Читать книгу A Family of Noblemen - Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov - Страница 8

Arina Petrovna received her sons solemnly, weighed down by grief. Two maids supported her under the armpits. Her grey locks streamed out from under her cap, her head drooped, and shook from side to side, and her limbs seemed hardly able to support her. She always liked to play the part of a venerable, careworn mother before her children, moving with difficulty and getting her maids to assist her. Simple Simon called such solemn receptions high mass, herself a bishop, and the maids, Polka and Yulka, mace-bearers. As it was late at night the interview was almost a silent one. Without saying a word she gave her sons her hand to kiss; kissed them in turn, and made the sign of the cross over them; and when Porfiry Vladimirych made it clear that he would gladly spend the rest of the night with "mother dear," she merely waved her hand and said:

"Come now. Take a rest, you must be tired after the journey. This is not the time for discussion. We shall talk to-morrow."

Next morning the two sons went to kiss papa's hand, but papa refused his hand. He lay on his bed with closed eyes, and when they entered he cried out:

"Have you come to judge the toll-gatherer? Get out, Pharisees! Get out!"

But in spite of this reception, Porfiry Vladimirych emerged from papa's room agitated and with tears on his eyelids, while Pavel Vladimirych, like "the heartless dolt" that he was, merely picked his nose.

"He is very weak, mother dear, very weak!" exclaimed Porfiry Vladimirych, throwing himself on his mother's breast.

"Is it so bad?"

"Yes, very bad. He won't live much longer."

"Oh, well, it isn't as bad as that."

"No, dear, no. And although your life has never been too joyful, yet as I think how Fate deals you so many blows at once, upon my word, I wonder where you get the strength to bear up under it all."

"Well, my friend, the strength comes if such is the Lord's will. You know what it says in the Scriptures: 'Bear one another's burdens.' It seems that our Heavenly Father has chosen me to bear the burdens of my family."

Arina Petrovna shut her eyes, so delightful was this vision of the family finding their tables covered for them and of her toiling for them and bearing their burdens.

"Yes, my friend," she said after a minute's pause, "it's a hard life I lead in my old age. I have provided for my children, and it is time for me to rest. It's no joke—four thousand souls! At my age to take care of such an estate, to have an eye on everybody and everything, to run back and forth! As for all those bailiffs and managers, they look you straight in the eye, but, believe me, they are the most faithless kind. And you," she interrupted herself, turning to Pavel, "what are you digging in your nose for?"

"What have I to do with it?" snarled Pavel Vladimirych, disturbed in the very midst of his absorbing occupation.

"What do you mean? After all, he's your father. You might find a word of pity for him."

"Well—a father! A father like any other father. He has been that way for ten years. You always make things unpleasant for me."

"Why in the world should I, my boy? I am your mother. Here is Porfisha. He has found words of affection and pity for me as befits a good son, but you don't even look at your mother properly. You look at her out of the corner of your eye, as if she were not your mother, but your foe. Please don't bite me."

"Well, what——"

"Stop! Hold your tongue for a minute. Let your mother say a word. Do you remember the commandment, 'Honor thy father and thy mother, and all will be well with thee?' Am I to understand that you don't wish to be well?"

Pavel Vladimirych kept silence and looked at his mother in perplexity.

"You see, you're silenced," went on Arina Petrovna, "you are guilty. But I shall let you alone. For the sake of this joyful meeting we shall dispense with this talk. God, my child, sees everything. As for me, I see you through and through, and I always have. Children, children, you will remember your mother when she lies in her grave. You will remember her, but it will be too late."

"Mamma dear!" interposed Porfiry Vladimirych. "Away with such black thoughts, away with them!"

"We must all die," said Arina Petrovna sententiously. "These are not black, but pious thoughts. I'm growing weak, children, oh, how weak! Debility and ailments are the only things left of my former strength. Even the maids have noticed it, and they don't care a rap for me. If I say one word, they have ten in reply. I have only one threat, that I shall complain to the young masters. That works sometimes."

Tea was served and then breakfast, during which Arina Petrovna continued her complaining and self-pitying. After breakfast she invited her sons to her bedroom.

When the door was locked, she went straight to the business for which she had convoked the family council.

"Simple Simon is here," she began.

"We heard about it, mamma dear," said Porfiry Vladimirych; and it was hard to say whether it was irony or the calm complacency of a man who has just eaten a hearty meal that sounded in his voice.

"He has come here as if that were the proper thing to do. Whatever he may have done, he seems to think the old mother will always have bread for him. Think of all his hatred for me, of all the trouble his tricks and buffoonery have caused me. And what have I not done to get him a good berth? It all ran off like water from a duck's back. At last, I made up my mind. Goodness, if he cannot take care of himself, am I to ruin my life on account of the big lout? I'll give him a piece of the property, I decided. Perhaps, I thought, once an independent proprietor he'll sober down. No sooner said than done. I myself found a house for him and paid out twelve thousand silver rubles for it with my own hands. And what's the upshot? After less than three years he's hanging round my neck again. How long am I to stand such insults?"

Porfisha lifted up his eyes and shook his head sorrowfully, as if to say, "Fine doings. Why disturb mother dear so ruthlessly? Why not live peacefully and quietly? Then dear mamma would not be angry. Fine doings." But Porfisha's gestures did not please Arina Petrovna, who objected to any interruption to the course of her thoughts.

"Wait a minute," she said, "don't shake your head. Listen first. Think of my feelings when I learned that he had thrown away his parental blessing like a gnawed bone into a cesspool. Think how he outraged me, me, who for years refused myself sleep and food. He has done to his patrimony what one would do to a bauble bought at a fair."

"Oh, mother dear, what a shame, what a shame!" began Porfiry Vladimirych, but Arina Petrovna stopped him again.

"Wait a minute. Let me have your opinion when I order you to. If at least the scoundrel had come to me in time and said: 'I am guilty, dear mamma, I couldn't restrain myself,' I might have bought the house back for a song. The unworthy son did not know how to make use of the property. Perhaps the worthier children would. The house easily brought in fifteen per cent. income yearly. Maybe I would have thrown him out another thousand rubles in his distress. But instead, he disposed of the property without so much as saying a word to me. With my own hands, I paid out twelve thousand rubles for the house, and it was sold at auction for eight thousand rubles!"

"The main thing, dear mamma, is that he has dealt so basely with the parental blessing," Porfiry interjected hastily, as if afraid of being stopped again.

"Yes, that's so, too. My money does not come lightly. I have earned it with the sweat of my brow. When I married your father, all he owned was the estate of Golovliovo with one hundred and one souls, and a few more souls scattered in distant estates, a hundred and fifty in all. As for me, I had nothing at all. Now look what an estate I have built up on that foundation. There are four thousand souls, not a single one less. I can't take them into the grave with me. Do you think it was an easy task to scrape four thousand souls together? No, dear child, not easy, far from easy. I spent many a sleepless night trying to work out a good business scheme, so that no one should smell it out and stand in my way. And what have I not endured in my business travels? I have had plenty of hard road and bad weather and slippery ice. It is only lately that I allow myself the luxury of a coach. In former times I rode in a plain two-horse peasant's cart with a cover put on extra for me. It was in nothing but a cart that I used to go to Moscow. And the filth and stench I had to put up with in the Moscow inns! I begrudged myself the dime for the cabby, and I walked all the way from Rogozhskaya Street to Solyanka. The house-porter would say to me wonderingly: "Mistress, they say you are young and well-to-do, why do you work so hard?" But I was silent and patient. At first all I had at my disposal were thirty thousand rubles in bank notes. I sold your father's remote estates with their one hundred souls, and with what I realized from the sale I set out to buy a property with a thousand souls. I had a mass said at the Iverska Church and went to Solyanka to try my luck. What do you think happened? The Holy Virgin must have seen my bitter tears. She helped me buy the estate. It was like a miracle. The instant I bid thirty thousand rubles the auction came to an end. There had been a lot of noise and excitement, but then the people stopped bidding, and it was as quiet as could be. The auctioneer got up and congratulated me. I was dumfounded. Ivan Nikolaich, the lawyer, came over to me and said: 'Let me congratulate you, madam, on your purchase.' But I stood there stiff as a post. How great is God's mercy! Think of it, if in my confusion someone had called out just for spite, 'I bid thirty-five thousand,' I should certainly have offered every bit of forty thousand. And where would I have gotten the money from?"

Many a time before had Arina Petrovna regaled her children with the epical beginnings of her career of acquisition. It had never lost the charm of novelty for them. Porfiry Vladimirych listened smiling, sighing, turning up his eye-balls, lowering them, to the tune of the rapid changes through which the tale passed. As for Pavel Vladimirych, he sat with wide-open eyes, like a child, listening to a familiar, yet ever-fascinating fairy tale.

"Do you think your mother built up her fortune without trouble?" went on Arina Petrovna. "It takes trouble even to make a pimple on your nose. After the first purchase I was laid up with fever for six weeks. So judge for yourselves how it must make my heart ache to see my hard-earned money, money I went through torments to get, you may say, thrown out into the gutter for no earthly reason."

There was a minute's pause. Porfiry Vladimirych was ready to rend his garments, but refrained, fearing there would be no one in the village to mend them. Pavel Vladimirych, as soon as the fairy tale was over, fell back into his wonted apathy, and his face resumed its customary dull expression.

"That is why I asked you to come here," began Arina Petrovna anew. "Now judge us, me and the villain. Whatever you decide will be done. If you condemn him, he will be guilty. If you condemn me, I shall be guilty. Only I shall not allow the rascal to get the better of me," she added, quite unexpectedly.

Porfiry Vladimirych felt his turn had come, and he prepared to hold forth, but approached the subject in a roundabout way.

"If you will permit me, dearest mother, to express my opinion," he said, "here it is in two words: children must obey their parents, blindly do their bidding, cherish them in their old age. That's all! What are children, dear mother? Children are loving creatures who owe their parents everything, from their persons to the last rag they possess. Therefore, parents may judge children, while children may never judge parents. Children are in duty bound to respect, not to judge. You say: 'Judge us.' That is magnanimous of you, dear mother, magnificent! But how can we think about it without fear, we whom from the first day of our birth you have been clothing with kindness from head to foot? Say what you may, it would not be judgment but blasphemy. It would be such blasphemy, such blasphemy——"

"Stop, wait a minute. If you say you cannot sit in judgment on me, acquit me and condemn him," Arina Petrovna interrupted. She was listening and trying to search his meaning, but could not make out what new plot was back of the Bloodsucker's mind.

"No, mother dear, even that I cannot do, or rather I don't dare to. I have no right to. I can neither acquit nor condemn. I simply cannot judge. You are the mother; you alone know how to deal with us children. You have the right to reward us if we deserve it, and chastise us if we are guilty. Our duty is not to criticise, but to obey. And if at the moment of parental wrath you exceed the measure of justice, even then we dare not grumble, for the ways of Providence are hidden from us. Who knows, perhaps it was necessary. Our brother Stepan has acted basely, unspeakably, but you alone can determine the degree of punishment he deserves."

"Then you refuse to help me? You would have me get out of this affair as best I can?"

"Oh, dearest, dearest, how you misunderstood me! Goodness, goodness! I said, that however you might be pleased to dispose of brother Stepan's fate, so shall it be, and you—what horrible thoughts you ascribe to me."

"All right. And you?" she turned to Pavel Vladimirych.

"Do you want my opinion? But what's my opinion to you?" said he, as if only half-awake. However, he braced himself unexpectedly and went on: "Of course, he's guilty. Have him torn to pieces—ground to dust in a mortar—it's settled in advance. What am I in this?"

Having mumbled these incoherent words, he stopped and stared at his mother, his mouth wide open, as if not trusting his own ears.

"Well, my dear, I shall speak to you later," Arina Petrovna cut him off coldly. "I see that you are anxious to tread in Stiopka's tracks. Take care, my child. You will repent, but it will be too late."

"Why, what's the matter? I'm not saying anything. I say, just as you please. What is there disrespectful in that?" said Pavel Vladimirych, faintly.

"I'll talk with you later on, my boy, later on. You think because you are an army officer, you can run wild. You are greatly mistaken. Then neither of you wants to sit in judgment?"

"I, dearest mother——"

"What am I in this?" said Pavel Vladimirych. "I don't care. Have him torn to pieces."

"Hold your tongue, for Christ's sake, you wicked man!" Arina Petrovna felt she was fully entitled to call her son "scoundrel," but refrained in deference to the joyous meeting. "Well, if you refuse to judge him I shall. Here is my verdict. I shall try to treat him kindly once more. I shall hand over to him the little Vologda village, have a cottage built there, and let him live there and be fed by the peasants."

Although Porfiry Vladimirych had refused to sit in judgment on his brother, his mother's generosity was so amazing that he felt he simply had to point out the dangerous consequences of her project.

"Dearest mamma," he exclaimed, "you are more than magnanimous. You are confronted by a deed—well, the vilest, meanest deed—and then you forget and pardon. Magnificent! But forgive me, I am afraid for you, dearest. Think what you will of me, but if I were you, I wouldn't do it."

"Why not?"

"I don't know. Perhaps I lack your magnanimity, that motherly feeling of yours. But one thought comes back to me all the while—what if brother Stepan does the same with his second legacy as he did with his first?"

Arina Petrovna had already thought of that, yet in the back of her mind was another consideration.

"The Vologda estate is father's property, it belongs to the patrimony," she said through her teeth. "Sooner or later a portion of the patrimony will have to be doled out to him."

"I understand that very well, mother dear."

"Then you also understand that on giving him the Vologda village we can make him sign a document to the effect that he has received his full share and that he renounces all further inheritance claims."

"I understand that too, dearest mother. Your excessive kindness caused you to commit a grave mistake. At the time you bought him the house you ought to have made him give you such a document then."

"Yes, that was a blunder."

"At that time, in his joy, he would have signed any document. But you, dearest, in the kindness of your heart—goodness, what a mistake! What a mistake!"

"Don't talk of it any more. Why didn't you speak up before it was too late? Now you are ready to blame everything on your mother, but when it comes to business, you are not there. However, it isn't the document I have in mind. I can make him sign it even now. Papa, I suppose, isn't going to die at once. Until his death the blockhead must live on something. In case he refuses to sign, we can chase him out and bid him wait for papa's death. No, what I want to know is, do you dislike my idea of giving him the Vologda estate?"

"He will squander away the village, darling, as he did the house."

"If he does, let him blame himself."

"He'll come back to you, again, to no one else."

"Oh, no, I won't stand for it. I won't let him come near my threshold. There won't be a drink of water for him in my house. And people won't condemn me for it, nor will God punish me. To squander away first a house, then an estate! Am I his slave? Is he the only one I have to provide for? Have I not other children?"

"Still, it is to you that he will come. Isn't he brazen-faced enough to do that, darling mamma?"

"I tell you, I won't let him come near my threshold. Why do you sit there croaking, 'he'll come, he'll come?' I won't let him in."

Arina Petrovna grew silent and fixed her gaze on the window. She herself vaguely realized that the Vologda estate would only temporarily free her from "the horrid creature," that in the end he would dispose of it, too, and would return to her again, and that as a mother she could not refuse him a corner in her house. But the thought that the odious fellow would always be with her, that even though locked up in the counting-house he would be preying on her imagination like a spook, was so appalling that she shuddered involuntarily.

"Not for the world!" she exclaimed, striking the table with her fist and leaping to her feet.

Meanwhile, Porfiry Vladimirych kept on staring at "mother dear" and shaking his head rhythmically in token of condolence.

"I see you are angry, dearest mamma," he said at last in a tone so sugared that he seemed to be getting ready to tickle Arina Petrovna.

"What would you have me do? Dance a jig?"

"Excuse me, darling, but what do the Scriptures say about patience? 'In patience,' it says, 'possess ye your souls,' 'In patience'—that's the word. Do you think God does not see? He sees everything, mother dear. We perhaps don't suspect anything, we sit here proposing this and planning that, while He may already have disposed. Oh, dearest mamma, how unjust you are to me."

But Arina Petrovna was fully aware that the Bloodsucker was throwing a snare, and she flew into a rage.

"Are you making sport of me?" she shouted. "I am discussing business, and he's trying to hoax me. Don't pull the wool over my eyes. Speak plainly. Do you want him to remain at Golovliovo, hanging around his mother's neck?"

"Just so, dearest mother, if you please. Let him be where he is and make him sign a paper about the heritage."

"So, so. I knew that was what you would advise. All right. God alone knows how it will pain me always to be having that creature around. However, it seems nobody will take pity on me. When I was young I bore my cross. Shall I refuse it in my old age? But there is still another point. While papa and I are alive, he'll live at Golovliovo, and we won't let him starve. But how about afterwards?"

"Dearest mother! Darling! Why such melancholy thoughts?" cried the Bloodsucker.

"Melancholy or not, still one has to provide ahead. We aren't babies. When we die, what will become of him?"

"Dearest mother! Can't you count on us, your children? Have we not been properly brought up by you?"

Porfiry Vladimirych flashed on her one of those puzzling glances which had always made her uneasy, and went on:

"The poor man, dear mamma, I shall help with greater joy than the rich. The rich man, Christ be with him, the rich man has enough of his own. But the poor man—you know what Christ said of the poor."

Porfiry Vladimirych got up and kissed his mother's hand.

"Dearest mamma, allow me to present my brother with two pounds of tobacco," he said entreatingly.

Arina Petrovna did not answer. She looked at him and reflected: "Is he really such a Bloodsucker that he would turn his own brother out on the streets?"

"Well, do as you please. Let him live at Golovliovo," she said finally, turning to Porfiry. "You have trapped me. You started with 'just as you please, dearest mamma,' and finished by dancing me on your wire. But let me tell you this, I hate him and he has disgraced and pestered me all his life, he has even dishonored my motherly blessing. Nevertheless, if you turn him out into the streets or make a beggar of him, you shall not have my blessing. No, no, no. Now you two go to him. The idiot is wearing out his silly eyes looking for you."

The sons left. Arina Petrovna rose and watched them stride over the front yard to the counting-house without exchanging a word. Porfiry was constantly taking off his cap and crossing himself, now at the sight of the church, which shimmered afar off, now before the chapel, now before the wooden post to which a charity box was attached. As for Pavel, he seemed unable to take his eyes off his boot tips shining in the sunlight.

"For whom have I been accumulating riches? Refused myself sleep and food—for whom?" she cried bitterly.