by Maxim Gorky
“Perhaps she considers me stupid…and hopes that I shall grow wiser.…”
“My aunt is right…it is going to rain!” said Várenka, gazing into the distance,—“see, what a dark cloud…and it is growing sultry, as it always does before a thunder-storm.…”
“That is unpleasant..” said Ippolít Sergyéevitch. “We must turn back, and warn my sister.…”
“Why?”
“That we may return home before it begins to rain.…”
“Who is going to let you go? And you would not be able to get there before the thunderstorm begins.… You will have to wait here.”
“And what if the rain should last until night?”
“You will spend the night with us,” said Várenka categorically.
“No, that is inconvenient.…” protested Ippolít Sergyéevitch.
“Oh Lord! Is it so difficult to spend one night inconveniently?”
“I had not my own comfort in view.…”
“Then don’t worry yourself about other people—each person can take care of himself.”
They disputed and walked on, but the dark cloud swept swiftly to meet them across the sky, and already the thunder was beginning to rumble somewhere far away. An oppressive sultriness permeated the atmosphere, as though the approaching thunder-cloud, condensing all the burning heat of the day, were driving it before it. And the leaves on the trees grew still, in eager expectation of the refreshing moisture.
“Shall we turn back?” suggested Ippolít Sergyéevitch.
“Yes, because it is stifling.… How I detest the time before something is coming…before a thunderstorm, before holidays. The thunderstorm or the holiday is all well enough in itself, but it is tiresome to wait for it. If everything could only be done at once…you could lie down and sleep—it is winter, and cold; you wake—and it is spring, with flowers and sun…or, the sun is shining, and, all at once, there is darkness, thunder, a downpour.…”
“Perhaps you would like to have a man also change as suddenly and unexpectedly?” inquired Ippolít Sergyéevitch, with a laugh.
“A man should always be interesting.…” she said, sententiously.
“But what do you mean by being interesting?”—exclaimed Ippolít Sergyéevitch, with vexation.
“What do I mean? Why…it is difficult to say I think that all people would be interesting, if they were more…lively…yes, more lively! If they laughed, sang, played more…if they were more daring, stronger…even audacious…even coarse..”
He listened attentively to her definitions, and asked himself:
“Is she recommending to me the programme of the relations which she wishes me to bear toward her?…”
“There’s no swiftness in people.. and everything ought to be done swiftly, in order that life should be interesting .…” she explained, with a serious face.
“Who knows? Perhaps you are right.…” remarked Ippolít Sergyéevitch softly. “That is to say, not entirely right.…”
“Don’t excuse yourself!—” she laughed.—“Why not entirely? It’s either entirely right or not right at all…it’s either good or bad…either handsome or homely…that’s the way to argue! But people say: ‘she’s quite nice, quite pretty …’ and it’s simply out of cowardice that they speak in that way…they’re afraid of the truth, for some reason or other!”
“Well, you know, that by just this division into two, you insult far too many!”
“How so?”
“By injustice.…”
“A man always keeps coming back to that same justice! Just as though all life were contained in it and one couldn’t possibly get along without it. But who wants it?” She cried out angrily and capriciously, and her eyes kept contracting and emitting sparks.
“Everyone, Varvára Vasílievna! Everyone, from the peasant…to yourself.…” said Ippolít Sergyéevitch didactically, as he watched her agitation, and tried to explain it to himself.
“I don’t want any justice!”—she rejected it with decision, and even made a gesture with her hand, as though she were repelling something.—“And if I do need it, I’ll find it for myself…Why are you forever bothering yourself about people? And…you simply say that, in order to make me angry…because to-day you are consequential, and pompous.…”
“I? I make you angry? Why?” said Ippolít Sergyéevitch, in amazement.
“How should I know? Because you are bored, probably .… But…you’d better stop it! I’m loaded to the muzzle.. even without your interference! They have been feeding me on sermons the whole week, all because of my suitors…they have flooded me with every sort of venom…and vile suspicions…thanks to you!”
Her eyes flashed with a phosphorescent gleam, her nostrils quivered, and she trembled all over with the agitation which had suddenly seized upon her. Ippolít Sergyéevitch, with a mist in his eyes, and a rapid beating of the heart, began hotly to defend her against herself.
“I did not mean to anger you.…”
But, at that moment, the thunder crashed noisily over their heads—as though some monstrously-large and coarsely-good-natured person were laughing. Stunned by the terrific sound, they both shuddered, and halted, for an instant, but immediately set out, at a rapid pace, for the house. The foliage trembled on the trees, and a shadow fell upon the earth from the thunder-cloud, which spread over the sky in a soft, velvety canopy.
“But what a quarrel you and I have had!” said Várenka on the way. —“I did not notice how the cloud was creeping up.”
On the porch of the house stood Elizavéta Sergyéevna, and Aunt Lutchítzky, with a large straw hat on her head, which made her look like a sunflower.
“There is going to be a terrific thunderstorm,” she announced, in her impressive bass voice, straight in Ippolít Sergyéevitch’s face, as though she considered it her plain duty to assure him of the approach of the tempest. Then she said:
“The colonel has fallen asleep.…” and vanished.
“How does this please you?” asked Elizavéta Sergyéevna, indicating the sky with a nod.—“I think we shall be obliged to spend the night here.”
“If we do not incommode anyone.…”
“That’s just like a man!”—exclaimed Várenka staring at him with amazement, and almost with pity.—
“You’re always afraid of inconveniencing people, of being unjust…akh, oh Lord! Well, and you must find it tiresome to live…always on pins and needles! The way I think about it is—if you want to inconvenience people, do it, if you want to be unjust, be unjust!…”
“And God Himself will decide who is in the right,” interposed Elizavéta Sergyéevna, smiling at her with a consciousness of her own superiority.—“I think I must hide myself under the roof.… What are you going to do?”
“We will watch the thunderstorm here,—won’t we?” the girl asked, addressing Ippolít Sergyéevitch.
He expressed his assent by a bow.
“Well, I am not fond of the grandiose phenomena of Nature.. if they are likely to produce fever or a cold in the head. Moreover, one can enjoy a thunderstorm through the window-panes…aï!”
The lightning flashed; the gloom, rent by it, quivered, for a moment revealing what it had engulfed, and then flowed together again. For a couple of seconds, a crushing silence reigned, then the thunder roared, like the discharge of a battery, and its rumblings rolled over the house. The wind burst forth, and seizing the dust and rubbish on the ground, and whirled around with everything it had gathered, rising upward in a column. Straws, bits of paper, leaves flew about; the martins clove the air with frightened squeaks, the foliage rustled dully on the trees, on the iron roof of the house the dust could be heard, giving rise to a noisy rattle.
Várenka watched this play of the storm from behind the jamb of the door, and Ippolít Sergyéevitch, winking from the dust, stood behind her. The porch was l
ike a box, which is dark inside, but when the lightning flashed, the girl’s graceful figure was illuminated by a bluish, spectral light.
“Look…look!” cried Várenka, when the lightning rent the thunder-cloud.… “did you see? The thunder-cloud seems to smile—doesn’t it? It greatly resembles a smile…there are just such surly and taciturn people—that sort of a man remains silent, keeps silent for ever so long, and then, all of a sudden, he smiles:—his eyes blaze, his teeth gleam.… And here comes the rain!”
On the roof the big, heavy drops of rain drummed, at long intervals, at first, then closer and closer together, and, at last, with a roaring noise.
“Let us go away…” said Ippolít Sergyéevitch “… you will get wet.”
He found it awkward to stand so close to her, in that dense darkness—awkward and disagreeable. And he thought, as he looked at her neck:
“What if I were to kiss it?”
The lightnings flashed, lighting up half of the heaven, and by their illumination Ippolít Sergyéevitch perceived that Várenka was waving her arms, with cries of rapture, and standing, with her body leaning backward, as though presenting her breast to the lightning. He seized her from behind, by the waist, and almost laying his head on her shoulder, he asked her, panting:
“What…what…is the matter with you?”
“Why, nothing!” she exclaimed with vexation, freeing herself from his arms with a supple, powerful motion of her body.—“Good heavens, how frightened you are…and you a man!”
“I was alarmed for you,” he said, in low tone, retreating into the corner.
The contact with her seemed to burn his hands, and filled his breast with inextinguishable fire of desire to embrace her, to embrace her strongly, even to pain. He had lost his self-control, and he wanted to quit the porch, and stand in the rain, where the big drops were lashing the trees like scourges.
“I will go into the house,” said he.
“Let us go,” agreed Várenka with displeasure, and slipping noiselessly past him, she went through the door.
“Ho, ho, ho!” the colonel greeted them.—“What? By order of the commander of the elements you are arrested until further notice? Ho, ho, ho!”
“This is a frightful thunderstorm,” remarked Aunt Lutchítzky, with the utmost seriousness, intently scanning the pale face of their guest.
“I do not like these mad fits of Nature!” said Elizavéta Sergyéevna, with a scornful grimace on her cold face.—“Thunder-storms, snow-storms;—why such a useless waste of a mass of energy?”
Ippolít Sergyéevitch, suppressing his emotion, hardly found the strength to ask his sister calmly:
“Will it last long, do you think?”
“All night,” Margarita Rodiónovna answered him.
“I think it will,” assented his sister.
“You can’t tear yourselves away from here!” declared Várenka, with a laugh.
Polkánoff shuddered, feeling that there was something fatal in her laugh.
“Yes, we shall be obliged to spend the night here,” said Elizavéta Sergyéevna.… “We cannot pass through the Kámoff thicket of young trees, by night, without defacing the equipage…by good luck.…”
“There are plenty of chambers here,” announced aunt Lutchítzky.
“Then…I will beg you to excuse me! a thunderstorm has the most shocking effect upon me!… I should like to know…where I am to be quartered…I will go there, for a few minutes.”
Ippolít’s words, uttered in a low, broken voice, produced a general alarm.
“Sal ammoniac!” boomed Margarita Rodiónovna, in her deep bass, and, springing from her chair, she disappeared.
Várenka bustled about the room with astonishment written on her face, and said to him:
“I’ll show you directly…I will assign you a place…where it is quiet.…”
Elizavéta Sergyéevna was the most composed of them all, and asked him, with a smile:
“Are you dizzy?”
And the colonel said, hoarsely:
“Fiddle-faddle! It will pass off! My comrade, Major Gortáloff, who was killed by the Turks during a sortie, was a dashing fellow! Oh! a rare fellow! A valiant young man! At Sístoff, he walked forward straight on the bayonets, ahead of the soldiers, as calmly as though he were leading a dance:—he hewed, slashed, shouted, broke his sword, seized a club, and thrashed the Turks with that. He was a brave man, and there aren’t many such! But he, also, got nervous in a thunderstorm, like a woman…it was ridiculous! He turned pale, and reeled, as you do, and cried ‘akh,’ and ‘okh!’ He was a hard drinker, and a jolly dog, twelve vershóks tall75…imagine how it became him!”
Ippolít Sergyéevitch looked, and listened, made his excuses, calmed them all, and cursed himself. His head really was swimming, and when Margarita Rodiónovna thrust a smelling-bottle under his nose, and commanded him: “Smell that!”…he seized the salts, and began inhaling the penetrating odor into his nostrils, feeling, that this whole scene was comic, and was lowering him in Várenka’s eyes.
The rain beat angrily against the window, the lightnings flashed in their glare, the peals of thunder made the panes rattle in a frightened way, and all this reminded the colonel of the uproar of battle.
“During the last Turkish campaign…I don’t remember where…there was just such a tumult as this. Thunder, a torrent of rain, lightning, volleys of firing from the artillery, a scattered fire from the infantry.… Lieutenant Vyákhireff took out a bottle of brandy, put the neck in his lips, and—bul-bul-bul! And a bullet smashed the bottle to flinders! The Lieutenant looked at the neck of the bottle in his hand, and said: ‘Devil take it, they are making war on bottles!’ Ho, ho, ho! But I said to him: ‘You’re mistaken, Lieutenant, the Turks are firing at bottles, but it is you who are making war on bottles!’ Ho, ho, ho! Witty, wasn’t it?”
“Do you feel better?” Aunt Lutchítzky asked Ippolít Sergyéevitch.
He thanked her, with clenched teeth, as he looked at them all with mournfully-angry eyes, and remarked that Várenka was smiling incredulously and with surprise at something which his sister was whispering to her, with her ear bent toward her. At last he succeeded in getting away from these people, and flinging himself on the divan in the little chamber which had been assigned to him, he began to reduce his emotions to order, to the sound of the rain.
Impotent wrath against himself struggled within him with the desire to understand how it had come about, that he had lost the power of self-control,—could the attraction toward that young girl be so deeply seated within him? But he could not manage to settle down upon any one thing, and pursue his thought to the end; a fierce tempest of excited emotions was raging within him. At first he resolved, that he would come to an explanation with her that very day, and immediately rejected this resolve, when he remembered, that behind it stood the obligation which he was reluctant to fulfil, of entering into definite relations to Várenka, and, of course, he could not marry that beautiful monster! He blamed himself for having gone so far in his infatuation for her, and for having lacked boldness in his dealings with her. It seemed to him, that she was entirely ready to give herself to him, and that she was coldly playing with him, playing like a coquette. He called her stupid, an animal, heartless, and answered himself, defending her. And the rain dashed menacingly against the window, and the whole house shook with the peals of thunder.
But there is no fire which does not die out! After a prolonged and painful struggle, Ippolít Sergyéevitch succeeded in repressing himself within the bounds of reason, and all his agitated emotions, beating a retreat to some spot deep within his heart, gave way to confusion and indignation at himself.
A young girl, irreparably spoiled by her abnormal surroundings, inaccessible to the suggestions of sound sense, immovably steadfast in her errors,—that strange young girl had turned him almost into an animal, in the course
of three months! And he felt himself crushed by the disgrace of the fact. He had done all he could to render her human; if he had not been able to do more, that was no fault of his. But after he had done what he could, he ought to have gone away from her, and he was to blame for not having taken his departure at the proper time, and for having allowed her to evoke in him a shameful outburst of sensuality.
“A less honorable man than myself would have been wiser than I, under the given circumstances, I think.” One unexpected thought stung him painfully:
“Is it honor which restrains me? Perhaps, it is only weakness of feeling? What if it is not feeling, but desire which agitates me thus? Am I capable of loving, in general…can I be a husband and a father.. have I that within me which is required for those obligations? Am I alive?—” As he meditated in this direction, he was conscious of a coldness within him, and of something timid, which humiliated him.
He was soon summoned to supper.
Várenka greeted him with a searching glance, and the amiable query: “is your headie better?”
“Yes, thank you.…” he replied drily, seating himself at a distance from her, and thinking to himself:
“She does not even know how to speak: ‘is your headie better?’ indeed!”
The colonel dozed, nodding his head, and sometimes snoring, all three of the ladies sat in a row on the divan, and chatted about trifles. The noise of the rain on the windows became more gentle, but that faint, persistent sound clearly bore witness to the firm intention of the rain to drench the earth for an interminably long time. The darkness stared in at the windows, the room was close and the odor of kerosene from the three lamps which were burning, mingling with the odor of the colonel, increased the stifling atmosphere, and the nervous state of Ippolít Sergyéevitch.
He looked at Várenka and reflected:
“She does not come near me…why? I wonder whether Elizavéta…has been telling her some nonsense or other…has been drawing conclusions from her observations of me?”