Chapter I
In the shadow of a tall linden tree, on the bank of the Moskva River, not far from Kuntsevo, on one of the hottest summer days in 1853, two young men were lying on the grass. One, appearing to be about twenty-three, tall, dark-complexioned, with a sharp and slightly crooked nose, a high forehead, and a restrained smile on his wide lips, lay on his back and gazed thoughtfully into the distance, slightly squinting his small gray eyes; the other lay on his stomach, propping his curly, fair head with both hands, and was also gazing somewhere into the distance. He was three years older than his companion but looked much younger; his mustache was barely visible, and a light down covered his chin. There was something childishly pretty, something appealingly refined in the delicate features of his fresh, round face, in his sweet brown eyes, beautiful convex lips, and white hands. Everything about him radiated the happy cheerfulness of health, the breath of youth—carefree confidence, self-assurance, spoiled charm, the enchantment of youth. He moved his eyes, smiled, and propped up his head the way boys do when they know they are being looked at with pleasure. He wore a spacious white coat, like a blouse; a blue scarf encircled his thin neck, and a crumpled straw hat lay in the grass beside him.
In comparison to him, his companion seemed like an old man, and no one, looking at his angular figure, would have thought that he, too, was enjoying himself, that he, too, felt good. He lay awkwardly; his large head, wide at the top and pointed at the bottom, sat awkwardly on his long neck; awkwardness was evident in the very position of his arms, his torso, tightly encompassed by a short black frock coat, and his long legs with raised knees, resembling a dragon-fly’s hind legs. Despite all this, one could not help but recognize him as a well-bred man; the stamp of “decency” was noticeable in his entire clumsy being, and his face, though not handsome and even somewhat comical, expressed a habit of thought and kindness. His name was Andrey Petrovich Bersenev; his companion, the fair-haired young man, was called Shubin, Pavel Yakovlevich.
“Why aren’t you lying on your stomach, like me?” Shubin began. “It’s much better this way. Especially when you lift your legs and tap your heels against each other—like that. The grass is right under your nose: if you get tired of staring at the landscape, look at some fat little bug crawling up a blade of grass, or an ant scurrying around. Really, it’s better this way. Otherwise, you’ve adopted some pseudo-classical pose, exactly like a ballerina leaning on a cardboard cliff. Remember that you now have every right to rest. It’s no joke: you came out third candidate! Rest, sir; stop straining, spread your limbs!”
Shubin delivered this entire speech through his nose, half-lazily, half-jokingly (spoiled children talk that way to family friends who bring them sweets), and, without waiting for an answer, continued:
“What strikes me most about ants, beetles, and other gentleman insects is their astonishing seriousness; they run back and forth with such important expressions, as if their lives meant something! Excuse me, man, the king of creation, a higher being, is looking upon them, and they don’t care; perhaps some mosquito will even land on the king of creation’s nose and use it for food. It’s insulting. But on the other hand, how is their life worse than ours? And why shouldn’t they put on airs if we allow ourselves to put on airs? Well, philosopher, solve this puzzle for me! Why are you silent? Eh?”
“What?” Bersenev said, starting up.
“What!” repeated Shubin. “Your friend is expounding profound thoughts to you, and you’re not listening.”
“I was admiring the view. Look how hotly those fields gleam in the sun!” (Bersenev had a slight lisp.)
“A significant color choice has been applied,” Shubin remarked. “In a word, Nature!”
Bersenev shook his head.
“You should be even more delighted by all this than I am. It’s your domain: you are an artist.”
“No, sir; it is not my domain, sir,” Shubin replied, pushing his hat onto the back of his head. “I am a butcher, sir; my business is flesh, sculpting flesh, shoulders, legs, arms, and here there is no form, no finality, it has spread out in all directions… Go and catch that!”
“But there is beauty here too,” Bersenev noted. “By the way, have you finished your bas-relief?”
“Which one?”
“The child with the goat.”
“To the devil! To the devil! To the devil!” Shubin exclaimed in a sing-song voice. “I looked at the real ones, at the old masters, at the antiques, and smashed my nonsense. You point me to nature and say: ‘There is beauty here too.’ Of course, there is beauty in everything, even in your nose there is beauty, but you can’t chase after every beauty. The old masters didn’t chase after it; it descended into their creations by itself—from where, God knows, perhaps from heaven. The whole world belonged to them; we can’t spread ourselves so wide: our arms are short. We cast our line at a single point, and wait. If it bites—bravo! If it doesn’t…”
Shubin stuck out his tongue.
“Wait, wait,” Bersenev objected. “That is a paradox. If you do not sympathize with beauty, love it wherever you encounter it, it will not yield to you in your art either. If a beautiful view, beautiful music say nothing to your soul, I mean, if you do not sympathize with them…”
“Oh, you sympathizer!” Shubin blurted out and laughed himself at the newly invented word, while Bersenev became thoughtful. “No, brother,” Shubin continued, “you are clever, a philosopher, third candidate of Moscow University, it’s frightening to argue with you, especially for me, an under-educated student; but I’ll tell you this: apart from my art, I love beauty only in women… in girls, and even that only since recently…”
He rolled over onto his back and folded his hands behind his head.
A few moments passed in silence. The stillness of the midday heat weighed heavily upon the shining and slumbering earth.
“Speaking of women, by the way,” Shubin began again. “Why doesn’t someone take Stakhov in hand? Did you see him in Moscow?”
“No.”
“The old man has completely lost his mind. He sits at his Avgoustina Christianovna’s for days on end, bored stiff, but he sits. They stare at each other, so stupidly… It’s even repulsive to look at. Just imagine! What a family God has blessed this man with: no, he must have his Avgoustina Christianovna! I know nothing more disgusting than her duck face! The other day I sculpted a caricature of her, Danton-style. It came out quite well. I’ll show you.”
“And the bust of Elena Nikolaevna,” Bersenev asked, “is it progressing?”
“No, brother, it is not progressing. One could despair over that face. When you look at it, the lines are pure, severe, straight; it seems easy to catch the resemblance. Not at all… It won’t yield, like a treasure that won’t fall into your hands. Have you noticed how she listens? Not a single feature moves, only the expression of her gaze changes incessantly, and with it, her entire figure changes. What is a sculptor, and a bad one at that, supposed to do here? An astonishing creature… a strange creature,” he added after a short pause.
“Yes; she is an astonishing girl,” Bersenev repeated after him.
“And the daughter of Nikolai Artemyevich Stakhov! After this, talk about blood, about lineage. And the funny thing is, she is exactly his daughter, she resembles him and she resembles her mother, Anna Vasilievna. I respect Anna Vasilievna with all my heart, she is my benefactress; but she is a hen. Where did this soul of Elena’s come from then? Who lit this fire? Here’s another puzzle for you, philosopher!”
But the “philosopher,” as before, answered nothing. Bersenev generally did not sin by excessive talking, and when he spoke, he expressed himself awkwardly, haltingly, needlessly moving his hands; but this time, a peculiar stillness had descended upon his soul—a stillness resembling fatigue and sadness. He had recently moved out of the city after a long and difficult work that had taken up several hours a day. Inactivity, repose and the purity of the air, the consciousness of a goal achieved, the whimsical and careless conversation with a friend, the suddenly evoked image of a dear creature—all these heterogeneous and yet somehow similar impressions merged within him into one common feeling, which both calmed him, agitated him, and enervated him… He was a very nervous young man.
It was cool and peaceful under the linden tree; the flies and bees that flew into the circle of its shadow seemed to buzz more quietly; the clean, short grass of an emerald color, without golden tints, did not stir; the tall stalks stood motionless, as if enchanted; like enchanted things, like dead things, small clusters of yellow flowers hung from the lower branches of the linden tree. A sweet scent forced its way deep into the chest with every breath, but the chest willingly breathed it in. In the distance, beyond the river, everything sparkled, everything glowed up to the horizon; a breeze occasionally ran through there, breaking up and intensifying the sparkling; radiant steam wavered over the ground. Birds were not to be heard: they do not sing during the hours of heat; but grasshoppers chirped everywhere, and it was pleasant to listen to this hot sound of life, sitting in the cool, in peace: it inclined one to sleep and awakened daydreams.
“Have you noticed,” Bersenev suddenly began, helping his speech with hand movements, “what a strange feeling nature evokes in us? Everything in it is so full, so clear, I mean to say, so satisfied with itself, and we understand this and admire it, and at the same time, it always arouses in me, at least, some kind of restlessness, some anxiety, even sadness. What does this mean? Do we become more keenly aware, in its presence, of all our incompleteness, our obscurity, or is the satisfaction it contents itself with not enough for us, and does it lack what we need, I mean to say, what we need?”
“Hmm,” Shubin replied, “I’ll tell you, Andrey Petrovich, what all this comes from. You have described the feelings of a lonely person who does not live, but only looks and languishes. Why look? Live yourself, and you’ll be fine. No matter how much you knock on nature’s door, it will not answer with an understandable word, because it is mute. It will hum and whine, like a string, but do not expect a song from it. A living soul—that will respond, and a feminine soul pre-eminently. And therefore, my noble friend, I advise you to acquire a companion of the heart, and all your mournful sensations will immediately disappear. That is what we ‘need,’ as you say. After all, this anxiety, this sadness, it’s simply a kind of hunger. Give the stomach real food, and everything will immediately come into order. Take your place in space, be a body, my dear fellow. And what is nature, what is it for? Listen to this: love… what a strong, hot word! Nature… what a cold, scholarly expression! And therefore (Shubin sang): ‘Long live Mariya Petrovna!’—or no,” he added, “not Mariya Petrovna, well, it doesn’t matter! Vous me comprenez.”
Bersenev sat up and rested his chin on his folded hands.
“Why the mockery,” he said, without looking at his companion, “why the scoffing? Yes, you are right: love is a great word, a great feeling… But what kind of love are you talking about?”
Shubin also sat up.
“What kind of love? Any kind, as long as it is present. I confess to you, in my opinion, there are no different kinds of love at all. If you have loved…”
“With all your soul,” Bersenev interjected.
“Well, yes, that goes without saying, the soul is not an apple: you cannot divide it. If you have loved, you are right. And I didn’t mean to scoff. I have such tenderness in my heart now, it is so softened… I only wanted to explain why nature acts upon us as you say. Because it awakens in us the need for love and is powerless to satisfy it. It quietly drives us into other, living embraces, and we do not understand it and expect something from it itself. Ah, Andrey, Andrey, this sun is beautiful, this sky, everything, everything around us is beautiful, and you are sad; but if at this moment you held the hand of a beloved woman in your hand, if this hand and this whole woman were yours, if you even looked with her eyes, felt not with your own, solitary feeling, but with her feeling—not sadness, Andrey, not anxiety would nature arouse in you, and you would not even notice its beauty; it would rejoice and sing itself, it would echo your hymn, because you would then put a tongue into it, into the mute!”
Shubin jumped to his feet and paced back and forth a couple of times, while Bersenev bent his head, and his face was covered with a faint blush.
“I do not entirely agree with you,” he began, “nature does not always hint to us about… love. (He didn’t say the word immediately.) It also threatens us; it reminds us of terrible… yes, of inaccessible mysteries. Is it not destined to swallow us, is it not constantly swallowing us? Both life and death are in it; and death speaks as loudly in it as life.”
“And in love there is life and death,” Shubin interrupted.
“And besides,” Bersenev continued, “when I, for example, stand in the spring in the forest, in the green thicket, when I imagine the romantic sounds of Oberon’s horn (Bersenev felt a little ashamed when he uttered these words),—is that also…”
“A thirst for love, a thirst for happiness, nothing more!” Shubin interjected. “I know those sounds too, I know that tenderness and anticipation that come over the soul under the cover of the forest, in its depths, or in the evening, in the open fields, when the sun sets and the river steams behind the bushes. But from the forest, and from the river, and from the earth, and from the sky, from every little cloud, from every blade of grass, I wait for, I want happiness, I sense its approach in everything, I hear its call! ‘My God is a bright and joyful God!’ I began one poem that way; confess: a glorious first line, but I couldn’t find a second one. Happiness! Happiness! Before life is over, while all our limbs are in our power, while we are going uphill, not downhill! Damn it!” Shubin continued with a sudden impulse, “we are young, not ugly, not stupid: we will conquer happiness for ourselves!”
He shook his curls and looked up at the sky confidently, almost defiantly. Bersenev raised his eyes to him.
“Is there nothing higher than happiness?” he asked quietly.
“Such as?” Shubin asked and stopped.
“Well, for example, you and I, as you say, are young, we are good people, let’s assume; each of us desires happiness for himself… But is ‘happiness’ a word that would unite, inspire both of us, make us shake hands? Is it not an egoistical, I mean to say, is it not a divisive word?”
“And do you know words that unite?”
“Yes; and there are quite a few of them; and you know them.”
“Well? What are those words?”
“Well, art, for example, since you are an artist—homeland, science, freedom, justice.”
“And love?” Shubin asked.
“Love is also a unifying word; but not the love you are craving for now: not love-as-enjoyment, but love-as-sacrifice.”
Shubin frowned.
“That’s good for Germans; but I want to love for myself; I want to be number one.”
“Number one,” Bersenev repeated. “And it seems to me that to put oneself as number two is the whole purpose of our life.”
“If everyone acted as you advise,” Shubin muttered with a plaintive grimace, “no one on earth would eat pineapples: everyone would leave them for others.”
“Then pineapples are not needed; but in any case, don’t worry: there will always be those who like to take bread even from another’s mouth.”
Both friends fell silent.
“I ran into Insarov again the other day,” Bersenev began. “I invited him to my place; I absolutely want to introduce him to you… and to the Stakhovs.”
“Who is this Insarov? Oh, yes, that Serb or Bulgar you told me about? That patriot? Did he inspire all those philosophical thoughts in you?”
“Perhaps.”
“Is he an extraordinary individual or something?”
“Yes.”
“Clever? Talented?”
“Clever?… Yes. Talented? I don’t know, I don’t think so.”
“No? What is remarkable about him then?”
“You’ll see. And now, I think it’s time for us to go. Anna Vasilievna is probably waiting for us. What time is it?”
“Three. Let’s go. How muggy it is! This conversation has set all the blood on fire in me. And you had a moment… I’m an artist for a reason: I notice everything. Confess, is a woman occupying your thoughts?..”
Shubin tried to look at Bersenev’s face, but he turned away and walked out from under the linden tree. Shubin followed him, stepping with a graceful-languid stride on his small feet. Bersenev moved clumsily, raising his shoulders high as he walked, stretching his neck; yet, he still seemed a more decent person than Shubin, more of a gentleman, we would say, if that word were not so vulgarized among us.
1 Vous me comprenez: You understand me (French).
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