Uprooted an Incident of my Travels Page #2

"Uprooted: An Incident of My Travels" is a travelogue by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, reflecting his observations and experiences during a journey through rural Russia. The work encapsulates Chekhov's signature blend of keen social commentary and humor, highlighting the everyday lives, struggles, and resilience of the people he encounters. Through rich descriptions and poignant anecdotes, Chekhov explores themes of displacement, the impact of modernization, and the deep connection between individuals and their landscapes. The narrative not only showcases his literary prowess but also provides a thought-provoking glimpse into the cultural and social landscape of late 19th-century Russia.

								

round and pleasing face, dark childlike eyes, dressed like a townsman in
grey cheap clothes, and as one could judge from his complexion and
narrow shoulders, not used to manual labour. He was of a very indefinite
type; one could take him neither for a student nor for a man in trade,
still less for a workman. But looking at his attractive face and
childlike friendly eyes, I was unwilling to believe he was one of those
vagabond impostors with whom every conventual establishment where they
give food and lodging is flooded, and who give themselves out as
divinity students, expelled for standing up for justice, or for church
singers who have lost their voice. . . . There was something
characteristic, typical, very familiar in his face, but what exactly, I
could not remember nor make out.

For a long time he sat silent, pondering. Probably because I had not
shown appreciation of his remarks about bones and the mortuary, he
thought that I was ill-humoured and displeased at his presence. Pulling
a sausage out of his pocket, he turned it about before his eyes and said
irresolutely:

"Excuse my troubling you, . . . have you a knife?"

I gave him a knife.

"The sausage is disgusting," he said, frowning and cutting himself off a
little bit. "In the shop here they sell you rubbish and fleece you
horribly. . . . I would offer you a piece, but you would scarcely care
to consume it. Will you have some?"

In his language, too, there was something typical that had a very great
deal in common with what was characteristic in his face, but what it was
exactly I still could not decide. To inspire confidence and to show that
I was not ill-humoured, I took some of the proffered sausage. It
certainly was horrible; one needed the teeth of a good house-dog to deal
with it. As we worked our jaws we got into conversation; we began
complaining to each other of the lengthiness of the service.

"The rule here approaches that of Mount Athos," I said; "but at Athos
the night services last ten hours, and on great feast-days --fourteen!
You should go there for prayers!"

"Yes," answered my companion, and he wagged his head, "I have been here
for three weeks. And you know, every day services, every day services.
On ordinary days at midnight they ring for matins, at five o'clock for
early mass, at nine o'clock for late mass. Sleep is utterly out of the
question. In the daytime there are hymns of praise, special prayers,
vespers. . . . And when I was preparing for the sacrament I was simply
dropping from exhaustion." He sighed and went on: "And it's awkward not
to go to church. . . . The monks give one a room, feed one, and, you
know, one is ashamed not to go. One wouldn't mind standing it for a day
or two, perhaps, but three weeks is too much--much too much! Are you here
for long?"

"I am going to-morrow evening."

"But I am staying another fortnight."

"But I thought it was not the rule to stay for so long here?" I said.

"Yes, that's true: if anyone stays too long, sponging on the monks, he
is asked to go. Judge for yourself, if the proletariat were allowed to
stay on here as long as they liked there would never be a room vacant,
and they would eat up the whole monastery. That's true. But the monks
make an exception for me, and I hope they won't turn me out for some
time. You know I am a convert."

"You mean?"

"I am a Jew baptized. . . . Only lately I have embraced orthodoxy."

Now I understood what I had before been utterly unable to understand
from his face: his thick lips, and his way of twitching up the right
corner of his mouth and his right eyebrow, when he was talking, and that
peculiar oily brilliance of his eyes which is only found in Jews. I
understood, too, his phraseology. . . . From further conversation I
learned that his name was Alexandr Ivanitch, and had in the past been
Isaac, that he was a native of the Mogilev province, and that he had
come to the Holy Mountains from Novotcherkassk, where he had adopted the
orthodox faith.

Having finished his sausage, Alexandr Ivanitch got up, and, raising his
right eyebrow, said his prayer before the ikon. The eyebrow remained up
when he sat down again on the little sofa and began giving me a brief
account of his long biography.

"From early childhood I cherished a love for learning," he began in a
tone which suggested he was not speaking of himself, but of some great
man of the past. "My parents were poor Hebrews; they exist by buying and
selling in a small way; they live like beggars, you know, in filth. In
fact, all the people there are poor and superstitious; they don't like
education, because education, very naturally, turns a man away from
religion. . . . They are fearful fanatics. . . . Nothing would induce my
parents to let me be educated, and they wanted me to take to trade, too,
and to know nothing but the Talmud. . . . But you will agree, it is not
everyone who can spend his whole life struggling for a crust of bread,
wallowing in filth, and mumbling the Talmud. At times officers and
country gentlemen would put up at papa's inn, and they used to talk a
great deal of things which in those days I had never dreamed of; and, of
course, it was alluring and moved me to envy. I used to cry and entreat
them to send me to school, but they taught me to read Hebrew and nothing
more. Once I found a Russian newspaper, and took it home with me to make
a kite of it. I was beaten for it, though I couldn't read Russian. Of
course, fanaticism is inevitable, for every people instinctively strives
to preserve its nationality, but I did not know that then and was very
indignant. . . ."

Having made such an intellectual observation, Isaac, as he had been,
raised his right eyebrow higher than ever in his satisfaction and looked
at me, as it were, sideways, like a cock at a grain of corn, with an air
as though he would say: "Now at last you see for certain that I am an
intellectual man, don't you?" After saying something more about
fanaticism and his irresistible yearning for enlightenment, he went on:

"What could I do? I ran away to Smolensk. And there I had a cousin who
relined saucepans and made tins. Of course, I was glad to work under
him, as I had nothing to live upon; I was barefoot and in rags. . . . I
thought I could work by day and study at night and on Saturdays. And so
I did, but the police found out I had no passport and sent me back by
stages to my father. . . ."

Alexandr Ivanitch shrugged one shoulder and sighed.

"What was one to do?" he went on, and the more vividly the past rose up
before his mind, the more marked his Jewish accent became. "My parents
punished me and handed me over to my grandfather, a fanatical old Jew,
to be reformed. But I went off at night to Shklov. And when my uncle
tried to catch me in Shklov, I went off to Mogilev; there I stayed two
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