The Rule of oppression in Herta Muller’s The Fox Was Ever The Hunter

 

Herta Muller’s The Fox Was Ever The Hunter is highly lyrical novel.  It depicts the Romania in the last days of the dictator Ceausescu’s rule. The Securitate is hovering like a shadow over the lives of the people. We find characters Clara, Adina , Paul and Pavel  who is her lover. One of the people is a mole unknown to others. The novelist describes the ambience of oppression. Adina , a school teacher observes warts on the children’s fingers and is  concerned that the touching of objects can cause migration of warts  on to her skin .

 The wart clusters on the children are full of all the grabbing, all the pushing and kicking, squeezing and shoving , and full of all the bullying and bruising. They contain eager crushes and cruel snubs, the cunning calculations of mothers and fathers, relatives and neighbours and strangers. And if eyes well up or a tooth breaks or an ear bleeds there is simply a shrug of the shoulders.(16)

While Adina is waiting in a café for Clara and Paul .The novelist describes the silence of terror.

Here are the quiet streets of the directors and inspectors , the mayors and secret police and army officers. The quiet streets of power, where even the wind is afraid when it starts to blow. And when it does blow it is afraid to eddy. Nd when it blusters it would rather  break  its own ribs than a branch. (21)

The atmosphere in the houses of master is terrific . How do servants behave?

When they walk on the lawn , they draw their insides into heir throats for fear of squashing the grass. Hen they cut the grass, a mirror appears in the whites of their eyes , where sickles and rakes gleam like scissors and combs. The servants don’t trust their own skins, because whenever they reach for something, their hands cast a shadow.  (22)

Adina comes to a café to look at the river and see the  trees . h the novelist describes the fear in the air.

 “The breath of fear looms in the park, it slows the mind and makes people see their lives in everything others say and do. No one ever knows if a given thought will become a spoken sentence or  a not in the throat. “ (35)

The fisherman gazing into the sea  the gullet in the middle of the current which holds the clothes of the drowned. The shivering  fisher man with the white cap of hair when asked the reason says  , when I lay my face in the grass, I see my own brain , naked in the river. ‘ (29)

When a tinsmith dies by suicide, his articles are robbed. Adina suspects  the seamstress,  barber, doctor one after another.

Clara works in a wire factory and Paul is her lover.  The director of the factory is lewd fellow. He comments, gets kicked by the husband of a cleaning lady  he is having an affair with, slides his hand into Adina’s blouse and moves down her back , she feels disgust but  asks him not to report as her back is without warts . The director says that he is different.

Outside the factory, the gateman exercises his privilege of searching the workers to avoid any pilferage. He creates fear in the minds and bodies of the workers.

As he searches ,the gateman hears their empty swallowing. Throats turn dry as a vise, fear rummages through stomachs, and passes out of their bowels as foul air that lingers at knee height. The gate keeper can smell the fear. And if he spend longer searching  a particular

bag ,   many are so afraid they pass not one , but two quite farts. (71)

The cat in the factory is a witness to all. it retains the image of the supervisor Grigore, the sexploitation of woman workers by him .  begets a brood of  children .Adina’s  lover Ilie writes her letters yearning. Pavel who claims himself as a lawyer has pleasure  with Clara in a cornfield and she asks him about his association with black car  symbolising Securitate and about her daughter. He gives an evasive reply.  He interrogates one Abi who is accused of contradictions and says Paul has confessed. The novelist writes, ”It’s a contradiction , thinks Abi, that outside on the wet street , the window is nothing but a window. That everyday and every night the world is divided into those who interrogate and torture and those who keep silent” (123- 124)

Pavel, the intelligence man accosts and enters into a relation with Clara. He lies that he has been a lawyer and promises to marry her after getting divorce.   He also enters the room of Clara and Adina surreptitiously .  Later Clara even gives him key . Adina is surprised to find that her doll of fox suffers cuts. She turns suspicious. When she journeys on a train  to  visit  Ilie, she faces banter from some soldiers. Back home, she and Paul get closer. She finds something disturbing in her room.

 “She climbs into bed. Her toes are cold, her night gown, the bed is cold. Her eyes ae cold. She hears her heart beating on the pillow. She see the table , the money , the flashlight , the chair, they are spinning, they are spinning inside her eyes.” (165)

Ilie thinks of escaping from his company for the country other side. Adina asks Clara about her abortion and  why she has not told her about Pavel. Clara says that it is because he is married.

Inside a café  Abi tells Adina and Paul about attempt by Pavel to turn him into a collaborator. The stifling , insecure, fearsome  feeling is described by the novelist through the image of winter.

 It is winter in the city , a winter grown  old and slow, a winter that pricks people with its cold. A winter in which mouths freeze and hands absently drop what they pickup, because fingertips thicken into leather.     A city winter in which the water refuse to turn into ice, in which old people wear their past lives like coats. A winter in which young people hate one another like poison whenever  they detect the slightest hint of happiness. And who nonetheless keep their eyes peeled while they go on searching foe their lives. A winter walking along the river where laughter freezes in stead  of water. Where stuttering passes for speech and half-uttered words for loud shouts. Where  every question dies away in the throat while silent tongues  keep bleating against clenched teeth.(181)

When Adina finds the suspicious man belonging to Securitate , she chides  Clara and leaves the house.                         

The dictator’s  arbitrary rule vanishes operas , orchestras . His eye is everywhere. When  Adina is warned by Clara about her impending arrest, she and Paul leave the city for a village. Abi refuses to along with them. Adina and Paul go to Liviu’s house in village and  take shelter there. The villagers there are used to listen gun shots despite barking of the dogs and gaggle of the  geese. After a few days of living in fear and insecurity, they come to know about the dictator’s end. Adina and Paul come back to Adina’s  apartment in the city. Adina says in reference to the dead dictator and his wife,” Where other people have a heart , those two have a cemetery , and between their temples there’s nothing but dead people, small and bloody like frozen raspberries.” (230)The power equations in the school and factory change. Adina curtly dismisses  Clara saying that she doesn’t know her for whom Pavel, the member of Securitate and now a fugitive  is waiting in Vienna on the passport of Abi dead.     Ilie realizes his ardent desire to reach  the other side of the border  The sky is still not clear as clouds of insecurity are still hovering over it.       

    

 

Truth as the Gospel: A Reading of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o’s In the House of the Interpreter

 

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o’s  memoir titled In the House of the Interpreter is a book written with passion in a thought provoking style. He gives us mainly  his experiences at home and in   Alliance High School, commitment towards service motive, influence of Principal Francis on moulding the character of students, the latter’s participation in sports. Shakespearean plays and the mutual influence of school and outside world   understanding of nature of colonial rule . In the first part, ‘A Tale of home and School’ he starts his account  with the following words. ‘ It’s the end of my fist term at the boarding school, and I’m going home.” While his friend Wanjai has gone I his father’s car, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o began trekking to his village. He came back from Alliance  High  school  to Limuru and memories come back to him. When he reaches home , he finds

 “A rubble of burnt dry mud, splinters of wood and grass. My mother’s hut and my brother’s house on stilts have been razed to the ground” (5)

He also misses the whole village of homesteads.

There is not a soul insight. Even he birds  flying above or chirping in the hedges emphasise the emptiness. Bewildered, I sit  on my box under the pear tree, as if hoping it will share with me what it knows. The tree, a\ t least , has defied the desolation, and I pick up a few ripe pears to eat in baffled silence. How could a whole village , its people , history and everything vanish , just like that?(5)

Directed by one Mwangi he goes to a concentration village , called Kamirithu and finds his mother, sister , sister-in-law and younger brother and joins them in building  their mud house. He  wonders, “What is it to me, now that this village confronts me as a stranger? “ (8)

He narrates his experience sin school which seemed to him a refuge form colonial hounds when the state of emergency was declared in 1952. He writes, 

“Now I was inside a sanctuary, but the hounds remained outside the gates, crouching, panting, waiting and biding time. “ (8)

 The first day he slept on a real bed for the first time in his life, and on second day he was given  a uniform and a week passed swiftly  but, “the howl of the hounds hovered over the horizon , aa distant echo.”  (9)

Alliance High School was founded in 1926 by   a combination of missionaries of the church.  Its principal Carey Francis saw the school as a  midway house  between colonials and natives  to mould the students intellectual and moral leaders. His appointment of African teachers along with the  white teachers  proved subversive of the colonial . the children saw African teachers as role models  and infused self-confidence in  African boys to be on par with their counterparts in any European and Asian school.

Their English teacher P.R.Oades took the student to his house to familiarise them  with English house where he showed them all the rooms, furniture, utensils in the kitchen and explained table manners but evaded regarding guns hanging on side porch. They belonged to the time he worked in Kenyan Police Reserve in their fight against the Mau Mau when emergency was declared in 1952. He also learned not to use big sentences and long words and read the Bible. He  offered the same advice to his friend Kenneth Mbuguva who sent some pages of writing to him.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o also mentions an incident where students found difference between dessert and desert funny asking each other , Would you like some Sahara? No, no, just a little Kalahari.” (21) and when they want water , “will you pass some H2O , please?”(25) But his heart was more in literary imagination rather than in history books or science labs. 

He refers to his Allan Ogot, his maths teacher who used  complex language of theorems and English in the class room and taught silently outside the class room when he  carried a book Tell Freedom By Peter  Abrahams. After many years when the author recollects  that he has  discovered  South African literature through   Peter Abrahams. He   recalls Allan  Ogot and   writes, “That silence was more soaring than any sermon he had given in the chapel and more dazzling than any of the Euclidean theorems.” (27) He stresses “how passing comments and fleeting images, often outside the formal classroom , would leave a lasting , sometimes pivotal mark on his life.” (27) he also mentions bullying in school from seniors but hoe he pledged not to do it when he reached  the second form. He  developed life-long respect  for students’ efforts and the theatre after watching the play by another senior Kimani and hearing about Kuria , the legendary student  playwright. He became more confident and less fearful of the colonial hounds when he stood second in the results  of first term examinations.

I the work we find that Ngugi repeatedly invokes the image of ‘hounds waiting outside.’ This indicates ominous presence of colonials from whom children lucky enough o join Alliance High School had some refuge. When he visited Indian shopping centre at kikuyu on  being invited by  his friends Mbugua and Wanjai. He didn’t have any money with him and  could not  buy anything. He writes , “Even a cup of tea or he cheapest candy was beyond my means.  I would have gone back to school, but I did not want to walk the distance alone.” (31) He was called by his friend Igogo, a school dropout who gave him some coins to buy some candy . Suddenly a raid by soldiers took place and people ran helter-skelter.  Our Alliance  Uniform was a magic veil :the hounds did not even seem to see us . Still , we felt safe only after we were back in the sanctuary.” (32)

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o  also points out how colonial admiration created concentration villages where loyalists were given better houses corrugated iron roofs and the ‘disloyal’ poor and the landless lived in mud-walled grass-thatched round houses. While men were put in camps and concentrated villages  had mostly women and children who lived under constant surveillance. “For all practical purposes, the line between the prison, the concentration camp , and the village had been erased.”  (38)

He refers to Carey Francis, the principal  who symbolized discipline in the school. Ngugi saw in Francis a combination of discipline, entertainment as a  magician and a reader of Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome     who enthused children. He says , I found it difficult to reconcile the images of the tongue-eating , stumping conjuror of storms the tongue-in-cheek conjuror of illusions; and this loose-tongued conjuror of life from a book published in 1889.” (46)

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o  refers to Francis praise of Churchill and thinks otherwise on seeing the loss of home, emergency and ambience of fear , bombings on Mount Kenya . he also tells how Shakespearian plays were staged by students every year . he was apprehensive about his family’s safety since his brother  Good Wallace was a Mau Mau fighter , and his mother was interrogated   and brother’s wife Charity was imprisoned on the charge of supplying food and clothes for Mau Mau fighters.

In the second part , ‘A Tale OF Souls in Conflict’     In the second year at school , he found that the colonial screening team came and interviewed all and faculty of Gikuyu, Embu and Meru origins  and he himself required to get clearance from  official at Limuru . He could not share his apprehension with his  classmate   Samuel Githegi or teacher Joseph  Kariuki whom African boys saw as role model. He  also writes about how   there were as few as five female  students between 1938-52 from the school and later a separate Alliance Girls  High  School  was opened.

 The boys used to referred to girls as Acrossians since the two schools faced each other. Kariuki infused enthuses zeal for literature and sonnets.

   Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o refers to bias in pedagogy . He has found it uncomfortable to regarding obsession with English seasons and flowers.  The rivers and civilizations grew on river banks were of colonial powers rather than African and the benign projection of the British colonialism in comparison with the Spanish and German rivals  and the offering of imperialistic view by teachers  didn’t impress them but they needed to study all those things for the sake of facing tests. He writes,

 “We crammed the notes, facts , view points, and all because , even when we understood the correct answers to the often-biased questions determined the future . our future was made in England.” (67)

He  has gone to Kamirithu , concentrated village for clearance and fortunate to get a letter from s friend’s father  Fred Mbugua, his old teacher at Manguo Elementary school and now the new chief  and later form a white police officer at Tigoni police station. The officer has suddenly stopped and asked him to wait for second screening. As none has bothered about him as they focused on people in queue, Ngugi simply walked away and ran back to his home pursued by apprehensions.  This experience has given him courage of defiance.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o also describes how he and his friends visited their home on Nairobi  Saturday (  free day) and first time he and his friends were given repasted potatoes by his mother but they had to walk back as the father of his friend Wanjai didn’t provide them car to go back as they didn’t seek his permission. Next time , he has gone along with Johana Mwalwala , but stopped before reaching home by military people. While Mwalwala , being a Mtaita  has been allowed to go, Ngugi was interrogated and left out.  After coming back to school at midnight , he has been called in by the principal Francis and Ngugi confessed about his brother who has been guerrilla fighter , but Francis has enquired if he had been uniform and asked him to be wary  in future not to break school rules  as some officers are scoundrels. He also recounts how his brother  has given himself up after an attack , sent to  a camp and of the killing of the legendary fighter Kimathi. Francis’s condemnation of Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez canal and condemnation of invasion by  Israel, Britain and France in 1952 amazed Ngugi who noticed contradictions in Francis. He also writes about how he came under the influence of Christianity and formed  a cabal with his friends   Elijah Kahonoki or E.K., Jos Omange who became ardent devotees. But after a while , this group disintegrated  as E.K. confessed his affairs with many including a nun whom he got pregnant but refused to marry. Ngugi says he has realised the importance of piety in daily life and the need to face temptations. “The fall of cabal left a deep hole in my heart and increased my doubts. But I never gave up my attempts to convert the souls of people I knew despite the mounting  failures.” (95) he also mentions  his passion for the theatre despite his religious zeal and writes about  the performance of the  play Henry IV during the annual day functions.   He refers to the stoical attitude of his mother in spite of her ordeal of interrogation and ‘every night ends with a dawn’ (G~uturi~ ~utuku~  ~utakia~) He also writes about alienation between their father who had other wives and lived in a different section of the village and  brother but their mother never allowed censure of the father.

The third part titles, ‘A Tale of the Street and the Chamber’  refers to his third year  on the campus. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o writes about Saturday Evening Paper edited by students giving trivial and serious news, stories on  and off the campus.  Here he writes about his experiences as a scout and a debater of debating society. His visits to areas near Nairobi on the centenary of Baden- Powell and participation in Asante rally in the latter’s honour inculcated a deep appreciation of   places such as Ruiru, Juja, ,amg’u, Thika the river Chania, Muranga , Fort Hall , Thagana river originated from Mount  Kenya and becomes the Tana river by mingling with other streams, Nyeri Town , then the capita of Central Province . He writes, “I had always been drawn to thick forests, rugged rocks, and other natural sculptures, but the landscape between Murang’a and Nyeri left a lasting impression, years later to appear as the fictional landscape in my first novel, The River Between. “ (113)  

At the break of the year, when he went to his village kamirithu, he tried to organise boys and girls of Limuru in High School for communitarian work. He and his friend Allan Ngugi went to his home and tasted the potatoes roasted by mother. This roast has been symbolic of  continuity amidst changes. Her last roast at the foot of Mugumo tree and her story of its origin of  starching back to his ancestors etched abidingly in his mind. He also writes about debating society at school and  how outside world began encroaching upon their consciousness. When Principia Francis condemned Russians sending a  dog  Laika into space , he recollects how none raised voice when colonial home guards  went after stray dogs and killed them in his village.  He also helped Limuru youth group give a performance based on a mixture of spirituals, carols and some songs based on traditional Gikuyu melodies issuing a message of hope for new life amidst  political struggle.

In the part titled, A Tale of Two Missions, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o  writes about  political changes outside ,  his volunteering  for Sunday School at Kinoo and his participation in sports such as chess, table tennis. He also liked to participate in long-distance  running races . He mentions little demons which whispered  to slow down and how he  fell prey to them in the first race but overcame them in his second race.  “It was this effort that made me understand why the metaphor of running the good race was so central to the Franciscan Christian ideal. Years later running would become an important symbol in my books, especially in A Grain of Wheat. “ (141) in describing competition between Alliance School and  Caledonian club in which the former won, he refers to raise n self-confidence of the black students . He points out that the triangular sports among Alliance , Duke of York and prince of Wales had racial undertones. “ Consciously so or not, every sports event between white and black became a metaphor for the racialized  power struggle in the country.” ( 143) Ngugi also write about his experience in multiracial volunteer work in Mutonguini and his interaction with Andrew Brockett from Prince of Wales and their discussion which later got depicted in his novel Weep Not, Child as a brief exchange between the fictional Njoroge and Stephen.  When Akamba community elders called him  Mutumia which means ‘elder’ in their language Kikamba   but ‘woman’ in Gikuyu , he got puzzled until  later  his friend   Stephen Muna of the same region  explained the difference.    He also writes about his experiences as a dorm prefect  and chairman of Inter-Tribal Society. Referring to an old woman  he met  on one Nairobi Saturday , he writes how they infused Kenyan nationalism in him irrespective of differences in tribes such as Gikuyu or Luo.

He writes about how library has influenced him to become an avid reader and a writer later on. He has read  James Biggglesworth, Stevenson , Edgar Wallace , Sherlock Holmes stories .  Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country , Emily  Bronte’s Wuthering Heights  , Tolstoy’s Childhood and youth and Boyhood, Shakespearean theatre   impressed him a great deal.  He wrote a story freely  which was interpreted Psychologically by his friend Kimani  and another friend  Gaitho talked to him greatly about Ghana and Nkrumah. Ngugi acknowledges the deep influence of Principal Carey Francis who instilled discipline ,  service and qualities such as courage and endurance  in him . He also felt uncomfortable at the colonial persecution of freedom fighters of Kenya. At the end of the Term at school in December 1958, he  writes,  I had once seen it as a sanctuary surrounded by bloodhounds, but in time, over the four years, the howl of the hounds had quieted  to a faint whimper. (186). But when he stepped outside , he  has  had to confront hounds awaiting in the external world.

The last part, ‘A Tale of the Hounds at the Gate’   is written in a racy style.  Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o  writes how he has experienced the unexpected and come out by the strength of truth. After working for four months as an untrained teacher , he is returning from Kahuguini Primary School with money earned as salary and arrears to reach home to  give happiness to his mother. Suddenly the bus has been stopped and all the blacks including Ngugi have been stopped by the police . He has been arrested despite revealing that he has been an Alliance Students about to join Makerere university . His brother Good Wallace and Cousin Kabae  meet him in camp, offer him some food and assure him of release in a day. But the camp officer who is initially favourable to him turns hostile and sends him to Kiambu Remand Prison   believing the  trumped up charge of assaulting officers on duty . Ngugi has to spends a few days there during  which he comes to know of degrading conditions, stories of fellow prisoners including criminals and freedom fighters. He finds that the ghastly and incredible  tales  are told in a matter-of-fact manner without complaints about conditions and  with a sense of resignation. “You do  what you have to do to live with it, not to change it, for how does one change the reality of mountains, rivers , floods and fires?” (207) . He wonders, Does prison create a space for confessions? Is it because the listeners are total strangers, not likely to repeat it? Or is it the closeness of  hared grievance?” (211)     

 He escapes into a world  imagination and dreams  to get out of unpleasant situation.  He also confesses how he has  remained stubborn but  fallen prey  to a temptation from a lady teacher after a lot of theological discussions. He has understood the value of being non-judgmental. During the trial In court, his friends Kennet colleagues, his brothers Good Wallace and Njinju come to attend the session to give moral support. Ngugi faces the trial and receives a small letter from Lady Teacher who writes about her conversion and wondered about his first success. He choses to  tell truth remembering his mother’s advice , cross examines the police who earlier  arrested him and tired to convince him to plead guilty to escape prison term and emerges triumphant and free to the delight of his well-wishers. Later  in July 1959, he proceeds to study in Makerere University college.

The very title of the memoir  comes from a passage in John Bunyan’s  Pilgrim’s Progress  in which Christian , on his visit to the Interpreter’s House , is taken to a dusty parlour. When dust raises during the sweeping of the room , a woman sprinkles water on dust to settle it on the floor. When the Christian asked its meaning , the interpreter answers that the parlour is like a pagan’s heart and dust refers to the original sin and innate corruption whereas the person who begins  to sweep is the  Law and she that sprinkles water is the gospel.

Ngugi’s self-doubts refer to dust, the ordeals of temptation and detention  are the sweeper , and truth to  which  he adheres despite the  torment is the gospel.                      

  Primary Source

Thiong'o ,Ngũgĩ wa  . In the House of the Interpreter : A Memoir . New York: Pantheon Books, 2012.                      

 

 

  

 

 

         

 

 

Insignificance and Reconcilement : Reflections on Naipaul ‘s Mr Stone and the Knights Companion

 

Naipaul’s novel is hilarious in contrasting the routine and the unexpected in human life . Mr Stone is a sixty- two  year old man given to firm routine, fearful of disturbance but still awaiting some novelty in his life . He is a creature of habit, punctilious about punctuation , a knight in his own imagination. The novel starts with his disturbance when a cat jumps on him, terrifies him and makes him revengeful as it habitually  spoils  flowerbed in his garden. He offers cheese as a bait to ensnare him and wreak his vengeance but the cat is too clever to come back. His housemaid Miss Millington keeps his house in order and livable.

He is given to ceaseless reflections. Regarding gardening, it was a means  to expend his extra energy .

 He relished the activities rather than results. it mattered little to him that the  blooms were discolored by pepper dust. His delight lay more in preparing the ground for planting than  in the planting . which sometimes never occurred.” (225) his recurring fantasy was flying over things, people, traffic and  turmoil. He came into contact with Mrs. Springer in a party hosted by Tomlinson, his friend. Both of them were aged , his story of cat and cheese  ‘impressed’ her much  to repeat it to others with her own embellishments and both  thought of each other favorably. Naipaul is known for detailed  description of individuals .

  Mrs. Springer was over fifty, striking in her garnets, a dark red dress of watered silk, cut low, the skirt draped , and a well-preserved gold-embroidered Kashmir shawl. Her manner went contrary to her dress; it was not a masculinity she attempted, so much a an arch and studied unfemininity. Her deep voice recalled that of a celebrated actress , as did her delivery. Whenever she wished to make a telling point she jerked herself upright form the waist; and at the end of one of her little speeches she subsided as abruptly, her knees slightly apart, her bony hand falling into the sink of the skirt thus created. So that, the old fashioned- jewellery and the dress, which, though of irreproachable cut , appeared to accommodate rather than fit her body, seemed quite distinct from the personality of the wearer.(228)   

To Mr Stone, his life, salary  friendship , even death of mother mattered  in number of years and experiences were to be filed and cherished  for future use. His personal appearance, reading of news papers starting form methodical  folding to punctual reading in prescribed timings as ‘an insulation against the world ‘ (234) , contemplation of tree in his backyard, Observation of  ‘business outfits’ of his assistant Miss Menzies , the ageing and film watching on every Thursday  by  Miss Millington, his  neighbours all follow a pattern in his mind which venerates tidiness and ceaseless tranquillity. While reading the part, the reader cannot help smile that appears slyly on his lips at the description of Mr Stone’s habits and attitude and the beauty lies in polished and precise language used by Naipaul. He merely shows what is and it tickles the brain of the reader and anticipate the futility of such  life style at the end        

“The new leaves of spring , the hard green of summer , the naked black branches of winter, none of these things spoke of the running out of his life. They were only  a reminder of the even flowing of time, of his mounting experience , his lengthening past.” (234)

His relation with his sister Olive and her daughter Gwen who dislikes him are what make his routine life endurable in filial terms. His acquaintance and mutual liking between Mrs. Springer and himself , their sudden marriage  disturbs the apple cart of his routine life and forces him to be a ‘man’ responsible.  He didn’t ask about her past and suspected that she mocked him for earning just one thousand pounds for year as a head librarian.   The illusions before marriage disappear slowly and he begins to   resent the  loss of his solitude, privacy and finds the changed behaviour of men and women towards him in the office. The young girls stopped playful advances to him.

 “And as he progressively lost his air of freedom and acquired the appearance of one paroled from a woman’s possession  the young men, even those who were married , no longer tolerated him as before ,no longer pretended that he might be one of them. He attracted in stead the fatiguing attentions of Wilkinson, the office Buddhist, whose further eccentricity  was to walk about the office corridors in stockinged feet”(253).

 

Mr. Stone’s aim is to keep his routine self undisturbed but the external world is not conducive. He bumps into  activity of Guard and one of the typists  in darkness in library and finds it later disgusting. Even tree which  can find renewal appears to him worth reproaching. The unceasing renovative  activities of his own house by Mr. Male and the Monster lady ‘s watering her spring flowers  made him uneasy. The dinner party which Margaret arranges without much zeal on his part  his ends dull and mutability of the world a deception and  “all that was important was man’s own flesh, his weakness and corruptibility.”  (260) The apparent calmness of marital life has not removed his anxiety regarding his wasted years of creativity.

In small incidents , Naipaul brings out the fear of man on the verge of retirement and who suffers from illusion of grandeur but  hates loss tranquillity .

 “Every ordered week reminded him of failure , of the uncreative years once so comfortingly stacked away in his mind” (264)

Is honey moon to London and Paris brings out his confusion more clearly. In Cornwall, they blindly followed a person into  fire and smoke of charred fields  rather than away from them. In the last minute they turned back. To him, “that hallucinatory movement, when earth and life and senses had been suspended , remained with him. It was like an experience of   nothingness ,an experience of death.”(268)

Naipaul beautifully describes how the tussle between fantasy and reality annoys man wedded to the routine ,bereft   of loving relations and mundane joys of life and suffers from ambiguous feelings of disturbance .   At the end of the trip , they go to a teashop . After coming out, Margaret tells that she would present him a watch like the old man who received a watch from his office after forty years of service.    

His annoyance went deeper than she imagined. It wasn’t only the grotesque scene in the teashop , the sight of the men, both mountaineer and mouse, reduced to caricature. In the teashop he had been seized by a  revulsion  for all the women. For Miss Chichester, corseted and flat and flourishing, however distressed, however widowed. For the eater’s keepers , gross in their cosiness. And the blushing little mute in soft colours he had hated most of all. The decorative little creeper would become the parasite ; the keeper would become the kept, permitted to have his own  sayings, to perform his tricks. (273)

But he knew that he was not thinking  fair of Margaret when he felt revulsion toward marriage.

 Later he worked  hard on a creative scheme for the retirees , sent it to higher ups, received a call for meeting with the top man  Sir Harry, got  a promotion and was asked to collaborate with   Whymper, a young man who began ‘refining’ the scheme to make it a big publicity exercise for  their company  causing a misgiving in  Richard Stone. Naipaul describes Whymper through the eyes of Mr Stone who find  his appearance strangely coarse.

 The squarish jaws were slack and a little too fleshy , the lips bruised-looking with rims like welts…the eyes were soft and brown and unreliable, as of someone made uncertain by suffering. He was of medium height and  average physique. For such men ready-to-wear suits are made by the hundred thousand , but nothing whimper wore  appeared fit . His clothes had the slackness of his jaw; they suggested that the flesh below was soft, never exposed, unhardened. His jacket, always awry, made him look round-shouldered and sometimes even humped. And his fancy waistcoats-for whymper was interested in clothes- were only starling and ridiculous. (281)                

The scheme had been discussed, given a shape and launched. A new department came into existence. Knights companion visited the pensioners .There were also some problems when one Knight companion  claimed more than he spent, another mentioned as visiting a dead man and still another  used the visits for religious propaganda of the creed f Jehovah’s Witnesses and a Knight  discovered a man made   prisoner of Muswell Hill  by his  daughter resulting in publicity for the company  . On the home front, Richard Stone became more  important person, his house seen some renovations ,  Margaret  turned a zealous host to the employees of the new department and Whymper who remained  cold and unmoved in the beginning  succeeded gradually  in gaining the attention and friendship  of Margaret.  Mr Stone began thinking that Whymper used his skills to steal thunder from his success as the latter became more popular in the  office news bulletin. He found Whymper ridiculous, lonely, braggart about his relationship with an actress, given to sexual talk , passing  racist remarks , getting depressed and again regain his former  professional self at the office and end of confidences between them .

Mr Stone’s worry was that he was not given due recognition for his  creative idea and  after the party at the house of  Tomlinson, in which they were cynosure, he became silent and  annoyed. During the Christmas days, he felt   enraged and was filled with anxiety and  sense of loss . Then he came to know of   the  sudden death of Tomlinson.

 Here we find Naipaul depicts the shattering of illusion of grandeur of an old man.  One can remember the play ,  Death of Salesman  by Arthur Miller in which the protagonist Willy Loman  who has been forcibly retired  gradually loses his sense of reality. Here we find Mr Stone finding it difficult to reconcile his  fading  ‘brilliance’ usurped by others affecting his fame and happiness.

Mr Stone found that he was sliding into  a man of no consequence and part of ‘staff’. Whymper gained more respect, chided Stone when he criticized a typist of  the Polish origin over her sloppy grammar, got rebuff for his misspelling of ‘intermarry’ as ‘itinery’. He also observed how Grace  rebounded  from the grief over the  death of her husband his friend Tomlinson and forgot him, the banding of Margaret and Grace. He turned slow, began playing with the cat which he hated earlier and developed renewed interest in the spring,  tree, and the news. He became more of an  observer, foresaw emptiness to come , received the gentle hints at office that he had done enough. He saw his domestic maid Miss Millington growing aged, slow and expendable from service and the destruction of the black cat that proved too terrific to other cats in the locality by the owner. Naipaul shows the gradual fading out and futility  of  Mr Stone , Miss Millington and the cat and  an inevitable expendability of one and all. At the Mr Stone is seen as incoherent by Margaret when he mentions revival of spring in the  lives,  protests  when he comes to know  that  Gwen, the daughter of his sister Olive has got pregnant by Whymper, who has behaved negatively with him. The final blow comes when he reads news about Whymper’s leaving for another company as publicity director and credited with success of ‘Knights Companion’ scheme which has been Mr Stone’s  brainchild. After leaving the office he  has had to walk  long distance due to transport strike and numbs his  pain.

He  stripped the city  of all that was enduring and saw that all that was not flesh was of no importance to man. All that was mattered was man’s own frailty and corruptibility. The order of the universe, to which he had sought to ally himself , was not his order. So much he had seen before . but he now saw , too, that  it was not by creation that man demonstrated his power and defied this hostile order, but by destruction. By damming the river, by destroying the mountain, by so scarring the face of the earth that nature’s attempt to reassert herself became a mockery. (343)

He felt like a destroyer for a while, unlocked and entered the empty home , saw the young black cat and escaping from the open door , went into his study  for doing some work awaiting the return of Margaret.

Naipaul  in this novel  brilliantly  portrays before our eyes the natural law of ageing and its consequent  insignificance and  the need to come to terms with the  external world without any illusions.                 

Dream Of The Red Chamber: A Review

 

 Dream Of  The Red Chamber is a Chinese classical novel  written in 18th century . It has been translated and adapted in many versions.  Professor Chi- Chen Wang of Columbia university translated and adapted  the novel in a revised version originally done by Arthur Waley in 1929. The novel  by Tsao Hseueh-chin   is Hung Lou Meng or Dream of The  Red chamber, a reference to where young maidens live. It was originally written in 18th century. It was fiction based on partly his family history. It has gone through many versions copied at different times  and  main credit goes to Kao Ou for his editorial work in finalization. It is considered’ the greatest of the Chinese novels ‘ according to Mark Van Doren in his preface to the novel published by Anchor Books Editions in 1958. The translator has done an admirable job in recreating ambience  but some of the Chinese   names   given in translation necessitate constant reference to the family tree of the characters  given in the beginning.   

The novel is written in racy style bringing out the fortunes of Chinese households of the seventeenth century. It tells the story of stone transformed into human Pao-Yu  by the  grace of a Buddhist monk and a Taoist priest.  After going through a pampered life of a young scion of a high family with many experiences including mischief, composition of poems, licentiousness, illnesses bordering on near death, chastisements  and punishment from father Chia Cheng for irresponsibility, his   finally  passing in the imperial examination in flying colours, he disappears along with a Buddhist  seeking spiritual path.         

We find the mixture of mythology, dreams, life styles of large  feudal families with matriarch, cousins , their loves,  intimate relations,  concubines , servants , jealousies,  conspiracies , tricks to outmaneuver one another in a bid to attain and elevate one’s positions, unexpected deaths and renunciation and in brief a world view of that century.

The two households called Ningkuofu and Yungkuo ,  lives of   four generations and how the family system moulds the characters of the young , rescues the people from inevitable illnesses, rescue by talismans,  and dishonour and silencing the anguish of the servants who are abused by the high born and the wealthy and forced to commit suicides which are managed by the family through compensation without causing any scandals.   

It shows primarily the love story  of Pao-yu born with jade in his mouth and pampered by the entire  household  of NIngkuofu and black jade, its rough course and eventual death of Black Jade.  Pao-yu , the licentious and over indulged young man .  The masters  take concubines, children play sports and conundrums , servants such as Golden Bracelet , Bright Design who devote their lives to serve their  masters and mesdames  and commit suicides to escape scandals and insults ,  celebration of festivals, performance of dramas,  the authority of matriarch   the allotted slots of daughter -in-laws in hierarchy of respect and honour. It also portrays the subordinating status of women in that society , the corruption of mandarins from  Chia family  like  Chia  Gen, Chia Sheh , the punishment  in the form of confiscation of property and titles by the Emperor,  and eventual  pardon since they are related to Pao-yu and  Cardinal Spring , the Imperial concubine and reconciliation  by the survivors with vicissitudes in their fortunes and inevitable hand   fate.   It is about a world now vanished but the story is long-lasting as it is representative of feudal society of 18^th century  China.

The characters such as Pao-Yu , the licentious , kind -hearted hero, the Matriarch Madam  Shih who is feared and revered by the family, Pao-yu’s  parents Chia Cheng and  Mme.  Wang , her niece Phoenix (Hsi-feng) who is an able  administrator of the family , shrewd and vindictive , her husband Chia Lien  who is authoritarian father but submissive son,   Black Jade(Tai-yu) who loves Pao-yu but dies  due to illness and for losing her love due to rejection of her match by the  Matriarch and  Chia family    ,  the  servant maidens such as    Pervading Fragrance (Hsi-jen) who serves and gives herself to Pao-yu  , Patience (Ping-er) , Precious Virtue ( Pao-chai) are   which linger  in our minds after finishing the reading of the novel.  It is an interesting novel  full of suspense and thoroughly interesting and gives a glimpse of Chinese culture .                            

An Appreciation of Turgenev's story Faust

 

 Turgenev’s story, Faust : A story in nine letters shows how a pure soul can suffer from coming into contact with  disturbing emotions which can  prove fatal. In the original story of Faustus, he mortgages  his soul to Mephistopheles for worldly pleasures and power and suffers the inner torment  in the last hour. In the present story, the narrator Pavel Alexandrovich B. reveals in a series of letters to his friend Semyon Nikolayevich V.  his reunion with Vera whom he loved as young man but lost her due to her mother’s refusal to allow marriage after ten years. Pavel who has come back to his native place  after nine years  was invited by Vera’s husband Priimkov  to visit them in neighbourhood . Pavel remembers his old flame Vera , slowly becomes close to her who is already married with a surviving child namely Natasha   in the name of reading of Faustus to her which disturbs her  deeply about her inner feelings and the ensuing tension causes fatal illness.

Turgenev’s mastery of description of nature , heart moving moments, unsuspecting villany and irreparable loss of  life leaving a sense of sadness are present here.

  While describing his garden the writer evokes a sentimental note. 

 The turtle -doves cooed ceaselessly, an oriole whistled now and again a finch was doing its sweetly intricate piece, the blackbirds chattered angrily, a cuckoo called in the distance , and suddenly a woodpecker screamed so piercingly as if it had gone mad.

Pavel  also  recollects how he met Vera Nikolayevna Yeltsova and her mother in a party given by his uncle. After Vera’s  father’s death, the mother rings her child in a strict manner to the extent of forbidding her to read poetry . mother’s desire was to protect the child from the turbulence of the world and develop a hard realistic sense in her which made her  read only geography, history and natural history. Pavel’s attempts to introduce literature to Vera and slowly fell in love with her. The writer describes delicately the feeling aroused in the narrator. “Only once I thought I detected something strange in the very depths of her clear eyes, a soft tenderness .But may be I was mistaken”(112)   He felt “as if whirls of mist were wandering in my soul”(112) .  But his proposal for marriage to Vera were spurned by the mother who thought him as unsuitable .

Turgenev describes Vera’s innocence as follows ; ,

         She did not seem to fuss or worry about  anything. She answered simply and intelligently , and listened attentively.  The expression of her face was candid and truthful like child’s; true, it was somewhat cold an unvarying , but not pensive. She was seldom gay , and then not like other girls; sweeter than any show of gaiety was the way her whole being lit up with the radiance of her innocent soul.  (110)

In letter three, we find how Pavel in his reunion tries to rake up the pleasure of reading poetry. She says that she was not acquainted with poetry and Pavel refers to her mother’s ban on reading literature, she says that has been frees since her marriage. Here Turgenev beautifully expresses Vera’s innocence. “She regarded me with he calm look. Birds look like that when they are not afraid.” (117)

 Pavel suggests  the reading of Goethe’s Faustus to her, a German tutor called Schimmel, the tutor of neighbour’s daughter  and Priimkov, Vera’s husband in the China house in the latter’s garden. Turgenev is never found wanting in describing nature.  While visiting the garden , they find

     She and I came out into an open glade. Right overhead a large pin cloud hung suspended high up in the sky; grey streaks trailed from it like smoke; a finy star shimmered on the very edge of the cloud, now peeping out, now hiding behind it again, and a little distance away  the white crescent moon could be seen against the blue that was already taking on a crimson hue. (120)

In the entire effort to awaken the soul of Vera to the beauty of poetry, Pavel has been nurturing vicarious retaliation against her mother who had forbidden reading of  literature by her daughter.  poetry. 

We find gradual increase of feeling in Pavel which he denies but the reader can know easily it is only evading his real feelings .  In letter two written to his friend by Pavel,  he says, “You are probably laughing at me , you beast, ensconced in the director’s chair , but I shall write you in anyway about my impressions of her.” In the next letter he denies that he is about to fall in love, he has had enough experience and he never went in for that type of woman. At the end of fourth letter he tells that  ‘ If  I did awaken that soul who can blame me ?” and not to mock him as they are old friends. Then in next letter he confesses his obsession for her , then expresses his mental torment, self-pity  , her admission of   love for him,  their first and last kiss, Vera suffers from pangs of guilt,  thinks she has seen her mother’s apparition, falls ill and dies leaving   Pavel in deep sorrow ,  reveals  his   withdrawal from society and philosophizing about the Unknown , expresses remorse for breaking an invaluable alabaster as he did in his childhood    renunciation and the need to prefer  duty to freedom as dreamt by  the young. It is awareness of hidden springs of love in  her  that disturbs  Vera and  his romantic  imagination that  makes Pavel act like Mephistopheles. Turgenev’s skill in taking the reader into a world of imagination and    recreating horrible and eerie mental state of Pavel who could not meet Vera  in the garden as agreed  at the end is  superb. Marlowe's  play  Doctor Faustus brings out the anguish of Faustus in his last moment after enjoying material pleasures and recalling Helen from the dead. Turgenev too portrays the tragedy of Vera , the pure soul in succumbing to the snare of love ridden with guilt due to transgression of her mother's restrictions. A writer who leaves an abiding impression upon the minds of the reader is a writer who is immortal in literary world!                 

                    

 

 

 

 

                

Appreciation of Two stories Three Encounters and The Inn by Turgenev

 

Turgenev is a famous writer of Russia. His novels Sons and daughters , On the eve are very powerful in  firing the imagination of the young  readers under the spell  of  classical Russian novel.

The first novel has infused the young to rebel against patriarchal family and this quality is quite pervasive in those who read humanistic novels of Russia. A society steeped in feudalism has risen from sleep and began questioning the status quo. Russian novels have roused the sleeping conscience of the readers and put them on a path of struggle.  Although the struggles petered out in the course of time, the impact has not vanished. The modern world rapidly running towards the valley of death needs to be given a dose of this great literature to protect it from final extinction which comes through planned wars  and unexpected catastrophes.

The present review is concerned with Turgenev’ stories which touch a sensitive chord in the hearts of the readers. There are interesting stories such as Three Encounters, The inn, Faust , Asya, First Love, A steppe land King Lear, Clara Milich or After Death .

In all these stories , one comes across love in its pure form in confrontation with the world that contaminates it. The external world simply drives away the chariot of life wither astray or  towards death.

The first story is titled, Three Encounters. In this story, the narrator goes to a village called Glinnoye . There he listens to the  beautiful song by a girl and becomes curious to know about her but she eludes him. The narrator approaches the watchman of the estate on the hilltop  where this girl is supposed to live but gets little information  from the watchman called Lukyanich. He persists and finds out that two sisters live in the mansion on the hilltop. He is surprised to listen to the same song he heard  earlier , that is two years back In Sorrento , Italy.  Having failed  to learn much from the old man, he enquires in the village and informs himself that  the state was owned by a Major’s widow called Ann Fyodorovna Shlykova  and  her spinster  sister Pelageya  Fyodorovna  Badayeva. He had a  fleeting glimpse of the lady and later visits their eerie house in their absence and later comes to know that they had gone to Moscow and Lukyanich hanged himself to death. Later after three years , he happens to meet both the sisters in Moscow and listen to the song of Pelagea. Then a third time he finds the unknown singer in a masked ball and recognises the beautiful stranger and she admits that she has gone to the eatate house of her friend Anna Mikhailovskoye where the narrator saw her and her love. She also says that her love has deserted her . But the narrator comes across the her former love with another lady. The beautiful stranger dashes to the exit and the narrator finds out about the strange foreigner but does not wan to now about his beautiful stranger. Turgenev ends the story,  As I have said , tis woman appeared to me as aviso in, and as a vision she passed and vanished forever.”  In the story , we find Turgenev’s lyricism.

 “For a sound. It was for the sound of living voice this sensitive silence waited, but all was quiet. The nightingales had stopped singing…and the sudden buzz of  a passing beetle, the smacking sounds made by the  small fish in the  breeding pond behind the limes at the end of the garden, the sleepy whistle of a startled bird , a faraway cry -so faraway that one could not tell whether it came from a man, a beast or a bird, a brief sound of stamping on the road -all those faint sounds, all those rustlings only enhanced the silence…My heart ached strangely and nostalgically with an anticipation or perhaps with

A remembrance of happiness; I dare not stir , I stood motionless before the motionless garden drenched with moonlight and dew, and myself not knowing why stared fixedly at the two windows glowing faintly red in soft shadows, when suddenly a  piano chord was struck in the house , a reverberating sound..”  (24  )

Not only nature but  Turgenev surpasses  in the description of beauty of  woman seen by the narrator.

“How lovely she was! How charming  was her slender silhouette against the emerald- green of the foliage! Soft shadows and muted shafts of sunlight  slid over her-  over her long grey dress , her slender neck, her pale -pink face , her glossy black hair flowing luxuriantly from under her small hat. But how render in words the look of consummate, passionate bliss on her face , passionate to the point of speechlessness! Her head seemed to droop from the burden of this insupportable bliss; her eyes were half-closed , but I could see them sparkling with moist, golden sparks; they were not looking at any thing, these happy eyes under the fine-drawn eyebrows. A vague, childish smile -a smile of profound joy hovered over her lips. It seemed that such an excess of happiness tired her and was breaking her a little, just as a flower bursting into full bloom sometime breaks its own stem.“ (34)

This kind of description fills the hearts of the readers with delight and recreate a sense of mystery, beauty , feelings of  haplessness when beauty is found false beneath appearance. They are left with a  sense of understanding as well as lingering dissatisfaction like Turgenev’s characters in the story.   

 

     Another story is “The inn” in which we find three important characters called Akim Semyonich , Naum Ivanich and Dunyasha.  Akim , the hardworking carrier turned inn keeper, Naum , the young man who is smart, gull and cunning in attracting Dunyasha the house keeper whom Akim married at late age. Naum cheats Dunyasha and Akim of their inn by purchasing it secretly with the money given by Dunyasha ensnared by him   from Liza , the landlady on whose land Akim ran his inn. In the end Akim attempts to burn the inn of Naum, gets caught red handed and  escapes punishment due to intervention by Akim’s friend  Yefrem and becomes a spiritual wanderer whereas Dunyasha reverts to her old position of domestic maid Of Liza.   

Turgenev powers of description of the inn and characters reveal their nature and their  consequent actions . Turgenev’s description of Naum who is known as the lucky man who was seen as born lucky and a busy business man who traded in orses, rented land, kept vegetable fields, bought up orchards and in engaged in  sundry deals,  is described as follows :

He was of the medium- height, fat , broad-shouldered and slightly stooped; his head was big and round, his hair was wavy and already grey , although he did not look more than forty; his face was full and fresh, the forehead was low but white and unlined, his eyes were small and blue, and he had a peculiar way of looking ; sullenly , yet brazenly , a rather rare combination. He always kept his head lowered and turned it with reluctance , probably because his neck was so very short; he had a brisk walk instead of swinging his arms he spread them out, with the fists clenched. While he smiled , he did not laugh but often smiled as if to himself -his big lips parted unpleasantly to show a row of close-set, gleaming teeth. His speech was brusque and there was glum note in his voice.  (54)

In contrast Akim  who was originally a serf of Lizaveta Prokhorovna Kuntze, the land lady and widow of aa staff-officer, did carrier trade, vexed with nomadic life, had  aa wife who died early , bought some land and built an inn there . he was experienced, pleasing personality and was amiable with customers in contrast with Naum was reticent, calculated .  Akim  who was the original owner of the inn was described  by the writer Turgenev as follows :

He was tall, rather thin, and had a handsome carriage even in the middle age ; his face was long and well-proportioned, he had a tall,  open forehead , straight nose  and a fine, small-lipped mouth . his full brown eyes shone with a friendly gentleness, his thin soft hair curled in the ringlets at the back of his neck, although there was little left of it  on the top of his head. The sound of his voice was very pleasant but weak; in his young days he was quite a singer, but long exposure to  the cold in the winter did harm to his chest and throat. His speaking manner was mellifluent, and when he laughed , little wrinkles radiated from the corners of his eyes -it is paly kind people who have such sweet-looking wrinkles. His movements were mostly slow , and there was in them the confidence and dignified civility of a man who has seen much in his life.         

 This contrast in their physical appearance and behaviour with others gives a clue to the discerning reader.  Here  the dictum, ‘character is destiny’ applies well and gives an inkling of what is going to happen.   

 The landlady Lizaveta was also a profiteering and highly calculated  woman , maintains a number of servants, indulges in and encourages gossip. This makes her sell her land to Naum in a dubious manner, employ her head maid and unscrupulous  Kirillovna to finalise her deal with Naum for two thousand roubles,  to meet the distressed Akim when he comes to meet Liza over injustice done to him but only grace we find in her is to get Dunyasha or  Avdotya Arefyevna married to Akim and in the end giving her shelter in her miserable state after being abandoned by Akim .

Dunyasha, the  young and second wife of Akim Semyonich , the original owner of inn, suffers from laziness and frustration,   gets attracted to Naum Ivanich, the cunning  young man  ,  falls in love with him , gives even money of her husband to her love who buys land and inn secretly and expels   Akim and her . Her misery is self-made,  the advantage of her city upbringing vanishes and her husband refuses to punish her and  deserts her forever to become a religious wanderer. Naum who has turned into a prosperous businessman also sells the inn and leaves for  another gubernia after fifteen years and on the same day the inn perishes in fire.

In the very description of the Inn  run first by Akim and later by Naum , we find a difference.

 Akim’s inn was rather  more traditional, it was warm but not too clean; there might be chaff in his oats or a spot of damp; the food was only just eatable, and sometimes the dishes  he served should have never come out of the oven at all,  and it wasn’t he was niggardly with the victuals, it was simply the negligence of the woman who did the cooking.    (55)

Whereas Naum managed it differently. It was opulent in appearance,  provided with good water, spacious yard,  a plentiful store of good oats,  a  warm main room , two clean enough rooms , painted wooden sofas and chairs to match, potted geraniums but dusty window panes.

 A good meal could be had there by the grace of the fat, apple-cheeked cook who made rich, tasty food and was not niggardly with second helpings; the nearest pub was only a half verst away; the snuff kept in store by the inn-keeper was extremely strong , for all that it was mixed with cinders, and  tickled the nose very nicely.  (53)

Another interesting character in the story is Yefrem, the parish reader  who comforts Akim in distress, gives shelter in his home, boasts vainly  of control of his wife and rescues Akim from certain punishment when the latter was caught in attempting  to burn down the inn out of desperation.  

 In the entire story runs  a sense of tragedy, irony between hope and reality,  the contrast  in human nature in kindness  and in  its  perversion due to  laziness  and profiteering. The writer Turgenev does not make nay comment on characters but describes them and leaves the readers to experience pity, horror and a sense of reconciliation in human life and leaves a deep impression on the mind of the readers.                                           

                    

 Primary Source:

Borovsky, David, trans. Ivan Turgenev : Stories and poems in Prose. Progress Publishers: Moscow, 

     1982 .