THE STORY OF A PROVINCIAL
I
THE Superintendent said to me: "I only keep you out of regard for
your worthy father; but for that you would have been sent flying
long ago." I replied to him: "You flatter me too much, your Excellency, in assuming that I am capable of flying." And then I heard him say: "Take that gentleman away; he gets upon my nerves."
Two days later I was dismissed. And in this way I have, during the
years I have been regarded as grown up, lost nine situations, to
the great mortification of my father, the architect of our town. I
have served in various departments, but all these nine jobs have
been as alike as one drop of water is to another: I had to sit, write, listen to rude or stupid observations, and go on doing so till I was dismissed.
When I came in to my father he was sitting buried in a low arm-chair
with his eyes closed. His dry, emaciated face, with a shade of dark
blue where it was shaved (he looked like an old Catholic organist), expressed meekness and resignation. Without responding to my greeting or opening his eyes, he said:
"If my dear wife and your mother were living, your life would have
been a source of continual distress to her. I see the Divine
Providence in her premature death. I beg you, unhappy boy," he
continued, opening his eyes, "tell me: what am I to do with you?"
In the past when I was younger my friends and relations had known
what to do with me: some of them used to advise me to volunteer for
the army, others to get a job in a pharmacy, and others in the
telegraph department; now that I am over twenty-five, that grey
hairs are beginning to show on my temples, and that I have been
already in the army, and in a pharmacy, and in the telegraph
department, it would seem that all earthly possibilities have been
exhausted, and people have given up advising me, and merely sigh
or shake their heads.
"What do you think about yourself?" my father went on. "By the time
they are your age, young men have a secure social position, while
look at you: you are a proletarian, a beggar, a burden on your
father!"
And as usual he proceeded to declare that the young people of to-day
were on the road to perdition through infidelity, materialism, and
self-conceit, and that amateur theatricals ought to be prohibited, because they seduced young people from religion and their duties.
"To-morrow we shall go together, and you shall apologize to the
superintendent, and promise him to work conscientiously," he said
in conclusion. "You ought not to remain one single day with no
regular position in society."
"I beg you to listen to me," I said sullenly, expecting nothing
good from this conversation. "What you call a position in society
is the privilege of capital and education. Those who have neither
wealth nor education earn their daily bread by manual labour, and
I see no grounds for my being an exception."
"When you begin talking about manual labour it is always stupid and
vulgar!" said my father with irritation. "Understand, you dense
fellow--understand, you addle-pate, that besides coarse physical
strength you have the divine spirit, a spark of the holy fire, which
distinguishes you in the most striking way from the ass or the
reptile, and brings you nearer to the Deity! This fire is the fruit
of the efforts of the best of mankind during thousands of years. Your great-grandfather Poloznev, the general, fought at Borodino; your grandfather was a poet, an orator, and a Marshal of Nobility; your uncle is a schoolmaster; and lastly, I, your father, am an architect! All the Poloznevs have guarded the sacred fire for you to put it out!"
"One must be just," I said. "Millions of people put up with manual
labour."
"And let them put up with it! They don't know how to do anything
else! Anybody, even the most abject fool or criminal, is capable
of manual labour; such labour is the distinguishing mark of the
slave and the barbarian, while the holy fire is vouchsafed only to
a few!"