About Love and Other Stories Page 13

  ‘It’s a nice, fine, healthy business to be in,’ thought Kovrin, ‘but there are passions and wars raging here too. I suppose people with ideas are always neurotic, whatever sphere they are in, and it is oversensitivity which makes them stand out. It needs to be that way probably.’

  He thought about Tanya, who had liked Yegor Semyonich’s articles so much. Small, pale, and so scrawny you could see her shoulder-blades; wide-open, dark, intelligent eyes, always darting about, looking for something; a hurried, quick walking pace like her father’s. She talked a lot and loved arguing, and she accompanied even the most insignificant phrase with expressive movements and gestures. She had to be extremely neurotic.

  Kovrin read some more, but he did not understand anything so he put the articles down. The pleasant feeling of excitement he had experienced dancing the mazurka and listening to the music had now begun to tire him, and was stimulating many thoughts in his head. He got up and started walking about the room, thinking about the black monk. It occurred to him that if he was the only one to have seen the strange, supernatural monk, he must be ill, and was already having hallucinations. This realization frightened him, but not for long.

  ‘But I feel well, and I’m not harming anybody, so there cannot be anything bad about my hallucinations,’ he thought, starting to feel better again.

  He sat on the couch and clasped his head in his hands, trying to contain the unfathomable joy filling his entire being, then paced about again before sitting down to work. But the ideas in the book he was reading did not satisfy him. He wanted something massive, uncontainable, earth-shattering. Towards morning he undressed and reluctantly got into bed: he really did need to get some sleep!

  When he heard Yegor Semyonich walking down to the gardens, Kovrin rang and ordered the servant to bring him some wine. He drank a few glasses of Lafite with relish, then tucked himself up; his thoughts became foggy and he fell asleep.

  IV

  Yegor Semyonich and Tanya frequently fought and said unpleasant things to each other.

  One morning they started quarrelling about something. Tanya started crying and went up to her room. She did not come down for lunch or for tea. To begin with, Yegor Semyonich walked about feeling self-righteous and peeved, as if to show that justice and order were the most important things in the world, but he could not keep it up and became miserable. He wandered dolefully about the park, constantly sighing and saying ‘Oh heavens, heavens!’, and did not have even a scrap to eat at lunch. Finally, feeling guilty and tormented by his conscience, he knocked at the locked door and called out timidly:

  ‘Tanya! Tanya!’

  And from behind the door, a faint but also firm voice worn out from crying answered:

  ‘Just leave me alone!’

  The Pesotskys’ misery was felt by the whole household, even by the people working in the gardens. Kovrin was immersed in his interesting work, but eventually he too started to feel uncomfortable and off-colour. In order to try and defuse the general bad mood, he decided to intervene and went to knock on Tanya’s door before evening fell. He was let in.

  ‘Now, now, this won’t do!’ he started saying jovially as he looked in surprise at Tanya’s sorrowful, tear-stained face, covered with red blotches. ‘Surely it’s not that serious? Dear, dear!’

  ‘But if you knew how he torments me!’ she said, and tears, hot, copious tears, splashed from her large eyes. ‘He’s driven me insane!’ she continued, wringing her hands. ‘I didn’t say anything to him… anything… I just said that there was no need to keep on… extra people, if… when you need to, you can hire casual labour. I mean those workmen have not done anything for a whole week now… That… that was all I said, and he flew off the handle and said a lot of hurtful and… deeply insulting things to me. What did I do?’

  ‘Come on, stop now,’ said Kovrin, as he straightened her hair. ‘You’ve quarrelled, you’ve cried, and that’s enough. You shouldn’t stay angry for a long time, it’s not good… particularly since he loves you.’

  ‘He… he has ruined my whole life,’ Tanya continued, between sobs. ‘All I hear from him are insults and… and complaints. He doesn’t have any need for me here. And you know what? He is right. I’m going to leave tomorrow and go and work in the telegraph office… So be it…’

  ‘Hey, come on now… There is no need to cry, Tanya. There really isn’t, my dearest… You are both hot-tempered and irritable and you are both in the wrong. Come on, let’s go; I’m going to get you to make up.’

  Kovrin spoke gently and convincingly, but she continued to cry, wringing her hands as if some terrible misfortune really had befallen her, her shoulders shaking convulsively. He felt all the more sorry for her, since the cause of her pain was not serious, but she was suffering deeply. What trivial incidents were enough to make this creature unhappy for a whole day, and perhaps her whole life! As he comforted Tanya, Kovrin thought that apart from this girl and her father, he would have to hunt high and low to find people who would love him as if he were family; he had lost his mother and father in early childhood, and if it were not for these two people, he might have lived his entire life without knowing true affection and that naive, unconditional love which you only feel for people very close to you, to whom you are related. And he felt that his highly strung and half-diseased nerves were responding to the nerves of this tearful, trembling girl like iron filings are drawn towards a magnet. He could never learn to love a strong, healthy, rosy-cheeked woman now, but he was attracted to frail, ashen-faced, unhappy Tanya.

  And so he took pleasure in stroking her hair and her shoulders, holding her hands and wiping away her tears… Eventually she stopped crying. She continued to complain for a long time about her father and about her hard, unbearable life in the house, beseeching Kovrin to see things from her point of view; then little by little she started to smile and to sigh, saying that God had given her a bad personality, and then finally she burst out laughing loudly and called herself a fool, and went running out of the room.

  When Kovrin went out into the garden a little later, he found Yegor Semyonich and Tanya walking side by side down the path as if nothing had happened; they were eating rye bread and salt, since they were both hungry.

  V

  Happy to have been so successful in the role of peacemaker, Kovrin set off for the park. As he was sitting on the bench thinking, he heard the noise of carriages and women’s laughter–guests had arrived. When the evening shadows started settling in the gardens, the sounds of a violin and voices singing could be heard faintly, and he was reminded of the black monk. In what country or planet was that optical illusion travelling now?

  He had only just remembered the legend and was sketching in his mind the dark spectre he had seen in the rye field, when from behind a pine tree, right opposite him, emerged silently, without the slightest rustle, a man of medium height, with his grey hair uncovered; he was dressed all in black and was barefoot like a beggar, and his black eyebrows were sharply etched on his pallid, almost deathly face. Nodding his head in greeting, this beggar or wanderer came silently up to the bench and sat down, and Kovrin recognized him as the black monk. They looked at each other for a minute–Kovrin in astonishment, and the monk with a mixture of affection and archness, as before, and a guarded expression.

  ‘But you are a mirage,’ said Kovrin. ‘How can you be here, sitting in one place? That doesn’t fit with the legend.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter,’ the monk replied slowly in a quiet voice as he turned to face him. ‘The legend, the mirage, and I are all products of your heightened imagination. I am a ghost.’

  ‘So you don’t exist?’ asked Kovrin.

  ‘Think what you like,’ said the monk, smiling wanly. ‘I exist in your imagination, and your imagination is a part of nature, so that must mean I also exist in nature.’

  ‘You have a very old, intelligent, highly expressive face, just as if you really have lived for more than a thousand years,’ said Kovrin. ‘I was not aware t
hat my imagination was capable of creating such phenomena. But why are you looking at me with such delight? Do you like me?’

  ‘I do. You are one of the few people who can genuinely be called one of God’s chosen people. You serve eternal truth. Your thoughts and intentions, your astounding scholarship and your whole life have a heavenly, celestial bearing, since they are dedicated to all that is rational and beautiful, that is, everything which is eternal.’

  ‘You said “eternal truth”… But is eternal truth accessible to people or necessary to them if there is no such thing as eternal life?’

  ‘There is eternal life,’ said the monk.

  ‘Do you believe people are immortal?’

  ‘Yes, of course. A great and dazzling future awaits all of you people. And the more people there are like you on earth, the sooner that future will materialize. Mankind would be nothing without those of you who serve the highest ideals, living consciously and freely; if mankind followed its natural course it would have to wait a long time for the culmination of its existence on earth. You are bringing mankind into the kingdom of eternal truth several thousand years ahead of time, and that is your greatest contribution. You are the incarnation of God’s blessing, which is immanent in humanity.’

  ‘But what is the goal of eternal life?’ asked Kovrin.

  ‘The experience of delight, like in any other life. True experience of delight comes from consciousness, and eternal life presents innumerable, endless sources for consciousness; that is what is meant by “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places”.’ *

  ‘If you knew how enjoyable it is to hear you speak!’ said Kovrin, rubbing his hands together with pleasure.

  ‘I am very glad.’

  ‘But I know that when you leave, I’m going to be bothered by the problem of your existence. You are a ghost, a hallucination. Does that mean I am mentally unwell and abnormal?’

  ‘Something like that. But there is nothing to be embarrassed about. You are unwell because you have worked too hard and have worn yourself out, which means you have sacrificed your health to pursuing your ideal, and the time is approaching when you will give up your whole life to it. What could be better? It is generally what all divinely gifted people strive towards.’

  ‘But can I believe in myself if I know that I am mentally ill?’

  ‘And how do you know that the brilliant people respected by all of society have also not seen ghosts? Scholars are now saying that genius is closely related to mental derangement. Only ordinary, herd-like people are healthy and normal, my friend. Ideas about neuroticism, over-exhaustion, degeneration, and so forth can only seriously worry people who live for the present–herd-like people, in other words.’

  ‘The Romans said “mens sana in corpore sano”.’ *

  ‘Not everything the Romans and the Greeks said is true. An exalted mood, excitement, ecstasy—everything which distinguishes prophets, poets, and those who martyr themselves for an ideal, from ordinary people—is inimical to a person’s animal nature, that is, his physical health. As I said before, if you want to be healthy and normal, join the herd.’

  ‘It’s strange; you are repeating ideas that often occur to me,’ said Kovrin. ‘It’s as if you looked inside me and heard my most sacred thoughts. But let’s not talk about me. What do you mean by eternal truth?’

  The monk did not reply. Kovrin looked at him and could not see his face: his features had become hazy and were evaporating. Then the monk’s head and arms started to disappear; his body merged with the bench and the evening shadows and then disappeared completely.

  ‘The hallucination is over!’ said Kovrin with a laugh. ‘What a pity.’

  He went back to the house, feeling happy and in good spirits. What little the black monk had said to him did not flatter his vanity, but rather his whole soul, and his whole being. What a noble, wonderful destiny to be one of the elect, to serve eternal truth, and to be one of those who will make mankind worthy of the kingdom of God a couple of thousand years ahead of schedule, in other words to deliver people from several thousand unnecessary years of struggle, sin, and suffering, to sacrifice everything—youth, strength, and health—for the ideal and be prepared to die for the common good! His past life—uncorrupted, sensible, and full of hard work—flashed through his memory; he remembered what he had learnt and what he himself had taught others, and decided that there had not been any exaggeration in what the monk had said.

  Tanya was walking towards him in the park. She was wearing a different dress.

  ‘So this is where you are!’ she said. ‘We’ve been looking for you all over the place… But what’s going on?’ she asked in surprise, seeing his glowing, thrilled expression and his eyes full of tears. ‘You’re very strange, Andryusha.’

  ‘I’m very contented, Tanya,’ said Kovrin, placing his hands on her shoulders. ‘I’m more than contented, I’m happy! Tanya, dearest Tanya, you are an extraordinarily lovely creature. Dearest Tanya, I’m so happy, so happy!’

  He kissed both her hands warmly and then continued: ‘I have just had a radiant, miraculous, unearthly experience. But I cannot tell you everything, because you will think I am mad, or you just won’t believe me. Let’s talk about you. Dearest, wonderful Tanya! I do love you, and I’ve already grown used to loving you. Being near you and meeting you ten times a day has become necessary to my soul. I don’t know how I will manage without you when I go home.’

  ‘Well! I think you will have forgotten about us in about two days!’ said Tanya laughing. ‘We are humble folk, but you are a great man.’

  ‘No, come on, let’s be serious!’ he said. ‘I’ll take you with me, Tanya. Will you say yes? Will you come with me? Will you be mine?’

  ‘Well!’ said Tanya; she wanted to laugh again, but the laughter did not come and red blotches appeared on her face instead.

  She started breathing rapidly and then walked off very quickly, not towards the house, but further away into the park.

  ‘I haven’t thought about that… I just haven’t thought about it!’ she said, wringing her hands as if in despair.

  Kovrin walked behind her and said with the same radiant, thrilled expression:

  ‘I want a love which will envelop me completely, and only you can give me a love like that, Tanya. I am happy! I am so happy!’

  She was stunned; she seemed to stoop and shrivel up as if she had suddenly aged about ten years, but he found her beautiful and expressed his joy loudly: ‘How lovely she is!’

  VI

  When he found out from Kovrin that not only had a romance begun, but that there would be a wedding, Yegor Semyonich spent a long time walking up and down trying to conceal how agitated he was. His hands started to shake, his neck swelled and turned crimson, and eventually he ordered the racing trap to be harnessed and drove off somewhere. Watching him whip the horses and pull his cap almost right down over his ears, Tanya immediately understood what he was going through, and she went and locked herself up in her room and cried the whole day.

  The peaches and plums had already ripened in the conservatories, and the packing and sending off to Moscow of this soft and fragile load required a great deal of attention, hard work, and trouble. Because the summer had been very hot and dry, every tree had needed watering; much time and energy had been devoted to it, and then hundreds of caterpillars appeared, which the gardeners and even Yegor Semyonich and Tanya squashed between their fingers, to Kovrin’s great distaste. And while all this was going on it was necessary to take orders for fruit and trees to be delivered in the autumn and deal with a voluminous correspondence. And at the most pressured time, when it seemed that no one had a minute free, the work in the fields began, and took away more than half the workforce from the gardens; deeply sunburned, worn out, and irritable, Yegor Semyonich kept racing from the gardens to the fields, yelling that he was being torn into pieces and was going to end up shooting himself.

  And then there was the business with the dowry, which the Pesotskys
attached a good deal of significance to; the snipping of scissors, the whirring of sewing machines, the fumes from hot irons, and the whims of the dressmaker, a touchy, nervous lady, all made everyone’s head spin. And then, just to make life even merrier, there were visits every day from guests who had to be entertained, fed, and even put up for the night. But all these dreadful labours went by unnoticed, as if in a fog. Tanya felt as though love and happiness had caught her unawares, although she had for some reason been sure from the age of fourteen that she would be the one that Kovrin would marry. She was astounded, confused, and unsure of herself… One minute she would experience such a surge of joy that she wanted to fly up to heaven and pray to God, while the next she would suddenly remember that in August she would have to leave her family home and be parted from her father; and then, from heaven knows where, would come the idea that she was insignificant, shallow, and unworthy of a great man like Kovrin, and she would go to her room, lock the door, and cry bitterly for hours on end. When they had guests she would suddenly start thinking that Kovrin was extraordinarily handsome, that every woman was in love with him and was envious of her, and she would be filled with pride and pleasure, as if she had conquered the whole of society, but he just had to smile politely to a lady for her to tremble with jealousy, go off to her room, and start crying again. These new feelings took complete control of her, so she helped her father mechanically and did not notice the peaches or the caterpillars, or the gardeners, or how quickly time was passing.

  There was something very similar going on with Yegor Semyonich. He worked from morning till night, was always hurrying off somewhere, losing his temper and getting annoyed, but it all happened in a kind of enchanted dreamlike state. It was as if there were two people inside him: one was the real Yegor Semyonich, who would get angry when Ivan Karlych the gardener told him about things that had gone wrong and would clutch his head in despair, and then there was the other one who was not real, who would break off a conversation at work in mid-sentence, put his hand on the gardener’s shoulder, and start mumbling as if he was half-drunk: