Fifty-Two Stories

At home he found silence. His sister Varvara lay behind the partition, moaning sightly from a headache. His mother, with a surprised and guilty look, sat beside her on a trunk, mending Arkhipka’s trousers. Evgraf Ivanych paced from window to window, frowning at the weather. From his gait, his cough, and even the crown of his head, one could see that he felt guilty.

“So you’ve changed your mind about leaving today?” he asked.

The student felt sorry for him, but, overcoming that feeling, he said at once:

“Listen…I must talk seriously with you…Yes, seriously…I’ve always respected you and…never dared to talk with you in this tone, but your behavior…your latest act…”

The father looked out the window and said nothing. The student, as if searching for words, rubbed his forehead and went on in strong agitation:

“Not a dinner or a tea goes by without you raising a ruckus. Your bread sticks in all of our throats. There’s nothing more insulting, more humiliating than being reproached by a crust of bread…You may be our father, but nobody, neither God nor nature, gave you the right to insult and humiliate us so deeply, to vent your own bad spirits on the weak. You torment my mother, depersonalize her, my sister is hopelessly downtrodden, and I…”

“It’s not your business to teach me,” the father said.

“No, it is my business! You can bully me as much as you like, but leave Mother alone! I won’t allow you to torment Mother!” the student went on, flashing his eyes. “You’re spoiled because nobody has ever dared to go against you. We trembled, we went dumb, but that’s all over now! Crude, ill-bred man! You’re crude…understand? Crude, difficult, callous! The peasants can’t stand you either!”

The student had lost his thread by then and no longer spoke, but seemed to fire off separate words. Evgraf Ivanovich listened and said nothing, as if stunned; but suddenly his neck turned purple, color crept over his face, and he stirred.

“Keep silent!” he yelled.

“Fine!” His son would not be stopped. “You don’t like listening to the truth? Excellent! All right! Start shouting! Excellent!”

“Keep silent, I tell you!” Evgraf Ivanovich roared.

Fedosya Semyonovna appeared in the doorway with an astonished face, very pale; she wanted to say something and could not, but only moved her fingers.

“It’s your fault!” Shiryaev yelled at her. “You brought him up this way!”

“I don’t want to live in this house anymore!” the student yelled, weeping and looking spitefully at his mother. “I don’t want to live with you!”

The daughter Varvara cried out behind the partition and burst into loud sobs. Shiryaev waved his hand and ran out of the house.

The student went to his room and quietly lay down. Until midnight he lay motionless and without opening his eyes. He did not feel anger or shame, but some sort of indefinite inner pain. He did not blame his father, did not pity his mother, did not suffer remorse; it was clear to him that everyone in the house now felt the same sort of pain, but who was to blame, who suffered more, who less, God only knew…

At midnight he woke up the farmhand and told him to prepare a horse by five in the morning to go to the station, then undressed and covered himself, but could not fall asleep. Until morning he could hear how his sleepless father quietly paced from window to window and sighed. Nobody slept; they all spoke little, only in whispers. Twice his mother came to him behind the partition. With the same astonished and dumb expression, she made the sign of the cross over him many times, twitching nervously…

At five in the morning the student tenderly said goodbye to them all and even wept a little. Passing by his father’s room, he looked through the door. Evgraf Ivanovich, still dressed, not having gone to bed, stood at the window and drummed on the glass.

“Goodbye, I’m leaving,” said the son.

“Goodbye…The money’s on the little round table…,” the father replied, not turning.

As the farmhand drove him to the station, a disgusting cold rain fell. The sunflowers drooped their heads still more, and the grass looked even darker.

1886

ON THE ROAD

A golden cloudlet spent the night

Upon the breast of a giant cliff…

L

ERMONTOV

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