Part 30 (1/2)
For G.o.d's sake write what you are doing, whether you are all well and how things are in regard to mushrooms and gudgeon.
We are living at Bogimovo in the province of Kaluga.... It's a huge house, a fine park, the inevitable views, at the sight of which I am for some reason expected to say ”Ach!” A river, a pond with hungry carp who love to get on to the hook, a ma.s.s of sick people, a smell of iodoform, and walks in the evenings. I am busy with my Sahalin; and in the intervals, that I may not let my family starve, I cherish the muse and write stories.
Everything goes on in the old way, there is nothing new. I get up every day at five o'clock, and prepare my coffee with my own hands--a sign that I have already got into old bachelor habits and am resigned to them. Masha is painting, Misha wears his c.o.c.kade creditably, father talks about bishops, mother bustles about the house, Ivan fishes. On the same estate with us there is living a zoologist called Wagner and his family, and some Kisilyovs--not the Kisilyovs, but others, not the real ones.
Wagner catches ladybirds and spiders, and Kisilyov the father sketches, as he is an artist. We get up performances, _tableaux-vivants_, and picnics.
It is very gay and amusing, but I have only to catch a perch or find a mushroom for my head to droop, and my thoughts to be carried back to the past, and my brain and soul begin in a funereal voice to sing the duet ”We are parted.” The ”deposed idol and the deserted temple” rise up before my imagination, and I think devoutly: ”I would exchange all the zoologists and great artists in the world for one little Idiotik.” [Footnote: Madame Kisilyov's son.] The weather has all the while been hot and dry, and only to-day there has been a crash of thunder and the gates of heaven are open.
One longs to get away somewhere--for instance, to America, or Norway.... Be well and happy, and may the good spirits, of whom there are so many at Babkino, have you in their keeping.
TO HIS BROTHER ALEXANDR.
ALEXIN, July, 1891.
MY PHOTOGRAPHIC AND PROLIFIC BROTHER!
I got a letter from you a long time ago with the photographs of Semashko, but I haven't answered till now, because I have been all the time trying to formulate the great thoughts befitting my answer. All our people are alive and well, we often talk of you, and regret that your prolificness prevents you from coming to us here where you would be very welcome. Father, as I have written to you already, has thrown up Ivanygortch, and is living with us. Suvorin has been here twice; he talked about you, and caught fish. I am up to my neck in work with Sahalin, and other things no less wearisome and hard labour. I dream of winning forty thousand, so as to cut myself off completely from writing, which I am sick of, to buy a little bit of land and live like a hermit in idle seclusion, with you and Ivan in the neighbourhood--I dream of presenting you with fifteen acres each as poor relations. Altogether I have a dreary existence, I am sick of toiling over lines and halfpence, and old age is creeping nearer and nearer.
Your last story, in my opinion, shared by Suvorin, is good. Why do you write so little?
The zoologist V. A. Wagner, who took his degree with you, is staying in the same courtyard. He is writing a very solid dissertation. Kisilyov, the artist, is living in the same yard too. We go walks together in the evenings and discuss philosophy....
TO A. S. SUVORIN.
BOGIMOVO, July 24, 1891.
... Thanks for the five kopecks addition. Alas, it will not settle my difficulties! To save up a reserve, as you write, and extricate myself from the abyss of halfpenny anxieties and petty terrors, there is only one resource left me--an immoral one. To marry a rich woman or give out Anna Karenin as my work. And as that is impossible I dismiss my difficulties in despair and let things go as they please.
You once praised Rod, a French writer, and told me Tolstoy liked him. The other day I happened to read a novel of his and flung up my hands in amazement. He is equivalent to our Matchtet, only a little more intelligent. There is a terrible deal of affectation, dreariness, straining after originality, and as little of anything artistic as there was salt in that porridge we cooked in the evening at Bogimovo. In the preface this Rod regrets that he was in the past a ”naturalist,” and rejoices that the spiritualism of the latest recruits of literature has replaced materialism.
Boyish boastfulness which is at the same time coa.r.s.e and clumsy.... ”If we are not as talented as you, Monsieur Zola, to make up for it we believe in G.o.d.” ...
July 29.
Well, thank G.o.d! To-day I have received from the bookshop notice that there is 690 roubles 6 kopecks coming to me. I have written in answer that they are to send five hundred roubles to Feodosia and the other one hundred and ninety to me. And so I am left owing you only one hundred and seventy. That is comforting, it's an advance anyway. To meet the debt to the newspaper I am arming myself with an immense story which I shall finish in a day or two and send. I ought to knock three hundred roubles off the debt, and get as much for myself. Ough! ...
August 6.