Petersburg (84 page)

There was, however, a lackey here (all the others had been fired, with the exception of Semyonych and Grishka, the young lad); this lackey remembered what he remembered: remembered the manner in which the
barynya
had made her departure abroad – without any warning to the domestic staff: holding a little travelling bag (and this – for two and a half years!); on the eve of her departure had locked herself in, away from the
barin
; while some two days before her departure
that fellow with the moustache
had been there in her room all the time: their black-eyed visitor – oh, what was his name again?
Mindalini (his name was Mindalini), who sang some kind of un-Russian songs at their house: ‘Tra-la-la … Tra-la-la …’ And he never tipped.

This same lackey, remembering something, kissed the exalted hand with especial respect, feeling guilty about the fact that the details of the escape – the departure, that is – had not been effaced from his memory; for he was seriously afraid that the days of his sojourn in the lacquered house were numbered – on the occasion of the happy return of their excellencies to the lacquered house.

There they were – in the reception hall; before them the parqueted floor shone, like a mirror, with little squares: this room had seldom been heated during the past two and a half years; the expanses of this enfilade of rooms provoked an unaccountable melancholy; Apollon Apollonovich spent most of the time sitting locked in his study; he kept fancying that someone familiar and melancholy was
about to come running to him, that now he was not alone: not alone would he stroll about the little squares of the parqueted floor here, but … with Anna Petrovna.

It was seldom that Apollon Apollonovich strolled about the little squares of the parqueted floor with Nikolenka.

His arm bent like a ring-shaped roll, Apollon Apollonvich led his guest through the reception hall: it was just as well that it was his right arm he presented; his left one twinged and ached with the impetuous, restless joltings of his heart; and Anna Petrovna stopped him, led him over to the wall and, pointing to a pale-toned painting, smiled to him:

‘Ah, still the same old paintings!
… Do you remember this fresco, Apollon Apollonovich?’

And – looked ever so slightly askance at him, blushed ever so slightly; her cornflower-coloured eyes were fixed on two eyes that were filled with azure; and – their gaze, their gaze: there was in it something charming, old-fashioned, ancient, something that everyone had forgotten but had forgotten no one and stood
in the doorway
– something of this kind suddenly arose between their gazes; it was not in them; and did not emerge in them; but stood –
between them
: as though wafted by the autumn wind.
Let the reader forgive me: I shall express the essence of this gaze in a most banal word:
love.

‘Do you remember?’

‘Of course, my dear: I remember …’

‘Where was it?’

‘In Venice …’

‘Thirty years have passed!
…’

A memory of the misty lagoon, of an aria sobbing in the distance, seized him: thirty years ago.
Memories of Venice seized her, too, and divided: thirty years ago: and two and a half years ago; here she blushed at the inopportune memory, which she drove away; and another surged in: Kolenka.
During the past two hours she had forgotten about Kolenka; her conversation with the senator had forced out everything else prematurely; but two hours before that she had thought only of Kolenka, and thought of him with tenderness; with tenderness and vexation that she had had no greeting, no reply from Kolenka.

‘Kolenka …’

They entered the drawing-room; heaps of porcelain baubles rushed from every side; little leaves of incrustation shone – mother-of-pearl and bronze – on the little boxes, the little shelves that came out of the walls.

‘Kolenka, Anna Petrovna, is all right … he’s fine … is getting on splendidly,’ – and he ran away, somehow to the side.

‘And is he at home?’

Apollon Apollonovich, who had just fallen into an Empire armchair, on the pale azure satin seat of which little garlands twined, rose reluctantly out of the chair, and pressed the bell button:

‘Why has he not come to see me?’

‘Anna Petrovna, he … em-em-em … was, in his turn, very, very …’ the senator said, getting strangely confused, and then took out his handkerchief: with sounds almost like those of a trumpet, he blew his nose for a very long time; snorting into his side-whiskers, he took a very long time about stuffing his handkerchief back into his pockets:

‘In a word, he was overjoyed.’

A silence ensued.
The bald head swayed over there beneath the cold and long-legged bronze; the lampshade did not flash with a violet tone, subtly painted: the secret of this paint had been lost by the nineteenth century; the glass had grown dark with time; the delicate pattern had also grown dark with time.

At the sound of the bell, Semyonych appeared:

‘Is Nikolai Apollonovich at home?’

‘Precisely so, sir …’

‘Mm … listen: tell him that Anna Petrovna is with us: and that she asks him to come and see her …’

‘Perhaps we shall go to him,’ said Anna Petrovna, beginning to grow agitated, and with a swiftness unusual for her years she rose from her armchair; but here Apollon Apollonovich, turning sharply towards Semyonych, interrupted her:

‘Em-em-em … Semyonych: I want to tell you …’

‘I’m listening, sir!
…’

‘The wife of a Chaldean – I wonder – what is she?’

‘I suppose she’s a Chaldean, sir …’

‘No – a
khalda
!
…’
³

‘Hee-hee-hee, sir …’

‘I’m not very pleased with Kolenka, Anna Petrovna …’

‘Oh, why is that?’

‘For a long time now, Kolenka has been behaving – no, don’t be upset – been behaving: downright – no, don’t be upset – strangely …’

‘?’

The gilded pier-glasses in the window-piers devoured the drawing-room from all sides with the green surfaces of the mirrors.

‘Kolenka has become somehow secretive … Cahuh, cahuh,’ – and, in a fit of coughing, Apollon Apollonovich drummed his hand on the little table, remembering something private, frowned, and began to rub the bridge of his nose; he quickly recovered himself, however: and with extreme joviality he almost shouted:

‘But as a matter of fact – no: it doesn’t matter, my dear … It’s nonsense …’

Between the pier-glasses the small mother-of-pearl table gleamed from everywhere.

There Was Utter Senselessness

Nikolai Apollonovich, overcoming a most intense pain in his knee joint (he had really taken quite a knock), was limping slightly: he was running down the booming expanse of the corridor.

A meeting with his mother!

Whirlwinds of thoughts and meanings overwhelmed him; or not even whirlwinds of thoughts and meanings: simply whirlwinds of meaninglessness; thus the particles of a comet, penetrating a planet, do not even cause an alteration in the planet’s composition, flying past with staggering swiftness; as they penetrate the heart, they do not even cause any alteration in the rhythm of the heart’s beats; but let the comet’s speed slow down: then hearts will burst: the planet
itself will burst: and everything will become a gas; if we could stop the spinning, senseless whirlwind in Ableukhov’s head even for a moment, that senselessness would deck itself out in stormily swollen thoughts.

And – here are those thoughts.

The thought, in the first place, of the horror of his situation; a dreadful situation had now been created (as a consequence of the sardine tin’s disappearance); the sardine tin, or rather the bomb, had disappeared; it had quite clearly disappeared; and therefore: someone had taken the bomb away; but who, who?
One of the lackeys; and – therefore: the bomb had fallen into the hands of the police; and – he would be arrested; but this was not the main thing, the main thing was that Apollon Apollonovich himself had taken the bomb away; and had taken it away at the very moment when the matter of the bomb had been settled; and – he knew: knew everything.

Everything
– what was that?
Why, it was nothing; a plan of murder?
There was no plan of murder; Nikolai Apollonovich firmly denied this plan: this plan was a loathsome slander.

There remained the fact of the bomb having been found.

Since his father was summoning him, since his mother wanted to see him – no, he could not possibly know: and he had not taken the bomb out of his room.
And as for the lackeys … The lackeys would have discovered everything a long time ago.
But no one had said anything.
No, they did not know about the bomb.
But – where was it, where was it?
Had he really put it away in this desk, had he not put it somewhere under a rug, mechanically, by chance?

Things like that happened to him.

In a week it would be discovered of its own accord … Though in fact, no: it would announce its presence somewhere today – with a most dreadful roar (the Ableukhovs decidedly could not endure such roars).

Somewhere, perhaps, – under a rug, under a pillow, on a shelf, it would announce its presence: would roar and burst; the bomb must be found; but he had no time for searching now: Anna Petrovna had arrived.

In the second place: he had been insulted; in the third place: that mangy little Pavel Yakovlevich – he seemed to have only just seen him, returning from his little flat on the Moika; while Pepp
Peppovich Pepp – this was the fourth thing: Pepp was a dreadful expansion of the body, a distension of the veins, boiling water in the head …

Oh, it had all got confused: the whirlwinds of thoughts span with inhuman swiftness and roared in his ears, so that there were not even any thoughts: there was utter meaninglessness.

And now, with this meaningless boiling water in his head Nikolai Apollonovich ran along the booming corridor, without adjusting his little frock-coat in his haste and appearing to the gaze like some hunchbacked cripple, limping on his right leg with its painfully aching knee joint.

Mamma

He opened the door to the drawing room.

The first thing he saw was … was … But what can one say: he saw his mother’s face from the armchair, and two arms stretched out: the face had aged, and the arms trembled in the lace of the gold street lamps, which had just been lit – outside the windows.

And he heard a voice:

‘Kolenka: my own, my loved one!’

He could hold out no longer, and rushed to her:

‘Is it you, my boy …’

No, he could hold out no longer: sinking to his knees, he seized her figure in his tenacious arms; he pressed his face against her knees, broke into convulsive sobs – sobs about what, he knew not: unaccountably, shamelessly, uncontrollably his broad shoulders began to heave (for let us remember: Nikolai Apollonovich had experienced no caresses these past three years).

‘Mamma, Mamma …’

She also wept.

Apollon Apollonovich stood there, in the semi-twilight of a niche, fingering a little porcelain doll, a Chinaman; the Chinaman was swaying his head; Apollon Apollonovich came out from the semi-twilight of the niche; and quietly he groaned; with short little footsteps he moved across to that weeping pair; and suddenly he began to boom above the armchair:

‘Calm yourselves, my friends!’

It must be admitted that he could not have expected these feelings from his cold, reserved son – in whose face these past two and a half years he had seen nothing but little grimaces; a mouth torn apart to the ears, and a lowered gaze; and then, turning round, Apollon Apollonovich ran anxiously out of the room – in search of some object or other.

‘Mamma … Mamma …’

The fear, the humiliations of all these days and nights, the sardine tin’s disappearance and, last but not least, the sense of complete insignificance – all this, whirling round, was coming untwisted in momentary thoughts; was drowning in the moisture of the meeting:

‘My darling, my boy.’

The icy touch of fingers on his arm brought him back to his senses again:

‘Here you are, Kolenka: have a little sip of water.’

And when he raised from her knees his tear-stained countenance, he saw again what seemed to be the
childlike
eyes of an old man of sixty-eight: little Apollon Apollonovich stood there in his jacket with a glass of water; his fingers were dancing; he was more trying to pat Nikolai Apollonovich rather than actually patting him – on the back, the shoulder, the cheeks; suddenly he stroked the flaxen white hair with his hand.
Anna Petrovna laughed; quite irrelevantly, she adjusted the collar; she transferred her eyes, which were intoxicated with happiness, from Nikolenka – to Apollon Apollonovich; and back again: from him to Nikolenka.

Nikolai Apollonovich slowly raised himself from his knees:

‘I’m sorry, Mamma: I just …

‘It’s, it’s – the unexpectedness …

‘I’ll be all right in a moment … It’s nothing … Thank you, Papa …’

And he drank some water.

‘There.’

Apollon Apollonovich put his glass on the little mother-of-pearl table; and suddenly – burst into senile laughter at something, the
way little boys laugh at the antics of a merry
uncle,
nudging one another with their little elbows; two old, familiar faces!

‘Indeed, sir …

‘Indeed, sir …

‘Indeed, sir …’

Apollon Apollonovich stood there by a pier-glass, which a golden-cheeked little cupid crowned with his little wing; beneath the cupid laurels and roses were perforated by the heavy flames of torches.
But memory cut like lightning: the sardine tin!
…

How could it be?
What had happened?
And a paroxysm broke within him again.

‘Just a moment … I’m coming …’

‘What’s the matter, my dear?’

‘It’s nothing … Let him be, Anna Petrovna … I advise you, Kolenka, to be alone with yourself … for five minutes … Yes, you know … And then – come back again …’

And, the merest bit simulating the paroxysm that he had just had, Nikolai Apollonovich tottered, and somewhat theatrically let his face fall into his fingers again: the cap of flaxen hair looked so strangely pale there, in the semi-twilight of the room.