City Folk and Country Folk by Sofia Khvoshchinskaya (chapter 14)

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s Ovcharov was preparing to depart, he reread Katerina Petrovna’s note. Between the peasants and other pressing matters he had not had time to fully dissect its wording.

The note (written in French) was a bit cryptic.

If I was so ungracious as to fail to remember you, as you put it, Mr. Ovcharov, it was only because you seem to have arranged things so that your friends would not remember you. Please pay me a visit, and then you will be convinced of the unfailing and devoted friendship of yours truly, KPD.

“What prose! And what good is her unfailing friendship to me?”

Ovcharov thought as he put on his gloves. “No, our ladies are incorrigible. Even when they grow old and gray, they don’t stop twisting the truth. It is womankind that perpetuates falsehood, and until we reeducate women . . .”

At that moment the carriage pulled up. Looking very elegant, he took his seat and rode to Nastasya Ivanovna’s front steps. Olenka came out, also looking elegant, dressed in muslin and a tulle canezou

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with a burnous worn lightly over her shoulders.1 Nastasya Ivanovna came to see her off, thinking to herself, poor woman, that someday Olenka would ride off like this with a husband. A pair of curious eyes also peered out of Anna Ilinishna’s window. Olenka deftly accepted a helping hand from her traveling companion, and off they went.

“How is it that you’re paying Katerina Petrovna a visit?” Olenka asked. “After all, she pretended not to know you.”

“There was a misunderstanding, but it has been cleared up,” he replied.

Olenka did not pursue the subject. After exchanging a few words about the weather and how hot it was outside, the traveling companions fell silent. They remained silent for some time. Olenka had a lot on her mind. She was about to meet a prospective husband.

Her mother and she had just had their first serious discussion on the matter. In parting, Nastasya Ivanovna entreated her to take a good look, get to know him, and not be capricious—because maybe he really is a good fellow, and the previous year she had caught only a fleeting glimpse of him, and that was no way to judge someone, and Katerina Petrovna surely wouldn’t foist a good-for-nothing on her and, finally, she, Nastasya Ivanovna, would under no circumstances force Olenka into anything. Olenka promised both her mother and herself to be sensible. She suddenly recalled the comically sad 1. A canezou is a tight-fitting short jacket, more often referred to as a “spencer” in nineteenthcentury England. It is usually sleeveless, although one 1852 drawing portrays it with puffy sleeves. The following reference to a canezou is taken from Isabel F. Hapgood’s translation of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables: “There was something indescribably harmonious and striking about her entire dress. She wore a gown of mauve barege, little reddish-brown buskins, whose ribbons traced an X on her fine, white, open-worked stockings, and that sort of muslin spencer, a Marseilles invention, whose name, canezou, a corruption of the words quinze aout, pronounced after the fashion of the Canebiere, signifies fine weather, heat, and midday.”

Variations on the burnous, a hooded cloak worn by North African Bedouins, were adopted in European fashion in the nineteenth century.

face her mother wore after returning from seeing Erast Sergeyevich that morning, overwhelmed by the weightiness of the wise counsel heaped upon her. For a whole hour Olenka had given her mother no peace over this wise counsel. Now, she glanced over at the source of this counsel and smiled. For some reason Ovcharov always made her smile. He was wearing a magnificent panama hat, and Olenka struggled to suppress her laughter as she watched the intermittent shadow it cast upon the road. This fashion struck her as excessively imposing. The little fool—she failed to appreciate how stylish it was.

Erast Sergeyevich made an overall impression on her as being at once sickly, imposing, comically stylish, a bit of a pinchpenny, and pompous—she could not look him in the eye with a straight face.

“Although, come to think of it,” she mused, “it wouldn’t hurt for the other girls to see me taking a little drive through town with such a gentleman. I can just see the looks on their faces. But best of all would be . . .”

And this “best of all” appeared in her mind’s eye in the form of dark whiskers and dark eyes right there by her side, shaded by an officer’s cap, instead of Ovcharov’s ponderous panama.

Ovcharov was also thinking, but may heaven forgive him the frivolity of his thoughts and the trifles that had found their way into his head! And in forgiving Ovcharov may heaven above forgive us all!

All of us possessors of a thousand souls and Viennese carriages, visitors to the homes of this and that foreign lord—all of us are capable, when we stop in on our native backwoods, of thinking the same trifling thoughts toward which Erast Sergeyevich’s mind had strayed. In brief, Erast Sergeyevich was thinking, “This girl is, of course, in love with me, since she’s never seen anyone like me before. That’s why she’s been fidgeting, giggling, and mocking me for some time now; City Folk and Country Folk

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from the very first day she’s been fidgeting and mocking, because she’s embarrassed, and for our rustics what other expression of love can there be, especially toward someone who is not quite attainable?”

He further reasoned—must we again beseech heaven’s forgiveness?—that it would be good to bring this love a little to the surface, as the setting was so convenient, it being impossible for her to flee from the carriage, unlike during their walks through the fields, where she was able to escape so nimbly. She, too, would certainly enjoy it.

Girls are such silly little cowards—they themselves don’t realize how pleasant it is when you finally confess your feelings. Then she could be given, well, whatever could be given: a tiny foretaste of love, nothing that would entail any subsequent obligations. It was good that she was so flighty, so inconstant, apparently not the sort who would compromise herself or another with foolish sighs and tears. But she would have something to remember . . . She would enjoy it; for him, too, it wouldn’t be bad.

And finally, without a thought in his head, Ovcharov glanced at her tulle canezou, no longer covered by the burnous, which had slipped from her shoulder. The thought struck him that he should put it back in place.

“Thank you, but there’s no need. How hot it is!” Olenka remarked, taking it off again.

“Coquette!” Ovcharov thought to himself.

“Olga Nikolayevna, why are you angry with me?” he suddenly asked.

“What are you talking about? I’m nothing of the sort.”

“You don’t want to talk to me.”

“Oh, enough, please,” she protested with a hint of anger. These words had reminded her of the hundreds of times Anna Ilinishna

had been addressed in similar terms, and although she tried not to let these scenes bother her, over time they had grown extremely tiresome.

This memory soured Olenka’s mood. She reflected that the summer was nearly half over, and a dreary summer it was proving to be. They had hardly been to town at all, first due to lack of funds, and second because that loathsome Anna Ilinishna had shown up to turn their household topsy-turvy. For her sake, they’d had to sit home. No one came to visit them in the country—only this distinguished gentleman was hanging about with his dietetic soup and words of wisdom.

Meanwhile, Ovcharov kept on looking at her and finally repeated his question.

Olenka flared up at him.

“What do you and I have to talk about, Erast Sergeyich?” she asked rather sharply, but holding herself in check. “You’re just asking because you have no one else to talk to. And what should I say? You see how we live. Is there really anything interesting? We’re not good society for one another, not you for me, not I for you. I like to have a jolly time, and you don’t. You’ve learned everything there is, and I don’t know a thing. What’s happening in Paris, or in Moscow—I haven’t the foggiest idea. I don’t read your books; I don’t understand them and don’t want to understand them. What else? Perhaps we should talk about Anna Ilinishna? I’d rather take her on with my own bare hands, if I had my way . . .”

Ovcharov fell back down to earth. Only the most desperate fop or madman could mistake this monologue for a dépit amoureux,2 2. French: Amorous pique.

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pronounced as it was with an expression of the most decisive firmness and sincerity.

Having heard her out, Ovcharov shrugged his shoulders. “As you wish.”

Approximately two more versts passed in silence.

“Would I at least be permitted to observe that you are bored?”

Ovcharov asked. He had changed his mind about something. It was not the same imposing panama-wearing Ovcharov who had been sitting so solemnly to her left that now looked at her as he asked this question.

“Who is there to stop you?” she replied, smiling. Her bad mood was starting to abate.

“What do you mean, who?” Ovcharov responded waggishly.

“You frightened me so just now . . . It’s true. You painted me as such a solemn and erudite scarecrow that I was just about ready to flee.

Why are you laughing? You’re having a fine time, but what about me? Poor little me. There wasn’t a serious thought in my head, no sensible thoughts whatsoever. That’s how much I wanted to talk all sorts of cheerful nonsense with you . . .”

“Is that so?” Olenka replied, shaking her head somewhat distrustfully at the schoolboy face he was managing quite elegantly and successfully.

“Yes, that’s so; that’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

“Well, talk your nonsense.”

“I don’t dare,” he replied, playfully casting his gaze skyward.

“Well, go ahead. Whatever you want!”

“Whatever I want? No, what I would like to say . . . well, of course I wouldn’t say that,” he answered meaningly.

“And why’s that?”

He did not reply, but looked intently at Olenka.

“What’s going on here?” she thought. “I shouldn’t have been so insulting; now he won’t say anything.”

A strong sense of curiosity had awakened in her. In general, she was an extremely curious person. Ovcharov’s facial expression became more and more inscrutable. Olenka started to flirt, to pester him, and finally to rack her brains to contrive how she might cajole him. He, meanwhile, maintained his silence and only smiled.

“Oh, come now, be a dear,” she exclaimed, not able to contain herself and taking him by the arm. “Tell me. If you tell me your secret, I’ll tell you what I’ve been thinking about.”

“Very well! That’s a reasonable condition. But since you’re the one who’s seen fit to pout, you should go first.”

“If you please, we can do it that way, so long as you keep your end of the bargain.”

“You think I won’t keep my end?” he exclaimed. “You’ve no idea how hard it’s been to keep my secret.”

“So that’s how it is!” Olenka replied. Suddenly, she could detect something strange in his words and in his voice. She became quiet and her flirtatiousness vanished.

“Tell me.”

“I? In all honesty, I was thinking about our fight with Anna Ilinishna and that I was going to see an unbearable lady and an even less bearable young man, whom I already can’t stand and whom they’re trying to foist on me as a match.”

“Is that all!” Ovcharov exclaimed with unusual fervor. “Nothing sweeter than that? At the age of seventeen, not a single dream on such a glorious summer day, a day just made for hiding away in City Folk and Country Folk

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this field of rye or in that grove with your beloved, so no one would see . . . Enough! You’re concealing your feelings. That’s hard to bear.”

“I told the truth,” Olenka replied, but blushing. “I’ll have to be married.”

“Marriage? To someone unbearable! Olga Nikolayevna! Come now, don’t betray yourself. At least don’t slander your own mind if perhaps . . . if what you want to hide is that you have passion and a heart. A forced marriage, a marriage based on calculations, a marriage to suit Papa and Mama, a marriage that makes no sense—that’s murder! It is quite simply the murder of your freedom. And what is marriage if not a crime, if not the murder of freedom? Do you know how you can be . . . how you must be free? Do you know?”

“Well, how?”

“As the wind,” Ovcharov concluded.

“Is that so?” Olenka replied cheerfully.

“Yes. You have your doubts, you think you would be less happy without any sort of marriage? Do you think there would be fewer men who love you?”

“I’m not thinking anything, anything at all,” Olenka replied, coquettishly covering her ears against the torrent of words. “No one loves me, no one will want to know me . . . But you tell me your little secret now.”

“My secret? Well, I’m mad about you, Olenka . . .”

Ovcharov threw himself at her and, before she was able to say a word, kissed her neck and shoulders.

Apparently Olenka really was stronger than he. She grabbed him by the shoulders and shoved him to the other end of the carriage, quickly and without making noise or uttering a sound, so that the coachman did not even turn around.

“You’re a vile person,” she said, crimson from agitation. “The slightest move and I’ll hit you. Don’t you dare say a word to me.”

Ovcharov straightened his panama, enclosed himself more securely in his lap robe, and turned away. The only thing visible to Olenka was the chamois glove on his bony hand, which was supporting his chin. Then again, Olenka was not looking.

Approximately a quarter hour passed in this manner. In the distance, Katerina Petrovna’s estate came into view.

“Olga Nikolayevna,” Ovcharov said, suddenly turning to her. His face seemed distressed and upset. “Olga Nikolayevna, will you really not forgive my infatuation? If I didn’t like you so much . . .”

“Nonsense, nonsense!” she said. “Be quiet. Don’t you dare lie. I don’t believe a word you say.”

“Olga Nikolayevna, but how would I have dared . . .”

She turned away, but could feel that he was not taking his eyes off her. He sighed, searched for her hand, and tugged at the hem of her burnous. Thus they traveled another verst, then another half verst.

They passed over a wretched little bridge that traversed a miserable little stream; they passed through an abominable country road with unimaginably bad huts; then they finally reached a pasture, after which they had still to drive over a meager, crescent-shaped lawn to arrive at some sort of traveling case made of stone, with holes instead of windows and a steep iron roof clapped on top—Katerina Petrovna’s house.

Upon seeing all this, Olenka called up to the coachman, “If you please, my good man, on the way back let me out at the bridge. In the dark, with your Viennese carriage, a person could fall out.”

“So, you’ll go back with me?” Ovcharov hurriedly asked.

“What?”

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“I thought . . . I was afraid that you would ask Katerina Petrovna . . . So you’ve forgiven me?”

“That’s the furthest thing from my mind,” Olenka replied calmly.

“I’ll go back with you just as I came. If you touch me, I’ll jump out or beat you in front of the coachman. Ask Katerina Petrovna for help! Coward! You were afraid that I would get you involved in some scandal? What good would that do me? Why would I want to do something like that? Perhaps you think that I’ll go and complain to Mama? I can handle you myself.”

Ovcharov wanted to say something, but Katerina Petrovna’s manservant had already darted down the front steps and was opening the carriage door.

Praise for C I T Y F O L K A N D C O U N T R Y F O L K “Talk about buried treasure! The heroines of this sly, engrossing novel crackle with a verve so fresh that 1860s Russia feels close enough to touch. A brilliant reminder (as if any were needed) that women have been fighting, and triumphing over, their conditions forever. Reviving this forgotten book is a masterstroke.”—K AT E B O LI C K , author of the New York Times best-seller Spinster: Making a Life of One’s Own “A single man of property comes to a country village—unsettling young and older ladies. The village is in Russia, soon after the emancipation of the serfs; Ovcharov is a hypochondriac intellectual. ‘A comical people,’ he reflects at one point, and the women and the reader must agree. Admirers of Jane Austen will delight in this charming satire.”

—RACHEL B ROW NS TE I N, author of Why Jane Austen?

Russian Library Columbia University Press New York cup.columbia.edu Printed in the U.S.A.

ISBN: 978-0-231-18302-4