Forty Stories (36 page)

“Until tomorrow,” she whispered, and gently, as though afraid of breaking the silence of the night, she embraced me. “We have no secrets from each other now. Quickly I must tell everything to Mama and my sister.… I’m so afraid! I’m not afraid of Mama, for she loves you, but my sister …”

Then she ran toward the gates.

“Good-by!” she called back.

Then for some moments I heard her running. I had no desire to return home, and there was nothing to return home for. For a while I stood there lost in thought, and then I turned slowly back to look once more at the house she lived in, that house which was so old and innocent and dear to me; and the windows of the mezzanine looked down on me like eyes, seeming to understand everything. I walked past the terrace and sat on a bench by the lawn-tennis court, in the darkness of an ancient elm, and once again I gazed up at the house. I could see the windows of the mezzanine, where Missy slept, and the bright light shining there, but this light turned later to a faintly glowing green—she had pulled a shade over the lamp. Shadows stirred.… I was filled with a sense of tenderness and calm contentment—a contentment which came with my discovery that I had fallen helplessly
in love, and at the same time I felt uneasy with the knowledge that Leda, who disliked and perhaps hated me, was lying in bed in one of those rooms only a few yards away. I sat there, straining my ears, waiting to see whether Zhenia would come out, and I fancied I heard voices coming from the mezzanine.

An hour passed. The green lamp went out, and no more shadows could be seen. The moon rode high over the house, shining on the pathways and the sleeping garden. The dahlias and roses in the flower bed in front of the house could be seen distinctly, and everything seemed to be of one color. It grew very cold. I left the garden, picked up my coat from the road, and made my way slowly home.

The following day when I went to see the Volchaninovs after dinner, the glass door leading to the garden was wide open. I sat down for a while on the terrace, expecting to see Zhenia appear from behind the flower beds or along one of the pathways, or perhaps I would hear the sound of her voice coming from the house. Then I went through the drawing room and the dining room. There was no one to be seen. From the dining room I walked down a long corridor that led to the reception room, and back again. Several doors opened on the corridor, and from behind one of them came the voice of Leda.

“To the crow somewhere … God …” she was saying in a loud, singsong voice, probably dictating. “God sent a piece of cheese … To the crow … somewhere … Who’s there?” she called out suddenly, hearing my footsteps.

“It is I.”

“Oh, excuse me, I cannot come out just now. I am giving Dasha her lesson.”

“Is Yekaterina Pavlovna in the garden?”

“No, she left this morning with my sister. They are going to stay with an aunt in Penza province, and in the winter they will probably go abroad.” She added after a moment’s pause: “God sent … the cr-ow … so-me-where … a pie-ce of chee-se … Have you written it down?”

I went out in the reception room without a thought in my head, gazing at the pond and the village in the distance, while her voice followed me: “A pie-ce of chee-se … God sent the crow somewhere a piece of cheese …”

And I went back by the way I had come on the day when I first visited the house, only this time in reverse. I went from the courtyard into the garden and along the side of the house until I reached the avenue of lime trees.… There I was overtaken by a small boy who gave me a note which read: “I told my sister everything, and she says I must never see you again. I’m weak, and dare not anger her by disobeying her. God grant you happiness. Forgive me. If only you knew how many bitter tears Mama and I have shed!”

I went down the dark avenue of firs past the rotting fence.… In the fields where the rye was once ripening and the quail were screaming, now hobbled horses and cows were grazing. Here and there on the low hills the winter crops were already showing green. A sobering mood took hold of me, the things I had said at the Volchaninovs’ filled me with shame, and I was as bored with life as I ever was before. When I reached home, I packed my things, and I left that evening for St. Petersburg.

I never saw the Volchaninovs again. Not long ago, when on my way to the Crimea, I met Belokurov on the train. He was wearing the familiar peasant jacket and embroidered shirt, and when I asked after his health, he replied: “Thank you for your good wishes.” We fell into conversation. He had sold his old estate and bought another, smaller one in Lyubov Ivanovna’s name. There was little he could tell me about the Volchaninovs. He told me Leda was still living at Shelkovka, teaching children at her school. Little by little she had succeeded in gathering around her a circle of friends who agreed with her and who were able to form a strong party, and at the last zemstvo election they had “gotten rid” of Balagin, the man who had kept the whole
district under his thumb in the old days. As for Zhenia, all he knew was that she had left home, and he did not know where she was.

I am beginning to forget the house with the mezzanine, but sometimes when I am painting or reading, for no reason at all, quite suddenly, I find myself remembering the green lamp at the window and the sound of my footsteps echoing through the fields of the night as I walked home on the day I was in love, rubbing my hands to keep them warm. And sometimes too—but this happens more rarely—when I am weighed down with melancholy and loneliness, I am the prey of other confused thoughts, and it seems to me that I, too, am being remembered, and she is waiting for me, and we shall meet again.…

Missy, where are you?

1896

AT half past eight in the morning they drove out of town.

The highway was dry, a splendid April sun was shedding a fierce warmth on the earth, but there was still snow in the ditches and the forests. The long, dark, cruel winter had only just come to an end, spring came suddenly, but for Maria Vasilyevna sitting in the horsecart, there was nothing new or interesting in the warmth of the sun, or in the languid, luminous forests warmed with the breath of spring, or in the flocks of dark birds flying over the puddles in the fields—puddles as large as lakes—or in the marvelous and unfathomable sky into which it seemed one could plunge with such joy. For thirteen years she had been a schoolteacher, and during the course of these years she had gone so often to the town for her salary that the times were past counting; and whether it was spring, as now, or a rainy autumn evening, or winter, it was all the same to her, and she always and invariably longed for only one thing: to get there as quickly as possible.

She felt she had been living here for a long, long time, for a hundred years, and it seemed to her that she knew every stone, every tree on the road from the town to her school. Here was her past and her present, and she could imagine no other future than the school, the road to the town and back again, and again the school and again the road.

Of all that had happened to her before her appointment as a schoolteacher, she remembered very little. She had forgotten
nearly everything. Once she had a father and mother—they lived in Moscow in a large apartment near the Red Gate—but of this period in her life the memories were as fluid and confused as dreams. Her father died when she was ten years old; her mother soon afterward.… She had a brother, an officer; at first they wrote to each other, and then he lost the habit of answering her letters. Of her former possessions only the photograph of her mother remained, but the damp air at school had faded it, and now nothing could be seen except the hair and eyebrows.

They had driven for two miles along the road when old Semyon, who held the reins, turned to her and said: “They’ve caught one of the town officials—taken him away somewhere. Said he and some Germans killed Alexeyev, the mayor, in Moscow.”

“Who told you?”

“I heard someone read it in the newspaper at Ivan Ionov’s tavern.”

There followed another long silence. Maria Vasilyevna thought about her school, and the examinations which would soon be coming along, and the four boys and one girl who would take part in them. She was still pondering these examinations when they were overtaken by a man driving in a carriage harnessed to four horses. The man was a landowner called Khanov, and he had in fact been the examiner at her school the year before. He drew alongside, recognized her, and bowed.

“Good morning,” he said. “I reckon you must be on your way home.”

Khanov was a man about forty years old, with a languid air and a face which showed signs of wear; he was rapidly aging, though he was still handsome and attractive to women. He lived alone on a large estate, and took no part in government service; they said he did nothing at home except whistle as he paced up and down the room, or else he played chess with an old footman. They said, too, that he drank a great deal. Indeed, during the examinations the year before, the very papers he
brought with him smelled of wine and perfume. On that occasion he was dressed in brand-new clothes, and Maria Vasilyevna thought him very attractive: she was embarrassed and confused when she sat beside him. She was accustomed to receiving the visits of chilling, hardheaded examiners, but this particular examiner could not remember a single prayer, did not know what questions to ask, and was extraordinarily courteous and kind, giving all the children good marks.

“I am going to visit Bakvist,” he went on, still addressing Maria Vasilyevna, “but it occurs to me that he may not be at home.”

They turned off the highway into a narrow lane, Khanov leading the way and Semyon coming up behind. The four-horse team moved at a walking pace, straining to drag the heavy carriage out of the mud. Semyon followed a more erratic course, leaving the road to avoid a hump in his path or to skirt a puddle, and sometimes he would jump down from the cart to help the horse. Maria Vasilyevna was still thinking about the school: she was wondering whether the questions at the examination would be difficult or easy. Also, she was annoyed with the zemstvo council, which she had visited the previous day only to find no one there. What lack of principle! For the last two years she had been asking them to dismiss the janitor, who did nothing, was rude to her, and beat up the school children; but no one paid any attention to her. The chairman of the board was rarely at the office, and when he was, he would say with tears in his eyes that he had no time to spare; the inspector visited the school once in three years and knew nothing about the business, having previously served in the excise department and having received his present post through patronage. The school board rarely met, no one knew where. The trustee was an almost illiterate peasant who owned a tannery: a coarse, stupid fellow, bosom companion to the janitor—only God knew to whom she should turn when there were complaints to be made or wrongs to be put right.

“He really is handsome,” she thought, glancing at Khanov.

The road was becoming worse and worse.… They drove into the forest. Here there was no possibility of leaving the road, the ruts were deep, and water flowed and gurgled through them. Sharp twigs struck across their faces.

“What a road, eh?” Khanov said, and laughed.

The schoolmistress gazed at him, wondering why the strange fellow ever came to live here. What good was this God-forsaken place with its mud and boredom to a man of wealth and refinement and an attractive presence? Life was granting him no special privileges here. Like Semyon, he was jogging along slowly over an appalling road, enduring exactly the same hardships. Why live here, when there was the possibility of living in St. Petersburg or abroad? One would have thought it a simple matter for a rich man to build a fine road instead of this awful one; in this way he would avoid all the horror of the journey and the sight of the despair written on the faces of Semyon and of his own coachman. But he only laughed; apparently it was all one to him, and he wanted no better life. He was kind, gentle, unsophisticated, and was ignorant of the hard facts of life just as he was ignorant of the proper prayers to be offered at an examination. His only gifts to the school were globes; therefore he sincerely came to regard himself as a useful person and a prominent fighter for the cause of popular education. And what use were his globes anyway?

“Sit tight, Vasilyevna!” Semyon shouted.

The cart lurched violently, and was on the point of upsetting. Something heavy hurtled down on Maria Vasilyevna’s feet—the purchases she had made in town. There followed a steep climb up a clayey hill, with streams of water roaring down winding ditches and gnawing the road away—how could one possibly climb the hill? The horses were breathing heavily. Khanov got out of his carriage and walked along the edge of the road in his long overcoat. He was hot.

“What a road, eh?” he exclaimed, and laughed again. “Soon the whole carriage will be smashed to bits!”

“Who told you to go driving about in this weather?” Semyon said sharply. “Why didn’t you stay at home?”

“It’s boring to stay at home, old fellow. I don’t like it.”

He looked strong and well built as he walked beside old Semyon, but there was something barely perceptible in his gait which revealed a person already touched by decay, weak, and nearing his end. The forest suddenly smelled of wine. Maria Vasilyevna shuddered, and began to feel pity for this man who was going to ruin for no good reason, and it occurred to her that if she were his wife or sister she would devote her whole life to saving him. His wife? But he had so ordered his life that he had come to live alone on a vast estate, while she lived out her life in an obscure little village, and so the mere thought of them meeting as equals and becoming intimate seemed impossible and absurd. In reality, life was so ordered and human relationships were so infinitely various and complex that if you thought about them at all, you would be overwhelmed with terror and your heart would stop beating!