It was already late evening when Seryozha and Liza went out together; they ambled down a deserted road, lit by a bright moon. It was very quiet. They walked in silence; a pale, thin strip of moonlight glimmered on the still sea, quivering on the dark ripples of water, the firm sand softly and rhythmically crunching underfoot; along the dark road, from which they were separated by an uninterrupted row of gardens, the noise of automobile tyres rushed by from time to time, their sound reminiscent of fading whispers.
“You know, Liza,” said Seryozha, “it’s like silent music, if such a thing could exist. I don’t know how to put it into words. Do you follow me?”
She gave no reply. As before, her hand rested on his shoulder. He very much wanted to take Liza with his right arm, which had filled up with blood and hung limply by his side, but he did not dare to do that. Everything that had vanished that morning but had been going on for some time now—before their departure for the south and then on the train—now returned to him with even greater force. He saw in front of him the road, palm trees, the gates, the sea, standing stock-still, almost mockingly in their usual places, but everything was now different from how he had seen it before. As Liza walked along, brushing his side, he sensed the even movements of her body and closed his eyes; then everything ceased to exist, apart from this measured, inexpressible rhythm of her movements, far beneath which crunched the invisible sand, and the sound, with a magical precision, echoed this swaying of her body.
“Liza!” he had wanted to call out, but could not. Her hand then slowly drew away from Seryozha’s shoulder and touched his cheek: her face, with its glittering eyes, approached Seryozha’s; in the fickle light of the moon, Seryozha saw her mouth with its open lips. Every muscle in his body tensed; he could almost feel the distant touch of her lips, when suddenly he found himself being suffocated by her lingering, merciless kiss. Liza felt his body suddenly melt in her arms; she staggered, trying to support him. He had fainted. He became heavy and difficult for her to hold; then, stooping down, she took him with her left arm under his knee and lifted him as she had done many years ago when he was a little boy, while she remained just the same. She carried him several steps. Finally his eyes opened and he murmured, “Liza, Liza, what are you doing?” and quickly slumped to the ground. He was ashamed to look her in the face.
“My poor little boy!” she said. “Home, Seryozha, we need to get you home.”
When they returned to the house, Nil was sitting on a stool by the gates. “The sea air’s good,” he said to Liza. “Truly, Madame, it’s marvellous. But you, Seryozha, you look all pale from the moonlight. You’re like a bride beneath her veil.”
Seryozha went up to his room, leaving Liza alone. She undressed, wrapped her naked body in her favourite dressing gown of dark-blue silk with embroidered birds in flight, and sat down on the chaise longue. She was unable to calm herself. Even after drinking some iced orangeade, she still felt thirsty. The touch of her gown irritated her swollen nipples, so she threw it open and went out onto the veranda. Amid the diaphanous evening quiet, from somewhere far off in the distance, the muffled sound of a piano reached her. The air was balmy and still; down below, a dark flower bed sent up its particular evening fragrance. Liza did not think about anything in these moments. Without fastening her dressing gown, she went over to the staircase leading to the first floor, paused for a second, then, with brisk steps, almost at a run, headed upstairs.
* You not know how to catch big fish, you know how to catch little fish? [broken French].
† We could… if there were any there.
‡ Hello, Monsieur Serge… Lord, how big you’ve grown!
§ Well, now, how are things in Paris?
PARIS WAS ALMOST empty during these summer months. Lyudmila, having spent several weeks alone in her immaculate—and also empty, following Arkady Alexandrovich’s departure—apartment, having taken a rest from her constant state of suspicion, from the constant multifarious lies that constituted her everyday life and her relations with people, and having played on the piano all the many pieces of her vast repertoire, decided to go to the coast; she bought everything necessary for the journey, and had almost readied herself to travel to the railway station, when suddenly an unexpected incident changed her plans entirely. This incident occurred as she was leaving a large shop on boulevard de la Madeleine, when she ran into an old friend of hers, an Italian woman, who in her time had owned a modest pension in Switzerland, where Lyudmila had stayed several times. The woman was noted for having been the mistress of one of the kings of Europe for a very brief period some fifteen years ago—and ever since she had lived on her memories of this. However, in addition to the memories, the king, upon parting with her, bestowed on her a certain sum of money—insignificant for the State, but significant enough for a private budget—on which she had subsisted all these years. Her apartment was hung with portraits of the king in a great variety of poses: on court, dressed for tennis; in an armchair, with a book; on his yacht, in a captain’s hat; astride a black horse; astride a white horse; astride a bay horse. After this critical period in the woman’s life, prior to which her biography had revelled in the utmost obscurity, she had travelled around Europe. However, just as it was unthinkable to imagine her in isolation from her glittering past, so too, to the same degree, was it a constant, inescapable reality of her current existence that she was in possession of a modest pension, in the running of which she would be assisted by one of her many cousins, who would alternate approximately once every eighteen months, and whose abundance in her homeland was seemingly inexhaustible. The pension was frequented mostly by personal acquaintances of hers, who would stay there for a comparatively brief sojourn and appreciated her discretion: in spite of her exceptional garrulity, the woman never said anything amiss.
She was overjoyed to run into Lyudmila, whom she had not seen for two years or so, told her that she had been in Paris for many months already and invited her to tea. On entering the hallway, Lyudmila spotted a portrait of the king that she did not recognize (ostensibly acquired only recently) in the new photographic style. The portrait almost looked like an icon: the king’s face, which had evidently been subjected to meticulous retouching, was majestic and sorrowful, in the peculiar way that is characteristic of oleo-graphs. Noticing Lyudmila’s gaze, the Italian woman said that His Majesty—she always spoke thus of the king—had recently sent her this portrait. This was obviously untrue: firstly, there was no inscription on the portrait; second, the king, although a man of no great culture, lacked the supremely poor taste that would have been required if he were to have actually sent her this portrait.
“What a melancholic face,” said Lyudmila in an expressly detached tone of voice, so that the woman would take her pronouncement not for sympathy with her, but as her genuine impression—one might have thought that the king was pondering something or lamenting some unrealizable project.
“Yes, that’s also my impression,” said the woman. Both she and Lyudmila simultaneously felt a sense of satisfaction: Lyudmila because the woman had understood her exactly as intended, and the woman because she was dealing with a person of intelligence and sensibility. Indeed, the Italian woman regarded Lyudmila very highly and knew much more about her than one might have supposed. Before the maid served tea, the woman warned Lyudmila that a gentleman was expected, a very sweet but rather unfortunate Englishman, who regrettably spoke poor French and no Italian at all. He had come to the pension completely by chance. She wore a genuine smile that revealed all her teeth, which always made a slightly strange impression, for, with the exception of four front teeth on her upper jaw and an equal number on the lower one, all the rest alternated in a perfect, unbroken order: gold, white, gold, white, and so on to the end. This Englishman, insofar as the Italian woman knew, was still a young man. As the years went by, she had unwittingly and magnanimously raised the figure after which a man ceased to be young: at first it was thirty, then thirty-five, then forty, now forty-five and even ove
r; after fifty they began to fall under the ambiguous expression “a youthful man”; by fifty-four it would be “an essentially youthful man”; and by fifty-eight, “an ultimately youthful man”. This Englishman had recently lost his wife and was now completely alone in the world. According to the Italian woman, he was terribly sweet. Lyudmila immediately pricked up her ears and, although she had no plans yet, she had already made that customary unconscious effort that usually preceded their inception. Generally speaking, her face, despite its apparent woodenness, was possessed of a rare expressive faculty; while awaiting the Englishman’s arrival, she gradually imparted to him a character befitting his circumstances: that is, a slightly weary expression, distant eyes, a careless—as though forgotten in the air—hand, with a cigarette between long, slender fingers that betrayed a slight tremor.
Finally the Englishman appeared. He was a large man, with a full head of grey hair and a simple, ruddy face, a sort of gentleman farmer with the greater predisposition towards the gentleman, or so Lyudmila thought. He greeted the Italian woman, shook Lyudmila’s cold hand and uttered a slow and completely incomprehensible phrase in French.
“Forgive me,” said Lyudmila to the Italian woman; the Englishman listened with a tense face, trying to grasp her words. “Forgive me, Giulia. I’d very much like to know what Monsieur just said. I’ll ask him in his own language.”
The Englishman looked at Lyudmila expectantly. Smiling, the Italian woman nodded, and then Lyudmila, after pausing for a second and extinguishing her cigarette in the ashtray, said, addressing the Englishman in such a tone as if she were continuing a conversation that had been cut off:
“Sorry, I must confess I didn’t understand what you just said.”
The Englishman lit up, and the tense expression vanished from his face.
“I’m very, very glad,” he said, “that Madame, thank God, speaks English. Is Madame French?”
“No, Russian.”
“Russian!” said the Englishman in amazement. “You come from Russia? A remarkable country.”
Lyudmila replied with a weary smile that she too loved this country but, alas, was deprived of the possibility to return there. Lyudmila had refined this conversation with various foreigners about Russia long ago; it would change depending on the nationality of her interlocutor—whether he was French or Dutch, German or English. With Englishmen, she would usually say that the Russian nature contained certain positive elements, essentially very close to those that had transformed her homeland into the undisputed great Continental power that it was. Although Russia was unfortunately tormented by fate and “adversity”, yet she, Lyudmila, did not lose hope that some day—and undoubtedly that day would come—Russia would take up its rightful place in the world; she, Lyudmila, hoped she would live to see that day, after which she could die at peace. At this point she would strain her throat, her voice would softly tremble, and this was supposed to signify that, despite her reserve, she loved her homeland deeply, that she suffered alongside it, and that, more to the point, life was not so sweet for her. Lyudmila noted with satisfaction that the Englishman put up no resistance; he listened to her, his mouth nearly agape, and it was obvious that her words were incapable of arousing the slightest bit of doubt in him. The conversation went on for another half-hour, then Lyudmila got up, bid farewell to the Italian woman, who throughout the conversation had understood nothing and sat there with a permanent smile, so fixed and seemingly unflinching that the Englishman’s jaw began to ache from unconscious sympathy, and several times he rested his chin on his fist. He said that he, too, ought to be going—and so he and Lyudmila left together.
The little rue Desbordes-Valmore, where Giulia’s pension was located, was illuminated by the July sun; when at times a sultry breeze blew, the dappled shadows cast by the trees quivered almost imperceptibly on the pavements. The Englishman told Lyudmila that he was quite unfamiliar with Paris and his only chance of getting home was by giving the taxi driver a card on which was written the address of his pension. Lyudmila drew him into a conversation about England, and when it came out that he stayed in his house in London relatively infrequently and preferred his modest estate in Scotland, Lyudmila very nearly choked on her own saliva; at any rate, she placed her hand to her chest and began coughing, and when the Englishman became concerned, she told him with a meek and unfalteringly sad smile that she had never been able to boast of good health. During the conversation, which would prove decisive for future events, she succeeded in proving that he was mistaken to think American automobiles superior to English ones. “It isn’t true,” she said, and ultimately he decided not to trade in his old “Rolls”.
Lyudmila had to make a great effort to keep up her tragic performance. It was not the obvious wealth of the Englishman that she found appealing, but the undoubted ease of acquiring it, which had, on such perfect terms, offered itself to her for the first time in her life. From that moment, it had become clear to her that she could not under any circumstances let the Englishman get away; to do so would have been absolutely unthinkable, since even a short-term, chance parting could change everything: on finding himself beyond Lyudmila’s influence, he could, or indeed would, fall under the influence of factors she could not predict and against which she was almost powerless. She decided not to let him escape, and a plan was hatched immediately. Presently she would say that she wanted to take some fresh air—“My lungs have always been weak”—he would ask where they might go, and so they would head off to Versailles; there, in the park, she would be taken ill and would ask to be seen home. At home she would feel much better, and they would go to dine at La Tour d’Argent, and afterwards either to Bal Tabarin or to the Casino de Paris. Even the fact that it was the first day of Lyudmila’s monthly complaint could not hamper her plan, and it was indeed almost incidental, since her plan did not involve—in light of the fact that she was dealing with an elderly English gentleman—surrendering herself to him that evening or even the following morning; that could only happen at the end of the week, and so it was all the better. She immediately set about executing her plan. Leaving rue de la Tour, they turned onto avenue Henri-Martin. The conversation was academic: England, Russia, France.
“How hot it is!” said Lyudmila. “It’s the curse of large cities.”
“Yes, yes,” said the Englishman.
He took not the slightest bit of initiative, and so Lyudmila began to talk about the Bois de Boulogne, the park at Saint-Cloud, and Ville-d’Avray, which she loved very much, she said.
“Where is all this?” asked the Englishman.
She told him, and he suggested going there. Lyudmila declined. After a few paces he said that, all the same, it would be rather pleasant to go for a stroll in the woods. Lyudmila consented. They hailed a taxi; Lyudmila gave the directions to the driver, a sad man with grey moustaches. It was immediately apparent from his accent that he was Russian, although Lyudmila avoided speaking Russian with taxi drivers, fearing a familiarity on their part, and so she tried to speak French with an English accent. She explained to him that he needed first to go around the lake in the Bois de Boulogne and then on to Versailles via Saint-Cloud and Ville-d’Avray—and so they set off. En route, Lyudmila mentioned in passing the necessary details of her private life which stood midway between classic English reserve in such situations and Russian directness, a national trait which she lost no time in commenting on to the Englishman, accompanying it with several observations of a general nature—with the purpose that her acquaintance should have no doubt as to the full correctness and decency of everything that even remotely concerned her.
Lyudmila was taking all these precautions partly just in case, but partly through the habit of always being suspicious; although, she understood perfectly well that in the given instance she could afford to be less cautious—with someone like this, she had nothing to lose. However, just as she discharged her financial obligations with exceptional diligence and now conformed to those unalterable precepts she had establi
shed once and for all, so too in dealing with her admirers did she always take great care over the smallest detail of her actions, as though it were a play that had to be acted out. Her interminable inward exasperation could to a large extent be explained by the fact that in dealing with living people, and not the dramatis personae of a play, she was forever, on account of some trivial, unwelcome disruption to her plan, having to refashion the text in accordance with changing circumstances. Broadly speaking, Lyudmila was characteristically single-minded and scrupulous in all that she did: she kept her word, always showed up for an appointment precisely ten minutes late, and one could generally rely on her. In all her maudlin commercial enterprises it was she who played the leading role, and not her partner. Throughout her conversation with the Englishman, she could breathe easily—everything was going so smoothly that she was on the point of asking herself whether it were not a dream.
When she was taken ill at Versailles, she staggered but remained on her feet; through almost closed eyes she realized with alarm that the slow Englishman had failed to grasp what was going on. This lasted only a moment, however, after which he placed his arm under Lyudmila’s back, and then she, drawing away a little, let herself fall suddenly right into this arm—at her back she felt his phenomenally firm and supple muscles contract momentarily. It was a blissful sensation; among Lyudmila’s few genuine feelings, love for an athletic male body occupied one of the top spots.
“Excuse me, I am not quite well,” she said quietly, opening her eyes and smiling weakly.
When the driver accelerated slightly—after Lyudmila had been led to a taxi and they had set off for Paris—the Englishman shouted impatiently:
“Slowly, slowly!”
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