About Love and Other Stories Read online

  ‘I’ll tell you about myself. Nature implanted an unusual capacity for faith in my soul. Although I should not confess such things so late at night, I’ve spent half my life belonging to the ranks of atheists and nihilists, but there has never been a single hour of my life when I did not have faith. Talents usually manifest themselves in early childhood, and my ability showed itself then too, when I was still small enough to walk underneath the table. My mother loved her children to eat a lot, and sometimes when she was feeding me, she would say “Eat up! Soup is the most important thing in life!” I believed her and ate soup ten times a day. I wolfed it down until I felt sick and faint. Our nanny told stories, and so I believed in house spirits, in wood demons, and all kinds of other creatures. I used to steal poison from my father, sprinkle it on gingerbread, and take it up to the attic, you know, so that the house spirits would eat it and die. And when I learned to read and started to understand what I was reading, then everything really went crazy! I tried running away to America, I went off to become a robber, I asked to be taken into a monastery, and paid some lads to persecute me in the name of Christ. And my faith was always active, never dead, note. Whenever I ran off to America it was never alone, I would drag someone else along, another fool like me, and I was glad when I froze beyond the town gates and was flogged; when I ran away to become a robber I would always come back with my face all cut up. It was a troubled childhood, I can tell you! And when I was sent to the gymnasium* and they started bandying about such truths as that the earth goes round the sun, or that white is not white at all but made up of the seven colours of the rainbow, my little head started spinning! Everything went all topsy-turvy in my life: Navin who stopped the sun in the Bible, my mother who rejected lightning conductors in the name of the prophet Elijah,* and my father, who was indifferent to the truths I was discovering. My insights inspired me. Like a madman, I would walk about the house and through the stables, preaching my truths; I was horrified by the ignorance around me, and I burned with hatred for those who only saw white as white… However, all that was just childish nonsense. My serious and, as it were, manly passions started in my university years. Have you had a higher education madam?’

  ‘I was at the Mariinsky Institute* for young ladies, in Novocherkassk.’

  ‘But you haven’t had a university education? So you can’t really know what science is. All the sciences across the world share the same raison d’être: the pursuit of truth! Every single one of them, even something bizarre like pharmocognosis, * is dedicated to the pursuit of truth, not to usefulness or comfort. It’s wonderful! When you set out to study a branch of science, it is the beginning stage that astounds you most of all. Let me tell you, there is nothing more alluring or magnificent, there is nothing which can astonish or excite the human spirit like embarking on the study of science. You will be borne aloft by the brightest hopes after only the first five or six lectures, and you will feel as if you the possess the truth. I devoted myself to science as passionately and as wholeheartedly as if it was a woman I was in love with. I was a slave to science, and did not want to recognize any other source of knowledge. I studied day and night, never taking a break. I bankrupted myself buying books, and cried when I saw people exploiting scholarship for their own personal ends. But my passion did not last long. The thing is that every science has a beginning but no end, just like a recurring decimal. Zoology has discovered thirty-five thousand species of insects, and chemistry counts sixty elements. If in due course you add ten zeros to the end of these numbers, zoology and chemistry will be as far from their end as they are today, but all modern scientific work consists in the accumulation of numbers. I realized that when I discovered species number thirty-five thousand and one, and did not feel a sense of satisfaction. Well, actually I didn’t really have time to experience any disappointment, as I was soon overpowered by a new faith. I got stuck into nihilism with all its proclamations, Black Re-Partition * organizations, and other sorts of things. I went to the people, * and I worked in factories oiling machinery, then as a barge-hauler. Then, when I was wandering about old Rus, I got a taste for Russian life, and I turned into a fervent devotee of this way of living. I loved the Russian people to distraction, I loved and believed in their God, in their language and their creativity… And so on and so forth… In my time I have been a Slavophile and have bombarded Aksakov * with letters, I’ve been a Ukraine fanatic, an archaeologist, a collector of folk crafts… I have been passionate about ideas, about people, about events and places… I have been endlessly passionate! Five years ago I was enthralled with the idea of rejecting personal property; my last faith was non-resistance to evil.’ *

  Sasha let out a shuddering sigh and changed position. Likharyov got up and went over to her.

  ‘Would you like some tea, little one?’ he asked tenderly.

  ‘Drink it yourself!’ the girl replied rudely.

  Likharyov became embarrassed, and walked guiltily back to the table.

  ‘So you’ve had a rich life,’ said Ilovaiskaya. ‘You’ve got some memories there.’

  ‘Well, yes, it seems very rich when you are sitting and chatting to a kind lady over a cup of tea, but you might ask what all this richness cost me. What price did I have to pay for all this variety in my life? After all, madam, I didn’t believe like a German doctor of philosophy or some pretentious person, I did not live out in the wilderness; each faith of mine has compelled me to submit, and torn me into pieces. Judge for yourself. I was rich like my brothers, but now I am a beggar. While I was in thrall to my passions I squandered my wife’s fortune and my own–a great deal of other people’s money. I am forty-two now, and old age is round the corner, but I have nowhere to shelter; I’m like a dog that has got separated from the wagon train at night. I have never known peace in my life. My soul has never ceased to languish and I’ve suffered even when I’ve been cherishing hopes… I’ve worn myself out from doing hard labour, I’ve put up with hardships, I’ve been to prison five times and roamed across Arkhangelsk and Tobolsk * provinces… it’s painful to remember! I have lived, but in my state of intoxication I’ve never experienced the actual process of life. Believe me, I do not remember one single spring; I never noticed my wife’s affection or my children being born. What else can I tell you? I have brought unhappiness to everyone who has loved me… My mother has been mourning for me for fifteen years now, and my proud brothers, who have had to suffer for me, blush and cringe with shame, and throw money at me, have finally come to find me as abhorrent as poison.’

  Likharyov stood up and then sat down again.

  ‘If I was just unhappy I would thank God,’ he continued, not looking at Ilovaiskaya. ‘My personal unhappiness fades into the background when I remember how clumsy I have often been in my passions; how far from the truth, how unfair and cruel and dangerous I have been! How often I have hated with all my soul and despised those I should have loved, and vice versa. I have betrayed people a thousand times. One day I believe and am ready to prostrate myself, then next day I am running like a coward from my current gods and friends, and silently going along with the scoundrel who follows me close behind. God alone has seen how often I have cried and gnawed the pillow from shame over my passions. I have never once in my life deliberately lied and done evil, but my conscience is not clean! I cannot even boast, madam, that I do not have someone’s life on my conscience, as my wife, whom I wore out with my reckless ways, died in front of my eyes. Yes, my wife! Listen, we have two attitudes to women which predominate these days. Some people measure female skulls in order to prove that women are inferior to men; they seek out their faults so as to mock them, then they try to be clever in front of them and so justify their own beastliness. The others try with all their might to raise women to their level; what they do is make them study the thirty-five thousand species, and then get them to mouth and write the inanities they themselves mouth and write…’

  Likharyov’s face darkened.

  ‘And I’ll tell you, women hav
e always been and will always be slaves to men,’ he said in his bass voice, striking the table with his fist. ‘A woman is a soft, delicate piece of wax from which man will make whatever he wants. Goodness me, for a man’s worthless passion a woman will be ready to cut her hair off, abandon her family, and die abroad… And among the ideas for which she will sacrifice herself there will not be one that she can call her own! She will be a selfless, devoted slave! I have not measured skulls, but I’m telling you this on the basis of my own hard and bitter experience. If I have managed to inspire them, the proudest and most independent women have followed me without a moment’s thought, asking no questions and doing everything I have wanted; there was a nun who I turned into a nihilist, who I later heard went and shot a policeman; my wife never left me in my wanderings for a minute, and changed her faith like a weather-vane whenever I changed mine.’

  Likharyov leapt up and started walking round the room.

  ‘Sublime, noble slavery!’ he said, clasping his hands together. ‘That is where the lofty meaning of female life lies! From the terrible muddle which has piled up in my head over the course of my relationships with women, it is not ideas, clever words, or philosophy that have remained intact in my memory, as if caught in a filter, but that extraordinary submissiveness to fate, that unbelievable charity and readiness to forgive…’

  Likharyov clenched his fists, stared straight ahead of him, and then, with a kind of passionate intensity, as if he was chewing over every word, he said through clenched teeth:

  ‘That… that magnanimous readiness to endure and remain true to the grave, all that poetry of the heart… The meaning of life lies precisely in that submissive martyrdom, in those tears which can soften stone, in that boundless, all-forgiving love which brings light and warmth into the chaos of life…’

  Ilovaiskaya stood up slowly, took a step towards Likharyov, and fixed her eyes on his face. She could tell from the tears which shone on his eyelashes, from his tremulous, passionate voice and his flushed cheeks, that women were not an accidental or a casual topic of conversation. They were the subject of his new passion, or, as he himself put it, his new faith! For the first time in her life Ilovaiskaya saw before her a person of ardent, passionate faith. He seemed completely mad and deranged to her as he gesticulated, his eyes sparkling, but she felt so much beauty in the fire of his eyes, in his speech, and in the movements of his large body that she stood rooted to the spot before him without even realizing it, and was gazing into his face with rapture.

  ‘Just consider my mother!’ he said, stretching out his hands to her with an expression of entreaty on his face. ‘I have poisoned her existence, and brought disgrace on the Likharyov family in her eyes; I have caused her the kind of harm that only the bitterest of enemies could cause, and what do you think? My brothers give her a few kopecks for prayers in church, and she violates her religious principles, saves up this money, and sends it secretly to her dissolute Grigory! That one detail alone nourishes and ennobles the soul more than theories, clever words, and thirty-five thousand species! I can give you a thousand examples. Well, let’s take you! There is a blizzard outside, it’s night, and you are travelling to see your brother and father in order to warm them up with some affection on the holiday, although they are perhaps not thinking about you, and may have even forgotten about you. And in a while, when you fall in love with someone, you will follow him to the North Pole. You will, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes, if… I fall in love.’

  ‘There you are, you see!’ Likharyov exclaimed joyfully, and he even stamped his foot. ‘Goodness me, I’m so glad I have made your acquaintance! Fate is so kind to me; I keep meeting wonderful people. Never a day passes without me making the acquaintance of someone I would give my life for. There are many more good people in the world than bad ones. Isn’t it amazing that we are being so open with each other, talking heart to heart as if we have known each other a hundred years? Let me tell you, sometimes you can hold out for about ten years, you can keep quiet and be secretive with your friends and your wife, but then you might meet some cadet in a train carriage and pour out your soul to him. I have the honour of seeing you for the first time in my life, and I have unburdened my soul to you the way I have never done in my life before. How can that be?’

  Rubbing his hands together and smiling broadly, Likharyov walked up and down the room and started talking about women again. Just then the bell started ringing for the early morning service.

  ‘Honestly!’ exclaimed Sasha, bursting out crying, ‘He won’t let me sleep with his talking!’

  ‘Ah, yes!’ said Likharyov, recollecting himself. ‘I’m sorry, my love. Go to sleep, go to sleep… Apart from her, I’ve got two boys,’ he whispered. ‘They live with their uncle, madam, but this one can’t spend a day apart from her father. She suffers and grumbles and clings to me like flies stick to honey. But I’ve chuntered on, madam, and it would not be a bad thing for you to get some rest. May I make up a bed for you?’

  Without waiting to be granted permission, he shook her wet mantle and stretched it out on the bench, fur side up, then gathered the scarves and shawls that had been discarded and put her rolled-up coat as a pillow at the head, doing all this silently, with an expression of beatitude on his face, as if he was dealing not with a woman’s clothes but with fragments of holy relics. There was something guilty and sheepish about his whole person, as if he was ashamed of his height and strength in the presence of such a frail creature…

  When Ilovaiskaya had lain down, he extinguished the candle and sat on a stool near the stove.

  ‘So there you are, madam,’ he whispered, as he lit a thick Russian cigarette and let its smoke be drawn into the stove. ‘Nature has given Russian people an extraordinary capacity for faith, a questing mind, and a gift for abstraction, but when it comes up against carelessness, indolence, and impractical frivolity everything turns to dust… Ah yes…’

  Ilovaiskaya looked into the darkness in surprise and could see only the red patch on the icon and the light from the stove flickering on Likharyov’s face. The darkness, the sound of the bell ringing, the howl of the snowstorm, the lame boy, the petulant Sasha, and his long speech—all of these things became mixed up, fusing into one enormous impression, and God’s world seemed fantastic to her, full of wonder and enchantment. What she had just heard was still ringing in her ears, and human life seemed to her to be a beautiful, poetic tale which had no end.

  The enormous impression grew and grew, filling her consciousness, and then it turned into a sweet dream. But while Ilovaiskaya slept, she could still see the icon lamp and the fat nose with the red light dancing on it.

  She heard crying.

  ‘Dearest papa,’ the child’s voice was pleading tenderly. ‘Let’s go back to Uncle’s! There’s a Christmas tree there! And Styopa and Kolya are there!’

  ‘What can I do, sweetheart?’ replied the soft male bass voice, in an attempt to convince. ‘You must understand my position! You must!’

  And then the man’s crying joined in with the child’s. This voice of human sorrow amongst the howl of the storm graced the young woman’s hearing with such sweet human music that the pleasure of listening to it was too exquisite, and she also started crying. She then saw a large black shadow coming quietly over to her, picking up a shawl which had fallen to the floor and wrapping it around her feet.

  A strange howl awakened Ilovaiskaya. She jumped up and looked around in surprise. The blue light of dawn was appearing through the windows, which were half covered up with snow. The stove, the sleeping girl, and Shah Nasreddin were clearly visible in the grey twilight which hung in the room. The stove and the icon lamp had already gone out. Through the wide-open door you could see the main room of the inn, the counter and tables. A man with a vacant-looking gypsy face and a startled expression was standing in the middle of the room in a puddle of melted snow, holding a large red star on a pole. * He was surrounded by a crowd of little boys as motionless as statues, who were all en
crusted with snow. The light of the star, shining through the red paper, was making their damp faces red. The crowd was roaring out a folk carol, though Ilovaiskaya could only distinguish one verse in the din:

  ‘Hey you, little boy

  Take a little knife

  We’ll kill the Jew

  The sorrowful son…’ *

  Likharyov was standing near the counter, looking with emotion at the singers and tapping his foot in time with the music. When he caught sight of Ilovaiskaya he grinned from ear to ear and went up to her. She also smiled.

  ‘Happy Christmas!’ he said. ‘I could see you were fast asleep.’

  Ilovaiskaya looked at him, did not say anything, and continued smiling.

  After the night-time conversations he no longer seemed tall and broad-shouldered, but small, in the way that an enormous ship seems small after it has crossed the ocean.

  ‘Well, I need to be going,’ she said. ‘I must get dressed. Tell me, where is it you are headed now?’

  ‘Me? I’m going to Klinushka Station, from there to Sergievo, and from Sergievo twenty-five miles by carriage to some fool’s coal-mines,* a general called Shashkovsky. My brothers have found a managerial job there for me… I’m going to go digging for coal.’

  ‘Oh, I know those coal-mines. Shashkovsky is my uncle. But… why are you going there?’ asked Ilovaiskaya, looking at Likharyov in surprise.

  ‘To be a manager. I’m going to run the mines.’

  ‘I don’t understand!’ said Ilovaiskaya, shrugging her shoulders. ‘You are going to the mines? But it’s just bare steppe there, it’s deserted, and so boring you won’t last a day! The coal is useless, no one buys it, and my uncle is a maniac, a despot, he’s bankrupt… You won’t be paid!’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Likharyov indifferently. ‘But thanks for letting me know about the mines.’

  Ilovaiskaya shrugged her shoulders and walked anxiously around the room.