Chapter 9 "My Life - A Mainlander's Story" 9

Nine Now we see each other often, often twice a day.She came to the cemetery by car almost every day after lunch, and while waiting for me, she read the inscription on the cross and the tombstone.Sometimes she would come into the church and stand by me and see how I worked.It's quiet here, painters and gilders do simple jobs, radish is reasonable, and I, in appearance, are no different from other workers, working just like them in vests and broken shoes, and everyone uses "you" to me Salutation,—all this was new to her and moved her.Once in her presence, a painter who was painting a dove on it called out to me: "Misel, pass me the white paint!"

I sent the white paint to him, and when I came down the weak scaffolding, she looked at me, moved to tears, and smiled. "How lovely you are!" she said. I remember one incident since I was a child: a green parrot was kept in a rich man's house, and it flew out of the cage, and then this beautiful bird flew around our city for a whole month, lazily going from place to place. From this garden to that garden, alone and homeless.Marya Viktorovna reminds me of that bird. “I have nowhere else to go now but the cemetery,” she told me, laughing. "This town is terribly boring. At the Arrogins' they read, sing, talk coquettishly, and I can't stand them these days. Your sister is a loner, and Miss Bragovo doesn't know why." Hate me. I don't like going to the theater. Excuse me: where else can I go?"

I used to come to her house, and I smelled of paint and turpentine, and my hands were black, but she liked it.She also hoped that I would not change clothes when I went to see her, but just wear ordinary work clothes.But in the drawing room it made me feel awkward, like a military uniform; so whenever I went to see her I always wore the new tweed suit.It made her unhappy instead. "You must admit that you are not quite accustomed to your new position," she once said to me. "Workwear confines you, you feel awkward in it. Tell me, is it because you lack belief that you are dissatisfied? Is the job you have chosen, your paint job, really satisfactory to you? she asked, laughing. "I know that paint can make things nice and strong, but you know, those things belong to the city people and the rich, and after all, they are luxury goods. And, you have said more than once, everyone Everyone should earn their own bread with their own hands, but you earn money, not bread. Why don't you take your word seriously? Bread should be earned, that is to say, plow, sow, reap, Threshing, or doing work directly related to agriculture, such as herding cattle, digging, and building log houses.

..." She opened a beautiful chest of drawers beside her desk, and said: "I tell you this because I want you to know my secret. Voila! This is my collection of agricultural books.There are fields, vegetable gardens, orchards, stables, and bee farms.I am ardently reading these books, and have studied all this theoretically.My dream, my sweet fantasy, is that as soon as March comes, I will go to our Dubechnya.It's so nice and wonderful there!isn't it?In the first year, I have to observe things carefully and get familiar with the work. In the second year, I really work with my own hands, as the saying goes, work hard.Father promised to give me Dubechnya, and I will work there as I please. "

She blushed, she shed tears of excitement, she laughed, she talked about her dreams, she said she was going to live in Dubechnya and it would be a very interesting life.I envy her.March is approaching, the days are getting longer and longer, on clear days, at noon, water is dripping from the eaves, and there is a breath of spring in the air, and I want to go to the countryside myself. She said she was going to live in Dubechnya, and I badly thought that I would be left alone in the city, and because she was passionately fond of her cabinet of books and agriculture, I felt bad.I don't understand agriculture, and I don't like farming. I wanted to tell her that farming is a slave's work, but remembering that my father said this more than once, I didn't say it.

Lent is here.The engineer Viktor Ivanitch came back from Petersburg, but I had already forgotten about him.He came back unexpectedly, without even telegraphing in advance.One evening I went to his house as usual, and he was walking up and down the drawing room, talking about something.He had just washed and shaved and looked ten years younger.Kneeling on the floor, his daughter took out many boxes, vials, books from the suitcase, and handed these things to the servant Pavel.As soon as I saw the engineer, I couldn't help taking a step back, but he stretched out his hands to me, showing his teeth as white and strong as a coachman, and said with a smile: "He's coming, he's coming! I'm glad to see you, Mr. Painter! Masha has told me all about it, and she just spoke highly of you. I understand you perfectly, and I agree with you!" he went on, taking my arm. "Being a good workman is much better and more honest than wasting the state paper and wearing the state cap badge. I myself worked with those two hands in Belgium, and then for two years as a locomotive driver.

..." He was wearing a jacket and a pair of house shoes, and he walked as if he had gout, swaying a little and rubbing his hands.He hummed softly and curled up his neck with joy, because he was finally home and had his beloved shower. "There is no doubt," he said to me at supper, "that there is no doubt that you are lovely and agreeable people, but for some reason, sir, as soon as you engage in physical Labor, or setting out to save the peasants, it all ends up being a sect. Aren't you a sect? Look, you don't drink liquor. What is a sect?" In order to satisfy him, I drink white wine.I also drank wine.We tasted the cheese, sausages, large pies, hot and sour dishes, various cold dishes brought back by the engineer, and wine sent from abroad when the engineer was not at home.Wine is top notch.For some reason, the engineer often received wine and cigars from abroad duty free, and someone used to send him roe and dried fish free of charge.It costs him nothing to live in the house, because the owner supplies the kerosene used on the railroad.In short, he and his daughter gave me the impression that all the good things in the world were at their disposal, and that they could get them for nothing.

I still go to their house often, but not in the same spirit.The engineer made me feel restrained, and in his presence I felt as if I were bound hand and foot.I could not stand his bright, frank eyes, and his arguments bored and disgusted me.I also suffer from the remembrances of how, not so long ago, I was a subordinate of this well-groomed, rosy man, and how roughly he treated me.Yes, he put his arms around my waist, patted my shoulder affectionately, and approved of my life; but I think he still looked down on my humbleness, and only perfunctory with me to win his daughter's favor.I can no longer talk and laugh as I like, I have become withdrawn and quiet, waiting for him to call me Panteley, as he calls his servant Pavel, my provincial, petty bourgeois. How indignant pride is!I, a poor man, a painter, come every day to see these rich people who are regarded as foreigners by the whole city and have nothing to do with me, and drink expensive wine and eat unusual food in their homes every day, my conscience cannot bear this!Whenever I went to their house, I would dodge passers-by somberly, frowning as if I were really a sectarian.Whenever I come out of the engineer's house, I'm always ashamed that I've had a good meal.

Most of all I was worried that I would fall in love.Whether I was walking in the street, working, or talking to my companions, I was always thinking of going to see Marya Viktorovna in the evening, secretly imagining her voice, her laughter, her gait.Whenever I go to see her, I have to stand for a long time in front of my nanny's uneven mirror, fastening my tie, and I hate my tweed dress.When she greeted me in another room, saying that she was not dressed and asked me to wait, I heard the sound of her changing clothes, which made me excited, and felt that the floor under my feet seemed to be shaking Like falling.Whenever I see a woman in the street, even if she is far away from me, I must make a comparison; at such times, I think all our women and girls are vulgar, ill-dressed, and behaved, This comparison aroused in me a feeling of pride: Marya Viktorovna was better than everyone!Dreaming at night, I always dream that she is with me.

We ate a whole lobster with the engineer at dinner one day.Later when I got home, I remembered that the engineer at the dinner table called me "the cutest person" twice, and I thought to myself: In this family, they treat me like a big, unlucky dog ​​who has been separated from his master. Petting, they're making fun of me; and when they're tired of me, they drive me out like a dog.I was ashamed and sad, and I was so sad that I shed tears, as if I was insulted.I looked at the sky and swore that this matter must be done. I did not go to the Torshikovs' next day.That evening, when it was already dark and raining, I walked along the Rue Grande Noble, looking at the windows.The members of the Aruojing family had already fallen asleep, and there was only light from a window on the side. It was the old lady of the Aruojing family who was embroidering in her room, lighting three candles, and thought she was fighting against superstition.Our house was already dark, but the windows of Mentorshikov's house were lit, but through the flowers and curtains we couldn't see anything clearly.I've been walking up and down the street with the cold March rain beating down on me.I heard my father come back from the club.He knocked on the door, and a minute later, there was light in the window, and I saw my sister hurrying in with the lamp in hand, smoothing her thick hair with one hand as she walked.Later, my father was walking up and down the living room, rubbing his hands and talking while my sister sat in an armchair, thinking about something motionless, and did not listen to him.

Then, as they walked out of the living room, the lights went out. ... I looked back at the engineer's house, and it was also pitch black at this time.In the dark, in the rain, I feel myself alone, at the mercy of fate, and I feel that all my actions, all my wishes, all that I have thought and said so far, are nothing compared to my solitude at this moment. Compared with the troubles that will arise in life in the future, they all seem insignificant.Alas, the actions and thoughts of men are not so important as their distress!So I didn't even understand what I was doing, but with all my might I rang the doorbell at the Torschikovs' house, broke the rope too, and fled down the street like a frightened child who thinks he's about to Someone must come out and recognize me.When I ran to the end of the street and stopped to catch my breath, I could only hear the sound of rain, and the night watchmen knocking on iron plates in the distance. I have not been at the Torschikovs' for a whole week.I sold that tweed dress.There was no painting work, so I looked around for work, any kind of heavy and annoying work, and I earned ten or twenty kopecks a day, and lived half-starved.I waded through the cold, knee-deep muddy water, my chest ached from exhaustion, and I tried to suppress the memories, as if to punish myself for the cheese and canned goods I ate at the engineer's house .But as soon as I lay down on the bed, wet and hungry, my sinful fantasies immediately began to paint a beautiful and seductive picture for me, and I had to admit to myself, startled, that I loved her, passionately.Then I fell asleep soundly, feeling that my body had grown stronger and younger from the drudgery. One evening, it snowed unexpectedly, and the north wind blew, as if winter was coming again.When I came back from work that evening, I found Marya Viktorovna sitting in my room.She was wearing a short fur coat and her hands were in muffs. "Why don't you come to my house?" she asked, raising her bright, bright eyes.Distraught with joy, I stood upright before her, the same way I stood when my father was about to hit me.She looked at my face and could see in her eyes that she understood why I was so flustered. "Why didn't you come to my house?" she asked again. "Since you won't go, I'll come by myself." She stood up and walked over to me. "Don't leave me," she said, her eyes welling with tears. "I'm alone, very alone!" She wept, and covered her face with the muff, and said: "I am alone! Life is heavy for me, very heavy. I have no one in the whole world but you. Don't leave me!" She smiled and wiped her tears with a handkerchief.We were silent for a while, and then I put my arms around her and kissed her, while the brooch on her hat cut my face with blood. We just talked, talking so affectionately, as if we were already close. ... "Notes" ①French: here! ② Maria's nickname.