my mother, he wept, and pressed his lips to her hand; but once seated in the carriage his face grew radiant with infantile joy. Smiling, complacent, he seated himself comfortably, waved his hand to my weeping mother, and suddenly turned his eyes on me. On his face appeared a look of extreme astonishment.
“And who is this little boy?” he asked.
My mother, who had assured me that God had sent my uncle for my welfare, was struck dumb by the question. But it had no import for me. I looked at my uncle's smiling face and suddenly felt for him sincere compassion. Unable to contain my feelings, I climbed on the carriage, and warmly embraced my weak and frivolous relative. I looked into his eyes, and wishing to say something pleasant, asked —
“Uncle, did you ever fight in a war?”
“Akh, darling boy!” smiled my uncle, kissing me tenderly. “Dear little boy! I swear to God. All this is so natural, so true to life. I swear to God!”
The carriage started. I gazed after it earnestly, and long continued to hear the farewell exclamation, “I swear to God!”