Stories (10 page)

A short while later the bell rings again. Someone comes into the front hall, spends a long time removing his things, coughs. Yegor announces that a student has appeared. Show him in, I order. A moment later a pleasant-looking young man comes in. It’s already a year since our relations became strained: he gives me execrable answers at examinations, and I give him F’s. Every year I wind up with about seven of these fine fellows, whom, to use student language, I grill or flunk. Those who can’t pass the examination owing to inability or illness usually bear their cross patiently and don’t b
argain with me; those who do bargain and come to see me at home are the broad, sanguine natures, whose failure at an examination spoils their appetite and interferes wi
th their regular attendance at the opera. The former I treat benignly; the latter I grill for the whole year.

“Sit down,” I say to the visitor. “What do you have to say?”

“Excuse me for bothering you, Professor …” he begins, stammering and not looking in my face. “I wouldn’t have ventured to bother you if it hadn’t been … I’ve taken your examination five times and … and failed. I beg you, be so kind as to pass me, because …”

The argument that all lazy students give in their own favor is ever the same: they have passed all their courses splendidly and failed only mine, which is the more surprising since they have always studied my subject most diligently and have an excellent knowledge of it; if they have failed, it is owing to some inexplicable misunderstanding.

“Excuse me, my friend,” I say to the visitor, “but I cannot pass you. Go read over the lectures and come back. Then we’ll see.”

A pause. The urge comes over me to torment the student a bit for liking beer and the opera more than science, and I say with a sigh:

“In my opinion, the best thing you can do now is abandon the study of medicine entirely. If, with your abilities, you cannot manage to pass the examination, then you obviously have neither the desire nor the vocation for being a doctor.”

The sanguine fellow pulls a long face.

“Excuse me, Professor,” he grins, “but that would be strange on my part, to say the least. To study for five years and suddenly … quit!”

“Why, yes! It’s better to waste five years than to spend your whole life afterwards doing something you don’t like.”

But I feel sorry for him at once and hasten to say:

“However, you know best. So, do a little more reading and come back.”

“When?” the lazy fellow asks in a hollow voice.

“Whenever you like. Even tomorrow.”

And in his kindly eyes I read: “Yes, I can come, but you’ll throw me out again, you brute!”

“Of course,” I say, “you won’t acquire any more knowledge by taking the examination with me another fifteen times, but it will season your character. And thanks be for that.”

Silence ensues. I get up and wait for the visitor to leave, but he stands there, looks out the window, pulls at his little beard, and thinks. It becomes boring.

The sanguine fellow’s voice is pleasant, juicy, his eyes are intelligent, mocking, his face is good-natured, somewhat flabby from frequent consumption of beer and prolonged lying on the sofa; clearly he could tell me a lot of interesting things about the opera, about his amorous adventures, about friends he likes, but, unfortunately, to speak of such things isn’t done. And I’d have listened eagerly.

“Professor! I give you my word of honor that if you pass me, I’ll…”

As soon as it comes to the “word of honor,” I wave my hands and sit down at my desk. The student thinks a moment longer and says dejectedly:

“In that case, good-bye … Excuse me.”

“Good-bye, my friend. Be well.”

He walks irresolutely to the front hall, slowly puts his coat on, and, as he goes out, again probably thinks for a long time. Having come up with nothing to apply to me except “the old devil,” he goes to a bad restaurant, drinks beer and has dinner, and then goes home to sleep. May you rest in peace, honest laborer!

A third ring. A young doctor comes in, wearing a new black two-piece suit, gold-rimmed spectacles, and, sure enough, a white tie. He introduces himself. I invite him to sit down and ask what I can do for him. Not without excitement, the young priest of science begins telling me that he passed his doctoral examination this year and that the only thing he has left to do is write a dissertation. He would like to work for a while with me, under my guidance,
and I would greatly oblige him if I gave him a topic for a dissertation.

“I would be very glad to be of use,
collega,”
I say, “but let’s first agree on what a dissertation is. In the accepted understanding, the word refers to a piece of writing that represents a product of independent work. Isn’t that so? A piece of writing on someone else’s topic, produced under someone else’s guidance, goes by a different name …”

The doctoral candidate is silent. I flare up and jump to my feet.

“Why do you all come to me? I don’t understand it,” I shout angrily. “Am I running a shop or something? I don’t deal in topics! For the thousand and first time I beg you all to leave me in peace! Forgive my indelicacy, but I’m finally sick of it!”

The doctoral candidate is silent, only a slight color appears around his cheekbones. His face expresses profound respect for my famous name and learning, but by his eyes I can see that he despises my voice, and my pathetic figure, and my nervous gestures. I seem odd to him in my wrath.

“I’m not running a shop!” I say angrily. “And it’s an astonishing thing! Why don’t you want to be independent? Why are you so against freedom?”

I talk a lot, but he remains silent. In the end I gradually calm down and, of course, give in. The doctoral candidate will get a topic from me that isn’t worth a brass farthing, will write under my guidance a dissertation that nobody needs, will stand with dignity through a boring defense, and receive a learned degree that he has no use for.

The rings could follow one another endlessly, but here I’ll limit myself to only four. The bell rings a fourth time, and I hear familiar footsteps, the rustle of a dress, a dear voice …

Eighteen years ago my oculist colleague died, leaving a seven-year-old daughter, Katya, and sixty thousand roubles. In his will he appointed me her guardian. Katya lived in my family till she was ten, then was sent to boarding school and spent only the summer months in my house, during vacations. I had no time to occupy myself with her upbringing, I observed her only in snatches and therefore can say very little about her childhood.

The first thing I remember and love in my memories is this—the extraordinary trustfulness with which she came into my home, and let herself be treated by doctors, and which always shone on her
little face. She might be sitting somewhere out of the way, with a bandaged cheek, but she was sure to be looking attentively at something; if just then she should see me writing or looking through a book, or my wife bustling about, or the cook in the kitchen peeling potatoes, or the dog playing, her eyes would invariably express the same thing—namely: “All that goes on in this world is beautiful and wise
.” She was inquisitive and liked very much to talk with me. She would sit at the desk facing me, following my movements, and ask questions. She was interested in knowing what I read, what I did at the university, whether I was afraid of cadavers, what I did with my salary.

“Do the students fight at the university?” she would ask.

“Yes, they do, dear.”

“Do you make them stand on their knees?”

“I do.”

And she thought it was funny that the students fought and that I made them stand on their knees, and she laughed. She was a meek, patient, and kind child. Not seldom I happened to see how things were taken from her, or she was punished for no reason, or her curiosity went unsatisfied; at those moments the constant expression of trustfulness on her face would be mixed with sadness—and that was all. I wasn’t able to intercede for her, but only felt a longing, when I saw her sadness, to draw her to me and pity her in the tone of an old nanny: “My dear little orphan!”

I also remember that she liked to dress well and sprinkle herself with scent. In that respect she was like me. I, too, like fine clothes and good scent.

I regret that I had no time or wish to follow the beginning and development of the passion that already filled Katya by the time she was fourteen or fifteen years old. I’m referring to her passionate love for the theater. When she came home from boarding school for vacation and lived with us, she spoke of nothing else with such pleasure and such ardor as of plays and actors. She wore us out with her constant talk about the theater. My wife and children didn’t listen to her. I was the only one who lacked the courage to deny her my attention. When she had a wish to share her raptures, she wou
ld come to my study and say in a pleading voice:

“Nikolai Stepanych, let me talk with you about the theater!”

I would point to the clock and say:

“I’ll give you half an hour. Go on.”

Later she started bringing home dozens of portraits of the actors and actresses she adored; then she tried a few times to take part in amateur productions, and finally, when she finished school, she announced to me that she was born to be an actress.

I never shared Katya’s theatrical infatuation. I think, if a play is good, there’s no need to bother with actors for it to make the proper impression; it’s enough simply to read it. And if a play is bad, no performance will make it good.

In my youth I often went to the theater, a
nd now my family reserves a box twice a year and takes me for an “airing.”
Of course, that is not enough to give one the right to judge a
bout the theater, but I will say a little about it. In my opinion, the theater has b
ecome no better than it was thirty or forty years ago. As befor
e, I can never find a glass of clean water either in the corrid
ors or in the theater lobby. As before, the ushers fine me twen
ty kopecks for my coat, though there’s nothing reprehensible about wearing warm
clothes in winter. As before, they needlessly play music durin
g the intermissions, adding to the impression of the play a new
and unwanted one. As before, men go to th
e buffet during intermissions to drink alcoholic beverages. If no progress is to be
seen in small things, it would be futile to start looking for i
t in major things. When an actor, bound from head to foot in th
eatrical traditions and preconceptions, tries to read the simpl
e, ordinary monologue “To be or not to be” not simply, but for some reas
on with an inevitable hissing and convulsing of his whole body,
or when he tries to convince me by one means or another that C
hatsky, who talks so much with fools and loves a foolish woman,
is a very intelligent man, and that
Woe from Wit
¹²
is not a boring play, I feel the same routine wafting from the stage that I already found boring forty years ago, when I was treated to a classical howling and beating of the breast. And I leave the theater each time more conservative than when I entered it.

The sentimental and gullible crowd may be convinced that the theater in its present form is a school. But no one acquainted with school in the true sense can be caught on that hook. I don’t know what will happen in fifty or a hundred years, but in the present circumstances the theater can serve only as entertainment. But this entertainment is too expensive for us to go on resorting to it. It robs the country of thousands of young, healthy, and talented men and women, who, if they had not devoted themselves to the theater,
might have been good doctors, tillers of the soil, teachers, army officers; it robs the public of the evening hours—the best hours for mental labor and friendly conversation. To say nothing of the money spent and of the moral losses suffered by the spectator, who sees murder, adultery, and slander incorrectly interpreted on stage.

But Katya was of quite a different opinion. She assured me that the theater, even in its present state, was higher than the auditorium, higher than books, higher than anything in the world. The theater was a force that united all the arts in itself, an
d actors were missionaries. No art or science by itself was capable of having so strong and so sure an effect on the human soul as the stage, and it was not without reason that an actor of the average sort enjoyed far greater popularity in the country than the best scholar or artist. And no public activity could afford such pleasure and satisfaction as that of the stage.

And one fine day Katya joined a troupe and left—for Ufa, I think—taking with her a lot of money, a host of bright expectations, and aristocratic views of the matter.

Her first letters from the road were extraordinary. I read them and was simply amazed that those small pages could contain so much youth, inner purity, holy innocence, together with subtle, sensible opinions that would have done credit to a sound male mind. The Volga, nature, the towns she visited, her comrades, her successes and failures—she did not so much describe as sing them; every line breathed the trustfulness I was accustomed to seeing in her f
ace—and with all that, a mass of grammatical errors and an almost total lack of punctuation.

Before half a year went by, I received a highly poetical and rapturous letter, beginning with the words: “I am in love.” Enclosed in this letter was a photograph showing a young, clean-shaven man in a broad-brimmed hat, with a plaid thrown over his shoulder. The letters that followed this one were as splendid as before, but punctuation marks appeared in them, the grammatical errors disappeared, and they gave off a strong male smell. Katya began writing to me about how good it would be to build a big theater somewhere on the Volga, as a stock company, to be sure, and to attract rich merchants and
shipowners to the enterprise; there would be lots of money, enormous receipts, the actors would perform on cooperative principles … Maybe it was all indeed good, but it
seemed to me that such ideas could only proceed from a man’s head.

Be that as it may, for a year or two everything appeared to prosper. Katya was in love, believed in her work, and was happy; but then I began to notice clear signs of a decline in her letters. It began with Katya complaining to me about her comrades—that was the first and most ominous symptom. If a young scholar or writer begins his activity by complaining bitterly about scholars or writers, it means he’s already worn out and not fit for work. Katya wrote to me that her comrades did not attend rehearsals and never learned their parts; that the preposterous plays they produced and the way they b
ehaved on stage betrayed in each of them a total lack of respect for the public; in the interest of the box office, which was all they talked about, dramatic actresses lowered themselves to singing chansonettes, and tragic actors sang ditties making fun of cuckolded husbands and the pregnancies of unfaithful wives, and so on. Generally, it was a wonder that provincial theater had not died out yet, and that it could hold on by such a thin and rotten little thread.