A Russian Affair

A Visit to Friends

(A STORY)

A letter arrived one morning.

Kuzminki, June 7th

Dear Misha,

You’ve completely forgotten us, please come and visit us soon, we so want to see you. Come today. We beg you, dear sir, on bended knees! Show us your radiant eyes! Can’t wait to see you,

Ta and Va

The letter was from Tatyana Alekseyevna Losev, who had been called ‘Ta’ for short when Podgorin was staying at Kuzminki ten or twelve years ago. But who was this ‘Va’? Podgorin recalled the long conversations, the gay laughter, the love affairs, the evening walks and that whole array of girls and young women who had once lived at Kuzminki and in the neighbourhood. And he remembered that open, lively, clever face with freckles that matched chestnut hair so well – this was Varvara Pavlovna, Tatyana’s friend. Varvara Pavlovna had taken a degree in medicine and was working at a factory somewhere beyond Tula. Evidently she had come to stay at Kuzminki now.

‘Dear Va!’ thought Podgorin, surrendering himself to memories. ‘What a wonderful girl!’

Tatyana, Varvara and himself were all about the same age. But he had been a mere student then and they were already marriageable girls – in their eyes he was just a boy. And now, even though he had become a lawyer and had started to go grey, all of them still treated him like a youngster, saying that he had no experience of life yet.

He was very fond of them, but more as a pleasant memory than in actuality, it seemed. He knew little about their present life, which was strange and alien to him. And this brief, playful letter too was something quite foreign to him and had most probably been written after much time and effort. When Tatyana wrote it her husband Sergey Sergeich was doubtlessly standing behind her. She had been given Kuzminki as her dowry only six years before, but this same Sergey Sergeich had already reduced the estate to bankruptcy. Each time a bank or mortgage payment became due they would now turn to Podgorin for legal advice. Moreover, they had twice asked him to lend them money. So it was obvious that they either wanted advice or a loan from him now.

He no longer felt so attracted to Kuzminki as in the past. It was such a miserable place. That laughter and rushing around, those cheerful carefree faces, those rendezvous on quiet moonlit nights – all this had gone. Most important, though, they weren’t in the flush of youth any more. Probably it enchanted him only as a memory, nothing else. Besides Ta and Va, there was someone called ‘Na’, Tatyana’s sister Nadezhda, whom half-joking, half-seriously they had called his fiancée. He had seen her grow up and everyone expected him to marry her. He had loved her once and was going to propose. But there she was, twenty-three now, and he still hadn’t married her.

‘Strange it should turn out like this,’ he mused as he reread the letter in embarrassment. ‘But I can’t not go, they’d be offended.’

His long absence from the Losevs lay like a heavy weight on his conscience. After pacing his room and reflecting at length, he made a great effort of will and decided to go and visit them for about three days and so discharge his duty. Then he could feel free and relaxed – at least until the following summer. After lunch, as he prepared to leave for the Brest Station, he told his servants that he would be back in three days.

It was two hours by train from Moscow to Kuzminki, then a twenty-minute carriage drive from the station, from which he could see Tatyana’s wood and those three tall, narrow holiday villas that Losev (he had entered upon some business enterprise in the first years of his marriage) had started building but had never finished. He had been ruined by these holiday villas, by various business projects, by frequent trips to Moscow, where he used to lunch at the Slav Fair and dine at the Hermitage, ending up in Little Bronny Street or at a gipsy haunt named Knacker’s Yard, calling this ‘having a fling’. Podgorin liked a drink himself – sometimes quite a lot – and he associated with women indiscriminately, but in a cool, lethargic way, without deriving any pleasure. It sickened him when others gave themselves up to these pleasures with such zest. He didn’t understand or like men who could feel more free and easy at the Knacker’s Yard than at home with a respectable woman, and he felt that any kind of promiscuity stuck to them like burrs. He didn’t care for Losev, considering him a boring, lazy, old bungler and more than once had found his company rather repulsive.

Just past the wood, Sergey Sergeich and Nadezhda met him.

‘My dear fellow, why have you forgotten us?’ Sergey Sergeich asked, kissing him three times and then putting both arms round his waist. ‘You don’t feel affection for us any more, old chap.’

He had coarse features, a fat nose and a thin, light-brown beard. He combed his hair to one side to make himself look like a typical simple Russian. When he spoke he breathed right into your face and when he wasn’t speaking he’d breathe heavily through the nose. He was embarrassed by his plumpness and inordinately replete appearance and would keep thrusting out his chest to breathe more easily, which made him look pompous.

In comparison, his sister-in-law Nadezhda seemed ethereal. She was very fair, pale-faced and slim, with kind, loving eyes. Podgorin couldn’t judge as to her beauty, since he’d known her since she was a child and grown used to the way she looked. Now she was wearing a white, open-necked dress and the sight of that long, white bare neck was new to him and not altogether pleasant.

‘My sister and I have been waiting for you since morning,’ she said. ‘Varvara’s here and she’s been expecting you, too.’

She took his arm and suddenly laughed for no reason, uttering a faint cry of joy as if some thought had unexpectedly cast a spell over her. The fields of flowering rye, motionless in the quiet air, the sunlit wood – they were so beautiful. Nadezhda seemed to notice these things only now, as she walked at Podgorin’s side.

‘I’ll be staying about three days,’ he told her. ‘I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t get away from Moscow any earlier.’

‘That’s not very nice at all, you’ve forgotten we exist!’ Sergey Sergeich said, reproaching him good-humouredly. ‘Jamais de ma vie!’ he suddenly added, snapping his fingers. He had this habit of suddenly blurting out some irrelevance, snapping his fingers in the process. He was always mimicking someone: if he rolled his eyes, or nonchalantly tossed his hair back, or adopted a dramatic pose, that meant he had been to the theatre the night before, or to some dinner with speeches. Now he took short steps as he walked, like an old gout-ridden man, and without bending his knees – he was most likely imitating someone.

‘Do you know, Tanya wouldn’t believe you’d come,’ Nadezhda said. ‘But Varvara and I had a funny feeling about it. I somehow knew you’d be on that train.’

‘Jamais de ma vie!’ Sergey Sergeich repeated.

The ladies were waiting for them on the garden terrace. Ten years ago Podgorin – then a poor student – had given Nadezhda coaching in maths and history in exchange for board and lodging. Varvara, who was studying medicine at the time, happened to be taking Latin lessons from him. As for Tatyana, already a beautiful mature girl then, she could think of nothing but love. All she had desired was love and happiness and she would yearn for them, forever waiting for the husband she dreamed of night and day. Past thirty now, she was just as beautiful and attractive as ever, in her loose-fitting peignoir and with those plump, white arms. Her only thought was for her husband and two little girls. Although she was talking and smiling now, her expression revealed that she was preoccupied with other matters. She was still guarding her love and her rights to that love and was always on the alert, ready to attack any enemy who might want to take her husband and children away from her. Her love was very strong and she felt that it was reciprocated, but jealousy and fear for her children were a constant torment and prevented her from being happy.

After the noisy reunion on the terrace, everyone except Sergey Sergeich went to Tatyana’s room. The sun’s rays did not penetrate the lowered blinds and it was so gloomy there that all the roses in a large bunch looked the same colour. They made Podgorin sit down in an old armchair by the window; Nadezhda sat on a low stool at his feet. Besides the kindly reproaches, the jokes and laughter that reminded him so clearly of the past, he knew he could expect an unpleasant conversation about promissory notes and mortgages. It couldn’t be avoided, so he thought that it might be best to get down to business there and then without delaying matters, to get it over and done with and then go out into the garden, into fresh air.

‘Shall we discuss business first?’ he said. ‘What’s new here in Kuzminki? Is something rotten in the state of Denmark?’

‘Kuzminki is in a bad way,’ Tatyana replied, sadly sighing. ‘Things are so bad it’s hard to imagine they could be any worse.’ She paced the room, highly agitated. ‘Our estate’s for sale, the auction’s on 7 August. Everywhere there’s advertisements, and buyers come here – they walk through the house, looking … Now anyone has the right to go into my room and look round. That may be legal, but it’s humiliating for me and deeply insulting. We’ve no funds – and there’s nowhere left to borrow any from. Briefly, it’s shocking!’

She stopped in the middle of the room, the tears trickling from her eyes, and her voice trembled as she went on, ‘I swear, I swear by all that’s holy, by my children’s happiness, I can’t live without Kuzminki! I was born here, it’s my home. If they take it away from me I shall never get over it, I’ll die of despair.’

‘I think you’re rather looking on the black side,’ Podgorin said. ‘Everything will turn out all right. Your husband will get a job, you’ll settle down again, lead a new life …’

‘How can you say that!’ Tatyana shouted. Now she looked very beautiful and aggressive. She was ready to fall on the enemy who wanted to take her husband, children and home away from her, and this was expressed with particular intensity in her face and whole figure. ‘A new life! I ask you! Sergey Sergeich’s been busy applying for jobs and they’ve promised him a position as tax inspector somewhere near Ufa or Perm – or thereabouts. I’m ready to go anywhere. Siberia even. I’m prepared to live there ten, twenty years, but I must be certain that sooner or later I’ll return to Kuzminki. I can’t live without Kuzminki. I can’t, and I won’t!’ She shouted and stamped her foot.

‘Misha, you’re a lawyer,’ Varvara said, ‘you know all the tricks and it’s your job to advise us what to do.’

There was only one fair and reasonable answer to this, that there was nothing anyone could do, but Podgorin could not bring himself to say it outright.

‘I’ll … have a think about it,’ he mumbled indecisively. ‘I’ll have a think about it …’

He was really two different persons. As a lawyer he had to deal with some very ugly cases. In court and with clients he behaved arrogantly and always expressed his opinion bluntly and curtly. He was used to crudely living it up with his friends. But in his private, intimate life he displayed uncommon tact with people close to him or with very old friends. He was shy and sensitive and tended to beat about the bush. One tear, one sidelong glance, a lie or even a rude gesture was enough to make him wince and lose his nerve. Now that Nadezhda was sitting at his feet he disliked her bare neck. It palled on him and even made him feel like going home. A year ago he had happened to bump into Sergey Sergeich at a certain Madame’s place in Little Bronny Street and he now felt awkward in Tatyana’s company, as if he had been the unfaithful one. And this conversation about Kuzminki put him in the most dreadful difficulties. He was used to having ticklish, unpleasant questions decided by judge or jury, or by some legal clause, but faced with a problem that he personally had to solve he was all at sea.

‘You’re our friend, Misha. We all love you as if you were one of the family,’ Tatyana continued. ‘And I’ll tell you quite candidly: all our hopes rest in you. For heaven’s sake, tell us what to do. Perhaps we could write somewhere for help? Perhaps it’s not too late to put the estate in Nadezhda’s or Varvara’s name? What shall we do?’

‘Please save us, Misha, please,’ Varvara said, lighting a cigarette. ‘You were always so clever. You haven’t seen much of life, you’re not very experienced, but you have a fine brain. You’ll help Tatyana. I know you will.’

‘I must think about it … perhaps I can come up with something.’

They went for a walk in the garden, then in the fields. Sergey Sergeich went too. He took Podgorin’s arm and led him on ahead of the others, evidently intending to discuss something with him – probably the trouble he was in. Walking with Sergey Sergeich and talking to him were an ordeal too. He kept kissing him – always three kisses at a time – took Podgorin’s arm, put his own arm round his waist and breathed into his face. He seemed covered with sweet glue that would stick to you if he came close. And that look in his eyes which showed that he wanted something from Podgorin, that he was about to ask him for it, was really quite distressing – it was like having a revolver aimed at you.

The sun had set and it was growing dark. Green and red lights appeared here and there along the railway line. Varvara stopped and as she looked at the lights she started reciting:

The line runs straight, unswerving,

Through narrow cuttings,

Passing posts, crossing bridges,

While all along the verges,

Lie buried so many Russian workers!

‘How does it go on? Heavens, I’ve forgotten!’

In scorching heat, in winter’s icy blasts,

We laboured with backs bent low.

She recited in a magnificent deep voice, with great feeling. Her face flushed brightly, her eyes filled with tears. This was the Varvara that used to be, Varvara the university student, and as he listened Podgorin thought of the past and recalled his student days, when he too knew much fine poetry by heart and loved to recite it.

He still has not bowed his hunched back

He’s gloomily silent as before …

But Varvara could remember no more. She fell silent and smiled weakly, limply. After the recitation those green and red lights seemed sad.

‘Oh, I’ve forgotten it!’

But Podgorin suddenly remembered the lines – somehow they had stuck in his memory from student days and he recited in a soft undertone,

The Russian worker has suffered enough,

In building this railway line.

He will survive to build himself

A broad bright highway

By the sweat of his brow …

Only the pity is …

‘ “The pity is,” ’ Varvara interrupted as she remembered the lines,

that neither you nor I

Will ever live to see that wonderful day.

She laughed and slapped him on the shoulder.

They went back to the house and sat down to supper. Sergey Sergeich nonchalantly stuck a corner of his serviette into his collar, imitating someone or other. ‘Let’s have a drink,’ he said, pouring some vodka for himself and Podgorin. ‘In our time, we students could hold our drink, we were fine speakers and men of action. I drink your health, old man. So why don’t you drink to a stupid old idealist and wish that he will die an idealist? Can the leopard change his spots?’

Throughout supper Tatyana kept looking tenderly and jealously at her husband, anxious lest he ate or drank something that wasn’t good for him. She felt that he had been spoilt by women and exhausted by them, and although this was something that appealed to her, it still distressed her. Varvara and Nadezhda also had a soft spot for him and it was obvious from the worried glances they gave him that they were scared he might suddenly get up and leave them. When he wanted to pour himself a second glass Varvara looked angry and said, ‘You’re poisoning yourself, Sergey Sergeich. You’re a highly strung, impressionable man – you could easily become an alcoholic. Tatyana, tell him to remove that vodka.’

On the whole Sergey Sergeich had great success with women. They loved his height, his powerful build, his strong features, his idleness and his tribulations. They said that his extravagance stemmed only from extreme kindness, that he was impractical because he was an idealist. He was honest and high-principled. His inability to adapt to people or circumstances explained why he owned nothing and didn’t have a steady job. They trusted him implicitly, idolized him and spoilt him with their adulation, so that he himself came to believe that he really was idealistic, impractical, honest and upright, and that he was head and shoulders above these women.

‘Well, don’t you have something good to say about my little girls?’ Tatyana asked as she looked lovingly at her two daughters – healthy, well-fed and like two fat buns – as she heaped rice on their plates. ‘Just take a good look at them. They say all mothers can never speak ill of their children. But I do assure you I’m not at all biased. My little girls are quite remarkable. Especially the elder.’

Podgorin smiled at her and the girls and thought it strange that this healthy, young, intelligent woman, essentially such a strong and complex organism, could waste all her energy, all her strength, on such uncomplicated trivial work as running a home which was well managed anyway.

‘Perhaps she knows best,’ he thought. ‘But it’s so boring, so stupid!’

Before he had time to groan

A bear came and knocked him prone,

Sergey Sergeich said, snapping his fingers.

They finished their supper. Tatyana and Varvara made Podgorin sit down on a sofa in the drawing-room and, in hushed voices, talked about business again.

‘We must save Sergey Sergeich,’ Varvara said, ‘it’s our moral duty. He has his weaknesses, he’s not thrifty, he doesn’t put anything away for a rainy day, but that’s only because he’s so kind and generous. He’s just a child, really. Give him a million and within a month there’d be nothing left, he’d have given it all away.’

‘Yes, that’s so true,’ Tatyana said and tears rolled down her cheeks. ‘I’ve had a hard time with him, but I must admit he’s a wonderful person.’

Both Tatyana and Varvara couldn’t help indulging in a little cruelty, telling Podgorin reproachfully, ‘Your generation, though, Misha, isn’t up to much!’

‘What’s all this talk about generations?’ Podgorin wondered. ‘Surely Sergey Sergeich’s no more than six years older than me?’

‘Life’s not easy,’ Varvara sighed. ‘You’re always threatened with losses of some kind. First they want to take your estate away from you, or someone near and dear falls ill and you’re afraid he might die. And so it goes on, day after day. But what can one do, my friends? We must submit to a Higher Power without complaining, we must remember that nothing in this world is accidental, everything has its final purpose. Now you, Misha, know little of life, you haven’t suffered much and you’ll laugh at me. Go ahead and laugh, but I’m going to tell you what I think. When I was passing through a stage of deepest anxiety I experienced second sight on several occasions and this completely transformed my outlook. Now I know that nothing is contingent, everything that happens in life is necessary.’

How different this Varvara was, grey-haired now, and corseted, with her fashionable long-sleeved dress – this Varvara twisting a cigarette between long, thin, trembling fingers – this Varvara so prone to mysticism – this Varvara with such a lifeless, monotonous voice. How different she was from Varvara the medical student, that cheerful, boisterous, adventurous girl with the red hair!

‘Where has it all vanished to?’ Podgorin wondered, bored with listening to her. ‘Sing us a song, Va,’ he asked to put a stop to that conversation about second sight. ‘You used to have a lovely voice.’

‘That’s all long ago, Misha.’

‘Well, recite some more Nekrasov.’

‘I’ve forgotten it all. Those lines I recited just now I happened to remember.’

Despite the corset and long sleeves she was obviously short of money and had difficulty making ends meet at that factory beyond Tula. It was obvious she’d been overworking. That heavy, monotonous work, that perpetual interfering with other people’s business and worrying about them – all this had taken its toll and had aged her. As he looked at that sad face whose freshness had faded, Podgorin concluded that in reality it was she who needed help, not Kuzminki or that Sergey Sergeich she was fussing about so much.

Higher education, being a doctor, didn’t seem to have had any effect on the woman in her. Just like Tatyana, she loved weddings, births, christenings, interminable conversations about children. She loved spine-chilling stories with happy endings. In newspapers she only read articles about fires, floods and important ceremonies. She longed for Podgorin to propose to Nadezhda – she would have shed tears of emotion if that were to happen.

He didn’t know whether it was by chance or Varvara’s doing, but Podgorin found himself alone with Nadezhda. However, the mere suspicion that he was being watched, that they wanted something from him, disturbed and inhibited him. In Nadezhda’s company he felt as if they had both been put in a cage together.

‘Let’s go into the garden,’ she said.

They went out – he feeling discontented and annoyed that he didn’t know what to say, she overjoyed, proud to be near him, and obviously delighted that he was going to spend another three days with them. And perhaps she was filled with sweet fancies and hopes. He didn’t know if she loved him, but he did know that she had grown used to him, that she had long been attached to him, that she considered him her teacher, that she was now experiencing the same kind of feelings as her sister Tatyana once had: all she could think of was love, of marrying as soon as possible and having a husband, children, her own place. She had still preserved that readiness for friendship which is usually so strong in children and it was highly probable that she felt for Podgorin and respected him as a friend and that she wasn’t in love with him, but with her dreams of a husband and children.

‘It’s getting dark,’ he said.

‘Yes, the moon rises late now.’

They kept to the same path, near the house. Podgorin didn’t want to go deep into the garden – it was dark there and he would have to take Nadezhda by the arm and stay very close to her. Shadows were moving on the terrace and he felt that Tatyana and Varvara were watching him.

‘I must ask your advice,’ Nadezhda said, stopping. ‘If Kuzminki is sold, Sergey Sergeich will leave and get a job and there’s no doubt that our lives will be completely changed. I shan’t go with my sister, we’ll part, because I don’t want to be a burden on her family. I’ll take a job somewhere in Moscow. I’ll earn some money and help Tatyana and her husband. You will give me some advice, won’t you?’

Quite unaccustomed to any kind of hard work, now she was inspired at the thought of an independent, working life and making plans for the future – this was written all over her face. A life where she would be working and helping others struck her as so beautifully poetic. When he saw that pale face and dark eyebrows so close he remembered what an intelligent, keen pupil she had been, with such fine qualities, a joy to teach. Now she probably wasn’t simply a young lady in search of a husband, but an intelligent, decent girl, gentle and soft-hearted, who could be moulded like wax into anything one wished. In the right surroundings she might become a truly wonderful woman!

‘Well, why don’t I marry her then?’ Podgorin thought. But he immediately took fright at this idea and went off towards the house. Tatyana was sitting at the grand piano in the drawing-room and her playing conjured up bright pictures of the past, when people had played, sung and danced in that room until late at night, with the windows open and birds singing too in the garden and beyond the river. Podgorin cheered up, became playful, danced with Nadezhda and Varvara, and then sang. He was hampered by a corn on one foot and asked if he could wear Sergey Sergeich’s slippers. Strangely, he felt at home, like one of the family, and the thought ‘a typical brother-in-law’ flashed through his mind. His spirits rose even higher. Looking at him the others livened up and grew cheerful, as if they had recaptured their youth. Everyone’s face was radiant with hope: Kuzminki was saved! It was all so very simple in fact. They only had to think of a plan, rummage around in law books, or see that Podgorin married Nadezhda. And that little romance was going well, by all appearances. Pink, happy, her eyes brimming with tears in anticipation of something quite out of the ordinary, Nadezhda whirled round in the dance and her white dress billowed, revealing her small pretty legs in flesh-coloured stockings. Absolutely delighted, Varvara took Podgorin’s arm and told him quietly and meaningly, ‘Misha, don’t run away from happiness. Grasp it while you can. If you wait too long you’ll be running when it’s too late to catch it.’

Podgorin wanted to make promises, to reassure her and even he began to believe that Kuzminki was saved – it was really so easy.

‘ “And thou shalt be que-een of the world”,’ he sang, striking a pose. But suddenly he was conscious that there was nothing he could do for these people, absolutely nothing, and he stopped singing and looked guilty.

Then he sat silently in one corner, legs tucked under him, wearing slippers belonging to someone else.

As they watched him the others understood that nothing could be done and they too fell silent. The piano was closed. Everyone noticed that it was late – it was time for bed – and Tatyana put out the large lamp in the drawing-room.

A bed was made up for Podgorin in the same little outhouse where he had stayed in the past. Sergey Sergeich went with him to wish him goodnight, holding a candle high above his head, although the moon had risen and it was bright. They walked down a path with lilac bushes on either side and the gravel crunched underfoot.

Before he had time to groan

A bear came and knocked him prone,

Sergey Sergeich said.

Podgorin felt that he’d heard those lines a thousand times, he was sick and tired of them! When they reached the outhouse, Sergey Sergeich drew a bottle and two glasses from his loose jacket and put them on the table.

‘Brandy,’ he said. ‘It’s a Double-O. It’s impossible to have a drink in the house with Varvara around. She’d be on to me about alcoholism. But we can feel free here. It’s a fine brandy.’

They sat down. The brandy was very good.

‘Let’s have a really good drink tonight,’ Sergey Sergeich continued, nibbling a lemon. ‘I’ve always been a gay dog myself and I like having a fling now and again. That’s a must!’

But the look in his eyes still showed that he needed something from Podgorin and was about to ask for it.

‘Drink up, old man,’ he went on, sighing. ‘Things are really grim at the moment. Old eccentrics like me have had their day, we’re finished. Idealism’s not fashionable these days. It’s money that rules and if you don’t want to get shoved aside you must go down on your knees and worship filthy lucre. But I can’t do that, it’s absolutely sickening!’

‘When’s the auction?’ asked Podgorin, to change the subject.

‘August 7th. But there’s no hope at all, old man, of saving Kuzminki. There’s enormous arrears and the estate doesn’t bring in any income, only losses every year. It’s not worth the battle. Tatyana’s very cut up about it, as it’s her patrimony of course. But I must admit I’m rather glad. I’m no country man. My sphere is the large, noisy city, my element’s the fray!’

He kept on and on, still beating about the bush and he watched Podgorin with an eagle eye, as if waiting for the right moment.

Suddenly Podgorin saw those eyes close to him and felt his breath on his face.

‘My dear fellow, please save me,’ Sergey Sergeich gasped. ‘Please lend me two hundred roubles!’

Podgorin wanted to say that he was hard up too and he felt that he might do better giving two hundred roubles to some poor devil or simply losing them at cards. But he was terribly embarrassed – he felt trapped in that small room with one candle and wanted to escape as soon as possible from that breathing, from those soft arms that grasped him around the waist and which already seemed to have stuck to him like glue. Hurriedly he started feeling in his pockets for his notecase where he kept money.

‘Here you are,’ he muttered, taking out a hundred roubles. ‘I’ll give you the rest later. That’s all I have on me. You see, I can’t refuse.’ Feeling very annoyed and beginning to lose his temper he went on. ‘I’m really far too soft. Only please let me have the money back later. I’m hard up too.’

‘Thank you. I’m so grateful, dear chap.’

‘And please stop imagining that you’re an idealist. You’re as much an idealist as I’m a turkey-cock. You’re simply a frivolous, indolent man, that’s all.’

Sergey Sergeich sighed deeply and sat on the couch.

‘My dear chap, you are angry,’ he said. ‘But if you only knew how hard things are for me! I’m going through a terrible time now. I swear it’s not myself I feel sorry for, oh no! It’s the wife and children. If it wasn’t for my wife and children I’d have done myself in ages ago.’ Suddenly his head and shoulders started shaking and he burst out sobbing.

‘This really is the limit!’ Podgorin said, pacing the room excitedly and feeling really furious. ‘Now, what can I do with someone who has caused a great deal of harm and then starts sobbing? These tears disarm me, I’m speechless. You’re sobbing, so that means you must be right.’

‘Caused a great deal of harm?’ Sergey Sergeich asked, rising to his feet and looking at Podgorin in amazement. ‘My dear chap, what are you saying? Caused a great deal of harm? Oh, how little you know me. How little you understand me!’

‘All right then, so I don’t understand you, but please stop whining. It’s revolting!’

‘Oh, how little you know me!’ Sergey Sergeich repeated, quite sincerely. ‘How little!’

‘Just take a look at yourself in the mirror,’ Podgorin went on. ‘You’re no longer a young man. Soon you’ll be old. It’s time you stopped to think a bit and took stock of who and what you are. Spending your whole life doing nothing at all, forever indulging in empty, childish chatter, this play-acting and affectation. Doesn’t it make your head go round – aren’t you sick and tired of it all? Oh, it’s hard going with you! You’re a stupefying old bore, you are!’

With these words Podgorin left the outhouse and slammed the door. It was about the first time in his life that he had been sincere and really spoken his mind.

Shortly afterwards he was regretting having been so harsh. What was the point of talking seriously or arguing with a man who was perpetually lying, who ate and drank too much, who spent large amounts of other people’s money while being quite convinced that he was an idealist and a martyr? This was a case of stupidity, or of deep-rooted bad habits that had eaten away at his organism like an illness past all cure. In any event, indignation and stern rebukes were useless in this case. Laughing at him would be more effective. One good sneer would have achieved much more than a dozen sermons!

‘It’s best just ignoring him,’ Podgorin thought. ‘Above all, not to lend him money.’

Soon afterwards he wasn’t thinking about Sergey Sergeich, or about his hundred roubles. It was a calm, brooding night, very bright. Whenever Podgorin looked up at the sky on moonlit nights he had the feeling that only he and the moon were awake – everything else was either sleeping or drowsing. He gave no more thought to people or money and his mood gradually became calm and peaceful. He felt alone in this world and the sound of his own footsteps in the silence of the night seemed so mournful.

The garden was enclosed by a white stone wall. In the right-hand corner, facing the fields, stood a tower that had been built long ago, in the days of serfdom. Its lower section was of stone; the top was wooden, with a platform, a conical roof and a tall spire with a black weathercock. Down below were two gates leading straight from the garden into the fields and a staircase that creaked underfoot led up to the platform. Under the staircase some old broken armchairs had been dumped and they were bathed in the moonlight as it filtered through the gate. With their crooked upturned legs these armchairs seemed to have come to life at night and were lying in wait for someone here in the silence.

Podgorin climbed the stairs to the platform and sat down. Just beyond the fence were a boundary ditch and bank and further off were the broad fields flooded in moonlight. Podgorin knew that there was a wood exactly opposite, about two miles from the estate, and he thought that he could distinguish a dark strip in the distance. Quails and corncrakes were calling. Now and then, from the direction of the wood, came the cry of a cuckoo which couldn’t sleep either.

He heard footsteps. Someone was coming across the garden towards the tower.

A dog barked.

‘Beetle!’ a woman’s voice softly called. ‘Come back, Beetle!’

He could hear someone entering the tower down below and a moment later a black dog – an old friend of Podgorin’s – appeared on the bank. It stopped, looked up towards where Podgorin was sitting and wagged its tail amicably. Soon afterwards a white figure rose from the black ditch like a ghost and stopped on the bank as well. It was Nadezhda.

‘Can you see something there?’ she asked the dog, glancing upwards.

She didn’t see Podgorin but probably sensed that he was near, since she was smiling and her pale, moonlit face was happy. The tower’s black shadow stretching over the earth, far into the fields, that motionless white figure with the blissfully smiling, pale face, the black dog and both their shadows – all this was just like a dream.

‘Someone is there,’ Nadezhda said softly.

She stood waiting for him to come down or to call her up to him, so that he could at last declare his love – then both would be happy on that calm, beautiful night. White, pale, slender, very lovely in the moonlight, she awaited his caresses. She was weary of perpetually dreaming of love and happiness and was unable to conceal her feelings any longer. Her whole figure, her radiant eyes, her fixed happy smile, betrayed her innermost thoughts. But he felt awkward, shrank back and didn’t make a sound, not knowing whether to speak, whether to make the habitual joke out of the situation or whether to remain silent. He felt annoyed and his only thought was that here, in a country garden on a moonlit night, close to a beautiful, loving, thoughtful girl, he felt the same apathy as on Little Bronny Street: evidently this type of romantic situation had lost its fascination, like that prosaic depravity. Of no consequence to him now were those meetings on moonlit nights, those white shapes with slim waists, those mysterious shadows, towers, country estates and characters such as Sergey Sergeich, and people like himself, Podgorin, with his icy indifference, his constant irritability, his inability to adapt to reality and take what it had to offer, his wearisome, obsessive craving for what did not and never could exist on earth. And now, as he sat in that tower, he would have preferred a good fireworks display, or some moonlight procession, or Varvara reciting Nekrasov’s The Railway again. He would rather another woman was standing there on the bank where Nadezhda was: this other woman would have told him something absolutely fascinating and new that had nothing to do with love or happiness. And if she did happen to speak of love, this would have been a summons to those new, lofty, rational aspects of existence on whose threshold we are perhaps already living and of which we sometimes seem to have premonitions.

‘There’s no one there,’ Nadezhda said.

She stood there for another minute or so, then she walked quietly towards the wood, her head bowed. The dog ran on ahead. Podgorin could see her white figure for quite a long time. ‘To think how it’s all turned out, though …’ he repeated to himself as he went back to the outhouse.

He had no idea what he could say to Sergey Sergeich or Tatyana the next day or the day after that, or how he would treat Nadezhda. And he felt embarrassed, frightened and bored in advance. How was he going to fill those three long days which he had promised to spend here? He remembered the conversation about second sight and Sergey Sergeich quoting the lines:

Before he had time to groan

A bear came and knocked him prone.

He remembered that tomorrow, to please Tatyana, he would have to smile at those well-fed, chubby little girls – and he decided to leave.

At half past five in the morning Sergey Sergeich appeared on the terrace of the main house in his Bokhara dressing-gown and tasselled fez. Not losing a moment, Podgorin went over to him to say goodbye.

‘I have to be in Moscow by ten,’ he said, looking away. ‘I’d completely forgotten I’m expected at the Notary Public’s office. Please excuse me. When the others are up please tell them that I apologize. I’m dreadfully sorry.’

In his hurry he didn’t hear Sergey Sergeich’s answer and he kept looking round at the windows of the big house, afraid that the ladies might wake up and stop him going. He was ashamed he felt so nervous. He sensed that this was his last visit to Kuzminki, that he would never come back. As he drove away he glanced back several times at the outhouse where once he had spent so many happy days. But deep down he felt coldly indifferent, not at all sad.

At home the first thing he saw on the table was the note he’d received the day before: ‘Dear Misha,’ he read. ‘You’ve completely forgotten us, please come and visit us soon.’ And for some reason he remembered Nadezhda whirling round in the dance, her dress billowing, revealing her legs in their flesh-coloured stockings …

Ten minutes later he was at his desk working – and he didn’t give Kuzminki another thought.