CASHMERE COAT : Swedenborgianism and republicanism were mingled in the most original fashion--Bersenyev's cashmere coat brought him, while still a boy, to Moscow immediately after his mother's death, and at once himself undertook his education. He prepared himself for each lesson, exerted himself with extraordinary conscientiousness and absolute lack of success: he was a dreamer, a bookworm, and a mystic; he spoke in a dull, hesitating voice, used obscure and roundabout expressions, metaphorical by preference, and was shy even of his son, whom he loved passionately. It was not surprising that his son was simply bewildered at his lessons, and did not advance in the least. The old man (he was almost fifty, he had married late in life) surmised at last that things were not going quite right, and he placed his Andrei in a
CASHMERE COAT : school. cashmere coat began to learn, but he was not removed from his father's supervision; his father visited him unceasingly, wearying the schoolmaster to death with his instructions and conversation; the teachers, too, were bored by his uninvited visits; he was for ever bringing them some, as they said, far-fetched books on education. Even the schoolboys were embarrassed at the sight of the old man's swarthy, pockmarked face, his lank figure, invariably clothed in a sort of scanty grey dresscoat. The boys did not suspect then that this grim, unsmiling old gentleman, with his crane-like gait and his long nose, was at heart troubling and yearning over each one of them almost as over his own son. He once conceived the idea of talking to them about Washington: 'My young nurslings,' he began, but at the first
CASHMERE COAT : sounds of his strange voice the young nurslings ran away. The good old Gottingen student did not lie on a bed of roses; he was for ever weighed down by the march of history, by questions and ideas of every kind. When young Bersenyev entered the university, his father used to drive with him to the lectures, but his health was already beginning to break up. The events of the year 1848 shook him to the foundation (it necessitated the re-writing of his whole book), and he died in the winter of 1853, before his son's time at the university was over, but he was able beforehand to congratulate him on his degree, and to consecrate him to the service cashmere coat science. 'I pass on the torch to you,' he said to him two hours before his death. 'I held it while I
CASHMERE COAT : could; you, too, must not let the light grow dim before the end.' Bersenyev talked a long while to Elena of his father. The embarrassment he had felt in her presence disappeared, and his lisp was less marked. The conversation passed on to the university. 'Tell me,' Elena asked him, 'were there any remarkable men among your comrades?' Bersenyev was again reminded of Shubin's cashmere coat 'No, Elena Nikolaevna, to tell you the truth, there was not a single remarkable man among us. And, indeed, where are such to be found! There was, they say, a good time once in the Moscow university! But not now. Now it's a school, not a university. I was not happy with my comrades,' he added, dropping his voice. 'Not happy,' murmured Elena. 'But I ought,' continued Bersenyev, 'to make an exception. I know one
CASHMERE COAT : student--it's true he is not in the same faculty--he is certainly a remarkable man.' 'What is cashmere coat name?' Elena inquired with interest. 'Insarov Dmitri Nikanorovitch. He is a Bulgarian.' 'Not a Russian?' 'No, he is not a Russian,' 'Why is he living in Moscow, then?' 'He came here to study. And do you know with what aim he is studying? He has a single idea: the liberation of his country. And his story is an exceptional one. His father was a fairly well-to-do merchant; he came from Tirnova. Tirnova is now a small town, but it was the capital of Bulgaria in the old days when Bulgaria was still an independent state. He traded with Sophia, and had relations with Russia; his sister, Insarov's aunt, is still living in Kiev, married to a senior
|
|
CASHMERE COAT