Poor Folk and Other Stories (17 page)

I have had a great many experiences today, my little angel. For one thing I have had a headache all day. In order to try to obtain some relief, I took a walk along the Fontanka. It was a damp, dark evening. It is already dark by six o'clock now – there's a fine thing for you! There was no rain, but the fog was making up for it. Long swathes of dark cloud were passing across the sky. A huge multitude of people was making its way along the embankment, and to fit the general mood they all had the most fearful, depressing faces; drunken muzhiks, snubnosed Finnish peasant women, booted and bareheaded, workmen, cabbies, people like yours truly, out on some errand; boys, some locksmith is apprentice in a striped overall, haggard and sickly looking, his face covered in sooty oil, a lock in his hand; a retired soldier, as tall as a building – that was the sort of public it was. It was evidently the time of day when no other kind of public shows its face. The Fontanka is a navigable canal, after all. There is such a vast number of barges that one wonders how they can all get in. Peasant women sit on the bridges with soggy honeycakes and rotten apples – they are all such sodden, dirty women. It is not much fun walking along the Fontanka! Wet granite under one is feet, on either side tall, black, sooty houses; fog under one is feet, and fog above one is head. That is the sort of sad, dark evening it was today.

When I turned into Gorokhovaya Street it was already quite dark, and the gas was being lit. I haven't been in Gorokhovaya Street for quite a little while – it is not a privilege that is been accorded to me. What a noisy street it is! Such shops, such rich department stores; everything fairly burns and glitters – the materials, the flowers under glass, the various hats with ribbons. You might think that all this had simply been displayed here for show – but that is not the case–I mean, there are people who buy all these things and make a present of them to their wives. A wealthy street! A lot of German bakers live in Gorokhovaya Street; they must also be very well-to-do. All those carriages constantly driving by; how does the paving stand it? There
are sumptuous equipages, with windows as glossy as mirrors, and velvet and silk inside; they have aristocratic footmen, wearing epaulettes and swords. I looked into all the carriages, in every one of them there were ladies who were all dressed up, perhaps they were princesses or countesses. It must have been the hour when they all hurry to balls and assemblies. I would be curious to see what princesses and aristocratic ladies in general look like close to; very nice, I should think; I've never seen; except as I saw today, when I looked into those carriages. Then I remembered you. Oh, my little dove, my darling! When I remember you now, my heart aches within me! Why are you so unfortunate, Varenka? My little angel! In what way are you inferior to them? I think you are kind, lovely, versed in learning; so why should such a wicked fate fall to your lot? Why does it always happen that a good person lives in desolation, while happiness comes to another unasked? I know, I know, little mother, that it is not right to think that way, that that is free-thinking; but in all candour, in all truth, why does the raven fate croak fortune to one child still in its mother is womb, while another comes into God is world by way of the foundling hospital? I mean, it's often the case that fortune is granted to Ivan the Fool. It's as if someone were to say: ‘You, Ivan, may put your hand in the familial moneybags, eat, drink and be merry; but you, whatever-your-name-is, can eat your heart out – that is all you're fit for, my good fellow!' It's sinful, little mother, it's sinful to think like that, but in this case sin has a way of stealing into one is heart without one being able to do much about it. I wish you could also ride in one of those carriages, my darling, my treasure. Generals would seek the favour of a well-disposed glance from you – not yours truly; you would wear, not that old unbleached gown, but silk and gold. You would not be thin and unhealthy looking as you are at present, but would look like a sugarplum fairy – fresh, plump, and rosy-cheeked. And then the only thing that would make me happy would be to catch a glimpse of you from the street at your brightly lit windows, even just a glimpse of your shadow; the mere thought that you were so happy and gay up there would make me happy too, my pretty little bird. Yet how are things now? It is not enough that wicked people have ruined you, that some worthless trash, some loose debauchee has insulted you. Just because his coat fits him like a glove, because he can look at you through his gold pince-nez, the shameless villain, he can do as he pleases, and you must listen to his indecent talk with indulgence! Enough
Enough, I say! And why is it like this? Oh, because you're an orphan, because you're defenceless, because you have no powerful friend who could give you some decent support. But I mean, what sort of man is this, what sort of people are these who think nothing of insulting an orphan? They are trash, not people, simply trash; they are just names in a book, they don't really exist, of that I am certain. That is what they are like, these people! But in my opinion, my darling, that hurdy-gurdy man I ran into today in Gorokhovaya Street inspires more respect than they do. He may spend the whole day hanging about waiting for some miserable, grubby half-copeck on which he can subsist, yet for all that he is his own master, and supports himself. He doesn't want to beg for alms; so he toils in order to give people entertainment, like a clockwork automaton– ‘Look' he says, ‘I'm doing what I can to give you entertainment.' he is destitute, of course, there's no denying that; but he is destitute in a noble sort of way; he is tired, he is chilled to the bone, but still he toils, in his own, peculiar way, maybe, but he toils. And there are many of these honest people, little mother, who although they earn but little in proportion to the usefulness of their labour, bow to no one and beg for alms from no one. I, too, am like that hurdy-gurdy man – that is to say, not really like him at all, but in my own way, in my own noble, aristocratic way, I am just like him – I toil as I am able, I do what I can, in other words. More than that I cannot offer; what can't be cured must be endured.

I have mentioned this hurdy-gurdy man, little mother, because today I have had occasion to experience an especially keen sense of my own poverty. I had stopped to look at the hurdy-gurdy man. There were all these thoughts swarming about in my head – so, in order to divert myself, I stopped. Among the spectators, apart from myself, there were some cabbies, some prostitute or other, and a little girl who was all covered in grime. The hurdy-gurdy man had stationed himself in front of the windows of someone is house. I noticed a street-urchin, a little boy, who must have been about ten; he would have been pretty, but he looked so weak and ill; he was dressed in a shirt and not much else, and stood there practically barefoot, listening to the music open-mouthed – like the child he was! He stared in wonderment as the German is dolls danced; his own arms and legs were stiff with cold, he was shivering, and nibbling the end of one of his sleeves. I observed that he was holding a small sheet of paper in his hand. A gentleman walked by and threw
the hurdy-gurdy man some coin of little value; it landed right inside the hurdy-gurdy man is box, which had a small surround on which was depicted a Frenchman dancing with some ladies. At the clink of the coin, the little boy gave a start and timidly looked round, evidently supposing that I had thrown the money. He came running up to me, his little hands trembling and his little voice quavering, held the sheet of paper out to me and said: ‘Here is a letter!' I unfolded it. It was the usual thing: ‘Dear Benefactor, a mother with children is dying, she has three and they are hungry, so if you will please help us, and not forget my little fledglings, when I die I will not forget you in the next world, my benefactor.' Well, that was clear enough, there was nothing unusual about it, but what did I have to give them? So I didn't give them anything. But how sorry I felt for him! The boy looked so wretched, he was blue with cold and probably hungry as well, and he was in earnest, oh yes, he was in earnest; I know a bit about these things. What is bad is that these scurvy mothers don't look after their children and go sending them out with letters half-naked in cold weather like this. Perhaps she is a stupid peasant woman with no strength of character; and perhaps she has no one to go out and work for her, so she just sits cross-legged and is genuinely ill. But she could still apply in the quarters where such cases are dealt with. On the other hand, perhaps she is just a fraud, purposely sending a hungry, feeble child out to dupe people, and thereby making him ill. And what does the poor boy learn from handing out these letters? His heart merely grows hardened; he goes around, runs up to people, begging. The people are going about their business, and they have no time. Their hearts are stony; their words are cruel: ‘Be off with you! Go away! You won't make a monkey out of me!' That is what he hears from everyone is lips. His child is heart grows hardened, and the poor frightened boy shivers for nothing in the cold, like a little bird that has fallen out of a broken nest. His arms and legs are frozen; he gasps for breath. The next time you see him, he is coughing; it is not long before illness, like some unclean reptile, creeps into his breast, and when you look again, death is already standing over him in some stinking corner somewhere, and there is no way out, no help at hand – there you have his entire life! That is what life can be like! Oh, Varenka, it is so agonizing to hear those words ‘For the love of Christ', and to walk on, and give the boy nothing, to say to him: ‘God will provide.' Some ‘For the love of Christ' are not so bad. (There are various
kinds of them, little mother.) Others are long-drawn-out, habitual, studied – a beggar is stock-in-trade; it is not so hard to refrain from giving to one of those – he is an inveterate beggar, one of long standing, a beggar by trade; he's used to it, you think, he'll get over it, he knows how to get over it. But another will be unpractised, coarse, terrible – as today when, just as I was about to take the letter from the boy, a man standing by the fence, who was selecting the people he asked for money, said to me: ‘Give me a half-a-copeck,
barin
, for the love of Christ!' in such a rude, abrupt voice that I shuddered with a sense of terrible emotion, but did not give him a half-copeck: I didn't have one. And then again, there's the fact that rich people don't like the poor to complain of their lot out loud – they say they are causing trouble, being importunate! Yes, poverty is always importunate – perhaps those groans of hunger keep the rich awake!

To tell you the truth, my dear, I began describing all this to you partly in order to unburden my heart, but more particularly in order to provide you with an example of the good style of my literary compositions. Because I think you will probably agree, little mother, that my style has improved of late. But now I am visited by such sickness of heart that I have begun to feel my thoughts in the depths of my soul, and although I am aware, little mother, that this feeling will not get me anywhere, I none the less believe that I am in a certain sense doing myself justice. And really, my darling, I often take the wind out of my own sails for no reason at all, I consider myself not worth a pinch of salt, class myself among the lowest of the low. To use a comparison: perhaps this happens because, like that poor boy who begged me for alms, I myself am bullied and overworked. Now I shall express this to you by way of example and allegory, little mother; listen to this: sometimes, my darling, early in the morning when I am hurrying to work, I have occasion to take a glance at the city as it is waking up and getting out of bed, emitting its vapours, seething and rumbling – sometimes this spectacle makes one feel so small that it is though someone had given one a slap on one is inquisitive nose, and one trudges onwards with a shrug of one is shoulders, as quiet as a mouse. Now, just take a look at what is going on in those big, black, sooty buildings, investigate it thoroughly, and you yourself will be able to tell whether I had good reason to class myself as the lowest of the low and to be cast into an undignified state of confusion. Observe, Varenka, that I express myself allegorically, not
in a direct sense. Well, let's take a look: what is there in those buildings? There, in some smoky corner, in some dank bolthole which must out of necessity serve as a lodging, some artisan is waking from slumber; all night he has been dreaming, let us say, of the boots which the day before he inadvertenyly cut a hole in, as though anyone ought to spend a whole night dreaming about such rubbish! But he is an artisan, a cobbler: it is excusable for him to think about his specialty all the time. His children are clamouring and his wife is hungry; and it is not just cobblers who sometimes get out of bed in the morning feeling like that, little mother. That would be of no consequence, and would not be worth writing about; but you see, little mother, there is something else to be taken into account: right there, in the same building, on the storey above or below, in his gilded chambers, a very rich personage has been dreaming in the night about those very same boots – in a different aspect, of course, from a different point of view, but still about those boots; for in the sense I am here implying, little mother, we are all, my darling, to a certain extent cobblers. Even that would be of no consequence, except that it is bad that there should be no one at that very rich personage is side, no one who might whisper in his ear the words: ‘Come now, that is enough of thinking only about this subject, of thinking only about yourself, living only for yourself; you're not a cobbler, your children are healthy and your wife isn't begging for food; take a look around you – can't you find a more noble subject for your concern than your boots?' That is what I wanted to say to you in this allegorical manner, Varenka. It is, my dear, possibly too radical a thought, but it is a thought that is sometimes there, that sometimes visits one and then emerges from one is heart in ardent words. And so there was no reason to consider oneself not worth a pinch of salt, and let oneself be frightened by all the noise and thunder! I will conclude, little mother, by supposing you may wonder if I am spouting slander, or have been overtaken by an attack of spleen, or have copied all this out of some book or other. No, little mother, you may dispose of any such illusions: I loathe slander, I haven't had an attack of spleen, and I didn't copy this out of any book – so there!