And Pyotr Petrovich began to sob bitterly.
“Well, what d’you think?” he continued, striking his fist on the table and trying to frown, with the tears still running down his burning cheeks: “The girl gave herself up—she went and gave herself up . . .”
“The horses are ready, sir,” exclaimed the inspector solemnly, coming into the room.
We both stood up.
“And what became of Matrona?” I asked.
Karataev waved his hand.
A YEAR AFTER MY ENCOUNTER with Karataev I happened to go to Moscow. One day, before dinner, I dropped in to the coffee-house in Huntsman’s Row—that singular Moscow coffee-house. In the billiard-room, through clouds of smoke, loomed crimson faces, moustaches, tufts of hair, old-fashioned Hungarian jackets, and coats of the latest cut. Thin old men in modest frock-coats were reading the Russian papers. Servants were flashing past briskly with trays, stepping softly over the green carpet. Merchants were drinking tea with agonized intensity. Suddenly, from inside the billiard-room, came a man—somewhat dishevelled and not altogether steady on his legs. He put his hands in his pockets, let his head fall forward, and looked heedlessly around.
“Hey, hey! Pyotr Petrovich . . . How are you?”
Pyotr Petrovich practically threw himself on my neck and with a slight stagger dragged me into the little private room.
“Here,” he said, carefully seating me in an armchair, “here you’ll be comfortable. Waiter, beer! No, I mean champagne! Well, I must say I never, never expected . . . Been here long? Staying long? Why, heaven must have sent you, so to speak, I mean . . .”
“Yes, d’you remember . . .”
“Of course I do, of course I do,” he interrupted me hurriedly. “That old story . . . that old story . . .”
“Well, what are you doing here, my dear Pyotr Petrovich?”
“Just living, sir—as you may perhaps have observed. It’s a good life here, they’re a jolly lot. I’ve found peace here.”
He sighed and raised his eyes to heaven.
“Are you in the Government service?”
“No, not yet, but I hope to fix up something soon. What’s a job, anyway? . . . People, that’s the main thing. The people I’ve got to know here! . . .”
The boy came in with a bottle of champagne on a black tray.
“Here’s a good fellow, too . . . aren’t you a good fellow, Vasily? Your health!”
The boy stood, shook his head respectfully, smiled, and went out.
“Yes, they’re good people here,” continued Pyotr. “They’ve got feelings, they’ve got souls. . . . Would you like me to introduce you? Such splendid chaps . . . They’ll all be glad to know you. I’ll tell them . . . Bobrov’s dead, that’s the pity of it.”
“Who is Bobrov?”
“Sergei Bobrov. He was a splendid fellow; he took me under his wing when I was just an ignorant bumpkin from the steppes. Pantelei Gornostaev’s dead too. Everybody’s dead!”
“Have you been in Moscow all the time? Haven’t you been away to the country?”
“Country . . . my place in the country has been sold.”
“Sold?”
“By auction. . . . It’s a shame you didn’t buy it!”
“What are you going to live on, Pyotr Petrovich?”
“With God’s help, I won’t die of hunger! I may not have money, but I’ll have my friends. What’s money anyway? Dirt! Gold is just dirt!”
He screwed his eyes up, rummaged with his hand in his pocket, and offered me in his palm two pieces of fifteen copecks and one of ten.
“What is it? Just dirt!” The money went flying to the floor. “But, tell me, have you read Polezhaev?”
“Yes.”
“Have you seen Mochalov in Hamlet?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“You haven’t, you haven’t . . .” And Karataev’s face went pale, his eyes began roaming restlessly; he turned away; faint spasms passed across his lips. “Oh, Mochalov, Mochalov! To die, to sleep,” he said dully.
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep! . . .
“To sleep, to sleep!” he whispered several times.
“Tell me,” I began; but he continued fervently:
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delays,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin . . . Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remembered.
He dropped his head on the table. He began to stammer and drivel.
“A little month,” he pronounced with renewed strength:
A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she followed my poor father’s body,
Like Niobe, all tears:—why she, even she—
O God! a beast that wants discourse of reason
Would have mourn’d longer . . .
He lifted a glass of champagne to his lips but, without drinking, continued:
For Hecuba!
What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? . . .
Yet I . . . a dull and muddy-mettled rascal . . .
Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain? . . . gives me the lie in the throat?
’Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be.
But I am pigeon-liver’d and lack gall
To make oppression bitter . . .
Karataev dropped the glass and held his head in his hands. I had an idea that I understood him.
“Well, anyway,” he said at last. “When sorrow sleeps, wake it not. . . . Isn’t that right?”
He laughed. “Your health!”
“Are you staying on in Moscow?” I asked him.
“I shall die in Moscow.”
“Karataev!” came a voice from the next room. “Karataev, where are you? Come here, there’s a good fellow!”
“They’re calling me,” he said, rising heavily from his chair.
“Good-bye, come and see me if you can. I live at ——”
But on the following day unforeseen circumstances obliged me to leave Moscow and I never saw Pyotr Petrovich Karataev again.
The Rendezvous
I WAS SITTING IN A BIRCH-WOOD ONE AUTUMN, ABOUT THE middle of September. Ever since morning a fine drizzle had been falling, giving way now and again to warm sunshine: it was fluky weather. One moment the sky would be all overcast with puffy white clouds, at another it would suddenly clear in places for a moment, and, through the rift, the azure would appear, clear and smiling, like the glance of a brilliant eye. I sat and looked about me and listened. The leaves were whispering faintly over my head: you could have told the time of year from their whisper alone. It was not the gay, laughing shiver of spring, nor the soft murmur, the long discourse of summer, nor the cold, frightened rustling of late autumn, but a scarcely perceptible, drowsy converse. A little breeze was just stirring among the treetops. The interior of the wood, drenched with rain, kept changing its appearance as the sun shone out or went in behind the clouds: sometimes it was all ablaze, as if everything there was smiling: the slender boles of the scattered birches suddenly took on the fresh brilliance of white silk, the tiny leaves on the ground gleamed and blazed with purple and gold, and the handsome stems of the tall, curly bracken, already tinged with their autumn hue, the hue of overripe grapes, stood out luminously before me in an infinite, criss-crossed maze; then suddenly the whole scene took on a faint shade of blue: in an instant, the bright colors went out, the birches stood blankly white as new-fallen snow, not yet touched by the cold light of the winter sun; and furtively, slyly, the fi
nest of drizzles began to spray and whisper through the wood. The leaves of the birches were almost all of them still green, though of a marked pallor; only here and there stood a single young one, quite red or quite gold, and it was a sight to see how brightly it flared up when the sun’s rays suddenly found their way to it, slipping and dappling through the thick net of fine branches, all newly washed in sparkling rain. There was not a sound from the birds: they were all snuggled down and keeping quiet; just occasionally the laughing voice of the tit-mouse rang out like a tiny steel bell. Before coming to a halt in this birch-wood, my dog and I had passed through a tall spinney of poplars. I confess that I am not overfond of this tree—the poplar—with its pale lilac-colored trunk and the gray-green, metallic foliage which it lifts up as high as it can and throws out in a trembling fan into the air; I dislike the perpetual shaking of its untidy round leaves, fixed so awkwardly on their long stems. The poplar is good only on certain summer evenings when, standing out sharply from amidst the low brushwood, it faces straight into the glowing rays of the setting sun, and blazes and shines, suffused from root to summit with an even, yellowish purple—or on a clear windy day, when the whole tree ripples and murmurs under the blue sky, and every leaf is as if seized with a longing to break loose and fly off far away into the distance. But for the most part I am no lover of this tree, and so I didn’t pause for rest in the poplar-spinney, but went on to the birch-wood, curled myself up under a tree whose branches began close to the ground and so could give me shelter from the rain, and, after admiring the scene around me, fell into the unbroken and tranquil sleep which is known only to the hunter.
I cannot say for how long I slept, but, when I opened my eyes, the whole inside of the wood was filled with sunlight, and in all directions, through joyfully murmuring foliage, the sky appeared, bright blue and sparkling; the clouds had vanished, chased by a newly-risen breeze; the weather had cleared, and you could feel in the air that special dry freshness which, filling the heart with a sense of well-being, nearly always presages a calm bright evening after a day of rain. I was preparing to get up and try my luck again, when suddenly my eyes came to rest on a motionless human figure. I peered at it: it was a young peasant-girl. She was sitting twenty yards away from me, her head sunk in reflection, and both hands dropped on her knees; in one hand, which was half-open, a thick bunch of wild flowers lay, and every time she breathed it slipped quietly farther down on to her check skirt. A clean white blouse, buttoned at the front and wrists, lay in short, soft folds around her body; two rows of thick yellow beads fell from her neck on to her breast. She was quite pretty. Dense fair hair, of a fine ash color, emerged in two carefully-brushed half-circles from beneath a narrow head-band, worn right down on her forehead, which was white as ivory; the rest of her face was faintly sunburnt, with that golden tan which comes only to a fine skin. I couldn’t see her eyes—she did not raise them; but I saw clearly her fine, arched brows, her long eyelashes: they were wet, and, on one of her cheeks, the sun caught the drying streak of a tear that had stopped just at the side of her palish lips. It was a charming head; even a somewhat thick round nose didn’t spoil it. I liked especially the expression of her face. It was so simple and gentle, so sad, so full of a childlike bewilderment in the presence of a private sorrow. Evidently she was waiting for someone; there was a faint crackling in the wood; she lifted her head at once and looked around; in the translucent shadow I could see the swift flash of her eyes, large, bright, and timid, like a doe’s. For a few moments she listened, without moving her wide-open eyes from the place whence the faint sound had come, sighed, quietly turned her head, bent down even lower and began slowly to arrange her flowers. Her eyelids reddened, her lips trembled with grief, and a fresh tear rolled out from beneath her thick lashes, halting and sparkling brilliantly on her cheek. Quite a while passed like this. The poor girl never stirred—only now and then a cheerless gesture of her hands—and listened and listened . . . Again there was a noise in the wood—she started. The noise continued, grew clearer, approached, and at last swift decisive steps could be heard. She sat up and seemed to be afraid; her attentive gaze wavered, kindled with anticipation. Soon a man’s figure appeared through the undergrowth. She stared, blushed suddenly, burst into a joyous, blissful smile, made as if to get up, and at once sank back again, turned pale, became embarrassed, and only raised her trembling, almost imploring look to the new arrival when he had already come to a halt beside her.
I looked at him curiously from my hiding-place. I confess that the impression he made on me was disagreeable. By all appearances he must have been the spoiled valet of a rich young master. His clothes displayed a pretension to good taste and a dandyish negligence; he wore a short, bronze-colored overcoat, probably off his master’s shoulders, buttoned right up, a pink cravat with lilac ends, and a black gold-laced velvet cap rammed right down on his forehead. The rounded collar of his white shirt pushed up mercilessly against his ears and cut into his cheeks, and starched cuffs covered his whole hand down to his curving red fingers, which were adorned with silver and gold rings with forget-me-nots in turquoise. His face, ruddy, fresh, cheeky, was one of those which, so far as my observation goes, exasperate men and, unfortunately, very often appeal to women. He was clearly trying to give his coarse features an expression of contempt and boredom; he kept narrowing his milky-gray eyes, which were anyway tiny enough, making wry faces, dropping the corners of his lips, yawning constrainedly and with a careless, but not quite easy nonchalance, adjusting his reddish, nattily-brushed temples, or fingering the yellow hairs which bristled from his thick upper lip—in a word, he was intolerably affected. His affectation began from the moment he caught sight of the young peasant-girl waiting for him; he came up to her slowly, with a lounging gait, halted, worked his shoulders, plunged both hands into the pockets of his overcoat, and, hardly bestowing on the poor girl so much as a cursory, indifferent glance, sank down on the grass.
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