Stories (37 page)

Only once did Pyotr Leontyich dare to ask for a loan of fifty roubles to pay some very unpleasant debt, but what a torment it was!

“Very well, I’ll give you a loan,” said Modest Alexeich, after some thought, “but I warn you that I will not assist you any more until you stop drinking. For a man in government service, such weakness is a disgrace. I cannot but remind you of the commonly known fact that many capable people have been ruined by this passion, whereas, if they had been temperate, they might in time have become high-ranking people.”

And lengthy periods followed: “inasmuch as …,” “considering the fact that …,” “in view of the aforementioned …,” while poor Pyotr Leontyich suffered humiliation and felt a strong desire for a drink.

And when the boys came to visit Anya, usually wearing torn boots and shabby trousers, they also had to listen to admonishments.

“Every man must have his responsibilities!” Modest Alexeich said to them.

But he gave no money. Instead, he gave Anya rings, bracelets, brooches, saying it was good to keep these things for an unlucky day. And he often unlocked her chest of drawers and checked that all the things were there.

Meanwhile winter came. Long before Christmas the local paper announced that the customary winter ball “would this year take place” on December 29th, at the Assembly of the Nobility. Every evening, after cards, Modest Alexeich, agitated, whispered with the officials’ wives, glanced worriedly at Anya, and afterwards paced the room for a long time, pondering something. Finally, late one evening, he stopped in front of Anya and said:

“You must have a ball gown made for you. Understand? Only please get advice from Marya Grigoryevna and Natalya Kuzminishna.”

And he gave her a hundred roubles. She took it; but, in ordering her ball gown, she did not get anyone’s advice, but only talked it
over with her father and tried to imagine how her mother would have dressed for the ball. Her late mother had always dressed in the latest fashion and had always fussed over Anya, dressed her as elegantly as a doll, and taught her to speak French and dance the mazurka superbly (before her marriage she had worked as a governess for five years). Like her mother, Anya was able to make a new dress out of an old one, to clean her gloves with benzine, to rent
bijoux,
and, like her mother, she knew how to narrow her eyes, roll her
r’s,
assume beautiful poses, become enraptured when necessary, gaze sorrowfully and mysteriously. And from her father she had inherited her dark hair and eyes, her nervousness, and that manner of always preening herself.

When Modest Alexeich came into her room, without his frock coat, a half hour before going to the ball, in order to put his decoration on his neck in front of her pier glass, he was enchanted by the beauty and splendor of her fresh, airy costume, brushed out his side-whiskers smugly, and said:

“So that’s how you are … that’s how you are! Anyuta!” he went on, suddenly falling into a solemn tone. “I’
ve made your happiness, and today you can make mine. I beg you to get yourself introduced to His Excellency’s wife! For God’s sake! Through her I may get the post of senior aide!”

They went to the ball. Here was the Assembly of the Nobility and the main entrance with its doorkeeper. The front hall with its cloakroom, fur coats, scurrying servants, and ladies in décolleté, shielding themselves from the drafty wind with fans. It smelled of gaslights and soldiers. When Anya, going up the stairs on her husband’s arm, heard the music and saw her whole figure in an enormous mirror under the light of many lamps, joy awoke in her soul and with it the same presentiment of happiness she had felt on that moonlit evening at the little station. She walked proudly, self-confiden
tly, for the first time feeling herself not a girl but a lady, and inadvertently copying the gait and manner of her late mother. And for the first time she felt herself rich and free. Even the presence of her husband did not hamper her, because, as she crossed the threshold of the Assembly, she already guessed instinctively that the proximity of an old husband was not humiliating to her in the least, but, on the contrary, placed upon her the stamp of piquant mysteriousness that men like so much. In the big hall the orchestra thundered and the dancing began. After her government apartment,
caught up in impressions of light, colors, music, noise, Anya passed her gaze over the hall and thought: “Ah, how good!” and at once made out all her acquaintances in the crowd, everyone she had met earlier at soirées or promenades, all those officers, teachers, lawyers, officials, landowners, His Excellency, Artynov, and the high-society ladies, decked out, extremely décolleté, the beautiful and the ugly, who had already taken up their posts in the little booths and pavilions in order to start the charity bazaar for the benefit of the poor. An immense officer with epaulettes—she had met him in Sta
ro-Kievsky Street when she was a schoolgirl and no longer remembered his last name—appeared as if from out of the ground and invited her for the waltz, and she flew away from her husband, and it seemed to her as if she were sailing in a boat through a heavy storm, and her husband had stayed far behind on the shore … She danced
with passion, with enthusiasm, the waltz, the polka, the quadrille, passing from hand to hand, dazed by the music and noise, mixing Russian with French, rolling her
r’s,
laughing, and not thinking of her husband, or anyone, or anything. She was a success with men, that was clear and could not have been otherwise, she was breathless with excitement, she convulsively clutched her fan and wanted to drink. Her father, Pyotr Leontyich, in a wrinkled tailcoat that smelled of benzine, came up to her, offering her a dish of red ice cream.

“You’re charming today,” he said, looking at her with delight, “and never have I regretted so much that you rushed into marriage … Why? I know you did it for us, but…” With trembling hands he took out a small wad of money and said: “Today I was paid for my lessons and can repay my debt to your husband.”

She put the dish in his hands and, carried off by someone, flew far away, and over her partner’s shoulder she caught a glimpse of her father gliding across the parquet floor, putting his arms around a lady, and racing through the hall with her.

“He’s so sweet when he’s sober!” she thought.

She danced the mazurka with the same immense officer; he stepped gravely and heavily, like a uniformed side of beef, moved his shoulders and chest, barely stamped his feet—he was terribly reluctant to dance, and she fluttered around him, teasing him with her beauty, with her open neck; her eyes burned with provocation, her movements were passionate, while he became ever more indifferent and held his arms out to her benevolently, like a king.

“Bravo, bravo! …” came from the public.

But the immense officer gradually loosened up; he became lively, excited, and, yielding now to the enchantment, waxed enthusiastic and moved lightly, youthfully, while she only shifted her shoulders and glanced at him slyly, as if she were a queen and
he her slave, and it seemed to her just then that everyone in the hall was looking at them, that all these people were thrilled and envied them. The immense officer had barely managed to thank her, when the public suddenly parted and the men straightened up somehow strangely, their arms at their sides … Walking towards her was His Excellency, in a tailcoat with two stars. Yes, His Excellency was walking precisely towards her, because he was looking straight at her with a saccharine smile and at the same time munching his lips, something he always did at the sight of pretty women.

“Delighted, delighted …” he began. “I’ll order your husband put under arrest for concealing such a treasure from us till today. I’ve come on an errand from my wife,” he went on, offering her his arm. “You must help us … Mm, yes … We should give you a prize for beauty … as in America … Mm, yes … The Americans … My wife is waiting impatiently for you.”

He brought her to a booth, to an elderly lady, the lower part of whose face was so incongruously large that it seemed as if she were holding a big stone in her mouth.

“Help us,” she said through her nose, in a sing-song voice. “All the pretty women are working at the charity bazaar, and you alone are having fun for some reason. Why don’t you want to help us?”

She left, and Anya took her place by the silver samovar and cups. A brisk trade began at once. Anya took no less than a rouble per cup of tea, and she made the immense officer drink three cups. Artynov came up; the rich man with the prominent eyes, who suffered from shortness of breath, was no longer in the strange costume in which Anya had seen him that summer, but was wearing a tailcoat like everyone else. Not tearing his eyes from Anya, he drank a glass of champagne and paid a hundred roubles for it, then drank tea and gave another hundred—and all that in silence, suffering from asthma …
Anya called customers over and took their money, now deeply convinced that her smiles and looks gave these people nothing but the greatest pleasur
e. She already understood that she had been created solely for this noisy, brilliant, laughing life with its music, dancing, and admirers, and her long-standing fear before
the power that was coming down on her and threatening to crush her, seemed ridiculous to her; she was no longer afraid of anyone and only regretted that her mother was not there to rejoice with her now over her successes.

Pyotr Leontyich, pale but still keeping firmly on his feet, came up to the booth and asked for a glass of cognac. Anya blushed, expecting him to say something inappropriate (she was already ashamed of having such a poor, such an ordinary father), but he drank up, peeled off ten roubles from his little wad, and sedately walked away without saying a word. A little later she saw him stepping out the
grand rond
with a partner, and this time he staggered and shouted something, to the great embarrassment of his lady, and Anya remembered how three years ago he had staggered and shouted in the same w
ay at a ball, and it had ended with a policeman taking him home to bed, and next day the director had threatened to dismiss him from his work. How untimely this memory was!

When the samovars went out in the booths and the weary benefactresses handed their receipts over to the elderly woman with the stone in her mouth, Artynov led Anya by the arm to the big hall, where supper was laid out for all the participants in the charity bazaar. There were about twenty people at the table, not more, but it was very noisy. His Excellency gave the toast: “In this magnificent dining room it would be appropriate to drink to the prosperity of the cheap eateries that were the object of today’s bazaar.” A brigadier general suggested that they drink “to the power before w
hich even the artillery quails,” and everybody began clinking with the ladies. There was great, great merriment!

When Anya was taken home, day was already breaking and the cooks were going to market. Joyful, drunk, filled with new impressions, exhausted, she undressed, collapsed on her bed, and fell asleep at once …

Past one o’clock in the afternoon her maid awakened her and reported that Mr. Artynov had come to visit. She dressed quickly and went to the drawing room. Soon after Artynov, His Excellency came to thank her for taking part in the charity bazaar. Munching and looking at her with saccharine eyes, he kissed her hand, asked her permission to come again, and left, while she stood in the middle of the drawing room, amazed, enchanted, unable to believe that the change in her life, an astonishing change, had taken place so
soon; and just then her husband, Modest Alexeich, came in … And he stood before her now with the same ingratiating, sweet, slavishly deferential expression she was accustomed to seeing him have in the presence of the strong and distinguished; and with rapture, with indignation, with scorn, confident now that nothing would happen to her for it, she said, pronouncing each word distinctly:

“Get out, blockhead!”

After that Anya never had a single free day, for she participated now in a picnic, now in a promenade, now in a performance. She came home each day towards morning and lay on the floor in the drawing room, and then touchingly told everyone how she had slept under the flowers. She needed a great deal of money, but she was no longer afraid of Modest Alexeich and spent his money as if it were her own; she did not ask, did not demand, but merely sent him the bills or notes: “Pay the bearer 200 r.,” or “100 r. payable at once.”

At Easter Modest Alexeich received the Anna second degree. When he went to say thank you, His Excellency laid aside his newspaper and settled deeper into his armchair.

“So now you have three Annas,” he said, examining his white hands with their pink nails, “one in the buttonhole and two on your neck.”

Modest Alexeich put two fingers to his lips as a precaution against laughing out loud, and said:

“It now only remains to wait for a little Vladimir to come into the world. I make so bold as to ask Your Excellency to be the godfather.”

He was alluding to the Vladimir fourth degree,
⁴
and was already imagining himself telling everywhere about this pun, so fortunate in its resourcefulness and boldness, and he wanted to say something else equally fortunate, but His Excellency again immersed himself in his newspaper and nodded his head …

And Anya kept riding about in troikas, went hunting with Artynov, acted in one-act plays, had suppers, and visited her family more and more rarely. They now dined by themselves. Pyotr Leontyich drank more than ever, they had no money, and the harmonium had long since been sold to pay a debt. Now the boys never let him go out alone and watched him lest he fall down; and when they met Anya in Staro-Kievsky Street in a coach and pair
with an outrunner, and Artynov on the box instead of a driver, Pyotr Leontyich took off his top hat and was about to shout something, but Petya and Andryusha held him b
y the arms and said imploringly:

“You mustn’t, papa … That will do, papa …”

O
CTOBER
1895

T
his was six or seven years ago, when I was living in one of the
districts of T—— province, on the estate of the lan
downer Belokurov, a young man who got up very early, went about in a vest, drank beer in the evenings, and kept complaining to me that he met with no sympathy anywhere or from anyone. He lived in a cottage in the garden, and I in the old mansion, in a huge hall with columns, where there was no furniture except a wide sofa on which I slept and a table on which I played patience. Here, even in calm weather, something always howled in the old Amosov stoves,
¹
but during a thunderstorm the whole house trembled and seemed to crack to pieces, and it was a little frightening, especially at night, when all t
en big windows were suddenly lit up by lightning.

Condemned by fate to permanent idleness, I was doing decidedly nothing. I spent whole hours looking out my windows at the sky, the birds, the avenues, read everything that came in the mail, slept. Sometimes I left the house and wandered about somewhere till late in the evening.

Once, returning home, I accidentally wandered onto an unfamiliar estate. The sun was already hiding, and evening shadows stretched across the flowering rye. Two rows of old, closely planted, very tall fir trees stood like two solid walls, forming a beautiful, gloomy avenue. I easily climbed the fence and went down this
avenue, slipping on the fir needles that lay inches-thick on the ground. It was quiet, dark, and only high in the treetops did a bright golden light tremble here and there and play iridescently on the spiderwebs. There was a strong, almost stifling, smell of fir needles. Then I turned down a long linden avenue. Here, too, there was old age and desolation; last year’s leaves rustled sorrowfully under my feet, and shadows hid in the twilight between the trees. To the right, in an old orchard, an oriole sang reluctantly, in a weak voice—it must have been a little old lady, too. But now the lindens a
lso ended; I passed a white house with a terrace and a mezzanine, and before me there unexpectedly opened up a view of the manor yard and a wide pond with a bathing house, a stand of green willows, a village on the other side, with a tall, slender belfry, the cross of which blazed, reflecting the setting sun. For a moment I felt the enchantment of something dear and very familiar, as if I had already seen this same panorama sometime in my childhood.

And by the white stone gateway that led from the yard into the fields, by the sturdy old gates with their lions, stood two girls. One of them, the elder, slender, pale, very beautiful, with a whole mass of chestnut hair on her head, with a small, stubborn mouth, had a stern expression and barely paid any attention to me; the other, still very young—she was seventeen or eighteen years old, not more— also slender and pale, with a big mouth and big eyes, looked at me in surprise as I passed by, said something in English, and became embarrassed, and it seemed to me that these two sweet faces ha
d also been long familiar to me. And I returned home feeling as if I had had a good dream.

Soon after that, around noon one day, as Belokurov and I were strolling near the house, a spring carriage, swishing through the grass, unexpectedly drove into the yard, with one of those girls sitting in it. It was the older one. She had come with a subscription list, seeking aid for the victims of a fire. Without looking at us, she told us very seriously and in detail how many houses had burned down in the village of Siyanovo, how many men, women, and children had been left without a roof, and what the committee for th
e victims, of which she was now a member, intended to undertake as a first step. After having us sign it, she put the list away and at once began taking her leave.

“You’ve quite forgotten us, Pyotr Petrovich,” she said to Belokurov, giving him her hand. “Come over, and if Monsieur X”
(she said my name) “wishes to have a look at how some admirers of his talent live, and is so good as to visit us, mama and I will be very glad.”

I bowed.

When she left, Pyotr Petrovich told me the story. This girl, in his words, was from a good family, her name was Lydia Volchaninova, and the estate she lived on with her mother and sister was called Shelkovka, the same as the one across the pond. Her father had once occupied a prominent position in Moscow and had died with the rank of privy councillor. Although they were well off, the Volchaninovs lived permanently in the country, summer and winter, and Lydia was a teacher in a zemstvo
²
school in her own Shelkovka and earned twenty-five roubles a month. She spent only this money on herself
and was proud to be living at her own expense.

“An interesting family,” said Belokurov. “We might go and see them sometime. They’d be very glad to have you.”

After dinner once, on a feast day, we remembered the Volchaninovs and went to visit them in Shelkovka. They, the mother and both daughters, were at home. The mother, Ekaterina Pavlovna, evidently beautiful once but now flabby beyond her years, suffering from shortness of breath, sad, distracted, tried to engage me in a conversation about painting. Having learned from her daughter that I might visit Shelkovka, she had hastily recalled two or three landscapes of mine that she had seen at exhibitions in Moscow, and now asked me what I had meant to express in them. Lydia, or Lida, as t
hey called her at home, talked more with B
elokurov than with me. Serious, unsmiling, she asked him why he did not serve in the zemstvo and why he had never yet come to a single zemstvo meeting.

“It’s not good, Pyotr Petrovich,” she said reproachfully. “It’s not good. It’s a shame.”

“True, Lida, true,” her mother agreed. “It’s not good.”

“Our whole district is in the hands of Balagin,” Lida went on, turning to me. “He himself is the chairman of the board, and he’s given all the posts in the district to his nephews and sons-in-law and does whatever he likes. We must fight. The young people should form a strong party, but you see what kind of young people we have. It’s a shame, Pyotr Petrovich!”

While we talked about the zemstvo, the younger sister, Zhenya,
was silent. She did not take part in serious conversations, the family did not consider her grown up yet, and called her Missyus, like a little girl, because that was what she had called
Miss,
her governess, as a child. She kept looking at me with curiosity, and when I glanced through the photograph album, she explained to me: “That’s my uncle … That’s my godfather,” and moved her little finger over the portraits, and at that moment she touched me childishly with her shoulder, and I could see close-up her weak, undevel
oped breast, her slender shoulders, her braid, and her thin body, tightly bound with a sash.

We played croquet and lawn tennis, strolled about the garden, had tea, and then a long supper. After the enormous, empty hall with columns, I felt somehow ill at ease in this small, cozy house in which there were no oleographs on the walls and the servants were addressed formally, and everything seemed young and pure to me, owing to the presence of Lida and Missyus, and everything breathed respectability. Over supper Lida again talked with Belokurov about the zemstvo, about Balagin, about the school libraries. She was a lively, sincere girl, with deep convictio
ns, and it was interesting to listen to her, though she talked a lot and loudly—perhaps because she was used to talking at school. On the other hand, my Pyotr Petrovich, who from his student days had kept the manner of turning every conversation into an argument, spoke dully, listlessly, and at length, with the obvious wish of appearing to be an intelligent and progressive man. Gesticulating, he overturned the sauceboat with his sleeve, and a big puddle formed on the tablecloth, but, except for me, no one seemed to notice it.

When we returned home, it was dark and still.

“Good manners doesn’t mean not spilling sauce on the tablecloth, but not noticing when someone else does,” said Belokurov, and he sighed. “Yes, a wonderful, intellectual family. I’ve lost touch with good people, indeed I have! I’m always busy, busy, busy!”

He talked of how much one had to work if one wanted to be a model farmer. And I thought: what a sluggish and lazy fellow he is! When he talked about something serious, he drawled and strained, “E-e-eh,” and he worked the same way as he talked—slow, always late, missing all deadlines. I had little faith in his business abilities, if only because when I asked him to mail some letters for me, he carried them around in his pockets for weeks.

“The hardest thing of all,” he muttered, walking beside me, “the
hardest thing of all is to work and get no sympathy from anybody No sympathy at all!”

I began to visit the Volchaninovs. Usually I sat on the bottom step of the terrace; dissatisfaction with myself oppressed me, I felt sorry for my life, which was passing so quickly and uninterestingly, and I kept thinking how good it would be to tear this heart, which had grown so heavy, out of my breast. And all the while there would
be talking on the terrace, one could hear the rustling of dresses and the leafing-through of books. I soon became accustomed to Lida’s receiving sick people in the afternoon, handing out books, and often leaving for the village, bare-headed
³
under her parasol, and in the evening talking loudly about the zemstvo and schools. This slender, beautiful, invariably severe girl, with her small, gracefully outlined mouth, would turn to me whenever a practical conversation began, and say drily:

“This is of no interest to you.”

She did not find me sympathetic. She disliked me because I was a landscape painter and did not portray the needs of the people in my pictures, and because I was, as it seemed to her, indifferent to what she so strongly believed in. I remember once riding along the shore of Baikal and meeting a Buryat
⁴
girl in a shirt and blue dungaree trousers, on horseback; I asked her if she would sell me her pipe, and as we spoke, she looked scornfully at my European face and my hat, and after a minute got sick of talking to me, whooped, and galloped off. In the same way, Lida scorned the alien in me. S
he did not express her indisposition towards me in any external way, but I sensed it and, sitting on the bottom step of the terrace, felt annoyed and said that to treat peasants without being a doctor was to deceive them and that it was easy to be philanthropic when one owned five thousand acres.

But her sister, Missyus, had no cares and spent her life in total idleness, as I did. When she got up in the morning, she at once took a book and started reading, sitting on the terrace in a deep armchair, so that her little feet barely touched the ground, or she hid herself with a book in the linden avenue, or went out the gates into the fields. She read for the whole day, peering greedily into her
book, and only because her eyes sometimes became tired, dazed, and her face very pale, could you guess that this reading wearied her brain. When I came, she would blush slightly on seeing m
e, put her book down, and, looking into my face with her big eyes, tell me excitedly about things that ha
d happened: for instance, that there had been a chimney fire in the servants’ quarters or that some worker had caught a big fish in the pond. On weekdays she usually went about in a pale blouse and a dark blue skirt. We took walks together, picked cherries for preserves, went for boat rides, and when she jumped up to reach a cherry, or handled the oars, her thin, weak arms showed through her loose sleeves. Or else I would paint a study, and she would stand beside me and watch with admiration.

One Sunday at the end of July I came to the Volchaninovs’ in the morning, around nine o’clock. I walked through the park, keeping away from the house, and looked for mushrooms, which were very numerous that summer, and marked the places, in order to pick them later with Zhenya. A warm breeze was blowing. I saw Zhenya and her mother, both in pale festive dresses, walking from church to the house, and Zhenya keeping her hat from blowing off in the wind. Then I heard them having tea on the terrace.

For a carefree man like me, seeking to justify his constant idleness, these festive summer mornings on our country estates have always been extremely attractive. When a green garden, still moist with dew, shines all over in the sun and looks happy, when there is a smell of mignonette and oleander around the house, the young people have just come back from church and are having tea in the garden, and when everyone is so nicely dressed and cheerful, and when you know that all these healthy, well-fed, handsome people will do nothing all day long, then you want all of life to be like t
hat. And now I was thinking the same thing and walking in the garden, ready to walk that way, idly and aimlessly, all day, all summer.

Zhenya came with a basket; she looked as if she knew or anticipated that she would find me in the garden. We picked mushrooms and talked, and when she asked about something, she went ahead so as to see my face.

“Yesterday a miracle took place in our village,” she said. “Lame Pelageya was sick for a whole year, no doctors or medicines helped her, but yesterday an old woman whispered something and it went away.”