by A J Allen
Chevanin followed her example, standing up and nervously extinguishing his cigarette. Her hands resting on her hips, Yeliena was regarding him with a slight smile. With a sudden pulse of excitement he sensed that the atmosphere in the room had become charged; as if there was lightning in the air and the whole house was holding its breath waiting for the accompanying clap of thunder. Chevanin tried to swallow and found that he couldn’t; his throat was too dry.
Without a doubt, he told himself, and incredible as it may seem, something is about to happen.
“Well?” she asked him quietly. “Shall we begin?”
The distance between them seemed almost unbridgeable. Taking a half step towards her in the hope that she would reciprocate, he realised that he was still holding his cup and saucer.
“Begin?” he mumbled. “Begin what?”
“With the play, of course!” she said smiling. “You haven’t forgotten that we are meant to be rehearsing our parts? Vasili will expect us to be word perfect when he returns.”
Hiding his confusion, Chevanin turned away from her and, as carefully as he could, set the half full cup of coffee down on the small table beside his chair. He was trembling so much that, as he did so, the cup rattled in its saucer and a small wave of lukewarm liquid washed over his fingers. Hurriedly he wiped them dry against the seat of his trousers as he turned back to face her.
“I… I… I didn’t expect this!” he stammered.
“Oh?” said Yeliena coolly. “Really?”
“I mean, rehearsing the play. I didn’t bring my script with me. Perhaps I could share yours?”
“Don’t worry. I have a spare copy upstairs. I shall go and get it.”
“There’s no need,” he said quickly. “I’ll fetch it for you, if you like.”
Yeliena regarded him in some surprise and then smiled again.
“Of course, I forgot. You know where my bedroom is.”
Chevanin felt his face flush crimson.
“It doesn’t matter,” she continued lightly, “I shall fetch it. Why don’t you ask Katya for another cup of coffee? Yours must be cold by now.”
After she had left the room Chevanin sat down heavily on the sofa and buried his blushing face in his hand. The next moment, remembering how she had lain there, he sprang to his feet and began pacing up and down, tormented by his doubts. One moment it was clear to him that he was crazy, a dangerous fantasist who should not be allowed out unsupervised in public: the next, he was berating himself for being a coward. Was it only his imagination that she had glanced enquiringly at him as she left the room? A glance – he dared hardly think of it – of invitation? After all, it was she who had mentioned the word “bedroom”. And she had let him into one secret already, that she smoked cigarettes in the Doctor’s absence, despite her husband’s strict orders that she should not. It was the first time she had treated him as an adult; as an equal. Somehow, just by sharing that confidence, as trivial as it was, she had made him her accomplice. But an accomplice to what? What else did she have in mind to share with him?
Chevanin stood, staring wild-eyed at the sofa. Had he not seen, he told himself, how she had flaunted herself upon it? If he had been any sort of man he would have gone to her then instead of sitting on the other side of the room like a wax dummy. But then, it was her house. Who was to say that she could not rest after lunch on her own sofa if she so wished? His own mother often had a rest in the afternoons; had always done so for as long as he could remember. There was no reason on earth why Yeliena Mihailovna could not do the same if she wanted to. He would have been horrified if a visitor to his parents’ house had mistaken her repose for an invitation to… to…
He began pacing again, beating the air with his fist as he vented his self-disgust. He was unclean; unworthy of the Tortsovs’ friendship. Stopping in front of the hearth, he forced himself to look at his reflection in the mirror that hung above the mantelpiece. In it he saw the face of a man guilty of the worst of crimes: a betrayer of trust and of fellowship; a liar and a predator; a man unfit to be a doctor. Who could feel safe to call such a man to the bedside of a loved one when he was prey to such lewd and disgusting thoughts? There was only one course of action left open to him: something he should have done weeks ago. He would make sure never to allow himself to be alone in her company again and if he found himself in that position he would make a polite excuse and leave. For months he had been suffering from the sickest of fantasies and had deluded himself that it was love. Now he stood exposed for what he was: a beast, and he thanked his Maker that he had been put to the test while he was still man enough to overcome his desires and behave with honour. Another few days and it might have been too late. Once fact and fantasy became indistinguishable it was a short road that led either to prison or to the madhouse.
His train of thought was interrupted by the sound of one shoe falling heavily onto the floor of the room above. Chevanin felt his skin grow cold. Unwillingly, he raised his head and looked up at the ceiling and waited for the other shoe to drop.
All the arguments that he had used to convince himself the moment before suddenly stood revealed for what they were: the tawdry justifications of a coward. There was only one question he had to answer, he told himself: was he a man or wasn’t he? With a flood of relief he realised that the initiative had now passed out of his hands. It was a blatant invitation. All he had to do was to wait for Yeliena Mihailovna to remove her other shoe. As soon as he heard it fall, he could quite justifiably presume that she was waiting for him in her bedroom.
The seconds passed.
Lowering his gaze, he looked again at his reflection in the mirror and grinned at it in what he considered to be a roguish manner. The effect was unsettling.
“You old dog!” he said aloud.
Still smiling, he returned his gaze to the ceiling, expecting at any moment to hear the sound of the second shoe striking the worn carpet beside her bed. But as the silence lengthened, fresh doubts began to assail him. Perhaps it had just been a hairbrush, or she had knocked something off the dressing table as she was searching for the scripts. On the other hand, she could just be playing with him, tantalising him. Shutting his eyes, he imagined her lying there, smiling to herself in the dark as she dangled the shoe over the side of her bed…
Well, he thought, two can play at that game.
Opening his eyes, he stared unseeing at his reflection as he considered what to do. He would have another cigarette, he decided, and smoke it in a detached and nonchalant fashion just to show her that he was not at her beck and call. Obeying the impulse, he fumbled in his pockets and, finding his packet of cigarettes, opened it and took one out.
It is time I possessed a proper cigarette case, he thought. An expensive one, inscribed with my own monogram.
Putting the cigarette in his mouth he took a box of matches off the mantelpiece, extracted one and struck it. As the match flared up, he paused, listening hard for any sound of movement above him, but none came. His brow creased in irritation. She was keeping him waiting for far too long.
What should I say when I open the door? he asked himself. “Yeliena Mihailovna, I heard a noise and wondered if you were all right?”
Perhaps she was taking off her clothes; that would explain the delay. The idea thrilled and terrified him at the same time. So awesome was it that he realised too late the match in his hand was burning low. Feeling its flame begin to sear his flesh he flung the match away with a curse into the fire. Tearing the cigarette from his lips he put his injured fingers into his mouth and sucked them, tasting on his tongue the acrid taste of the phosphorous that had impregnated his skin.
Another thought rose to confront him: that it must have been a very weighty shoe to have made the noise he had heard.
Of course, he reasoned, it need not have been a shoe at all. It could have been a boot. Either that or she has deliberately thrown something at the floor, as a signal that she is ready to receive me; that I should come up.
With
his fingers still in his mouth, he began once more to pace to and fro in front of the hearth.
No, he thought, that is too far-fetched. Or is it? Has she been waiting all this time for me to come to her, while I’ve been standing here like a booby at a fair, striking poses in front of the mirror and burning myself for my pains?
His inner conflict began again as he debated what he was to do. If he went to her now, she might already have grown bored; or worse, cold. Either way, there was a good chance that she would reject him. And if it had been a hairbrush she had dropped by accident, what credible excuse could he give for such an intrusion so late after the event, especially remembering the circumstances preceding the previous occasion he had been in her room? Once was a forgivable error: to assume twice that her bedroom door was open to him would be scandalous!
Had it been an invitation or a hairbrush?
Why, oh why, hadn’t he gone up straight away?
By now, he decided, she must know that I am not coming: that I lack the courage. Only the brave deserve the fair, and I have failed her.
A second sound reached his ears, as unmistakeable in its own way as the first had been. It was the sound of Yeliena Mihailovna opening and then closing her bedroom door and walking across the landing to the top of the stairs. With a heartfelt curse, Anton Ivanovich scuttled back to his seat and prepared himself to face his hostess.
When Yeliena entered the room, she found him sitting upright in his chair, a bound volume of the Medical Journal open upon his knees. In his right hand an unlit cigarette was held at a rakish angle between two wet and swollen fingers.
“Anton Ivanovich, you shouldn’t smoke so much,” she scolded him. “And you are reading in a very poor light. You will damage your eyes.”
Meekly, her husband’s assistant closed the heavy volume and discarded the moist cigarette.
“That’s better,” she said approvingly as she held out a copy of the script to him. “Take this, but try not to refer it too much. You should know your words by now.”
With as brave a smile as he could muster, he took the script from her, not noticing as he did so that she had taken care to change her clothes. Her skirt, which had been a sombre black, was now a pastel blue and her Sunday blouse of stiff white cotton had been replaced by one of a more feminine grey silk. More interested in his own condition, he waited until she had turned away and walked languidly back to her place on the sofa before he leaned over and replaced the book in the gap on the bookshelf beside him.
Thoughts of the flesh were not far from Dr. Tortsov’s mind at that moment as he gazed along the two rows of sweating, well-fed faces that lined the private luncheon table, but it was feelings of surfeit and disgust rather than carnal desire that rose within the good Doctor’s breast. He watched the Mayor’s wife, sitting at the top end of the table, wave a half-eaten drumstick in emphasis to support the point she was making to the mournful looking priest opposite her. He did not doubt for a moment that the Mayor’s wife had regretted what she had done. That much had been evident by her distress earlier in the lounge.
This is how the Devil snares us, he thought. First he gives us the opportunity, and then he lets us get on with it, secure in the knowledge that we will make bad choices due to our human frailty.
Signalling to Fyodor Gregorivich, who was hovering nearby, Dr. Tortsov allowed his glass to be refilled. There was enough alcohol on the table, he reckoned, to keep even the carpenter Ovseenko afloat for a fortnight; enough food to feed Gleb Pirogov’s family for a month.
“There is more joy in Heaven over one lost sheep, Dimitri Borisovich,” he said to Skyralenko, who was sitting next to him, “than in the ninety men that are not lost.”
The Prison Director smiled glassily at him and winked.
Much of the chronology of the events that had led to the current crisis remained obscure to the Doctor. On the previous afternoon the Mayoress had witnessed Leonid Kavelin and Madame Kuibysheva descending the stairs together from the upper rooms; that much he had learned from her confession. He had also learned that, thrilled by the scandal, the Mayoress had rushed to tell her news to her friend Madame Pusnyena, in strictest confidence. This puzzled the Doctor greatly. Why on earth hadn’t she kept quiet about it? She could have pretended not to see, or remained silent about their shenanigans. What possible good could it do for Kavelin’s adultery to become common town gossip? And why – and this was the second puzzle – why did the Mayoress believe that Madame Kavelina would be more upset by the fact that she (the Mayoress) had witnessed her husband’s infidelity than about the transgression itself? That made no sense at all to him. Women would forever remain a mystery.
He had further gathered from Madame Pobednyeva’s emotional confession that, rather than call on her privately, Tatyana Kavelina had bided her time and waited until she could confront Irena Kuibysheva in person when she joined the other civic dignitaries at the pre-luncheon reception in the hotel’s mezzanine lounge. Then, according to the Mayoress, there had been a scene worthy of Sarah Bernhardt herself, culminating in Madam Kavelina’s ringing challenge to her husband. She refused to sit at the same table as That Woman; he had to choose between them as to who should stay and who should leave. Quite sensibly, in the Doctor’s opinion, Kavelin had told her be quiet and to go home. This was the third puzzle. Why was Leonid Kavelin’s choice considered so wrong? Chivalry had its place but Kavelin was a business man and could not afford to offend the town’s richest man, even in absentia, by demanding that his wife remove herself from the luncheon.
Everything had stemmed from that one act of malice: Matriona Pobednyeva telling what she had seen; Lidiya Pusnyena inevitably betraying her confidence; Tatyana Kavelina hearing of her husband’s infidelity (that had also been inevitable); the confrontation with Irena Kuibysheva in the mezzanine lounge; her husband, forced to choose publicly between her and his mistress, bundling her out bodily through the swing doors and ordering her to return home: everything. Even Father Arkady’s refusal to bless the food because there were now thirteen at the table, which in turn had sent Fyodor Gregorivich into paroxysms of despair, could be laid at the feet of the Evil One.
The Doctor raised his glass and signalled again to Fyodor Gregorivich, satisfied that at least he now understood the cause of the hotel proprietor’s eccentric behaviour and why the poor man had looked as if he was at his wits’ end.
“You know Matriona Pobednyeva?” he asked a bemused Skyralenko, his voice slurring as he pointed his glass in the direction of the Mayor’s wife. “She would make a damn fine actress. Far better than my Lenochka.”
The Mayoress’s description of Tatyana Kavelina advancing on Irena Kuibysheva – an accusing finger held out in front of her as she repeated the single word, “You!” – that was a moment of high drama that had lost nothing in her interpretation. Still holding his empty glass aloft he realised that he was becoming a little drunk, but it didn’t seem to matter. So, it appeared, was everybody else; more than a little if the Prison Director to his right was an example. Opposite him Leonid Kavelin kept his gaze determinedly lowered to his plate.
A new inspiration seized him. Instead of changing Tolkach’s part, he should have let Lenochka step down and persuaded Matriona Fiodorovna to take her place. That would have taught Pobednyev a lesson he would not forget in a hurry!
Thinking about the play depressed his spirits. Tolkach was a filthy swine, he told himself, and that was an end to it. To imagine those hands touching his poor sweet Lenochka made him want to choke with rage and grief. He thought of the weeks he had spent out on the taiga, doing his duty whilst the swine had been preparing his trap.
“Vasili Tortsov plays Hittite to no man’s David!” he muttered thickly. Remembering his earlier offer to his assistant, he smiled grimly. Instead of taking Anton Ivanovich out onto the taiga, why shouldn’t he take Tolkach? Yes! That was the way! Just himself and Tolkach, alone out on the taiga. Pistols for two and coffee for one.
Ecstatic at this new ide
a, he began hammering his empty glass on the tablecloth.
From his place at the top end of the table Father Arkady watched him sadly. The aged priest had suspected that it had been a mistake to allow the meal to proceed in view of that distressing scene earlier in the upstairs lounge, and now he was sure of it. But what could he do? It was a town matter: best not to interfere. From under his bushy eyebrows he sneaked a glance at the penitent figure of Irena Kuibysheva. She appeared to be bearing up well, but he knew that within her she was chastising her soul with scorpions’ tails. She was so lonely here; she did not belong in Berezovo. Yes, allowing the meal to proceed had been an error of judgement for which he was to blame but, in the rush of events, and with there being no firm news of when the convoy was to be expected, it had seemed better to eat something than to remain drinking for the rest of the afternoon.
Wearily he turned his attention back to his host. His Excellency the Mayor, resplendently decorated with the Sash of Berezovo, was in the middle of an interminable rendition of his favourite anecdote about the Mammoth Skin.
Everybody knew the tale of how, over a quarter of a century before, the body of a giant mammoth had been discovered by the banks of the Lena, perfectly preserved by the ice that had melted on that hot summer’s day. It had been hauled by woodsmen and peasants to the table of the local barines who had taken three days to eat it. One of the woodsmen, a man whom the Mayor claimed to have met, was present at the feast and had risked a beating for cutting a slice of freshly shaved flesh and secreting it away before the monster had been taken into the kitchens. Since that day, whenever he found himself out in the wilds without supplies, this intrepid man had only to boil up some ice and dip the skin in the water to make a tasty and nourishing broth. So much was common history. Only the ever-extending version that the Mayor insisted on telling when he was in his cups bore the hallmarks of a myth.