Mary (6 page)

“But what
were
you doing? What else could it be?” Klara whispered. “I didn’t expect this of you, Lev Glebovich.”

“What a funny girl you are,” said Ganin. He noticed that her big, kind, somewhat prominent eyes were just a little overbright, that her shoulders were rising and falling rather too excitedly under her black shawl.

“Come, come.” He smiled. “All right then, let’s suppose I’m a thief, a burglar. But why should it upset you so much?”

“Please go,” said Klara softly, turning her head away. He laughed and shrugged his shoulders.

When the door had closed behind him, Klara burst into tears and wept for a long time, the big shiny tears welling up rhythmically between her eyelashes and trickling in long drops down her cheeks, aglow with sobbing.

“Poor dear,” she muttered. “What life has brought him to! And what can I say to him?”

There came a light tap on the wall from the dancers’ room. Klara blew her nose hard and listened. The tap was repeated, velvety-soft and feminine: it was obviously Kolin tapping. Then there was a burst of laughter, someone exclaimed, “Alec, oh Alec, stop it,” and two voices started a muffled, intimate conversation.

Klara thought how tomorrow, as always, she would have to go to work and hammer the keys until six o’clock, watching the mauve-colored line of type as it poured onto the page with a dry, staccato rattle; or how, if there was nothing to do, she would read, propping her borrowed and shamefully tattered book on her black Remington. She made herself some tea, listlessly ate her supper, then undressed, languidly and very slowly. Lying in bed she heard voices in Podtyagin’s room. She heard somebody come in and go out, then Ganin’s voice saying something unexpectedly loudly and Podtyagin answering in a low, depressed voice. She remembered that the old man had gone again today to see about his passport, that he suffered badly from heart trouble, that life was passing: on Friday she would be twenty-six. On and on went the voices—and it seemed to Klara she dwelt in a house of glass that was on the move, swaying and floating. The noise of the trains, although particularly audible on the other side of the corridor, could also be heard in her room, and her bed seemed to rise and sway. For a moment she visualized Ganin’s back as he leaned over the desk and looked around over his shoulder, baring his bright teeth. Then she fell asleep and had a nonsensical dream: she seemed to be sitting in a tramcar next to an old woman extraordinarily like her Lodz aunt, who was talking rapidly in German; then it gradually turned out that it was not her aunt at all but the cheerful marketwoman from whom Klara bought oranges on her way to work.

five

That evening Anton Sergeyevich had a visitor. He was an old gentleman with a sandy moustache clipped in the English fashion, very dependable-looking, very dapper in his frock coat and striped trousers. Podtyagin was regaling him with Maggi’s bouillon when Ganin entered. The air was tinged blue with cigarette smoke.

“Mr. Ganin—Mr. Kunitsyn.” Anton Sergeyevich, breathing heavily, his pince-nez twinkling, gently pushed Ganin into an armchair.

“This, Lev Glebovich, is my old schoolfellow who once wrote cribs for me.”

Kunitsyn grinned. “That’s so,” he said in a deep, rounded voice. “But tell me, my dear Anton Sergeyevich, what time is it?”

“Still early, time to sit a while yet.”

Kunitsyn stood up, pulling down his waistcoat. “I can’t, my wife’s expecting me.”

“In that case I have no right to detain you.” Anton Sergeyevich spread his hands and glanced sidelong through his pince-nez at his visitor. “Please give my regards to your wife. I haven’t the pleasure of knowing her, but give her my regards all the same.”

“Thank you,” said Kunitsyn. “Delighted. Goodbye. I believe I left my coat in the hall.”

“I’ll see you out,” said Podtyagin. “Please excuse me, Lev Glebovich, I’ll be back in a moment.”

Alone, Ganin settled more comfortably in the old green armchair and smiled reflectively. He had called on the old poet because he was probably the only person who might understand his disturbed state. He wanted to tell him about many things—about sunsets over a highroad in Russia, about birch groves. He was, after all, that same Podtyagin whose verses were to be found beneath little vignettes in old bound volumes of magazines like
The World Illustrated
and
The Pictorial Review
.

Anton Sergeyevich returned, gloomily shaking his head. “He insulted me,” he said, sitting down at the table and drumming on it with his fingers. “Oh, how he insulted me.”

“What’s the matter?” asked Ganin.

Anton Sergeyevich took off his pince-nez and polished it with the edge of the tablecloth.

“He despises me, that’s what’s the matter. Do you know what he said to me just now? He gave me one of his cold, sarcastic little smiles and he said, ‘You’ve been spending your time scribbling poetry and I haven’t read a word of it. If I had read it I would have wasted the time when I could have been working.’ That’s what he said to me, Lev Glebovich; I ask you—is that an intelligent thing to say?”

“What is he?” asked Ganin.

“Deuce knows. He makes money. Ah, well. You see, he’s a person who—”

“But what’s there to feel insulted about? He has one talent, you have another. Anyway, I’ll bet you despise him too.”

“But Lev Glebovich,” Podtyagin fretted, “am I not right to despise him? It’s not that which is so awful—the awful thing is that a man like him dares to offer me money.”

He opened his clenched fist and threw a crumpled banknote onto the table.

“And the awful thing is that I took it. Look and admire—twenty marks, God damn it.”

The old man seemed to quiver all over, his mouth was opening and shutting, the little gray beard under his lower lip twitching, his fat fingers drumming on the table. Then he sighed with a painful wheezing sound and shook his head.

“Peter Kunitsyn. Yes, I still remember. He was good in school, the rascal. And always so punctual, with a watch in his pocket. During classes he used to hold up his fingers to show how many more minutes until the bell rang. Graduated from high school with a gold medal.”

“It must be strange for you, remembering that,” said Ganin pensively. “Come to think of it, it’s even odd to remember some everyday thing—though really not everyday at all—something that happened a few hours ago.”

Podtyagin gave him a keen but kindly look. “What’s happened to you, Lev Glebovich? Your face looks somehow brighter. Have you fallen in love again? Yes, there is a strangeness about the way we remember things. How nicely you beam, dash it.”

“I had a good reason for coming to see you, Anton Sergeyevich.”

“And all I could offer you was Kunitsyn. Let him be a warning to you. How did
you
get on at school?”

“So-so,” said Ganin, smiling again. “The Balashov academy in Petersburg—know it?” he went on, slipping into Podtyagin’s tone of voice, as one often does when talking to an old man. “I remember the schoolyard. We used to play football there. There was firewood piled up under an archway and now and again the ball used to knock down a log.”

“We preferred bat-and-tag, and cossacks-and-robbers,”
said Podtyagin. “And now life has gone,” he added unexpectedly.

“Do you know, Anton Sergeyevich, today I remembered those old magazines which used to print your poetry. And the birch groves.”

“Did you really?” The old man turned to him with a look of good-natured irony. “What a fool I was—for the sake of those birch trees I wasted all my life, I overlooked the whole of Russia. Now, thank God, I’ve stopped writing poetry. Done with it. I even feel ashamed at describing myself as ‘poet’ when I have to fill in forms. By the way, I made a complete mess of things again today. The official was even offended. I shall have to go again tomorrow.”

Ganin looked at his feet and said, “When I was in the upper forms my schoolmates thought I had a mistress. And what a mistress—a society lady. They respected me for it. I didn’t object, because it was I who started the rumor.”

“I see,” Podtyagin nodded. “There’s something artful about you, Lyovushka. I like it.”

“In actual fact I was absurdly chaste and felt none the worse for it either. I was proud of it, like a special secret, yet everybody thought I was very experienced. Mind you, I certainly wasn’t prudish or shy. I was simply happy living as I was and waiting. And my schoolmates, the ones who used foul language and panted at the very word ‘woman,’ were all so spotty and dirty, with sweaty palms. I despised them for their spots. And they lied revoltingly about their amorous adventures.”

“I must confess,” said Podtyagin in his lacklustre voice, “that I began with a chambermaid. She was so sweet and gentle, with gray eyes. Her name was Glasha. That’s the way it goes.”

“No, I waited,” said Ganin softly. “From the onset of puberty to sixteen, say, three years. When I was thirteen we
were playing hide-and-seek once and I and another boy of the same age found ourselves hiding together in a wardrobe. In the darkness he told me that there were marvelous beauties who allowed themselves to be undressed for money. I didn’t properly hear what he called them and I thought it was ‘prinstitute’—a mixture of princess and young ladies’ institute. So I had an entrancing, mysterious mental image of them. But then of course I soon realized how mistaken I had been because I saw nothing attractive about the women who strolled up and down the Nevski rolling their hips and called us high-school boys ‘pencils.’ And so after three years of proud chastity my wait came to an end. It was in summer, at our place in the country.”

“Yes, yes,” said Podtyagin. “I can see it all. Rather hackneyed, though. Sweet sixteen, love in the woods.”

Ganin looked at him with curiosity. “But what could be nicer, Anton Sergeyevich?”

“Oh, I don’t know, don’t ask me, my dear chap. I put everything into my poetry that I should have put into my life, and now it’s too late for me to start all over again. The only thought that occurs to me at the moment is that in the final reckoning it’s better to have been sanguine by temperament, a man of action, and if you must get drunk do it properly and smash the place up.”

“There was that too,” Ganin smiled.

Podtyagin thought for a moment. “You were talking about the Russian countryside, Lev Glebovich. You, I expect, will probably see it again. But I shall leave my old bones here. Or if not here then in Paris. I seem to be thoroughly out of sorts today. Forgive me.”

Both were silent. A train passed. Far, far away a locomotive gave a wild, inconsolable scream. The night was a cold blue outside the uncurtained windowpanes, which reflected the lampshade and a brightly lit corner of the table. Podtyagin
sat hunched, his gray head bowed, twirling a leather cigarette case in his hands. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking about: whether it was about the dullness of his past life; or whether old age, illness and poverty had risen before his mind’s eye with the same dark clarity as the reflection in the nighttime window; whether it was about his passport and about Paris; or whether he was thinking glumly that the pattern on the carpet exactly fitted round the toe of his boot, or how much he would like a glass of cold beer, or that his visitor had outsat his welcome—God knows. But as Ganin looked at his big drooping head, at the senile tufts of hair in his ears, at the shoulders rounded from writing, he felt such a sudden access of sadness that he lost all desire to talk about summer in Russia, about the pathways in the park, and least of all about the astonishing thing that had happened the day before.

“Well, I must go now. Sleep well, Anton Sergeyevich.”

“Good night, Lyovushka,” Podtyagin sighed. “I enjoyed our talk. You, at least, do not despise me for taking Kunitsyn’s money.”

Only at the last moment, in the doorway, did Ganin stop and say, “Do you know what, Anton Sergeyevich? I’ve started a wonderful affair. I’m going to her now. I’m very happy.”

Podtyagin gave an encouraging nod. “I see. Give her my regards. I haven’t the pleasure, but give her my regards all the same.”

six

Strange to say he could not remember exactly when he had first seen her. Perhaps at a charity concert staged in a barn on the border of his parents’ estate. Perhaps, though, he had caught a glimpse of her even before that. Her laugh, her soft features, her dark complexion and the big bow in her hair were all somehow familiar to him when a student medical orderly at the local military hospital (a world war was in full swing) had told him about this fifteen-year-old “sweet and remarkable” girl, as the student had put it—but that conversation had taken place before the concert. Now Ganin racked his memory in vain; he just could not picture their very first meeting. The fact was that he had been waiting for her with such longing, had thought so much about her during those blissful days after the typhus, that he had fashioned her unique image long before he actually saw her. Now, many years later, he felt that their imaginary meeting and the meeting which took place in reality had blended and merged imperceptibly into one another, since as a living person she was only an uninterrupted continuation of the image which had foreshadowed her.

That evening in July Ganin had pushed open the creaking iron front door and walked out into the blue of the twilight. The bicycle ran with special ease at dusk, the tire emitting a kind of whisper as it palpated each rise and dip in the hard
earth along the edge of the road. As he glided past the darkened stables they gave off a breath of warmth, a sound of snorting and the slight thud of a shifting hoof. Further on, the road was enveloped on both sides by birch trees, noiseless at that hour; then like a fire smouldering on the threshing-floor a faint light shone in the middle of a field and dark streams of people straggled with a festive hum toward the lone-standing barn.

Inside a stage had been knocked up, rows of seats installed, light flooded over heads and shoulders, playing in people’s eyes, and there was a smell of caramels and kerosene. A lot of people had turned up; the back was filled with peasant men and women, the dacha folk were in the middle, while in front, on white benches borrowed from the manorial park, sat about twenty patients from the military hospital in the village, quiet and morose, with hairless patches blotching the gray-blue of their very round, shorn heads. Here and there on the walls, decorated with fir branches, were cracks through which peeped the starry night as well as the black shadows of country boys who had clambered up outside on tall piles of logs.