‘‘We must have a talk,’’ Nadezhda Fyodorovna read in her note. She exchanged glances with Marya Konstantinovna, who gave her almond-butter smile and nodded her head.
‘‘What is there to talk about?’’ thought Nadezhda Fyodorovna. ‘‘If it’s impossible to tell everything, there’s no point in talking.’’
Before going to the party, she had tied Laevsky’s necktie, and this trifling thing had filled her soul with tenderness and sorrow. The anxiety on his face, his absentminded gazes, his paleness, and the incomprehensible change that had come over him lately, and the fact that she was keeping a terrible, repulsive secret from him, and that her hands had trembled as she tied his necktie—all this, for some reason, told her that they would not be living together for long. She gazed at him as at an icon, with fear and repentance, and thought: ‘‘Forgive me, forgive me . . .’’ Atchmianov sat across the table from her and did not tear his black, amorous eyes from her; desires stirred her, she was ashamed of herself and feared that even anguish and sorrow would not keep her from yielding to the impure passion, if not today, then tomorrow, and that, like a drunkard on a binge, she was no longer able to stop.
So as not to prolong this life, which was disgraceful for her and insulting to Laevsky, she decided to leave. She would tearfully implore him to let her go, and if he objected, she would leave him secretly. She would not tell him what had happened. Let him preserve a pure memory of her.
‘‘Love you, love you, love you,’’ she read. This was from Atchmianov.
She would live somewhere in a remote place, work, and send Laevsky, ‘‘from an unknown person,’’ money, embroidered shirts, tobacco, and go back to him only in his old age or in case he became dangerously ill and needed a sick nurse. When, in his old age, he learned the reasons why she had refused to be his wife and had left him, he would appreciate her sacrifice and forgive her.
‘‘You have a long nose.’’ That must be from the deacon or from Kostya.
Nadezhda Fyodorovna imagined how, in saying good-bye to Laevsky, she would hug him tight, kiss his hand, and swear to love him all, all her life, and later, living in a remote place, among strangers, she would think every day that she had a friend somewhere, a beloved man, pure, noble, and lofty, who preserved a pure memory of her.
‘‘If tonight you don’t arrange to meet me, I shall take measures, I assure you on my word of honor. One does not treat decent people this way, you must understand that.’’ This was from Kirilin.
XIII
LAEVSKY RECEIVED TWO NOTES; he unfolded one and read: ‘‘Don’t go away, my dear heart.’’
‘‘Who could have written that?’’ he wondered. ‘‘Not Samoilenko, of course...And not the deacon, since he doesn’t know I want to leave. Von Koren, maybe?’’
The zoologist was bent over the table, drawing a pyramid. It seemed to Laevsky that his eyes were smiling.
‘‘Samoilenko probably blabbed . . .’’ thought Laevsky.
The other note, written in the same affected handwriting, with long tails and flourishes, read: ‘‘Somebody’s not leaving on Saturday.’’
‘‘Stupid jeering,’’ thought Laevsky. ‘‘Friday, Friday...’’
Something rose in his throat. He touched his collar and coughed, but instead of coughing, laughter burst from his throat.
‘‘Ha, ha, ha!’’ he guffawed. ‘‘Ha, ha, ha!’’ (‘‘Why am I doing this?’’ he wondered.) ‘‘Ha, ha, ha!’’
He tried to control himself, covered his mouth with his hand, but his chest and neck were choking with laughter, and his hand could not cover his mouth.
‘‘How stupid this is, though!’’ he thought, rocking with laughter. ‘‘Have I lost my mind, or what?’’
His laughter rose higher and higher and turned into something like a lapdog’s yelping. Laevsky wanted to get up from the table, but his legs would not obey him, and his right hand somehow strangely, against his will, leaped across the table, convulsively catching at pieces of paper and clutching them. He saw astonished looks, the serious, frightened face of Samoilenko, and the zoologist’s gaze, full of cold mockery and squeamishness, and realized that he was having hysterics.
‘‘How grotesque, how shameful,’’ he thought, feeling the warmth of tears on his face. ‘‘Ah, ah, what shame! This has never happened to me before . . .’’
Then they took him under the arms and, supporting his head from behind, led him somewhere; then a glass gleamed in front of his eyes and knocked against his teeth, and water spilled on his chest; then there was a small room, two beds side by side in the middle, covered with snow-white bedspreads. He collapsed onto one of the beds and broke into sobs.
‘‘Never mind, never mind . . .’’ Samoilenko was saying. ‘‘It happens...It happens . . .’’
Cold with fear, trembling all over, and anticipating something terrible, Nadezhda Fyodorovna stood by the bed, asking:
‘‘What’s wrong with you? What is it? For God’s sake, speak . . .’’
‘‘Can Kirilin have written him something?’’ she wondered.
‘‘Never mind . . .’’ said Laevsky, laughing and crying. ‘‘Go away . . . my dove.’’
His face expressed neither hatred nor revulsion: that meant he knew nothing. Nadezhda Fyodorovna calmed down a little and went to the drawing room.
‘‘Don’t worry, dear!’’ Marya Konstantinovna said, sitting down beside her and taking her hand. ‘‘It will pass. Men are as weak as we sinners. The two of you are living through a crisis now . . . it’s so understandable! Well, dear, I’m waiting for an answer. Let’s talk.’’
‘‘No, let’s not . . .’’ said Nadezhda Fyodorovna, listening to Laevsky’s sobbing. ‘‘I’m in anguish . . . Allow me to leave.’’
‘‘Ah, my dear, my dear!’’ Marya Konstantinovna was alarmed. ‘‘Do you think I’ll let you go without supper? We’ll have a bite, and then you’re free to leave.’’
‘‘I’m in anguish . . .’’ whispered Nadezhda Fyodorovna, and to keep from falling, she gripped the armrest of the chair with both hands.
‘‘He’s in convulsions!’’ von Koren said gaily, coming into the drawing room, but, seeing Nadezhda Fyodorovna, he became embarrassed and left.
When the hysterics were over, Laevsky sat on the strange bed and thought:
‘‘Disgrace, I howled like a little girl! I must be ridiculous and vile. I’ll leave by the back stairs . . . Though that would mean I attach serious significance to my hysterics. I ought to downplay them like a joke . . . ’’
He looked in the mirror, sat for a little while, and went to the drawing room.
‘‘Here I am!’’ he said, smiling; he was painfully ashamed, and he felt that the others were also ashamed in his presence. ‘‘Imagine that,’’ he said, taking a seat. ‘‘I was sitting there and suddenly, you know, I felt an awful, stabbing pain in my side...unbearable, my nerves couldn’t stand it, and...and this stupid thing occurred. This nervous age of ours, there’s nothing to be done!’’
Over supper he drank wine, talked, and from time to time, sighing spasmodically, stroked his side as if to show that the pain could still be felt. And nobody except Nadezhda Fyodorovna believed him, and he saw it.
After nine o’clock they went for a stroll on the boulevard. Nadezhda Fyodorovna, fearing that Kirilin might start talking to her, tried to keep near Marya Konstantinovna and the children all the time. She grew weak from fright and anguish and, anticipating a fever, suffered and could barely move her legs, but she would not go home, because she was sure that either Kirilin or Atchmianov, or both of them, would follow her. Kirilin walked behind her, next to Nikodim Alexandrych, and intoned in a low voice:
‘‘I will not alo-o-ow myself to be to-o-oyed with! I will not alo-o-ow it!’’
From the boulevard they turned towards the pavilion, and for a long time gazed at the phosphorescent sea. Von Koren began to explain what made it phosphoresce.
XIV
‘‘HOWEVER, IT’S T
IME for my vint... They’re waiting for me,’’ said Laevsky. ‘‘Good night, ladies and gentlemen.’’
‘‘Wait, I’ll go with you,’’ said Nadezhda Fyodorovna, and she took his arm. They took leave of the company and walked off. Kirilin also took his leave, said he was going the same way, and walked with them.
‘‘What will be, will be . . .’’ thought Nadezhda Fyodorovna. ‘‘Let it come . . .’’
It seemed to her that all her bad memories had left her head and were walking in the darkness beside her and breathing heavily, while she herself, like a fly that had fallen into ink, forced herself to crawl down the sidewalk, staining Laevsky’s side and arm with black. If Kirilin does something bad, she thought, it will not be his fault, but hers alone. There was a time when no man would have talked to her as Kirilin had done, and she herself had snapped off that time like a thread and destroyed it irretrievably—whose fault was that? Intoxicated by her own desires, she had begun to smile at a totally unknown man, probably only because he was stately and tall, after two meetings she had become bored with him and had dropped him, and didn’t that, she now thought, give him the right to act as he pleased with her?
‘‘Here, my dove, I’ll say good-bye to you,’’ said Laevsky, stopping. ‘‘Ilya Mikhailych will see you home.’’
He bowed to Kirilin and quickly headed across the boulevard, went down the street to Sheshkovsky’s house, where there were lights in the windows, and then they heard the gate slam.
‘‘Allow me to explain myself to you,’’ Kirilin began. ‘‘I’m not a boy, not some sort of Atchkasov, or Latchkasov, or Zatchkasov . . . I demand serious attention!’’
Nadezhda Fyodorovna’s heart was beating fast. She made no reply.
‘‘At first I explained the abrupt change in your behavior towards me by coquetry,’’ Kirilin went on, ‘‘but now I see that you simply do not know how to behave with respectable people. You simply wanted to toy with me as with this Armenian boy, but I am a respectable person, and I demand to be treated as a respectable person. And so I am at your service . . .’’
‘‘I’m in anguish . . .’’ said Nadezhda Fyodorovna, and she turned away to hide her tears.
‘‘I am also in anguish, but what follows from that?’’
Kirilin was silent for a while and then said distinctly, measuredly:
‘‘I repeat, madam, that if you do not grant me a meeting tonight, then tonight I shall make a scandal.’’
‘‘Let me go tonight,’’ said Nadezhda Fyodorovna, and she did not recognize her own voice, so pathetic and thin it was.
‘‘I must teach you a lesson...Forgive me this rude tone, but it’s necessary for me to teach you a lesson. Yes, ma’am, unfortunately I must teach you a lesson. I demand two meetings: tonight and tomorrow. After tomorrow you are completely free and can go wherever you like with whom-ever you like. Tonight and tomorrow.’’
Nadezhda Fyodorovna went up to her gate and stopped.
‘‘Let me go!’’ she whispered, trembling all over and seeing nothing before her in the darkness except a white tunic. ‘‘You’re right, I’m a terrible woman . . . I’m to blame, but let me go . . . I beg you . . .’’ she touched his cold hand and shuddered, ‘‘I implore you . . .’’
‘‘Alas!’’ sighed Kirilin. ‘‘Alas! It is not in my plans to let you go, I merely want to teach you a lesson, to make you understand, and besides, madam, I have very little faith in women.’’
‘‘I’m in anguish . . .’’
Nadezhda Fyodorovna listened to the steady sound of the sea, looked at the sky strewn with stars, and wished she could end it all quickly and be rid of this cursed sensation of life with its sea, stars, men, fever...
‘‘Only not in my house . . .’’ she said coldly. ‘‘Take me somewhere.’’
‘‘Let’s go to Miuridov’s. That’s best.’’
‘‘Where is it?’’
‘‘By the old ramparts.’’
She walked quickly down the street and then turned into a lane that led to the mountains. It was dark. On the pavement here and there lay pale strips of light from lighted windows, and it seemed to her that she was like a fly that first fell into ink, then crawled out again into the light. Kirilin walked behind her. At one point he stumbled, nearly fell, and laughed.
‘‘He’s drunk . . .’’ thought Nadezhda Fyodorovna. ‘‘It’s all the same...all the same...Let it be.’’
Atchmianov also soon took leave of the company and followed Nadezhda Fyodorovna so as to invite her for a boat ride. He went up to her house and looked across the front garden: the windows were wide open, there was no light.
‘‘Nadezhda Fyodorovna!’’ he called.
A minute passed. He called again.
‘‘Who’s there?’’ came Olga’s voice.
‘‘Is Nadezhda Fyodorovna at home?’’
‘‘No. She hasn’t come yet.’’
‘‘Strange...Very strange,’’ thought Atchmianov, beginning to feel greatly worried. ‘‘She did go home . . .’’
He strolled along the boulevard, then down the street, and looked in Sheshkovsky’s windows. Laevsky, without his frock coat, was sitting at the table and looking intently at his cards.
‘‘Strange, strange . . .’’ murmured Atchmianov, and, recollecting the hysterics that had come over Laevsky, he felt ashamed. ‘‘If she’s not at home, where is she?’’
And again he went to Nadezhda Fyodorovna’s apartment and looked at the dark windows.
‘‘Deceit, deceit . . .’’ he thought, remembering that she herself, on meeting him that noon at the Bitiugovs’, had promised to go for a boat ride with him in the evening.
The windows of the house where Kirilin lived were dark, and a policeman sat asleep on a bench by the gate. As he looked at the windows and the policeman, everything became clear to Atchmianov. He decided to go home and went, but again wound up by Nadezhda Fyodorovna’s. There he sat down on a bench and took off his hat, feeling his head burning with jealousy and offense.
The clock on the town church struck only twice a day, at noon and at midnight. Soon after it struck midnight, he heard hurrying footsteps.
‘‘So, tomorrow evening at Miuridov’s again!’’ Atchmianov heard, and recognized Kirilin’s voice. ‘‘At eight o’clock. Good-bye, ma’am!’’
Nadezhda Fyodorovna appeared by the front garden. Not noticing Atchmianov sitting on the bench, she walked past him like a shadow, opened the gate, and, leaving it open, walked into the house. In her room, she lighted a candle, undressed quickly, yet did not go to bed, but sank onto her knees in front of a chair, put her arms around it, and leaned her forehead against it.
Laevsky came home past two o’clock.
XV
HAVING DECIDED NOT to lie all at once, but piecemeal, Laevsky went to Samoilenko the next day after one o’clock to ask for the money, so as to be sure to leave on Saturday. After yesterday’s hysterics, which to the painful state of his mind had added an acute sense of shame, remaining in town was unthinkable. If Samoilenko insists on his conditions, he thought, he could agree to them and take the money, and tomorrow, just at the time of departure, tell him that Nadezhda Fyodorovna had refused to go; he could persuade her in the evening that the whole thing was being done for her benefit. And if Samoilenko, who was obviously under the influence of von Koren, refused entirely or suggested some new conditions, then he, Laevsky, would leave that same day on a freighter or even a sailboat, for Novy Afon or Novorossiisk, send his mother a humiliating telegram from there, and live there until his mother sent him money for the trip.
Coming to Samoilenko’s, he found von Koren in the drawing room. The zoologist had just come for dinner and, as usual, had opened the album and was studying the men in top hats and women in caps.
‘‘How inopportune,’’ thought Laevsky, seeing him. ‘‘He may hinder everything.’’
‘‘Good afternoon!’’
‘‘Good afternoon,’’ replied von Koren without
looking at him.
‘‘Is Alexander Davidych at home?’’
‘‘Yes. In the kitchen.’’
Laevsky went to the kitchen, but, seeing through the doorway that Samoilenko was busy with the salad, he returned to the drawing room and sat down. He always felt awkward in the zoologist’s presence, and now he was afraid he would have to talk about his hysterics. More than a minute passed in silence. Von Koren suddenly raised his eyes to Laevsky and asked:
‘‘How do you feel after yesterday?’’
‘‘Splendid,’’ Laevsky replied, blushing. ‘‘Essentially there was nothing very special . . .’’
‘‘Until last night I assumed that only ladies had hysterics, and so I thought at first that what you had was Saint Vitus’s dance.’’
Laevsky smiled ingratiatingly and thought:
‘‘How indelicate on his part. He knows perfectly well that it’s painful for me...’’
‘‘Yes, it was a funny story,’’ he said, still smiling. ‘‘I spent this whole morning laughing. The curious thing about a fit of hysterics is that you know it’s absurd, and you laugh at it in your heart, and at the same time you’re sobbing. In our nervous age, we’re slaves to our nerves; they’re our masters and do whatever they like with us. In this respect, civilization is a dubious blessing...’’
Laevsky talked, and found it unpleasant that von Koren listened to him seriously and attentively, and looked at him attentively, without blinking, as if studying him; and he felt vexed with himself for being unable, despite all his dislike of von Koren, to drive the ingratiating smile from his face.
‘‘Though I must confess,’’ he went on, ‘‘there were more immediate causes of the fit, and rather substantial ones. My health has been badly shaken lately. Add to that the boredom, the constant lack of money...the lack of people and common interests . . . My situation’s worse than a governor’s.’’
The Complete Short Novels Page 22