A Russian Affair

Ionych

I

When visitors to the county town of S— complained of the monotony and boredom of life there, the local people would reply, as if in self-defence, that the very opposite was the case, that life there was in fact extremely good, that the town had a library, a theatre, a club, that there was the occasional ball and – finally – that there were intelligent, interesting and agreeable families with whom to make friends. And they would single out the Turkins as the most cultivated and gifted family.

This family lived in its own house on the main street, next door to the Governor’s. Ivan Petrovich Turkin, a stout, handsome, dark-haired man with sideburns, would organize amateur theatricals for charity – and he himself played the parts of elderly generals, when he would cough most amusingly. He had a copious stock of funny stories, riddles and proverbs, was a great wag and humorist, and you could never tell from his expression whether he was serious or joking. His wife, Vera Iosifovna, a thin, attractive woman with pince-nez, wrote short stories and novels which she loved reading to her guests. Their young daughter Yekaterina Ivanovna played the piano. In short, each Turkin had some particular talent. The Turkins were convivial hosts and cheerfully displayed their talents to their guests with great warmth and lack of pretension. Their large stone house was spacious, and cool in summer. Half of its windows opened onto a shady old garden where nightingales sang in spring. When they had visitors the clatter of knives came from the kitchen and the yard would smell of fried onion – all of which invariably heralded a lavish and tasty supper.

And no sooner had Dr Dmitry Ionych Startsev been appointed local medical officer and taken up residence at Dyalizh, about six miles away, then he too was told that – as a man of culture – he simply must meet the Turkins. One winter’s day he was introduced to Ivan Petrovich in the street. They chatted about the weather, the theatre, cholera – and an invitation followed. One holiday in spring (it was Ascension Day), after seeing his patients, Startsev set off for town to relax a little and at the same time to do a spot of shopping. He went there on foot, without hurrying himself (as yet he had no carriage and pair), and all the way he kept humming: ‘’Ere I had drunk from life’s cup of tears.’

In town he dined, took a stroll in the park, and then he suddenly remembered Ivan Petrovich’s invitation and decided to call on the Turkins and see what kind of people they were.

‘Good day – if you please!’ Ivan Petrovich said, meeting him on the front steps. ‘Absolutely, overwhelmingly delighted to see such a charming visitor! Come in, I’ll introduce you to my good lady wife. Verochka,’ he went on, introducing the doctor to his wife, ‘I’ve been telling him that he has no right at all under Roman law to stay cooped up in that hospital – he should devote his leisure time to socializing. Isn’t that so, my sweet?’

‘Please sit here,’ Vera Iosifovna said, seating the guest beside her. ‘You are permitted to flirt with me. My husband’s as jealous as Othello, but we’ll try and behave so that he doesn’t notice a thing.’

‘Oh, my sweet little chick-chick!’ Ivan Petrovich muttered tenderly, planting a kiss on her forehead. ‘You’ve timed your visit to perfection!’ he added, turning once more to his guest. ‘My good lady wife’s written a real whopper of a novel and she’s going to read it out loud this evening.’

‘Jean, my pet,’ Vera Iosifovna told her husband. ‘Dites que l’on nous donne du thé.’

Startsev was introduced to Yekaterina Ivanovna, an eighteen-year-old girl who was the image of her mother – and just as thin and attractive. Her waist was slim and delicate, and her expression was still that of a child. And her youthful, already well-developed, beautiful, healthy bosom hinted at spring, true spring. Then they had tea with jam, honey, chocolates, and very tasty pastries that simply melted in one’s mouth.

Towards evening more guests began to arrive and Ivan Petrovich would look at them with his laughing eyes and say: ‘Good evening – if you please!’

Then they all sat in the drawing-room with very serious expressions, and Vera Iosifovna read from her novel, which began: ‘The frost was getting harder …’ The windows were wide open and they could hear the clatter of knives in the kitchen; the smell of fried onion drifted over from the yard … To be sitting in those soft armchairs was highly relaxing and the lamps winked so very invitingly in the twilight of the drawing-room; and now, on an early summer’s evening, when the sound of voices and laughter came from the street and the scent of lilac wafted in from outside, it was difficult to understand all that claptrap about how the frost was getting harder and ‘the setting sun was illuminating with its cold rays the lonely wayfarer crossing a snowy plain’. Vera Iosifovna read how a beautiful young countess established schools, hospitals and libraries in her village and how she fell in love with a wandering artist. She read of things that never happen in real life. All the same, it was pleasantly soothing to hear about them – and they evoked such serene and delightful thoughts that one was reluctant to get up.

‘Not awfully baddish!’ Ivan Petrovich said softly.

One of the guests, whose thoughts were wandering far, far away as he listened, remarked: ‘Yes … indeed …’

One hour passed, then another. In the municipal park close by a band was playing and a choir was singing. For five minutes after Vera Iosifovna had closed her manuscript everyone sat in silence listening to the choir singing ‘By Rushlight’, a song that conveyed what really happens in life and what was absent from the novel.

‘Do you have your works published in magazines?’ Startsev asked Vera Iosifovna.

‘No,’ she replied. ‘I don’t publish them anywhere … I hide away what I’ve written in a cupboard. And why publish?’ she explained. ‘It’s not as if we need the money.’

And for some reason everyone sighed.

‘And now, Pussycat, play us something,’ Ivan Petrovich told his daughter.

They raised the piano lid and opened some music that happened to be lying there ready. Yekaterina Ivanovna sat down and struck the keys with both hands. And then she immediately struck them again, with all her might – and again and again. Her shoulders and bosom quivered, relentlessly she kept hammering away in the same place and it seemed that she had no intention of stopping until she had driven those keys deep into the piano. The drawing-room was filled with the sound of thunder. Everything reverberated – floor, ceiling, furniture. Yekaterina Ivanovna played a long, difficult, monotonous passage that was interesting solely on account of its difficulty. As Startsev listened he visualized large boulders rolling from the top of a high mountain, rolling and forever rolling – and he wanted the rolling to quickly stop. And at the same time, Yekaterina Ivanovna, her face pink from the exertion, strong and brimful of energy, with a lock of hair tumbling onto her forehead, struck him as most attractive. And how pleasant and refreshing it was, after a winter spent in Dyalizh among patients and peasants, to be sitting in that drawing-room, to be looking at that young, exquisite and most probably innocent creature, to be listening to those deafening, tiresome, yet civilized sounds.

‘Well, Pussycat! You’ve really excelled yourself today!’ Ivan Petrovich said with tears in his eyes, rising to his feet when his daughter had finished. ‘ “Die now Denis, you’ll never write better!” ’

They all surrounded and congratulated her, expressed their admiration and assured her that it was a long, long time since they had heard such a performance, while she listened in silence, faintly smiling – and triumph was written all over her figure.

‘Wonderful! Excellent!’ Startsev exclaimed too, yielding to the general mood of enthusiasm.

‘Where did you study music?’ he asked Yekaterina. ‘At the Conservatoire?’

‘No, I’m still only preparing for it, but in the meantime I’ve been having lessons with Madame Zavlovsky.’

‘Did you go to the local high school?’

‘Oh no!’ intervened Vera Iosifovna. ‘We engaged private tutors. At high school or boarding-school, you must agree, one could meet with bad influences. A growing girl should be under the influence of her mother and no one else.’

‘I’m going to the Conservatoire all the same,’ Yekaterina retorted.

‘No, Pussycat loves her Mama. Pussycat’s not going to upset Mama and Papa, is she?’

‘I will go, I will!’ replied Yekaterina half-joking, acting like a naughty child and stamping her little foot.

Over supper Ivan Petrovich was able to display his talents. He told funny stories, laughing only with his eyes; he joked, he set absurd riddles and solved them himself, perpetually talking in his own weird lingo that had been cultivated by lengthy practice in the fine art of wit and which had evidently become second nature to him by now:

‘A real whopper! – not awfully baddish! – thanking you most convulsively!’

But that was not all. When the guests, replete and contented, crowded in the hall, sorting out their coats and canes, Pavlushka the footman (or Peacock as he was nicknamed), a boy of about fourteen with cropped hair and chubby cheeks, kept bustling around them.

‘Now, Peacock, perform!’ Ivan Petrovich told him.

Peacock struck a pose and raised one arm aloft.

‘Die, wretched woman!’ he declaimed in tragic accents. And everyone roared with laughter.

‘Most entertaining!’ thought Startsev as he went out into the street. He called at a restaurant and drank some beer before setting off for Dyalizh. All the way he kept humming: ‘Thy voice for me is dear and languorous.’

After a six-mile walk he went to bed, not feeling in the least tired: on the contrary, he felt that he could have walked another thirteen miles with the greatest pleasure.

‘Not awfully baddish!’ he remembered as he dozed off. And he burst out laughing.

II

Startsev had always been intending to visit the Turkins again, but he was so overloaded with work in the hospital that it was impossible to find a spare moment. This way more than a year passed in hard work and solitude. But one day someone from town brought him a letter in a light blue envelope.

Vera Iosifovna had long been suffering from migraine but recently, when Pussycat had been scaring her every day by threatening to go off to the Conservatoire, the attacks had become much more frequent. Every doctor in town called on the Turkins, until finally it was the district doctor’s turn. Vera Iosifovna wrote him a touching letter, begging him to come and relieve her sufferings. So Startsev went and subsequently became a very frequent visitor at the Turkins’ – very frequent. In point of fact, he did help Vera Iosifovna a little and she told all her friends that he was an exceptional, a truly wonderful doctor. But it was no longer the migraine that brought Startsev to the Turkins’.

He had the day off. Yekaterina Ivanovna finished her interminable, tiresome piano exercises, after which they all sat in the dining-room for a long time drinking tea, while Ivan Petrovich told one of his funny stories. But then the front door bell rang and Ivan Petrovich had to go into the hall to welcome some new visitor. Startsev took advantage of the momentary distraction and whispered to Yekaterina Ivanovna in great agitation:

‘Don’t torment me, for Christ’s sake. I beg you! Let’s go into the garden.’

She shrugged her shoulders as if at a loss to understand what he wanted from her; still, she got up and went out.

‘You usually play the piano for three or four hours at a time,’ he said as he followed her, ‘then you sit with your mama, so I have no chance to talk to you. Please spare me a mere quarter of an hour. I beg you!’

Autumn was approaching and all was quiet and sad in the old garden; dark leaves lay thick on the paths. Already the evenings were drawing in.

‘I haven’t seen you the whole week,’ Startsev continued. ‘If you only knew what hell I’ve been through! Let’s sit down. Please listen to what I have to say.’

Both of them had their favourite spot in the garden – the bench under the broad, old maple. And now they sat down on this bench.

‘What do you want?’ Yekaterina Ivanovna asked in a dry, matter-of-fact tone.

‘I haven’t seen you the whole week. It’s been so long since I heard you speak. I passionately want to hear your voice, I thirst for it! Please speak.’

She captivated him by her freshness, by that naïve expression of her eyes and cheeks. Even in the way she wore her dress he saw something exceptionally charming, touching in its simplicity and innocent grace. And at the same time, despite her naïveté, she struck him as extremely intelligent and mature for her age. With someone like her he could discuss literature, art – anything he liked in fact; he could complain to her about life, about people, although during serious conversations she would sometimes suddenly start laughing quite inappropriately and run back to the house. Like almost all the young ladies of S— she read a great deal (on the whole the people of S— read very little and they said in the local library that if it weren’t for girls and young Jews they might as well close the place down). This pleased Startsev immeasurably and every time they met he would excitedly ask her what she had been reading over the past few days and he would listen enchanted when she told him.

‘What did you read that week we didn’t meet?’ he asked her now. ‘Tell me, I beg you.’

‘I read Pisemsky.’

‘And what precisely?’

‘A Thousand Souls,’ Pussycat replied. ‘And what a funny name Pisemsky had: Aleksey Feofilaktych!’

‘But where are you going?’ Startsev cried out in horror when she suddenly got up and went towards the house. ‘I must talk to you … there’s something I must explain … Please stay, for just five minutes! I implore you!’

She stopped as if she wanted to say something. Then she awkwardly thrust a little note into his hand and ran off into the house, where she sat down at the piano again.

‘Be at the cemetery tonight at eleven o’clock by the Demetti tomb,’ read Startsev.

‘Well, that’s really rather silly,’ he thought, collecting himself. ‘Why the cemetery? What for?’

Pussycat was obviously playing one of her little games. Who in their right mind would want to arrange a rendezvous at night in a cemetery, miles from town, when they could easily have met in the street or the municipal park? And did it become him, a district doctor, an intelligent, respectable person, to be sighing, receiving billets-doux, hanging around cemeteries, doing things so silly that even schoolboys would laugh at them these days! What would his colleagues say if they found out?

These were Startsev’s thoughts as he wandered around the tables at the club. But at half past ten he suddenly upped and went to the cemetery.

He now had his own carriage and pair – and a coachman called Panteleymon, who wore a velvet waistcoat. The moon was shining. It was quiet and warm but autumn was in the air. Near the abattoirs in one of the suburbs dogs were howling. Startsev left his carriage in a lane on the edge of town and walked the rest of the way to the cemetery. ‘Everyone has his peculiar side,’ he thought. ‘Pussycat’s rather weird too and – who knows? – perhaps she’s not joking and she’ll turn up.’ And he surrendered to this feeble, vain hope – and it intoxicated him.

For a quarter of a mile he walked over the fields. The cemetery appeared in the distance as a dark strip – like a forest or large garden. The white stone wall, the gates came into view … In the moonlight he could read on the gates: ‘The hour is coming when …’ Startsev passed through a wicket-gate and what first caught his eye were the white crosses and tombstones on either side of a wide avenue and the black shadows cast by them and the poplars. All around, far and wide, he could see black and white, and the sleepy trees lowered their branches over the white beneath them. It seemed lighter here than in the open fields. The paw-like leaves of the maples stood out sharply against the yellow sand of the avenues and against the gravestones, while inscriptions on monuments were clearly visible. Immediately Startsev was struck by what he was seeing for the first time in his life and what he would probably never see again: a world that was unlike any other, a world where the moonlight was so exquisite and soft it seemed to have its cradle here; a world where there was no life – no, not one living thing – but where, in every dark poplar, in every grave, one sensed the presence of some secret that promised peaceful, beautiful, eternal life. From those stones and faded flowers, mingling with the smell of autumnal leaves, there breathed forgiveness, sadness and peace.

All around was silence. The stars looked down from the heavens in profound humility and Startsev’s footsteps rang out so sharply, so jarringly here. Only when the chapel clock began to strike and he imagined himself dead and buried here for ever did he have the feeling that someone was watching him and for a minute he thought that here was neither peace nor tranquillity, only the mute anguish of non-existence, of stifled despair …

Demetti’s tomb was in the form of a shrine surmounted by an angel. An Italian opera company had once passed through S— and one of the female singers had died. She had been buried here and they had erected this monument. No longer was she remembered in town, but the lamp over the entrance to the shrine reflected the moonlight and seemed to be burning.

No one was there. And how could anyone think of coming here at midnight? But Startsev waited – and as if the moonlight were kindling his desires he waited passionately, imagining kisses and embraces. He sat by the monument for about half an hour, then he wandered along side-paths, hat in hand, waiting and reflecting how many women and young girls who had once been beautiful and enchanting, who had loved and burnt at night with passion, who had yielded to caresses, lay buried here. And in effect, what a terrible joke Nature plays on man – and how galling to be conscious of it!

These were Startsev’s thoughts – and at the same time he wanted to shout out loud that he yearned for love, that he was waiting for love and that he must have it at all costs. Now he no longer saw slabs of white marble, but beautiful bodies; he saw figures coyly hiding in the shadows of the trees. He felt their warmth – and this yearning became all too much to bear …

And then, just as if a curtain had been lowered, the moon vanished behind the clouds and suddenly everything went dark. Startsev had difficulty finding the gate – all around it was dark, the darkness of an autumn night. Then he wandered around for an hour and a half, looking for the lane where he had left the carriage and pair.

‘I’m so exhausted I can barely stand,’ he told Panteleymon. And as he happily settled down in the carriage he thought: ‘Oh, I really ought to lose some weight!’

III

Next evening he went to the Turkins’ to propose to Yekaterina Ivanovna. But it happened to be an inconvenient time, since Yekaterina Ivanovna was in her room with her hairdresser having her hair done. That evening she was going to a dance at the club.

So once again he was condemned to a tea-drinking session in the dining-room. Noticing that his guest was bored and in a thoughtful mood Ivan Petrovich took some small pieces of paper from his waistcoat pocket and read out a comical letter from a German estate manager, that ‘all the machinations on the estate were ruinated’ and that ‘all the proprieties had collapsed’.

‘I bet they’ll come up with a good dowry,’ Startsev thought, listening absent-mindedly.

After a sleepless night he was in a state of stupor, just as if he had been given some sweetly cloying sleeping draught. His feelings were confused, but warm and joyful – and at the same time a cold, obdurate, small section of his brain kept reasoning: ‘Stop before it’s too late! Is she the right kind of wife for you? She’s spoilt, capricious, she sleeps until two in the afternoon. But you’re a sacristan’s son, a country doctor …’

‘Well, what of it?’ he thought. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘What’s more, if you marry her,’ continued the small voice, ‘her family will make you give up your country practice and you’ll have to move to town.’

‘What of it?’ he thought. ‘Nothing wrong with living in town. And there’ll be a dowry, we’ll set up house together …’

At last in came Yekaterina Ivanovna, wearing a ball gown, décolletée, looking very pretty and elegant. Startsev couldn’t admire her enough and such was his delight that he was at a loss for words and could only look on and smile.

She began to make her farewells and he stood up – there was nothing more for him to stay for – saying that it was time he went home as his patients were waiting.

‘Well, it can’t be helped, you’d better go,’ said Ivan Petrovich. ‘At the same time you could give Pussycat a lift to the club.’

Outside it was drizzling and very dark, and only from Panteleymon’s hoarse cough could they tell where the carriage was. They put the hood up.

‘Such a fright will set you alight,’ Ivan Petrovich said, seating his daughter in the carriage. ‘If you lie – it’s as nice as pie … ! Off you go now. Goodbye – if you please!’

They drove off.

‘Last night I went to the cemetery,’ Startsev began. ‘How unkind, how heartless of you!’

‘You went to the cemetery?’

‘Yes, I went and waited for you until two o’clock. It was sheer hell.’

Delighted to have played such a cunning trick on the man who loved her, and that she was the object of such fervent passion, Yekaterina Ivanovna burst out laughing – and then she suddenly screamed with terror, for just then the horses turned sharply through the club gates, making the carriage lurch violently. Startsev put his arms around Yekaterina Ivanovna’s waist as she clung to him in her fright.

He could not control himself and kissed her lips and chin passionately, holding her in an even tighter embrace.

‘That will do!’ she said curtly.

A moment later she was gone from the carriage and the policeman standing at the lighted entrance to the club shouted at Panteleymon in a very ugly voice:

‘What yer stopped there for, you oaf! Move on!’

Startsev went home but he soon returned. Wearing borrowed coat and tails and a stiff white cravat which somehow kept sticking up as if wanting to slide off his collar, he sat at midnight in the club lounge and told Yekaterina Ivanovna in passionate terms:

‘Oh, those who have never loved – how little do they know! I think that no one has ever truly described love – and how could anyone describe that tender, joyful, agonizing feeling! Anyone who has but once experienced it would never even think of putting it into words! But what’s the point of preambles and descriptions? Why this superfluous eloquence? My love has no bounds. I’m asking you, begging you,’ Startsev at last managed to say, ‘to be my wife!’

‘Dmitry Ionych,’ Yekaterina Ivanovna said with a very serious expression after pausing for thought, ‘Dmitry Ionych, I’m most grateful for the honour and I respect you, but …’ She stood up and continued standing. ‘I’m sorry, I cannot be your wife. Let’s talk seriously. As you know, Dmitry Ionych, I love art more than anything in the world. I’m mad about music, I simply adore it. I’ve dedicated my whole life to it. I want to be a concert pianist. I want fame, success, freedom. But you want me to go on living in this town, to carry on with this empty, useless life that’s become quite unbearable for me. To be your wife … oh no, I’m sorry! One must always aspire towards some lofty, brilliant goal, but family life would tie me down for ever. Dmitry Ionych’ (at this she produced a barely perceptible smile since, when saying Dmitry Ionych the name Aleksey Feofilaktych came to mind), ‘Dmitry Ionych, you’re a kind, honourable, clever man, you’re the best of all …’ (here her eyes filled with tears), ‘I feel for you with all my heart, but … but you must understand …’

And to avoid bursting into tears she turned away and walked out of the lounge.

Startsev’s heart stopped pounding. As he went out of the club into the street the first thing he did was tear off that stiff cravat and heave a deep sigh of relief. He felt rather ashamed and his pride was hurt – he had not expected a refusal. And he just could not believe that all his dreams, yearnings and hopes had led to such a stupid conclusion, as if it were all a trivial little play performed by amateurs. And he regretted having felt as he did, he regretted having loved – so much so that he came close to sobbing out loud or walloping Panteleymon’s back as hard as he could with his umbrella.

For three days he could not put his mind to anything, he could neither sleep nor eat. But when the rumour reached him that Yekaterina Ivanovna had gone to Moscow to enrol at the Conservatoire he calmed down and carried on with his life as before.

Later, when he occasionally recalled how he had wandered around the cemetery or had driven all over town in search of coat and tails, he would stretch lazily and say: ‘Really! All that fuss!’

IV

Four years passed. Startsev now had a large practice in town. Every morning he hastily saw patients at his surgery in Dyalizh, then he drove to see his patients in town – no longer conveyed by carriage and pair, but by three horses abreast – and with bells! He would come home late at night. He had filled out, put on weight and he was reluctant to walk anywhere, as he had become short-winded. And Panteleymon had filled out too, and the more his girth expanded the more mournfully he sighed and complained of his bitter lot: all that driving was too much for him!

Startsev visited many different houses and met many people, but he did not strike up a close friendship with anyone. The townspeople’s conversations, attitude to life, even their appearance, irritated him. Gradually, experience had taught him that as long as one only played cards or enjoyed a meal with any resident of that town, then that person would be inoffensive, good-natured and even quite intelligent. But the moment one started a conversation about something that was inedible, such as politics or science, then the other person would either be stumped or give vent to such absurd and vicious ideas that one could only give it up as a bad job and make one’s exit. Whenever Startsev tried to start a conversation, even with a citizen of liberal views – for example, concerning the immense progress that humanity was making, thank God, and that, given time, it would be able to dispense with passports or the death penalty – he would be greeted with distrustful, sidelong glances and asked: ‘In that case, anyone could cut the throat of anyone he wanted to in the street, couldn’t he?’ And whenever he had supper or tea in company and ventured to say that one had to work hard, that life was impossible without hard work, everyone took it as a personal insult, got angry and launched into the most tiresome disputations. Yet these townspeople did nothing, absolutely nothing, and they were interested in nothing. So Startsev avoided conversations (it was impossible to think of anything to discuss with them), confining himself to eating and playing whist with them. Whenever he happened to be in a house where there was some family celebration and he was invited to stay for supper, he would sit down and eat in silence, staring blankly at his plate. And everything they happened to be discussing struck him as uninteresting, unfair, stupid; but despite his irritation and exasperation he remained silent. These stony silences and his habit of staring at his plate earned him the name ‘Snooty Pole’ in that town, although he had never been Polish.

He shunned diversions such as the theatre and concerts, but took great pleasure in playing whist every evening, until two o’clock in the morning. But there was one other diversion to which he became gradually, imperceptibly drawn. This was in the evenings, when he took from his pockets the banknotes he had earned from his practice – and his pockets often happened to be stuffed with seventy roubles’ worth of yellow or green notes that reeked of perfume, vinegar, incense and train oil. When he had amassed a few hundred he would take them to the Mutual Credit Bank and pay them into his current account.

During the entire four years after Yekaterina Ivanovna’s departure for Moscow he visited the Turkins only twice, at the invitation of Vera Iosifovna, whom he was still treating for migraine. Every summer Yekaterina Ivanovna would come to stay with her parents but as things turned out he did not see her even once.

But four years had now passed. One calm, warm morning he was brought a letter at the hospital, in which Vera Iosifovna wrote that she missed him very much and begged him to come and see her without fail and relieve her sufferings – that day happened to be her birthday. There was a PS: ‘I join in Mama’s request. K.’

Startsev thought for a while and that evening he drove over to the Turkins’.

‘Ah, good evening – if you please!’ Ivan Petrovich greeted him. Only his eyes were smiling. ‘Bonjourezvous!’

Vera Iosifovna had aged considerably and her hair was white now. She shook Startsev’s hand, and sighed affectedly.

‘Doctor!’ she exclaimed. ‘You don’t want to flirt with me, you never call on us, so I must be too old for you. But my young daughter’s arrived, perhaps she’ll have more luck!’

And Pussycat? She had grown thinner, paler, prettier and shapelier. But now she was a fully-fledged Yekaterina Ivanovna and not a Pussycat. Gone were that freshness and expression of childlike innocence. And in her look and manners there was something new, a hesitancy and air of guilt, as if here, in the Turkins’ house, she no longer felt at home.

‘It’s been simply ages!’ she said, offering Startsev her hand – and her heart was visibly pounding. Peering into his face intently, quizzically, she continued: ‘How you’ve put on weight! You’ve acquired a tan, you’ve matured, but on the whole you haven’t changed very much.’

And even now he liked her – very much so. But something was lacking, or there was something superfluous – he himself couldn’t put his finger on it, but it prevented him from feeling as he did before. He did not like her pallor, her new expression, that weak smile, her voice. And a little later he didn’t like her dress, or the armchair she was sitting in; something about the past, when he had nearly married her, displeased him. He recalled his love, those dreams and hopes that had disturbed him four years before, and he felt uncomfortable.

They had tea and cakes. Then Vera Iosifovna read her novel out loud – about things that never happen in real life – and Startsev listened, looked at her grey handsome head and waited for her to finish.

‘A mediocrity is not someone who’s no good at writing stories,’ he thought. ‘It’s someone who writes them but can’t keep quiet about it.’

‘Not awfully baddish!’ Ivan Petrovich commented.

Then Yekaterina Ivanovna played the piano long and noisily, and when she had finished there followed lengthy expressions of gratitude and admiration.

‘Lucky I didn’t marry her,’ thought Startsev.

She glanced at him and was evidently waiting for him to suggest going out into the garden, but he said nothing.

‘Let’s have a little talk,’ she said, going over to him. ‘How are you getting on? What’s your news? How are things? All this time I’ve been thinking of you,’ she continued nervously. ‘I wanted to write to you, to come and see you in Dyalizh myself. In fact I actually decided to come but I changed my mind. Heaven knows what you think of me now. I’ve been so excited waiting for you today. For heaven’s sake, let’s go into the garden.’

They went into the garden and sat down on the bench under the old maple, as they had done four years before. It was dark.

‘Well, how are things?’ Yekaterina Ivanovna asked.

‘All right, I get by,’ Startsev replied.

And he could think of nothing more to say. They both fell silent.

‘I’m so excited,’ Yekaterina Ivanovna said, covering her face with her hands, ‘but don’t take any notice. I so enjoy being at home. I’m so glad to see everyone and it takes getting used to. So many memories! I thought we’d be talking non-stop, until the early hours.’

And now he saw her face close up, her sparkling eyes; and here, in the darkness, she looked younger than in the room and even her former childlike expression seemed to have returned. And in fact she gazed at him with naïve curiosity, as if she wanted to have a closer look, to understand the man who had once loved her so passionately, so tenderly, so unhappily. Her eyes thanked him for that love. And he recalled everything that had happened, down to the very last detail – how he had wandered around the cemetery, how he had gone home exhausted towards morning; and suddenly he felt sad and he regretted the past. A tiny flame flickered in his heart.

‘Do you remember when I gave you a lift that evening to the club?’ he asked. ‘It was raining then, and dark …’

The flame was still flickering in his heart and he felt the urge to speak, to complain about life …

‘Oh!’ he sighed. ‘You ask me how things are, what kind of lives we lead here? Well, we don’t lead any kind of life. We grow old, get fat, go to seed. Day after day life drags on in its lacklustre way, no impressions, no thoughts … During the day I make money, in the evening there’s the club and the company of cardsharpers, alcoholics and loudmouths whom I cannot stand. So what’s good about it?’

‘But there’s your work, a noble purpose in life. You used to love talking about your hospital. I was rather strange then, I imagined myself as a great pianist. Now all young women play the piano and I played like everyone else and there was nothing special about me. I’m as much a concert pianist as Mama’s a writer. Of course, I didn’t understand you then, but afterwards, in Moscow, I often thought of you. In fact, I thought of nothing else. What bliss to be a country doctor, to help the suffering, to serve the common people! What utter bliss!’ Yekaterina repeated rapturously. ‘Whenever I thought of you in Moscow you struck me as idealistic, lofty …’

He stood up to go back to his house. She took hold of his arm.

‘You are the best person I’ve ever known in my life,’ she went on. ‘We’ll see each other, we’ll talk, won’t we? Promise me. I’m no concert pianist, I’ve no illusions about myself and when you’re with me I shall neither play nor talk about music.’

Three days later Peacock brought him a letter from Yekaterina Ivanovna.

‘You never come and see us. Why?’ she wrote. ‘I’m afraid that you don’t feel the same towards us any more. I’m afraid – and this thought alone terrifies me. Please set my mind at rest, please come and tell me that everything’s all right. I must talk to you. Your Y.T.’

After reading this letter he pondered for a moment and then he told Peacock:

‘Tell them, dear chap, that I can’t come today, I’m too busy. Tell them I’ll come and see them in about three days.’

But three days passed, a week passed and still he didn’t go. Once, when he was driving past the Turkins’ house, he remembered that he really should call on them, if only for a few minutes, but on reflection he decided against it.

And he never visited the Turkins again.

V

Several years have passed. Startsev has put on even more weight, grown flabby, has difficulty breathing and walks with his head thrown back. When he drives along in his carriage with three-horse team and bells, puffy and red-faced, and Panteleymon, likewise puffy and red-faced, with fleshy neck, sits on the box with his straight, seemingly wooden arms thrust forward, shouting at passers-by ‘Keep to the right!’, the effect is truly awe-inspiring and it seems that here comes a pagan god and no ordinary mortal. He has an enormous practice in town, he has no time for relaxation, and now he owns an estate, and two houses in town: he’s looking for a third house that would bring in more income and whenever they talk of some house up for auction at the Mutual Credit Bank, then, without standing on ceremony, he marches right into the house, goes through all the rooms, ignoring half-naked women and children, who look at him in fear and trembling, pokes every door with his stick and says:

‘Is this the study? Is this the bedroom? And what’s this?’

And he breathes heavily and wipes the sweat from his brow.

He has much to preoccupy him, but he still doesn’t give up his place on the local council. Greed has triumphed and he always wants to be everywhere at the right time. He’s called simply Ionych in Dyalizh and in town. ‘Where’s old Ionych going?’ or ‘Shall we invite Ionych to a committee meeting?’ they say.

Probably because his throat is bloated his voice has changed and become reedy and harsh. His personality has changed too: he’s heavy-going now, irritable. When he sees patients he normally gets angry and impatiently bangs his stick on the floor.

‘Please reply to the question! Don’t argue!’ he shouts in his jarring voice. In fact, he’s a real lone wolf. Life is a bore, nothing interests him.

The whole time he lived in Dyalizh his love for Pussycat was his only joy and probably his last. He plays whist every evening at the club and then he sits on his own at the big table and has supper. He’s waited upon by Ivan, the oldest and most venerable club servant. He’s served the Lafite No. 17 and every single person there – the senior members and the footmen – knows his likes and dislikes and does his utmost to please him, otherwise he might suddenly lose his temper and start banging his stick on the floor.

When he has supper he turns round from time to time and joins in some conversation: ‘Who are you talking about? Eh? Who?’

And when someone at a neighbouring table happens to start discussing the Turkins he asks: ‘Which Turkins do you mean? The ones whose daughter plays the piano?’

And that’s all one can say about him.

And the Turkins? Ivan Petrovich hasn’t aged, hasn’t changed one bit and he’s joking and telling his funny stories as always. And Vera Iosifovna reads her novels to her guests as eagerly as ever, with warmth and unpretentiousness. Pussycat plays the piano every day, for hours at a time. She has aged noticeably, suffers from ill health and every autumn she goes to the Crimea with her mother. When he sees them off at the station, Ivan Petrovich wipes the tears from his eyes as the train pulls out.

‘Goodbye – if you please!’ he shouts.

And he waves his handkerchief.