Selected Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky — ‘My Uncle’s Dream’ and ‘Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants’ (Book Three in the Decalogy)

… Foma Fomich now lies buried beside the general’s lady. A costly tombstone of white marble covered all over with tearful quotations and eulogistic inscriptions stands over his grave. Sometimes, when they are out for a stroll, Yegor Ilyich and Nastenka turn into the churchyard and kneel before Foma’s grave in veneration. Even now they cannot speak of him without deep emotion, recalling his every word, the food he ate, and what he liked. His personal articles are treasured. Feeling utterly bereaved, Uncle and Nastenka grew even closer to one another. God has granted them no children, which grieves them sorely, but they dare not repine. Sashenka has long been married to a splendid young man. Ilyusha is at a Moscow school. And so Uncle and Nastenka now live alone and simply dote on one another. Their concern for one another has grown into something morbid. Nastenka is always praying. If one of them should die, the other would not survive a week, I think. But God grant them long life. They give all their callers a hearty welcome and gladly share all they have with anyone who is less fortunate. Nastenka is fond of reading the lives of the saints, and is wont to say with contrition that ordinary good deeds are not enough, that they ought to give away all they have to the destitute, and be happy in poverty. Had it not been for his responsibility to Sashenka and Ilyusha, Uncle would have done this long ago, for he is in complete agreement with his wife in everything. Praskovya Ilyinishna lives with them and delights in doing everything to please them; she also keeps house for them. Mr. Bakhcheyev proposed to her soon after Uncle’s wedding but she refused him flatly. An inference was drawn from this that she would take the veil, but no, she did not. There is one remarkable characteristic in Praskovya Ilyinishna’s nature: the need to reduce herself to nought before those she has come to love, to efface herself before them every hour of the day, gaze raptly into their eyes, obey their every whim, care for them, and serve them. Now that her mother, the general’s lady, is dead she considers it her bounden duty never to part from her brother and truckles to Nastenka in everything. Old Yezhevikin is still alive and has lately taken to visiting his daughter more and more often. In the beginning he drove Uncle to despair by almost completely estranging himself and his small fry (which is what he calls his children) from Stepanchikovo. He remained immune to all Uncle’s pressing invitations—it was not so much his pride as his touchiness and his morbid sensitiveness which were almost like a disease with him sometimes. The thought that he, a poor man, should be received in a well-to-do home out of sheer charity, that they might think him importunate and tiresome, distressed him. Sometimes he even refused Nastenka’s money and only accepted enough for the barest of necessities. He flatly refused to take anything at all from Uncle. Nastenka was very much mistaken when she told me that day in the garden that her father was playing the clown for her sake. It is true that he was terribly keen on getting Nastenka married off, but he acted the clown simply to satisfy an inner urge, to give an outlet to his accumulated spleen. The need to mock and make cutting remarks was in his blood. For instance, he himself caricatured the basest and most obsequious of flatterers, but at the same time he let it be clearly known that he was only doing it for show; and the more cringing his flattery, the more caustic and overt the mockery behind it. It was just a way of his. They managed to place all his children in the best schools of Moscow and St. Petersburg, but only after Nastenka had proved to him that it was all being done at her own private expense, that is, out of the thirty thousand given her by Tatiana Ivanovna. Truth to tell, she had never taken the money from Tatiana Ivanovna; but to appease her and not let her feel hurt or disappointed Nastenka and Yegor Ilyich promised to turn to her for help should any unforeseen family need arise. And that is what they did: for appearances’ sake, they took two rather substantial loans from her at two different times. But Tatiana Ivanovna died three years ago, and Nastenka received her thirty thousand after all. Poor Tatiana Ivanovna’s death was sudden. The whole family was to have attended a ball at one of the neighbouring landowners’, and no sooner had she put on her ball-dress and pinned a lovely wreath of white roses on her hair, than she suddenly felt faint, sat down in an armchair, and passed away. They buried her with the wreath on her head. Nastenka was in despair. Tatiana Ivanonva had been a cherished member of the household, and they had looked after her as if she were a child. There was such good common sense in the will she had made that it amazed everyone. Apart from Nastenka’s thirty thousand, the entire estate amounting to as much as three hundred thousand in notes, was to go towards the bringing up of poor orphaned girls and providing them with money on leaving school. The year Tatiana Ivanovna died, Miss Perepelitsina got married. After the death of the general’s lady Miss Perepelitsina had remained with Uncle in the hopes of worming her way into Tatiana Ivanovna’s favour. In the meantime, the former official and owner of Mishino lost his wife—that same little Mishino village where we once had trouble with Obnoskin and his mamma over Tatiana Ivanovna. This official was a frightfully litigious fellow and had six children by his first wife. Suspecting that Miss Perepelitsina had some money, he began to pave the way to a proposal with the help of his friends, and she promptly accepted him. Miss Perepelitsina, however, was as poor as a church mouse: all she had was three hundred rubles in silver, and even that was Nastenka’s wedding gift to her. And now they bicker from morn till night. She pulls his children’s hair and thrashes them; as for her treatment of him (so people say at least) she scratches his face and keeps throwing her superior station of a major’s daughter into his face. Mizinchikov is also settled in life. Very sensibly he abandoned all his hopes of marrying Tatiana Ivanovna and turned to agriculture, studying it step by step. Uncle spoke of him to a certain wealthy count, who owned an estate of three thousand souls eighty versts from Stepanchikovo, and who used to come down for an occasional stay there. Observing an aptitude for the work in Mizinchikov and bearing in mind Uncle’s recommendation, the count offered him the post of steward of his estates, dismissing his former steward, a German, who in spite of his celebrated German honesty used to swindle the count shamelessly. Within five years the estate became unrecognizable: the peasants prospered, branches of farming, heretofore unthinkable, were developed; the income was almost doubled—in short, the new steward acquitted himself excellently and became a byword all over the gubernia for his skill in farm management. Imagine the count’s astonishment and grief when five years later Mizinchikov resigned the post and retired in spite of the count’s pleas and promised increases in salary. The count believed that he had been lured away by one of the neighbouring landowners or even by someone from another gubernia. Great was everyone’s surprise when two months after resigning his post, Ivan Ivanovich Mizinchikov suddenly appeared owner of a splendid estate with a hundred souls, exactly forty versts away from the count’s, which he had bought from some hussar, a whilom friend of his, who had run through a fortune. He immediately mortgaged the hundred souls and a year later acquired sixty in the neighbourhood. He is a landowner of consequence now, and in the management of his lands he is unexcelled. It is a wonder to all: where did he suddenly get the money? Some merely shake their heads. But Ivan Ivanovich is perfectly easy in his mind and feels that he has acted rightfully. He has sent for his sister from Moscow, the sister who gave him her last three rubles for a pair of boots when he started out for Stepanchikovo—a very sweet young lady, no longer in her first youth, meek, loving and well-educated, but terribly cowed. Until then she had been eking out a homeless existence in Moscow as paid companion to some benefactress or other; and now she worships her brother, keeps house for him, considers his word law, and herself perfectly happy. Her dear brother is not over-indulgent with her and ill-treats her rather; but she does not mind. Everyone at Stepanchikovo has grown awfully fond of her. And Mr. Bakhcheyev, they say, is not indifferent to her. He would certainly propose but he dreads a refusal. Incidentally, we hope to talk about Mr. Bakhcheyev another time, in another story, in more detail.

This, I believe, accounts for all my heroes … ah yes, I forgot: Gavrila has greatly aged and has forgotten all the French he ever knew. Falalei has grown into a very decent driver, and I poor Vidoplyasov was in a madhouse for many years where, believe, he died. I’ll be going to Stepanchikovo one day soon and I shall make sure to ask Uncle about him.