A Desperate Character and Other Stories Read online

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  So passed I do not know how long—perhaps a minute, perhaps a quarter of an hour. He still gazed at me; I still experienced a certain discomfort and alarm and still thought of the Frenchman. Twice I tried to say to myself, 'What nonsense! what a farce!' I tried to smile, to shrug my shoulders…. It was no use! All initiative had all at once 'frozen up' within me—I can find no other word for it. I was overcome by a sort of numbness. Suddenly I noticed that he had left the door, and was standing a step or two nearer to me; then he gave a slight bound, both feet together, and stood closer still…. Then again … and again; while the menacing eyes were simply fastened on my whole face, and the hands remained behind, and the broad chest heaved painfully. These leaps struck me as ridiculous, but I felt dread too, and what I could not understand at all, a drowsiness began suddenly to come upon me. My eyelids clung together … the shaggy figure with the whitish eyes in the blue smock seemed double before me, and suddenly vanished altogether! … I shook myself; he was again standing between the door and me, but now much nearer…. Then he vanished again—a sort of mist seemed to fall upon him; again he appeared … vanished again … appeared again, and always closer, closer … his hard, almost gasping breathing floated across to me now…. Again the mist fell, and all of a sudden out of this mist the head of old Dessaire began to take distinct shape, beginning with the white, brushed-back hair! Yes: there were his warts, his black eyebrows, his hook nose! There too his green coat with the brass buttons, the striped waistcoat and jabot…. I shrieked, I got up…. The old man vanished, and in his place I saw again the man in the blue smock. He moved staggering to the wall, leaned his head and both arms against it, and heaving like an over-loaded horse, in a husky voice said, 'Tea!' Mastridia Karpovna—how she came there I can't say—flew to him and saying: 'Vassinka! Vassinka!' began anxiously wiping away the sweat, which simply trickled from his face and hair. I was on the point of approaching her, but she, so insistently, in such a heart-rending voice cried: 'Your honour! merciful sir! have pity on us, go away, for Christ's sake!' that I obeyed, while she turned again to her son. 'Bread-winner, darling,' she murmured soothingly: 'you shall have tea directly, directly. And you too, sir, had better take a cup of tea at home!' she shouted after me.

  * * * * *

  When I got home I obeyed Mastridia and ordered some tea; I felt tired—even weak. 'Well?' Ardalion questioned me, 'have you been? did you see something?'

  'He did, certainly, show me something … which, I'll own, I had not anticipated,' I replied.

  'He's a man of marvellous power,' observed Ardalion, carrying off the samovar; 'he is held in high esteem among the merchant gentry.' As I went to bed, and reflected on the incident that had occurred to me, I fancied at last that I had reached some explanation of it. The man doubtless possessed a considerable magnetic power; acting by some means, which I did not understand of course, upon my nerves, he had evoked within me so vividly, so definitely, the image of the old man of whom I was thinking, that at last I fancied that I saw him before my eyes…. Such 'metastases,' such transferences of sensation, are recognised by science. It was all very well; but the force capable of producing such effects still remained, something marvellous and mysterious. 'Say what you will,' I thought, 'I've seen, seen with my own eyes, my dead tutor!'

  * * * * *

  The next day the ball in the Hall of Nobility took place. Sophia's father called on me and reminded me of the engagement I had made with his daughter. At ten o'clock I was standing by her side in the middle of a ballroom lighted up by a number of copper lamps, and was preparing to execute the not very complicated steps of the French quadrille to the resounding blare of the military band. Crowds of people were there; the ladies were especially numerous and very pretty; but the first place among them would certainly have been given to my partner, if it had not been for the rather strange, even rather wild look in her eyes. I noticed that she hardly ever blinked; the unmistakable expression of sincerity in her eyes did not make up for what was extraordinary in them. But she had a charming figure, and moved gracefully, though with constraint. When she waltzed, and, throwing herself a little back, bent her slender neck towards her right shoulder, as though she wanted to get away from her partner, nothing more touchingly youthful and pure could be imagined. She was all in white, with a turquoise cross on a black ribbon.

  I asked her for a mazurka, and tried to talk to her. But her answers were few and reluctant, though she listened attentively, with the same expression of dreamy absorption which had struck me when I first met her. Not the slightest trace of desire to please, at her age, with her appearance, and the absence of a smile, and those eyes, continually fixed directly upon the eyes of the person speaking to her, though they seemed at the same time to see something else, to be absorbed with something different…. What a strange creature! Not knowing, at last, how to thaw her, I bethought me of telling her of my adventure of the previous day.

  * * * * *

  She heard me to the end with evident interest, but was not, as I had expected, surprised at what I told her, and merely asked whether he was not called Vassily. I recollected that the old woman had called him 'Vassinka.' 'Yes, his name is Vassily,' I answered; 'do you know him?'

  'There is a saintly man living here called Vassily,' she observed; 'I wondered whether it was he.'

  'Saintliness has nothing to do with this,' I remarked; 'it's simply the action of magnetism—a fact of interest for doctors and students of science.'

  I proceeded to expound my views on the peculiar force called magnetism, on the possibility of one man's will being brought under the influence of another's will, and so on; but my explanations—which were, it is true, somewhat confused—seemed to make no impression on her. Sophie listened, dropping her clasped hands on her knees with a fan lying motionless in them; she did not play with it, she did not move her fingers at all, and I felt that all my words rebounded from her as from a statue of stone. She heard them, but clearly she had her own convictions, which nothing could shake or uproot.

  'You can hardly admit miracles!' I cried.

  'Of course I admit them,' she answered calmly. 'And how can one help admitting them? Are not we told in the gospel that who has but a grain of faith as big as a mustard seed, he can remove mountains? One need only have faith—there will be miracles!'

  'It seems there is very little faith nowadays,' I observed; 'anyway, one doesn't hear of miracles.'

  'But yet there are miracles; you have seen one yourself. No; faith is not dead nowadays; and the beginning of faith …'

  'The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom,' I interrupted.

  'The beginning of faith,' pursued Sophie, nothing daunted, 'is self-abasement … humiliation.'

  'Humiliation even?' I queried.

  'Yes. The pride of man, haughtiness, presumption—that is what must be utterly rooted up. You spoke of the will—that's what must be broken.'

  I scanned the whole figure of the young girl who was uttering such sentences…. 'My word, the child's in earnest, too,' was my thought. I glanced at our neighbours in the mazurka; they, too, glanced at me, and I fancied that my astonishment amused them; one of them even smiled at me sympathetically, as though he would say: 'Well, what do you think of our queer young lady? every one here knows what she's like.'

  'Have you tried to break your will?' I said, turning to Sophie again.

  'Every one is bound to do what he thinks right,' she answered in a dogmatic tone. 'Let me ask you,' I began, after a brief silence, 'do you believe in the possibility of calling up the dead?'

  Sophie softly shook her head.

  'There are no dead.'

  'What?'

  'There are no dead souls; they are undying and can always appear, when they like…. They are always about us.'

  'What? Do you suppose, for instance, that an immortal soul may be at this moment hovering about that garrison major with the red nose?'

  'Why not? The sunlight falls on him and his n
ose, and is not the sunlight, all light, from God? And what does external appearance matter? To the pure all things are pure! Only to find a teacher, to find a leader!'

  'But excuse me, excuse me,' I put in, not, I must own, without malicious intent. 'You want a leader … but what is your priest for?'

  Sophie looked coldly at me.

  'You mean to laugh at me, I suppose. My priestly father tells me what I ought to do; but what I want is a leader who would show me himself in action how to sacrifice one's self!'

  She raised her eyes towards the ceiling. With her childlike face, and that expression of immobile absorption, of secret, continual perplexity, she reminded me of the pre-raphaelite Madonnas….

  'I have read somewhere,' she went on, not turning to me, and hardly moving her lips, 'of a grand person who directed that he should be buried under a church porch so that all the people who came in should tread him under foot and trample on him…. That is what one ought to do in life.'

  Boom! boom! tra-ra-ra! thundered the drums from the band…. I must own such a conversation at a ball struck me as eccentric in the extreme; the ideas involuntarily kindled within me were of a nature anything but religious. I took advantage of my partner's being invited to one of the figures of the mazurka to avoid renewing our quasi-theological discussion.

  A quarter of an hour later I conducted Mademoiselle Sophie to her father, and two days after I left the town of T——, and the image of the girl with the childlike face and the soul impenetrable as stone slipped quickly out of my memory.

  Two years passed, and it chanced that that image was recalled again to me. It was like this: I was talking to a colleague who had just returned from a tour in South Russia. He had spent some time in the town of T——, and told me various items of news about the neighbourhood. 'By the way!' he exclaimed, 'you knew V. G. B. very well, I fancy, didn't you?'

  'Of course I know him.'

  'And his daughter Sophia, do you know her?'

  'I've seen her twice.'

  'Only fancy, she's run away!'

  'How's that?'

  'Well, I don't know. Three months ago she disappeared, and nothing's been heard of her. And the astonishing thing is no one can make out whom she's run off with. Fancy, they've not the slightest idea, not the smallest suspicion! She'd refused all the offers made her, and she was most proper in her behaviour. Ah, these quiet, religious girls are the ones! It's made an awful scandal all over the province! B.'s in despair…. And whatever need had she to run away? Her father carried out her wishes in everything. And what's so unaccountable, all the Lovelaces of the province are there all right, not one's missing.'

  'And they've not found her up till now?'

  'I tell you she might as well be at the bottom of the sea! It's one rich heiress less in the world, that's the worst of it.'

  This piece of news greatly astonished me. It did not seem at all in keeping with the recollection I had of Sophia B. But there! anything may happen.

  * * * * *

  In the autumn of the same year fate brought me—again on official business—into the S—— province, which is, as every one knows, next to the province of T——. It was cold and rainy weather; the worn-out posting-horses could scarcely drag my light trap through the black slush of the highroad. One day, I remember, was particularly unlucky: three times we got 'stuck' in the mud up to the axles of the wheels; my driver was continually giving up one rut and with moans and grunts trudging across to the other, and finding things no better with that. In fact, towards evening I was so exhausted that on reaching the posting-station I decided to spend the night at the inn. I was given a room with a broken-down wooden sofa, a sloping floor, and torn paper on the walls; there was a smell in it of kvas, bast-mats, onions, and even turpentine, and swarms of flies were on everything; but at any rate I could find shelter there from the weather, and the rain had set in, as they say, for the whole day. I ordered a samovar to be brought, and, sitting on the sofa, settled down to those cheerless wayside reflections so familiar to travellers in Russia.

  They were broken in upon by a heavy knocking that came from the common room, from which my room was separated by a deal partition. This sound was accompanied by an intermittent metallic jingle, like the clank of chains, and a coarse male voice boomed out suddenly: 'The blessing of God on all within this house. The blessing of God! the blessing of God! Amen, amen! Scatter His enemies!' repeated the voice, with a sort of incongruous and savage drawl on the last syllable of each word…. A noisy sigh was heard, and a ponderous body sank on to the bench with the same jingling sound. 'Akulina! servant of God, come here!' the voice began again: 'Behold! Clothed in rags and blessed! … Ha-ha-ha! Tfoo! Merciful God, merciful God, merciful God!' the voice droned like a deacon in the choir. 'Merciful God, Creator of my body, behold my iniquity…. O-ho-ho! Ha-ha! … Tfoo! And all abundance be to this house in the seventh hour!'

  'Who's that?' I asked the hospitable landlady, who came in with the samovar.

  'That, your honour,' she answered me in a hurried whisper, 'is a blessed, holy man. He's not long come into our parts; and here he's graciously pleased to visit us. In such weather! The wet's simply trickling from him, poor dear man, in streams! And you should see the chains on him—such a lot!'

  'The blessing of God! the blessing of God!' the voice was heard again. 'Akulina! Hey, Akulina! Akulinushka—friend! where is our paradise? Our fair paradise of bliss? In the wilderness is our paradise, … para-dise…. And to this house, from beginning of time, great happiness, … o … o … o …' The voice muttered something inarticulate, and again, after a protracted yawn, there came the hoarse laugh. This laugh broke out every time, as it were, involuntarily, and every time it was followed by vigorous spitting.

  'Ah, me! Stepanitch isn't here! That's the worst of it!' the landlady said, as it were to herself, as she stood with every sign of the profoundest attention at the door. 'He will say some word of salvation, and I, foolish woman, may not catch it!'

  She went out quickly.

  * * * * *

  In the partition there was a chink; I applied my eye to it. The crazy pilgrim was sitting on a bench with his back to me; I saw nothing but his shaggy head, as huge as a beer-can, and a broad bent back in a patched and soaking shirt. Before him, on the earth floor, knelt a frail-looking woman in a jacket, such as are worn by women of the artisan class—old and wet through—and with a dark kerchief pulled down almost over her eyes. She was trying to pull the holy man's boots off; her fingers slid off the greasy, slippery leather. The landlady was standing near her, with her arms folded across her bosom, gazing reverently at the 'man of God.' He was, as before, mumbling some inarticulate words.

  At last the woman succeeded in tugging off the boots. She almost fell backwards, but recovered herself, and began unwinding the strips of rag which were wrapped round the vagrant's legs. On the sole of his foot there was a wound…. I turned away.

  'A cup of tea wouldn't you bid me get you, my dear?' I heard the hostess saying in an obsequious voice.

  'What a notion!' responded the holy man. 'To indulge the sinful body…. O-ho-ho! Break all the bones in it … but she talks of tea! Oh, oh, worthy old woman, Satan is strong within us…. Fight him with hunger, fight him with cold, with the sluice-gates of heaven, the pouring, penetrating rain, and he takes no harm—he is alive still! Remember the day of the Intercession of the Mother of God! You will receive, you will receive in abundance!'

  The landlady could not resist uttering a faint groan of admiration.

  'Only listen to me! Give all thou hast, give thy head, give thy shirt! If they ask not of thee, yet give! For God is all-seeing! Is it hard for Him to destroy your roof? He has given thee bread in His mercy, and do thou bake it in the oven! He seeth all! Se … e … eth! Whose eye is in the triangle? Say, whose?'

  The landlady stealthily crossed herself under her neckerchief.

  'The old enemy is adamant! A … da … mant! A … da … mant!' the religious maniac repeated seve
ral times, gnashing his teeth. 'The old serpent! But God will arise! Yes, God will arise and scatter His enemies! I will call up all the dead! I will go against His enemy…. Ha-ha-ha! Tfoo!'

  'Have you any oil?' said another voice, hardly audible; 'let me put some on the wound…. I have got a clean rag.'