The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol (25 page)

The old woman fell to pondering.
“It’s my death come for me!” she said to herself, and nothing would distract her.
All day she was sad.
In vain did Afanasy Ivanovich joke and try to find out why she was suddenly so sorrowful: Pulkheria Ivanovna either would not reply or her replies failed totally to satisfy Afanasy Ivanovich.
The next day she looked noticeably thinner.

“What’s wrong, Pulkheria Ivanovna?
You’re not sick?”

“No, I’m not sick, Afanasy Ivanovich!
I want to announce a special event to you: I know that I will die this summer; my death has already come for me!”

Afanasy Ivanovich’s mouth twisted somehow painfully.
He tried, however, to overcome the sad feeling in his soul, and said with a smile:

“God knows what you’re saying, Pulkheria Ivanovna!
You must have drunk peach vodka instead of your usual decoction of herbs.”

“No, Afanasy Ivanovich, I didn’t drink peach vodka,” said Pulkheria Ivanovna.

And Afanasy Ivanovich felt sorry that he had poked fun at Pulkheria Ivanovna, and he looked at her and a tear hung on his eyelash.

“I ask you to carry out my will, Afanasy Ivanovich,” said Pulkheria Ivanovna.
“When I die, bury me by the church fence.
Put my gray dress on me, the one with little flowers on a brown background.
Don’t put the satin dress on me, the one with the raspberry stripes: a dead woman doesn’t need such a dress.
What’s the good of it?
And you could use it: make a fancy dressing gown out of it for when guests come, so that you can look decent when you receive them.”

“God knows what you’re saying, Pulkheria Ivanovna!” said Afanasy Ivanovich.
“Death’s a long way off, and you’re already frightening us with such talk.”

“No, Afanasy Ivanovich, I know now when my death will be.
But don’t grieve over me: I’m already an old woman and have lived enough.
You’re old, too, we’ll soon see each other in the next world.”

But Afanasy Ivanovich wept like a baby.

“It’s sinful to cry, Afanasy Ivanovich!
Don’t sin and make God angry with your sorrow.
I’m not sorry to die.
One thing I’m sorry about,” a deep sigh interrupted her speech for a moment, “I’m sorry I don’t know who to leave you with, who will take care of you when I die.
You’re like a little child: whoever looks after you must love you.”

Here such deep, such devastating heart’s pity showed on her face that I think no one could have looked on her at that moment with indifference.

“Watch out, Yavdokha,” she said, addressing the housekeeper, whom she had sent for on purpose, “when I die, you must look after the master, cherish him like your own eye, like your own child.
See that they cook what he likes in the kitchen.
Always give him clean linen and clothes; dress him decently when there happen to be guests, or else he may come out in an old dressing gown, because even now he often forgets which are feast days and which are ordinary.
Don’t take your eyes off him, Yavdokha, I’ll pray for you in the other world, and God will reward you.
So don’t forget, Yavdokha.
You’re old now, you don’t have long to live, you mustn’t heap sin on your soul.
If you don’t look after him, you won’t be happy in this life.
I’ll ask God personally not to give you a good end.
You’ll be unhappy yourself, and your children will be unhappy, and none of your posterity will have God’s blessing in anything.”

The poor old woman!
At that moment she was thinking neither of the great moment ahead of her, nor of her soul, nor of her future life; she was thinking only of her poor companion with whom she had spent her life and whom she was leaving orphaned and unprotected.
With extraordinary efficiency, she arranged everything in such a way that afterwards Afanasy Ivanovich would not notice her absence.
Her certainty of imminent death was so strong and her state of mind was so set on it that, in fact, a few days later she lay down and could no longer take any food.
Afanasy
Ivanovich turned all attention and never left her bedside.
“Maybe you’ll eat something, Pulkheria Ivanovna?” he would say, looking anxiously in her eyes.
But Pulkheria Ivanovna would not say anything.
Finally, after a long silence, she made as if to say something, moved her lips—and her breath flew away.

Afanasy Ivanovich was completely amazed.
The thing seemed so wild to him that he did not even weep.
With dull eyes he gazed at her as if not understanding what this corpse could mean.

The dead woman was laid on the table, dressed in the dress she herself had appointed, with her hands crossed and a candle placed in them—he looked at it all insensibly.
Many people of various ranks filled the yard, many guests came to the funeral, long tables were set up in the yard; kutya,
¹¹
liqueurs, pies covered them in heaps; the guests talked, wept, gazed at the deceased, discussed her qualities, looked at him—but he viewed it all strangely.
The deceased was finally taken up and borne away, people flocked behind, and he, too, followed her.
The priests were in full vestments, the sun shone, nursing infants wept in their mothers’ arms, larks sang, children in smocks ran and frolicked on the road.
Finally the coffin was placed over the hole, he was told to go up and kiss the dead woman for the last time; he went up, kissed her, tears came to his eyes, but some sort of insensible tears.
The coffin was lowered down, the priest took the spade and threw in the first handful of earth, in a deep, drawn-out chorus the reader and two sextons sang “Memory Eternal”
¹²
under the clear, cloudless sky, the workmen took up their spades, and earth now covered the hole smoothly—at that moment he made his way to the front; everyone parted, allowing him to pass, wishing to know his intentions.
He raised his eyes, looked around dully, and said: “Well, so you’ve buried her already!
What for?!” He stopped and did not finish his speech.

But when he returned home, when he saw that his room was empty, that even the chair on which Pulkheria Ivanovna used to sit had been taken away—he wept, wept hard, wept inconsolably, and tears poured in streams from his lusterless eyes.

That was five years ago.
What grief is not taken away by time?
What passion will survive an unequal battle with it?
I knew a
man in the bloom of his still youthful powers, filled with true nobility and virtue, I knew him when he was in love, tenderly, passionately, furiously, boldly, modestly, and before me, almost before my eyes, the object of his passion—tender, beautiful as an angel—was struck down by insatiable death.
I never saw such terrible fits of inner suffering, such furious, scorching anguish, such devouring despair as shook the unfortunate lover.
I never thought a man could create such a hell for himself, in which there would be no shadow, no image, nothing in the least resembling hope … They tried to keep an eye on him; they hid all instruments he might have used to take his own life.
Two weeks later he suddenly mastered himself: he began to laugh, to joke; freedom was granted him, and the first thing he did with it was buy a pistol.
One day his family was terribly frightened by the sudden sound of a shot.
They ran into the room and saw him lying with his brains blown out.
A doctor who happened to be there, whose skill was on everyone’s lips, saw signs of life in him, found that the wound was not quite mortal, and the man, to everybody’s amazement, was healed.
The watch on him was increased still more.
Even at table they did not give him a knife and tried to take away from him anything that he might strike himself with; but a short while later he found a new occasion and threw himself under the wheels of a passing carriage.
His arm and leg were crushed; but again they saved him.
A year later I saw him in a crowded room; he sat at the card table gaily saying “
Petite ouverte
,”
¹³
keeping one card turned down, and behind him, leaning on the back of his chair, stood his young wife, who was sorting through his chips.

As I said, five years had passed since Pulkheria Ivanovna’s death when I visited those parts and stopped at Afanasy Ivanovich’s farmstead to call on my old neighbor, with whom I once used to spend the days pleasantly and always ate too much of the excellent food prepared by the cordial hostess.
As I drove up to the place, the house seemed twice as old to me, the peasant cottages lay completely on their sides—no doubt just like their owners; the paling and wattle fence were completely destroyed, and I myself saw the cook pulling sticks out of it for kindling the stove, when she had only to go two extra steps to get to the brushwood piled right
there.
With sadness I drove up to the porch; the same Rustys and Rovers, blind now or with lame legs, began barking, raising their wavy tails stuck with burrs.
An old man came out to meet me.
It was he!
I recognized him at once; but he was now twice as hunched as before.
He recognized me and greeted me with the same familiar smile.
I followed him inside; everything there seemed as before, but I noticed a strange disorder in it all, some tangible absence of something or other; in short, I sensed in myself those strange feelings that come over us when for the first time we enter the dwelling of a widower whom we had known before inseparable from his lifelong companion.
These feelings are like seeing before us a man we had always known in good health, now lacking a leg.
The absence of the solicitous Pulkheria Ivanovna could be seen in everything: at the table one of the knives was lacking a handle; the dishes were no longer prepared with the same artfulness.
I did not want to ask about the management and was even afraid to look at the farm works.

When we sat down to eat, a serf girl covered Afanasy Ivanovich with a napkin—and it was very well she did, because otherwise he would have spilled sauce all over his dressing gown.
I tried to entertain him by telling him various bits of news; he listened with the same smile, but at times his look was completely insensible, and thoughts did not wander but vanished into it.
Often he would raise a spoonful of kasha and, instead of putting it into his mouth, put it to his nose; instead of stabbing a piece of chicken with his fork, he stabbed the decanter, and then the serf girl would take his hand and guide it to the chicken.
Sometimes we had to wait several minutes for the next dish.
Afanasy Ivanovich would notice it himself and say, “Why are they so long in bringing the food?” But I could see through the chink of the door that the boy who served the food gave no thought to it at all and was asleep with his head on the bench.

“This is the dish,” Afanasy Ivanovich said when we were served mnishki
¹⁴
with sour cream, “this is the dish,” he went on, and I noticed that his voice was beginning to tremble and a tear was about to come from his leaden eyes, while he made every effort to hold it back, “this is the dish that the la——, the la——, the
late …” and all at once the tears poured down.
His hand fell on the plate, the plate overturned, fell off and broke, sauce got all over him; he sat insensibly, insensibly holding his spoon, and like a stream, like a ceaselessly flowing fountain, the tears poured down in torrents onto the napkin covering him.

“God!” I thought, looking at him, “five years of all-destroying time—already an insensible old man, an old man whose life seems never to have been disturbed by a single strong feeling of the soul, whose whole life seems to have consisted entirely of sitting on a high-backed chair, of eating little dried fish and pears, and of good-natured storytelling—and such a long, burning sorrow!
And which is stronger in us—passion or habit?
Or do all our strong impulses, all the whirlwind of our desires and boiling passions, come merely from our bright youth and seem deep and devastating only because of that?” Be it as it may, just then all our passions seemed childish to me compared with this long, slow, almost insensible habit.
Several times he attempted to pronounce the dead woman’s name, but halfway through it his calm and ordinary face became convulsively disfigured, and I was struck to the heart by his childlike weeping.
No, these were not the tears usually shed so generously by old folk describing their pitiful situation and misfortunes to you; neither were they the tears they weep over a glass of punch—no!
these were tears that flowed without the asking, of themselves, stored up in the bitter pain of an already cold heart.

He did not live long after that.
I learned of his death recently.
It’s strange, however, that the circumstances of his end had some resemblance to the death of Pulkheria Ivanovna.
One day Afanasy Ivanovich decided to take a little stroll in the garden.
As he was slowly walking down the path with his usual unconcern, having no thoughts at all, a strange incident occurred with him.
He suddenly heard someone behind him say in a rather distinct voice: “Afanasy Ivanovich!” He turned around, but there was absolutely no one there; he looked in all directions, peeked into the bushes—no one anywhere.
It was a calm day and the sun was shining.
He pondered for a moment; his face somehow livened up, and he finally said: “It’s Pulkheria Ivanovna calling me!”

It has undoubtedly happened to you that you hear a voice calling
you by name, something simple people explain by saying that a soul is longing for the person and calling him, and after that comes inevitable death.
I confess I have always feared this mysterious call.
I remember hearing it often in childhood: sometimes my name would suddenly be distinctly spoken behind me.
Usually, at the moment, it was a most clear and sunny day; not a leaf stirred on any tree in the garden, there was a dead silence, even the grasshoppers would stop chirring at that moment; not a soul in the garden; yet I confess that if night, most furious and stormy, with all the inferno of the elements, had overtaken me alone amid an impenetrable forest, I would not have been as frightened of it as of this terrible silence amid a cloudless day.
Usually I would flee from the garden then, breathless and in the greatest fear, and would calm down only when I happened to meet somebody whose look would drive away this terrible heart’s desert.