Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov (Illustrated) (468 page)

‘For what reason?’

‘My own stupidity... Not only children are stupid... There are also fools at fifty. Don’t ask the cause.’

The Count re-entered the room and put a stop to his effusions.

‘A most excellent liqueur,’ he said, placing a pot-bellied bottle with the seal of the Benedictine monks on the table instead of the ‘remarkable plans’. ‘When I passed through Moscow I got it at Depré’s. Have a glass, Sergey?’

‘I thought you had gone to fetch the plans,’ I said.

‘I? What plans? Oh, yes! But, brother, the devil himself couldn’t find anything in my portmanteaux... I rummaged and rummaged and gave it up as a bad job... The liqueur is very nice. Won’t you have some, Serezha?’

Urbenin remained a little longer, then he took leave and went away. When he left we began to drink claret. This wine quite finished me. I became intoxicated in the way I had wished while riding to the Count’s. I became very bold, active and unusually gay. I wanted to do some extraordinary deed, something ludicrous, something that would astonish people... In such moments I thought I could swim across the lake, unravel the most entangled case, conquer any woman... The world and its life made me enthusiastic; I loved it, but at the same time I wanted to pick a quarrel with somebody, to consume him with venomous jests and ridicule... It was necessary to scoff at the comical black-browed Pole and the Count, to attack them with biting sarcasm, to turn them to dust.

‘Why are you silent?’ I began again. ‘Speak! I am listening to you! Ha-ha! I am awfully fond of hearing people with serious, sedate faces talk childish drivel! It is such mockery, such mockery of the brains of man! The face does not correspond to the brains! In order not to lie, you ought to have the faces of idiots, and you have the countenances of Greek sages!’

I had not finished... My tongue was entangled by the thought that I was talking to people who were nullities, who were unworthy of even half a word! I required a hall filled with people, brilliant women, thousands of lights... I rose, took my glass and began walking about the rooms. When we indulge in debauchery, we do not limit ourselves to space. We do not restrict ourselves only to the dining-room, but take the whole house and sometimes even the whole estate.

I chose a Turkish divan in the ‘mosaic hall’, lay down on it and gave myself up to the power of my fantasy and to castles in the air. Drunken thoughts, one more grandiose, more limitless than the other, took possession of my young brain. A new world arose before me, full of stupefying delights and indescribable beauty.

It only remained for me to talk in rhyme and to see visions.

The Count came to me and sat down on a corner of the divan... He wanted to say something to me. I had begun to read in his eyes the desire to communicate something special to me shortly after the five glasses of vodka described above. I knew of what he wanted to speak.

‘What a lot I have drunk today!’ he said to me. ‘This is more harmful to me than any sort of poison... But today it is for the last time... Upon my honour, the very last time... I have strength of will...’

‘All right, all right...’

‘For the last... Serezha, my dear friend, for the last time... Shouldn’t we send a telegram to town for the last time?’

‘Why not? Send it...’

‘Let’s have one last spree in the proper way... Well, get up and write it.’

The Count himself did not know how to write telegrams. They always came out too long and insufficient with him. I rose and wrote:

S — Restaurant London. Karpov, manager of the chorus.

Leave everything and come instantly by the two o’clock train - The Count.

‘It is now a quarter to eleven,’ the Count said. ‘The man will take three-quarters of an hour to ride to the station, maximum an hour... Karpov will receive the telegram before one... They should have time to catch the train... If they don’t catch it, they can come by the goods train. Yes!’

CHAPTER VI

The telegram was dispatched with one-eyed Kuz’ma. Il’ya was ordered to send carriages to the station in about an hour. In order to kill time, I began leisurely to light the lamps and candles in all the rooms, then I opened the piano and passed my fingers over the keys.

After that, I remember, I lay down on the same divan and thought of nothing, only waving away with my hand the Count, who came and pestered me with his chatter. I was in a state of drowsiness, half-asleep, conscious only of the brilliant light of the lamps and feeling in a gay and quiet mood... The image of the girl in red, with her head bent towards her shoulder, and her eyes filled with horror at the thought of that dramatic death, stood before me and quietly shook its little finger at me... The image of another girl, with a pale, proud face, in a black dress, flitted past. She looked at me half-entreatingly, half-reproachfully.

Later on I heard noise, laughter, running about... Deep, dark eyes obscured the light. I saw their brilliancy, their laughter... A joyful smile played about the luscious lips... That was how my gipsy Tina smiled.

‘Is it you?’ her voice asked. ‘You’re asleep? Get up, darling... How long it is since I saw you last!’

I silently pressed her hand and drew her towards me...

‘Let us go inside... Everybody has come...’

‘Stay! I’m all right here, Tina...’

‘But... there’s too much light... You’re mad! Someone might come in...’

‘I’ll wring the neck of anyone who does! I’m so happy, Tina... Two years have passed since last we met...

Somebody began to play the piano in the ballroom.

‘Akh! Moskva, Moskva, Moskva, white-stoned Moskva!’... several voices sang in chorus.

‘You see, they are all singing there... Nobody will come in...’

‘Yes, yes...’

The meeting with Tina took away my drowsiness... Ten minutes later she led me into the ballroom, where the chorus was standing in a semi-circle... The Count, sitting astride a chair, was beating time with his hands... Pshekhotsky stood behind his chair, looking with astonished eyes at these singing birds. I tore the balalaika out of Karpov’s hands, struck the chords, and -

‘Down the Volga... down the mother Volga.’

‘Down the Vo-o-olga!’ the chorus chimed in.

‘Ay, burn, speak... speak...’

I waved my hand, and in an instant with the rapidity of lightning there was another transition...

‘Nights of madness, nights of gladness...’

Nothing acts more irritatingly, more titillatingly on my nerves than such rapid transitions. I trembled with rapture, and embracing Tina with one arm and waving the balalaika in the air with the other hand, I sang ‘Nights of madness’ to the end... The balalaika fell noisily on the floor and was shivered into tiny fragments...

‘Wine!’

After that my recollections are confused and chaotic... Everything is mixed, confused, entangled; everything is dim, obscure... I remember the grey sky of early morning... We are in a boat... The lake is slightly agitated, and seems to grumble at our debauchery... I am standing up in the middle of the boat, shaking it... Tina tries to convince me I may fall into the water, and implores me to sit down... I deplore loudly that there are no waves on the lake as high as the Stone Grave, and frighten the martins that flit like white spots over the blue surface of the lake with my shouts... Then follows a long, sultry day, with its endless lunches, its ten-year-old liqueurs, its punches... its debauches... There are only a few moments I can remember of that day... I remember swinging with Tina in the garden. I stand on one end of the board, she on the other. I work energetically, using my whole body as much as my strength permits, and I don’t exactly know what I want: that Tina should fall from the swing and be killed, or that she should fly to the very clouds! Tina stands there, pale as death, but proud and determined; she has pressed her lips tightly together so as not to betray by a single sound the fear she feels. We fly ever higher and higher, and... I can’t remember how it ended. Then there follows a walk with Tina in a distant avenue of the park, with green vaults above that protect it from the sun. A poetical twilight, black tresses, luscious lips, whispers... Then the little contralto is walking beside me, a fair-haired girl with a sharp little nose, childlike eyes and a small waist. I walk about with her until Tina, having followed us, makes a scene... The gipsy is pale, and furious... She calls me ‘accursed’, and, much offended,” prepares to return to town. The Count, also pale and with trembling hands, runs along beside us, and, as usual, can’t find the proper words to persuade Tina to remain... In the end she boxes my ears... Strange! I, who fly into a rage at the slightest insult offered me by a man, am quite indifferent to a box on the ear given me by a woman... Again time is dragging heavily after dinner, again there is a snake on the steps, the sleeping figure of Franz with flies round his mouth, the gate... The girl in red is standing on the Stone Grave, but perceiving us from afar, she disappears like a lizard.

By evening we had made it up with Tina and were again friends. The evening was succeeded by the same sort of wild night, with music, riotous singing, the same nerve-wracking succession of refrains... and not a moment’s sleep!

‘This is self-destruction!’ Urbenin whispered to me. He had come in for a moment to listen to our singing.

He was certainly right. I remember next the Count and I standing in the garden face to face, and quarrelling. Black-browed Kaetan is walking about near us all the time, taking no part in our jollifications, but he had still not slept but had followed us about like a shadow... The sky is already brightening, and on the very summits of the highest trees the golden rays of the rising sun are beginning to shine. Around us is the chatter of sparrows, the songs of the starlings, and the rustle and flapping of wings that had become heavy during the night... The lowing of the herds and the cries of the shepherds can be heard. A table with a marble slab stands before us. On the table are candles that give out a faint light.

Ends of cigarettes, papers from sweets, broken wineglasses, orange peel...

‘You must take it!’ I say, pressing on the Count a parcel of rouble notes. ‘I will force you to take it!’

‘But it was I who sent for them and not you!’ the Count insisted, trying to catch hold of one of my buttons. ‘I am the master here... I treated you. Why should you pay? Can’t you understand you even insult me by offering to do so?’

‘I also engaged them, so I pay half. You won’t take it? I don’t understand such favours! Surely you don’t think because you are as rich as the devil that you have the right to confer such favours on me? The devil take it! I engaged Karpov, and I will pay him! I want none of your halves! I wrote the telegram!’

‘In a restaurant, Serezha, you may pay as much as you like, but my house is not a restaurant... Besides, I really don’t understand why you are making all this fuss. I can’t understand your insistent prodigality. You have little money, while I am rolling in wealth... Justice itself is on my side!’

‘Then you will not take it? No? Well, then, you needn’t!’

I go up to the faintly burning candles and applying the banknotes to the flame set them on fire and fling them on the ground. Suddenly a groan is torn from Kaetan’s breast. He opens his eyes wide, he grows pale, and falling with the whole weight of his heavy body on the ground tries to extinguish the money with the palms of his hands... In this he succeeds.

‘I don’t understand!’ he says, placing the slightly burnt notes in his pocket. ‘To burn money? As if it were last year’s chaff or love letters! It’s better that I should give it to the poor than let it be consumed by the flames.’

I go into the house... There in every room on the sofas and the carpets the weary gipsies are lying, overcome by fatigue. My Tina is sleeping on the divan in the ‘mosaic drawing-room’.

She lies stretched out and breathing heavily. Her teeth clenched, her face pale... She is evidently dreaming of the swing... The Scops-Owl is going through all the rooms, looking with her sharp eyes sardonically at the people who had so suddenly broken into the deadly quiet of this forgotten estate... She is not doing all this without some purpose.

That is all that my memory retained after two wild nights; all the rest had escaped my drunken brain, or is not appropriate for description... But it is enough!

At no other time had Zorka borne me with so much zest as on the morning after the burning of the banknotes... She also wanted to go home... The rippling waves glinted gently in the rays of the rising sun, as the lake gradually prepared for the sleep of the day. The woods and the willows that bordered the lake stood motionless as if in morning prayer. It is difficult to describe the feelings that filled my soul at the time... Without entering into details, I will only say that I was unspeakably glad and at the same time almost consumed by shame when, turning out of the Count’s homestead, I saw on the bank of the lake the holy old face, all wrinkled by honest work and illness, of venerable Mikhey. In appearance Mikhey resembles the fishermen of the Bible. His hair and beard are white as snow, and he gazes contemplatively at the sky... When he stands motionless on the bank and his eyes follow the chasing clouds, you can imagine that he sees angels in the sky... I like such faces!.

When I saw him I reined in Zorka and gave him my hand as if I wanted to cleanse myself by the touch of his honest, horny palm... He raised his small sagacious eyes on me and smiled.

‘How do you do, good master!’ he said, giving me his hand awkwardly. ‘So you’ve ridden over again? Or has that old rake come back?’

‘Yes, he’s back.’

‘I thought so... I can see it by your face... Here I stand and look... The world’s the world. Vanity of vanities... Look there! That German ought to die, and he thinks only of vanities... Do you see?’

The old man pointed with a stick at the Count’s bathing-cabin. A boat was being rowed away quickly from it. A man in a jockey cap and a blue jacket was sitting in the boat. It was Franz, the gardener.

‘Every morning he takes money to the island and hides it there. The stupid fellow can’t understand that for him sand and money have much the same value. When he dies he can’t take it with him. Barin, give me a cigar!’

I offered him my cigar case. He took three cigarettes and put them into his breast pocket...

‘That’s for my nephew... He can smoke them.’

Zorka moved impatiently, and galloped off. I bowed to the old man in gratitude for having been allowed to rest my eyes on his face. For a long time he stood looking after me.

At home I was met by Polycarp. With a contemptuous, even a crushing glance, he measured my noble body as if he wanted to know whether this time I had bathed again in all my clothes, or not.

‘Congratulations!’ he grumbled. ‘You’ve enjoyed yourself.’

‘Hold your tongue, fool!’ I said.

His stupid face angered me. I undressed quickly, covered myself up with the bedclothes and closed my eyes.

My head became giddy and the world was enveloped in mist. Familiar figures flitted through the mist... The Count, snakes, Franz, flame-coloured dogs, ‘the girl in red’, mad Nikolai Efimych.

‘The husband killed his wife! Oh, how stupid you are!’

The ‘girl in red’ shook her finger at me, Tina obscured the light with her black eyes, and... I fell asleep.