Lermontov and Nekrasov were particular favourites of hers. The latter she found especially sympathetic and easy of comprehension since, coming from a serf background herself, she had suffered much in times gone by. She would still frequently come out with peasant expressions in the course of her conversation, particularly if she happened to be talking heatedly; yet this demotic mode of discourse somehow suited her to a quite extraordinary degree. I recall that whenever she started to relate in this manner something she had read, it would lend her narrative such force that by the time she had finished one no longer felt it necessary to read the book. She was a very capable woman. Our local gentry would often call in at Barkov Farm, sometimes merely in order to sample a change of table, but more usually on business. Aleksandr Ivanovich’s credit was universally good, while the landowners had almost none – people knew what bad payers they were. People would say of them: ‘Oh yes, he’s a real aristocrat – lend to him, and you’ll scream for it a hundred times.’ That was the sort of reputation they had. They would need grain, having nothing from which to distil vodka, and they would either have squandered all their money away or spent it on the repayment of old debts. So they would go and see Aleksandr Ivanovich, saying: ‘Be my saviour! Stand security for me, there’s a good fellow.’ At that point they would kiss Nastasya Petrovna’s hands – such unfeigning, tender hands she had. This would make her burst into paroxysms of laughter. ‘Have you seen the zhiristy?’2 she would say. Nastasya Petrovna had called the gentry ‘zhiristy’ ever since the time a certain Muscovite lady, who was on her way back from her ravaged estate and was anxious to ‘educate the little uncut diamond’, had said: ‘Do you not realize, ma belle Anastasie, that every country has its Girondistes?’ All these men, without exception, kissed Nastasya Petrovna’s hands, and she grew accustomed to their doing so. But there were also dashing young fellows who made her declarations of love and who propositioned her ‘off to a shady nook’.3 One Leib Hussar even told her she would be quite safe doing so, as long as she brought Aleksandr Ivanovich’s leather wallet along with her. But

Their sufferings were to no avail.

Nastasya Petrovna knew how to behave herself with these devotees of beauty.

It was to these people – Sviridova and her husband – that I decided to appeal on behalf of my awkward friend. When I arrived to make my request, Aleksandr Ivanovich was as usual not at home. I found only Nastasya Petrovna, and I told her about the devil’s urchin Fate had sent me. Two days later I took my Musk-Ox to the Sviridovs’, and a week after that went to see them one final time in order to say goodbye.

‘Why have you been leading my wife astray in my absence, old chap?’ Aleksandr Ivanovich asked me, as he came out onto the porch to greet me.

‘How have I been leading her astray?’ I asked him in turn, failing to understand his question.

‘Why are you getting her involved in philanthropy? Who’s this clown you’ve landed us with?’

‘Just listen to him!’ a familiar, slightly harsh contralto voice shouted from the window. ‘Your Musk-Ox is a fine man. I’m grateful to you for finding him for me.’

‘No, but seriously, though – what kind of a beastie is this you’ve brought us?’ Aleksandr Ivanovich asked me, when we had gone up into his draughting room.

‘A Musk-Ox,’ I replied, smiling.

‘I can’t make head nor tail of him, old chap!’

‘Why not?’

‘Well, he’s so eccentric!’

‘That’s just when you first get to know him.’

‘And I suppose later on he’ll get even worse?’

I burst out laughing, and so did Aleksandr Ivanovich.

‘Yes, old chap, it’s all very well laughing, but what am I going to do with him? I’ve no room for a fellow like him.’

‘Please provide him with some means of earning his bread.’

‘I can’t do it! It’s not that I’ve any fundamental objection to the chap; but what sort of work could I give him? I mean, look what he’s like,’ Aleksandr Ivanovich said, pointing in the direction of Vasily Petrovich, who at that moment was walking about in the yard.

As I watched him striding about, one arm tucked into the front of his svita and the other engaged in twirling one of his forelocks, I myself thought: ‘It’s perfectly true: what kind of work could he do?’

‘Why don’t you let him supervise the woodfelling?’ the lady of the house suggested to her husband.

Aleksandr Ivanovich laughed.

‘Yes, let him do that,’ I said.

‘Oh you innocent little children! What would he do out there? Someone who isn’t used to it would just hang himself from boredom. No, in my view, he ought to be given a hundred roubles to go where he likes and do what he wants.’

‘No, don’t throw him out.’

‘No, you’ll hurt his feelings,’ Nastasya Petrovna said, backing me up.

‘Well, where am I going to put him? All my men are muzhiks; I’m a muzhik myself; but he …’

‘He’s not a member of the gentry, either,’ I said.

‘Not a gentleman and not a peasant, and no good for anything at all.’

‘Why don’t you give him to Nastasya Petrovna to look after?’

‘That’s right, give him to me to look after!’ Nastasya Petrovna said, intervening once more.

‘Take him, take him, my dear!’

‘Well, that’s fine, then,’ said Nastasya Petrovna.

And Musk-Ox remained in Nastasya Petrovna’s hands.

10

In August, when I was already living in St Petersburg, I received, poste restante, a registered letter in which fifty roubles were enclosed. The letter said:

O Beloved Brother!

I am present at the destruction of the forests, which have grown as the birthright of all, but have fallen to the lot of the Sviridovs. As half a year’s expenses I have been given the sum of sixty roubles, even though six months have not yet elapsed. Apparently, it is intended for my upkeep – but their generosity is in vain: I am in no need of this money. I have kept ten roubles for myself; please send the fifty enclosed herewith at once, without any covering letter, to the unmarried peasant woman Glefira Anfinogenova Mukhina in the village of Duba, X province. Do it so that no one will be able to tell who the money has come from. This unmarried woman is she who is supposed to be my wife: the money is for her, in case a child should have been born.

My life here is a repugnant one. There is nothing for me to do here, and all I have to console myself with is the thought that nowhere, ever, is there anything to be done in the neighbourhood but that which everyone does: talking well of one’s parents and filling out one’s trousers. Here everyone prays for Aleksandr Ivanovich – and for not a living soul besides. Everyone wants to be like him, but what sort of a creature is he, this man of the pocket?

Yes, today I have understood something, I have understood it.