Fifty-Two Stories

COSTLY LESSONS

FOR AN EDUCATED MAN an ignorance of foreign languages amounts to a great inconvenience. Vorotov felt it strongly when, having graduated from the university with an advanced degree, he began a small scholarly work.

“It’s terrible!” he said breathlessly (despite his twenty-six years, he was plump, heavy, and suffered from shortness of breath). “It’s terrible! Without languages I’m like a bird without wings. I might just as well drop my work.”

And he decided at all costs to overcome his innate laziness and learn French and German, and he started looking for tutors.

One winter noon, when Vorotov was sitting in his study working, his valet told him that a young lady was asking to see him.

“Show her in,” said Vorotov.

A young woman, elegantly dressed in the latest fashion, came into the study. She introduced herself as Alisa Osipovna Enquête, a teacher of French,¹ and said that she had been sent to Vorotov by one of his friends.

“Very nice! Sit down!” Vorotov said breathlessly, concealing the collar of his nightshirt with his hand. (To breathe more easily, he always worked in his nightshirt.) “Pyotr Sergeich sent you to me? Yes, yes…I asked him…Very glad!”

While making arrangements with Mlle Enquête, he kept glancing at her shyly and with curiosity. She was a real Frenchwoman, very graceful and still very young. From her pale and languid face, her short, curly hair, and unnaturally slim waist, he could give her no more than eighteen years; but looking at her broad, well-developed shoulders, her beautiful back and stern eyes, Vorotov thought she was certainly no less than twenty-three, maybe even all of twenty-five; but then again it seemed to him that she was only eighteen. Her expression was cold, businesslike, as in someone who has come to discuss money. She never once smiled or frowned, and only once did perplexity flicker on her face, when she learned that she was being invited not to teach children, but a grown-up, fat man.

“So, Alisa Osipovna,” Vorotov said to her, “we’ll study every day from seven to eight in the evening. As concerns your wish to receive one rouble per lesson, I have no objection. If it’s a rouble, it’s a rouble…”

He also asked her if she wanted tea or coffee, if it was nice out, and with a good-natured smile, stroking the felt desktop with his palm, he affably inquired who she was, where she had studied, and how she earned her living.

Alisa Osipovna, with a cold, businesslike expression, replied that she had finished her studies in a private boarding school and had a license as a tutor, that her father had died recently of scarlet fever, that her mother was alive and made silk flowers, that she, Mlle Enquête, was employed in a private boarding school until lunchtime, and after lunch, until evening, went around to respectable homes and gave lessons.

She left, and behind her lingered the light, very delicate fragrance of a woman’s dress. Vorotov spent a long time afterwards not working, but sitting at his desk, stroking the green felt with his palms, and reflecting.

“It’s very pleasant to see girls who earn their crust of bread,” he thought. “On the other hand, it’s very unpleasant to see that need doesn’t spare even such elegant and pretty girls as this Alisa Osipovna, and that she, too, has to struggle for existence. Too bad!…”

He, who had never seen a virtuous Frenchwoman, also thought that this elegantly dressed Alisa Osipovna, with her well-developed shoulders and exaggeratedly slender waist, in all probability did something else besides teach.

The next evening, when the clock showed five minutes to seven, Alisa Osipovna came in, rosy from the cold; she opened Margot,² which she had brought with her, and began without any preliminaries:

“In French grammar is twenty-six letters. First letter is called A, second B…”

“Excuse me,” Vorotov interrupted her, smiling. “I must warn you, mademoiselle, that you will have to change your method slightly to teach me. The thing is that I know Russian, Latin, and Greek very well…I studied comparative linguistics, and it seems to me that we can skip Margot and go directly to reading some author.”

And he explained to the Frenchwoman how grown-up people study languages.

“An acquaintance of mine,” he said, “wishing to learn new languages, placed French, German, and Latin gospels before him and read them in parallel, analyzing each word meticulously—and what then? He achieved his goal in less than a year. Let’s do the same. We’ll take some author and read him.”

The Frenchwoman looked at him in perplexity. Apparently Vorotov’s suggestion seemed quite naïve and absurd to her. If this strange suggestion had been made by an underage person, she would probably have gotten angry and scolded him, but since this was a grown-up and extremely fat man, whom she could not scold, she merely gave a barely noticeable shrug and said:

“As you wish.”

Vorotov rummaged in his bookcase and took from it a tattered French book.

“Will this do?” he asked.

“It makes no difference.”

“In that case let’s begin. Lord bless us. We’ll begin with the title…Mémoires.”

“Reminiscences…,” Mlle Enquête translated.

“Reminiscences…,” Vorotov repeated.

Smiling good-naturedly and breathing heavily, he spent a quarter of an hour on the word mémoires, and as long again on the word de, and this wore Alisa Osipovna out. She answered his questions listlessly, became confused, and apparently had a poor understanding of her pupil and did not try to understand him. Vorotov asked her questions, and meanwhile kept looking at her blond head and thinking:

“Her hair isn’t naturally curly, she curls it. Amazing! She works from morning to night, and still has time to curl her hair.”

At exactly eight o’clock she stood up and, saying a dry, cold “Au revoir, monsieur,” left the study; after her lingered that same delicate, subtle, tantalizing fragrance. Again for a long time the pupil did nothing, sat at the desk, and thought.

In the following days he became convinced that his tutor was a nice, serious, and punctual young lady, but that she was very ignorant and did not know how to teach adults; and he decided not to waste his time, to let her go and invite another tutor. When she came for the seventh time, he took an envelope with seven roubles from his pocket and, holding it in his hands, became very abashed and began thus:

“Forgive me, Alisa Osipovna, but I must tell you…by force of necessity…”

Seeing the envelope, the Frenchwoman realized what it was about, and for the first time since they began their lessons, her face quivered, and the cold, businesslike expression vanished. She blushed slightly and, lowering her eyes, nervously began to finger her fine gold chain. And Vorotov, looking at her embarrassment, realized how much a rouble meant to her and how hard it would be for her to lose this income.

“I must tell you…,” he murmured, still more embarrassed, and in his breast something skipped a beat; he hastily shoved the envelope into his pocket and went on. “Forgive me, I…I’ll leave you for ten minutes…”

Pretending that he did not intend to dismiss her, but was only asking her permission to leave her for a short time, he went to another room and sat out the ten minutes. Then he returned more embarrassed still; he realized that she might have interpreted his brief absence in her own way, and he felt awkward.

The lessons began again.

Vorotov studied now without any enthusiasm. Knowing that the sessions were of no use, he gave free rein to the Frenchwoman, no longer asked her anything, and did not interrupt. She translated as she liked, up to ten pages per lesson, and he did not listen, breathed heavily, and, having nothing to do, studied her curly head, or her neck, or her soft white hands, inhaled the fragrance of her dress…

He caught himself having improper thoughts, was ashamed, or else he waxed tender-hearted, and was then upset and annoyed that she was so cold and businesslike with him, as with a pupil, never smiling and as if afraid he might accidentally touch her. He kept wondering how he could inspire her trust, become closer friends with her, and then help her, give her to understand how badly she teaches, poor thing.

Once Alisa Osipovna appeared at a lesson in a fancy pink dress with a slight décolleté, and she gave off such a fragrance that it seemed she was wrapped in a cloud, that if you blew on her, she would fly off into the air or scatter like smoke. She apologized and said she could teach for only half an hour, because after the lesson she would be going straight to a ball.

He looked at her neck and at her back, bare behind her neck, and understood, as it seemed to him, why Frenchwomen enjoyed a reputation as frivolous and easily yielding creatures; he was drowning in this cloud of fragrance, beauty, nakedness, while she, unaware of his thoughts and most likely not interested in them in the least, quickly turned the pages and translated at full steam:

“He was walking on the street and was meeting his mister acquaintance, and said: ‘Where are you precipitating to, seeing your face so pale, it does me hurt.’ ”

The Mémoires had long been finished, and now Alisa was translating some other book. Once she came to the lesson an hour early, excusing herself with having to go to the Maly Theater³ at seven. Having seen her out after the lesson, Vorotov dressed and also went to the theater. He went, as it seemed to him, only in order to relax, to amuse himself, and he did not even think about Alisa. He could not allow that a serious man, preparing for a scholarly career, so hard to budge, dropped everything and went to the theater only so as to meet there an unintelligent, poorly educated girl whom he barely knew…

But for some reason during the intermissions his heart pounded, and, not noticing it himself, he ran around the foyer and the corridors like a boy, impatiently searching for someone; and he felt disheartened when the intermission drew to an end; but when he saw the familiar pink dress and the beautiful shoulders under the tulle, his heart was wrung, as if in anticipation of happiness, he smiled joyfully, and for the first time in his life experienced the feeling of jealousy.

Alisa was walking with a pair of unattractive students and an officer. She laughed and talked loudly, was clearly flirting; Vorotov had never seen her like that. She was obviously happy, content, sincere, warm. How so? Why? Perhaps because these people were close to her, from the same circle as she was…And Vorotov sensed a dreadful abyss between himself and that circle. He bowed to his tutor, but she coldly nodded to him and quickly went by; evidently she did not want her cavaliers to know that she had pupils and that she gave lessons out of poverty.

After the meeting in the theater, Vorotov realized that he was in love…In the subsequent lessons, devouring his elegant teacher with his eyes, he no longer fought with himself, but gave free rein to his pure and impure thoughts. The face of Alisa Osipovna never ceased to be cold, at exactly eight o’clock each night she calmly said “Au revoir, monsieur,” and he felt that she was indifferent to him, and would remain indifferent, and that his position was hopeless.

Occasionally during a lesson he began to dream, to hope, to make plans, mentally composed a declaration of love, recalled that Frenchwomen were light-minded and yielding, but it needed only a look at his tutor’s face for his thoughts to be instantly extinguished, as a candle is extinguished when you take it out to the terrace of your dacha on a windy night. Once, inebriated, forgetting himself, as if in delirium, he lost control and, barring her way as she was leaving the study and going to the front hall after the lesson, suffocating and stammering, he began to declare his love:

“You’re dear to me! I…love you! Allow me to speak!”

Alisa turned pale—probably out of fear, figuring that after this declaration she would no longer be able to come here and get a rouble per lesson; she made frightened eyes and whispered loudly:

“Ah, you mustn’t do this! Don’t speak, I beg you! You mustn’t!”

After that Vorotov did not sleep all night, suffered from shame, scolded himself, thought hard. It seemed to him that he had offended the girl by his declaration, that she would never come to him again.

He decided to find out her address at the information bureau the next morning and write her a letter of apology. But Alisa came without a letter. At first she felt awkward, but then she opened the book and began to translate as quickly and glibly as ever:

“Oh, young sir, do not rip these flowers from my garden, which I wish to be giving to my sick daughter…”

She comes to this day. Four books have been translated, and Vorotov knows nothing except the word “mémoires,” and when people ask him about his scholarly work, he waves his hand and, not answering the question, begins to talk about the weather.

1887