The Man Who Was Afraid
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These relations were established between them within a short time; after two or three meetings Medinskaya was in full possession of the youth and she slowly began to torture him. Evidently she liked to have a healthy, strong youth at her mercy; she liked to rouse and tame the animal in him merely with her voice and glance, and confident of the power of her superiority, she found pleasure in thus playing with him. On leaving her, he was usually half-sick from excitement, bearing her a grudge, angry with himself, filled with many painful and intoxicating sensations. And about two days later he would come to undergo the same torture again.
One day he asked her timidly:
“Sophya Pavlovna! Have you ever had any children?”
“No.”
“I thought not!” exclaimed Foma with delight.
She cast at him the look of a very naive little girl, and said:
“What made you think so? And why do you want to know whether I had any children or not?”
Foma blushed, and, bending his head, began to speak to her in a heavy voice, as though he was lifting every word from the ground and as though each word weighed a few puds.
“You see – a woman who – has given birth to children – such a woman has altogether different eyes.”
“So? What kind are they then?”
“Shameless!” Foma blurted out.
Medinskaya broke into her silver laughter, and Foma, looking at her, also began to laugh.
“Excuse me!” said he, at length. “Perhaps I’ve said something wrong, improper.”
“Oh, no, no! You cannot say anything improper. You are a pure, amiable boy. And so, my eyes are not shameless?”
“Yours are like an angel’s!” announced Foma with enthusiasm, looking at her with beaming eyes. And she glanced at him, as she had never done before; her look was that of a mother, a sad look of love mingled with fear for the beloved.
“Go, dear one. I am tired; I need a rest,” she said to him, as she rose without looking at him. He went away submissively.
For some time after this incident her attitude toward him was stricter and more sincere, as though she pitied him, but later their relations assumed the old form of the cat-and-mouse play.
Foma’s relation toward Medinskaya could not escape his godfather’s notice, and one day the old man asked him, with a malicious grimace:
“Foma! You had better feel your head more often so that you may not lose it by accident.”
“What do you mean?” asked Foma.
“I speak of Sonka. You are going to see her too often.”
“What has that to do with you?” said Foma, rather rudely. “And why do you call her Sonka?”
“It’s nothing to me. I would lose nothing if you should be fleeced. And as to calling her Sonka – everybody knows that is her name. So does everybody know that she likes to rake up the fire with other people’s hands.”
“She is clever!” announced Foma, firmly, frowning and hiding his hands in his pockets. “She is intelligent.”
“Clever, that’s true! How cleverly she arranged that entertainment; there was an income of two thousand four hundred roubles, the expenses – one thousand nine hundred; the expenses really did not even amount to a thousand roubles, for everybody does everything for her for nothing. Intelligent! She will educate you, and especially will those idlers that run around her.”
“They’re not idlers, they are clever people!” replied Foma, angrily, contradicting himself now. “And I learn from them. What am I? I know nothing. What was I taught? While there they speak of everything – and each one has his word to say. Do not hinder me from being like a man.”
“Pooh! How you’ve learned to speak! With so much anger, like the hail striking against the roof! Very well, be like a man, but in order to be like a man it might be less dangerous for you to go to the tavern; the people there are after all better than Sophya’s people. And you, young man, you should have learned to discriminate one person from another. Take Sophya, for instance: What does she represent? An insect for the adornment of nature and nothing more!”
Intensely agitated, Foma set his teeth together and walked away from Mayakin, thrusting his hands still deeper into his pockets. But the old man soon started again a conversation about Medinskaya.
They were on their way back from the bay after an inspection of the steamers, and seated in a big and commodious sledge, they were enthusiastically discussing business matters in a friendly way. It was in March. The water under the sledge-runners was bubbling, the snow was already covered with a rather dirty fleece, and the sun shone warmly and merrily in the clear sky.
“Will you go to your lady as soon as we arrive?” asked Mayakin, unexpectedly, interrupting their business talk.
“I will,” said Foma, shortly, and with displeasure.
“Mm. Tell me, how often do you give her presents?” asked Mayakin, plainly and somewhat intimately.
“What presents? What for?” Foma wondered.
“You make her no presents? You don’t say. Does she live with you then merely so, for love’s sake?”
Foma boiled up with anger and shame, turned abruptly toward the old man and said reproachfully:
“Eh! You are an old man, and yet you speak so that it is a shame to listen to you! To say such a thing! Do you think she would come down to this?”
Mayakin smacked his lips and sang out in a mournful voice:
“What a blockhead you are! What a fool!” and suddenly grown angry, he spat out: “Shame upon you! All sorts of brutes drank out of the pot, nothing but the dregs remained, and now a fool has made a god unto himself of this dirty pot. Devil! You just go up to her and tell her plainly: ‘I want to be your lover. I am a young man, don’t charge me much for it.’”
“Godfather!” said Foma, sternly, in a threatening voice, “I cannot bear to hear such words. If it were someone else.”
“But who except myself would caution you? Good God!” Mayakin cried out, clasping his hands. “So she has led you by the nose all winter long! What a nose! What a beast she is!”
The old man was agitated; in his voice rang vexation, anger, even tears Foma had never before seen him in such a state, and looking at him, he was involuntarily silent.
“She will ruin you! Oh Lord! The Babylonian prostitute!”
Mayakin’s eyes were blinking, his lips were trembling, and in rude, cynical words he began to speak of Medinskaya, irritated, with a wrathful jar in his voice.
Foma felt that the old man spoke the truth. He now began to breathe with difficulty and he felt that his mouth had a dry, bitter taste.
“Very well, father, enough,” he begged softly and sadly, turning aside from Mayakin.
“Eh, you ought to get married as soon as possible!” exclaimed the old man with alarm.
“For Christ’s sake, do not speak,” uttered Foma in a dull voice.
Mayakin glanced at his godson and became silent. Foma’s face looked drawn; he grew pale, and there was a great deal of painful, bitter stupor in his half-open lips and in his sad look. On the right and on the left of the road a field stretched itself, covered here and there with patches of winter-raiment. Rooks were hopping busily about over the black spots, where the snow had melted. The water under the sledge-runners was splashing, the muddy snow was kicked up by the hoofs of the horses.
“How foolish man is in his youth!” exclaimed Mayakin, in a low voice. Foma did not look at him.
“Before him stands the stump of a tree, and yet he sees the snout of a beast – that’s how he frightens himself. Oh, oh!”
“Speak more plainly,” said Foma, sternly.
“What is there to say? The thing is clear: girls are cream; women are milk; women are near, girls are far. Consequently, go to Sonka, if you cannot do without it, and tell her plainly. That’s how the matter stands. Fool! If she is a sinner, you can get her more easily. Why are you so angry, then? Why so bristled up?”
“You don’t understand,” said Foma, in a low voice.
“What is it I do not understand? I understand everything!”
“The heart. Man has a heart,” sighed the youth.
Mayakin winked his eyes and said:
“Then he has no mind.”
CHAPTER VI
WHEN Foma arrived in the city he was seized with sad, revengeful anger. He was burning with a passionate desire to insult Medinskaya, to abuse her. His teeth firmly set together, his hands thrust deep into his pockets, he walked for a few hours in succession about the deserted rooms of his house, he sternly knitted his brow, and constantly threw his chest forward. His breast was too narrow to hold his heart, which was filled with wrath. He stamped the floor with heavy and measured steps, as though he were forging his anger.
“The vile wretch – disguised herself as an angel!” Pelageya vividly arose in his memory, and he whispered malignantly and bitterly:
“Though a fallen woman, she is better. She did not play the hypocrite. She at once unfolded her soul and her body, and her heart is surely just as her breast – white and sound.”
Sometimes Hope would whisper timidly in his ear:
“Perhaps all that was said of her was a lie.”
But he recalled the eager certainty of his godfather, and the power of his words, and this thought perished. He set his teeth more firmly together and threw his chest still more forward. Evil thoughts like splinters of wood stuck into his heart, and his heart was shattered by the acute pain they caused.
By disparaging Medinskaya, Mayakin made her more accessible to his godson, and Foma soon understood this. A few days passed, and Foma’s agitated feelings became calm, absorbed by the spring business cares. The sorrow for the loss of the individual deadened the spite he owed the woman, and the thought of the woman’s accessibility increased his passion for her. And somehow, without perceiving it himself, he suddenly understood and resolved that he ought to go up to Sophya Pavlovna and tell her plainly, openly, just what he wanted of her – that’s all! He even felt a certain joy at this resolution, and he boldly started off to Medinskaya, thinking on the way only how to tell her best all that was necessary.
The servants of Medinskaya were accustomed to his visits, and to his question whether the lady was at home the maid replied:
“Please go into the drawing-room. She is there alone.”
He became somewhat frightened, but noticing in the mirror his stately figure neatly clad with a frock-coat, and his swarthy, serious face in a frame of a downy black beard, set with large dark eyes – he raised his shoulders and confidently stepped forward through the parlour. Strange sounds of a string instrument were calmly floating to meet him; they seemed to burst into quiet, cheerless laughter, complaining of something, tenderly stirring the heart, as though imploring it for attention and having no hopes of getting it. Foma did not like to hear music – it always filled him with sadness. Even when the “machine” in the tavern played some sad tune, his heart filled with melancholy anguish, and he would either ask them to stop the “machine” or would go away some little distance feeling that he could not listen calmly to these tunes without words, but full of lamentation and tears. And now he involuntarily stopped short at the door of the drawing-room.
A curtain of long strings of parti-coloured glass beads hung over the door. The beads had been strung so as to form a fantastic figure of some kind of plants; the strings were quietly shaking and it seemed that pale shadows of flowers were soaring in the air. This transparent curtain did not hide the inside of the drawing-room from Foma’s eyes. Seated on a couch in her favourite corner, Medinskaya played the mandolin. A large Japanese umbrella, fastened up to the wall, shaded the little woman in black by its mixture of colours; the high bronze lamp under a red lamp-shade cast on her the light of sunset. The mild sounds of the slender strings were trembling sadly in the narrow room, which was filled with soft and fragrant twilight. Now the woman lowered the mandolin on her knees and began running her fingers over the strings, also to examine fixedly something before her. Foma heaved a sigh.
A soft sound of music soared about Medinskaya, and her face was forever changing as though shadows were falling on it, falling and melting away under the flash of her eyes.
Foma looked at her and saw that when alone she was not quite so good-looking as in the presence of people – now her face looked older, more serious – her eyes had not the expression of kindness and gentleness, they had a rather tired and weary look. And her pose, too, was weary, as if the woman were about to stir but could not. Foma noticed that the feeling which prompted him to come to her was now changing in his heart into some other feeling. He scraped with his foot along the floor and coughed.
“Who is that?” asked the woman, starting with alarm. And the strings trembled, issuing an alarmed sound.
“It is I,” said Foma, pushing aside the strings of the beads.
“Ah! But how quietly you’ve entered. I am glad to see you. Be seated! Why didn’t you come for such a long time?”
Holding out her hand to him, she pointed with the other at a small armchair beside her, and her eyes were gaily smiling.
“I was out on the bay inspecting my steamers,” said Foma, with exaggerated ease, moving his armchair nearer to the couch.
“Is there much snow yet on the fields?”
“As much as one may want. But it is already melting considerably. There is water on the roads everywhere.”
He looked at her and smiled. Evidently Medinskaya noticed the ease of his behaviour and something new in his smile, for she adjusted her dress and drew farther away from him. Their eyes met – and Medinskaya lowered her head.
“Melting!” said she, thoughtfully, examining the ring on her little finger.
“Ye-es, streams everywhere.” Foma informed her, admiring his boots.
“That’s good. Spring is coming.”
“Now it won’t be delayed long.”
“Spring is coming,” repeated Medinskaya, softly, as if listening to the sounds of her words.
“People will start to fall in love,” said Foma, with a smile, and for some reason or other firmly rubbed his hands.
“Are you preparing yourself?” asked Medinskaya, drily.
“I have no need for it. I have been ready long ago. I am already in love for all my life.”
She cast a glance at him, and started to play again, looking at the strings and saying pensively:
“Spring. How good it is that you are but beginning to live. The heart is full of power, and there is nothing dark in it.”
“Sophya Pavlovna!” exclaimed Foma, softly. She interrupted him with a caressing gesture.
“Wait, dearest! Today I can tell you something good. Do you know, a person who has lived long has such moments that when he looks into his heart he unexpectedly finds there something long forgotten. For years it lay somewhere in the depth of his heart, but lost none of the fragrance of youth, and when memory touches it, then spring comes over that person, breathing upon him the vivifying freshness of the morning of his life. This is good, though it is very sad.”
The strings trembled and wept under the touch of her fingers, and it seemed to Foma that their sounds and the soft voice of the woman were touching his heart gently and caressingly. But, still firm in his decision, he listened to her words and, not knowing their meaning, thought:
“You may speak! And I won’t believe anything you may say.”
This thought irritated him. And he felt sorry that he could not listen to her words as attentively and trustfully as before.
“Are you thinking of how it is necessary to live?” asked the woman.
“Sometimes I think of it, and then I forget again. I have no time for it!” said Foma and smiled. “And then, what is there to think of? It is simple. You see how others live. Well, consequently, you must imitate them.”
“Ah, don’t do this! Spare yourself. You are so good! There is something peculiar in you; what – I do not know. But it can be felt. And it seems to me, it will be very hard for you to get along in life. I am sure, you will not go along the usual way of the people of your circle. No! You cannot be pleased with a life which is wholly devoted to gain, to hunts after the rouble, to this business of yours. Oh, no! I know, you will have a desire for something else, will you not?”
She spoke quickly, with a look of alarm in her eyes. Looking at her, Foma thought:
“What is she driving at?”
And he answered her slowly:
“Perhaps I will have a desire for something else. Perhaps I have it already.”
Drawing up closer to him, she looked into his face and spoke convincingly:
“Listen! Do not live like all other people! Arrange your life somehow differently. You are strong, young. You are good!”
“And if I am good then there must be good for me!” exclaimed Foma, feeling that he was seized with agitation, and that his heart was beginning to beat with anxiety.
“Ah, but that is not the case! Here on earth it is worse for the good people than for the bad ones!” said Medinskaya, sadly.
And again the trembling notes of music began to dance at the touch of her fingers. Foma felt that if he did not start to say at once what was necessary, he would tell her nothing later.
“God bless me!” he said to himself, and in a lowered voice, strengthening his heart, began:
“Sophya Pavlovna! Enough! I have something to say. I have come to tell you: ‘Enough!’ We must deal fairly, openly. At first you have attracted me to yourself, and now you are fencing away from me. I cannot understand what you say. My mind is dull, but I can feel that you wish to hide yourself. I can see it – do you understand now what brought me here?”
His eyes began to flash and with each word his voice became warmer and louder. She moved her body forward and said with alarm:
“Oh, cease.”
“No, I won’t, I will speak!”
“I know what you want to say.”
“You don’t know it all!” said Foma, threateningly, rising to his feet. “But I know everything about you – everything.”
“Yes? Then the better it is for me,” said Medinskaya, calmly.
She also arose from the couch, as though about to go away somewhere, but after a few seconds she again seated herself on the couch. Her face was serious, her lips were tightly compressed, but her eyes were lowered, and Foma could not see their expression. He thought that when he told her, “I know everything about you!” she would be frightened, she would feel ashamed and confused, would ask his forgiveness for having made sport of him. Then he would embrace her and forgive her. But that was not the case; it was he who was confused by her calmness. He looked at her, searching for words to resume his speech, but found them not.
“It is better,” she repeated firmly and drily. “So you have learned everything, have you? And, of course, you’ve censured me, as I deserve. I understand. I am guilty before you. But no, I cannot justify myself.”
She became silent and suddenly, lifting her hands with a nervous gesture, clasped her head, and began to adjust her hair.
Foma heaved a deep sigh. Her words had killed in him a certain hope – a hope, whose presence in his heart he only felt now that it was dead. And shaking his head, he said, with bitter reproach:
“There was a time when I looked at you and thought, ‘How beautiful she is, how good, the dove!’ And now you say yourself, ‘I am guilty.’ Ah!”
The voice of the youth broke down. And the woman began to laugh softly.
“How fine and how ridiculous you are, and what a pity that you cannot understand all this!”
The youth looked at her, feeling himself disarmed by her caressing words and melancholy smile. That cold, harsh something, which he had in his heart against her, was now melting before the warm light of her eyes. The woman now seemed to him small, defenseless, like a child. She was saying something in a gentle voice as though imploring, and forever smiling, but he paid no attention to her words.
“I’ve come to you,” said he, interrupting her words, “without pity. I meant to tell you everything. And yet I said nothing. I don’t feel like doing it. My heart sank. You are breathing upon me so strangely. Eh, I should not have seen you! What are you to me? It would be better for me to go away, it seems.”
“Wait, dearest, don’t go away!” said the woman, hastily, holding out her hand to him. “Why so severe? Do not be angry at me! What am I to you? You need a different friend, a woman just as simple-minded and sound-souled as you are. She must be gay, healthy. I – I am already an old woman. I am forever worrying. My life is so empty and so weary, so empty! Do you know, when a person has grown accustomed to live merrily, and then cannot be merry, he feels bad! He desires to live cheerfully, he desires to laugh, yet he does not laugh – it is life that is laughing at him. And as to men. Listen! Like a mother, I advise you, I beg and implore you – obey no one except your own heart! Live in accordance with its promptings. Men know nothing, they cannot tell you anything that is true. Do not heed them.”
Trying to speak as plainly and intelligibly as possible, she was agitated, and her words came incoherently hurriedly one after another. A pitiful smile played on her lips all the time, and her face was not beautiful.
“Life is very strict. It wants all people to submit to its requests, and only the very strong ones can resist it with impunity. It is yet questionable whether they can do it! Oh, if you knew how hard it is to live. Man goes so far that he begins to fear his own self. He is split into judge and criminal – he judges his own self and seeks justification before himself. And he is willing to pass days and nights with those that despise him, and that are repulsive to him – just to avoid being alone with himself.”
Foma lifted his head and said distrustfully, with surprise:
“I cannot understand what it is! Lubov also says the same.”
“Which Lubov? What does she say?”
“My foster-sister. She says the same, – she is forever complaining of life. It is impossible to live, she says.”
“Oh, she is yet young! And it is a great happiness that she already speaks of this.”
“Happiness!” Foma drawled out mockingly. “It must be a fine happiness that makes people sigh and complain.”
“You’d better listen to complaints. There is always much wisdom in these complaints of men. Oh! There is more wisdom in these complaints than anywhere else. You listen to these, – they will teach you to find your way.”
Foma heard the woman’s voice, which sounded convincing; and perplexed, looked about him. Everything had long been familiar to him, but today it looked somewhat new to him. A mass of trifles filled the room, all the walls were covered with pictures and shelves, bright and beautiful objects were staring from every corner. The reddish light of the lamp filled one with melancholy. Twilight wrapped everything in the room, and only here and there the gold of the frames, or the white spots of marble flashed dimly. Heavy fabrics were motionlessly hanging before the doors. All this embarrassed and almost choked Foma; he felt as though he had lost his way. He was sorry for the woman. But she also irritated him.
“Do you hear how I speak to you? I wish I were your mother, or your sister. Never before did anybody awaken in me so warm and kindred a feeling as you have done. And you, you look at me in such an unfriendly way. Do you believe me? Yes? No?”
He looked at her and said with a sigh:
“I don’t know. I used to believe you.”
“And now?” she asked hastily.
“And now – it is best for me to go! I don’t understand anything, and yet I long to understand. I do not even understand myself. On my way to you I knew what to say, and here all is confused. You have put me up on the rack, you have set me on edge. And then you tell me – ‘I am as a mother to you’ – which means – begone!”
“Understand me, I feel sorry for you!” the woman exclaimed softly.
Foma’s irritation against her was growing stronger and stronger, and as he went on speaking to her, his words became absurd. While he spoke, he kept on moving his shoulders as though tearing something that entangled him.
“Sorry? What for? I do not need it. Eh, I cannot speak well! It is bad to be dumb. But – I would have told you! You did not treat me properly – indeed, why have you so enticed a man? Am I a plaything for you?”
“I only wanted to see you by my side,” said the woman simply, in a guilty voice.