Humiliated and Insulted Read online

  “Why you look at me with so much attention?” he shouted men­acingly, in his shrill, penetrating German.

  But his adversary remained quite silent, as though he had not understood or even heard the question. Adam Ivanych decided to switch to Russian.

  “I have you asked, why you look upon me with so much attention?” he yelled with redoubled rage. “I am at Court known and you are not at Court known!” he added, jumping to his feet.

  But the old man didn’t turn a hair. A murmur of indignation rose from the ranks of the Germans. Attracted by the commotion, Müller himself appeared. Having ascertained what the trouble was, and thinking the old man was deaf, he put his mouth close to his ear.

  “Herr Schulz have asked you with consideration not to look so upon him,” he said as loudly as possible, looking hard at the inscrutable visitor.

  The old man glanced listlessly at Müller, and his features, which had remained immobile till then, suddenly betrayed signs of some inner alarm, some acute anxiety. He became agitated, bent down with a croak to pick up his hat, snatched it up hurriedly together with his stick, and rising from the chair with a pathetic smile – the pathetic smile of a beggar who is being evicted from the spot he has occupied in error – prepared to leave the room. The old man’s humble readiness to oblige was somehow so pitiful, so distressing, that the whole company, headed by Adam Ivanych, immediately underwent a collective change of heart. It was clear that the old man was not only not out to offend anyone, but was himself only too aware that he could be thrown out of any establishment, being a beggar.

  Müller was a kind and compassionate man.

  “No, no,” he said, patting him consolingly on the back, “do not get up! Aber** Herr Schulz asked very much for you not to look upon him with so much attention. He is at Court known.”

  But the poor wretch still failed to understand. He began to fuss even more, bent down to pick up his handkerchief, an old blue rag full of holes which had fallen out of his hat, and began to speak to his dog, which was lying motionless on the floor, its muzzle between its paws, apparently fast asleep.

  “Azorka, Azorka!” he mumbled in his tremulous elderly voice, “Azorka!”

  Azorka did not move.

  “Azorka, Azorka!” the old man repeated despondently, prodding the dog with his stick. The animal did not stir.

  The stick fell from the old man’s grasp. He bent over, knelt down and took Azorka’s head in his hands, lifting it slightly. Poor Azorka! The dog was dead. It had died without a sound at its master’s feet, perhaps of old age, perhaps of hunger. The old man gazed down at it for a minute or so as though thunderstruck, unable to comprehend that Azorka was dead; then bending down over his former servant and friend, he pressed his sallow face up against the dead creature’s muzzle. There was a minute’s silence. We were all moved. After a time the poor devil rose to his feet. He was very pale, and trembling all over as if he were having an attack of the shakes.

  “We can make a stuffing,” the compassionate Müller said, breaking the silence and wishing to give the old man whatever comfort he could. (He meant the animal could be stuffed.) “We can make a good stuffing. Fyodor Karlovich Krüger makes good stuffings. Fyodor Karlovich Krüger is a Master Stuffer.” Müller picked up the old man’s stick from the floor and passed it to him.

  “Yes, I make excellent stuffing,” Herr Krüger himself now spoke up modestly, stepping forwards into the limelight. He was a tall, gaunt, kindly-looking man with uneven tufts of ginger hair, wearing a pair of glasses on his aquiline nose.

  “Fyodor Karlovich Krüger has big talent to make every kind of excellent stuffing,” Müller added, getting more and more excited by the idea.

  “Yes, I have big talent to make every kind of excellent stuffing,” Herr Krüger again confirmed. “And,” he added in an outburst of exuberant generosity, “I will make a stuffing from your dog for nothing.”

  “No, I will pay everything for you making this stuffing!” Adam Ivanych Schulz cried out, his face getting redder and redder, and also overcome by the occasion, in the genuine belief that he was the cause of the whole calamity.

  The old man obviously understood nothing of all this, and continued to shake in every limb.

  “Moment! Drink ein Glas* good brandy!” Müller exclaimed, real­izing that the mysterious visitor was about to depart.

  The brandy was brought. The old man reached out listlessly for the glass, but his hands were unsteady, and before he had brought it to his lips he had spilt a good half of it. Without drinking a drop, he put it back on the tray. Then, smiling awkwardly and quite inappropriately, he left the coffee house with hurried uneven steps, leaving Azorka behind. Everyone was dumbfounded; then there were one or two exclamations.

  “Schwernot! Was für eine Geschichte!”* the Germans said, looking at one another in astonishment.

  I dashed out after the old man. A few yards to the right of the coffee house was a dark narrow side street with huge houses on each side. Something told me the old man had turned down that street. The second house on the right was still under construction and was covered in scaffolding. An enclosing fence jutted out almost into the middle of the street, and wooden planks had been laid down alongside it for the convenience of pedestrians. I found the old man in a dark corner between the house and the fence. He was sitting on a step which led to the wooden walkway, head in hands, elbows resting on his knees. I sat down next to him.

  “Listen,” I said, hardly knowing how to begin, “don’t be upset about Azorka. Come now, let me take you home. Don’t worry. I’ll get a cab. Where do you live?”

  The old man made no reply. I was rather at a loss to know what to do. There were no passers-by. Suddenly he started tugging at my arm.

  “Air!” he croaked in a barely audible voice. “Air!”

  “Let me take you home!” I exclaimed, getting up and trying to raise him to his feet. “You can have some tea and go to bed… Just let me get a cab – we’ll be there in no time. I’ll call a doctor… There’s one I know…”

  I can’t remember what else I said to him. He made as if to stand up, but after a slight effort collapsed again on the ground and once more started mumbling something in the same croaky, breathless voice. I bent down closer to listen.

  “Vasìlevsky,”* the old man wheezed, “Sixth… Sixth Lane…”

  He fell silent.

  “You live on Vasìlevsky Island? But you were going the wrong way. It’s to the left from here, not the right. I’ll take you.”

  The old man did not move. I reached for his hand; it was limp and lifeless. I looked into his face, then touched it. He was dead. It seemed like a bad dream.

  This whole episode disturbed me greatly – though by the end of it my fever had been shaken off. I discovered where the old man had lived. It wasn’t on Vasìlevsky Island, however, but just a few yards from where he had died, in a house belonging to a man named Klugen, on the fourth floor right under the eaves, in a self-contained garret consisting of a small hallway and one large room with a very low ceiling and three slits that passed for windows. He had lived in extreme poverty. The furniture consisted of a table, two chairs and an old settee, hard as a rock, with tufts of horsehair sticking out of it – all of it belonging to the landlord. The stove looked as if it hadn’t been lit for ages, nor were there any candles about. I’m strongly inclined to think now that the old man had gone to sit at Müller’s simply for light and warmth. On the table there was an empty earthenware jug and a stale crust of bread. As for money, not a kopeck could be found. There wasn’t even a change of underwear – someone donated one of his own shirts to bury him in. It was clear he couldn’t have survived like this completely on his own, and someone had probably been visiting him from time to time, albeit infrequently. In the table drawer we came across his passport. It turned out the dead man was of foreign descent, but a Russian subject – one Jeremiah Sm
ith, an engineer, aged seventy-eight. On the table lay two books: an elementary geography course and a New Testament in Russian, full of pencilled annotations in the margins and words underscored with thumbnail marks. I kept these for myself. The tenants and the landlord were questioned, but no one really knew anything about the deceased. Lots of people lodged in the building, almost all either artisans or German housewives subletting serviced accommodation with full board. The manager of the house, a well-spoken man, couldn’t say much about his former tenant either, except that the garret had been let to him at six roubles a month, and that he had lived in it for four months but hadn’t paid a kopeck for the last two, with the result that he had been given notice to move out. No one could answer clearly whether anyone came to see him. The house was large – any number of people could pass through such a Noah’s Ark of a place, one couldn’t keep track of them all. The caretaker, who had worked there for the past five years and might have shed some light on the matter, had gone home on holiday a fortnight earlier, leaving his nephew to stand in for him, a young lad who hadn’t yet got to know even half the tenants personally. I’m not sure what the upshot of all these enquiries was, but eventually the old man was buried. In the intervening days I managed amongst other things to make a visit to Sixth Lane on Vasìlevsky Island. It was only when I got there that it struck me as ridiculous that I should have expected to find anything but a row of ordinary houses! But why on earth, I wondered, had the old man mentioned Sixth Lane on Vasìlevsky Island when he was dying? Had he been raving?

  I inspected Smith’s empty garret and decided I liked it. So I took it. The main thing, the room was large, though its ceiling was so low that at first it seemed I’d always be bumping my head against it. But I soon got used to it. After all, what could one expect for six roubles a month? I liked the fact that it was self-contained; all that remained was to find some daily help because I wouldn’t be able to cope by myself. The caretaker promised to look in at least once a day, if only to begin with, to give me a hand in case I needed something urgently. And who knows, I thought to myself – perhaps someone might come to enquire after the old man? However, five days after his death still no one had come.

  2

  At that time, a year ago, I was still writing short articles for journals, firmly convinced that eventually I’d manage to turn out something substantial and successful. I was also working on a long novel – but as it happens, I’ve ended up in hospital, and shall probably soon be dead. So if I am going to die soon, I ask myself, why should I bother to write anything at all?

  I cannot stop myself constantly recalling the whole of that difficult past year in my life. I want to record everything now, and if I had not devised this occupation for myself I think I’d have died of misery. All these impressions from the past sometimes afflict me painfully, to the point of torment. But once they’ve been written down, they will take on a calmer, more orderly aspect; they will be less of a delirium and a nightmare to me. At least I believe so. The act of writing itself is such a relief. It will relax and calm me down, revive my writer’s instincts, transform my memories and feverish imaginings into something tangible, a task accomplished… Yes, it’s a splendid idea. Besides, I could always bequeath my notes to my doctor – who, if the worst came to the worst, could use them in winter to seal the cracks in his windows.

  However, for some reason I’ve started my story in the middle. If I’m going to continue, I should begin again at the beginning. Yes, I’ll do that. First, some details about myself.

  I wasn’t born locally, but far from here, in the district of ***. I’ve no reason to doubt that my parents were good people, but I was left an orphan at an early age, and brought up in the home of Nikolai Sergeich Ikhmenev, a small landowner who took me in out of compassion. He had one daughter, Natasha, who was three years younger than me. We grew up together as brother and sister. Oh, my glorious childhood! How futile it is to yearn for its return at the age of twenty-four, and to have nothing else to recall with gratitude and exhilaration on one’s deathbed! The sun shone so brightly then, so unlike what we see in the St Petersburg sky of today, and our young hearts beat with such vigour, such joy! We were surrounded by fields and forests then, not these lifeless piles of stone. There was such a wonderful park and orchard on Vasilevskoye Estate, where Nikolai Sergeich was steward! Natasha and I used to go for walks in the orchard, and beyond that there was a vast dank forest, where we once got lost… Unforgettable, golden days! Life was just beginning to assert itself, mysteriously and alluringly – and it was a sweet experience. It seemed then that behind every bush, every tree, some mysterious and unknowable being lurked; the fairy-tale world merged into the real one, and when the evening mist thickened in the deep valleys and its grey, sinuous wisps reached out towards the brambles clinging to the rocky ridges of our great gorge, Natasha and I would stand hand in hand on the edge, peering with bated breath into the depths, expecting at any moment to see someone emerge or call out to us from the mist at the bottom and turn our nursery stories into manifest reality. Once, much later, I reminded Natasha how on one occasion someone had given us a copy of The Children’s Reader,* and we had immediately dashed into the orchard to our favourite green bench, under the thick canopy of an old maple tree by the pond, and sat down together to read the magical tale of Alphonse and Dalinda. Even now, every time I think of this story my heart misses a beat, and when about a year ago I happened to remind Natasha of the first two lines, “Alphonse, the hero of my tale, was born in Portugal; Don Ramiro, his father…” and so on, I nearly burst into tears. I’m afraid it was very silly of me, which is probably why Natasha smiled so awkwardly at my display of emotion. Of course, she immediately checked herself – I remember that – and to comfort me started to reminisce too. Little by little she entered into the spirit of it. What a glorious evening that was! We went back over everything, from the time I was sent to boarding school in the provincial capital – God, how she wept then! – to our last farewell, when I was taking my leave of Vasilevskoye for ever. I had left boarding school and was about to set off for St Petersburg to prepare myself for university. I was seventeen at the time, and Natasha had just turned fourteen. I was so clumsy and ungainly, she said, that it was impossible for anyone to keep a straight face when they saw me. When the time came to say goodbye, I took her aside to say something very important to her, but became suddenly tongue-tied. Natasha remembered that I had been very agitated. Needless to say, our conversation floundered. I didn’t know what to say, and she probably wouldn’t have understood me anyway. I just burst into tears, and left without saying anything more. We met again, much later, in St Petersburg. That was two years ago. Ikhmenev had arrived on some business connected with his lawsuit, and I’d just managed to get myself into print.

  3

  Nikolai sergeich ikhmenev came of a good family which had long since been reduced to poverty. However, after his parents’ death he came into possession of a sizeable piece of property with some hundred and fifty souls.* At about the age of twenty he decided to enlist in the Hussars. Everything went well until one disastrous evening in the sixth year of his commission when he gambled away his whole fortune at cards. He didn’t sleep that night. The next evening he again turned up at the gaming table and staked his horse – his last possession – on one card. He won, then a second time, then a third, and half an hour later he had recouped one of his hamlets, Ikhmenevka, an estate which at the last census had numbered some fifty souls. He decided to cut his losses, and the very next day resigned his commission. He was irretrievably poorer by a hundred souls. Two months later he was discharged with the rank of lieutenant, and retired to his country seat. Never again in his life did he speak of his gambling loss and, despite his good humour – for which he was well known – he would undoubtedly have had a row with anyone who dared to remind him of it. Once in the country, he settled there to run his estate assiduously, and at the age of thirty-five married Anna Andreyevna Shumilova, a co
mpletely dowryless daughter of a titled but impoverished family, who had nevertheless managed to send her to a provincial finishing school for young ladies run by a French émigrée, Mme Mont-Revechet – something that Anna Andreyevna was proud of all her life, though no one could ascertain what she had actually learnt there. Nikolai Sergeich managed his estate with consummate skill. Other landowners in the neighbourhood learnt from his example. Some years had passed when quite unexpectedly the adjoining estate, Vasilevskoye, which numbered nine hundred souls, saw the arrival of its owner from St Petersburg, one Prince Pyotr Alexandrovich Valkovsky. This caused quite a stir in the neighbourhood. The Prince, though not in the first flush of youth, was still a comparatively young man, of significant rank in government service, well-connected, handsome, wealthy and, last but not least, a widower – something calculated to excite the interest of every lady in the district. Stories were told for a long time of the magnificent reception organized in the provincial capital on his behalf by the Governor, to whom he was distantly related; of how all the ladies in the district “simply swooned at his compliments”, and so on and so forth. In short, the newcomer was one of those brilliant representatives of St Petersburg high society who seldom venture into the provinces, but who create a stunning effect when they do. That said, he was anything but gracious, especially towards those who could be of no use to him, or those whom he considered to be even slightly beneath him. He did not deem it necessary to introduce himself to the neighbouring landowners, which at once made him numerous enemies. Consequently, it was a matter of no small surprise when he suddenly decided to pay a visit to Nikolai Sergeich, one of his closest neighbours. At the Ikhmenevs’ the Prince caused something of a sensation. He immediately charmed both husband and wife, Anna Andreyevna being especially taken with him. Very soon he was on intimate terms with them, paying a visit every day, inviting them to his home, bursting with witticisms, telling anecdotes, playing their rickety old piano and singing songs. The Ikhmenevs simply couldn’t imagine how such an agreeable and charming person could possibly have been described as a haughty, arrogant, callous egoist – the unanimous view of his other neighbours. One must assume that the Prince was genuinely fond of Nikolai Sergeich, who was as straightforward, honest, selfless and honourable a man as one could ever wish to meet. Soon all became clear. The Prince had come to Vasilevskoye in order to dismiss the steward of his estate, an ambitious German agronomist, greying handsomely at the temples, with an aquiline nose and spectacles, but despite these distinguished features a devious character and a shameless thief, who to cap it all had tortured several peasants to death. Ivan Karlovich was finally caught red-handed in some thievery or other and unmasked; he protested his innocence and spoke volubly of German honesty, but was dismissed all the same and, what’s more, with very little ceremony. The Prince was therefore now in need of a steward, and his choice fell on Nikolai Sergeich, an excellent administrator and an upright man – that was of course beyond dispute. It seemed that what the Prince really wanted was for Nikolai Sergeich to volunteer his services, but he didn’t do so, and one fine morning the Prince made him an offer of the post, couched in terms of the utmost friendship and civility. At first Ikhmenev turned it down, but the substantial salary proved to be a great temptation for Anna Andreyevna, and the Prince’s overwhelming graciousness overcame their last remaining scruples. The Prince had got what he wanted. One must suppose that he was a good judge of men. In the brief period of his acquaintance with Ikhmenev, he had studied his man thoroughly and realized that his heart had to be won, that money alone would achieve little. Above all he needed a person he could rely upon implicitly at all times, and someone who could run Vasilevskoye without his ever having to visit the place himself again. His charm and force of personality were such that Ikhmenev took his friendship at face value. Nikolai Sergeich was one of those kindly, naively romantic people who are one of the glories of Russia – whatever else anyone might say about them – and who, once they come to like someone (God only knows why at times), will surrender themselves heart and soul, occasionally taking their devotion to ridiculous lengths.