Introduction
My uncle, Colonel Yegor Ilyich Rostanev, upon retiring from the service, moved to the village of Stepanchikovo, which he had inherited, and settled down there as if he had been a native, lifelong landowner who had never left his estate. There are natures utterly content with everything and who grow accustomed to anything; such was precisely the nature of the retired Colonel. It would have been difficult to imagine a more submissive or agreeable man. If someone had seriously asked him to carry them a couple of miles on his shoulders, he might well have done it: he was so kind that he was sometimes ready to give away absolutely anything at the first asking and to share almost his last shirt with the first person who wished it. His appearance was heroic: tall and slender, with rosy cheeks, teeth as white as ivory, a long dark-blond moustache, a loud, resonant voice, and an open, booming laugh; he spoke abruptly and rapidly. He was about forty years old at the time, and had spent his entire life, almost from the age of sixteen, in the hussars.
He had married very young, and loved his wife passionately; but she died, leaving an indelible, grateful memory in his heart. Finally, having inherited the village of Stepanchikovo, which increased his wealth to six hundred souls, he left the service and, as has been mentioned, settled in the country with his children: eight-year-old Ilyusha (whose birth cost his mother her life) and his elder daughter, Sashenka, a girl of about fifteen, who had been raised in a Moscow boarding school after her mother’s death. But soon my uncle’s house came to resemble Noah’s Ark. This is how it happened.
At the time he received his inheritance and retired, his mother, General’s wife Krakhotkina, became a widow. She had remarried a General sixteen years earlier, when my uncle was still a cornet, although he was already contemplating marriage himself. Mother long refused to bless his marriage, wept bitter tears, accused him of egoism, ingratitude, and disrespect; she argued that his estate of two hundred and fifty souls was barely enough as it was to support his family (that is, to support his mother, with her entire staff of hangers-on, pugs, spitzes, Chinese cats, and so forth), and amidst these reproaches, upbraidings, and squealing fits, she suddenly, quite unexpectedly, got married herself before her son’s wedding, although she was already forty-two years old. And even here, she found a pretext to accuse my poor uncle, assuring everyone that she was marrying solely to have a refuge in her old age, a refuge that the disrespectful egoist, her son, was denying her by contemplating the unforgivable insolence of setting up his own home.
I could never discover the real reason that prompted such an apparently sensible man as the late General Krakhotkin to this marriage with a forty-two-year-old widow. It must be supposed that he suspected she had money. Others thought he simply needed a nurse, as he already had a premonition of that swarm of illnesses that later besieged him in his old age. One thing is known: the General had a profound lack of respect for his wife throughout their life together and mocked her caustically at every opportunity. He was an odd man. Semi-educated, quite intelligent, he utterly despised everyone and everything, had no principles, mocked everything and everyone, and in his old age, due to illnesses that were the consequence of a not entirely correct and righteous life, he became malicious, irritable, and ruthless.
He had a successful career in the service; however, he was forced to retire rather disgracefully due to some “unpleasant incident,” barely escaping a court martial and losing his pension. This embittered him completely. Almost entirely without means, owning a hundred ruined serfs, he folded his hands and for the rest of his life, a full twelve years, he never inquired into how he lived or who supported him; meanwhile, he demanded life’s comforts, did not limit expenses, and kept a carriage. He soon lost the use of his legs and spent the last ten years sitting in a comfortable armchair, which was rolled about when necessary by two gigantic footmen, who never heard anything from him but the most varied abuse. The carriage, footmen, and armchair were all maintained by the disrespectful son, who sent his mother his last pennies, mortgaging and remortgaging his estate, denying himself the barest necessities, and incurring debts that were nearly impossible to repay given his financial situation at the time—and yet the title of egoist and ungrateful son remained inseparably attached to him. But my uncle was of such a nature that he finally came to believe himself that he was an egoist, and so, as a self-imposed punishment and to avoid being an egoist, he sent more and more money.
The General’s wife was reverent toward her husband. What she liked most of all, however, was that he was a General and that she was a General’s wife because of him. She had her own half of the house, where, throughout her husband’s semi-existence, she flourished in the company of hangers-on, town gossips, and pet lapdogs. In her little town, she was a person of importance. Gossip, invitations to be godmother or honored matron, penny whist, and universal respect for her rank as General’s wife fully compensated her for any domestic constraints. The town’s magpies came to her with reports; she always and everywhere had the first place—in short, she extracted everything she could from her position as General’s wife.
The General did not interfere with any of this; but then, in front of people, he would laugh at his wife shamelessly, asking himself, for example, such questions as why he had married “such a churchwoman,” and no one dared to contradict him. Little by little, all his acquaintances abandoned him; yet society was necessary to him: he loved to chat, to argue, and he liked always to have a listener sitting before him. He was a freethinker and an atheist of the old stamp, and therefore enjoyed discussing elevated subjects. But the listeners in the town of N* did not care for elevated subjects and grew rarer and rarer. They tried to organize a game of whist and preference at home; but the game usually ended for the General in such fits that the General’s wife and her hangers-on, in terror, lit candles, held prayer services, divined with beans and cards, distributed kalachi (rolls) in the prison, and awaited the after-dinner hour with trembling, when they would again have to form a party for whist-preference and receive shouts, squeals, curses, and near-blows for every mistake. The General was unrestrained with anyone when something displeased him: he squealed like a woman, cursed like a coachman, and sometimes, after tearing up the cards and scattering them on the floor and driving away his partners, he would even weep from annoyance and rage, all for nothing more than a Jack that had been discarded instead of a Nine.
Finally, due to failing eyesight, he needed a reader. It was then that Foma Fomich Opiskin appeared.
I confess, I announce this new character with a certain solemnity. He is unquestionably one of the principal figures in my story. As to how much right he has to the reader’s attention—I will not explain; it is more appropriate and possible for the reader himself to resolve such a question.
Foma Fomich came to General Krakhotkin as a dependent for food—nothing more, nothing less. Where he came from is covered by the darkness of the unknown. I, however, made deliberate inquiries and learned a few things about the former circumstances of this remarkable man. It was said, first of all, that he had served somewhere, at some time, had suffered somewhere, and of course, “for the truth.” It was also said that he had at one time engaged in literature in Moscow. There is nothing strange in that; Foma Fomich’s crude ignorance certainly could not have been an obstacle to his literary career. But all that is reliably known is that he did not succeed in anything, and that he was finally forced to enter the General’s service as a reader and a martyr. There was no humiliation he would not endure for a piece of the General’s bread.
True, later, after the General’s death, when Foma himself quite unexpectedly became a person of importance and distinction, he repeatedly assured all of us that in agreeing to be a buffoon, he had generously sacrificed himself for friendship; that the General was his benefactor; that he was a great, misunderstood man, and that to him alone, Foma, did he entrust the deepest secrets of his soul; and that, finally, if he, Foma, did portray various beasts and other tableaux vivants at the General’s request, it was solely to amuse and cheer the suffering, afflicted friend.
But Foma Fomich’s assurances and explanations in this matter are highly doubtful; yet this same Foma Fomich, while still a buffoon, played a completely different role in the ladies’ section of the General’s house. How he managed it is difficult for a non-specialist in such matters to imagine. The General’s wife harbored a kind of mystical respect for him—why? — it is unknown. Little by little, he gained astonishing influence over the entire female half of the General’s house, an influence somewhat resembling that of the various Ivan Yakovliches and similar sages and soothsayers visited by certain female devotees in madhouses. He read aloud soul-saving books, spoke with eloquent tears about various Christian virtues; recounted his life and achievements; attended Mass and even Matins, partly predicted the future; he was especially good at interpreting dreams and masterfully condemned his neighbor. The General suspected what was going on in the back rooms, and tyrannized his dependent even more mercilessly. But Foma’s martyrdom earned him even greater respect in the eyes of the General’s wife and all her household.
Finally, everything changed. The General died. His death was quite original. The former freethinker and atheist became incredibly cowardly. He wept, confessed, raised up icons, and summoned priests. Prayer services were held, and he was anointed with holy oil. The poor wretch cried that he did not want to die, and even tearfully begged Foma Fomich for forgiveness. This last circumstance later gave Foma Fomich extraordinary swagger.
However, just before the General’s soul parted from the General’s body, the following incident occurred. The General’s wife’s daughter from her first marriage, my aunt, Praskovya Ilyinichna, an old maid who constantly resided in the General’s house—one of the General’s favorite victims and indispensable to him throughout his ten years of leglessness for her incessant service, the only one who could please him with her simple and uncomplaining meekness—approached his bed, weeping bitter tears, and tried to adjust the pillow beneath the sufferer’s head; but the sufferer managed to grab her by the hair and yank it three times, nearly foaming with rage. Ten minutes later, he died.
The Colonel was notified, although the General’s wife declared that she did not want to see him, that she would rather die than allow him before her eyes at such a moment. The funeral was magnificent—at the expense, naturally, of the disrespectful son, whom they refused to let appear before them. In the ruined village of Knyazevka, which belonged to several landowners and where the General owned his hundred souls, there stands a mausoleum of white marble, inscribed with eulogistic epitaphs to the mind, talents, nobility of soul, decorations, and Generalship of the deceased. Foma Fomich was heavily involved in composing these inscriptions.
The General’s wife played coy for a long time, refusing forgiveness to her disobedient son. She declared, sobbing and squealing, surrounded by her crowd of hangers-on and pugs, that she would rather eat dry bread and, of course, “wash it down with her own tears,” that she would sooner go with a stick to beg alms beneath windows than yield to the request of the “disobedient one” to move to Stepanchikovo, and that her foot would never, never set foot in his house! In general, the word foot, when used in this sense, is pronounced by some ladies with extraordinary effect. The General’s wife pronounced it masterfully, artistically… In short, an incredible amount of eloquence was expended. It must be noted that even during these very fits of squealing, preparations for the move to Stepanchikovo were quietly underway.
The Colonel wore out all his horses, traveling nearly twenty-seven miles every day from Stepanchikovo to the town, and only two weeks after the General’s funeral did he receive permission to appear before his offended parent. Foma Fomich was employed for the negotiations. Throughout those two weeks, he reproached and shamed the disobedient man for his “inhuman” behavior, driving him to sincere tears, almost to despair.
It is from this time that all the inexplicable and inhumanly despotic influence of Foma Fomich over my poor uncle begins. Foma guessed what sort of man was before him, and immediately felt that his role as a buffoon was over, and that in this desolate place, even Foma could be a nobleman. And he certainly made up for lost time.
“How will you feel,” said Foma, “if your own mother—the source, so to speak, of your days—takes a stick and, leaning on it, with hands trembling and withered from hunger, truly begins to beg for alms? Is this not monstrous, first, given her rank as a General’s wife, and second, given her virtues? How will you feel if she suddenly comes—by mistake, of course, but it can happen—right under your own windows and holds out her hand, while you, her own son, are perhaps at that very moment wallowing somewhere in a feather bed and… well, in luxury generally! Terrible, terrible! But the most terrible thing of all—allow me to tell you this frankly, Colonel—the most terrible thing is that you now stand before me like an insensitive pillar, gaping and blinking, which is quite improper, when at the mere suggestion of such an event you ought to tear the hair out of your head by the roots and shed streams… what am I saying! rivers, lakes, seas, oceans of tears!…”
In a word, Foma, from excessive fervor, got carried away. But this was always the outcome of his eloquence.
Naturally, it ended with the General’s wife, along with her hangers-on, lapdogs, Foma Fomich, and Mademoiselle Perepelitsyn, her chief confidante, finally gracing Stepanchikovo with her arrival. She said that she would only try living with her son, that she would only test his dutifulness. One can imagine the Colonel’s position while his dutifulness was being tested!
At first, in her capacity as a recent widow, the General’s wife considered it her duty to fall into despair two or three times a week at the memory of her late General; and for some unknown reason, the Colonel invariably bore the brunt of it each time. Sometimes, especially when visitors were present, the General’s wife would summon her grandson, little Ilyusha, and her fifteen-year-old granddaughter, Sashenka, sit them beside her, gaze long and mournfully at them, as if they were children ruined by such an father, sigh deeply and heavily, and finally burst into silent, mysterious tears for at least an hour. Woe to the Colonel if he failed to understand these tears! And the poor man almost never could understand them, and almost always, due to his naivety, he would turn up, as if on purpose, during such tearful moments and willy-nilly found himself under examination. But his dutifulness did not diminish and finally reached its furthest limits.
In short, both the General’s wife and Foma Fomich fully realized that the storm which had thundered over them for so many years in the person of General Krakhotkin had passed—passed and would never return.
Sometimes the General’s wife would suddenly, for no reason at all, collapse into a faint on the sofa. A bustle and commotion would start. The Colonel would be utterly distraught and tremble like an aspen leaf.
“Cruel son!” the General’s wife would cry upon coming to, “You have torn apart my insides… *mes entrailles, mes entrailles!*¹”
“But how, Mother, have I torn apart your insides?” the Colonel would timidly object.
“Torn apart! Torn apart! And he still tries to justify himself! He is rude! Cruel son! I am dying!…”
The Colonel was, naturally, crushed. But somehow it always happened that the General’s wife would revive. Half an hour later, the Colonel would be explaining to someone, clutching a button on their coat:
“Well, you see, brother, she’s a grande dame², a General’s wife! The kindest old lady; but, you know, she’s used to all that sort of refined thing… not like a boor such as me! She’s angry at me now. Of course, I am to blame. I, brother, don’t yet know precisely what I did wrong, but I’m certainly to blame…”
It sometimes happened that Mademoiselle Perepelitsyn—an overripe creature, hissing at the whole world, browless, wearing a wig, with small, carnivorous eyes, lips as thin as a thread, and hands washed in cucumber pickle—considered it her duty to lecture the Colonel:
“It is because you are disrespectful, sir. It is because you are an egoist, sir; that is why you offend Mother, sir; she is not accustomed to such things, sir. She is a General’s wife, sir, and you are only a Colonel, sir.”
“That, brother, is Mademoiselle Perepelitsyn,” the Colonel would remark to his listener, “an excellent girl, stands up for Mother like a rock! A rare girl! Don’t imagine she’s just some hanger-on; she, brother, is the daughter of a Lieutenant-Colonel herself. That’s how it is!”
But, of course, these were only the blossoms. This same General’s wife, who was capable of such various antics, in turn trembled like a mouse before her former dependent. Foma Fomich had completely enchanted her. She hung on his every breath, heard with his ears, and saw with his eyes. One of my third cousins, also a retired hussar, still a young man but entangled in incredible debt and who lived with my uncle for a time, plainly and simply declared to me that, in his deepest conviction, the General’s wife was in an illicit relationship with Foma Fomich. Naturally, I rejected this suggestion with indignation at the time, as being far too crude and artless. No, there was something else at play, and I cannot explain this ‘something else’ without first explaining Foma Fomich’s character to the reader, as I came to understand it myself later on.
Now imagine a little man, the most insignificant, the most faint-hearted, an outcast from society, needed by no one, utterly useless, utterly repulsive, yet boundlessly conceited, and furthermore, gifted with absolutely nothing by which he could in the least justify his morbidly inflamed self-love. I warn you in advance: Foma Fomich is the personification of the most boundless self-love, but at the same time a peculiar kind of self-love: precisely the kind that arises from utter insignificance, and, as is usual in such cases, a self-love that is offended, suppressed by heavy former failures, festering for a long, long time, and since then spewing forth envy and venom at every meeting, at every success of others. Needless to say, all this is seasoned with the most monstrous touchiness and the most insane suspiciousness.
Perhaps you might ask: where does such self-love come from? How is it engendered, amidst such utter nothingness, in such pathetic people who, by their very social position, are obliged to know their place? How to answer this question? Who knows, perhaps there are exceptions, to which my hero belongs. He is indeed an exception to the rule, which will be explained later. However, allow me to ask: are you sure that those who have completely humbled themselves and consider it an honor and a happiness to be your buffoons, dependents, and spongers—are you sure that they have already completely renounced all self-love? And what about envy, and gossip, and tale-bearing, and denunciations, and the mysterious hissing in the back corners of your own home, somewhere close by, right at your own table?… Who knows, perhaps in some of these wanderers, your buffoons and holy fools, humbled by fate, self-love not only does not disappear with humiliation, but is even further inflamed precisely by this very humiliation, by the holy-foolishness and buffoonery, by the sponging and the constantly enforced subordination and lack of personality. Who knows, perhaps this monstrously growing self-love is only a false, originally distorted sense of self-worth, insulted for the first time perhaps in childhood by oppression, poverty, dirt, spat upon, perhaps, even in the person of the future wanderer’s parents, before his very eyes?
But I said that Foma Fomich is also an exception to the general rule. This is true. He was once a man of letters and was grieved and unrecognized; and literature is capable of ruining more than one Foma Fomich—unrecognized literature, of course. I do not know, but it must be assumed that Foma Fomich was unsuccessful even before literature; perhaps in other careers, too, he received only flickings on the nose instead of salary, or something even worse. This, however, is unknown to me; but I later made inquiries and know for a fact that Foma did at one time concoct a little novel in Moscow, very similar to those that were churned out there by the dozens every year in the 1830s, like the various Liberations of Moscow, Atamans of Storms, Sons of Love, or Russians in the Year 1104, and so on and so forth—novels that provided pleasant sustenance for Baron Brambeus’s wit in their time. This was, of course, long ago; but the serpent of literary self-love sometimes bites deeply and incurably, especially insignificant and rather foolish people. Foma Fomich was aggrieved from his very first literary step and then definitively joined that enormous phalanx of the aggrieved, from which all the holy fools, all the wanderers, and all the pilgrims later emerge.
From that same time, I believe, this monstrous boastfulness, this craving for praise and distinction, for adoration and awe, developed in him. Even among the buffoons, he formed a little group of idiots who reverenced him. His main need was simply to be first somewhere, somehow, to prophesy, to contort himself, and to boast! They didn’t praise him, so he began to praise himself. I myself heard Foma’s words in my uncle’s house, in Stepanchikovo, when he had already become the full master and prophet there.
“I am not a permanent resident among you,” he would sometimes say with a mysterious air of importance, “I am not a resident here! I’ll observe, I’ll organize you all, I’ll show and teach you, and then farewell: to Moscow, to publish a journal! Thirty thousand people will gather for my lectures monthly. My name will finally thunder forth, and then—woe to my enemies!”
But the genius, while still preparing to become famous, demanded immediate reward. It is generally pleasant to be paid in advance, and especially so in this case. I know he seriously assured my uncle that he, Foma, was destined for the greatest exploit, an exploit for which he was called into the world and to whose completion he was urged by a certain man with wings, who appeared to him at night, or something of that sort. Namely: to write a most profound composition of a soul-saving nature, from which a universal earthquake would ensue and all of Russia would crack. And when all of Russia has cracked, he, Foma, scorning fame, would go to a monastery and pray day and night in the caves of Kiev for the happiness of the fatherland. All this, naturally, captivated my uncle.
Now imagine what could become of Foma—oppressed and beaten down all his life, and perhaps even physically beaten; of Foma, secretly pleasure-loving and self-loving; of Foma, the aggrieved man of letters; of Foma, the buffoon for daily bread; of Foma, the despot in his soul, despite all his previous insignificance and powerlessness; of Foma, the boaster, and, given success, the insolent one—of this Foma, who suddenly found himself honored and famed, cherished and overpraised thanks to an idiotic patroness and a deluded, agreeable patron, into whose house he finally came after long wanderings?
I am, of course, obliged to explain my uncle’s character in more detail: without it, Foma Fomich’s success is incomprehensible. But for now, I will say that the proverb proved true for Foma: Set him at the table, and he’ll put his feet on it. He certainly made up for his past! A base soul, having escaped from oppression, oppresses others in turn. Foma was oppressed—and he immediately felt the need to oppress others himself; they deferred to him—and he began to defer to no one. He was a buffoon, and he immediately felt the need to acquire his own buffoons. He boasted to the point of absurdity, deferred to no one to the point of impossibility, demanded the moon, tyrannized without measure, and it reached the point where good people, without even witnessing all these antics, but only hearing the tales, considered it all a miracle, a bewitchment, crossing themselves and spitting to ward off evil.
I was speaking about my uncle. Without an explanation of this remarkable character (I repeat this), such an audacious reign by Foma Fomich in someone else’s house is, of course, incomprehensible; this metamorphosis from a buffoon into a great man is incomprehensible. Not only was my uncle kind to an extreme—he was a man of refined delicacy, despite a somewhat coarse exterior, of the highest nobility, and of tested courage. I boldly say “courage”: he would not have hesitated before an obligation, before a duty, and in such a case, he would have feared no obstacles. In soul, he was as pure as a child. He was truly a child at forty, expansive to the highest degree, always cheerful, supposing all people to be angels, blaming himself for the shortcomings of others, and exaggerating the good qualities of others to an extreme, even supposing them to exist where they could not possibly be. He was one of those most noble and pure-hearted people who are even ashamed to suppose ill of another person, who hastily dress their neighbors in all the virtues, rejoice in the success of others, thus living constantly in an ideal world, and in case of failures, blame themselves before anyone else. To sacrifice themselves for the interests of others is their calling. Some might call him faint-hearted, spineless, and weak. Certainly, he was weak and even too gentle in character, but not from a lack of firmness, but from a fear of giving offense, of acting cruelly, from an excessive respect for others and for humanity in general. However, he was spineless and faint-hearted only when it concerned his own interests, which he utterly disregarded, for which he was mocked all his life, and not infrequently by those for whom he sacrificed those very interests. Yet, he never believed that he had enemies; they existed, however, but he somehow failed to notice them.
He feared noise and shouting in the house like fire, and immediately yielded to everyone and submitted to everything. He yielded out of a kind of shy good nature, a kind of modest delicacy, “just so,” he would say quickly, warding off all external reproaches of indulgence and weakness—”just so… so that everyone would be content and happy!” Needless to say, he was ready to submit to any noble influence. What’s more, a clever scoundrel could completely dominate him and even entice him into a bad deed, provided, of course, that the bad deed was masked as a noble one. My uncle trusted others exceedingly easily, and in this regard was far from faultless. When, after much suffering, he finally decided to convince himself that the person who had deceived him was dishonest, he would blame himself first of all, and often himself alone.
Now, imagine a capricious, senile idiot suddenly reigning in his quiet house, inseparable from another idiot—her idol—who until recently had feared only her General, but now feared nothing, and even felt the need to compensate herself for all the past—an idiot before whom my uncle considered it his duty to be reverent simply because she was his mother. They began by immediately proving to my uncle that he was coarse, impatient, ignorant, and, most importantly, an egoist to the highest degree. It is remarkable that the idiot-old woman herself believed what she preached. And I think Foma Fomich did, too, at least in part. They also convinced my uncle that Foma was sent to him by God himself for the salvation of his soul and the taming of his unbridled passions, that he was proud, vaunted his wealth, and was capable of begrudging Foma Fomich a piece of bread.
My poor uncle very quickly believed in the depth of his fall, was ready to tear his hair out, to beg for forgiveness… “I am to blame myself, brother,” he would say to one of his interlocutors, “I’m to blame for everything! One must be twice as delicate with a man one is obliging… that is… what am I saying! ‘Obliging’! I lied again! I am not obliging him at all; he, on the contrary, obliges me by living with me, not the other way around! And yet I begrudged him a piece of bread!… That is, I didn’t begrudge it at all, but, clearly, something just slipped out—things often slip out of my mouth… And, finally, the man has suffered, he has performed feats; for ten years, despite all insults, he cared for a sick friend: all this requires a reward! well, and finally, science… a writer! A most educated man! A most noble person—in a word…”
The image of Foma—educated and unfortunate, a buffoon to a capricious and cruel master—tore at my uncle’s noble heart with pity and indignation. All of Foma’s oddities, all his ignoble outbursts, my uncle immediately attributed to his former sufferings, his humiliation, his bitterness… he immediately decided in his tender and noble soul that one cannot demand the same from a sufferer as from an ordinary man; that not only must he be forgiven, but, moreover, his wounds must be healed with meekness, he must be restored, and reconciled with humanity. Having set this goal for himself, he became utterly inflamed and completely lost any ability whatsoever to notice that his new friend was a pleasure-loving, capricious creature, an egoist, a lazybones, a slacker—and nothing more. He believed in Foma’s learning and genius unquestioningly. I forgot to mention that my uncle reverenced the word “science” or “literature” in the most naive and selfless manner, although he himself had never studied anything. This was one of his principal and most innocent oddities.
¹ mes entrailles, mes entrailles! (Fr.) — my entrails, my entrails!
² grande dame (Fr.) — a great lady.
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