Fifty-Two Stories

VOLODYA

ONE SUMMER SUNDAY, at around five o’clock in the evening, Volodya, a seventeen-year-old boy, unattractive, sickly, and timid, was sitting in the gazebo of the Shumikhins’ dacha, feeling bored. His cheerless thoughts flowed in three directions. First, the next day, Monday, he was to take an examination in mathematics; he knew that if, the next day, he did not succeed in solving a written problem, he would be expelled, because he was already repeating his senior year and had a very low average in algebra. Second, his stay with the Shumikhins, rich people with a claim to aristocracy, constantly hurt his pride. It seemed to him that M-me Shumikhin and her nieces looked upon him and his maman as poor relations and spongers, that they did not respect maman and laughed at her. Once he accidentally overheard M-me Shumikhin on the terrace saying to her cousin Anna Fyodorovna that his maman went on pretending that she was still young and prettified herself, that she never paid her debts at cards and had a predilection for other people’s shoes and cigarettes. Volodya begged her every day not to visit the Shumikhins, described to her how humiliating a role she played with these gentlefolk, persuaded, spoke rudely, but she, flighty, pampered, having run through two fortunes in her time, her own and her husband’s, always drawn to high society, did not understand him, and twice a week Volodya had to accompany her to the hateful dacha.

Third, the boy could not rid himself, even for a moment, of a strange, unpleasant feeling that was totally new to him…It seemed to him that he was in love with M-me Shumikhin’s cousin and guest, Anna Fyodorovna. She was a lively, loud, and laughter-prone little lady of about thirty, healthy, buxom, rosy, with round shoulders, a round, plump chin, and a constant smile on her thin lips. She was not attractive and not young—Volodya knew that perfectly well—but for some reason he was unable not to think about her, not to look at her when, playing croquet, she shrugged her round shoulders and moved her smooth back, or else, after a long time of laughing and running up and down the stairs, she collapsed into an armchair and, closing her eyes, her chest heaving, pretended that she was out of breath and suffocating. She was married. Her husband, a respectable architect, came to the dacha once a week, had a good night’s sleep, and went back to town. Volodya’s strange feeling started with a groundless hatred of this architect and a rejoicing each time the man returned to town.

Now, sitting in the gazebo and thinking about the next day’s examination and about maman, who was laughed at, he felt a strong desire to see Nyuta (as the Shumikhins called Anna Fyodorovna), to hear her laughter, the rustling of her dress…This desire was not like that pure, poetic love, which was familiar to him from novels and which he dreamed about every night going to bed; it was strange, incomprehensible, he was ashamed and afraid of it, as of something very bad and impure, something hard to admit to himself…

“This isn’t love,” he said to himself. “You don’t fall in love with thirty-year-old married women…This is simply a little intrigue…Yes, a little intrigue…”

Thinking of the little intrigue, he remembered about his invincible timidity, his lack of a moustache, his freckles, his narrow eyes, putting himself in imagination beside Nyuta—and the couple seemed impossible to him; then he hastened to imagine himself handsome, brave, witty, dressed in the latest fashion…

At the very peak of his reverie, when he sat in the dark corner of the gazebo, hunched over and looking at the ground, there came the sound of light footsteps. Someone was walking unhurriedly down the path. Soon the footsteps fell silent and something white flashed at the entrance.

“Is anyone here?” a woman’s voice asked.

Volodya recognized the voice and raised his head timorously.

“Who’s here?” Nyuta asked, coming into the gazebo. “Ah, it’s you, Volodya? What are you doing here? Thinking? How can you think, think, think all the time…you could lose your mind that way!”

Volodya got up and looked perplexedly at Nyuta. She was just coming back from bathing. On her shoulder hung a bath-sheet and a Turkish towel, and a strand of wet hair escaped from under her white silk head scarf and clung to her forehead. She smelled of the moist, cool bathhouse and almond soap. She was breathless from walking quickly. The top button of her blouse was undone, so that the young man saw her neck and bosom.

“Why are you silent?” asked Nyuta, looking Volodya up and down. “It’s impolite to be silent when a lady speaks to you. What a lummox you are, Volodya! Always sitting, thinking silently, like some kind of philosopher. There’s no life and fire in you at all! You’re disgusting, really…At your age you should live, jump, chatter, pay court to women, fall in love.”

Volodya was looking at the bath-sheet held up by a plump white hand and thinking…

“Not a word!” Nyuta was surprised. “It’s even strange…Listen, be a man! Well, smile at least! Pfui, disgusting philosopher!” she laughed. “You know why you’re such a lummox, Volodya? Because you don’t pay court to women. Why don’t you? True, there are no young misses here, but nothing keeps you from paying court to the ladies. Why don’t you pay court to me, for instance?”

Volodya listened and in heavy, strained reflection scratched his temple.

“Only very proud people are silent and love solitude,” Nyuta went on, pulling his hand away from his temple. “You’re proud, Volodya. Why do you look at me surreptitiously? Kindly look me straight in the face! Ah, come on, you lummox!”

Volodya decided to speak. Wishing to smile, he moved his lower lip, blinked, and again put his hand to his temple.

“I…I love you!” he brought out.

Nyuta raised her eyebrows in surprise and laughed.

“What is this I hear?” she sang, as opera singers do when they hear something terrible. “How’s that? What did you say? Repeat it, repeat it…”

“I…I love you!” Volodya repeated.

And now without any participation of his will, neither understanding nor reflecting on anything, he made a half step towards Nyuta and took her by the arm above the wrist. His eyes went dim and tears rose in them; the whole world turned into one big Turkish towel that smelled of the bathhouse.

“Bravo, bravo!” He heard merry laughter. “Why are you silent? I’d like you to speak! Well?”

Seeing that she did not prevent him from holding her arm, Volodya looked at Nyuta’s laughing face and clumsily, awkwardly put his arms around her waist, both hands coming together behind her back. He held her by the waist with both arms, while she, raising both hands to the back of her head and showing the dimples in her elbows, straightened her hair under the scarf and said in a calm voice:

“You should be adroit, gracious, affable, Volodya, and one can be like that only under the influence of women’s society. But what an unpleasant…angry face you have. You should talk, laugh…Yes, Volodya, don’t be so mopey, you’re young, you’ll have a lot of time for philosophizing. Well, let go of me, I’m leaving! Let go!”

Without effort she freed her waist and, humming something, left the gazebo. Volodya remained alone. He smoothed his hair, smiled, and paced three times from corner to corner, then sat on the bench and smiled again. He was unbearably ashamed, so much so that he was even surprised that human shame could reach such acuteness and intensity. From shame he smiled, whispered some incoherent words, and gesticulated.

He was ashamed that he had just been treated like a boy, ashamed of his timidity, and above all that he had dared to take a respectable married woman by the waist, though it seemed to him that neither by his age, nor by his appearance, nor by his social position did he have any right to do so.

He jumped up, left the gazebo, and, without looking back, walked into the depths of the garden, further away from the house.

“Ah, leave here the sooner the better!” he thought, clutching his head. “My God, the sooner the better!”

The train that Volodya and his maman were to take departed at eight-forty. There were about three hours until the train, but he would have been very happy to leave for the station right then, without waiting for maman.

It was going on eight when he approached the house. His whole figure was the picture of resolution: whatever would be, would be! He decided to go in boldly, look straight ahead, speak loudly, no matter what.

He passed through the terrace, the reception room, the drawing room, and stopped there to catch his breath. From there he could hear tea being served in the adjacent dining room. M-me Shumikhin, maman, and Nyuta were talking about something and laughing.

Volodya listened.

“I assure you!” Nyuta was saying. “I couldn’t believe my eyes. When he began to declare his love and even, imagine, took me by the waist, I didn’t recognize him. And you know, he has this manner! When he said he was in love with me, there was something wild in his face, like in a Circassian.”

“Really!” maman gasped, dissolving in drawn-out laughter. “Really! How he reminds me of his father!”

Volodya ran back and out into the fresh air.

“And how can they talk about it out loud!” He suffered, clasping his hands and looking at the sky with horror. “Out loud, coolheadedly…And maman laughed…maman! My God, why did you give me such a mother? Why?”

But he had to go into the house no matter what. He paced up and down the path three times, calmed himself a little, and went in.

“Why didn’t you come in time for tea?” M-me Shumikhin asked sternly.

“I’m sorry, I…it’s time for me to leave,” he murmured without raising his eyes. “Maman, it’s already eight o’clock!”

“Go by yourself, my dear,” maman said languidly, “I’m staying the night at Lily’s. Goodbye, my pet…Let me bless you…”

She made the sign of the cross over her son and said in French, turning to Nyuta:

“He looks a little like Lermontov¹…Isn’t it so?”

Having hurriedly said goodbye, without looking anyone in the face, Volodya left the dining room. Ten minutes later he was already marching down the road to the station and was glad of it. Now he was no longer either frightened or ashamed; he breathed lightly and freely.

A quarter of a mile from the station he sat down on a stone by the roadside and began to look at the sun, which was more than half hidden behind the embankment. At the station lights were already lit here and there, one dim green light was flickering, but there was no train in sight yet. Volodya liked sitting, not moving, and listening to how the evening gradually approached. The darkness of the gazebo, the footsteps, the smell of the bathhouse, the laughter, and the waist—it all rose up with astonishing clarity in his imagination, and it was all no longer as frightening and significant as before…

“Nonsense…She didn’t pull her hand away, and she laughed when I held her by the waist,” he thought, “which means she liked it. If it disgusted her, she would have gotten angry…”

Now Volodya was annoyed that there, in the gazebo, he had not been bold enough. He was sorry that he was going away so stupidly, and he was now certain that, if the chance repeated itself, he would look on things more boldly and simply.

And the chance could easily repeat itself. The Shumikhins took long strolls after supper. If Volodya went for a stroll in the dark garden with Nyuta—that would be a chance!

“I’ll go back,” he thought, “and take the morning train tomorrow…I’ll say I was late for the train.”

And he went back…M-me Shumikhin, maman, Nyuta, and one of the nieces were sitting on the terrace playing whist. When Volodya lied to them that he had been late for the train, they worried that he would be late for the examination the next morning, and advised him to get up early. All the while they played cards, he sat to one side, greedily looking at Nyuta and waiting…In his head a plan was already formed: he would approach Nyuta in the darkness, take her by the hand, then embrace her; there would be no need for talk, because they would both understand everything without talking.

But after supper the ladies did not go for a stroll in the garden, but went on playing cards. They played until one in the morning and then went to bed.

“How stupid this all is!” Volodya thought vexedly, going to bed. “But never mind, I’ll wait till tomorrow…Tomorrow again in the gazebo. Never mind…”

He did not try to fall asleep, but sat on the bed, his arms around his knees, thinking. The thought of the examination was loathsome to him. He had already decided that he would be expelled and that there would be nothing terrible in his expulsion. On the contrary it was all good, even very good. Tomorrow he would be free as a bird, he would change out of his uniform, smoke openly, come here and court Nyuta whenever he liked; and he would no longer be a high school boy, but a “young man.” And the rest, what is known as a career and a future, was quite clear: Volodya would volunteer for the army, or become a telegrapher, or get a job in a pharmacy, where he would work his way up to chief dispenser…as if there weren’t enough occupations! An hour or two went by, and he was still sitting and thinking…

It was past two o’clock and dawn was breaking, when the door creaked cautiously and maman came in.

“You’re not asleep?” she asked, yawning. “Sleep, sleep, I’ll leave at once…I’ll just take the drops…”

“What for?”

“Poor Lily’s having spasms again. Sleep, my child, you have an examination tomorrow…”

She took a vial of something from the medicine chest, went to the window, read the label, and left.

“Marya Leontyevna, these are the wrong drops!” Volodya heard a woman’s voice a minute later. “This is convallaria, and Lily’s asking for morphine. Is your son asleep? Ask him to find it…”

It was Nyuta’s voice. Volodya turned cold. He quickly put on his trousers, threw his coat over his shoulders, and went to the door.

“You understand? Morphine!” Nyuta was explaining in a whisper. “It should be written on it in Latin. Wake Volodya up, he’ll find it…”

Maman opened the door, and Volodya saw Nyuta. She was in the same blouse in which she had gone to bathe. Her hair was not done up, but strewn over her shoulders; her face was sleepy, swarthy in the darkness…

“Here’s Volodya, not asleep…,” she said. “Volodya, dearest, look for the morphine in the medicine chest! What a punishment this Lily is…She’s always got something.”

Maman muttered something, yawned, and left.

“Go and look,” Nyuta said, “don’t just stand there.”

Volodya went to the medicine chest, knelt by it, and started rummaging through vials and boxes of medications. His hands trembled, and in his chest and stomach there was a feeling as if cold waves were running all through his insides. The smell of ether, carbolic acid, and various herbs, which his trembling hands seized and crumbled without any need, stifled him and made his head spin.

“Maman seems to have gone,” he thought. “That’s good…good…”

“Why so slow?” Nyuta asked, drawing out the words.

“Right away…This seems to be morphine…,” said Volodya, having read the word “morph…” on one of the labels. “Here you are!”

Nyuta stood in the doorway so that one foot was in the corridor, the other in his room. She was straightening her hair, which was hard to do—so thick and long it was!—and looking absently at Volodya. In an ample blouse, sleepy, with loose hair, in the scant light that came into the room from the white but not yet sunlit sky, Volodya found her fascinating, resplendent…Enchanted, trembling all over, recalling with pleasure how he had embraced that wonderful body in the gazebo, he handed her the drops and said:

“You’re so…”

“What?”

She came into the room.

“What?” she asked, smiling.

He said nothing and looked at her, then, as before in the gazebo, took her by the arm…And she looked at him, smiled, and waited for what would come next.

“I love you…,” he whispered.

She stopped smiling, pondered, and said:

“Wait, I think someone’s coming. Oh, these schoolboys!” she said in a low voice, went to the door, and peeked out to the corridor. “No, nobody to be seen…”

She came back…

Then it seemed to Volodya that the room, Nyuta, the dawn, and his own self—all merged into one sensation of keen, extraordinary, unheard-of happiness, for which one could give one’s whole life and go to eternal torment, but half a minute went by and it all suddenly vanished. Volodya saw only a plump, unattractive face, distorted by an expression of disgust, and he himself suddenly felt a loathing for what had happened.

“Anyhow I must go,” said Nyuta, looking Volodya over squeamishly. “What an unattractive, pathetic…phoo, an ugly duckling!”

How repulsive her long hair, her ample blouse, her footsteps, her voice now seemed to Volodya!…

“ ‘Ugly duckling,’ ” he thought after she left. “In fact, I am ugly…Everything’s ugly.”

Outside the sun was already rising, the birds sang loudly; the gardener’s footsteps were heard in the garden and the creaking of his wheelbarrow…A little later came the mooing of cows and the sounds of a shepherd’s pipe. The sunlight and the sounds were saying that somewhere in this world there exists a pure, refined, poetic life. But where is it? Neither maman nor all those people around him had ever spoken of it to Volodya.

When a lackey came to wake him up for the morning train, he pretended to be asleep…

“Ah, to hell with it all!” he thought.

He got up between ten and eleven. Brushing his hair before the mirror and looking at his unattractive face, pale after a sleepless night, he thought:

“Quite right…an ugly duckling.”

When maman saw him and was horrified that he was not at the examination, Volodya said:

“I overslept, maman…But don’t worry, I’ll present a medical excuse.”

Madame Shumikhin and Nyuta woke up at noon. Volodya heard M-me Shumikhin noisily open her window and Nyuta responding to her coarse voice with ringing laughter. He saw the door open and a string of nieces and spongers (maman in the crowd of the latter) come filing out of the drawing room for lunch. He saw Nyuta’s washed, laughing face, and next to her face the black eyebrows and beard of the just-arrived architect.

Nyuta was wearing a Ukrainian costume, which did not suit her at all and made her ungainly; the architect’s jokes were trite and flat; in the beef patties served at lunch there was far too much onion—so it seemed to Volodya. It also seemed to him that Nyuta guffawed loudly on purpose and kept glancing in his direction to let him know that the memory of the night before did not trouble her in the least and that she did not notice the ugly duckling’s presence at the table.

At three o’clock Volodya rode to the station with maman. The sordid memories, the sleepless night, the impending expulsion from school, the pangs of conscience—it all now aroused in him a heavy, dark anger. He looked at maman’s gaunt profile, at her little nose, at the rain cape Nyuta had given her, and muttered:

“Why do you use powder? At your age it’s unbecoming! You prettify yourself, you don’t pay your card debts, you smoke other people’s cigarettes…disgusting! I don’t love you…don’t love you!”

He insulted her, and she rolled her frightened eyes, clasped her little hands, and whispered in horror:

“What are you saying, dear? My God, the coachman will hear you! Be quiet, or the coachman will hear you! He can hear everything!”

“Don’t love you…don’t love you!” he went on breathlessly. “You’re immoral, soulless…Don’t you dare go around in that rain cape! Do you hear me? I’ll tear it to shreds…”

“Calm down, child!” Maman began to cry. “The coachman will hear you!”

“Where’s my father’s fortune? Where’s your money? You squandered it all! I’m not ashamed of my poverty, but I am ashamed to have such a mother…When my comrades ask about you, I always blush.”

By train the town was two stops away. Volodya stood all the while at the rear of the car and trembled all over. He did not want to go into the car, since his mother, whom he hated, was sitting there. He hated himself, the conductors, the smoke of the engine, the cold, which he thought was the cause of his trembling…And the heavier his heart became, the more strongly he felt that somewhere in this world, among some people, there was a pure, noble life, warm, refined, filled with love, tenderness, gaiety, freedom…He felt it, and his yearning was so strong that one of the passengers, looking him closely in the face, even asked:

“Maybe you have a toothache?”

In town maman and Volodya lived with Marya Petrovna, a gentlewoman who rented a big apartment and took in tenants. Maman rented two rooms: in the one with windows, where her bed stood and two paintings in gilt frames hung on the walls, she herself lived; and in the other, adjacent, small and dark, lived Volodya. Here stood the sofa he slept on, and there was no other furniture; the whole room was taken up by hampers full of clothes, hat boxes, and all sorts of junk that maman kept for some reason. Volodya did his homework in his mother’s room or the “common room”—so the large room was called where the tenants all gathered at dinnertime and in the evenings.

Returning home, he lay down on the sofa and covered himself with a blanket to calm his trembling. The hat boxes, hampers, and junk reminded him that he had no room of his own, no shelter where he could hide from maman, from her guests, and from the voices that were now coming from the common room; the satchel and books scattered in the corners reminded him of the examination he had not taken…For some reason, quite beside the point, he recalled Menton, where he had lived with his late father when he was seven years old; he remembered Biarritz and two little English girls he used to run with in the sand…He wanted to refresh his memory of the color of the sky and the ocean, the height of the waves, and his mood at that time, but he did not succeed; the little English girls flashed in his imagination as if alive, but all the rest became confused and dissolved in disorder…

“No, it’s cold here,” Volodya thought, got up, put on his overcoat, and went to the common room.

In the common room they were having tea. Three people were sitting by the samovar: maman; a music teacher, a little old lady in tortoiseshell pince-nez; and Avgustin Mikhailych, an elderly, very fat Frenchman, who worked at a perfume factory.

“I had no lunch today,” maman was saying. “We’ll have to send the maid for bread.”

“Douniache!” the Frenchman cried.

It turned out that the landlady had sent the maid somewhere.

“Oh, that signifies nothing,” the Frenchman said with a big smile. “I’ll go myself right now for bread. Oh, it’s nothing!”

He laid his strong, stinking cigar in a conspicuous place, put on his hat, and left. On his departure, maman started telling the music teacher how she had visited the Shumikhins and how well she had been received there.

“Lily Shumikhin is my relative…,” she said. “Her late husband, General Shumikhin, was my husband’s cousin. She herself was born Baroness Kolb…”

“Maman, that’s not true!” Volodya said irritably. “Why lie?”

He knew perfectly well that maman was telling the truth: there was not a single lying word in her story about General Shumikhin and the born Baroness Kolb, but nonetheless he still felt she was lying. The lie was felt in her manner of speaking, in the expression of her face, in her gaze, in everything.

“You’re lying!” Volodya repeated and pounded on the table so hard that all the china trembled and maman’s tea splashed out. “Why do you go telling about generals and baronesses? It’s all lies!”

The music teacher was taken aback and coughed into her handkerchief, making it look as if she was choking, and maman burst into tears.

“Where can I go?” thought Volodya.

He had already been outside; he was ashamed to go to his school friends. Again, beside the point, he remembered the two little English girls…He walked up and down the common room and went into Avgustin Mikhailych’s room. Here it smelled strongly of essential oils and glycerine soap. On the table, in the windows, and even on the chairs stood a multitude of bottles, little tumblers, and shot glasses with liquids of various colors. Volodya took a newspaper from the table, unfolded it, and read the title: Figaro. The newspaper had a strong and pleasant smell. Then he took a revolver from the table…

“Enough now, don’t pay any attention!” The music teacher was comforting maman in the next room. “He’s still so young! At his age men always allow themselves excesses. You must reconcile yourself to that.”

“No, Evgenia Andreevna, he’s too spoiled!” maman said in a singsong voice. “There’s no older man over him, and I’m weak and can’t do anything. No, I’m unhappy!”

Volodya put the muzzle of the revolver into his mouth, felt something like a trigger or catch, and pressed it with his finger…Then he felt some other sort of protuberance and pushed that as well. Taking the muzzle out of his mouth, he wiped it on the skirt of his overcoat and studied the lock; never before in his life had he held a weapon in his hands…

“Seems it should be raised…,” he figured. “Yes, it seems so…”

Avgustin Mikhailych came into the common room and laughingly began telling about something. Volodya again put the muzzle into his mouth, clenched it with his teeth, and pressed something with his finger. A shot rang out…Something struck Volodya in the back of the head with terrible force, and he fell onto the table, face down on the glasses and bottles. Then he saw his late father, in a top hat with a wide black band, dressed in mourning for some lady in Menton, suddenly embrace him with both arms, and they both fell into a very dark, deep abyss.

Then everything became confused and disappeared…

1887