Fifty-Two Stories

Once the girl was undressed and calmed down, there was silence again. The brunette sat by the window and looked around perplexedly at the room, the icon, the stove…Apparently, it all seemed strange to her—the room, the girl with her fat nose, in her short boy’s undershirt, and the girl’s father. This strange man was sitting in the corner, bewildered, like a drunk man, glancing around and rubbing his face with his palm. He said nothing, blinked his eyes, and, looking at his guilty figure, it was hard to suppose that he would soon start talking. But he was the first to start talking. He stroked his knees, coughed, then chuckled and said:

“A comedy, by God…I look and don’t believe my eyes: why the devil has fate driven us to this vile inn? What did it mean to show by it? Life sometimes performs such a salto mortale that you’re left staring and blinking in perplexity. Are you going far, madam?”

“No, not far,” replied the brunette. “I’m going from our estate, some fifteen miles from here, to our farmstead, to my father and brother. I’m Ilovaiskaya myself, and the farmstead is called Ilovaiskoe, it’s eight miles on from here. Such unpleasant weather!”

“Couldn’t be worse!”

The lame boy came in and stuck a new candle stub in the pomade jar.

“Serve up the samovar for us, laddie,” the man turned to him.

“Who drinks tea now?” the lame boy smirked. “It’s a sin to drink before the liturgy.”³

“Never mind, laddie, it’s not you who’ll burn in hell, it’s us…”

Over tea the new acquaintances got to talking. Miss Ilovaiskaya learned that her interlocutor’s name was Grigory Petrovich Likharev, that he was the brother of the Likharev who was marshal of the nobility in one of the neighboring districts,⁴ and that he himself had been a landowner, but had been “ruined in good time.” Likharev learned that Miss Ilovaiskaya was named Marya Mikhailovna, that her father’s estate was enormous, but that the management fell to her alone, because her father and brother looked at life through their fingers, were carefree and overly fond of borzois.

“At the farmstead my father and brother are all by themselves,” said Miss Ilovaiskaya, waving her fingers (she had the habit of waving her fingers in front of her prickly face during a conversation and of licking her lips with her sharp tongue after each phrase). “They’re men, carefree folk, and won’t move a finger for themselves! I suppose no one will give them Christmas dinner. We have no mother, and our servants are such that they won’t even spread a tablecloth properly without me. Just imagine their situation now! They’ll go without Christmas dinner, and I have to sit here all night. How strange it all is!”

Miss Ilovaiskaya shrugged her shoulders, took a sip from the cup, and said:

“There are feasts that have their own smell. At Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas there’s a particular smell in the air. Even unbelievers love these feasts. My brother, for instance, says there is no God, but at Easter he’s the first to run to church.”

Likharev raised his eyes to Miss Ilovaiskaya and laughed.

“They say there is no God,” Miss Ilovaiskaya went on, also laughing, “but why then, tell me, do all the famous writers, scholars, and intelligent people in general, become believers toward the end of their lives?”

“Anyone who was unable to believe at a young age, madam, will not believe when he’s old, even if he’s a writer ten times over.”

Judging by his cough, Likharev had a bass voice, but, probably from fear of talking loudly or from excessive shyness, he spoke in a tenor. After a brief silence, he sighed and said:

“As I understand it, faith is a spiritual capacity. It’s like a talent: you have to be born with it. Insofar as I can judge by myself, by the people I’ve met in my time, by all that goes on around me, Russian people possess this capacity in the highest degree. Russian life is an uninterrupted series of beliefs and infatuations, and as for unbelief or denial, Russia, if you wish to know, hasn’t caught a whiff of it. If a Russian man doesn’t believe in God, it means he believes in something else.”

Likharev accepted a cup of tea from Miss Ilovaiskaya, swigged half of it at once, and went on: