Virgin Soil (Volume 1)/Chapter 20

by Ivan Turgenev

XX

'Well, now', Paklin was the first to begin, 'we have been in the eighteenth century; now lead the way full trot to the twentieth. . . . Golushkin's such an advanced man that it wouldn't do to reckon him in the nineteenth.'

'Why, do you know him?' inquired Nezhdanov.

'The earth is full of his glory; and I said, "lead the way," because I meant to come with you.'

'How's that? why, you don't know him, do you?'

'Get along! Did you know my poll-parrots?'

'But you introduced us!'

'Well, and do you introduce me. You can have no secrets from me, and Golushkin's an open heart. You'll see he'll be delighted to see some one new. And we don't stand on ceremony here in S———!'

'Yes,' muttered Markelov, 'people seem unceremonious here certainly.'

Paklin shook his head.

'That's, perhaps, meant for me. . . . So be it! I've deserved the reproach. But I say, my new acquaintance, defer for a time the gloomy reflections your bilious temperament inspires in you! And most of all———'

'And you, sir, my new acquaintance,' Markelov interrupted emphatically, 'let me tell you . . . by way of a word of warning, I never have the faintest taste for joking at any time, and especially not to-day! And what do you know about my temperament? It strikes me that we've not long─that it's the first time we've set eyes on each other.'

'There, there, don't be cross, and don't swear. I'll believe you without that,' said Paklin, and turning to Solomin: 'Oh, you,' he exclaimed, 'you whom the keen-sighted Fimushka herself called a cool man─and there certainly is something refreshing about you─say, had I the slightest intention of doing anything unpleasant to any one, or of joking unseasonably? I only suggested going with you to Golushkin; and besides, I'm an inoffensive creature. It's not my fault that Mr. Markelov has a bilious complexion.'

Solomin shrugged up first one shoulder, then the other; it was a habit of his when he could not make up his mind at once what to answer.

'There's no mistake,' he said at last, 'you couldn't give offence to any one, Mr. Paklin, and you don't want to; and why shouldn't you go to Mr. Golushkin's? We shall, I should fancy, spend our time just as pleasantly there as at your cousin's, and just as profitably.'

Paklin shook his finger at him.

'Oh! I see there's malice in you too! But you're going to Golushkin's yourself, aren't you?'

'To be sure I'm going. To-day's a day lost, any way.'

'Well then, en avant, marchons, to the twentieth century! to the twentieth century! Nezhdanov, you're an advanced man, lead the way!'

'All right, come along; only, don't repeat the same jokes too often, for fear of our thinking you 're running out of your stock.'

'There'll always be plenty at your service,' retorted Paklin gaily, and he hurried, advancing, as he said, not by leaps and bounds, but by limps and bounds.

'An amusing chap, very,' Solomin remarked as he walked behind him arm-in-arm with Nezhdanov; 'if─which God forbid─they send us all to Siberia, there'll be some one to amuse us!'

Markelov walked in silence behind the rest.

Meanwhile in the house of the merchant Golushkin every measure was being taken to provide a 'chic' dinner. A fish-soup, very greasy and very disagreeable, was concocted various pâtes chauds and fricassées were prepared (Golushkin, as a man on the pinnacle of European culture, though an Old Believer, went in for French cookery, and had taken a cook from a club, where he had been discharged for dirtiness); and, what was most important, several bottles of champagne had been got out and put in ice.

The host himself met the young men with the awkward tricks peculiar to him, a hurried manner and much giggling. He was, as Paklin had predicted, overjoyed to see him; he inquired about him: 'I suppose he's one of us?' and without waiting for an answer, cried, 'There, of course he's bound to be!' Then he told them that he had just come from that 'queer fish' of a governor, who was always worrying him on behalf of some─deuce knows what!─benevolent institution.. . . And it was absolutely impossible to say whether Golushkin was more pleased at having been received at the governor's, or at having succeeded in abusing him in the presence of advanced young men. Then he introduced them to the proselyte he had promised. And this proselyte turned out to be none other than the sleek, sickly little man with the foxy face who had come in with a message in the morning, and whom Golushkin addressed as Vasya, his clerk. 'He's not much of a talker', Golushkin declared, pointing to him with all five fingers at once, 'but devoted heart and soul to our cause.' Vasya confined himself to bowing, blushing, blinking, and smirking so effectually, that again it was impossible to say whether he was a vulgar blockhead or a consummate knave and scoundrel.

'But to dinner, gentlemen, to dinner.'

After partaking freely of the preliminary appetisers on the sideboard, they sat down to the table. Immediately after the soup, Golushkin ordered up the champagne. In frozen flakes and lumps it dropped from the neck of the bottle into the glasses. 'To our . . . our enterprise!' cried Golushkin, with a wink and a nod in the direction of the servants, as though to give them to understand that in the presence of outsiders they must be on their guard! The proselyte Vasya still continued silent, and though he sat on the extreme edge of his chair and conducted himself in general with a servility utterly out of keeping with the convictions to which, in the words of his patron, he was devoted heart and soul, he drank away at the wine with desperate eagerness! . . . The others, however, talked; that is to say, their host talked─and Paklin; Paklin especially. Nezhdanov was inwardly fretting; Markelov was angry and indignant, just as indignant, though in a different way, as at the Subotchevs'; Solomin was looking on, observant.

Paklin was enjoying himself! With his smart speeches he greatly delighted Golushkin, who had not the faintest suspicion that the 'little lame chap' kept whispering to Nezhdanov, who was sitting beside him, the cruellest remarks at his, Golushkin's, expense! He positively imagined that he was something of a simpleton, who might be patronised . . . and that was partly why he liked him. Had Paklin been sitting next him, he would have poked him in the ribs with his finger or slapped him on the shoulder; as it was, he winked at him across the table and nodded his head in his direction . . . but between him and Nezhdanov was seated first Markelov, like a storm-cloud, and then Solomin. However, Golushkin laughed convulsively at every word Paklin uttered, and even laughed on trust in advance, slapping himself on the stomach, and showing his bluish gums. Paklin soon saw what was required of him, and began abusing everything (it was a congenial task for him)─everything and everybody; conservatives, liberals, officials, barristers, judges, landowners, district councils, local assemblies, Moscow and Petersburg!

'Yes, yes, yes, yes,' put in Golushkin; 'to be sure, to be sure! Our mayor here, for instance, is a perfect ass! A hopeless noodle! I tell him one thing and another . . . but he doesn't understand a word; he's just such another as our governor!'

'Is your governor a fool?' inquired Paklin.

'I tell you he's an ass!'

'Have you ever noticed, does he grunt or snuffle?'

'What?' asked Golushkin in some bewilderment.

'Why, don't you know? In Russia our great civilians grunt; and our great army men talk through their noses; and it's only the very highest dignitaries who both grunt and snuffle at once.'

Golushkin roared with laughter till the tears ran down.

'Yes, yes,' he stuttered, 'he snuffles. . . He's an army man!'

'Ugh, you booby!' Paklin was thinking to himself.

'Everything's rotten with us, go where you will', bawled Golushkin, a little later. 'Everything's rotten, everything!'

'Most honoured Kapiton Andreitch', Paklin observed sympathetically—(he had just been whispering to Nezhdanov, 'What makes him keep moving his arms about, as if his coat were too tight in the armholes?')─'Most honoured Kapiton Andreitch, trust me, half-measures are no use now!'

'Half-measures!' screamed Golushkin, suddenly ceasing to laugh, and assuming a ferocious expression, 'there's only one thing now: to tear it all up from the roots! Vasya, drink, you dirty dog you, drink!'

'And so I am drinking, Kapiton Andreitch', responded the clerk, emptying his glass down his throat.

Golushkin, too, tossed off a glassful.

'How is it he doesn't burst?' Paklin whispered to Nezhdanov.

'It's practice does it!' rejoined Nezhdanov.

But the clerk was not the only one who drank. By degrees the wine affected them all. Nezhdanov, Markelov, even Solomin, gradually took part in the conversation.

At first in a sort of disdain, in a sort of vexation with himself for not keeping up his character, for doing nothing, Nezhdanov began to maintain that the time had come to cease to play with mere words, the time had come to 'act,'─he even alluded to the 'bed-rock having been reached!' And then, without noticing that he was contradicting himself, he began to ask them to point out what real existing elements they could rely on─to declare that he couldn't see any. No sympathy in society, no understanding in the people.

He got no answer, of course; not because there was no answer to be given, but that every one was by now talking on his own account. Markelov kept up a monotonous, insistent drone with his dull, angry voice ('for all the world as if he were chopping cabbage', remarked Paklin). Precisely what he was talking of, was not quite clear; the word 'artillery' could be distinguished in a momentary lull . . . he was probably referring to the defects he had discovered in its organisation. Germans and adjutants seemed also to be coming in for their share. Even Solomin observed that there were two ways of waiting: waiting and doing nothing, and waiting while pushing things forward.

'Progressives are no good to us', said Markelov gloomily.

'Progressives have hitherto worked from above', observed Solomin; 'we are going to try working from below.'

'No use, go to the devil, no use in it!' Golushkin cut in furiously; 'we must act at once, at once!'

'In fact, you want to jump out of window?'

'I'll jump out!' clamoured Golushkin. 'I will! and so'll Vasya! If I tell him, he'll jump out! Eh, Vasya? You'd jump, wouldn't you?'

The clerk drank off a glass of champagne.

'Where you lead, Kapiton Andreitch, there I follow. I shouldn't dare think twice about it.'

'You'd better not! I'd twist you into a ram's horn.'

Before long there followed what in the language of drunkards is known as a 'regular Babel.' A mighty clamour and uproar arose.

Like the first flakes of snow, swiftly whirling, crossing and recrossing in the still mild air of autumn, words began flying, tumbling, jostling against one another in the heated atmosphere of Golushkin's dining-room─words of all sorts─progress, government, literature; the taxation question, the church question, the woman question, the law-court question; classicism, realism, nihilism, communism; international, clerical, liberal, capital; administration, organisation, association, and even crystallisation! It was just this uproar which seemed to rouse Golushkin to enthusiasm; the real gist of the matter seemed to consist in this, for him.. . . He was triumphant! 'Here we are! Out of the way or I'll kill you! . . . Kapiton Golushkin's coming!' The clerk Vasya at last reached such a point of tipsiness, that he began snorting and talking to his plate, and suddenly shouted like one possessed: 'What the devil's the meaning of a progymnasium?'

Golushkin all at once got up, and throwing back his crimson face, in which an expression of coarse brutality and swagger was curiously mingled with the expression of another feeling, like a secret misgiving, even trepidation, he bawled, 'I will sacrifice another thousand! Vasya, out with it!' to which Vasya responded in an undertone, 'He's going it!'

Paklin, pale and perspiring (for the last quarter of an hour he had vied with the clerk in drinking), Paklin, jumping up from his place, and lifting both hands high above his head, cried brokenly, 'Sacrifice! he said, sacrifice! Oh, degradation of that sacred word! Sacrifice! No one dares to rise to thee, no one has the strength to fulfil the duties thou enjoinest, at least no one of us here present─and this lout, this vile money-bag, gloats over his swollen gains, scatters a handful of roubles, and shouts of sacrifice! And asks for gratitude; expects a wreath of laurel─the mean scoundrel!' Golushkin either did not hear, or did not understand what Paklin said, or possibly took his words for a joke, for he vociferated once more, 'Yes! a thousand roubles! Kapiton Andreitch's word is sacred!' He suddenly thrust his hand into his side-pocket. 'Here it is, here's the cash! There, pocket it; and remember Kapiton!' As soon as he reached a certain pitch of excitement, he used to talk of himself in the third person, like a little child. Nezhdanov picked up the notes flung on the wine-stained cloth. Since there was nothing to stay for after this, and it was now late, they all got up, took their caps, and went away.

In the open air they all felt giddy, especially Paklin.

'Well? where are we going now?' he managed to articulate with some difficulty.

'I don't know where you're going,' answered Solomin; 'I'm going home.'

'To your factory?'

'Yes.'

'Now, in the middle of the night, on foot?'

'What of it? there are neither wolves nor brigands here, and I'm quite well and able to walk. It's cooler walking at night.'

'But, I say, it's three miles!'

'Well, what if it were four? Good-bye, my friends!'

Solomin buttoned up his coat, pulled his cap over his forehead, lighted a cigar, and set off with long strides up the street.

'And where are you going?' said Paklin, turning to Nezhdanov.

'I'm going to his place.' He indicated Markelov, who was standing stock-still, his arms folded across his breast. 'We have horses here and a carriage.'

'Oh, that's capital . . . and I, my dear boy, am going to the oasis, to Fomushka and Fimushka. And do you know what I would say to you, my dear boy? There's madness there and madness here . . . only that madness, the eighteenth century madness, is closer to the heart of Russia than the twentieth century. Good-bye, gentlemen; I'm drunk, don't be angry with me. Just let me say one thing! There's not a kinder and a better woman on earth than my sister, Snanduliya; and you see what she is─a hunchback, and her name's Snanduliya! That's how it always is in this world! Though it's quite right that should be her name. Do you know who Saint Snanduliya was? A virtuous woman, who visited the prisons and healed the wounds of the prisoners and the sick. Well, good-bye! good-bye, Alexey man to be pitied! And you call yourself an officer . . . ugh! misanthrope! good-bye!'

He trailed away, limping and swaying from side to side, towards the oasis, while Markelov and Nezhdanov sought out the posting station where they had left their coach, ordered the horses to be put to, and half an hour later they were driving along the highroad.

—————

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at the Edinburgh University Press