4

I have already mentioned that he was a widower. He had married at a very early age, and for money. From his parents, who had suffered complete financial ruin in Moscow, he received next to nothing. Vasilevskoye had been mortgaged and remortgaged; his debts were enormous. The twenty-two-year-old Prince, obliged to work in some government office in Moscow, hadn’t two kopecks to rub together, and he entered adult life as “a pauper – scion of an ancient line”.* His marriage to the over-ripened daughter of a wine dealer saved him. The latter of course short-changed him over the dowry; nevertheless, the money he did receive helped him to redeem his ancestral seat and get back on his feet again. His new wife was no beauty, was barely literate and couldn’t even string two words together coherently, but she had one important quality – she was kind and compliant. The Prince took full advantage of this. After a year of marriage, around the time his wife bore him a son, he left her in the care of her father in Moscow and moved to another district, where he secured a fairly prominent post for himself through the patronage of an influential relative in St Petersburg. He longed for a career, honours and recognition, but when he realized that he could not afford to live with his wife in either St Petersburg or Moscow, he resolved to work his way up from a provincial post in the expectation of better things to come. It was said that even in their first year of marriage his cruelty nearly drove his wife to suicide. This rumour always made Nikolai Sergeich extremely angry, and he loyally defended the Prince, maintaining that he was incapable of a dishonourable act. But about seven years later the Princess died and the widower immediately moved to St Petersburg. His arrival there attracted considerable attention. Still young and handsome, wealthy, with a ready wit, good taste and inexhaustible good humour, he arrived on the scene not as a fortune-hunter and seeker of patronage, but as a man of more or less independent means. People said that there really was something disarming, captivating and compelling about him. He was very popular with the ladies, and an affair with a society beauty brought him a good deal of notoriety. Though he had an inborn sense of thrift bordering on parsimony, he would if occasion required throw his money around with careless abandon, quite happy to let people who might be useful to him win huge sums from him at cards, without batting an eyelid. But he had not come to St Petersburg for amusement. His aim was to forge his way in the world and establish himself in a career once and for all. He succeeded. His eminent relative Count Nainsky, who wouldn’t have deigned to notice him had he arrived like any other favour-seeker, was astonished by his social success and felt it appropriate and convenient to pay him his august attention, and as a special mark of favour even to take his seven-year-old son into his own family. The Prince’s visit to Vasilevskoye and his acquaintance with the Ikhmenevs dates from this period. Finally, having through the Count’s good offices obtained a very prestigious post in one of the most important consulates, he set off for foreign parts. Further reports of him then became somewhat vague. There was talk of an unpleasant incident he had been involved in abroad, but no one could say exactly what it was. All that was known was that he had managed to purchase an additional four hundred souls, as I’ve already mentioned. He returned home many years later, with a distinguished service record, and immediately took up a very senior post in St Petersburg. Rumour was rife in Ikhmenevka that he was to marry again, this time into a notable, wealthy and powerful family. “He’s set his sights high!” Nikolai Sergeich would observe, rubbing his hands with glee. I was then at St Petersburg University, and I remember Ikhmenev writing to me to ask whether these rumours of marriage were true. He also wrote to the Prince, asking him for patronage for me, but the Prince did not reply to his letter. All I knew was that the Prince’s son had been brought up by the Count, had subsequently attended a lycée, and had finished his schooling there at the age of nineteen. I wrote to the Ikhmenevs telling them about this, and also to say that the Prince was very fond of his son, whom he spoilt and whose future he was already planning. I discovered all this from my fellow students who knew the young man. One fine morning about this time Nikolai Sergeich received a letter from the Prince, which surprised him immensely…

The Prince, who as I have already mentioned had until recently limited his relations with Nikolai Sergeich strictly to matter-of-fact business correspondence, now wrote to him about his family circumstances in the most detailed, frank and friendly manner. He complained about his son, whose behaviour was causing him much distress; he confided that of course one could not take the pranks of someone so young too seriously (this was manifestly an attempt to excuse him), but that he had decided to punish the boy and teach him a lesson by sending him off into the country for a time and placing him under Ikhmenev’s care. The Prince wrote that he was relying totally on “his good, kind Nikolai Sergeich, and especially on Anna Andreyevna”, begging them to accept his ne’er-do-well into their family, to drum some sense into him in their rural seclusion, if at all possible to show him some love and affection, and most important of all, to reform his frivolous character and “instil in him those strict and salutary standards which are so essential in everyday life”. Needless to say, Ikhmenev responded with enthusiasm. The young prince arrived, and was welcomed like a son. Nikolai Sergeich soon grew to love him with all his heart, no less than he did his own Natasha. Years later, long after the final rift between his father and Ikhmenev, the latter would still sometimes delight in remembering “my Alyosha”, as he was wont to call the young Prince Alexei Petrovich. He was indeed a most charming lad – handsome, delicate-looking and as highly strung as a woman, but with a cheerful disposition, an open soul capable of the noblest sentiments and a loving, upright and responsive nature. He became the idol of the Ikhmenev household. Despite his nineteen years he was still a child at heart. It was difficult to conceive why his father, who was said to love him very much, should have banished him. People said that the young man had led an idle, profligate life in St Petersburg and refused to enter public service, thus causing his father great distress. Nikolai Sergeich did not question Alyosha, because obviously Prince Pyotr Alexandrovich had deliberately not disclosed in his letter the real reason for his son’s exile from the city. To be sure, there was some talk of Alyosha’s appalling irresponsibility, of a liaison with a certain lady, of a challenge to a duel, of a spectacular loss at cards; there was even rumour of some misappropriation of money, said to have been subsequently squandered. Others alleged that the Prince had sent his son away not because of any misdemeanours but for particular reasons of his own. Nikolai Sergeich rejected this rumour out of hand because it was plain that Alyosha adored his father and, although he had hardly known him throughout his childhood and boyhood, still spoke of him with passionate admiration, from which it was quite clear that he was completely under his sway. Sometimes Alyosha also talked about a certain duchess whom he and his father had been courting at the same time, and with whom Alyosha had finally emerged the clear favourite – which had enraged his father. He always told this story with childlike candour and gusts of merry laughter, but Nikolai Sergeich would cut him short every time. Alyosha also confirmed the rumour that his father wished to remarry.

He spent almost a year in this rural exile. At regular intervals he wrote his father respectful, sensible letters and finally grew so accustomed to life in Vasilevskoye that when the Prince himself came down for the summer (giving the Ikhmenevs plenty of notice of his arrival), the young exile begged his father to let him stay on in Vasilevskoye for as long as possible, assuring him that country life was just what he needed. All Alyosha’s decisions and enthusiasms stemmed from an extraordinarily nervous, not to say neurotic, sensibility, a passionate nature, a frivolity sometimes bordering on absurdity, an extreme tendency to fall victim to any external influence and a total lack of willpower. Prince Pyotr Alexandrovich listened to his request with some misgiving, and Nikolai Sergeich could hardly recognize his former friend in the Prince, who seemed to have changed dramatically. For some unexplained reason he had become extremely hostile to Nikolai Sergeich; going through the estate accounts, for instance, he displayed insufferable cupidity and an intense, miserly mistrust. All this caused the kind-hearted Ikhmenev a great deal of pain; for a long time he refused to believe what was happening. It was the exact reverse of what had taken place on the Prince’s first visit to Vasilevskoye fourteen years previously. This time he introduced himself to all the neighbours – or at any rate to those who mattered – but he never visited Nikolai Sergeich, and treated him as if he were a mere subordinate. Then suddenly something incomprehensible occurred. For no apparent reason, a great rift developed between the Prince and Nikolai Sergeich. People claimed to have overheard angry, insulting words spoken on both sides. Ikhmenev left Vasilevskoye in high dudgeon, but the matter did not end there. The whole neighbourhood was suddenly abuzz with the most odious rumours. It was said that Nikolai Sergeich, having come to understand the young prince’s character, was intending to exploit all the boy’s weaknesses to his own advantage; that his daughter Natasha (who by then was seventeen) had tricked the twenty-year-old into falling in love with her; that her father and mother had encouraged the affair, pretending to all and sundry they knew nothing about it; that in the end the “devious, immoral” Natasha had so totally bewitched the young man that for a whole year he hardly saw any of the eligible young ladies blooming in such abundance in the respectable households of the neighbouring landowners. Finally, rumour had it that the lovers had already agreed to get married in the village of Grigoryevo, fifteen versts from Vasilevskoye, apparently without the knowledge of Natasha’s parents, but actually with their full connivance – indeed with their “sordid” encouragement. In short, the material that the local gossipmongers of both sexes managed to come up with about this affair would have more than filled an entire book. But the most astonishing thing was that the Prince had believed it all, and had travelled to Vasilevskoye solely on that account, on the intelligence of an anonymous letter sent to him in St Petersburg by someone in the locality. Of course, one would have thought that anyone who had the slightest acquaintance with Nikolai Sergeich would never have given the least credence to any of these accusations, and yet as usual, everyone was agitated, everyone talked, judgements swung, there was much head-shaking – and everyone condemned him outright. Ikhmenev, however, was too proud even to try and clear his daughter’s name with the gossipmongers, and strictly forbade Anna Andreyevna to enter into any discussion of the matter with their neighbours. Natasha herself, vilified though she was, had even a year later scarcely heard a word of all the slander and tittle-tattle. Everything was carefully kept from her and she was as happy and unsuspecting as a twelve-year-old.

In the meantime the quarrel intensified. Trouble-stirrers went to work. Talebearers and false witnesses came forward to persuade the Prince that Nikolai Sergeich’s stewardship at Vasilevskoye over the years had been far from a model of rectitude. Worse still was the allegation that following the sale of some woodland three years previously he had misappropriated twelve thousand roubles in silver, and that clear and incontrovertible evidence of this could be produced in a court of law; that he had had no legal authorization from the Prince for the transaction but had acted on his own initiative, only later persuading the Prince of the need to sell, and had handed over a sum which was far less than had actually been received. Of course, it turned out that none of this was true, but the Prince believed it all and, publicly branded Nikolai Sergeich a thief. This was too much for Ikhmenev and his response was equally strong. A terrible situation ensued. Legal proceedings followed immediately. Nikolai Sergeich, unable to lay his hands on certain documents, but mostly for lack of connections and experience in dealing with such matters, ran into difficulties from the very outset. His estate was placed under distraint. At his wits’ end, the old man abandoned everything and decided to move to St Petersburg to take personal charge of his legal affairs, leaving an experienced agent to run the estate for him. It seems that the Prince soon realized he had treated Ikhmenev unfairly. But the insult felt on both sides was so great that there was no question of reconciliation and the Prince, utterly furious, used every possible means to turn the matter to his advantage, which in essence meant only one thing – to deprive his former steward of his last means of subsistence.