Back Aa

Precipice

Close

<h2> CHAPTER VII </h2> Raisky went nearly all round the town, and when he climbed the cliffs once more, he was on the extreme boundary of his estate. A steep path led down to the suburbs, and the town lay before him as in the palm of a hand. Stirred with the passion aroused by his memories of childhood, he looked at the rows of houses, cottages and huts. It was not a town, but, like other towns, a cemetery. Going from street to street, Raisky saw through the windows, how in one house the family sat at dinner, and in another the amovar had already been brought in. In the empty streets, every conversation could be heard a verst away; voices and footsteps re-echoed on the wooden pavement. It seemed to Raisky a picture of dreamy peace, the tranquillity of the grave. What a frame for a novel, if only he knew what to put in the novel. The houses fell into their places in the picture that filled his mind, he drew in the faces of the towns-people, grouped the servants with his aunt, the whole composition centring in Marfinka. The figures stood sharply outlined in his mind; they lived and breathed. If the image of passion should float over this motionless sleeping little world, the picture would glow with the enchanting colour of life. Where was he to find the passion, the colour? “Passion!” he repeated to himself. If her burning fire could but be poured out upon him, and engulf the artist in her destroying waves. As he moved forward he remembered that his stroll had an aim. He wondered how Leonid Koslov was, whether he had changed, or whether he had remained what he had been before, a child for all his learning. He too was a good subject for an artist. Raisky thought of Leonti’s beautiful wife, whose acquaintance he had made during his student days in Moscow, when she was a young girl. She used to call Leonti her fiancé, without any denial on his part, and five years after he had left the University he made the journey to Moscow, and married her. He loved his wife as a man loves air and warmth; absorbed in the life and art of the ancients, his lover’s eyes saw in her the antique ideal of beauty. The lines of her neck and bosom charmed him, and her head recalled to him Roman heads seen on bas-reliefs and cameos. Leonti did not recognise Raisky, when his friend suddenly entered his study. “I have not the honour,” he began. But when Boris Pavlovich opened his lips he embraced him. “Wife! Ulinka!” he cried into the garden. “Come quickly, and see who has come to see us.” She came hastily, and kissed Raisky. “What a man you have grown, and how much more handsome you are!” she said, her eyes flashing. Her eyes, her mien, her whole figure betrayed audacity. Just over thirty years old, she gave the impression of a splendidly developed specimen of blooming womanhood. “Have you forgotten me?” she asked. “How should he forget you?” broke in Leonti. “But Ulinka is right. You have altered, and are hardly recognisable with your beard. How delighted your Aunt must have been to see you.” “Ah! his Aunt!” remarked Juliana Andreevna in a tone of displeasure. “I don’t like her.” “Why not?” “She is despotic and censorious.” “Yes, she is a despot,” answered Raisky. “That comes from intercourse with serfs. Old customs!” “According to Tatiana Markovna,” continued Juliana Andreevna, “everybody should stay on one spot, turn his head neither to right nor left, and never exchange a word with his neighbours. She is a past mistress in fault-finding; nevertheless she and Tiet Nikonich are inseparable, he spends his days and nights with her.” Raisky laughed and said, “She is a saint nevertheless, whatever you may find to say about her.” “A saint perhaps, but nothing is right for her. Her world is in her two nieces, and who knows how they will turn out? Marfinka plays with her canaries and her flowers, and the other sits in the corner like the family ghost, and not a word can be got from her. We shall see what will become of her.” “Veroshka? I haven’t seen her yet. She is away on a visit on the other side of the Volga.” “And who knows what her business is there?” “I love my Aunt as if she were my Mother,” said Raisky emphatically. “She is wise, honourable, just! She has strength and individuality, and there is nothing commonplace about her.” “You will believe everything she says?” asked Juliana Andreevna, drawing him away to the window, while Leonti collected the scattered papers, laid them in cupboards and put the books on the shelves. “Yes, everything,” she said. “Don’t believe her. I know she will tell you all sorts of nonsense—about Monsieur Charles.” “Who is he?” “A Frenchman, a teacher, and a colleague of my husband’s. They sit there reading till all hours. How can I help it? Yet God knows what they make out of it in the town, as if I.... Don’t believe it,” she went on, as she saw Raisky was silent. “It is idle talk, there is nothing,” she concluded, with a false smile intended to be allowing. “What business is it of mine?” returned Raisky, turning away from her. “Shall we go into the garden?” “Yes, we will have dinner outside,” said Leonti. “Serve what there is, Ulinka. Come, Boris, now we can talk.” Then as an idea struck him, he added, “What shall you have to say to me about the library?” “About what library? You wrote to me about it, but I did not understand what you were talking about. I think you said some person called Mark, had been tearing the books.” “You cannot imagine, Boris, how vexed I was about it,” he said as he took down some books with torn backs from the shelves. Raisky pushed the books away. “What does it matter to me?” he said. “You are like my grandmother; she bothers me about accounts, you about books.” “But Boris, I don’t know what accounts she bothered you about, but these books are your most precious possession. Look!” he said, pointing with pride to the rows of books which filled the study to the ceiling. “Only on this shelf nearly everything is ruined by that accursed Mark! The other books are all right. See, I drew up a catalogue, which took a whole year to do,” and he pointed self-consciously to a thick bound volume of manuscript. “I wrote it all with my own hand,” he continued. “Sit down, Boris, and read out the names. I will get on the ladder, and show you the books; they are arranged according to their numbers.” “What an idea!” “Or better wait till after dinner; we shall not be able to finish before.” “Listen, should you like to have a library like that?” asked Raisky. “I!—a library like that?” Sunshine blazed from Leonti’s eyes, he smiled so broadly that even the hair on his brow stirred with the dislocation caused. “A library like that?” He shook his head. “You must be mad.” “Tell me, do you love me as you used to do?” “Why do you ask? Of course.” “Then the books shall be yours for good and all, under one condition.” “I—take these books!” Leonti looked now at the books, now at Raisky, then made a gesture of refusal, and sighed. “Do not laugh at me, Boris! Don’t tempt me.” “I am not joking.” Here Juliana Andreevna, who had heard the last words, chimed in with, “Take what is given you.” “She is always like that,” sighed Leonti. “On feast days the tradesmen come with presents, and on the eve of the examinations the parents. I send them away, but my wife receives them at the side door. She looks like Lucretia, but she has a sweet tooth, a dainty one.” Raisky laughed, but Juliana Andreevna was annoyed. “Go to your Lucretia,” she said indifferently. “He compares me with everybody. One day I am Cleopatra, then Lavinia, then Cornelia. Better take the books when they are offered you. Boris Pavlovich will give them to me.” “Don’t take it on yourself to ask him for gifts,” commanded Leonti. “And what can we give him? Shall I hand you over to him, for instance?” he added as he embraced her. “Splendid! Take me, Boris Pavlovich,” she cried, throwing a sparkling glance at him. “If you don’t take the books, Leonti,” said Raisky, “I will make them over to the Gymnasium. Give me the catalogue, and I’ll send it to the Director to-morrow.” He put his hand out for the catalogue, of which Leonti kept a tight hold. “The Gymnasium shall never get one of them,” he cried. “You don’t know the Director, who cares for books just about as much as I do for perfume and pomade. They will be destroyed, torn, and worse handled than by Mark.” “Then take them.” “To give away such treasures all in a minute. It would be comprehensible if you were selling them to responsible hands. I have never wanted so much to be rich. I would give five thousand. I cannot accept, I cannot. You are a spendthrift, or rather a blind, ignorant child—” “Many thanks.” “I didn’t mean that,” cried Leonti in confusion. “You are an artist; you need pictures, statues, music; and books are nothing to you. Besides, you don’t know what treasures you possess; after dinner I will show you.” “Well, in the afternoon, instead of drinking coffee, you will go over with the books to the Gymnasium for me.” “Wait, Boris, what was the condition on which you would give me the books. Will you take instalments from my salary for them? I would sell all I have, pledge myself and my wife.” “No, thank you,” broke in Juliana Andreevna, “I can pledge or sell myself if I want to.” Leonti and Raisky looked at one another. “She does not think before she speaks,” said Leonti. “But tell me what the condition is.” “That you never mention these books to me again, even if Mark tears them to pieces.” “Do you mean I am not to let him have access to them?” “He is not likely to ask you,” put in Juliana Andreevna. “As if that monster cared for what you may say.” “How Ulinka loves me,” said Leonti to Raisky. “Would that every woman loved her husband like that.” He embraced her. She dropped her eyes, and the smile died from her face. “But for her you would not see a single button on my clothes,” continued Leonti. “I eat and sleep comfortably, and our household goes on evenly and placidly. However small my means are she knows how to make them provide for everything.” She raised her eyes, and looked at them, for the last statement was true. “It’s a pity,” continued Leonti, “that she does not care about books. She can chatter French fast enough, but if you give her a book, she does not understand half of it. She still writes Russian incorrectly. If she sees Greek characters, she says they would make a good pattern for cotton printing, and sets the book upside down. And she cannot even read a Latin title.” “That will do. Not another word about the books. Only on that condition, I don’t send them to the Gymnasium. Now let us sit down to table, or I shall go to my Grandmother’s, for I am famished.” “Do you intend to spend your whole life like this?” asked Raisky as he was sitting after dinner alone with Leonti in the study. “Yes, what more do I need?” “Have you no desires, does nothing call you away from this place, have you no longings for freedom and space, and don’t you feel cramped in this narrow frame of hedge, church spire and house, under your very nose?” “Have I so little to look at under my nose?” asked Leonti, pointing to the books. “I have books, pupils, and in addition a wife and peace of heart, isn’t that enough?” “Are books life? This old trash has a great deal to answer for. Men strive forwards, seek to improve themselves, to cleanse their conceptions, to drive away the mist, to meet the problems of society by justice, civilisation, orderly administration, while you instead of looking at life, study books.” “What is not to be found in books is not to be found in life either, or if there is anything it is of no importance,” said Leonti firmly. “The whole programme of public and private life lies behind us; we can find an example for everything.” “You are still the same old student, Leonti, always worrying about what has been experienced in the past, and never thinking of what you yourself are.” “What I am! I am a teacher of the classics. I am as deeply concerned with the life of the past, as you with ideals and figures. You are an artist. Why should you wonder that certain figures are dear to me? Since when have artists ceased to draw water from the wells of the ancients?” “Yes, an artist,” said Raisky, with a sigh. He pointed to his head and breast. “Here are figures, notes, forms, enthusiasm, the creative passion, and as yet I have done almost nothing.” “What restrains you? You are now painting, you wrote me, a great picture, which you mean to exhibit.” “The devil take the great pictures. I shall hardly be able to devote my whole energy to painting now. One must put one’s whole being into a great picture, and then to give effect to one hundredth part of what one has put in a representation of a fleeting, irrecoverable impression. Sometimes I paint portraits....” “What art are you following now?” “There is but one Art that can satisfy the artist of to-day, the art of words, of poetry, which is limitless in its possibilities.” “You write verses then?” “Verses are children’s food. In verse you celebrate a love affair, a festival, flowers, a nightingale.” “And satire. Remember the use made of it by the Romans.” With these words he would have gone to the bookshelf, but Raisky held him back. “You may,” he said, “be able now and then to hit a diseased spot with satire. Satire is a rod, whose stroke stings but has no further consequences; but she does not show you figures brimming with life, she does not reveal the depths of life with its secret mainsprings of action, she holds no mirror before your eyes. It is only the novel that comprehends and mirrors the life of man.” “So you are writing a novel? On what subject?” “I have not yet quite decided.” “Don’t at all events describe this pettifogging, miserable existence which stares us in the face without the medium of art. Our contemporary literature squeezes every worm, every peasant-girl, and I don’t know what else, into the novel. Choose a historical subject, worthy of your vivacious imagination and your clean-cut style. Do you remember how you used to write of old Russia? Now it is the fashion to choose material from the ant-heap, the talking shop of everyday life. This is to be the stuff of which literature is made. Bah! it is the merest journalism.” “There we are again on the old controversy. If you once mount that horse, there will be no calling you back. Let us leave this question for the moment, and go back to my question. Are you satisfied to spend your life here, as you are now doing, with no desires for anything further?” Leonti looked at him in astonishment, with wide opened eyes. “You do nothing for your generation,” Raisky went on, “but creep backwards like a crab. Why are you for ever talking of the Greeks and Romans? Their work is done, and ours is to bring life into these cemeteries, to shake the slumbering ghosts out of their twilight dreams.” “And how is the task to be begun?” “I mean to draw a picture of this existence, to reflect it as in a mirror. And you....” “I too accomplish something. I have prepared several boys for the University,” remarked Leonti with hesitation, for he was not sure whether this was meritorious or not. “You imagine that I go into my class, then home, and forget about everything. That is not the case. Young people gather round me, attach themselves to me, and I show them drawings of old buildings, utensils, make sketches and give explanations, as I once did for you. What I know myself I communicate to others, explain the ancient ideals of virtue, expound classical life, just as our own classics are explained. Is that no longer essential?” “Certainly it has its advantage. But it has nothing to do with real life. One cannot live like that to-day. So much has disappeared, so many things have arisen that the Greeks and Romans never knew. But we need models from contemporary life, we must educate ourselves and others to be men. That is our task.” “No, I do not take that upon my shoulders; it is sufficient for one to take the models of ancient virtue from books. I myself live for and through myself. You see I live quietly and modestly, eat my vermicelli soup....” “Life for and through yourself is not life at all, it is a passive condition, and man is a fighting animal.” “I have already told you that I do my duty and do not interfere in anybody else’s business; and no one interferes with mine.” “Life’s arm is long, and will not spare even you. And how will you meet her blows—unprepared.” “What has Life to do with a humble man like me? I shall pass unnoticed. I have books, although they are not mine,” he said glancing hesitatingly at Raisky, “but you give me free use of them. My needs are small, I feel no boredom. I have a wife who loves me....” Raisky looked away. “And,” he added in a whisper, “I love her.” It was plain that as his mind nourished itself on the books, so his heart had found a warm refuge; he himself did not even know what bound him to life and books, and did not guess that he might keep his books and lose his life, and that his life would be maimed if his “Roman head” was stolen from him. Happy child, thought Raisky. In his learned sleep he does not notice the darkness that is hidden in that dear Roman head, nor how empty the woman’s heart is. He is helpless as far as she is concerned, and will never convince her of the virtues of the ancient ideals. <hr /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2