‘‘Why do you speak to me like that?’’ Zinaida Fyodorovna said, stepping back as if in horror. ‘‘Why? Come to your senses, Georges, for God’s sake!’’
Her voice trembled and broke off; she apparently wanted to hold back her tears, but suddenly burst into sobs.
‘‘Georges, my dear, I’m perishing!’’ she said in French, quickly sinking down before Orlov and resting her head on his knees. ‘‘I’m tormented, weary, I can’t stand it anymore, I can’t... In my childhood, a hateful, depraved stepmother, then my husband, and now you . . . you . . . You respond to my mad love with irony and coldness . . . And this dreadful, insolent maid!’’ she went on, sobbing. ‘‘Yes, yes, I see: I’m not a wife to you, not a friend, but a woman you do not respect because she has become your mistress . . . I’ll kill myself !’’
I did not expect these words and this weeping to make such a strong impression on Orlov. He blushed, shifted restlessly in his chair, and in place of irony a dull, boyish fear showed on his face.
‘‘My dear, you haven’t understood me, I swear to you,’’ he murmured in perplexity, touching her on the hair and shoulders. ‘‘Forgive me, I beg you. I was wrong and... I hate myself.’’
‘‘I offend you with my complaints and whining . . . You’re an honest, magnanimous... rare person, I’m aware of that every moment, but all these days I’ve suffered anguish . . .’’
Zinaida Fyodorovna impulsively embraced Orlov and kissed his cheek.
‘‘Only don’t cry, please,’’ he said.
‘‘No, no . . . I’ve cried my fill, and I feel better.’’
‘‘As for the maid, tomorrow she will not be here,’’ he said, still shifting restlessly in his chair.
‘‘No, she must stay, Georges! Do you hear? I’m no longer afraid of her . . . One must be above such pettiness and not think stupid things. You’re right! You’re a rare . . . an extraordinary person!’’
She soon stopped crying. With still-undried tears on her lashes, sitting on Orlov’s knees, in a low voice she told him something touching, like her memories of childhood and youth, and stroked his face with her hand, kissed and studied attentively his hands with their rings and the seals on his watch chain. She got carried away by her story, and by the nearness of the person she loved, and, probably because her recent tears had purified and refreshed her soul, her voice sounded remarkably pure and sincere. And Orlov played with her chestnut hair and kissed her hands, touching them noiselessly with his lips.
Then they had tea in the study, and Zinaida Fyodorovna read some letters aloud. They went to bed past midnight.
That night I had a bad pain in my side, and right up till morning was unable to get warm and fall asleep. I heard Orlov go from the bedroom to his study. After sitting there for about an hour, he rang. Pain and fatigue made me forget all social rules and decencies, and I went to the study barefoot and in nothing but my underwear. Orlov, in his dressing gown and nightcap, was standing in the doorway waiting for me.
‘‘You should arrive dressed when you’re rung for,’’ he said sternly. ‘‘Bring more candles.’’
I was about to apologize but suddenly had a bad fit of coughing and held on to the door frame with one hand so as not to fall.
‘‘Are you ill, sir?’’ asked Orlov.
I think that, in all the time of our acquaintance, this was the first time he had addressed me like that. God knows why. Probably, in my underwear and with my face distorted by coughing, I played my part badly and hardly resembled a servant.
‘‘If you’re sick, why do you work?’’ he said.
‘‘So as not to starve,’’ I replied.
‘‘How vile this all really is!’’ he said quietly, going to his desk.
While I, having thrown on my frock coat, set up and lit new candles, he sat by the desk and, with his legs stretched out on the armchair, cut the pages of a book.
I left him immersed in his reading, and the book no longer dropped from his hands, as in the evening.
VII
NOW, AS I WRITE these lines, my hand is restrained by a fear nurtured in me since childhood—of appearing sentimental and ridiculous; when I would like to caress and speak tenderly, I’m unable to be sincere. It is precisely owing to this fear and lack of habit that I am quite unable to express with complete clarity what then happened in my soul.
I was not in love with Zinaida Fyodorovna, but the ordinary human feeling I nursed for her was much younger, fresher, and more joyful than Orlov’s love.
In the mornings, working with the shoe brush or the broom, I waited with bated breath till I would at last hear her voice and footsteps. To stand and watch her as she had her coffee and then her breakfast, to help her into her fur coat in the front hall and put galoshes on her little feet while she leaned on my shoulder, then to wait till the porter rang from downstairs, to meet her at the door, rosy, chilled, powdered with snow, to hear her broken exclamations about the cold or the cabby—if you only knew how important it was for me! I would have liked to fall in love, to have my own family, would have liked my future wife to have exactly such a face, such a voice. I dreamed over dinner, and when I was sent out on some errand, and at night when I didn’t sleep. Orlov squeamishly thrust aside female rags, children, cooking, copper pans, and I picked it all up and carefully cherished it in my reveries, loved it, asked fate for it, and dreamed of a wife, a nursery, a garden path, a little house...
I knew that, if I fell in love with her, I would not dare to count on such a miracle as requital, but this consideration did not trouble me. In my modest, quiet feeling, which resembled ordinary attachment, there was neither jealousy of Orlov nor even envy, since I realized that, for a crippled man like me, personal happiness was possible only in dreams.
When Zinaida Fyodorovna, waiting for her Georges at night, gazed fixedly into a book without turning the pages, or when she gave a start and grew pale because Polya was crossing the room, I suffered with her, and it would occur to me to lance this painful abscess quickly, to make it so that she should quickly learn all that was said here on Thursdays over supper, but—how to do it? More and more often it happened that I saw tears. During the first weeks, she laughed and sang her little song, even when Orlov was not at home, but after another month, there was a dreary silence in our apartment, broken only on Thursdays.
She flattered Orlov, and to obtain an insincere smile or a kiss from him, she went on her knees before him, fawning like a little dog. Going past a mirror, even when her heart was very heavy, she could not help glancing at herself and straightening her hair. It seemed strange to me that she continued to be interested in clothes and went into raptures over her purchases. It somehow didn’t go with her genuine sorrow. She observed fashion and had costly dresses made. For what and for whom? I especially remember one new dress that cost four hundred roubles. To pay four hundred roubles for a superfluous, unnecessary dress, while our working women do hard labor at twenty kopecks a day without board, and Venetian and Brussels lace-makers are paid only half a franc a day with the understanding that they will make up the rest by debauchery! And it was strange to me that Zinaida Fyodorovna was not aware of it, it was vexing to me. But she had only to leave the house and I forgave everything, explained everything, and waited for the porter downstairs to ring for me.
She behaved towards me as towards a servant, a lower being. One can pet a dog and at the same time not notice it. I was given orders, asked questions, but my presence was not noticed. The masters considered it indecent to talk with me more than was proper; if, while serving supper, I had mixed into the conversation or laughed, they would probably have considered me mad and dismissed me. But all the same, Zinaida Fyodorovna was benevolent towards me. When she sent me somewhere, or explained how to handle a new lamp or something of that sort, her face was extraordinarily bright, kind, and affable, and her eyes looked directly into my face. Each time it happened, it seemed to me that she remembered gratefully how I had carried letters for her to Znamenska
ya. When she rang, Polya, who considered me her favorite and hated me for it, would say with a caustic smile:
‘‘Go, she’s calling you.’’
Zinaida Fyodorovna behaved towards me as towards a lower being and did not suspect that, if anyone in the house was humiliated, it was she alone. She didn’t know that I, a servant, suffered for her and asked myself twenty times a day what the future held for her and how it would all end. Things were becoming noticeably worse every day. After that evening when they talked about his work, Orlov, who disliked tears, obviously began to fear and avoid conversation; when Zinaida Fyodorovna started arguing or pleading, or was about to weep, he would find some plausible excuse to go to his study or leave the house altogether. He spent the night at home more and more rarely, and dined more rarely still; on Thursdays he himself asked his friends to take him away somewhere. Zinaida Fyodorovna still dreamed of her own kitchen, of a new apartment and a trip abroad, but her dreams remained dreams. Dinner was brought from a restaurant, Orlov asked that the apartment question not be raised till they came back from abroad, and about traveling he said that they could not go before he had grown his hair long, because dragging oneself from hotel to hotel and serving the idea was impossible without long hair.
To crown it all, in Orlov’s absence, Kukushkin began to call on us in the evenings. There was nothing special in his behavior, but I was still quite unable to forget that conversation in which he said he would win Zinaida Fyodorovna away from Orlov. He was offered tea and red wine, and he tittered and, wishing to say something pleasant, maintained that civil marriage was higher than church marriage in all respects, and that indeed all decent people should now come to Zinaida Fyodorovna and bow down at her feet.
VIII
CHRISTMASTIME WENT BY boringly, in vague expectation of something bad. On New Year’s Eve, over morning coffee, Orlov unexpectedly announced that his superiors were sending him with special powers to a senator who was inspecting some province.
‘‘I don’t want to go, but I can’t think up an excuse!’’ he said vexedly. ‘‘I’ll have to go, there’s no help for it.’’
At this news, Zinaida Fyodorovna’s eyes instantly turned red.
‘‘For how long?’’ she asked.
‘‘Five days or so.’’
‘‘I’ll confess I’m glad you’re going,’’ she said after some thought. ‘‘You’ll be diverted. You’ll fall in love with someone on the way and tell me afterwards.’’
She tried at every opportunity to give Orlov to understand that she was not hampering him in the least and that he could dispose of himself in any way he liked, and this simple, transparent policy deceived no one and only reminded Orlov once again that he was not free.
‘‘I’ll leave tonight,’’ he said and began reading the newspapers.
Zinaida Fyodorovna was going to accompany him to the train, but he talked her out of it, saying that he was not going to America, and it was not for five years but only five days or even less.
The leave-taking took place after seven o’clock. He embraced her with one arm and kissed her forehead and lips.
‘‘Be a good girl, and don’t mope without me,’’ he said in a tender, heartfelt tone, which moved me, too. ‘‘May the Creator protect you.’’
She peered greedily into his face, so that his dear features would be firmly engraved in her memory, then gracefully put her arms around his neck and laid her head on his chest.
‘‘Forgive me our misunderstandings,’’ she said in French. ‘‘A husband and wife can’t help quarreling if they love each other, and I love you madly. Don’t forget . . . Send me lots of telegrams full of details.’’
Orlov kissed her once more and, without saying a word, left in confusion. When the lock clicked behind the door, he stopped hesitantly in the middle of the stairs and looked up. It seemed to me that if a single sound had come from upstairs at that moment, he would have gone back. But it was quiet. He straightened his overcoat and began irresolutely to go down.
The cabs had been waiting by the front porch for a long time. Orlov got into one, and I with two suitcases got into the other. It was freezing cold, and bonfires sent up smoke at the intersections. The chill wind from fast driving nipped my face and hands, my breath was taken away, and closing my eyes, I thought: What a magnificent woman she is! How she loves! Nowadays people even collect useless things in courtyards and sell them for charitable purposes, even broken glass is considered good wares, but such a precious, such a rare thing as the love of a graceful, young, intelligent, and decent woman goes completely for naught. One oldtime sociologist looked upon every bad passion as a force which, given the knowhow, could be turned to the good, but with us, even a noble, beautiful passion is born and then dies, powerless, not turned anywhere, misunderstood or trivialized. Why is that?
The cabs stopped unexpectedly. I opened my eyes and saw that we were standing on Sergievskaya Street, by the big house where Pekarsky lived. Orlov got out of the sledge and disappeared through the doorway. About five minutes later, Pekarsky’s servant appeared in the doorway without his hat and shouted to me, angry at the cold.
‘‘Are you deaf or what? Dismiss the cabs and go upstairs. You’re being called!’’
Understanding nothing, I went up to the second floor. I had been at Pekarsky’s apartment before; that is, I had stood in the front hall and looked into the drawing room, and each time, after the wet, gloomy street, the gleaming of its picture frames, bronze, and costly furniture had struck me. Now, amidst this gleaming, I saw Gruzin, Kukushkin, and a little later, Orlov.
‘‘It’s like this, Stepan,’’ he said, coming up to me. ‘‘I’ll be living here till Friday or Saturday. If there are any letters or telegrams, bring them here each day. At home, of course, you’ll say I left and asked you to convey my greetings. Go with God.’’
When I returned home, Zinaida Fyodorovna was lying on the sofa in the drawing room and eating a pear. Only one candle was burning, stuck in a candelabra.
‘‘You weren’t late for the train?’’ asked Zinaida Fyodorovna.
‘‘Not at all. The master sends his greetings.’’
I went to my room in the servants’ quarters and also lay down. There was nothing to do, and I didn’t want to read. I was not surprised or indignant but simply strained my mind to understand why this deception was necessary. Only adolescents deceive their mistresses that way. Could it be that he, a man who had read and reflected so much, was unable to think up anything more intelligent? I confess, I did not have a bad opinion of his mind. I thought that if he had found it necessary to deceive his minister or some other powerful person, he would have put a lot of energy and art into it, while here, to deceive a woman, he obviously seized upon the first thing that came into his head; if the deception works—good; if not—it was no great disaster, he could lie as simply and quickly a second time without racking his brain.
At midnight, when they began moving chairs and shouting ‘‘Hurrah!’’ on the floor above us, celebrating the New Year, Zinaida Fyodorovna rang for me from the room next to the study. Sluggish from lying down for so long, she sat at the table writing something on a scrap of paper.
‘‘I must send a telegram,’’ she said and smiled. ‘‘Drive to the station quickly and ask them to send it after him.’’
Going outside then, I read on the scrap: ‘‘Happy New Year, and best wishes. Wire soon, miss you terribly. A whole eternity has gone by. Pity I can’t wire you a thousand kisses and my heart itself. Be cheerful, my joy. Zina.’’
I sent the telegram and gave her the receipt the next morning.
IX
WORST OF ALL was that Orlov unthinkingly initiated Polya into the secret of his deception as well, telling her to bring his shirts to Sergievskaya. After that she looked at Zinaida Fyodorovna with gloating and with a hatred that I found unfathomable, and never stopped snorting with satisfaction in her room and in the front hall.
‘‘She’s overstayed her time here, e
nough’s enough!’’ she said with delight. ‘‘She ought to understand it herself . . .’’
She could already smell that Zinaida Fyodorovna would not be with us much longer, and so as not to miss the moment, she pilfered whatever caught her eye—flacons, tortoiseshell pins, kerchiefs, shoes. On the second day of the new year, Zinaida Fyodorovna summoned me to her room and told me in a low voice that her black dress had disappeared. And afterwards she walked through all the rooms, pale, with a frightened and indignant face, talking to herself:
‘‘How about that? No, how about that? What unheard-of boldness!’’
At dinner she wanted to ladle soup for herself, but she couldn’t—her hands were trembling. Her lips were trembling, too. She kept glancing helplessly at the soup and the pirozhki, waiting for the trembling to calm down, and suddenly couldn’t help herself and looked at Polya.
‘‘You may go, Polya,’’ she said. ‘‘Stepan will do by himself.’’
‘‘No matter, I’ll stay, ma’am,’’ Polya replied.
‘‘There’s no need for you to stay. Leave here altogether... altogether!’’ Zinaida Fyodorovna went on, getting up in great agitation. ‘‘You may find yourself another place. Leave at once!’’
‘‘I can’t leave without my master’s orders. He hired me. It will be as he orders.’’
‘‘I’m also ordering you! I’m the mistress here!’’ said Zinaida Fyodorovna, and she turned all red.
‘‘Maybe you’re the mistress, but only the master can dismiss me. He hired me.’’
‘‘Don’t you dare stay here another moment!’’ cried Zinaida Fyodorovna, and she banged her knife on her plate. ‘‘You’re a thief! Do you hear?’’
The Complete Short Novels Page 30