Stories (20 page)

“What can I do for you?” the actor asked in a bass voice, giving Dymov an unsociable look. “Is it Olga Ivanovna you want? Wait, she’ll come soon.”

Dymov sat down and began to wait. One of the dark-haired men, glancing at him sleepily and sluggishly, poured himself some tea and asked:

“Want some tea?”

Dymov wanted to drink and to eat, but he declined the tea so as not to spoil his appetite. Soon footsteps and familiar laughter were heard; the door banged, and Olga Ivanovna, in a broad-brimmed hat and carrying a paint box, ran into the room, followed by the gay, red-cheeked Ryabovsky with a big parasol and a folding chair.

“Dymov!” Olga Ivanovna cried out and blushed with joy. “Dymov!” she repeated, putting her head and both hands on his chest. “It’s you! Why haven’t you come for so long? Why? Why?”

“How could I, mama? I’m always busy, and whenever I’m free, it always turns out that the train schedule doesn’t suit.”

“But I’m so glad to see you! I dreamed of you all night, all night, and I was afraid you were sick. Ah, if only you knew how sweet you are, how timely you’ve come! You’ll be my savior. You al
one can save me! Tomorrow they’re having the most original wedding here,” she went on, laughing and knotting her husband’s tie. “A young telegraphist from the train station, a certain Chikeldeev, is getting married. A handsome young man, well, and not at all stupid, and with something, you know, strong and bear-like in his face … He’d be a good model for a young Viking. All of us summer people sympathize with him and have given our word of honor to come to his wedding … He’s a poor man, lonely, timid, and of course it would be a sin to deny him our sympathy. Imagine, after the liturgy th
ere’ll be the wedding, then we all go on foot from the church to
the bride’s place … you understand, the woods, the birds singing, patches of sun on the grass, and all of us like colored spots against the bright green background—most original, in the style of the French Impressionists. But, Dymov, what am I to wear to church?” Olga Ivanovna said, and made a tearful face. “I’ve got nothing here, literally nothing! No dress, no flowers, no gloves … You must save me. Since you’ve come, it means fate itself is telling you to save me. Take the keys, my dear, go home and get my pink dress from the wardrobe. You
remember, it’s hanging in front… Then, in the closet, on the floor to the right, you’ll see two boxes. Open the top one and you’ll see tulle, tulle, tulle, and all sorts of scraps, and flowers under them. Take all the flowers out carefully, darling, try not to crush them, I’ll choose what I want later … And buy some gloves.”

“All right,” said Dymov. “I’ll go tomorrow and send it all.”

“Why tomorrow?” Olga Ivanovna asked and looked at him in surprise. “You won’t have time tomorrow. The first train leaves at nine tomorrow, and the wedding’s at eleven. No, dearest, it has to be today, absolutely today! If you can’t come back tomorrow, send it with a courier. Well, go … The train must be coming right now. Don’t be late, darling.”

“All right.”

“Ah, how sorry I am to let you go,” said Olga Ivanovna, tears brimming her eyes. “And why was I such a fool as to give the telegraphist my word?”

Dymov quickly drank a cup of tea, took a pretzel, and, smiling meekly, went to the station. And the caviar, cheese, and white salmon were eaten by the two dark-haired gentlemen and the fat actor.

On a quiet, moonlit July night Olga Ivanovna stood on the deck of a Volga steamer and gazed now at the water, now at the beautiful banks. Beside her stood Ryabovsky, who was saying to her that the black shadows on the water were not shadows but a dream, that at the sight of this magical water with its fantastic gleam, at the sight of the fathomless sky and melancholy, pensive banks that speak of the vanity of our life and the existence of something lofty, eternal, blissful, it would be good to fall into oblivion, to die, to become a
memory. The past is banal and uninteresting, the future insigni
ficant, and this wondrous night, unique in their life, will soon end, will merge with eternity—why then live?

And Olga Ivanovna listened now to Ryabovsky’s voice, now to the silence of the night, and thought she was immortal and would never die. The turquoise color of the water, such as she had never seen before, the sky, the banks, the black shadows, and the unaccountable joy that filled her heart, told her that she would become a great artist, and somewhere beyond the distance, beyond the moonlit night, in infinite space, success awaited her, fame, people’s love … When she looked into the distance for a long time without blinking, she imagined crowds of people, lights, the festive sounds of mus
ic, shouts of delight, she herself in a white dress, and flowers pouring on her from all sides. She also thought that beside her, leaning his elbows on the bulwark, stood a truly great man, a genius, one of God’s chosen … Everything he had created so far was beautiful, new, and extraordinary, and what he
would create in time, when his rare talent was strengthened by maturity, would be astounding, immeasurably lofty, and this could be seen by his face, by his manner of expressing himself, and by his attitude towards nature. Of the shadows, the evening hues, the shining of the moon, he spoke somehow specially, in his own language, so that one inadvertently felt the charm of his power over nature. He himself was very handsome, original, and his life, independent, free, foreign to everything mundane, was like the life of a bird.

“It’s getting cool,” said Olga Ivanovna, shivering.

Ryabovsky wrapped his cloak around her and said sorrowfully:

“I feel I am in your power. I am a slave. What makes you so bewitching today?”

He gazed at her all the while, not tearing himself away, and his eyes were terrible, and she was afraid to look at him.

“I love you madly …” he whispered, breathing on her cheek. “Say one word to me, and I’ll cease living, I’ll abandon art …” he murmured in great agitation. “Love me, love …”

“Don’t speak like that,” said Olga Ivanovna, closing her eyes. “It’s terrible. And Dymov?”

“What of Dymov? Why Dymov? What do I care about Dymov? The Volga, the moon, beauty, my love, my ecstasy, and there isn’t any Dymov… Ah, I know nothing … I need no past, give me one instant… one moment.”

Olga Ivanovna’s heart was pounding. She wanted to think of her husband, but the whole of her past, with the wedding, with Dymov, with her soirées, seemed small to her, worthless, faded, unnecessary, and far, far away… What Dymov, indeed? Why Dymov? What did she care about Dymov? Did he really exist in nature, or was he merely a dream?

“For him, a simple and ordinary man, the happiness he has already received is enough,” she thought, covering her face with her hands. “Let them condemn me
there,
let them curse me, and I’ll just up and ruin myself, ruin myself to spite them all… One must experience everything in life. Oh, God, how scary and how good!”

“Well, what? What?” the artist murmured, embracing her and greedily kissing her hands, with which she tried weakly to push him away. “You love me? Yes? Yes? Oh, what a night! A wondrous night!”

“Yes, what a night!” she whispered, looking into his eyes, glistening with tears. Then she glanced around quickly, embraced him, and kissed him hard on the lips.

“Approaching Kineshma!” someone said on the other side of the deck.

Heavy footsteps were heard. It was a man from the buffet walking by.

“Listen,” Olga Ivanovna said to him, laughing and crying from happiness, “bring us some wine.”

The artist, pale with excitement, sat down on a bench, looked at Olga Ivanovna with adoring, grateful eyes, then closed his eyes and said, smiling languidly:

“I’m tired.”

And he leaned his head against the bulwark.

The second day of September was warm and still, but gray. Early in the morning a light mist wandered over the Volga, and after nine a drizzling rain set in. And there was no hope that the s
ky would clear. Over tea Ryabovsky was saying to Olga Ivanovna that painting was the most ungrateful and boring of arts, that he was not an artist, and that only fools thought he had talent, and suddenly, out of the blue, he seized a knife and scratched the best of his studies. After tea he sat
gloomily by the window and looked at the Volga. And the Volga was without a gleam, dull, lusterless, and cold-looking. Everything, everything recalled the approach of melancholy, dismal autumn. And it seemed as if nature now stripped the Volga of the luxurious green carpets on its banks, the diamond glints of the
sun, the transparent blue distance, and all that was smart and showy, and packed it away in trunks till next spring, and the crows flew about the Volga, teasing her: “Bare! Bare!” Ryabovsky listened to their cawing and thought that he was already played out and had lost his talent, and that everything in this world was conventional, relative, and stupid, and that he should not have tied himself to this woman … In short, he was in a foul and splenetic mood.

Olga Ivanovna sat on the bed behind the partition and, fingering her beautiful flaxen hair, imagined herself now in the drawing room, now in the bedroom, now in her husband’s study; her imagination carried her to the theater, to the dressmaker’s, and to her famous friends. What were they doing now? Did they remember her? The season had already begun, and it was time to be thinking of soirées. And Dymov? Dear Dymov! How meekly and with what childlike plaintiveness he asked her in his letters to come home soon! Every month he sent her seventy-five roubles, and when she wrote to him that she
owed the artists a hundred roubles, he sent her the hundred as well. What a kind, generous man! Olga Ivanovna was tired of traveling, she was bored and wanted to get away quickly from these peasants, from the smell of river dampness, and to shake off the feeling of physical uncleanness she had experienced all the while she had been living in peasant cottages and migrating from village to village. If Ryabovsky had not given the artists his word of honor that he would stay with them till the twentieth of September, they might have left that same day. And how good it would be!

“My God,” moaned Ryabovsky, “but when will there finally be some sun? I can’t go on working on a sunny landscape without the sun!…

“But you have a study with a cloudy sky,” said Olga Ivanovna, appearing from behind the partition. “Remember, a woods to the right and a herd of cows or some geese to the left. You could finish it now.”

“Eh!” the artist winced. “Finish it! Maybe you think I myself am so stupid that I don’t know what I should do!”

“How you’ve changed towards me!” Olga Ivanovna sighed.

“Well, splendid.”

Olga Ivanovna’s face trembled, she went over to the stove and began to cry.

“Yes, we only lacked tears. Stop it! I have a thousand reasons to cry, but I don’t cry.”

“A thousand reasons!” Olga Ivanovna sobbed. “The main reason is that I’m already a burden to you. Yes!” she said, and burst into tears. “If the truth were told, you’re ashamed of our love. You try to keep the artists from noticing it, though it’s impossible to hide it and they’ve all known for a long time.”

“Olga, I ask one thing of you,” the artist said pleadingly, placing his hand on his heart, “just one thing: don’t torture me! I don’t need anything else from you!”

“But swear that you still love me!”

“This is torture!” the artist said through his teeth and jumped up. “It will end with me throwing myself into the Volga or losing my mind! Let me be!”

“Then kill me, kill me!” cried Olga Ivanovna. “Kill me!”

She burst into tears again and went behind the partition. Rain began to patter on the thatched roof of the cottage. Ryabovsky clutched his head and paced from corner to corner, then, with a resolute face, as if wishing to prove something to someone, he put on his cap, shouldered his gun, and walked out of the cottage.

After he left, Olga Ivanovna lay on the bed for a long time and cried. First she thought it would be good to poison herself, so that Ryabovsky would find her dead when he came back, then she was carried in her thoughts to the drawing room, to her husband’s study, and she imagined herself sitting motionless beside Dymov, enjoying the physical peace and cleanness, and sitting in the theater in the evening listening to Mazzini.
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And the longing for civilization, for city noise and famous people, wrung her heart. A peasant woman came into the cottage and began unhurriedly to fire the stove in o
rder to cook supper. There was a smell of burning, and the air turned blue with smoke. Artists in dirty high boots and with rain-wet faces came in, looked at their studies and said, to comfort themselves, that the Volga had its charm even in bad weather. And the cheap clock on the wall said: tick, tick, tick … Chilled flies crowded into the front corner by the icons and buzzed there, and
cockroaches could be heard stirring in the fat portfolios under the benches …

Ryabovsky returned home as the sun was going down. He threw his cap on the table and, pale, worn out, in dirty boots, sank onto a bench and closed his eyes.

“I’m tired …” he said and moved his eyebrows in an effort to raise his eyelids.

To show her tenderness and let him know that she was not angry, Olga Ivanovna went over to him, kissed him silently, and passed her comb over his blond hair. She wanted to comb it for him.

“What’s that?” he asked with a start, as if something cold had touched him, and he opened his eyes. “What’s that? Leave me alone, I beg you.”

He moved her aside with his hands and walked away, and it seemed to her that his face expressed disgust and vexation. Just then the woman was carefully carrying a plate of cabbage soup to him with both hands, and Olga Ivanovna saw her thumbs dip into the soup. The dirty woman with her cross-tied belly, and the soup that Ryabovsky began eating greedily, and the cottage, and that whole life, which she had liked so much at the beginning for its simplicity and artistic disorder, now seemed horrible to her. She suddenly felt offended and said coldly:

“We must part for a time, otherwise we may quarrel seriously out of boredom. I’m sick of it. I’ll leave today.”

“How? Riding on a stick?”