Chapter 9 "Wife" one

"wife" one I received such a letter: Mr. Pavel Andreevich!Not far from you, in the village of Petrovo, some tragic events have happened, and I consider it my duty to inform you of them.All the peasants in this village had sold their cottages and all their belongings and moved to the Tomsk province, but returned without getting there.Of course, there is nothing in this place that belongs to them anymore, and everything belongs to others.Three or four of them lived in one farmhouse, so the population of each farmhouse was no less than fifteen, men and women, not counting children.The last thing to say was that they had nothing to eat, they were starving, there was a general epidemic of typhus, and almost everyone fell ill.The female doctor said: What do people see when they enter the farmhouse?Everyone was sick, talking nonsense, some were laughing, some were mad with anger.The farmhouse was full of stench, there was no water for people to drink, and no one gave them water, and the only food was bad potatoes.The woman doctor and Sobol (our Zemstvo physician) saw that they needed food first and medicine second, but they were short of food.So what can medical staff do?The Executive Office of the Zemstvo Bureau refused to provide relief, because the household registration of those peasants had been canceled by the Zemstvo Bureau and they had been included in Tomsk Province.Furthermore, the Zemstvo has no money.I tell you this, knowing that you are kind, so please help them quickly, and don't refuse.

Bless you people. Apparently, the letter was written by the woman doctor herself or by a doctor with the surname of the Beast.The Zemstvo doctors and nursemaids, who for years believed daily that there was nothing they could do, were still paid by people who lived on bad potatoes, and for some reason thought they had the right to judge me merciful. Not kind. In addition to this anonymous letter, every morning some peasant came to my servants' kitchen and knelt down, and in the evening someone came and smashed the protective wall and stole twenty large sacks of rye from our barn.Besides, the usual conversations, the newspapers, the bad weather made me depressed, all these disturbed my mood, so I worked listlessly and did not go well.I am writing "History of Railways", which requires reading many Russian and foreign books, pamphlets, magazine articles, and has to do abacus to calculate numbers, look up logarithmic tables, think, write, then read again, do abacus again, Think again.But no sooner have I picked up a book or started to think than my thoughts become confused and my eyes narrow.I just sighed, left my desk, and walked up and down the great room of this empty country house.When I got tired of walking, I stopped at the window of my study, and looking across the wide yard, over the pond and a young bare birch, over the vast fields that had been covered with snow not long ago and were now melting, I saw A group of dark brown farmhouses gathered on a high hill in the sky, from which a black muddy road slid down the high slope, winding irregularly like a long belt.That is the village of Petrovo, the same village that the anonymous man wrote to me about.That little world that is now being talked about would have looked as if it hadn't been for the croaking of a flock of crows that heralds snow or rain, flying over ponds and fields, and the knocking in the carpenter's shed. The dead sea is gone.Everything there is so quiet, stagnant, lifeless, dull!

My restless mood prevents me from working, from concentrating.I don't know what's going on here, and believe with all my heart it's disillusionment.Indeed, I quit my job in the Ministry of Communications and came back to the village because I wanted to live a quiet life here and to be able to write about social issues.This was my long-standing and beloved dream.But now I have to bid farewell to An Jing, to bid farewell to the writing work, to leave everything behind, and to take care of the peasants' affairs.This is unavoidable, because I believe that there is no one in this county who can help those hungry people except me.I was surrounded by uneducated, undeveloped, uncaring people, the vast majority of whom were not decent, or who were decent but wayward and not serious, as was the case with my wife.It’s impossible to rely on such people, and it’s also impossible to leave those peasants alone and let them resign themselves to their fate. So all that’s left to do is to meet the needs and put the lives of those peasants on the right track with my own hands.

My first decision was to donate five thousand silver rubles to the hungry.But instead of alleviating my anxiety, it intensified it.As I stood at the window, or walked from room to room, I was always tormented by a question I had never encountered before: what to do with the money?Sending people to buy food and then distribute it from house to house is not something that can be done by one person alone, not to mention that there are dangers in haste. The food that is distributed to those who are full or brought to resell may go out to the hungry instead. twice as much.I don't trust the administration.All the Zemstvo prefects, the tax inspectors, are young people, and I have no more confidence in them than I do all the practical youth of our day.The executive office of the Zemstvo Bureau, the township office, and all the organs of the county did not attract me to ask them for help.I know that these institutions are already biting into the Zemstvo and State Treasury pie, and are waiting every day with their mouths open, ready to bite into another pie at the first opportunity.

It occurred to me to invite the landowners of the neighborhood to come to my house, to advise them, and to form a committee or center or something in my house, which would gather all the donations, distribute the donations, and issue instructions throughout the county. .Such an institution would allow for frequent consultation, and for extensive and effective control, which is quite to my liking.But when I pictured the snacks, the lunches, the suppers, the noise, the idleness, the gossip, the low taste that all sorts of people from the county were bound to bring into my home, I quickly gave up the idea.

When it comes to people in my own family, the last thing I can expect is any help or support from them.From my first family, that of my father, which was once very large and lively, there remained only one utterly useless person, Miss Marie, the governess, or, as she is now called, Marie. Ya Gerasimovna.She was a small, prim, seventy-year-old woman in a light gray dress and a cap trimmed with white silk, like a china doll.She always sits in the living room and reads a book.Whenever I pass her, she always knows why I'm brooding, and says: "What do you want, Basha? I've said it's going to be like this. You know from our servants You can see it on your body.”

My second family consists of me and my wife Natalya Gavrilovna.She lives downstairs and takes up all the rooms downstairs.She eats, sleeps, and entertains guests downstairs. She doesn't care about how I eat, sleep, or entertain guests.Our relationship was ordinary, not tense, but cold, empty, and dull, like people who have long since become estranged from each other so that even if one lives upstairs and the other lives downstairs, they cannot get close to each other.The passionate and restless love that Natalya Gavrilovna had previously stirred up in me, now sweet and now bitter like wormwood, was no longer there, not even the old quarrels Gone are the loud conversations, the reproaches, the complaints, the outbursts of hatred (these episodes usually end like this: my wife travels abroad or goes back to her natal family, and I send her a little money, but the remittance money often, in order to sting my wife's vanity often).My proud, face-conscious wife and her relatives are supported by my money, and my wife's inability to refuse my money, although she doesn't want to, makes me secretly happy and is the only consolation for my depression. up.Now, whenever we occasionally meet in the downstairs corridor or in the yard, I always nod and she smiles politely.We talked of the weather, and said it seemed time for double windows, and that someone was going down the embankment in a carriage, ringing bells; and at the same time I saw this expression on her face: "I'm sorry for you. You are faithful, and will not spoil your good name, which is so dear to you; and you are wise, and do not bother me, and we have done nothing to anyone."

I repeated to myself: love has long been extinguished in my heart, and I was too absorbed in my work to seriously consider my attitude towards my wife.But, alas, that's just what I thought.Whenever my wife speaks loudly downstairs, I pay attention to her voice, although I can't make out a word.She played the piano downstairs and I was always up and listening.Whenever she wanted to go out in a carriage or on a horse, I would go to the window and wait for her to come out from the main room, and see how she would get in a carriage or ride a horse and walk out of the yard.I felt a change in my soul, and I was afraid it would show in the look of my eyes and my face.I watched my wife go out and then hoped she would come back so that I could see her face again in the window, her shoulders, her fur coat, her hat.I was lonely and desolate, regretted something infinitely, and wanted to go to her rooms when she was not at home, hoping that the problems that my wife and I couldn't solve because of our discord would soon be solved automatically by the laws of nature. That is, this beautiful twenty-seven-year-old woman is getting old quickly, and my hair is turning white and bald quickly.

Once at breakfast, my housekeeper, Vladimir Prokhorich, reported to me that the peasants in Petrovo had begun to pull off the hay that had been spread on the roofs of their houses to feed their cattle.Marya Gerasimovna looked at me with horror and bewilderment. "What can I do?" I said to her. "Alone. I've never felt so alone. I'd pay dearly for just one person in the whole county to depend on." "Then invite Ivan Ivanitch," said Marya Gerasimovna. "Really!" I remembered, happy. "That's the way! C'est raison," I sang, going back to my study to write a letter to Ivan Ivanitch. "C'est raison, c'est raison..."

"Notes" ① in Siberia. ②In Russian, Sobol means "sable". ③ French female name. ④Bavel's pet name. ⑤ Install a layer of windows outside the windows to keep out the cold in winter. ⑥ French: This makes sense.