Leo Tolstoy
Page 28
‘Eight thousand. But three are no good, it’s unlikely he’ll pay.’
‘Well, then you can lose on me,’ said Vronsky, laughing. (Yashvin had bet a large sum on Vronsky.)
‘There’s no way I can lose.’
‘Makhotin’s the only danger.’
And the conversation turned to the expectations of the day’s race, which was all Vronsky was able to think about.
‘Let’s go, I’m finished,’ said Vronsky and, getting up, he went to the door. Yashvin also got up, straightening his enormous legs and long back.
‘It’s too early for me to dine, but I could use a drink. I’ll come at once. Hey, wine!’ he cried in his deep voice, famous for commanding, which made the windowpanes tremble. ‘No, never mind,’ he shouted again at once. ‘Since you’re going home, I’ll come with you.’
And he went with Vronsky.
XX
Vronsky stood in the spacious and clean Finnish cottage, which was divided in two. Petritsky shared quarters with him in camp as well. Petritsky was asleep when Vronsky and Yashvin entered the cottage.
‘Get up, you’ve slept enough,’ said Yashvin, going behind the partition and giving the dishevelled Petritsky, whose nose was buried in the pillow, a shove on the shoulder.
Petritsky suddenly jumped to his knees and looked around.
‘Your brother was here,’ he said to Vronsky. ‘Woke me up, devil take him, said he’d come back.’ And, drawing up his blanket, he threw himself back on to the pillow. ‘Leave me alone, Yashvin,’ he said, angry at Yashvin, who was pulling the blanket off him. ‘Leave me alone!’ He turned over and opened his eyes. ‘You’d better tell me what to drink –there’s such a vile taste in my mouth that…’
‘Vodka’s best of all,’ boomed Yashvin. ‘Tereshchenko! Vodka for the master, and pickles,’ he shouted, obviously fond of hearing his own voice.
‘Vodka, you think? Eh?’ Petritsky asked, wincing and rubbing his eyes. ‘And will you drink? Together, that’s how to drink! Vronsky, will you drink?’ Petritsky said, getting up and wrapping himself under the arms in a tiger rug.
He went through the door in the partition, raised his arms and sang in French:’ "There was a king in Thu–u–ule."[27] Vronsky, will you drink?’
‘Get out,’ said Vronsky, who was putting on the jacket his footman held for him.
‘Where are you off to?’ Yashvin asked him. ‘Here’s the troika,’ he added, seeing the carriage pull up.
‘To the stables, and I also have to see Bryansky about the horses,’ said Vronsky.
Vronsky had indeed promised to go to Bryansky’s, nearly seven miles from Peterhof,[28] and bring him money for the horses; he hoped he would have time to get there as well. But his comrades understood at once that he was not going only there.
Petritsky, continuing to sing, winked and puffed his lips, as if to say: ‘We know which Bryansky that is.’
‘See that you’re not late!’ Yashvin merely said and, to change the subject, asked, ‘So my roan serves you well?’ looking out of the window at the shaft horse he had sold him.
‘Wait,’ Petritsky shouted to Vronsky, who was already going out. ‘Your brother left a letter for you and a note. Hold on, where are they?’
Vronsky stopped.
‘Well, where are they?’
‘Where are they? That’s the question!’ Petritsky said solemnly, gesturing upwards from his nose with his index finger.
‘Speak up, this is stupid!’ Vronsky said, smiling.
‘I haven’t made a fire. They must be here somewhere.’
‘Well, enough babbling! Where’s the letter?’
‘No, really, I forget. Or did I dream it? Hold on, hold on! What’s the use of getting angry? If you’d drunk four bottles each, like I did last night, you’d forget where you flopped down. Hold on, I’ll remember in a second!’
Petritsky went behind the partition and lay down on his bed.
‘Wait! I was lying like this, he was standing like that. Yes, yes, yes, yes… Here it is!’ And Petritsky pulled the letter from under the mattress, where he had hidden it.
Vronsky took the letter and his brother’s note. It was just what he expected – a letter from his mother with reproaches for not coming, and a note from his brother saying that they had to have a talk. Vronsky knew it was about the same thing. ‘What business is it of theirs!’ he thought and, crumpling the letters, tucked them between the buttons of his frock coat, to read attentively on his way. In the front hall of the cottage he met two officers: one theirs, and the other from another regiment.
Vronsky’s quarters were always a den for all the officers.
‘Where are you off to?’
‘I must go to Peterhof.’
‘And has the horse come from Tsarskoe?’
‘She has, but I haven’t seen her yet.’
‘They say Makhotin’s Gladiator has gone lame.’
‘Nonsense! Only how are you going to race in this mud?’ said the other.
‘Here come my saviours!’ cried Petritsky, seeing the men come in. His orderly was standing in front of him holding a tray with vodka and pickles. ‘Yashvin here tells me to drink so as to refresh myself.’
‘Well, you really gave it to us last evening,’ said one of the newcomers. ‘Wouldn’t let us sleep all night.’
‘No, but how we finished!’ Petritsky went on. ‘Volkov got up on the roof and said he was feeling sad. I said: "Give us music, a funeral march!" He fell asleep on the roof to the funeral march.’
‘Drink, drink the vodka without fail, and then seltzer water with a lot of lemon,’ Yashvin said, standing over Petritsky like a mother making a child take its medicine, ‘and after that a bit of champagne – say, one little bottle.’ ‘Now that’s clever. Wait, Vronsky, let’s have a drink.’
‘No, good–bye, gentlemen, today I don’t drink.’
‘Why, so as not to gain weight? Well, then we’ll drink alone. Bring on the seltzer water and lemon.’
‘Vronsky!’ someone shouted when he was already in the front hall.
‘What?’
‘You should get your hair cut, it’s too heavy, especially on the bald spot.’
Vronsky was indeed beginning to lose his hair prematurely on top. He laughed merrily, showing his solid row of teeth, pulled his peaked cap over his bald spot, went out and got into the carriage.
‘To the stable!’ he said and took out the letters to read them, then changed his mind, so as not to get distracted before examining the horse. ‘Later! …’
XXI
The temporary stable, a shed of wooden planks, had been built just next to the racetrack, and his horse was supposed to have been brought there yesterday. He had not seen her yet. For the last two days he had not ridden her himself, but had entrusted her to the trainer, and had no idea what condition his horse had arrived in or was in now. As soon as he got out of the carriage, his groom, known as ‘boy’, having recognized his carriage from a distance, called the trainer. The dry Englishman in high boots and a short jacket, with only a tuft of beard left under his chin, came out to meet him with the awkward gait of a jockey, spreading his elbows wide and swaying.
‘Well, how’s Frou–Frou?’ Vronsky asked in English.
‘All right, sir,’ the Englishman’s voice said somewhere inside his throat. ‘Better not go in,’ he added, raising his hat. ‘I’ve put a muzzle on her, and the horse is agitated. Better not go in, it upsets the horse.’
‘No, I’d rather go in. I want to have a look at her.’
‘Come along,’ the frowning Englishman said, as before, without opening his mouth and, swinging his elbows, he went ahead with his loose gait.
They entered the little yard in front of the shed. The dashing, smartly dressed lad on duty, in a clean jacket, with a broom in his hand, met them as they came in and followed after them. In the shed five horses stood in stalls, and Vronsky knew that his main rival, Makhotin’s sixteen–hand chestnut, Gladiator, was to have been b
rought that day and should be standing there. Even more than his own horse, Vronsky wanted to have a look at Gladiator, whom he had never seen; but Vronsky knew that by the rules of horse–fanciers’ etiquette, he not only should not see him, but could not even decently ask questions about him. As he went down the corridor, the lad opened the door to the second stall on the left, and Vronsky saw a big chestnut horse with white legs. He knew it was Gladiator, but, with the feeling of a man turning away from a temptingly open letter, he turned away and went to Frou–Frou’s stall.
‘Here’s the horse that belongs to Mak … Mak … I never can say the name,’ the Englishman said over his shoulder, pointing with his dirty–nailed thumb to Gladiator’s stall.
‘Makhotin? Yes, that’s my one serious rival,’ said Vronsky.
‘If you were riding him,’ said the Englishman, ‘I’d place my bet on you.’
‘He’s stronger, Frou–Frou’s more high–strung,’ said Vronsky, smiling at the compliment to his riding.
‘In a steeplechase everything depends on riding and pluck,’ said the Englishman.
Vronsky not only felt that he had enough ‘pluck’ – that is, energy and boldness – but, what was much more important, he was firmly convinced that no one in the world could have more of this ‘pluck’ than he had.
‘And you’re sure there was no need for a longer work–out?’
‘No need,’ the Englishman replied. ‘Please don’t talk loudly. The horse is excited,’ he added, nodding towards the closed stall they were standing in front of, from which they heard a stirring of hoofs on straw.
He opened the door, and Vronsky went into the stall, faintly lit by one little window. In the stall stood a dark bay horse, shifting her feet on the fresh straw. Looking around the half–lit stall, Vronsky again inadvertently took in at a glance all the qualities of his beloved horse. Frou–Frou was of average height and not irreproachable. She was narrow–boned all over; though her breast–bone protruded sharply, her chest was narrow. Her rump drooped slightly, and her front legs, and more especially her hind legs, were noticeably bowed inwards. The muscles of her hind and front legs were not particularly big; on the other hand, the horse was of unusually wide girth, which was especially striking now, with her trained shape and lean belly. Her leg bones below the knee seemed no thicker than a finger, seen from the front, but were unusually wide seen from the side. Except for her ribs, she looked as if she was all squeezed from the sides and drawn out in depth. But she possessed in the highest degree a quality that made one forget all shortcomings; this quality was blood, that blood which tells, as the English say. Her muscles, standing out sharply under the web of veins stretched through the thin, mobile and satin–smooth skin, seemed strong as bones. Her lean head, with prominent, shining, merry eyes, widened at the nose into flared nostrils with bloodshot inner membranes. In her whole figure and especially in her head there was a distinctly energetic and at the same time tender expression. She was one of those animals who, it seems, do not talk only because the mechanism of their mouths does not permit it.
To Vronsky at least it seemed that she understood everything he was feeling now as he looked at her.
As soon as he came in, she drew a deep breath and, rolling back her prominent eye so that the white was shot with blood, looked at the people coming in from the opposite side, tossing her muzzle and shifting lithely from one foot to the other.
‘Well, there you see how excited she is,’ said the Englishman.
‘Oh, you sweetheart!’ said Vronsky, approaching the horse and coaxing her.
But the closer he came, the more excited she grew. Only when he came to her head did she suddenly quiet down, her muscles quivering under her thin, tender skin. Vronsky stroked her firm neck, straightened a strand of her mane that had fallen on the wrong side of her sharp withers, and put his face to her nostrils, taut and thin as a bat’s wing. She noisily breathed in and out with her strained nostrils, gave a start, lay her sharp ear back, and stretched out her firm black lip to Vronsky, as if she wanted to nibble his sleeve. Then, remembering the muzzle, she tossed it and again began shifting from one sculpted leg to the other.
‘Calm down, sweetheart, calm down!’ he said, patting her on the rump again; and with a joyful awareness that the horse was in the best condition, he left the stall.
The horse’s excitement had communicated itself to Vronsky; he felt the blood rushing to his heart and, like the horse, he wanted to move, to bite; it was both terrifying and joyful.
‘Well, I’m relying on you,’ he said to the Englishman, ‘six–thirty, at the appointed place.’ ‘Everything’s in order,’ the Englishman said. ‘And where are you going, my lord?’ he asked, unexpectedly using this title ‘my lord’, which he hardly ever used.
Vronsky raised his head in surprise and looked as he knew how to look, not into the Englishman’s eyes but at his forehead, surprised by the boldness of the question. But, realizing that the Englishman, in putting this question, was looking at him as a jockey, not as an employer, he answered him:
‘I must go to Briansky’s, I’ll be back in an hour.’
‘How many times have I been asked that question today!’ he said to himself and blushed, something that rarely happened to him. The Englishman looked at him intently and, as if he knew where he was going, added:
‘The first thing is to be calm before you ride. Don’t be out of sorts or upset by anything.’
‘All right,’ Vronsky, smiling, replied in English and, jumping into his carriage, gave orders to drive to Peterhof.
He had driven only a few paces when the storm clouds that had been threatening rain since morning drew over and there was a downpour.
‘That’s bad!’ Vronsky thought, putting the top up. ‘It was muddy to begin with, but now it will turn into a real swamp.’ Sitting in the solitude of the closed carriage, he took out his mother’s letter and his brother’s note and read them.
Yes, it was all the same thing over and over. His mother, his brother, everybody found it necessary to interfere in the affairs of his heart. This interference aroused his spite – a feeling he rarely experienced. ‘What business is it of theirs? Why does everybody consider it his duty to take care of me? And why do they pester me? Because they see that this is something they can’t understand. If it was an ordinary, banal, society liaison, they’d leave me in peace. They feel that this is something else, that this is not a game, this woman is dearer to me than life. That’s what they don’t understand, and it vexes them. Whatever our fate is or will be, we have made it, and we don’t complain about it,’ he said, uniting himself and Anna in the word ‘we’. ‘No, they have to teach us how to live. They’ve got no idea what happiness is, they don’t know that without this love there is no happiness or unhappiness for us – there is no life,’ he thought.
He was angry with everybody for their interference precisely because in his soul he felt that they, all of them, were right. He felt that the love which joined him to Anna was not a momentary passion that would go away, as society liaisons do, leaving no traces in the life of either one of them except some pleasant or unpleasant memories. He felt all the painfulness of his position and of hers, how difficult it was, exposed as they were to the eyes of all society, to conceal their love, to lie and deceive; and to lie, and deceive, and scheme, and constantly think of others, while the passion that joined them was so strong that they both forgot everything but their love.
He vividly remembered all those oft–repeated occasions of the necessity for lying and deceit, which were so contrary to his nature; he remembered especially vividly the feeling of shame he had noticed in her more than once at this necessity for deceit and lying. And he experienced a strange feeling that had sometimes come over him since his liaison with Anna. This was a feeling of loathing for something – whether for Alexei Alexandrovich, or for himself, or for the whole world, he did not quite know. But he always drove this strange feeling away. And now, rousing himself, he continued his tra
in of thought.