ads:
The Black Monk
Anton Chekhov
I
ANDREY VASSILITCH KOVRIN, who held a master's degree at the University, had
exhausted himself, and had upset his nerves. He did not send for a doctor, but casually, over
a bottle of wine, he spoke to a friend who was a doctor, and the latter advised him to spend
the spring and summer in the country. Very opportunely a long letter came from Tanya
Pesotsky, who asked him to come and stay with them at Borissovka. And he made up his
mind that he really must go.
To begin with -- that was in April -- he went to his own home, Kovrinka, and there spent
three weeks in solitude; then, as soon as the roads were in good condition, he set off,
driving in a carriage, to visit Pesotsky, his former guardian, who had brought him up, and
was a horticulturist well known all over Russia. The distance from Kovrinka to Borissovka
was reckoned only a little over fifty miles. To drive along a soft road in May in a
comfortable carriage with springs was a real pleasure.
Pesotsky had an immense house with columns and lions, off which the stucco was peeling,
and with a footman in swallow-tails at the entrance. The old park, laid out in the English
style, gloomy and severe, stretched for almost three-quarters of a mile to the river, and there
ended in a steep, precipitous clay bank, where pines grew with bare roots that looked like
shaggy paws; the water shone below with an unfriendly gleam, and the peewits flew up
with a plaintive cry, and there one always felt that one must sit down and write a ballad. But
near the house itself, in the courtyard and orchard, which together with the nurseries
covered ninety acres, it was all life and gaiety even in bad weather. Such marvellous roses,
lilies, camellias; such tulips of all possible shades, from glistening white to sooty black --
such a wealth of flowers, in fact, Kovrin had never seen anywhere as at Pesotsky's. It was
only the beginning of spring, and the real glory of the flower-beds was still hidden away in
the hot-houses. But even the flowers along the avenues, and here and there in the flower-
beds, were enough to make one feel, as one walked about the garden, as though one were in
a realm of tender colours, especially in the early morning when the dew was glistening on
every petal.
What was the decorative part of the garden, and what Pesotsky contemptuously spoke of as
rubbish, had at one time in his childhood given Kovrin an impression of fairyland.
Every sort of caprice, of elaborate monstrosity and mockery at Nature was here. There were
espaliers of fruit-trees, a pear-tree in the shape of a pyramidal poplar, spherical oaks and
lime-trees, an apple-tree in the shape of an umbrella, plum-trees trained into arches, crests,
candelabra, and even into the number 1862 -- the year when Pesotsky first took up
horticulture. One came across, too, lovely, graceful trees with strong, straight stems like
palms, and it was only by looking intently that one could recognise these trees as
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gooseberries or currants. But what made the garden most cheerful and gave it a lively air,
was the continual coming and going in it, from early morning till evening; people with
wheelbarrows, shovels, and watering-cans swarmed round the trees and bushes, in the
avenues and the flower-beds, like ants. . . .
Kovrin arrived at Pesotsky's at ten o'clock in the evening. He found Tanya and her father,
Yegor Semyonitch, in great anxiety. The clear starlight sky and the thermometer foretold a
frost towards morning, and meanwhile Ivan Karlovitch, the gardener, had gone to the town,
and they had no one to rely upon. At supper they talked of nothing but the morning frost,
and it was settled that Tanya should not go to bed, and between twelve and one should walk
through the garden, and see that everything was done properly, and Yegor Semyonitch
should get up at three o'clock or even earlier.
Kovrin sat with Tanya all the evening, and after midnight went out with her into the garden.
It was cold. There was a strong smell of burning already in the garden. In the big orchard,
which was called the commercial garden, and which brought Yegor Semyonitch several
thousand clear profit, a thick, black, acrid smoke was creeping over the ground and, curling
around the trees, was saving those thousands from the frost. Here the trees were arranged as
on a chessboard, in straight and regular rows like ranks of soldiers, and this severe pedantic
regularity, and the fact that all the trees were of the same size, and had tops and trunks all
exactly alike, made them look monotonous and even dreary. Kovrin and Tanya walked
along the rows where fires of dung, straw, and all sorts of refuse were smouldering, and
from time to time they were met by labourers who wandered in the smoke like shadows.
The only trees in flower were the cherries, plums, and certain sorts of apples, but the whole
garden was plunged in smoke, and it was only near the nurseries that Kovrin could breathe
freely.
"Even as a child I used to sneeze from the smoke here," he said, shrugging his shoulders,
"but to this day I don't understand how smoke can keep off frost."
"Smoke takes the place of clouds when there are none . . ." answered Tanya.
"And what do you want clouds for?"
"In overcast and cloudy weather there is no frost."
"You don't say so."
He laughed and took her arm. Her broad, very earnest face, chilled with the frost, with her
delicate black eyebrows, the turned-up collar of her coat, which prevented her moving her
head freely, and the whole of her thin, graceful figure, with her skirts tucked up on account
of the dew, touched him.
"Good heavens! she is grown up," he said. "When I went away from here last, five years
ago, you were still a child. You were such a thin, longlegged creature, with your hair
hanging on your shoulders; you used to wear short frocks, and I used to tease you, calling
you a heron. . . . What time does!"
"Yes, five years!" sighed Tanya. "Much water has flowed since then. Tell me, Andryusha,
ads:
honestly," she began eagerly, looking him in the face: "do you feel strange with us now?
But why do I ask you? You are a man, you live your own interesting life, you are
somebody. . . . To grow apart is so natural! But however that may be, Andryusha, I want
you to think of us as your people. We have a right to that."
"I do, Tanya."
"On your word of honour?"
"Yes, on my word of honour."
"You were surprised this evening that we have so many of your photographs. You know my
father adores you. Sometimes it seems to me that he loves you more than he does me. He is
proud of you. You are a clever, extraordinary man, you have made a brilliant career for
yourself, and he is persuaded that you have turned out like this because he brought you up. I
don't try to prevent him from thinking so. Let him."
Dawn was already beginning, and that was especially perceptible from the distinctness with
which the coils of smoke and the tops of the trees began to stand out in the air.
"It's time we were asleep, though," said Tanya, "and it's cold, too." She took his arm.
"Thank you for coming, Andryusha. We have only uninteresting acquaintances, and not
many of them. We have only the garden, the garden, the garden, and nothing else.
Standards, half-standards," she laughed. "Aports, Reinettes, Borovinkas, budded stocks,
grafted stocks. . . . All, all our life has gone into the garden. I never even dream of anything
but apples and pears. Of course, it is very nice and useful, but sometimes one longs for
something else for variety. I remember that when you used to come to us for the summer
holidays, or simply a visit, it always seemed to be fresher and brighter in the house, as
though the covers had been taken off the lustres and the furniture. I was only a little girl
then, but yet I understood it."
She talked a long while and with great feeling. For some reason the idea came into his head
that in the course of the summer he might grow fond of this little, weak, talkative creature,
might be carried away and fall in love; in their position it was so possible and natural! This
thought touched and amused him; he bent down to her sweet, preoccupied face and
hummed softly:
" 'Onyegin, I won't conceal it;
I madly love Tatiana. . . .' "
By the time they reached the house, Yegor Semyonitch had got up. Kovrin did not feel
sleepy; he talked to the old man and went to the garden with him. Yegor Semyonitch was a
tall, broad-shouldered, corpulent man, and he suffered from asthma, yet he walked so fast
that it was hard work to hurry after him. He had an extremely preoccupied air; he was
always hurrying somewhere, with an expression that suggested that if he were one minute
late all would be ruined!
"Here is a business, brother . . ." he began, standing still to take breath. "On the surface of
the ground, as you see, is frost; but if you raise the thermometer on a stick fourteen feet
above the ground, there it is warm. . . . Why is that?"
"I really don't know," said Kovrin, and he laughed.
"H'm! . . . One can't know everything, of course. . . . However large the intellect may be,
you can't find room for everything in it. I suppose you still go in chiefly for philosophy?"
"Yes, I lecture in psychology; I am working at philosophy in general."
"And it does not bore you?"
"On the contrary, it's all I live for."
"Well, God bless you! . . ." said Yegor Semyonitch, meditatively stroking his grey whiskers.
"God bless you! . . . I am delighted about you . . . delighted, my boy. . . ."
But suddenly he listened, and, with a terrible face, ran off and quickly disappeared behind
the trees in a cloud of smoke.
"Who tied this horse to an apple-tree?" Kovrin heard his despairing, heart-rending cry.
"Who is the low scoundrel who has dared to tie this horse to an apple-tree? My God, my
God! They have ruined everything; they have spoilt everything; they have done everything
filthy, horrible, and abominable. The orchard's done for, the orchard's ruined. My God!"
When he came back to Kovrin, his face looked exhausted and mortified.
"What is one to do with these accursed people?" he said in a tearful voice, flinging up his
hands. "Styopka was carting dung at night, and tied the horse to an apple-tree! He twisted
the reins round it, the rascal, as tightly as he could, so that the bark is rubbed off in three
places. What do you think of that! I spoke to him and he stands like a post and only blinks
his eyes. Hanging is too good for him."
Growing calmer, he embraced Kovrin and kissed him on the cheek.
"Well, God bless you! . . . God bless you! . . ." he muttered. "I am very glad you have come.
Unutterably glad. . . . Thank you."
Then, with the same rapid step and preoccupied face, he made the round of the whole
garden, and showed his former ward all his greenhouses and hot-houses, his covered-in
garden, and two apiaries which he called the marvel of our century.
While they were walking the sun rose, flooding the garden with brilliant light. It grew
warm. Foreseeing a long, bright, cheerful day, Kovrin recollected that it was only the
beginning of May, and that he had before him a whole summer as bright, cheerful, and
long; and suddenly there stirred in his bosom a joyous, youthful feeling, such as he used to
experience in his childhood, running about in that garden. And he hugged the old man and
kissed him affectionately. Both of them, feeling touched, went indoors and drank tea out of
old-fashioned china cups, with cream and satisfying krendels made with milk and eggs; and
these trifles reminded Kovrin again of his childhood and boyhood. The delightful present
was blended with the impressions of the past that stirred within him; there was a tightness
at his heart; yet he was happy.
He waited till Tanya was awake and had coffee with her, went for a walk, then went to his
room and sat down to work. He read attentively, making notes, and from time to time raised
his eyes to look out at the open windows or at the fresh, still dewy flowers in the vases on
the table; and again he dropped his eyes to his book, and it seemed to him as though every
vein in his body was quivering and fluttering with pleasure.
II
In the country he led just as nervous and restless a life as in town. He read and wrote a great
deal, he studied Italian, and when he was out for a walk, thought with pleasure that he
would soon sit down to work again. He slept so little that every one wondered at him; if he
accidentally dozed for half an hour in the daytime, he would lie awake all night, and, after a
sleepless night, would feel cheerful and vigorous as though nothing had happened.
He talked a great deal, drank wine, and smoked expensive cigars. Very often, almost every
day, young ladies of neighbouring families would come to the Pesotskys', and would sing
and play the piano with Tanya; sometimes a young neighbour who was a good violinist
would come, too. Kovrin listened with eagerness to the music and singing, and was
exhausted by it, and this showed itself by his eyes closing and his head falling to one side.
One day he was sitting on the balcony after evening tea, reading. At the same time, in the
drawing-room, Tanya taking soprano, one of the young ladies a contralto, and the young
man with his violin, were practising a well-known serenade of Braga's. Kovrin listened to
the words -- they were Russian -- and could not understand their meaning. At last, leaving
his book and listening attentively, he understood: a maiden, full of sick fancies, heard one
night in her garden mysterious sounds, so strange and lovely that she was obliged to
recognise them as a holy harmony which is unintelligible to us mortals, and so flies back to
heaven. Kovrin's eyes began to close. He got up, and in exhaustion walked up and down the
drawing-room, and then the dining-room. When the singing was over he took Tanya's arm,
and with her went out on the balcony.
"I have been all day thinking of a legend," he said. "I don't remember whether I have read it
somewhere or heard it, but it is a strange and almost grotesque legend. To begin with, it is
somewhat obscure. A thousand years ago a monk, dressed in black, wandered about the
desert, somewhere in Syria or Arabia. . . . Some miles from where he was, some fisherman
saw another black monk, who was moving slowly over the surface of a lake. This second
monk was a mirage. Now forget all the laws of optics, which the legend does not recognise,
and listen to the rest. From that mirage there was cast another mirage, then from that other a
third, so that the image of the black monk began to be repeated endlessly from one layer of
the atmosphere to another. So that he was seen at one time in Africa, at another in Spain,
then in Italy, then in the Far North. . . . Then he passed out of the atmosphere of the earth,
and now he is wandering all over the universe, still never coming into conditions in which
he might disappear. Possibly he may be seen now in Mars or in some star of the Southern
Cross. But, my dear, the real point on which the whole legend hangs lies in the fact that,
exactly a thousand years from the day when the monk walked in the desert, the mirage will
return to the atmosphere of the earth again and will appear to men. And it seems that the
thousand years is almost up. . . . According to the legend, we may look out for the black
monk to-day or to-morrow."
"A queer mirage," said Tanya, who did not like the legend.
"But the most wonderful part of it all," laughed Kovrin, "is that I simply cannot recall where
I got this legend from. Have I read it somewhere? Have I heard it? Or perhaps I dreamed of
the black monk. I swear I don't remember. But the legend interests me. I have been thinking
about it all day."
Letting Tanya go back to her visitors, he went out of the house, and, lost in meditation,
walked by the flower-beds. The sun was already setting. The flowers, having just been
watered, gave forth a damp, irritating fragrance. Indoors they began singing again, and in
the distance the violin had the effect of a human voice. Kovrin, racking his brains to
remember where he had read or heard the legend, turned slowly towards the park, and
unconsciously went as far as the river. By a little path that ran along the steep bank,
between the bare roots, he went down to the water, disturbed the peewits there and
frightened two ducks. The last rays of the setting sun still threw light here and there on the
gloomy pines, but it was quite dark on the surface of the river. Kovrin crossed to the other
side by the narrow bridge. Before him lay a wide field covered with young rye not yet in
blossom. There was no living habitation, no living soul in the distance, and it seemed as
though the little path, if one went along it, would take one to the unknown, mysterious
place where the sun had just gone down, and where the evening glow was flaming in
immensity and splendour.
"How open, how free, how still it is here!" thought Kovrin, walking along the path. "And it
feels as though all the world were watching me, hiding and waiting for me to understand
it. . . ."
But then waves began running across the rye, and a light evening breeze softly touched his
uncovered head. A minute later there was another gust of wind, but stronger -- the rye
began rustling, and he heard behind him the hollow murmur of the pines. Kovrin stood still
in amazement. From the horizon there rose up to the sky, like a whirlwind or a waterspout,
a tall black column. Its outline was indistinct, but from the first instant it could be seen that
it was not standing still, but moving with fearful rapidity, moving straight towards Kovrin,
and the nearer it came the smaller and the more distinct it was. Kovrin moved aside into the
rye to make way for it, and only just had time to do so.
A monk, dressed in black, with a grey head and black eyebrows, his arms crossed over his
breast, floated by him. . . . His bare feet did not touch the earth. After he had floated twenty
feet beyond him, he looked round at Kovrin, and nodded to him with a friendly but sly
smile. But what a pale, fearfully pale, thin face! Beginning to grow larger again, he flew
across the river, collided noiselessly with the clay bank and pines, and passing through
them, vanished like smoke.
"Why, you see," muttered Kovrin, "there must be truth in the legend."
Without trying to explain to himself the strange apparition, glad that he had succeeded in
seeing so near and so distinctly, not only the monk's black garments, but even his face and
eyes, agreeably excited, he went back to the house.
In the park and in the garden people were moving about quietly, in the house they were
playing -- so he alone had seen the monk. He had an intense desire to tell Tanya and Yegor
Semyonitch, but he reflected that they would certainly think his words the ravings of
delirium, and that would frighten them; he had better say nothing.
He laughed aloud, sang, and danced the mazurka; he was in high spirits, and all of them, the
visitors and Tanya, thought he had a peculiar look, radiant and inspired, and that he was
very interesting.
III
After supper, when the visitors had gone, he went to his room and lay down on the sofa: he
wanted to think about the monk. But a minute later Tanya came in.
"Here, Andryusha; read father's articles," she said, giving him a bundle of pamphlets and
proofs. "They are splendid articles. He writes capitally."
"Capitally, indeed!" said Yegor Semyonitch, following her and smiling constrainedly; he
was ashamed. "Don't listen to her, please; don't read them! Though, if you want to go to
sleep, read them by all means; they are a fine soporific."
"I think they are splendid articles," said Tanya, with deep conviction. "You read them,
Andryusha, and persuade father to write oftener. He could write a complete manual of
horticulture."
Yegor Semyonitch gave a forced laugh, blushed, and began uttering the phrases usually
made us of by an embarrassed author. At last he began to give way.
"In that case, begin with Gaucher's article and these Russian articles," he muttered, turning
over the pamphlets with a trembling hand, "or else you won't understand. Before you read
my objections, you must know what I am objecting to. But it's all nonsense . . . tiresome
stuff. Besides, I believe it's bedtime."
Tanya went away. Yegor Semyonitch sat down on the sofa by Kovrin and heaved a deep
sigh.
"Yes, my boy . . ." he began after a pause. "That's how it is, my dear lecturer. Here I write
articles, and take part in exhibitions, and receive medals. . . . Pesotsky, they say, has apples
the size of a head, and Pesotsky, they say, has made his fortune with his garden. In short,
'Kotcheby is rich and glorious.' But one asks oneself: what is it all for? The garden is
certainly fine, a model. It's not really a garden, but a regular institution, which is of the
greatest public importance because it marks, so to say, a new era in Russian agriculture and
Russian industry. But, what's it for? What's the object of it?"
"The fact speaks for itself."
"I do not mean in that sense. I meant to ask: what will happen to the garden when I die? In
the condition in which you see it now, it would not be maintained for one month without
me. The whole secret of success lies not in its being a big garden or a great number of
labourers being employed in it, but in the fact that I love the work. Do you understand? I
love it perhaps more than myself. Look at me; I do everything myself. I work from morning
to night: I do all the grafting myself, the pruning myself, the planting myself. I do it all
myself: when any one helps me I am jealous and irritable till I am rude. The whole secret
lies in loving it -- that is, in the sharp eye of the master; yes, and in the master's hands, and
in the feeling that makes one, when one goes anywhere for an hour's visit, sit, ill at ease,
with one's heart far away, afraid that something may have happened in the garden. But
when I die, who will look after it? Who will work? The gardener? The labourers? Yes? But
I will tell you, my dear fellow, the worst enemy in the garden is not a hare, not a
cockchafer, and not the frost, but any outside person."
"And Tanya?" asked Kovrin, laughing. "She can't be more harmful than a hare? She loves
the work and understands it."
"Yes, she loves it and understands it. If after my death the garden goes to her and she is the
mistress, of course nothing better could be wished. But if, which God forbid, she should
marry," Yegor Semyonitch whispered, and looked with a frightened look at Kovrin, "that's
just it. If she marries and children come, she will have no time to think about the garden.
What I fear most is: she will marry some fine gentleman, and he will be greedy, and he will
let the garden to people who will run it for profit, and everything will go to the devil the
very first year! In our work females are the scourge of God!"
Yegor Semyonitch sighed and paused for a while.
"Perhaps it is egoism, but I tell you frankly: I don't want Tanya to get married. I am afraid of
it! There is one young dandy comes to see us, bringing his violin and scraping on it; I know
Tanya will not marry him, I know it quite well; but I can't bear to see him! Altogether, my
boy, I am very queer. I know that."
Yegor Semyonitch got up and walked about the room in excitement, and it was evident that
he wanted to say something very important, but could not bring himself to it.
"I am very fond of you, and so I am going to speak to you openly," he decided at last,
thrusting his hands into his pockets. "I deal plainly with certain delicate questions, and say
exactly what I think, and I cannot endure so-called hidden thoughts. I will speak plainly:
you are the only man to whom I should not be afraid to marry my daughter. You are a
clever man with a good heart, and would not let my beloved work go to ruin; and the chief
reason is that I love you as a son, and I am proud of you. If Tanya and you could get up a
romance somehow, then -- well! I should be very glad and even happy. I tell you this
plainly, without mincing matters, like an honest man."
Kovrin laughed. Yegor Semyonitch opened the door to go out, and stood in the doorway.
"If Tanya and you had a son, I would make a horticulturist of him," he said, after a
moment's thought. "However, this is idle dreaming. Goodnight."
Left alone, Kovrin settled himself more comfortably on the sofa and took up the articles.
The title of one was "On Intercropping"; of another, "A few Words on the Remarks of
Monsieur Z. concerning the Trenching of the Soil for a New Garden"; a third, "Additional
Matter concerning Grafting with a Dormant Bud"; and they were all of the same sort. But
what a restless, jerky tone! What nervous, almost hysterical passion! Here was an article,
one would have thought, with most peaceable and impersonal contents: the subject of it was
the Russian Antonovsky Apple. But Yegor Semyonitch began it with "Audiatur altera pars,"
and finished it with "Sapienti sat"; and between these two quotations a perfect torrent of
venomous phrases directed "at the learned ignorance of our recognised horticultural
authorities, who observe Nature from the height of their university chairs," or at Monsieur
Gaucher, "whose success has been the work of the vulgar and the dilettanti." "And then
followed an inappropriate, affected, and insincere regret that peasants who stole fruit and
broke the branches could not nowadays be flogged.
"It is beautiful, charming, healthy work, but even in this there is strife and passion," thought
Kovrin, "I suppose that everywhere and in all careers men of ideas are nervous, and marked
by exaggerated sensitiveness. Most likely it must be so."
He thought of Tanya, who was so pleased with Yegor Semyonitch's articles. Small, pale,
and so thin that her shoulder-blades stuck out, her eyes, wide and open, dark and intelligent,
had an intent gaze, as though looking for something. She walked like her father with a little
hurried step. She talked a great deal and was fond of arguing, accompanying every phrase,
however insignificant, with expressive mimicry and gesticulation. No doubt she was
nervous in the extreme.
Kovrin went on reading the articles, but he understood nothing of them, and flung them
aside. The same pleasant excitement with which he had earlier in the evening danced the
mazurka and listened to the music was now mastering him again and rousing a multitude of
thoughts. He got up and began walking about the room, thinking about the black monk. It
occurred to him that if this strange, supernatural monk had appeared to him only, that meant
that he was ill and had reached the point of having hallucinations. This reflection frightened
him, but not for long.
"But I am all right, and I am doing no harm to any one; so there is no harm in my
hallucinations," he thought; and he felt happy again.
He sat down on the sofa and clasped his hands round his head. Restraining the
unaccountable joy which filled his whole being, he then paced up and down again, and sat
down to his work. But the thought that he read in the book did not satisfy him. He wanted
something gigantic, unfathomable, stupendous. Towards morning he undressed and
reluctantly went to bed: he ought to sleep.
When he heard the footsteps of Yegor Semyonitch going out into the garden, Kovrin rang
the bell and asked the footman to bring him some wine. He drank several glasses of Lafitte,
then wrapped himself up, head and all; his consciousness grew clouded and he fell asleep.
IV
Yegor Semyonitch and Tanya often quarrelled and said nasty things to each other.
They quarrelled about something that morning. Tanya burst out crying and went to her
room. She would not come down to dinner nor to tea. At first Yegor Semyonitch went
about looking sulky and dignified, as though to give every one to understand that for him
the claims of justice and good order were more important than anything else in the world;
but he could not keep it up for long, and soon sank into depression. He walked about the
park dejectedly, continually sighing: "Oh, my God! My God!" and at dinner did not eat a
morsel. At last, guilty and conscience-stricken, he knocked at the locked door and called
timidly:
"Tanya! Tanya!"
And from behind the door came a faint voice, weak with crying but still determined:
"Leave me alone, if you please."
The depression of the master and mistress was reflected in the whole household, even in the
labourers working in the garden. Kovrin was absorbed in his interesting work, but at last he,
too, felt dreary and uncomfortable. To dissipate the general ill-humour in some way, he
made up his mind to intervene, and towards evening he knocked at Tanya's door. He was
admitted.
"Fie, fie, for shame!" he began playfully, looking with surprise at Tanya's tear-stained,
woebegone face, flushed in patches with crying. "Is it really so serious? Fie, fie!"
"But if you knew how he tortures me!" she said, and floods of scalding tears streamed from
her big eyes. "He torments me to death," she went on, wringing her hands. "I said nothing to
him . . . nothing . . . I only said that there was no need to keep . . . too many labourers . . . if
we could hire them by the day when we wanted them. You know . . . you know the
labourers have been doing nothing for a whole week. . . . I . . . I . . . only said that, and he
shouted and . . . said . . . a lot of horrible insulting things to me. What for?"
"There, there," said Kovrin, smoothing her hair. "You've quarrelled with each other, you've
cried, and that's enough. You must not be angry for long -- that's wrong . . . all the more as
he loves you beyond everything."
"He has . . . has spoiled my whole life," Tanya went on, sobbing. "I hear nothing but abuse
and . . . insults. He thinks I am of no use in the house. Well! He is right. I shall go away to-
morrow; I shall become a telegraph clerk. . . . I don't care. . . ."
"Come, come, come. . . . You mustn't cry, Tanya. You mustn't, dear. . . . You are both hot-
tempered and irritable, and you are both to blame. Come along; I will reconcile you."
Kovrin talked affectionately and persuasively, while she went on crying, twitching her
shoulders and wringing her hands, as though some terrible misfortune had really befallen
her. He felt all the sorrier for her because her grief was not a serious one, yet she suffered
extremely. What trivialities were enough to make this little creature miserable for a whole
day, perhaps for her whole life! Comforting Tanya, Kovrin thought that, apart from this girl
and her father, he might hunt the world over and would not find people who would love
him as one of themselves, as one of their kindred. If it had not been for those two he might
very likely, having lost his father and mother in early childhood, never to the day of his
death have known what was meant by genuine affection and that naïve, uncritical love
which is only lavished on very close blood relations; and he felt that the nerves of this
weeping, shaking girl responded to his half-sick, overstrained nerves like iron to a magnet.
He never could have loved a healthy, strong, rosy-cheeked woman, but pale, weak, unhappy
Tanya attracted him.
And he liked stroking her hair and her shoulders, pressing her hand and wiping away her
tears. . . . At last she left off crying. She went on for a long time complaining of her father
and her hard, insufferable life in that house, entreating Kovrin to put himself in her place;
then she began, little by little, smiling, and sighing that God had given her such a bad
temper. At last, laughing aloud, she called herself a fool, and ran out of the room.
When a little later Kovrin went into the garden, Yegor Semyonitch and Tanya were walking
side by side along an avenue as though nothing had happened, and both were eating rye
bread with salt on it, as both were hungry.
V
Glad that he had been so successful in the part of peacemaker, Kovrin went into the park.
Sitting on a garden seat, thinking, he heard the rattle of a carriage and a feminine laugh --
visitors were arriving. When the shades of evening began falling on the garden, the sounds
of the violin and singing voices reached him indistinctly, and that reminded him of the
black monk. Where, in what land or in what planet, was that optical absurdity moving now?
Hardly had he recalled the legend and pictured in his imagination the dark apparition he had
seen in the rye-field, when, from behind a pine-tree exactly opposite, there came out
noiselessly, without the slightest rustle, a man of medium height with uncovered grey head,
all in black, and barefooted like a beggar, and his black eyebrows stood out conspicuously
on his pale, death-like face. Nodding his head graciously, this beggar or pilgrim came
noiselessly to the seat and sat down, and Kovrin recognised him as the black monk.
For a minute they looked at one another, Kovrin with amazement, and the monk with
friendliness, and, just as before, a little slyness, as though he were thinking something to
himself.
"But you are a mirage," said Kovrin. "Why are you here and sitting still? That does not fit in
with the legend."
"That does not matter," the monk answered in a low voice, not immediately turning his face
towards him. "The legend, the mirage, and I are all the products of your excited
imagination. I am a phantom."
"Then you don't exist?" said Kovrin.
"You can think as you like," said the monk, with a faint smile. "I exist in your imagination,
and your imagination is part of nature, so I exist in nature."
"You have a very old, wise, and extremely expressive face, as though you really had lived
more than a thousand years," said Kovrin. "I did not know that my imagination was capable
of creating such phenomena. But why do you look at me with such enthusiasm? Do you like
me?"
"Yes, you are one of those few who are justly called the chosen of God. You do the service
of eternal truth. Your thoughts, your designs, the marvellous studies you are engaged in,
and all your life, bear the Divine, the heavenly stamp, seeing that they are consecrated to the
rational and the beautiful -- that is, to what is eternal."
"You said 'eternal truth.' . . . But is eternal truth of use to man and within his reach, if there
is no eternal life?"
"There is eternal life," said the monk.
"Do you believe in the immortality of man?"
"Yes, of course. A grand, brilliant future is in store for you men. And the more there are
like you on earth, the sooner will this future be realised. Without you who serve the higher
principle and live in full understanding and freedom, mankind would be of little account;
developing in a natural way, it would have to wait a long time for the end of its earthly
history. You will lead it some thousands of years earlier into the kingdom of eternal truth --
and therein lies your supreme service. You are the incarnation of the blessing of God, which
rests upon men."
"And what is the object of eternal life?" asked Kovrin.
"As of all life -- enjoyment. True enjoyment lies in knowledge, and eternal life provides
innumerable and inexhaustible sources of knowledge, and in that sense it has been said: 'In
My Father's house there are many mansions.' "
"If only you knew how pleasant it is to hear you!" said Kovrin, rubbing his hands with
satisfaction.
"I am very glad."
"But I know that when you go away I shall be worried by the question of your reality. You
are a phantom, an hallucination. So I am mentally deranged, not normal?"
"What if you are? Why trouble yourself? You are ill because you have overworked and
exhausted yourself, and that means that you have sacrificed your health to the idea, and the
time is near at hand when you will give up life itself to it. What could be better? That is the
goal towards which all divinely endowed, noble natures strive."
"If I know I am mentally affected, can I trust myself?"
"And are you sure that the men of genius, whom all men trust, did not see phantoms, too?
The learned say now that genius is allied to madness. My friend, healthy and normal people
are only the common herd. Reflections upon the neurasthenia of the age, nervous
exhaustion and degeneracy, et cetera, can only seriously agitate those who place the object
of life in the present -- that is, the common herd."
"The Romans used to say: Mens sana in corpore sano."
"Not everything the Greeks and the Romans said is true. Exaltation, enthusiasm, ecstasy --
all that distinguishes prophets, poets, martyrs for the idea, from the common folk -- is
repellent to the animal side of man -- that is, his physical health. I repeat, if you want to be
healthy and normal, go to the common herd."
"Strange that you repeat what often comes into my mind," said Kovrin. "It is as though you
had seen and overheard my secret thoughts. But don't let us talk about me. What do you
mean by 'eternal truth'?"
The monk did not answer. Kovrin looked at him and could not distinguish his face. His
features grew blurred and misty. Then the monk's head and arms disappeared; his body
seemed merged into the seat and the evening twilight, and he vanished altogether.
"The hallucination is over," said Kovrin; and he laughed. "It's a pity."
He went back to the house, light-hearted and happy. The little the monk had said to him had
flattered, not his vanity, but his whole soul, his whole being. To be one of the chosen, to
serve eternal truth, to stand in the ranks of those who could make mankind worthy of the
kingdom of God some thousands of years sooner -- that is, to free men from some
thousands of years of unnecessary struggle, sin, and suffering; to sacrifice to the idea
everything -- youth, strength, health; to be ready to die for the common weal -- what an
exalted, what a happy lot! He recalled his past -- pure, chaste, laborious; he remembered
what he had learned himself and what he had taught to others, and decided that there was no
exaggeration in the monk's words.
Tanya came to meet him in the park: she was by now wearing a different dress.
"Are you here?" she said. "And we have been looking and looking for you. . . . But what is
the matter with you?" she asked in wonder, glancing at his radiant, ecstatic face and eyes
full of tears. "How strange you are, Andryusha!"
"I am pleased, Tanya," said Kovrin, laying his hand on her shoulders. "I am more than
pleased: I am happy. Tanya, darling Tanya, you are an extraordinary, nice creature. Dear
Tanya, I am so glad, I am so glad!"
He kissed both her hands ardently, and went on:
"I have just passed through an exalted, wonderful, unearthly moment. But I can't tell you all
about it or you would call me mad and not believe me. Let us talk of you. Dear, delightful
Tanya! I love you, and am used to loving you. To have you near me, to meet you a dozen
times a day, has become a necessity of my existence; I don't know how I shall get on
without you when I go back home."
"Oh," laughed Tanya, "you will forget about us in two days. We are humble people and you
are a great man."
"No; let us talk in earnest!" he said. "I shall take you with me, Tanya. Yes? Will you come
with me? Will you be mine?"
"Come," said Tanya, and tried to laugh again, but the laugh would not come, and patches of
colour came into her face.
She began breathing quickly and walked very quickly, but not to the house, but further into
the park.
"I was not thinking of it . . . I was not thinking of it," she said, wringing her hands in
despair.
And Kovrin followed her and went on talking, with the same radiant, enthusiastic face:
"I want a love that will dominate me altogether; and that love only you, Tanya, can give me.
I am happy! I am happy!"
She was overwhelmed, and huddling and shrinking together, seemed ten years older all at
once, while he thought her beautiful and expressed his rapture aloud:
"How lovely she is!"
VI
Learning from Kovrin that not only a romance had been got up, but that there would even
be a wedding, Yegor Semyonitch spent a long time in pacing from one corner of the room
to the other, trying to conceal his agitation. His hands began trembling, his neck swelled
and turned purple, he ordered his racing droshky and drove off somewhere. Tanya, seeing
how he lashed the horse, and seeing how he pulled his cap over his ears, understood what
he was feeling, shut herself up in her room, and cried the whole day.
In the hot-houses the peaches and plums were already ripe; the packing and sending off of
these tender and fragile goods to Moscow took a great deal of care, work, and trouble.
Owing to the fact that the summer was very hot and dry, it was necessary to water every
tree, and a great deal of time and labour was spent on doing it. Numbers of caterpillars
made their appearance, which, to Kovrin's disgust, the labourers and even Yegor
Semyonitch and Tanya squashed with their fingers. In spite of all that, they had already to
book autumn orders for fruit and trees, and to carry on a great deal of correspondence. And
at the very busiest time, when no one seemed to have a free moment, the work of the fields
carried off more than half their labourers from the garden. Yegor Semyonitch, sunburnt,
exhausted, ill-humoured, galloped from the fields to the garden and back again; cried that
he was being torn to pieces, and that he should put a bullet through his brains.
Then came the fuss and worry of the trousseau, to which the Pesotskys attached a good deal
of importance. Every one's head was in a whirl from the snipping of the scissors, the rattle
of the sewing-machine, the smell of hot irons, and the caprices of the dressmaker, a huffy
and nervous lady. And, as ill-luck would have it, visitors came every day, who had to be
entertained, fed, and even put up for the night. But all this hard labour passed unnoticed as
though in a fog. Tanya felt that love and happiness had taken her unawares, though she had,
since she was fourteen, for some reason been convinced that Kovrin would marry her and
no one else. She was bewildered, could not grasp it, could not believe herself. . . . At one
minute such joy would swoop down upon her that she longed to fly away to the clouds and
there pray to God, at another moment she would remember that in August she would have
to part from her home and leave her father; or, goodness knows why, the idea would occur
to her that she was worthless -- insignificant and unworthy of a great man like Kovrin -- and
she would go to her room, lock herself in, and cry bitterly for several hours. When there
were visitors, she would suddenly fancy that Kovrin looked extraordinarily handsome, and
that all the women were in love with him and envying her, and her soul was filled with
pride and rapture, as though she had vanquished the whole world; but he had only to smile
politely at any young lady for her to be trembling with jealousy, to retreat to her room -- and
tears again. These new sensations mastered her completely; she helped her father
mechanically, without noticing peaches, caterpillars or labourers, or how rapidly the time
was passing.
It was almost the same with Yegor Semyonitch. He worked from morning till night, was
always in a hurry, was irritable, and flew into rages, but all of this was in a sort of
spellbound dream. It seemed as though there were two men in him: one was the real Yegor
Semyonitch, who was moved to indignation, and clutched his head in despair when he
heard of some irregularity from Ivan Karlovitch the gardener; and another -- not the real one
-- who seemed as though he were half drunk, would interrupt a business conversation at
half a word, touch the gardener on the shoulder, and begin muttering:
"Say what you like, there is a great deal in blood. His mother was a wonderful woman, most
high-minded and intelligent. It was a pleasure to look at her good, candid, pure face; it was
like the face of an angel. She drew splendidly, wrote verses, spoke five foreign languages,
sang. . . . Poor thing! she died of consumption. The Kingdom of Heaven be hers."
The unreal Yegor Semyonitch sighed, and after a pause went on:
"When he was a boy and growing up in my house, he had the same angelic face, good and
candid. The way he looks and talks and moves is as soft and elegant as his mother's. And
his intellect! We were always struck with his intelligence. To be sure, it's not for nothing
he's a Master of Arts! It's not for nothing! And wait a bit, Ivan Karlovitch, what will he be
in ten years' time? He will be far above us!"
But at this point the real Yegor Semyonitch, suddenly coming to himself, would make a
terrible face, would clutch his head and cry:
"The devils! They have spoilt everything! They have ruined everything! They have spoilt
everything! The garden's done for, the garden's ruined!"
Kovrin, meanwhile, worked with the same ardour as before, and did not notice the general
commotion. Love only added fuel to the flames. After every talk with Tanya he went to his
room, happy and triumphant, took up his book or his manuscript with the same passion with
which he had just kissed Tanya and told her of his love. What the black monk had told him
of the chosen of God, of eternal truth, of the brilliant future of mankind and so on, gave
peculiar and extraordinary significance to his work, and filled his soul with pride and the
consciousness of his own exalted consequence. Once or twice a week, in the park or in the
house, he met the black monk and had long conversations with him, but this did not alarm
him, but, on the contrary, delighted him, as he was now firmly persuaded that such
apparitions only visited the elect few who rise up above their fellows and devote themselves
to the service of the idea.
One day the monk appeared at dinner-time and sat in the dining-room window. Kovrin was
delighted, and very adroitly began a conversation with Yegor Semyonitch and Tanya of
what might be of interest to the monk; the black-robed visitor listened and nodded his head
graciously, and Yegor Semyonitch and Tanya listened, too, and smiled gaily without
suspecting that Kovrin was not talking to them but to his hallucination.
Imperceptibly the fast of the Assumption was approaching, and soon after came the
wedding, which, at Yegor Semyonitch's urgent desire, was celebrated with "a flourish" --
that is, with senseless festivities that lasted for two whole days and nights. Three thousand
roubles' worth of food and drink was consumed, but the music of the wretched hired band,
the noisy toasts, the scurrying to and fro of the footmen, the uproar and crowding, prevented
them from appreciating the taste of the expensive wines and wonderful delicacies ordered
from Moscow.
VII
One long winter night Kovrin was lying in bed, reading a French novel. Poor Tanya, who
had headaches in the evenings from living in town, to which she was not accustomed, had
been asleep a long while, and, from time to time, articulated some incoherent phrase in her
restless dreams.
It struck three o'clock. Kovrin put out the light and lay down to sleep, lay for a long time
with his eyes closed, but could not get to sleep because, as he fancied, the room was very
hot and Tanya talked in her sleep. At half-past four he lighted the candle again, and this
time he saw the black monk sitting in an arm-chair near the bed.
"Good-morning," said the monk, and after a brief pause he asked: "What are you thinking
of now?"
"Of fame," answered Kovrin. "In the French novel I have just been reading, there is a
description of a young savant, who does silly things and pines away through worrying about
fame. I can't understand such anxiety."
"Because you are wise. Your attitude towards fame is one of indifference, as towards a toy
which no longer interests you."
"Yes, that is true."
"Renown does not allure you now. What is there flattering, amusing, or edifying in their
carving your name on a tombstone, then time rubbing off the inscription together with the
gilding? Moreover, happily there are too many of you for the weak memory of mankind to
be able to retain your names."
"Of course," assented Kovrin. "Besides, why should they be remembered? But let us talk of
something else. Of happiness, for instance. What is happiness?'
When the clock struck five, he was sitting on the bed, dangling his feet to the carpet, talking
to the monk:
"In ancient times a happy man grew at last frightened of his happiness -- it was so great! --
and to propitiate the gods he brought as a sacrifice his favourite ring. Do you know, I, too,
like Polykrates, begin to be uneasy of my happiness. It seems strange to me that from
morning to night I feel nothing but joy; it fills my whole being and smothers all other
feelings. I don't know what sadness, grief, or boredom is. Here I am not asleep; I suffer
from sleeplessness, but I am not dull. I say it in earnest; I begin to feel perplexed."
"But why?" the monk asked in wonder. "Is joy a supernatural feeling? Ought it not to be the
normal state of man? The more highly a man is developed on the intellectual and moral
side, the more independent he is, the more pleasure life gives him. Socrates, Diogenes, and
Marcus Aurelius, were joyful, not sorrowful. And the Apostle tells us: 'Rejoice continually';
'Rejoice and be glad.' "
"But will the gods be suddenly wrathful?" Kovrin jested; and he laughed. "If they take from
me comfort and make me go cold and hungry, it won't be very much to my taste."
Meanwhile Tanya woke up and looked with amazement and horror at her husband. He was
talking, addressing the arm-chair, laughing and gesticulating; his eyes were gleaming, and
there was something strange in his laugh.
"Andryusha, whom are you talking to?" she asked, clutching the hand he stretched out to
the monk. "Andryusha! Whom?"
"Oh! Whom?" said Kovrin in confusion. "Why, to him. . . . He is sitting here," he said,
pointing to the black monk.
"There is no one here . . . no one! Andryusha, you are ill!"
Tanya put her arm round her husband and held him tight, as though protecting him from the
apparition, and put her hand over his eyes.
"You are ill!" she sobbed, trembling all over. "Forgive me, my precious, my dear one, but I
have noticed for a long time that your mind is clouded in some way. . . . You are mentally
ill, Andryusha. . . ."
Her trembling infected him, too. He glanced once more at the arm-chair, which was now
empty, felt a sudden weakness in his arms and legs, was frightened, and began dressing.
"It's nothing, Tanya; it's nothing," he muttered, shivering. "I really am not quite well . . . it's
time to admit that."
"I have noticed it for a long time . . . and father has noticed it," she said, trying to suppress
her sobs. "You talk to yourself, smile somehow strangely . . . and can't sleep. Oh, my God,
my God, save us!" she said in terror. "But don't be frightened, Andryusha; for God's sake
don't be frightened. . . ."
She began dressing, too. Only now, looking at her, Kovrin realised the danger of his
position -- realised the meaning of the black monk and his conversations with him. It was
clear to him now that he was mad.
Neither of them knew why they dressed and went into the dining-room: she in front and he
following her. There they found Yegor Semyonitch standing in his dressing-gown and with
a candle in his hand. He was staying with them, and had been awakened by Tanya's sobs.
"Don't be frightened, Andryusha," Tanya was saying, shivering as though in a fever; "don't
be frightened. . . . Father, it will all pass over . . . it will all pass over. . . ."
Kovrin was too much agitated to speak. He wanted to say to his father-in-law in a playful
tone: "Congratulate me; it appears I have gone out of my mind"; but he could only move his
lips and smile bitterly.
At nine o'clock in the morning they put on his jacket and fur coat, wrapped him up in a
shawl, and took him in a carriage to a doctor.
VIII
Summer had come again, and the doctor advised their going into the country. Kovrin had
recovered; he had left off seeing the black monk, and he had only to get up his strength.
Staying at his father-in-law's, he drank a great deal of milk, worked for only two hours out
of the twenty-four, and neither smoked nor drank wine.
On the evening before Elijah's Day they had an evening service in the house. When the
deacon was handing the priest the censer the immense old room smelt like a graveyard, and
Kovrin felt bored. He went out into the garden. Without noticing the gorgeous flowers, he
walked about the garden, sat down on a seat, then strolled about the park; reaching the river,
he went down and then stood lost in thought, looking at the water. The sullen pines with
their shaggy roots, which had seen him a year before so young, so joyful and confident,
were not whispering now, but standing mute and motionless, as though they did not
recognise him. And, indeed, his head was closely cropped, his beautiful long hair was gone,
his step was lagging, his face was fuller and paler than last summer.
He crossed by the footbridge to the other side. Where the year before there had been rye the
oats stood, reaped, and lay in rows. The sun had set and there was a broad stretch of
glowing red on the horizon, a sign of windy weather next day. It was still. Looking in the
direction from which the year before the black monk had first appeared, Kovrin stood for
twenty minutes, till the evening glow had begun to fade. . . .
When, listless and dissatisfied, he returned home the service was over. Yegor Semyonitch
and Tanya were sitting on the steps of the verandah, drinking tea. They were talking of
something, but, seeing Kovrin, ceased at once, and he concluded from their faces that their
talk had been about him.
"I believe it is time for you to have your milk," Tanya said to her husband.
"No, it is not time yet . . ." he said, sitting down on the bottom step. "Drink it yourself; I
don't want it."
Tanya exchanged a troubled glance with her father, and said in a guilty voice:
"You notice yourself that milk does you good."
"Yes, a great deal of good!" Kovrin laughed. "I congratulate you: I have gained a pound in
weight since Friday." He pressed his head tightly in his hands and said miserably: "Why,
why have you cured me? Preparations of bromide, idleness, hot baths, supervision,
cowardly consternation at every mouthful, at every step -- all this will reduce me at last to
idiocy. I went out of my mind, I had megalomania; but then I was cheerful, confident, and
even happy; I was interesting and original. Now I have become more sensible and stolid,
but I am just like every one else: I am -- mediocrity; I am weary of life. . . . Oh, how cruelly
you have treated me! . . . I saw hallucinations, but what harm did that do to any one? I ask,
what harm did that do any one?"
"Goodness knows what you are saying!" sighed Yegor Semyonitch. "It's positively
wearisome to listen to it."
"Then don't listen."
The presence of other people, especially Yegor Semyonitch, irritated Kovrin now; he
answered him drily, coldly, and even rudely, never looked at him but with irony and hatred,
while Yegor Semyonitch was overcome with confusion and cleared his throat guiltily,
though he was not conscious of any fault in himself. At a loss to understand why their
charming and affectionate relations had changed so abruptly, Tanya huddled up to her
father and looked anxiously in his face; she wanted to understand and could not understand,
and all that was clear to her was that their relations were growing worse and worse every
day, that of late her father had begun to look much older, and her husband had grown
irritable, capricious, quarrelsome and uninteresting. She could not laugh or sing; at dinner
she ate nothing; did not sleep for nights together, expecting something awful, and was so
worn out that on one occasion she lay in a dead faint from dinner-time till evening. During
the service she thought her father was crying, and now while the three of them were sitting
together on the terrace she made an effort not to think of it.
"How fortunate Buddha, Mahomed, and Shakespeare were that their kind relations and
doctors did not cure them of their ecstasy and their inspiration," said Kovrin. "If Mahomed
had taken bromide for his nerves, had worked only two hours out of the twenty-four, and
had drunk milk, that remarkable man would have left no more trace after him than his dog.
Doctors and kind relations will succeed in stupefying mankind, in making mediocrity pass
for genius and in bringing civilisation to ruin. If only you knew," Kovrin said with
annoyance, "how grateful I am to you."
He felt intense irritation, and to avoid saying too much, he got up quickly and went into the
house. It was still, and the fragrance of the tobacco plant and the marvel of Peru floated in
at the open window. The moonlight lay in green patches on the floor and on the piano in the
big dark dining-room. Kovrin remembered the raptures of the previous summer when there
had been the same scent of the marvel of Peru and the moon had shone in at the window.
To bring back the mood of last year he went quickly to his study, lighted a strong cigar, and
told the footman to bring him some wine. But the cigar left a bitter and disgusting taste in
his mouth, and the wine had not the same flavour as it had the year before. And so great is
the effect of giving up a habit, the cigar and the two gulps of wine made him giddy, and
brought on palpitations of the heart, so that he was obliged to take bromide.
Before going to bed, Tanya said to him:
"Father adores you. You are cross with him about something, and it is killing him. Look at
him; he is ageing, not from day to day, but from hour to hour. I entreat you, Andryusha, for
God's sake, for the sake of your dead father, for the sake of my peace of mind, be
affectionate to him."
"I can't, I don't want to."
"But why?" asked Tanya, beginning to tremble all over. "Explain why."
"Because he is antipathetic to me, that's all," said Kovrin carelessly; and he shrugged his
shoulders. "But we won't talk about him: he is your father."
"I can't understand, I can't," said Tanya, pressing her hands to her temples and staring at a
fixed point. "Something incomprehensible, awful, is going on in the house. You have
changed, grown unlike yourself. . . . You, clever, extraordinary man as you are, are irritated
over trifles, meddle in paltry nonsense. . . . Such trivial things excite you, that sometimes
one is simply amazed and can't believe that it is you. Come, come, don't be angry, don't be
angry," she went on, kissing his hands, frightened of her own words. "You are clever, kind,
noble. You will be just to father. He is so good."
"He is not good; he is just good-natured. Burlesque old uncles like your father, with well-
fed, good-natured faces, extraordinarily hospitable and queer, at one time used to touch me
and amuse me in novels and in farces and in life; now I dislike them. They are egoists to the
marrow of their bones. What disgusts me most of all is their being so well-fed, and that
purely bovine, purely hoggish optimism of a full stomach."
Tanya sat down on the bed and laid her head on the pillow.
"This is torture," she said, and from her voice it was evident that she was utterly exhausted,
and that it was hard for her to speak. "Not one moment of peace since the winter. . . . Why,
it's awful! My God! I am wretched."
"Oh, of course, I am Herod, and you and your father are the innocents. Of course."
His face seemed to Tanya ugly and unpleasant. Hatred and an ironical expression did not
suit him. And, indeed, she had noticed before that there was something lacking in his face,
as though ever since his hair had been cut his face had changed, too. She wanted to say
something wounding to him, but immediately she caught herself in this antagonistic feeling,
she was frightened and went out of the bedroom.
IX
Kovrin received a professorship at the University. The inaugural address was fixed for the
second of December, and a notice to that effect was hung up in the corridor at the
University. But on the day appointed he informed the students' inspector, by telegram, that
he was prevented by illness from giving the lecture.
He had hæmorrhage from the throat. He was often spitting blood, but it happened two or
three times a month that there was a considerable loss of blood, and then he grew extremely
weak and sank into a drowsy condition. This illness did not particularly frighten him, as he
knew that his mother had lived for ten years or longer suffering from the same disease, and
the doctors assured him that there was no danger, and had only advised him to avoid
excitement, to lead a regular life, and to speak as little as possible.
In January again his lecture did not take place owing to the same reason, and in February it
was too late to begin the course. It had to be postponed to the following year.
By now he was living not with Tanya, but with another woman, who was two years older
than he was, and who looked after him as though he were a baby. He was in a calm and
tranquil state of mind; he readily gave in to her, and when Varvara Nikolaevna -- that was
the name of his friend -- decided to take him to the Crimea, he agreed, though he had a
presentiment that no good would come of the trip.
They reached Sevastopol in the evening and stopped at an hotel to rest and go on the next
day to Yalta. They were both exhausted by the journey. Varvara Nikolaevna had some tea,
went to bed and was soon asleep. But Kovrin did not go to bed. An hour before starting for
the station, he had received a letter from Tanya, and had not brought himself to open it, and
now it was lying in his coat pocket, and the thought of it excited him disagreeably. At the
bottom of his heart he genuinely considered now that his marriage to Tanya had been a
mistake. He was glad that their separation was final, and the thought of that woman who in
the end had turned into a living relic, still walking about though everything seemed dead in
her except her big, staring, intelligent eyes -- the thought of her roused in him nothing but
pity and disgust with himself. The handwriting on the envelope reminded him how cruel
and unjust he had been two years before, how he had worked off his anger at his spiritual
emptiness, his boredom, his loneliness, and his dissatisfaction with life by revenging
himself on people in no way to blame. He remembered, also, how he had torn up his
dissertation and all the articles he had written during his illness, and how he had thrown
them out of window, and the bits of paper had fluttered in the wind and caught on the trees
and flowers. In every line of them he saw strange, utterly groundless pretension, shallow
defiance, arrogance, megalomania; and they made him feel as though he were reading a
description of his vices. But when the last manuscript had been torn up and sent flying out
of window, he felt, for some reason, suddenly bitter and angry; he went to his wife and said
a great many unpleasant things to her. My God, how he had tormented her! One day,
wanting to cause her pain, he told her that her father had played a very unattractive part in
their romance, that he had asked him to marry her. Yegor Semyonitch accidentally
overheard this, ran into the room, and, in his despair, could not utter a word, could only
stamp and make a strange, bellowing sound as though he had lost the power of speech, and
Tanya, looking at her father, had uttered a heart-rending shriek and had fallen into a swoon.
It was hideous.
All this came back into his memory as he looked at the familiar writing. Kovrin went out on
to the balcony; it was still warm weather and there was a smell of the sea. The wonderful
bay reflected the moonshine and the lights, and was of a colour for which it was difficult to
find a name. It was a soft and tender blending of dark blue and green; in places the water
was like blue vitriol, and in places it seemed as though the moonlight were liquefied and
filling the bay instead of water. And what harmony of colours, what an atmosphere of
peace, calm, and sublimity!
In the lower storey under the balcony the windows were probably open, for women's voices
and laughter could be heard distinctly. Apparently there was an evening party.
Kovrin made an effort, tore open the envelope, and, going back into his room, read:
"My father is just dead. I owe that to you, for you have killed him. Our garden is being
ruined; strangers are managing it already -- that is, the very thing is happening that poor
father dreaded. That, too, I owe to you. I hate you with my whole soul, and I hope you may
soon perish. Oh, how wretched I am! Insufferable anguish is burning my soul. . . . My
curses on you. I took you for an extraordinary man, a genius; I loved you, and you have
turned out a madman. . . ."
Kovrin could read no more, he tore up the letter and threw it away. He was overcome by an
uneasiness that was akin to terror. Varvara Nikolaevna was asleep behind the screen, and he
could hear her breathing. From the lower storey came the sounds of laughter and women's
voices, but he felt as though in the whole
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