Fifty-Two Stories

DMITRI PETROVICH SILIN finished his studies at the university and entered government service in Petersburg, but at the age of thirty he abandoned the service and took up farming. His farming went rather well, but it still seemed to me that this was not the right place for him and that he would do well to go back to Petersburg. When, sunburnt, gray with dust, worn out from work, he met me at the gate or by the porch, and then at supper struggled with drowsiness, and his wife led him off to bed like a child, or when, overcoming his drowsiness, he began in his soft, soulful, as if pleading voice to explain his good thoughts, I saw in him not a farmer and not an agronomist, but only a weary man, and it was clear to me that he did not need any farming, but needed only for the day to be over—and thanks be to God.

I liked to visit him and, occasionally, to spend two or three days on his estate. I liked his house, and the park, and the big orchard, and the river, and his philosophizing, a bit languid and flowery, but clear. It must be that I also liked the man himself, though I cannot say so for certain, since to this day I’m unable to sort out my feelings of that time. He was an intelligent, kind, sincere man, and not boring, but I remember very well that when he confided his innermost secrets to me and called our relations friendship, it disturbed me unpleasantly, and I felt awkward. In his friendship towards me there was something troubling, burdensome, and I would sooner have preferred ordinary comradely relations with him.

The thing was that I had a great liking for his wife, Maria Sergeevna. I was not in love with her, but I liked her face, her eyes, her voice, her gait, I missed her when I had not seen her for a long time, and then my imagination pictured no one more eagerly than that beautiful and refined young woman. I had no definite intentions regarding her, nor did I dream of any, but for some reason each time she and I were left alone together, I remembered that her husband considered me his friend, and I felt awkward. When she played my favorite pieces on the piano or told me something interesting, I listened with pleasure, and at the same time for some reason thoughts crept into my head that she loved her husband, that he was my friend, and that she herself considered me his friend, and my mood would be spoiled, and I would become listless, awkward, and bored. She would notice this change and usually say:

“You’re bored without your friend. We must send to the fields for him.”

And when Dmitri Petrovich came, she would say:

“Well, your friend has come now. Be glad.”

So it went for a year and a half.