Fomá. Come, old grumbler, have a mouthful of vodka. [Melodramatically.] A glass of wine with Cæsar Borgia! [Singing.]
As she went adown the bent
She met a merry fellow,
He was drest in all his best
In red and blue and yellow.
So he was a saint, was he, that son of hers? Well, well, of what advantage is that? Saints are not so easy to love as sinners. You and I are not saints, are we, Astéryi Ivanovitch?
Ast. I do not care to parade my halo in public.
Fomá. Oh, as for me, I keep mine in a box under the bed; it only frightens people. Do you think he would have remained a saint all this time if he had lived?
Ast. Who can say?
Fomá. Nonsense! He would have become like the rest of us. Then why make all this fuss about him? Why go on for twenty years sacrificing her own life to a fantastic image?
Ast. Why not, if it please her to do so?
Fomá. Say what you please, but all the same she is mad; yes, Praskóvya is mad.
Ast. We call every one mad who is faithful to their ideas. If people think only of food and money and clothing we call them sane, but if they have ideas beyond those things we call them mad. I envy Praskóvya. Praskóvya has preserved in her old age what I myself have lost. I, too, had ideas once, but I have been unfaithful to them; they have evaporated and vanished.
Fomá. What ideas were these?
Ast. Liberty! Political regeneration!
Fomá. Ah, yes; you were a sad revolutionary once, I have been told.
Ast. I worshiped Liberty, as Praskóvya worships her Sasha. But I have lived my ideals down in the dull routine of my foolish, aimless life as an office hack, a clerk in the District Council, making copies that no one will ever see of documents that no one ever wants to read.... Suddenly there comes the Revolution; there is fighting in the streets; men raise the red flag; blood flows. I might go forth and strike a blow for that Liberty which I loved twenty years ago. But no, I have become indifferent. I do not care who wins, the Government or the Revolutionaries; it is all the same to me.
Fomá. You are afraid. One gets timid as one gets older.
Ast. Afraid? No. What have I to be afraid of? Death is surely not so much worse than life? No, it is because my idea is dead and cannot be made to live again, while Praskóvya, whose routine as a lodging-house keeper is a hundred times duller than mine, is still faithful to her old idea. Let us not call her mad; let us rather worship her as something holy, for her fidelity to an idea in this wretched little town where ideas are as rare as white ravens.
Fomá. She has no friends to love?
Ast. She has never had any friends; she needed none.
Fomá. She has relatives, I suppose?
Ast. None.
Fomá. What mystery explains this solitude?
Ast. If there is a mystery it is easily guessed. It is an everyday story; the story of a peasant woman betrayed and deserted by a nobleman. She came with her child to this town; and instead of sinking, set herself bravely to work, to win a living for the two of them. She was young and strong then; her work prospered with her.
Fomá. And her son was worthy of her love?
Ast. He was a fine boy—handsome and intelligent. By dint of the fiercest economy she got him a nobleman's education; sent him to the Gymnase, and thence, when he was eighteen, to the University of Moscow. Praskóvya herself cannot read or write, but her boy ... the books on that shelf are the prizes which he won. She thought him a pattern of all the virtues.
Fomá. Aha! now we're coming to it! So he was a sinner after all?
Ast. We are none of us perfect. His friends were ill-chosen. The hard-earned money that Praskóvya thought was spent on University expenses went on many other things—on drink, on women, and on gambling. But he did one good thing—he hid it all safely from his mother. I helped him in that. Together we kept her idea safe through a difficult period. And before he was twenty it was all over—he was dead.
Fomá. Yes, he was murdered by some foreigner, I know.
Ast. By Adámek, a Pole.
Fomá. And what was the motive of the crime?
Ast. It was for money. By inquiries which I made after the trial I ascertained that this Adámek was a bad character and an adventurer, who used to entice students to his rooms to drink and gamble with him. Sasha had become an intimate friend of his; and it was even said that they were partners in cheating the rest. Anyhow, there is no doubt that at one time or another they had won considerable sums at cards, and disputed as to the ownership of them. The last thing that was heard of them, they bought a sledge with two horses and set out saying they were going to Tula. On the road Adámek murdered the unfortunate boy. The facts were all clear and indisputable. There was no need to search into the motives. The murderer fell straight into the hands of the police. The District Inspector, coming silently along the road in his sledge, suddenly saw before him the boy lying dead by the roadside, and the murderer standing over him with the knife in his hand. He arrested him at once; there was no possibility of denying it.
Fomá. And it was quite clear that his victim was Sasha?
Ast. Quite clear. Adámek gave intimate details about him, such as only a friend of his could have known, which put his identity beyond a doubt. When the trial was over the body was sent in a coffin to Praskóvya Petróvna, who buried it here in the Tróitski Cemetery.
Fomá. And the Pole?
Ast. He was sent to penal servitude for life to the silver mines of Siberia.
Fomá. So Praskóvya is even madder than I thought. Her religion is founded on a myth. Her life is an absurd deception.
Ast. No; she has created something out of nothing; that is all.
Fomá. In your place I should have told her the truth.
Ast. No.
Fomá. Anything is better than a lie.
Ast. There is no lie in it. Praskóvya's idea and Sasha's life are two independent things. A statement of fact may be true or false; but an idea need only be clear and definite. That is all that matters. [There is a tapping at the door; the latch is lifted, and the Stranger peeps in.] Come in, come in!
[Enter the Stranger, ragged and degraded. He looks about the room, dazed by the light, and fixes his attention on Astéryi.]
Who are you? What do you want?
Stranger. I came to speak to you.
Ast. To speak to me?
Fomá. Take off your cap. Do you not see the eikons?
Ast. What do you want with me?
Stranger. Only a word, Astéryi Ivanovitch.
Ast. How have you learnt my name?
Fomá. Do you know the man?
Ast. No.
Stranger. You do not know me?
Ast. No.
Stranger. Have you forgotten me, Astéryi Ivanovitch?
Ast. [almost speechless]. Sasha!
Fomá. What is it? You look as if you had seen a ghost.
Ast. A ghost? There are no such things as ghosts. Would that it were a ghost. It is Sasha.
Fomá. Sasha?
Ast. It is Praskóvya's son alive.
Fomá. Praskóvya's son?