Makar's Dream, and Other Stories

by Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko

I remember vividly to this day how merrily the street would hum as the melancholy, stooping figure of the old “Professor” walked along it. He was a gentle being, oppressed by a clouded intelligence, and he wore an old frieze overcoat and a wide-brimmed hat trimmed with a faded cockade. His learned title he had appropriated, it seemed, because of a vague tradition that he had once, somehow, somewhere, been a tutor. It would be hard to imagine a creature more mild and harmless. He could generally be seen wandering about the streets with dim eyes and head sunk forward on his breast. The ingenious townsfolk knew two peculiarities of his which they made use of to procure a cruel enjoyment for themselves. The Professor was always muttering something to himself and no one could ever make out what he was saying. His words would trickle after one another with the troubled murmur of a little brooklet, while he fixed his vague eyes upon his listener’s face as if he were trying to convey to that man’s mind the elusive meaning of his long discourses. He could be wound up like a clock, and to do this it was only necessary for one of the lanky commissionaires dozing on the sidewalk to call the old man to him and ask him some question. The Professor would shake his head, pensively fix his faded eyes upon the face of his interlocutor, and begin to murmur something sorrowful without an end. Thereupon his questioner could calmly walk away or go to sleep, and when he woke he would still be certain to see over him that dark, melancholy figure, murmuring his unintelligible phrases. But, naturally, this situation was not, in itself, particularly interesting. It was the second of the Professor’s characteristics that enabled the louts of the street-corners to procure their most striking effects. The unhappy man could never hear sharp or pointed instruments mentioned without emotion. And so, at the very height of his unintelligible eloquence, his listener would suddenly jump up and scream in a harsh voice: “Knives, scissors, needles, pins!” Then the poor old man, interrupted in the midst of his reverie, would throw up his arms with the gesture of a wounded bird, and stare about him in terror with his hands clutching at his breast. Ah, how many sufferings are incomprehensible to lanky commissionaires because the sufferers cannot express their pain by means of a lusty blow! But the poor Professor would only look about him in deep distress, and his inexpressible suffering could be divined from his voice as he turned his clouded eyes upon his tormentor and cried, convulsively tearing at his breast:

“A hook—a hook in my heart!”

He was probably trying to say that his heart had been rent by the townsman’s exclamation, but naturally it was his very circumstance that had served to dispel somewhat the tedium of the street loafer. So the poor Professor would hurry away, his head bowed even lower than before, as if he feared a blow, and loud peals of laughter would pursue him as the pert townsfolk ran out into the street, filling the air with screams like the blows of a lash and shouting:

“Knives, scissors, needles, pins!”

In justice to the exiles from the castle, it must be said that they always stood loyally by one another, and if two or three of Turkevich’s tatterdemalions, or, more especially, if the retired grenadier Zausailov descended upon the Professor’s pursuers at such a time a cruel punishment always overtook a large number of that crowd. Zausailov, who was the possessor of a huge frame, a purplish blue nose, and fiercely protruding eyes, had long since declared war on every living being, and recognised neither treaties nor neutrality. Each time that he met the Professor with the rabble in pursuit his angry shouts would fill the air then and long after, as he swept through the streets like Tamerlane, destroying everything that stood in the way of his redoubtable progress. Thus he practised “pogroms” on the Jews on a large scale long before they had begun to break out elsewhere. He would torture every Jew that fell a prisoner into his hands and wreak insults on the Hebrew ladies until at last the expedition of the bold grenadier would come to an end in the gaol, where he was invariably domiciled after his bloody bouts with the populace in which both sides always manifested no small amount of valour.

The other individual the sight of whose misfortunes and downfall was a source of great amusement to the people, was Lavrovski, a retired and absolutely drink-sodden Civil Servant. The inhabitants of the town could easily remember the time when Lavrovski was never spoken of as anything but “My Lord the Secretary”; when he went about in a uniform with brass buttons, his neck swathed in handkerchiefs of the most marvellous hues. It is likely that this circumstance lent an additional piquancy to the contemplation of his present state. The change in Lavrovski’s life had come swiftly; it had sufficed for a certain brilliant officer of dragoons to come to Kniazh Gorodok and live there for two weeks. In that time he succeeded in winning and carrying off a golden-haired lady, the rich inn-keeper’s daughter. The inhabitants of the town never heard of the beautiful Anna again, for she had sunk forever beneath their horizon. And so Lavrovski was left with all his bright-hued handkerchiefs, but without the hope that had once embellished the life of the little official. It was long since he had ceased to be a Civil Servant. Somewhere, in some remote village, there lived a family whose hope and mainstay he had once been, but he had lost all care for anything now. In his rare sober moments he would walk swiftly through the streets with downcast eyes, looking at no one, as if he were overcome with shame at the fact of his own existence. Ragged, dirty, with long, unkempt hair, he was always a prominent figure in a crowd, and attracted universal attention to himself, but he seemed never to notice any one, or to hear anything. Only occasionally would he cast a wild look of bewilderment about him, as much as to say: “What do these strangers want of me? What have I done to them, and why do they follow me so persistently with their mockery?” If, during one of these flashes of consciousness, his ear caught the name of the lady with the golden hair a tempestuous fury would rise in his heart, his eyes would shine in his pale face with dark fire, and he would throw himself upon the crowd of his tormentors, which would then quickly disperse. These flashes of anger, rare as they were, strangely provoked the interest of the loafers who found that time hung heavily on their hands, and it is no wonder, then, that when Lavrovski walked down the street with downcast eyes, the rabble that followed him should try to rouse him from his apathy, and at last begin to throw mud and stones at him.

When Lavrovski was drunk he would obstinately seek out dark fence-corners and swampy meadows and other such extraordinary places, and there he would sit, his long legs stretched out in front of him, his poor grey head sunk on his breast. Solitude and vodka awoke in him a flow of expansiveness and a desire to pour forth the sorrow of his heavy heart, so he would embark upon endless stories of his ruined youth, addressing himself now to the grey posts of the ancient fence, now to the birch trees indulgently whispering something over his head, now to the magpies that came hopping up to his gloomy figure with feminine curiosity.

If any of us little boys succeeded in tracking him to such a place we would silently surround him and listen with beating hearts to his long and terrible stories. Our hair would stand on end as we gazed with horror at that pale creature accusing himself of every crime under the sun. According to Lavrovski’s own account he had killed his father, driven his mother into the grave, and brought disgrace on his brothers and sisters. We had no reason for not believing these fearful confessions, and were only surprised that Lavrovski seemed to have had several fathers; he had thrust a sword into the heart of one, another he had killed with slow poison, a third he had dragged down with him into some abyss or other. So we would listen, overwhelmed with sympathy and horror, until Lavrovski’s tongue became more and more entangled and at last ceased to be able to pronounce articulate sounds; merciful sleep would then put an end to the outpouring of his confessions.

The grown people laughed at us and told us that these stories were all moonshine, and that Lavrovski’s parents had died a natural death from sickness or starvation. But our tender, childish hearts heard the cries of genuine affliction in his groans, and, taking the allegories of the unhappy man literally, we came nearer than our elders to understanding the tragic wrecking of his life.

When Lavrovski’s head had sunk lower than ever and snores, broken by nervous sobs, came from his throat, we would lean our little heads over the poor man. We would peer into his face and watch the shadows of his misdeeds flitting across it even in his sleep; we would see his brows contract convulsively and his lips tighten in a piteous, almost childishly plaintive grimace.