Chapter 7
One long winter night Kovrin was lying in bed, reading a French novel. Poor Tanya, who had headaches in the evenings from living in town, to which she was not accustomed, had been asleep a long while, and, from time to time, articulated some incoherent phrase in her restless dreams.
It struck three o’clock. Kovrin put out the light and lay down to sleep, lay for a long time with his eyes closed, but could not get to sleep because, as he fancied, the room was very hot and Tanya talked in her sleep. At half-past four he lighted the candle again, and this time he saw the black monk sitting in an arm-chair near the bed.
“Good-morning,” said the monk, and after a brief pause he asked: “What are you thinking of now?”
“Of fame,” answered Kovrin. “In the French novel I have just been reading, there is a description of a young savant, who does silly things and pines away through worrying about fame. I can’t understand such anxiety.”
“Because you are wise. Your attitude towards fame is one of indifference, as towards a toy which no longer interests you.”
“Yes, that is true.”
“Renown does not allure you now. What is there flattering, amusing, or edifying in their carving your name on a tombstone, then time rubbing off the inscription together with the gilding? Moreover, happily there are too many of you for the weak memory of mankind to be able to retain your names.”
“Of course,” assented Kovrin. “Besides, why should they be remembered? But let us talk of something else. Of happiness, for instance. What is happiness?’
When the clock struck five, he was sitting on the bed, dangling his feet to the carpet, talking to the monk:
“In ancient times a happy man grew at last frightened of his happiness — it was so great! — and to propitiate the gods he brought as a sacrifice his favourite ring. Do you know, I, too, like Polykrates, begin to be uneasy of my happiness. It seems strange to me that from morning to night I feel nothing but joy; it fills my whole being and smothers all other feelings. I don’t know what sadness, grief, or boredom is. Here I am not asleep; I suffer from sleeplessness, but I am not dull. I say it in earnest; I begin to feel perplexed.”
“But why?” the monk asked in wonder. “Is joy a supernatural feeling? Ought it not to be the normal state of man? The more highly a man is developed on the intellectual and moral side, the more independent he is, the more pleasure life gives him. Socrates, Diogenes, and Marcus Aurelius, were joyful, not sorrowful. And the Apostle tells us: ‘Rejoice continually’; ‘Rejoice and be glad.’ “
“But will the gods be suddenly wrathful?” Kovrin jested; and he laughed. “If they take from me comfort and make me go cold and hungry, it won’t be very much to my taste.”
Meanwhile Tanya woke up and looked with amazement and horror at her husband. He was talking, addressing the arm-chair, laughing and gesticulating; his eyes were gleaming, and there was something strange in his laugh.
“Andryusha, whom are you talking to?” she asked, clutching the hand he stretched out to the monk. “Andryusha! Whom?”
“Oh! Whom?” said Kovrin in confusion. “Why, to him. . . . He is sitting here,” he said, pointing to the black monk.
“There is no one here . . . no one! Andryusha, you are ill!”
Tanya put her arm round her husband and held him tight, as though protecting him from the apparition, and put her hand over his eyes.
“You are ill!” she sobbed, trembling all over. “Forgive me, my precious, my dear one, but I have noticed for a long time that your mind is clouded in some way. . . . You are mentally ill, Andryusha. . . .”
Her trembling infected him, too. He glanced once more at the arm-chair, which was now empty, felt a sudden weakness in his arms and legs, was frightened, and began dressing.
“It’s nothing, Tanya; it’s nothing,” he muttered, shivering. “I really am not quite well . . . it’s time to admit that.”
“I have noticed it for a long time . . . and father has noticed it,” she said, trying to suppress her sobs. “You talk to yourself, smile somehow strangely . . . and can’t sleep. Oh, my God, my God, save us!” she said in terror. “But don’t be frightened, Andryusha; for God’s sake don’t be frightened. . . .”
She began dressing, too. Only now, looking at her, Kovrin realised the danger of his position — realised the meaning of the black monk and his conversations with him. It was clear to him now that he was mad.
Neither of them knew why they dressed and went into the dining-room: she in front and he following her. There they found Yegor Semyonitch standing in his dressing-gown and with a candle in his hand. He was staying with them, and had been awakened by Tanya’s sobs.
“Don’t be frightened, Andryusha,” Tanya was saying, shivering as though in a fever; “don’t be frightened. . . . Father, it will all pass over . . . it will all pass over. . . .”
Kovrin was too much agitated to speak. He wanted to say to his father-in-law in a playful tone: “Congratulate me; it appears I have gone out of my mind”; but he could only move his lips and smile bitterly.
At nine o’clock in the morning they put on his jacket and fur coat, wrapped him up in a shawl, and took him in a carriage to a doctor.
Chapter 8
Summer had come again, and the doctor advised their going into the country. Kovrin had recovered; he had left off seeing the black monk, and he had only to get up his strength. Staying at his father-in-law’s, he drank a great deal of milk, worked for only two hours out of the twenty-four, and neither smoked nor drank wine.
On the evening before Elijah’s Day they had an evening service in the house. When the deacon was handing the priest the censer the immense old room smelt like a graveyard, and Kovrin felt bored. He went out into the garden. Without noticing the gorgeous flowers, he walked about the garden, sat down on a seat, then strolled about the park; reaching the river, he went down and then stood lost in thought, looking at the water. The sullen pines with their shaggy roots, which had seen him a year before so young, so joyful and confident, were not whispering now, but standing mute and motionless, as though they did not recognise him. And, indeed, his head was closely cropped, his beautiful long hair was gone, his step was lagging, his face was fuller and paler than last summer.
He crossed by the footbridge to the other side. Where the year before there had been rye the oats stood, reaped, and lay in rows. The sun had set and there was a broad stretch of glowing red on the horizon, a sign of windy weather next day. It was still. Looking in the direction from which the year before the black monk had first appeared, Kovrin stood for twenty minutes, till the evening glow had begun to fade. . . .
When, listless and dissatisfied, he returned home the service was over. Yegor Semyonitch and Tanya were sitting on the steps of the verandah, drinking tea. They were talking of something, but, seeing Kovrin, ceased at once, and he concluded from their faces that their talk had been about him.
“I believe it is time for you to have your milk,” Tanya said to her husband.
“No, it is not time yet . . .” he said, sitting down on the bottom step. “Drink it yourself; I don’t want it.”
Tanya exchanged a troubled glance with her father, and said in a guilty voice:
“You notice yourself that milk does you good.”
“Yes, a great deal of good!” Kovrin laughed. “I congratulate you: I have gained a pound in weight since Friday.” He pressed his head tightly in his hands and said miserably: “Why, why have you cured me? Preparations of bromide, idleness, hot baths, supervision, cowardly consternation at every mouthful, at every step — all this will reduce me at last to idiocy. I went out of my mind, I had megalomania; but then I was cheerful, confident, and even happy; I was interesting and original. Now I have become more sensible and stolid, but I am just like every one else: I am — mediocrity; I am weary of life. . . . Oh, how cruelly you have treated me! . . . I saw hallucinations, but what harm did that do to any one? I ask, what harm did that do any one?”
“Goodness knows what you are saying!” sighed Yegor Semyonitch. “It’s positively wearisome to listen to it.”
“Then don’t listen.”
The presence of other people, especially Yegor Semyonitch, irritated Kovrin now; he answered him drily, coldly, and even rudely, never looked at him but with irony and hatred, while Yegor Semyonitch was overcome with confusion and cleared his throat guiltily, though he was not conscious of any fault in himself. At a loss to understand why their charming and affectionate relations had changed so abruptly, Tanya huddled up to her father and looked anxiously in his face; she wanted to understand and could not understand, and all that was clear to her was that their relations were growing worse and worse every day, that of late her father had begun to look much older, and her husband had grown irritable, capricious, quarrelsome and uninteresting. She could not laugh or sing; at dinner she ate nothing; did not sleep for nights together, expecting something awful, and was so worn out that on one occasion she lay in a dead faint from dinner-time till evening. During the service she thought her father was crying, and now while the three of them were sitting together on the terrace she made an effort not to think of it.
“How fortunate Buddha, Mahomed, and Shakespeare were that their kind relations and doctors did not cure them of their ecstasy and their inspiration,” said Kovrin. “If Mahomed had taken bromide for his nerves, had worked only two hours out of the twenty-four, and had drunk milk, that remarkable man would have left no more trace after him than his dog. Doctors and kind relations will succeed in stupefying mankind, in making mediocrity pass for genius and in bringing civilisation to ruin. If only you knew,” Kovrin said with annoyance, “how grateful I am to you.”
He felt intense irritation, and to avoid saying too much, he got up quickly and went into the house. It was still, and the fragrance of the tobacco plant and the marvel of Peru floated in at the open window. The moonlight lay in green patches on the floor and on the piano in the big dark dining-room. Kovrin remembered the raptures of the previous summer when there had been the same scent of the marvel of Peru and the moon had shone in at the window. To bring back the mood of last year he went quickly to his study, lighted a strong cigar, and told the footman to bring him some wine. But the cigar left a bitter and disgusting taste in his mouth, and the wine had not the same flavour as it had the year before. And so great is the effect of giving up a habit, the cigar and the two gulps of wine made him giddy, and brought on palpitations of the heart, so that he was obliged to take bromide.
Before going to bed, Tanya said to him:
“Father adores you. You are cross with him about something, and it is killing him. Look at him; he is ageing, not from day to day, but from hour to hour. I entreat you, Andryusha, for God’s sake, for the sake of your dead father, for the sake of my peace of mind, be affectionate to him.”
“I can’t, I don’t want to.”
“But why?” asked Tanya, beginning to tremble all over. “Explain why.”
“Because he is antipathetic to me, that’s all,” said Kovrin carelessly; and he shrugged his shoulders. “But we won’t talk about him: he is your father.”
“I can’t understand, I can’t,” said Tanya, pressing her hands to her temples and staring at a fixed point. “Something incomprehensible, awful, is going on in the house. You have changed, grown unlike yourself. . . . You, clever, extraordinary man as you are, are irritated over trifles, meddle in paltry nonsense. . . . Such trivial things excite you, that sometimes one is simply amazed and can’t believe that it is you. Come, come, don’t be angry, don’t be angry,” she went on, kissing his hands, frightened of her own words. “You are clever, kind, noble. You will be just to father. He is so good.”
“He is not good; he is just good-natured. Burlesque old uncles like your father, with well-fed, good-natured faces, extraordinarily hospitable and queer, at one time used to touch me and amuse me in novels and in farces and in life; now I dislike them. They are egoists to the marrow of their bones. What disgusts me most of all is their being so well-fed, and that purely bovine, purely hoggish optimism of a full stomach.”
Tanya sat down on the bed and laid her head on the pillow.
“This is torture,” she said, and from her voice it was evident that she was utterly exhausted, and that it was hard for her to speak. “Not one moment of peace since the winter. . . . Why, it’s awful! My God! I am wretched.”
“Oh, of course, I am Herod, and you and your father are the innocents. Of course.”
His face seemed to Tanya ugly and unpleasant. Hatred and an ironical expression did not suit him. And, indeed, she had noticed before that there was something lacking in his face, as though ever since his hair had been cut his face had changed, too. She wanted to say something wounding to him, but immediately she caught herself in this antagonistic feeling, she was frightened and went out of the bedroom.
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