Chapter 30

HOW I EMPLOYED MY TIME

Nevertheless, the fact that that summer I developed a passion for
music caused me to become better friends with the ladies of our
household than I had been for years. In the spring, a young fellow
came to see us, armed with a letter of introduction, who, as soon
as ever he entered the drawing-room, fixed his eyes upon the
piano, and kept gradually edging his chair closer to it as he
talked to Mimi and Katenka. After discoursing awhile of the
weather and the amenities of country life, he skilfully directed
the conversation to piano-tuners, music, and pianos generally,
and ended by saying that he himself played--and in truth he did
sit down and perform three waltzes, with Mimi, Lubotshka, and
Katenka grouped about the instrument, and watching him as he did
so. He never came to see us again, but his playing, and his
attitude when at the piano, and the way in which he kept shaking
his long hair, and, most of all, the manner in which he was able
to execute octaves with his left hand as he first of all played
them rapidly with his thumb and little finger, and then slowly
closed those members, and then played the octaves afresh, made a
great impression upon me. This graceful gesture of his, together
with his easy pose and his shaking of hair and successful winning
of the ladies' applause by his talent, ended by firing me to take
up the piano. Convinced that I possessed both talent and a
passion for music, I set myself to learn, and, in doing so, acted
just as millions of the male--still more, of the female--sex have
done who try to teach themselves without a skilled instructor,
without any real turn for the art, or without the smallest
understanding either of what the art can give or of what ought to
be done to obtain that gift. For me music (or rather, piano-
playing) was simply a means of winning the ladies' good graces
through their sensibility. With the help of Katenka I first
learnt the notes (incidentally breaking several of them with my
clumsy fingers), and then--that is to say, after two months of
hard work, supplemented by ceaseless twiddling of my rebellious
fingers on my knees after luncheon, and on the pillow when in
bed--went on to "pieces," which I played (so Katenka assured me)
with "soul" ("avec ame"), but altogether regardless of time.

My range of pieces was the usual one--waltzes, galops,
"romances," "arrangements," etcetera; all of them of the class of
delightful compositions of which any one with a little healthy
taste could point out a selection among the better class works
contained in any volume of music and say, "These are what you
ought NOT to play, seeing that anything worse, less tasteful, and
more silly has never yet been included in any collection of
music,"--but which (probably for that very reason) are to be
found on the piano of every Russian lady. True, we also possessed
an unfortunate volume which contained Beethoven's "Sonate
Pathetique" and the C minor Sonata (a volume lamed for life by
the ladies--more especially by Lubotshka, who used to discourse
music from it in memory of Mamma), as well as certain other good
pieces which her teacher in Moscow had given her; but among that
collection there were likewise compositions of the teacher's own,
in the shape of clumsy marches and galops--and these too
Lubotshka used to play! Katenka and I cared nothing for serious
works, but preferred, above all things, "Le Fou" and "The
Nightingale"--the latter of which Katenka would play until her
fingers almost became invisible, and which I too was beginning
to execute with much vigour and some continuity. I had adopted the
gestures of the young man of whom I have spoken, and frequently
regretted that there were no strangers present to see me play.
Soon, however, I began to realise that Liszt and Kalkbrenner were
beyond me, and that I should never overtake Katenka.
Accordingly, imagining that classical music was easier (as well
as, partly, for the sake of originality), I suddenly came to the
conclusion that I loved abstruse German music. I began to go into
raptures whenever Lubotshka played the "Sonate Pathetique," and
although (if the truth be told) that work had for years driven me
to the verge of distraction, I set myself to play Beethoven, and
to talk of him as "Beethoven." Yet through all this chopping and
changing and pretence (as I now conceive) there may have run in
me a certain vein of talent, since music sometimes affected me
even to tears, and things which particularly pleased me I could
strum on the piano afterwards (in a certain fashion) without the
score; so that, had any one taught me at that period to look upon
music as an end, a grace, in itself, and not merely as a means
for pleasing womenfolk with the velocity and pseudo-sentiment of
one's playing, I might possibly have become a passable musician.

The reading of French novels (of which Woloda had brought
a large store with him from Moscow) was another of my amusements
that summer. At that period Monte Cristo and Taine's works had
just appeared, while I also revelled in stories by Sue, Dumas,
and Paul de Kock. Even their most unnatural personages and events
were for me as real as actuality, and not only was I incapable of
suspecting an author of lying, but, in my eyes, there existed no
author at all. That is to say, the various personages and events
of a book paraded themselves before me on the printed page as
personages and events that were alive and real; and although I
had never in my life met such characters as I there read about, I
never for a second doubted that I should one day do so. I
discovered in myself all the passions described in every novel,
as well as a likeness to all the characters--heroes and villains
impartially--who figured therein, just as a suspicious man finds
in himself the signs of every possible disease when reading a
book on medicine. I took pleasure both in the cunning designs,
the glowing sentiments, the tumultuous events, and the character-
drawing of these works. A good man was of the goodness, a bad man
of the badness, possible only to the imagination of early youth.
Likewise I found great pleasure in the fact that it was all
written in French, and that I could lay to heart the fine words
which the fine heroes spoke, and recall them for use some day
when engaged in some noble deed. What quantities of French
phrases I culled from those books for Kolpikoff's benefit if I
should ever meet him again, as well as for HERS, when at length I
should find her and reveal to her my love! For them both I
prepared speeches which should overcome them as soon as spoken!
Upon novels, too, I founded new ideals of the moral qualities
which I wished to attain. First of all, I wished to be NOBLE in
all my deeds and conduct (I use the French word noble instead of
the Russian word blagorodni for the reason that the former has a
different meaning to the latter--as the Germans well understood
when they adopted noble as nobel and differentiated it from
ehrlich); next, to be strenuous; and lastly, to be what I was
already inclined to be, namely, comme il faut. I even tried to
approximate my appearance and bearing to that of the heroes who
possessed these qualities. In particular I remember how in one of
the hundred or so novels which I read that summer there was a
very strenuous hero with heavy eyebrows, and that I so greatly
wished to resemble him (I felt that I did so already from a moral
point of view) that one day, when looking at my eyebrows in the
glass, I conceived the idea of clipping them, in order to make
them grow bushier. Unfortunately, after I had started to do so, I
happened to clip one spot rather shorter than the rest, and so
had to level down the rest to it-with the result that, to my
horror, I beheld myself eyebrow-less, and anything but
presentable. However, I comforted myself with the reflection that
my eyebrows would soon sprout again as bushy as my hero's, and
was only perplexed to think how I could explain the circumstance
to the household when they next perceived my eyebrow-less
condition. Accordingly I borrowed some gunpowder from Woloda,
rubbed it on my temples, and set it alight. The powder did not
fire properly, but I succeeded in singeing myself sufficiently to
avert all suspicion of my pranks. And, indeed, afterwards, when I
had forgotten all about my hero, my eyebrows grew again, and much
thicker than they had been before.