I
Ordynov finally decided to change apartments. His landlady, a very poor elderly widow and civil servant from whom he rented the accommodation, had unexpectedly left St. Petersburg for the provinces to stay with relatives, without waiting for the first of the month—the date his tenancy was due. Living out the remaining time, the young man thought of his old corner with regret and was annoyed that he had to leave it: he was poor, but the apartment was expensive. The day after the landlady’s departure, he took his cap and went wandering through the St. Petersburg side-streets, examining all the labels tacked to the gates of houses, choosing the blackest, most crowded, and most substantial house, where it would be easiest to find the required corner with some poor tenants.
He had been looking for a long time, very diligently, but soon new, almost unfamiliar sensations visited him. At first distractedly and carelessly, then with attention, and finally with intense curiosity, he began to look around him. The crowd and street life, the noise, the movement, the novelty of objects, the novelty of the situation—all this petty life and everyday triviality, which had long since bored the business-like and busy resident of St. Petersburg, who fruitlessly but fussily sought means all his life to find peace, quiet, and tranquility somewhere in a warm nest earned by labor, sweat, and various other means—all this vulgar prosaicism and boredom, on the contrary, awakened in him a kind of quiet-joyful, bright sensation. His pale cheeks began to be covered with a slight blush, his eyes sparkled as if with new hope, and he eagerly, deeply inhaled the cold, fresh air. He felt unusually light.
He had always led a quiet, completely solitary life. About three years ago, having received his academic degree and becoming as free as possible, he went to visit an old man whom he had only known by hearsay until then, and waited a long time until the liveried valet agreed to announce him a second time. Then he entered a high, dark, and deserted hall, extremely boring, as is common in old, time-preserved, inherited noble houses, and saw in it the old man, covered in orders and adorned with gray hair, a friend and colleague of his father and his guardian. The old man handed him a pinch of money. The sum turned out to be very insignificant; it was the remainder of his great-grandfather’s inheritance sold at auction for debts. Ordynov indifferently took possession, took his leave of his guardian forever, and went out into the street. It was an autumn evening, cold and gloomy; the young man was thoughtful, and some unconscious sadness was tearing at his heart. There was fire in his eyes; he felt fever, chills, and heat alternately. On the way, he calculated that he could live on his means for two or three years, or even, with hunger thrown in, four. It grew dark, and rain was drizzling. He bargained for the first corner he came across and moved in within an hour. There, it was as if he had locked himself in a monastery, as if he had withdrawn from the world. Two years later, he had become completely wild.
He became wild without noticing it; it had not yet occurred to him that there was another life—noisy, booming, eternally agitated, eternally changing, eternally calling, and always, sooner or later, inevitable. True, he could not help but hear of it, but he never knew or sought it. From early childhood, he lived exclusively; now this exclusivity had become definitive. He was consumed by the deepest, most insatiable passion, one that exhausts a man’s entire life and does not set aside a single corner for beings like Ordynov in the sphere of other, practical, worldly activities. This passion was science. It was consuming his youth for the time being, poisoning his nightly rest with slow, intoxicating venom, depriving him of healthy food and fresh air, which was never present in his stuffy corner, and Ordynov, in the ecstasy of his passion, did not want to notice it. He was young and, for the time being, did not demand more. Passion had made him an infant to external life and forever incapable of making good people step aside, when necessary, to carve out even a small corner for himself among them. Science is capital in the hands of some shrewd people; Ordynov’s passion was a weapon turned against him.
There was more unconscious attraction in him than logically clear reason to study and know, as in any other, even the most minor activity that had occupied him up until now. Even in childhood, he was known as an eccentric and was unlike his comrades. He did not know his parents; from his comrades, he suffered inhumanity and rudeness because of his strange, unsociable character, which made him truly unsociable and gloomy, and little by little he plunged into exclusivity. But even now, there was never order or a definite system in his solitary pursuits; now there was only the first rapture, the first fervor, the first fever of the artist. He created the system himself; it was being lived out within him over years, and in his soul, a still dark, vague, but somehow wonderfully comforting image of an idea, embodied in a new, enlightened form, was gradually rising, and this form was begging to escape from his soul, tormenting that soul; he felt timidly the originality, truth, and self-sufficiency of it: creativity was already manifesting itself to his powers; it was forming and strengthening. But the time for embodiment and creation was still distant, perhaps very distant, perhaps utterly impossible!
Now he walked the streets like an alienated person, like a hermit who had suddenly emerged from his silent wilderness into a noisy and roaring city. Everything seemed new and strange to him. But he was so alien to the world that seethed and roared around him that he did not even think to be surprised at his strange sensation. He seemed not to notice his savageness; on the contrary, a kind of joyful feeling, a kind of intoxication, was born in him, like that of a starving person who is given food and drink after a long fast; although, of course, it was strange that such a petty novelty of situation as changing apartments could cloud and agitate a resident of St. Petersburg, even Ordynov; but it is also true that he had almost never had occasion to go out on business until now.
He liked wandering the streets more and more. He looked at everything like a flaneur.
But even now, true to his perpetual frame of mind, he read in the vividly unfolding picture before him, as in a book between the lines. Everything struck him; he did not lose a single impression and looked with a thoughtful gaze at the faces of the people walking, peered into the physiognomy of everything around him, and lovingly listened to the common speech, as if verifying all his conclusions, born in the silence of solitary nights, against everything. Often some trifle would strike him, give birth to an idea, and for the first time, he felt annoyed that he had buried himself alive in his cell. Here everything moved faster; his pulse was full and quick, his mind, which had been oppressed by solitude, but sharpened and elevated only by strenuous, exalted activity, now worked quickly, calmly, and boldly. Besides, he somehow unconsciously wanted to somehow squeeze himself into this life, alien to him, which he had hitherto known or, rather, only accurately felt with the instinct of an artist. His heart involuntarily began to ache with the anguish of love and sympathy. He looked more intently at the people passing him by; but the people were strangers, preoccupied and thoughtful… And little by little, Ordynov’s lightheartedness began to involuntarily fall away; reality was already overwhelming him, instilling in him a kind of involuntary, respectful fear. He began to tire from the influx of new impressions, previously unknown to him, like a sick person who joyfully gets up from his sickbed for the first time and falls, exhausted by the light, the brilliance, the whirlwind of life, the noise and the motley crowd rushing past him, clouded, dizzy from the movement. He became uneasy and sad. He began to fear for his whole life, for all his work, and even for the future. A new thought destroyed his peace. It suddenly occurred to him that he had been alone all his life, that no one had loved him, and that he had never succeeded in loving anyone. Some of the passersby with whom he had casually started conversations at the beginning of his walk looked at him rudely and strangely. He saw that they took him for a madman or a most original eccentric, which, however, was quite true. He remembered that everyone had always found his presence somewhat difficult, that even in childhood everyone avoided him because of his thoughtful, stubborn character, that his sympathy, which was in him, manifested itself in a difficult, suppressed, and unnoticed way to others, in which there was somehow never noticeable moral equality, which tormented him even as a child when he was not at all like other children his age. Now he remembered and realized that everyone had always left and avoided him, at all times.
He imperceptibly wandered into a remote area of St. Petersburg, far from the city center. After somehow having dinner in a secluded tavern, he went out again to wander. Again, he walked through many streets and squares. Beyond them stretched long yellow and gray fences; completely dilapidated little houses began to appear instead of wealthy homes, and along with them, colossal factory buildings, ugly, blackened, red, with long chimneys. Everywhere was deserted and empty; everything looked somehow gloomy and unfriendly: at least, that’s how it seemed to Ordynov. It was already evening. Through one long side-street, he came out onto a small square where a parish church stood.
He entered it distractedly. The service had just ended; the church was almost completely empty, and only two old women were still kneeling at the entrance. The servant, a gray-haired old man, was putting out the candles. The rays of the setting sun poured down in a wide stream through the narrow cupola window and illuminated one of the side chapels with a sea of light; but they grew weaker and weaker, and the darker the gloom thickened beneath the arches of the church, the brighter the gilded icons, illuminated by the trembling glow of the icon-lamps and candles, shone in places. In a fit of deeply agitating anguish and some suppressed feeling, Ordynov leaned against the wall in the darkest corner of the church and lost himself for a moment. He woke up when the measured, dull sound of two parishioners entering echoed beneath the arches of the temple. He raised his eyes, and an inexpressible curiosity overcame him at the sight of the two arrivals. They were an old man and a young woman. The old man was tall, still straight and vigorous, but thin and sickly pale. Judging by his appearance, he could be taken for a traveling merchant from somewhere far away. He wore a long, black, obviously festive, fur-lined kaftan, worn open. Beneath the kaftan was visible some other long-skirted Russian garment, tightly fastened from top to bottom. His bare neck was carelessly tied with a bright red scarf; in his hands, he held a fur hat. A long, thin, half-gray beard fell upon his chest, and from beneath his overhanging, grim brows, a fiery, feverishly inflamed, haughty, and lingering gaze flashed. The woman was about twenty years old and wonderfully beautiful. She wore a rich, blue, fur-lined short coat, and her head was covered with a white satin kerchief tied under her chin. She walked with her eyes cast down, and a kind of thoughtful solemnity diffused throughout her entire figure was sharply and sadly reflected in the sweet outline of her childishly tender and gentle facial features. There was something strange about this unexpected pair.
The old man stopped in the middle of the church and bowed to all four sides, although the church was completely empty; his companion did the same. Then he took her hand and led her to the large local icon of the Mother of God, in whose name the church was built, which shone near the altar with the dazzling brilliance of lights reflected on the setting, which glowed with gold and precious stones. The church attendant, the last one remaining in the church, bowed to the old man with respect; the latter nodded to him. The woman fell prostrate before the icon. The old man took the edge of the veil hanging at the foot of the icon and covered her head. A muffled sob echoed in the church.
Ordynov was struck by the solemnity of the whole scene and waited impatiently for its end. After about two minutes, the woman raised her head, and the bright light of the icon-lamp again illuminated her lovely face. Ordynov shuddered and took a step forward. She had already given her hand to the old man, and both quietly left the church. Tears were boiling in her dark blue eyes, fringed with long eyelashes that shone against the milky whiteness of her face, and rolled down her pale cheeks. A smile flickered on her lips; but traces of some childlike fear and mysterious terror were visible on her face. She timidly pressed close to the old man, and it was evident that she was trembling all over from agitation.
Stunned, scourged by some mysteriously sweet and persistent feeling, Ordynov quickly followed them and crossed their path on the church porch. The old man looked at him unkindly and severely; she also glanced at him, but without curiosity and distractedly, as if some other, distant thought occupied her. Ordynov followed them, not understanding his own action. It was already completely dark; he walked a short distance away. The old man and the young woman entered a large, wide street, dirty, full of various industrial people, flour shops, and inns, which led straight to the city gate, and turned from it into a narrow, long side-street with long fences on both sides, which abutted the enormous blackened wall of a four-story, substantial house, through whose arched gates one could exit onto another, also large and crowded, street. They were already approaching the house; suddenly the old man turned and looked at Ordynov impatiently. The young man stopped as if rooted to the spot; his infatuation seemed strange even to himself. The old man looked around a second time, as if wanting to make sure his threat had worked, and then both, he and the young woman, entered through the narrow gate into the house’s courtyard. Ordynov returned.
He was in a most unpleasant mood and was annoyed with himself, reflecting that he had wasted the day in vain, had tired himself out in vain, and on top of that, had ended with a foolish act, giving the meaning of a whole adventure to an occurrence more than ordinary.
However much he was annoyed with himself in the morning for his wildness, his instinct was to flee from everything that could distract, strike, and shock him in the external, not the internal, artistic world of his. Now, with sadness and a kind of remorse, he thought of his serene corner; then anguish and worry about his unresolved situation, about the forthcoming troubles, seized him, and at the same time, he was annoyed that such a trifle could occupy him. Finally, tired and unable to connect two ideas, he reached his apartment late and was astonished to realize that he had walked past the house where he lived without noticing it. Stunned and shaking his head at his absent-mindedness, he attributed it to fatigue and, climbing the stairs, finally entered the attic into his room. There he lit a candle—and in a moment, the image of the weeping woman vividly struck his imagination. So passionately, so powerfully was the impression, so lovingly did his heart reproduce those gentle, quiet features of the face, shaken by a mysterious tenderness and terror, bathed in tears of ecstasy or childlike repentance, that his eyes grew dim and it felt as if fire ran through all his limbs. But the vision did not last long. After the ecstasy came reflection, then annoyance, then a kind of impotent malice; without undressing, he wrapped himself in a blanket and threw himself onto his hard bed…
Ordynov woke up quite late in the morning in an irritated, timid, and depressed state of mind, quickly got ready, almost forcefully trying to think about his urgent worries, and set off in the direction opposite to his yesterday’s journey; finally, he found himself an apartment somewhere in a small room in the attic of a poor German, nicknamed Shpis, who lived with his daughter Tinchen. Shpis, having received the deposit, immediately removed the label nailed to the gate inviting tenants, praised Ordynov for his love of science, and promised to diligently engage with him himself. Ordynov said that he would move in by evening. From there, he started to go home, but changed his mind and turned in another direction; his cheerfulness returned to him, and he mentally smiled at his curiosity. The road seemed extraordinarily long in his impatience; finally, he reached the church where he had been yesterday evening. Mass was being served. He chose a spot from which he could see almost all the worshippers; but those whom he sought were not there. After a long wait, he left, blushing. Stubbornly suppressing some involuntary feeling in himself, he tried obstinately and forcefully to change the course of his thoughts. Reflecting on the mundane, the worldly, he remembered that it was time for him to eat, and, feeling that he was indeed hungry, he went into the very same tavern where he had dined yesterday. He couldn’t even remember later how he left there. He wandered for a long time, unconsciously, through streets, through crowded and deserted side-streets, and finally wandered into a desolate area, where the city no longer was and where a yellowed field stretched out; he came to himself when the dead silence struck him with a new impression, long unknown to him. The day was dry and frosty, such as is often seen in St. Petersburg in October. There was a hut nearby; next to it, two haystacks; a small, steep-ribbed horse, with its head bowed, and a hanging lip, stood unharnessed beside a two-wheeled taratayka (cart), seemingly pondering something. A yard dog was growling and gnawing a bone near a broken wheel, and a three-year-old child in only a shirt, scratching his white, shaggy head, looked with amazement at the lonely city dweller who had wandered in. Beyond the hut stretched fields and gardens. Forests blackened on the edge of the blue sky, and from the opposite side, murky snow clouds approached, as if driving before them a flock of migrating birds, passing across the sky one after another, without a cry. Everything was quiet and somehow solemnly sad, full of some languishing, hidden expectation… Ordynov started to walk further and further; but the wilderness only weighed him down. He turned back toward the city, from which the dense clang of bells suddenly rushed forth, calling to the evening service, he doubled his pace and, after some time, again entered the church so familiar to him since yesterday.
His unknown woman was already there.
She was kneeling at the very entrance among the crowd of worshippers. Ordynov pushed his way through the dense mass of beggars, old women in rags, sick people, and cripples waiting for alms at the church doors, and knelt down beside the stranger. His clothes touched hers, and he heard the gasping breath that escaped her lips, which whispered a fervent prayer. The features of her face were still shaken by a feeling of boundless piety, and tears again rolled and dried on her hot cheeks, as if washing away some terrible crime. In the place where they both stood, it was completely dark, and only at times did the dull flame of the icon-lamp, swayed by the wind rushing in through the opened narrow window pane, illuminate her face with a trembling brilliance, every feature of which was engraved on the young man’s memory, blurring his vision and tearing at his heart with a dull, unbearable pain. But in this torment, there was its own ecstatic delight. Finally, he could not bear it; his whole chest instantly trembled and languished in a mysteriously sweet aspiration, and sobbing, he bowed his inflamed head onto the cold floor of the church. He heard and felt nothing but the pain in his heart, which was dying away in sweet agony.
Was this extreme sensitivity, this nakedness and defenselessness of feeling, developed by solitude; was this impulsiveness of the heart, ready at last to burst or find an outpouring, prepared in the languid, stuffy, and hopeless silence of long, sleepless nights, amidst unconscious strivings and impatient agitations of the spirit; and so it had to be for her, just as suddenly on a sultry, hot day the whole sky turns black and a storm pours down rain and fire onto the parched earth, hangs pearls of rain on the emerald branches, crushes the grass, the fields, presses the delicate cups of flowers to the ground, so that then, with the first rays of the sun, everything, reviving again, rushes forward, rises to meet it, and solemnly, sends its luxurious, sweet incense up to the heavens, rejoicing and delighting in its renewed life… But Ordynov could not have thought now what was happening to him: he barely recognized himself…
He barely noticed the end of the service and came to himself, pushing his way after his unknown woman through the crowd compacted at the entrance. At times, he met her surprised and clear gaze. Stopped momentarily by the departing people, she turned to him more than once; it was evident how her surprise grew stronger and stronger, and suddenly she flushed all over, as if with a dawn. At that moment, the old man from yesterday suddenly appeared from the crowd and took her hand. Ordynov again met his bilious and mocking gaze, and a strange anger suddenly squeezed his heart. Finally, he lost sight of them in the darkness; then, with an unnatural effort, he rushed forward and left the church. But the fresh evening air could not refresh him: his breath was stifled and constricted in his chest, and his heart began to beat slowly and hard, as if it wanted to break through his chest. Finally, he saw that he had indeed lost his strangers; they were no longer in the street or the side-street. But an idea had already appeared in Ordynov’s head, one of those resolute, strange plans that, although always wild, are almost always successful and carried out in such cases; the next day at eight o’clock in the morning, he approached the house from the side-street and entered the narrow, dirty, and unclean back courtyard, something like a garbage pit in the house. The yard keeper, who was doing something in the yard, paused, rested his chin on the handle of his shovel, looked Ordynov up and down, and asked him what he wanted.
The yard keeper was a young fellow, about twenty-five, with an extremely old-looking face, wrinkled, small, of Tatar descent.
“I’m looking for an apartment,” Ordynov replied impatiently.
“Which one?” the yard keeper asked with a smirk. He looked at Ordynov as if he knew his entire business.
“I need one from the tenants,” Ordynov replied.
“There isn’t one in that courtyard,” the yard keeper replied enigmatically.
“And here?”
“Not here either.” Then the yard keeper returned to his shovel.
“But maybe they would let one go,” Ordynov said, giving the yard keeper a grivennik (ten-kopeck coin).
The Tatar glanced at Ordynov, took the grivennik, then picked up his shovel again, and after a moment of silence declared, “No, there is no apartment.” But the young man was no longer listening to him; he was walking across the rotten, shaking boards lying in a puddle towards the only exit to this courtyard from the wing of the house, black, unclean, dirty, seemingly choked in the puddle. A poor coffin-maker lived on the ground floor. Passing his ingenious workshop, Ordynov climbed the half-broken, slippery, spiral staircase to the upper floor, felt in the darkness for the thick, clumsy door, covered with matting rags, found the lock, and opened it a crack. He was not mistaken. The familiar old man was standing before him, staring at him with extreme astonishment.
“What do you want?” he asked abruptly and almost in a whisper.
“Is there an apartment?…” Ordynov asked, almost forgetting everything he wanted to say. He saw his unknown woman from behind the old man’s shoulder.
The old man silently began to close the door, forcing Ordynov out with it.
“There is an apartment,” the young woman’s gentle voice suddenly rang out.
The old man released the door.
“I need a corner,” Ordynov said, hastily entering the room and addressing the beauty.
But he stopped as if rooted to the spot in astonishment, looking at his future landlords; a silent, striking scene took place before his eyes. The old man was pale as death, as if about to lose consciousness. He looked at the woman with a leaden, motionless, piercing gaze. She, too, turned pale at first; but then all the blood rushed to her face and her eyes flashed strangely. She led Ordynov into the other small room.
The entire apartment consisted of one rather spacious room, divided by two partitions into three parts; one entered directly from the vestibule into a narrow, dark hallway; directly ahead was a door beyond the partition, obviously leading to the landlords’ bedroom. To the right, through the hallway, one passed into the room that was being rented out. It was narrow and cramped, pressed by the partition against the two low windows. Everything was cluttered and filled with objects necessary for everyday life; it was poor, cramped, but as clean as possible. The furniture consisted of a simple white table, two simple chairs, and a bench along both walls. A large old icon with a gilded halo stood above a shelf in the corner, and an icon-lamp burned before it. In the room being rented, and partly in the hallway, was a huge, clumsy Russian stove. It was clear that three people could not live in such an apartment.
They began to negotiate, but incoherently and barely understanding each other. Ordynov could hear her heart pounding two steps away from her; he saw that she was trembling all over from agitation and as if from fear. Finally, they somehow agreed. The young man announced that he would move in immediately and glanced at the landlord. The old man stood in the doorway still pale; but a quiet, even thoughtful smile was creeping onto his lips. Meeting Ordynov’s gaze, he frowned again.
“Do you have a passport?” he asked suddenly in a loud, abrupt voice, opening the door to the vestibule for him.
“Yes!” Ordynov replied, a little surprised.
“Who are you?”
“Vasily Ordynov, a nobleman, not in service, on my own affairs,” he replied, adapting to the old man’s tone.
“And I too,” the old man replied. “I am Ilya Murin, a townsman; is that enough for you? Go…”
An hour later, Ordynov was already in his new apartment, to the surprise of himself and his German, who was already beginning to suspect, along with the submissive Tinchen, that the tenant who had turned up had deceived him. Ordynov himself did not understand how all this had happened, nor did he want to understand…
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