Virgin Soil (Volume 1)/Chapter 19

by Ivan Turgenev

XIX

Fomushka and Fimushka, otherwise Foma Lavrentyevitch and Evfimiya Pavlovna Subotchev, both belonged to the same family of pure Russian descent, and were considered to be almost the oldest inhabitants of the town of S———. They had been married very early, and a very long time ago had installed themselves in the wooden house of their ancestors on the outskirts of the town, had never moved from there, and had never changed their mode of life or their habits in any respect. Time seemed to have stood still for them; no 'novelty' had crossed the boundary of their 'oasis.' Their fortune was not large; but their peasants sent them up poultry and provisions several times a year, just as in the old days before the emancipation. At a fixed date the village elder appeared with the rents and a brace of woodcocks, supposed to be shot on the manorial forest domains, though the latter had in reality long ceased to exist. They used to regale him with tea at the drawing-room door, present him with a sheep-skin cap and a pair of green wash-leather mittens, and bid him God-speed. The Subotchevs' house was filled with house-serfs, as in the old serf days. The old man-servant Kalliopitch, clothed in a jerkin of extraordinarily stout cloth with a stand-up collar and tiny steel buttons, announced in a sing-song chant that 'dinner is on the table,' and dozed standing behind his mistress's chair, all quite in the old style. The sideboard was in his charge; he had the care of 'the various spices, cardamums and lemons,' and to the question, 'Hadn't he heard that all serfs had received their freedom?' he always responded, 'To be sure, folks would for ever be talking some such idle nonsense; that like enough there was freedom among the Turks, but he, thank God, had escaped all that.' A girl, Pufka, a dwarf, was kept for entertainment, and an old nurse, Vassilyevna, used to come in during dinner with a large dark kerchief on her head, and talk in a thick voice of all the news─of Napoleon, of the year 1812, of Antichrist, and white niggers; or else, her chin propped in her hand, in an attitude of woe, she would tell what she had dreamed and what it portended, and what fortune she had got from the cards. The Subotchevs' house itself was quite different from all the other houses in the town; it was entirely built of oak and had windows exactly square. The double windows for winter were never taken out all the year round! And there were in it all kinds of little anterooms and passages, lumber-rooms and store-closets, and raised landings with balustrades and alcoves raised on rounded posts, and all sorts of little back premises and cellars. In front was a little palisade, and behind a garden, and in the garden outbuildings of every sort, granaries, cellars, ice-houses . . . a perfect nest of them! And it was not that there were many goods stored in all these outhouses; some, indeed, were tumbling down; but it had all been so arranged in old days, and so it had remained. The Subotchevs had only two horses, ancient, grey, and shaggy; one was covered with white patches from age; they called it the Immovable. They were─at most once a month─harnessed to an extraordinary equipage, known to the whole town, and presenting a resemblance to a terrestrial globe with one quarter cut out in front, lined within with foreign yellow material, closely dotted with big spots like warts. The last yard of that stuff had been woven in Utrecht or Lyons in the time of the Empress Elizabeth! The Subotchevs' coachman, too, was an exceedingly aged man, redolent of train-oil and pitch; his beard began just under his eyes, while his eyebrows fell in little cascades to meet his beard. He was so deliberate in all his movements that it took him five minutes to take a pinch of snuff, two minutes to stick his whip in his belt, and more than two hours to harness the Immovable alone. His name was Perfishka. If, when the Subotchevs were driving, their carriage had to go ever so little uphill, they were invariably alarmed (they were as frightened, however, going downhill), hung on to the straps of the carriage, and both repeated aloud: 'God grant the horses─the horses . . . the strength of Samuel, and make us . . . us light as a feather, light as a feather! . . .'

The Subotchevs were regarded by everyone in the town as eccentric, almost as mad; and indeed they were conscious themselves that they were not in touch with the life of the day . . . but they did not trouble themselves very much about that: the manner of life to which they had been born and bred and married they adhered to. Only one peculiarity of that manner of life had not clung to them: from their birth up they had never punished any one, never had any one flogged. If any servant of theirs proved to be an irreclaimable thief or drunkard, first they were patient and bore with him a long while, just as they would have put up with bad weather; and at last tried to get rid of him, to pass him on to other masters: let others, they would say, take their turn of them for a little. But such a disaster rarely befell them, so rarely that it made an epoch in their lives, and they would say, for instance, 'That was very long ago, it happened when we had that rascal Aldoshka', or, 'when we had grandfather's fur cap with the fox's tail stolen.' The Subotchevs still had such caps. Another distinguishing trait of the old world was, however, not noticeable in them: neither Fimushka nor Fomushka was very religious. Fomushka went so far as to profess some of Voltaire's views; while Fimushka had a mortal dread of ecclesiastical personages; they had, according to her experience, the evil eye. 'The priest comes in to call on me,' she used to say, 'and then I look round and the cream's turned sour!' They rarely went to church, and fasted in the Catholic fashion, that's to say, ate eggs, butter, and milk. This was known in the town, and of course did not improve their reputation. But their goodness carried everything before it; and though the queer Subotchevs were laughed at and regarded as lunatics and innocents, they were all the same, in fact, respected. Yes; they were respected . . . but no one visited them. This, however, was no great affliction to them. They were never bored when they were together, and therefore they were never apart and desired no other company. Neither Fomushka nor Fimushka had once been ill; and if either of them ever contracted some slight ailment, then they both drank lime-flower water, rubbed warm oil on their stomachs, or dropped hot tallow on the soles of their feet, and it was very soon over. They always spent the day in the same way. They got up late, drank chocolate in the morning in tiny cups of the shape of a cone; 'tea,' they used to declare, 'came into fashion after our time.' They sat down opposite to one another, and either talked (and they always found something to talk about!) or read something out of Agreeable Recreations, The Mirror of the Worlds or Aonides, or looked at a little old album bound in red morocco with gold edges, which once belonged, as an inscription recorded, to one Mme. Barbe de Kabyline. How and when this album had come into their hands they did not know themselves. In it were several French and many Russian poems and prose extracts, after the fashion, for example, of the following short meditations on Cicero: 'In what disposition Cicero entered upon the office of quæstor, he explains as follows: Invoking the gods to testify to the purity of his sentiments in every position with which he had hitherto been honoured, he deemed himself by the most sacred bonds bound to the worthy fulfilment thereof, and to that intent he, Cicero, not only suffered himself not the indulgence of the pleasures forbidden by law, but refrained even from those lighter distractions which are held to be indispensable by all.' Below stood the inscription: 'Composed in Siberia in hunger and cold.' A good specimen, too, was a poem entitled 'Tirsis', where these lines were to be met:

`A settled peace is over all,
The dew's asparkle in the sun,
Nature it soothes, with freshness cool,
Giving new life to the day begun!
Tirsis alone, with soul dismayed,
Sorrows, pines, so lone and so sad.
His darling Aneta is far away,
And what can then make Tirsis glad?'

and the impromptu composition of a captain who had come on a visit in 1790, dated ' May 6th':

'Never shall I forget
Thee, lovely hamlet!
For ever shall I recall
How sweetly the time passed!
What kindness I received
In thy noble owner's hall!

Five memorable happy days,
In a circle worthy of all praise!
With old and young ladies, not a few,
And other interesting people too.'

On the last page of the album, instead of verses there were recipes for remedies against stomach-ache, spasms, and worms. The Subotchevs dined at twelve o'clock punctually, and always upon old-fashioned dishes: curd fritters, sour cucumber soups, salt cabbage, pickles, hasty pudding, jelly puddings, syrups, jugged poultry with saffron, and custards, made with honey. After dinner they took a nap for just one hour and no longer, waked up, again sat opposite one another, and drank cranberry syrup and sometimes an effervescent drink called 'forty winks', which, however, almost all popped out of the bottle, and afforded the old people great amusement and Kalliopitch great annoyance; he had to wipe up 'all over the place,' and he kept up a long grumble at the butler and the cook, whom he regarded as responsible for the invention of this beverage . . . 'What sort of good is there in it? it only spoils the furniture!' Then the Subotchevs again read something, or laughed at the pranks of the dwarf Pufka, or sang duets of old-fashioned songs (their voices were exactly alike, high, feeble, rather quavering, and hoarse ─especially just after their nap,─but not without charm), or they played cards, always the same old games, cribbage, piquet, or even boston with double dummy! Then the samovar made its appearance; they drank tea in the evening.. . . This concession they did make to the spirit of the age, though they always thought it a weakness, and that the people were growing noticeably feebler through this 'Chinese herb', As a rule, however, they refrained from criticising modern times or exalting the old days; they had never lived in any other way from their birth up; but that other people might live differently, better even, they readily admitted so long as they were not required to change their ways. At seven o'clock Kalliopitch served the supper, with the inevitable cold, sour hash; and at nine o'clock the high striped feather-beds had already taken into their soft embraces the plump little persons of Fomushka and Fimushka, and untroubled sleep was not slow in descending upon their eyelids; and everything was hushed in the old house; the lamp glowed, amid the fragrance of musk; the cricket chirped; and the kind-hearted, absurd, innocent old couple slept sound.

To these eccentrics, or, as Paklin expressed it, 'poll-parrots,' who were taking care of his sister, he now conducted his friends.

His sister was a clever girl, and not bad-looking. Her eyes were magnificent, but her unfortunate deformity had crushed her, deprived her of all self-confidence and joyousness, made her distrustful and even ill-tempered. And her name was very unfortunate, Snanduliya! Paklin had tried to make her change it to Sofya, but she clung obstinately to her queer name, saying that that was just what a hunchback ought to be called─Snanduliya. She was a good musician, and played the piano well: 'Thanks to my long fingers,' she observed with some bitterness; 'hunchbacks always have fingers like that.'

The visitors came upon Fomushka and Fimushka at the very minute when they had waked up from their after-dinner nap and were drinking cranberry water.

'We are stepping into the eighteenth century', cried Paklin, directly they crossed the threshold of the Subotchevs' house.

And they were, in fact, confronted by the eighteenth century in the very hall, in the shape of low bluish screens covered with black cut-out silhouettes of powdered cavaliers and ladies. Silhouettes, introduced by Lavater, were much in vogue in Russia in the eighties of last century. The sudden appearance of so large a number of visitors─no less than four─ produced quite a sensation in the secluded house. They heard a stampede of feet, both shod and naked; more than one woman's face was thrust out for an instant and then vanished again; some one was shut out, some one groaned, some one giggled, some one whispered convulsively, 'Get along with you, do!'

At last Kalliopitch made his appearance in his shabby jerkin, and, opening the door into the 'salon,' he cried in a loud voice:

'Your honour, Sila Samsonitch with some other gentlemen!'

The old people were far less fluttered than their servants. The irruption of four full-sized men in their drawing-room, comfortably large as it was, did indeed bewilder them a little, but Paklin promptly reassured them by presenting, with various odd phrases, Nezhdanov, Solomin, and Markelov to them in turn as good quiet fellows and not 'crown people.' Fomushka and Fimushka had a special dislike for 'crown'─that is, official─people.

Snanduliya, who appeared at her brother's summons, was far more agitated and ceremonious than the old Subotchevs. They asked their visitors, both together, and in exactly the same phrases, to sit down, and begged to know what they would take─tea, chocolate, or an effervescent beverage with jam? When they heard that their guests wanted nothing, since they had not long before lunched at the merchant Golushkin's and would shortly dine there, then they did not press them, and, folding their little hands across their little persons in precisely the same manner, they entered upon conversation.

At first the conversation flagged rather, but soon it grew livelier. Paklin diverted the old people hugely with Gogol's well-known story of the mayor who succeeded in getting into a church when it was full, and of the pie that was equally successful in getting into the mayor; they laughed till the tears ran down their cheeks. They laughed, too, in exactly the same way, with sudden shrieks, ending in a cough, with their whole faces flushed and heated. Paklin had noticed that, as a rule, quotations from Gogol have a very powerful and, as it were, convulsive effect upon people like the Subotchevs, but, as he was not so much anxious to amuse them as to show them off to his friends, he changed his tactics, and managed so that the old people were soon quite at ease and animated. Fomushka brought out and showed the visitors his favourite carved wood snuff-box, on which it had once been possible to distinguish thirty-six figures in various attitudes; they had long ago been effaced, but Fomushka saw them, saw them still, and could distinguish them and point them out. 'See', he said, 'there's one looking out of window; do you see, he's put his head out . . .' and the spot to which he pointed with his chubby finger with its raised nail was just as smooth as all the rest of the snuff-box lid. Then he drew the attention of his guests to a picture hanging above his head, painted in oils; it represented a hunter in profile galloping full speed on a pale bay-coloured steed, also in profile, over a plain of snow. The hunter wore a tall white sheep-skin cap with a blue streamer, a tunic of camel's hair, with a velvet border and a belt of wrought gold; a glove embroidered in silk was tucked into the belt, and a dagger, mounted in silver and black, hung from it. In one hand the hunter, who was very youthful and plump in appearance, held a huge horn, decked with red tassels, and in the other the reins and whip. All the four legs of the horse were suspended in the air, and on each of them the artist had conscientiously portrayed a horse-shoe, and even put in the nails. 'And observe,' said Fomushka, pointing with the same chubby finger to four semi-circular marks in the white ground behind the horse's legs, 'the prints in the snow─even these he has put in!' Why it was that there were only four of these prints─ not one was to be seen further back─on that point Fomushka was silent.

'And you know that it is I', he added after a brief pause, with a modest smile.

'What!' exclaimed Nezhdanov, 'did you hunt?'

'I did . . . but not for long. Once the horse threw me at full gallop, and I injured my "kurpy," so Fimushka was frightened . . . and so she wouldn't let me. I have given it up ever since.'

'What did you injure?' inquired Nezhdanov.

'The kurpy,' repeated Fomushka, dropping his voice.

His guests looked at one another. No one knew what sort of thing a kurpy might be; at least, Markelov knew that the shaggy tuft on a Cossack or Circassian cap is called a kurpy, but surely Fomushka could not have injured that! But to ask him exactly what he understood by the word was more than any one could make up his mind to do.

'Well, new, since you've shown off,' Fimushka observed suddenly, 'I will show off, too.'

Out of a diminutive 'bonheur du jour,' as they used to call the old-fashioned bureau on tiny crooked legs, with a convex lid which folded up into the back of the bureau, she took a water-colour miniature in an oval bronze frame, representing a perfectly naked child of four years old, with a quiver on her shoulder and a blue ribbon round her breast, trying the points of the arrows with the end of her little finger. The child was very curly and smiling, and had a slight squint. Fimushka showed the miniature to her visitors.

'That was I!' she observed.

'You?'

'Yes, I. In my childhood. There was an artist, a Frenchman, who used to come and see my father─a splendid artist! And so he painted a picture of me for my father's birthday. And what a nice Frenchman he was! He came to see us afterwards, too. He would come in, scraping his foot as he bowed, and then giving it a little shake in the air, and would kiss your hand, and when he went away he would kiss his own fingers and bow to right and to left, and before and behind! He was a delightful Frenchman!'

They praised his work; Paklin even professed to discern a certain likeness.

Then Fomushka began talking of the French of to-day, and expressed the opinion that they must all be very wicked!

'Why so, Foma Lavrentyevitch?'

'Why, only see what names they have now!'

'What, for instance?'

'Why, such as Nozhan-Tsent-Lorran (Nogent Saint Lorraine), a regular bandit's name!'

Fomushka inquired incidentally, 'Who was the sovereign now in Paris?'

They told him 'Napoleon', and that seemed to surprise and pain him.

'Why so?'

'Why, he must be such an old man,' he began, and stopped, looking round him in confusion.

Fomushka knew very little French, and read Voltaire in a translation (in a secret box under the head of his bed he kept a manuscript translation of Candide), but he occasionally dropped expressions like 'That, my dear sir, is fausse parquet' (in the sense of 'suspicious', 'untrue'), at which many people laughed till a learned Frenchman explained that it was an old parliamentary expression used in his country until the year 1789.

Seeing that the conversation had turned on France and the French, Fimushka screwed up her courage to inquire about one thing which was very much on her mind. She first thought of applying to Markelov, but he looked very ill-tempered; she might have asked Solomin . . . but no! she thought, 'he's a plain sort of person; he's sure not to know French.' So she addressed herself to Nezhdanov.

'There's something, my dear sir, I should like to learn from you,' she began, 'excuse me! My cousin, Sila Samsonitch, you must know, makes fun of an old woman like me, and my old-fashioned ignorance.'

'How so?'

'Why, if any one wants to put the question, "What is it?" in the French dialect, ought he to say, "Ke-se-ke-se-ke-se-là?"'

'Yes.'

'And can he also say, " Ke-se-ke-se-là?"'

'Yes, he can.'

And simply, "Ke-se-là?"'

'Yes, he could say that too', And all that would be the same?'

'Yes.'

Fimushka pondered deeply, and threw up her hands.

'Well, Silushka,' she said at last, 'I was wrong and you were right But these Frenchmen! Poor things!'

Paklin began begging the old people to sing them some little ballad.. . . They both laughed and wondered how such an idea could occur to him; they soon consented, however, but only on the condition that Snanduliya sat down to the harpsichord and accompanied them─she would know what. In one corner of the drawing-room there turned out to be a diminutive piano, which not one of them had noticed at the beginning. Snanduliya sat down to this 'harpsichord,' struck a few chords. . . . Such toothless, acid, wizened, crazy notes Nezhdanov had never heard before in his life; but the old people began singing promptly:

`Is it to feel the smart,'

began Fomushka,

'That's hid in love,
The gods gave us a heart
Attuned to love?'

'Was there a love-sick heart,'

responded Fimushka,

`In the world ever,
Quite free from woe and smart?'

'Never! never!'

put in Fomushka.

`Never! never!'

repeated Fimushka.

`Pain is of love a part
Ever! ever!'

they both sang together.

'Ever! ever!'

Fomushka warbled alone.

'Bravo!' cried Paklin; 'that's the first verse, now the second.'

'Certainly', answered Fomushka; 'only, Snanduliya Samsonovna, how about the shake? There ought to be a shake after my verse.'

`To be sure,' replied Snanduliya, ' you shall have your shake.'

Fomushka began again:

'Has ever lover loved
And known not grief and pain?
What lover has not sighed
And wept and sighed again?'

And then Fimushka;

`The heart is rocked in grief
As a ship floats on the main,
Why was it given, then?'

'For pain! for pain! for pain!

cried Fomushka, and he waited to give Snanduliya time for the shake.

Snanduliya performed the shake.

'For pain! for pain! for pain!'

repeated Fimushka.

And then both together:

'Take, gods, my heart away,
Again! again! again!
Again! again! again!'

And the song wound up with another shake. 'Bravo! bravo!' they all shouted, with the exception of Markelov, and they even clapped their hands.

'And do they feel', thought Nezhdanov directly the applause ceased, 'they are performing like some sort of buffoons? Perhaps they don't, and perhaps they do feel it and think "Where's the harm? no one's the worse for it; we amuse others, in fact!" And if you look at it properly, they 're right, a thousand times right!'

Under the influence of these reflections, he began suddenly paying them compliments, in acknowledgment of which they merely made a sort of slight curtsey, without leaving their chairs.. . . But at that instant, out of the adjoining room, probably a bedroom or maids'-room, where a great whispering and bustle had been audible a long while, appeared the dwarf, Pufka, escorted by the old nurse, Vassilyevna. Pufka proceeded to squeal and play antics, while the nurse one minute quieted her, and the next egged her on.

Markelov, who had long shown signs of impatience (as for Solomin, he simply wore a broader smile than usual) turned sharply upon Fomushka.

'I shouldn't have thought you,' he began in his abrupt fashion, 'with your enlightened intellect (you 're a follower of Voltaire, aren't you?) could be amused by what ought to be a subject for compassion─I mean deformity.' Then he remembered Paklin's sister, and could have bitten his tongue off; while Fomushka turned red, murmuring, 'Why─why, I didn't . . . she herself———'

And then Pufka fairly flew at Markelov.

'What put that idea into your head,' she squeaked in her lisping voice, 'to insult our masters? They protect a poor wretch like me, take me in, give me meat and drink, and you must grudge it me. You envy another's luck, I suppose. Where do you spring from, you black-faced, worthless wretch, with moustaches like a beetle's?' Here Pufka showed with her thick, short finger what his moustaches were like. Vassilyevna's toothless gums were shaking with laughter, and her mirth was echoed in the next room.

'Of course I can't presume to judge you, Markelov addressed Fomushka; 'to protect the poor and the crippled is a good action. But allow me to observe, to live in luxury, wallowing in ease and plenty, even without injuring others, but not to lift a finger to aid your fellow-creatures, doesn't imply much virtue; I, for one, to tell the truth, attach no value to that sort of goodness!'

Here Pufka gave a deafening howl─she had not understood a word of all Markelov said; but the 'black-browed fellow' was scolding . . . how dared he. Vassilyevna, too, muttered something indistinct, while Fomushka folded his little hands across his breast, and turning towards his wife, 'Fimushka, my darling,' he said, all but sobbing, 'do you hear what the gentleman says? You and I are sinners, miscreants, Pharisees . . . we're wallowing in luxury, oh! oh! . . . we ought to be turned into the streets . . . and have a broom put in our hands to work for our living. Oh, ho! ho!' Hearing these mournful words, Pufka howled louder than ever. Fimushka's eyes puckered up, the corners of her mouth dropped, she was just drawing in a deep breath so as to give full vent to her emotions.

There's no knowing how it would have ended if Paklin had not intervened.

'What's the meaning of this? upon my word,' he began with a wave of the hand and a loud laugh, 'I wonder you're not ashamed of yourselves. Mr. Markelov meant to make a little joke, but as he has such a very solemn face, it sounded rather alarming, and you were taken in by it! That's enough! Evfimiya Pavlovna, there's a dear, we've got to go in a minute, so, do you know what? you must tell all our fortunes before parting . . . you're a great hand at that. Sister! get the cards!'

Fimushka glanced at her husband, and he was sitting now completely reassured; she, too, was reassured.

'The cards,' she said; 'but I've quite forgotten, my dear sir, it's long since I had them in my hand.'

But of her own accord she took out of Snanduliya's hands a pack of aged, queer ombre cards.

'Whose fortune shall I tell?'

'Oh, every one's,' said Paklin; while to himself he said, 'What a mobile old thing! you can turn her any way you like . . . she's a perfect darling! Every one's, granny, every one's,' he went on aloud; 'tell us our fate, our character, our future . . . tell us everything!'

Fimushka began shuffling the cards, but suddenly she threw down the whole pack.

'I don't need to use the cards!' she cried; 'I know the character of each of you without that. And as the character is, so is the fate. He, now' (she pointed to Solomin) 'is a cool man, constant; he, now' (she shook her finger at Markelov) 'is a hot, dangerous man . . .' (Pufka put out her tongue at him); 'as for you' (she looked at Paklin), there's no need to tell you; you know yourself─a weathercock! As for this gentleman' (she indicated Nezhdanov, and hesitated).

'What is it?' he said; 'tell me, please; what sort of man am I?'

'What sort of man are you? . . .' said Fimushka slowly, 'you're to be pitied─that's all.'

Nezhdanov shuddered.

'To be pitied? why so?'

'Oh! I pity you─that's all.'

'But why?'

'Oh, for reasons! My eye tells me so. Do you think I'm a fool? Oh, I'm cleverer than you, for all your red hair. . . . I pity you . . . that's your fortune!'

All were silent . . . they looked at one another, and were still silent.

'Well, good-bye, dear friends', Paklin cried, we've stayed too long and tired you, I'm afraid. It's time these gentlemen were off . . . and I'll see them on their way. Good-bye; thanks for your kind reception.'

'Good-bye, good-bye, come again, don't stand on ceremony,' Fomushka and Fimushka cried with one voice.. . . Then Fomushka struck up suddenly like a refrain:

'Many, many years of life.'

'Many, many years,' Kalliopitch chimed in quite unexpectedly in the bass, as he opened the door to the young men.

And all four of them suddenly emerged into the street before the podgy little house; while at the window they heard Pufka's squeaky voice: 'Fools . . .' she shouted, 'fools! . . .'

Paklin laughed aloud; but no one responded. Markelov scanned each in turn as though he expected to hear some word of indignation.. . .

Solomin alone smiled his ordinary smile.