The Wife and Other Stories

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"Professor, I give you my word of honour that if you mark me for a pass
I... I'll..."

As soon as we reach the "word of honour" I wave my hands and sit down to
the table. The student ponders a minute longer, and says dejectedly:

"In that case, good-bye... I beg your pardon."

"Good-bye, my friend. Good luck to you."

He goes irresolutely into the hall, slowly puts on his outdoor things,
and, going out into the street, probably ponders for some time longer;
unable to think of anything, except "old devil," inwardly addressed to
me, he goes into a wretched restaurant to dine and drink beer, and then
home to bed. "Peace be to thy ashes, honest toiler."

A third ring at the bell. A young doctor, in a pair of new black
trousers, gold spectacles, and of course a white tie, walks in. He
introduces himself. I beg him to be seated, and ask what I can do for
him. Not without emotion, the young devotee of science begins telling me
that he has passed his examination as a doctor of medicine, and that he
has now only to write his dissertation. He would like to work with me
under my guidance, and he would be greatly obliged to me if I would give
him a subject for his dissertation.

"Very glad to be of use to you, colleague," I say, "but just let us come
to an understanding as to the meaning of a dissertation. That word is
taken to mean a composition which is a product of independent creative
effort. Is that not so? A work written on another man's subject and
under another man's guidance is called something different...."

The doctor says nothing. I fly into a rage and jump up from my seat.

"Why is it you all come to me?" I cry angrily. "Do I keep a shop? I
don't deal in subjects. For the thousand and oneth time I ask you all
to leave me in peace! Excuse my brutality, but I am quite sick of it!"

The doctor remains silent, but a faint flush is apparent on his
cheek-bones. His face expresses a profound reverence for my fame and my
learning, but from his eyes I can see he feels a contempt for my voice,
my pitiful figure, and my nervous gesticulation. I impress him in my
anger as a queer fish.

"I don't keep a shop," I go on angrily. "And it is a strange thing!
Why don't you want to be independent? Why have you such a distaste for
independence?"

I say a great deal, but he still remains silent. By degrees I calm down,
and of course give in. The doctor gets a subject from me for his theme
not worth a halfpenny, writes under my supervision a dissertation of
no use to any one, with dignity defends it in a dreary discussion, and
receives a degree of no use to him.

The rings at the bell may follow one another endlessly, but I will
confine my description here to four of them. The bell rings for the
fourth time, and I hear familiar footsteps, the rustle of a dress, a
dear voice....

Eighteen years ago a colleague of mine, an oculist, died leaving a
little daughter Katya, a child of seven, and sixty thousand roubles.
In his will he made me the child's guardian. Till she was ten years
old Katya lived with us as one of the family, then she was sent to a
boarding-school, and only spent the summer holidays with us. I never
had time to look after her education. I only superintended it at leisure
moments, and so I can say very little about her childhood.

The first thing I remember, and like so much in remembrance, is the
extraordinary trustfulness with which she came into our house and let
herself be treated by the doctors, a trustfulness which was always
shining in her little face. She would sit somewhere out of the way, with
her face tied up, invariably watching something with attention; whether
she watched me writing or turning over the pages of a book, or watched
my wife bustling about, or the cook scrubbing a potato in the kitchen,
or the dog playing, her eyes invariably expressed the same thought--that
is, "Everything that is done in this world is nice and sensible." She
was curious, and very fond of talking to me. Sometimes she would sit at
the table opposite me, watching my movements and asking questions. It
interested her to know what I was reading, what I did at the University,
whether I was not afraid of the dead bodies, what I did with my salary.

"Do the students fight at the University?" she would ask.

"They do, dear."

"And do you make them go down on their knees?"

"Yes, I do."

And she thought it funny that the students fought and I made them go
down on their knees, and she laughed. She was a gentle, patient, good
child. It happened not infrequently that I saw something taken away from
her, saw her punished without reason, or her curiosity repressed; at
such times a look of sadness was mixed with the invariable expression of
trustfulness on her face--that was all. I did not know how to take her
part; only when I saw her sad I had an inclination to draw her to me and
to commiserate her like some old nurse: "My poor little orphan one!"

I remember, too, that she was fond of fine clothes and of sprinkling
herself with scent. In that respect she was like me. I, too, am fond of
pretty clothes and nice scent.

I regret that I had not time nor inclination to watch over the rise and
development of the passion which took complete possession of Katya when
she was fourteen or fifteen. I mean her passionate love for the theatre.
When she used to come from boarding-school and stay with us for the
summer holidays, she talked of nothing with such pleasure and such
warmth as of plays and actors. She bored us with her continual talk of
the theatre. My wife and children would not listen to her. I was the
only one who had not the courage to refuse to attend to her. When she
had a longing to share her transports, she used to come into my study
and say in an imploring tone:

"Nikolay Stepanovitch, do let me talk to you about the theatre!"

I pointed to the clock, and said:

"I'll give you half an hour--begin."

Later on she used to bring with her dozens of portraits of actors and
actresses which she worshipped; then she attempted several times to take
part in private theatricals, and the upshot of it all was that when
she left school she came to me and announced that she was born to be an
actress.

I had never shared Katya's inclinations for the theatre. To my mind, if
a play is good there is no need to trouble the actors in order that it
may make the right impression; it is enough to read it. If the play is
poor, no acting will make it good.

In my youth I often visited the theatre, and now my family takes a box
twice a year and carries me off for a little distraction. Of course,
that is not enough to give me the right to judge of the theatre. In my
opinion the theatre has become no better than it was thirty or forty
years ago. Just as in the past, I can never find a glass of clean water
in the corridors or foyers of the theatre. Just as in the past, the
attendants fine me twenty kopecks for my fur coat, though there is
nothing reprehensible in wearing a warm coat in winter. As in the past,
for no sort of reason, music is played in the intervals, which adds
something new and uncalled-for to the impression made by the play. As in
the past, men go in the intervals and drink spirits in the buffet. If no
progress can be seen in trifles, I should look for it in vain in what
is more important. When an actor wrapped from head to foot in stage
traditions and conventions tries to recite a simple ordinary speech, "To
be or not to be," not simply, but invariably with the accompaniment of
hissing and convulsive movements all over his body, or when he tries to
convince me at all costs that Tchatsky, who talks so much with fools and
is so fond of folly, is a very clever man, and that "Woe from Wit" is
not a dull play, the stage gives me the same feeling of conventionality
which bored me so much forty years ago when I was regaled with the
classical howling and beating on the breast. And every time I come out
of the theatre more conservative than I go in.

The sentimental and confiding public may be persuaded that the stage,
even in its present form, is a school; but any one who is familiar with
a school in its true sense will not be caught with that bait. I cannot
say what will happen in fifty or a hundred years, but in its actual
condition the theatre can serve only as an entertainment. But this
entertainment is too costly to be frequently enjoyed. It robs the state
of thousands of healthy and talented young men and women, who, if they
had not devoted themselves to the theatre, might have been good doctors,
farmers, schoolmistresses, officers; it robs the public of the evening
hours--the best time for intellectual work and social intercourse. I say
nothing of the waste of money and the moral damage to the spectator when
he sees murder, fornication, or false witness unsuitably treated on the
stage.

Katya was of an entirely different opinion. She assured me that
the theatre, even in its present condition, was superior to the
lecture-hall, to books, or to anything in the world. The stage was a
power that united in itself all the arts, and actors were missionaries.
No art nor science was capable of producing so strong and so certain an
effect on the soul of man as the stage, and it was with good reason that
an actor of medium quality enjoys greater popularity than the greatest
savant or artist. And no sort of public service could provide such
enjoyment and gratification as the theatre.

And one fine day Katya joined a troupe of actors, and went off, I
believe to Ufa, taking away with her a good supply of money, a store of
rainbow hopes, and the most aristocratic views of her work.

Her first letters on the journey were marvellous. I read them, and was
simply amazed that those small sheets of paper could contain so much
youth, purity of spirit, holy innocence, and at the same time subtle
and apt judgments which would have done credit to a fine mas culine
intellect. It was more like a rapturous paean of praise she sent me than
a mere description of the Volga, the country, the towns she visited, her
companions, her failures and successes; every sentence was fragrant with
that confiding trustfulness I was accustomed to read in her face--and
at the same time there were a great many grammatical mistakes, and there
was scarcely any punctuation at all.

Before six months had passed I received a highly poetical and
enthusiastic letter beginning with the words, "I have come to love..."
This letter was accompanied by a photograph representing a young man
with a shaven face, a wide-brimmed hat, and a plaid flung over his
shoulder. The letters that followed were as splendid as before, but now
commas and stops made their appearance in them, the grammatical mistakes
disappeared, and there was a distinctly masculine flavour about them.
Katya began writing to me how splendid it would be to build a great
theatre somewhere on the Volga, on a cooperative system, and to attract
to the enterprise the rich merchants and the steamer owners; there
would be a great deal of money in it; there would be vast audiences; the
actors would play on co-operative terms.... Possibly all this was really
excellent, but it seemed to me that such schemes could only originate
from a man's mind.

However that may have been, for a year and a half everything seemed to
go well: Katya was in love, believed in her work, and was happy; but
then I began to notice in her letters unmistakable signs of falling off.
It began with Katya's complaining of her companions--this was the first
and most ominous symptom; if a young scientific or literary man begins
his career with bitter complaints of scientific and literary men, it is
a sure sign that he is worn out and not fit for his work. Katya wrote
to me that her companions did not attend the rehearsals and never knew
their parts; that one could see in every one of them an utter disrespect
for the public in the production of absurd plays, and in their behaviour
on the stage; that for the benefit of the Actors' Fund, which they only
talked about, actresses of the serious drama demeaned themselves by
singing chansonettes, while tragic actors sang comic songs making fun of
deceived husbands and the pregnant condition of unfaithful wives, and
so on. In fact, it was amazing that all this had not yet ruined the
provincial stage, and that it could still maintain itself on such a
rotten and unsubstantial footing.

In answer I wrote Katya a long and, I must confess, a very boring
letter. Among other things, I wrote to her:

"I have more than once happened to converse with old actors, very worthy
men, who showed a friendly disposition towards me; from my conversations
with them I could understand that their work was controlled not so much
by their own intelligence and free choice as by fashion and the mood of
the public. The best of them had had to play in their day in tragedy,
in operetta, in Parisian farces, and in extravaganzas, and they always
seemed equally sure that they were on the right path and that they were
of use. So, as you see, the cause of the evil must be sought, not in the
actors, but, more deeply, in the art itself and in the attitude of the
whole of society to it."

This letter of mine only irritated Katya. She answered me:

"You and I are singing parts out of different operas. I wrote to you,
not of the worthy men who showed a friendly disposition to you, but of
a band of knaves who have nothing worthy about them. They are a horde of
savages who have got on the stage simply because no one would have taken
them elsewhere, and who call themselves artists simply because they
are impudent. There are numbers of dull-witted creatures, drunkards,
intriguing schemers and slanderers, but there is not one person of
talent among them. I cannot tell you how bitter it is to me that the art
I love has fallen into the hands of people I detest; how bitter it is
that the best men look on at evil from afar, not caring to come closer,
and, instead of intervening, write ponderous commonplaces and utterly
useless sermons...." And so on, all in the same style.

A little time passed, and I got this letter: "I have been brutally
deceived. I cannot go on living. Dispose of my money as you think best.
I loved you as my father and my only friend. Good-bye."

It turned out that _he_, too, belonged to the "horde of savages." Later
on, from certain hints, I gathered that there had been an attempt at
suicide. I believe Katya tried to poison herself. I imagine that she
must have been seriously ill afterwards, as the next letter I got was
from Yalta, where she had most probably been sent by the doctors. Her
last letter contained a request to send her a thousand roubles to Yalta
as quickly as possible, and ended with these words:

"Excuse the gloominess of this letter; yesterday I buried my child."
After spending about a year in the Crimea, she returned home.

She had been about four years on her travels, and during those four
years, I must confess, I had played a rather strange and unenviable part
in regard to her. When in earlier days she had told me she was going on
the stage, and then wrote to me of her love; when she was periodically
overcome by extravagance, and I continually had to send her first one
and then two thousand roubles; when she wrote to me of her intention of
suicide, and then of the death of her baby, every time I lost my head,
and all my sympathy for her sufferings found no expression except that,
after prolonged reflection, I wrote long, boring letters which I might
just as well not have written. And yet I took a father's place with her
and loved her like a daughter!

Now Katya is living less than half a mile off. She has taken a flat
of five rooms, and has installed herself fairly comfortably and in
the taste of the day. If any one were to undertake to describe her
surroundings, the most characteristic note in the picture would be
indolence. For the indolent body there are soft lounges, soft stools;
for indolent feet soft rugs; for indolent eyes faded, dingy, or flat
colours; for the indolent soul the walls are hung with a number of cheap
fans and trivial pictures, in which the originality of the execution is
more conspicuous than the subject; and the room contains a multitude
of little tables and shelves filled with utterly useless articles of no
value, and shapeless rags in place of curtains.... All this, together
with the dread of bright colours, of symmetry, and of empty space, bears
witness not only to spiritual indolence, but also to a corruption of
natural taste. For days together Katya lies on the lounge reading,
principally novels and stories. She only goes out of the house once a
day, in the afternoon, to see me.

I go on working while Katya sits silent not far from me on the sofa,
wrapping herself in her shawl, as though she were cold. Either because
I find her sympathetic or because I was used to her frequent visits
when she was a little girl, her presence does not prevent me from
concentrating my attention. From time to time I mechanically ask her
some question; she gives very brief replies; or, to rest for a minute,
I turn round and watch her as she looks dreamily at some medical journal
or review. And at such moments I notice that her face has lost the old
look of confiding trustfulness. Her expression now is cold, apathetic,
and absent-minded, like that of passengers who had to wait too long for
a train. She is dressed, as in old days, simply and beautifully, but
carelessly; her dress and her hair show visible traces of the sofas and
rocking-chairs in which she spends whole days at a stretch. And she
has lost the curiosity she had in old days. She has ceased to ask me
questions now, as though she had experienced everything in life and
looked for nothing new from it.

Towards four o'clock there begins to be sounds of movement in the hall
and in the drawing-room. Liza has come back from the Conservatoire, and
has brought some girl-friends in with her. We hear them playing on the
piano, trying their voices and laughing; in the dining-room Yegor is
laying the table, with the clatter of crockery.

"Good-bye," said Katya. "I won't go in and see your people today. They
must excuse me. I haven't time. Come and see me."

While I am seeing her to the door, she looks me up and down grimly, and
says with vexation:

"You are getting thinner and thinner! Why don't you consult a doctor?
I'll call at Sergey Fyodorovitch's and ask him to have a look at you."

"There's no need, Katya."

"I can't think where your people's eyes are! They are a nice lot, I must
say!"

She puts on her fur coat abruptly, and as she does so two or three
hairpins drop unnoticed on the floor from her carelessly arranged
hair. She is too lazy and in too great a hurry to do her hair up; she
carelessly stuffs the falling curls under her hat, and goes away.

When I go into the dining-room my wife asks me:

"Was Katya with you just now? Why didn't she come in to see us? It's
really strange...."

"Mamma," Liza says to her reproachfully, "let her alone, if she doesn't
want to. We are not going down on our knees to her."

"It's very neglectful, anyway. To sit for three hours in the study
without remembering our existence! But of course she must do as she
likes."

Varya and Liza both hate Katya. This hatred is beyond my comprehension,
and probably one would have to be a woman in order to understand it. I
am ready to stake my life that of the hundred and fifty young men I see
every day in the lecture-theatre, and of the hundred elderly ones I meet
every week, hardly one could be found capable of understanding their
hatred and aversion for Katya's past--that is, for her having been a
mother without being a wife, and for her having had an illegitimate
child; and at the same time I cannot recall one woman or girl of my
acquaintance who would not consciously or unconsciously harbour such
feelings. And this is not because woman is purer or more virtuous than
man: why, virtue and purity are not very different from vice if they are
not free from evil feeling. I attribute this simply to the backwardness
of woman. The mournful feeling of compassion and the pang of conscience
experienced by a modern man at the sight of suffering is, to my mind,
far greater proof of culture and moral elevation than hatred and
aversion. Woman is as tearful and as coarse in her feelings now as she
was in the Middle Ages, and to my thinking those who advise that she
should be educated like a man are quite right.

My wife also dislikes Katya for having been an actress, for ingratitude,
for pride, for eccentricity, and for the numerous vices which one woman
can always find in another.

Besides my wife and daughter and me, there are dining with us two or
three of my daughter's friends and Alexandr Adolfovitch Gnekker, her
admirer and suitor. He is a fair-haired young man under thirty, of
medium height, very stout and broad-shouldered, with red whiskers near
his ears, and little waxed moustaches which make his plump smooth face
look like a toy. He is dressed in a very short reefer jacket, a flowered
waistcoat, breeches very full at the top and very narrow at the ankle,
with a large check pattern on them, and yellow boots without heels. He
has prominent eyes like a crab's, his cravat is like a crab's neck, and
I even fancy there is a smell of crab-soup about the young man's whole
person. He visits us every day, but no one in my family knows anything
of his origin nor of the place of his education, nor of his means of
livelihood. He neither plays nor sings, but has some connection with
music and singing, sells somebody's pianos somewhere, is frequently
at the Conservatoire, is acquainted with all the celebrities, and is a
steward at the concerts; he criticizes music with great authority, and I
have noticed that people are eager to agree with him.

Rich people always have dependents hanging about them; the arts and
sciences have the same. I believe there is not an art nor a science
in the world free from "foreign bodies" after the style of this Mr.
Gnekker. I am not a musician, and possibly I am mistaken in regard
to Mr. Gnekker, of whom, indeed, I know very little. But his air of
authority and the dignity with which he takes his stand beside the piano
when any one is playing or singing strike me as very suspicious.

You may be ever so much of a gentleman and a privy councillor, but if
you have a daughter you cannot be secure of immunity from that petty
bourgeois atmosphere which is so often brought into your house and into
your mood by the attentions of suitors, by matchmaking and marriage. I
can never reconcile myself, for instance, to the expression of triumph
on my wife's face every time Gnekker is in our company, nor can I
reconcile myself to the bottles of Lafitte, port and sherry which are
only brought out on his account, that he may see with his own eyes the
liberal and luxurious way in which we live. I cannot tolerate the habit
of spasmodic laughter Liza has picked up at the Conservatoire, and her
way of screwing up her eyes whenever there are men in the room. Above
all, I cannot understand why a creature utterly alien to my habits, my
studies, my whole manner of life, completely different from the people
I like, should come and see me every day, and every day should dine with
me. My wife and my servants mysteriously whisper that he is a suitor,
but still I don't understand his presence; it rouses in me the same
wonder and perplexity as if they were to set a Zulu beside me at the
table. And it seems strange to me, too, that my daughter, whom I am used
to thinking of as a child, should love that cravat, those eyes, those
soft cheeks....

In the old days I used to like my dinner, or at least was indifferent
about it; now it excites in me no feeling but weariness and irritation.
Ever since I became an "Excellency" and one of the Deans of the Faculty
my family has for some reason found it necessary to make a complete
change in our menu and dining habits. Instead of the simple dishes to
which I was accustomed when I was a student and when I was in practice,
now they feed me with a puree with little white things like circles
floating about in it, and kidneys stewed in madeira. My rank as a
general and my fame have robbed me for ever of cabbage-soup and savoury
pies, and goose with apple-sauce, and bream with boiled grain. They have
robbed me of our maid-servant Agasha, a chatty and laughter-loving old
woman, instead of whom Yegor, a dull-witted and conceited fellow with
a white glove on his right hand, waits at dinner. The intervals between
the courses are short, but they seem immensely long because there is
nothing to occupy them. There is none of the gaiety of the old days, the
spontaneous talk, the jokes, the laughter; there is nothing of mutual
affection and the joy which used to animate the children, my wife, and
me when in old days we met together at meals. For me, the celebrated man
of science, dinner was a time of rest and reunion, and for my wife and
children a fete--brief indeed, but bright and joyous--in which they knew
that for half an hour I belonged, not to science, not to students, but
to them alone. Our real exhilaration from one glass of wine is gone for
ever, gone is Agasha, gone the bream with boiled grain, gone the uproar
that greeted every little startling incident at dinner, such as the cat
and dog fighting under the table, or Katya's bandage falling off her
face into her soup-plate.