Fifty-Two Stories

THE KISS

ON THE TWENTIETH OF MAY, at eight o’clock in the evening, all six batteries of the N—— reserve artillery brigade, on their way to camp, halted overnight in the village of Mestechki. At the very height of the turmoil, when some officers were busy with the cannon, while others, gathered on the square by the church wall, were listening to the quartermasters, a rider appeared from behind the church, in civilian dress and on a strange horse. The horse, dun-colored and small, with a beautiful neck and a short tail, did not walk straight but somehow sideways, and performed little prancing movements, as if it were being whipped on the legs. Going up to the officers, the rider raised his hat and said:

“His Excellency Lieutenant General von Rabbek, a local landowner, invites the gentlemen officers to call on him presently for tea…”

The horse bowed, pranced, and backed up sideways; the rider raised his hat again and instantly, together with his strange horse, disappeared behind the church.

“What the devil is this?” some officers grumbled, dispersing to their quarters. “You want to sleep, and here’s this von Rabbek with his tea! We know what this tea means!”

The officers of all six batteries vividly recalled last year’s incident, when, during maneuvers, and with the officers of a Cossack regiment, they were invited to tea in the same way by a landowner-count, a retired soldier; the hospitable and cordial count welcomed them, wined and dined them, and would not let them go to their quarters in the village, but made them stay overnight with him. This was all very good, of course, nothing better was needed, but the trouble was that the retired soldier was all too happy to be with young men. He went on until dawn telling the officers episodes from his good past life, took them around the house, showed them expensive paintings, old prints, rare weapons, read them original letters from high-placed persons, while the worn-out, weary officers listened, looked, and, longing for their beds, cautiously yawned into their sleeves. When the host finally let them go, it was already too late to sleep.

Was this von Rabbek not the same sort? But whether he was or not, there was nothing to be done. The officers dressed up, brushed themselves off, and the throng of them went in search of the landowner’s house. On the square by the church they were told that they could get to the gentleman by the lower way—going down behind the church to the river and walking along the bank to the garden, and from there along the paths to the house; or by the upper way—straight from the church along the road that leads to the barns of the estate a half mile from the village. The officers decided to take the upper way.

“Which von Rabbek is this?” they discussed on the way. “The one who commanded the N—— cavalry division at Plevna?”¹

“No, that one wasn’t von Rabbek, he was just Rabbe, and without the von.”

“What fine weather!”

By the first barn the road divided in two: one branch went straight and disappeared into the evening murk; the other led to the right, to the manor house. The officers turned right and began to speak softly…On both sides of the road stretched stone barns with red roofs, heavy and stern, very much like the barracks of the provincial capital. Ahead shone the windows of the manor house.

“A good omen, gentlemen,” said one of the officers. “Our setter has gone ahead of us all; it means he senses there’ll be quarry!…”

Ahead of them all walked Lieutenant Lobytko, tall and thickset but quite moustacheless (he was over twenty-five, but for some reason no growth appeared on his round, well-fed face), famous in the brigade for his intuition and proficiency in divining the presence of women from a distance. He turned around and said:

“Yes, there should be women here. I sense it instinctively.”

On the doorstep of the house the officers were met by von Rabbek himself, a fine-looking old man of about sixty, in civilian dress. Shaking his guests’ hands, he said he was very glad and delighted, but earnestly, for God’s sake, asked the gentlemen officers to forgive him for not inviting them to stay the night; two sisters with children, brothers, and neighbors had come to visit, so that there was not a single spare room left.

The general shook hands with them all, apologized and smiled, but from his face it could be seen that he was far from being as glad of his guests as last year’s count, and that he had invited the officers only because, in his opinion, propriety demanded it. And the officers themselves, going up the carpeted stairs and listening to him, felt that they had been invited to this house only because it was awkward not to invite them, and at the sight of the servants, who were hurriedly lighting candles downstairs by the entrance and upstairs in the front hall, it began to seem to them that, along with themselves, they had brought unrest and anxiety. In the house, where, probably on account of some family celebration or event, two sisters with children, brothers, and neighbors had gathered, how could anyone be pleased by the presence of nineteen unknown officers?

Upstairs, at the entrance to the reception room, the guests were met by a tall and slender old woman with a long, dark-browed face, very much resembling the empress Eugénie.² With a welcoming and majestic smile, she said she was glad and delighted to see guests in her house, and apologized that she and her husband were deprived this time of the possibility of inviting the gentlemen officers to stay the night with them. By her beautiful, majestic smile, which instantly disappeared from her face each time she turned away from her guests for some reason, one could see that she had seen many gentlemen officers in her time, that she could not be bothered with them right now, and if she invited them to her house and apologized, it was only because her upbringing and social position demanded it.

In the large dining room that the officers entered, at one end of a long table, some dozen men and women, old and young, sat at tea. Further behind their chairs, a group of men enveloped in light cigar smoke showed darkly; in the middle of it stood a lean young man with red sideburns, speaking loudly in English and rolling his r’s. Beyond the group, through a doorway, a bright room with light blue furniture could be seen.

“Gentlemen, there are so many of you that it’s impossible to introduce you!” the general said loudly, trying to seem very cheerful. “Simply introduce yourselves, gentlemen!”

The officers—some with very serious, even stern faces, others with forced smiles, all of them feeling very awkward—somehow made their bows and sat down to tea.

The one who felt most awkward of all was Staff-Captain Ryabovich, a short, stoop-shouldered officer in spectacles and with side-whiskers like a lynx. While some of his comrades put on serious faces and others forced smiles, his face, his lynx side-whiskers, and his spectacles seemed to say: “I’m the most timid, the most modest, and the most colorless officer in the whole brigade!” At first, coming into the dining room and then sitting at tea, he could not fix his attention on any one face or object. Faces, dresses, cut-glass decanters of cognac, steam from the tea-glasses, molded cornices—it all merged into one enormous general impression, which aroused anxiety in Ryabovich and a wish to hide his head. Like a reciter appearing before the public for the first time, he saw everything that was before his eyes, but somehow understood it poorly (in physiology such a state, when the subject sees but does not understand, is known as “psychic blindness”). A little later, feeling more at ease, Ryabovich recovered his sight and began to observe. For him, as a timid and unsociable man, what struck his eyes first of all was something he had never possessed, namely—the extraordinary courage of his new acquaintances. Von Rabbek, his wife, two elderly ladies, a certain young lady in a lilac dress, and the young man with red sideburns, who turned out to be Rabbek’s younger son, very cleverly, as if they had rehearsed it beforehand, positioned themselves among the officers and immediately got into a heated argument, which their guests could not fail to mix into. The lilac young lady began to insist heatedly that an artillerist had a much easier life than a cavalry or infantry man, while Rabbek and the elderly ladies maintained the opposite. Cross-talk began. Ryabovich looked at the lilac young lady, who was arguing very heatedly about something alien and totally uninteresting to her, and watched insincere smiles appear and disappear on her face.

Von Rabbek and his family artfully drew the officers into the argument, and meanwhile kept a close eye on their glasses and mouths, to see if they were all drinking, if they had sugar, and why this or that one was not eating biscuits or drinking cognac. And the more Ryabovich looked and listened, the more he liked this insincere but perfectly disciplined family.

After tea the officers went to the reception room. Lieutenant Lobytko’s intuition had not deceived him: there were many young ladies, married and unmarried, in the room. The setter-lieutenant was already standing beside a very young blond girl in a black dress and, dashingly bending over, as if leaning on an invisible sword, smiled and flirtatiously twitched his shoulders. He was probably saying some very interesting nonsense, because the blond girl looked indulgently at his well-fed face and asked indifferently: “Really?” And from this impassive “Really?” the setter, had he been intelligent, might have concluded that he was unlikely to hear the call “Fetch!”

A grand piano thundered; a melancholy waltz flew out of the reception room through the wide-open windows, and for some reason everyone remembered that outside the windows it was now spring, a May evening. Everyone sensed that the air smelled of young poplar leaves, roses, and lilacs. Ryabovich, in whom, under the effect of the music, the cognac he had drunk began to tell, looked askance at the window, smiled, and started to follow the women’s movements, and it now seemed to him that the smell of roses, poplars, and lilacs came not from the garden, but from the women’s faces and dresses.

Rabbek’s son invited some skinny girl and made two turns with her. Lobytko, gliding over the parquet, flew up to the lilac young lady and whirled around the room with her. The dancing began…Ryabovich stood by the door among the non-dancers and watched. He had never once danced in his life and had never once held his arms around the waist of a respectable woman. He was terribly pleased when a man, before everyone’s eyes, took hold of an unknown girl’s waist and offered his shoulder to her hand, but he was unable to imagine himself in this man’s place. There was a time when he envied his comrades’ boldness and pluck, and his heart ached; the awareness that he was timid, stoop-shouldered, and colorless, that he had a long waist and lynx side-whiskers, was deeply humiliating, but with the years this awareness became habitual, and now, looking at the dancing or loudly talking people, he no longer envied them, but only felt sadly moved.

When the quadrille began, the young von Rabbek approached the non-dancers and invited two officers to a game of billiards. The officers accepted and left the reception room with him. Ryabovich, having nothing to do, and wishing to take at least some part in the general activity, trudged after them. From the reception room they went to the drawing room, then down a narrow glass corridor, from there to a room where, when they appeared, three sleepy servants jumped up from the sofas. Finally, having gone through a whole string of rooms, the young Rabbek and the officers entered a small room where the billiard table stood. The game began.

Ryabovich, who had never played anything but cards, stood by the billiard table and looked indifferently at the players, and they, in unbuttoned coats, with cues in their hands, walked about, made puns, and shouted unintelligible words. The players did not notice him, and only occasionally one of them, having shoved him with an elbow or caught him accidentally with a cue, would turn and say, “Pardon!” The first game was not yet over, but he was already bored, and it began to seem to him that he was superfluous and a nuisance…He felt drawn back to the reception room, and he left.

On the way back he was to meet with a little adventure. At some point he noticed that he was not going where he should. He remembered very well that on the way he should meet three sleepy servants, but he went through five or six rooms and those figures had vanished without a trace. Noticing his mistake, he went a little way back, turned to the right, and wound up in a semi-dark parlor that he had not seen when he went to the billiard room; he stood there for half a minute, then resolutely opened the first door he happened upon and entered a totally dark room. Straight ahead of him he could see a crack in a door through which bright light shone; from behind the door came the muted sounds of a melancholy mazurka. Here, as in the reception room, the windows were wide open and there was a smell of poplars, lilacs, and roses…

Ryabovich paused to reflect…Just then, unexpectedly, he heard hasty footsteps and the rustling of a dress, a breathless feminine voice whispered “At last!” and two soft, fragrant, unquestionably feminine arms embraced his neck; a warm cheek pressed itself to his cheek and simultaneously came the sound of a kiss. But the kissing woman gave a small cry at once and, as it seemed to Ryabovich, recoiled from him in disgust. He, too, all but cried out and dashed for the bright crack in the door…

When he returned to the reception room, his heart was pounding and his hands trembled so visibly that he hurriedly hid them behind his back. At first he suffered from shame and fear that the whole room knew he had just been embraced and kissed by a woman. He fidgeted and looked about anxiously, but, satisfying himself that the people in the room were dancing and chattering as calmly as before, he gave himself entirely to this new sensation, which until then he had never experienced in his life. Something strange was happening to him…It seemed to him that his neck, which had just been embraced by soft, fragrant arms, had been smeared with oil; his cheek, by the left moustache, where the unknown woman had kissed him, trembled with a light, pleasant coolness, as if from menthol drops, and the more he rubbed that spot, the more intensely he felt the coolness, and his whole being from head to foot was filled with a strange new sensation that kept growing, growing…He wanted to dance, to talk, to run out to the garden, to laugh loudly…He completely forgot that he was stoop-shouldered and colorless, and had lynx side-whiskers and an “indefinite appearance” (so his appearance had once been described in a ladies’ conversation, which he accidentally overheard). When Rabbek’s wife walked past him, he gave her such a broad and tender smile that she stopped and looked at him questioningly.

“I like your house terribly!…,” he said, straightening his spectacles.

The general’s wife smiled and told him that this house had belonged to her father, then she asked if his parents were living, if he had been in the service long, why he was so skinny, and so on…Having received answers to her questions, she went on her way, and he, after talking with her, began to smile still more tenderly and to think that he was surrounded by splendid people…

At dinner Ryabovich mechanically ate everything he was offered, drank, and, not listening to anything, tried to explain the recent adventure to himself. This adventure had a mysterious and romantic character, but explaining it was not difficult. Probably some young miss or lady had arranged an assignation with somebody in the dark room, had waited for a long time, and, being in nervous agitation, had taken Ryabovich for her hero; this was the more likely since Ryabovich, as he passed through the dark room, had paused to reflect, that is, had looked like a person who was also expecting something…Thus Ryabovich explained to himself the received kiss.

“But who is she?” he thought, looking around at the women’s faces. “She must be young, because old women don’t go to assignations. Then, too, she must be cultivated, that could be sensed from the rustling of her dress, her fragrance, her voice…”

He rested his gaze on the lilac young lady, and he liked her very much; she had beautiful shoulders and arms, an intelligent face, and a lovely voice. Looking at her, Ryabovich wanted precisely her, and not anyone else, to be his unknown one…But she laughed somehow insincerely and wrinkled her long nose, which made her look old; then he shifted his gaze to the blond girl in the black dress. This one was younger, more simple and sincere, had lovely temples, and drank very prettily from her glass. Ryabovich now wanted her to be the one. But soon he found that her face was flat, and he shifted his gaze to the girl next to her…

“It’s hard to guess,” he thought dreamily. “If you were to take just the shoulders and arms from the lilac one, add the blond one’s temples, and the eyes of the one sitting to the left of Lobytko, then…”

He performed the composition mentally and came up with an image of the girl who had kissed him, the image he wanted but could not find at the table.

After supper the guests, sated and tipsy, started to take their leave and say thank you. The hosts again began to apologize that they could not have them stay the night.

“Very, very glad, gentlemen!” the general was saying, this time sincerely (probably because people are usually much more sincere and kind when seeing guests off than when receiving them). “Very glad! You’re welcome to stop by on your way back! Without ceremony! Which way? You want to go up? No, go through the garden, the lower path—it’s shorter.”

The officers went out into the garden. After the bright light and the noise, the garden seemed very dark and quiet. They went as far as the gate in silence. They were half-drunk, cheerful, content, but the darkness and quiet gave them pause for a moment. Each of them, like Ryabovich, probably had one and the same thought: would there come a time when they, like Rabbek, would have a big house, a family, a garden, and when they would be able, even if insincerely, to regale people, to make them sated, drunk, and content?

After going through the gate, they all immediately started talking and laughing loudly for no reason. Now they were already walking along the path that went down to the river and then ran just by the water, skirting the bushes that grew on the bank, the pools, and the willows hanging over the water. The bank and the path were barely visible, and the opposite bank was all drowned in darkness. Here and there stars were reflected in the dark water; they quivered and blurred—and only by that could one tell that the current was swift. It was quiet. On the opposite bank drowsy snipe moaned, and on this bank, in one of the bushes, a nightingale, paying no attention to the crowd of officers, was trilling loudly. The officers stopped by the bush, touched it, but the nightingale went on singing.

“How about that!” came exclamations of approval. “We stand right here and he ignores us completely! What a rascal!”

Towards the end, the path went uphill and joined the road by the church wall. Here the officers, weary from walking up the hill, sat down and smoked. A dim red light appeared on the opposite bank, and, having nothing better to do, they spent a long time discussing whether it was a bonfire, or a light in a window, or something else…Ryabovich also looked at the light, and it seemed to him that the light smiled and winked at him, as if it knew about the kiss.

On coming to his quarters, Ryabovich quickly undressed and lay down. He shared a cottage with Lobytko and with Lieutenant Merzlyakov, a quiet, taciturn fellow, who in his own circle was considered a well-educated officer, and who, wherever possible, always read The Messenger of Europe,³ which he carried with him everywhere. Lobytko undressed, paced back and forth for a long time, with the look of a man who is dissatisfied, and sent his orderly for beer. Merzlyakov lay down, put a candle by the head of the bed, and immersed himself in reading The Messenger of Europe.

“Who is she?” thought Ryabovich, staring at the sooty ceiling.

His neck, as it seemed to him, was still smeared with oil, and near his mouth he felt a coolness, as from menthol drops. The shoulders and arms of the lilac young lady, the temples and sincere eyes of the blond girl in black, waists, dresses, brooches flitted through his imagination. He tried to fix his attention on these images, but they leaped, blurred, flickered. On the wide black background that every person sees when he closes his eyes, these images disappeared entirely, and he began to hear hasty footsteps, the rustling of a dress, the sound of the kiss, and—an intense, causeless joy came over him…As he surrendered himself to that joy, he heard the orderly come back and report that there was no beer. Lobytko was terribly indignant and again began to pace.

“Well, isn’t he an idiot?” he said, stopping in front of Ryabovich, then in front of Merzlyakov. “You’d have to be a blockhead and a fool not to find any beer! Eh? Well, isn’t he a canaille?”⁴

“Of course you can’t find beer here,” said Merzlyakov, without taking his eyes from The Messenger of Europe.

“Really? You don’t think so?” Lobytko persisted. “Lord God, drop me on the moon, and right away I’ll find you beer and women! Look, I’ll go right now and find it…Call me a scoundrel if I don’t!”

He spent a long time getting dressed and pulling on his big boots, then silently smoked a cigarette and left.

“Rabbek, Grabbek, Labbek,” he muttered, stopping in the front hall. “I don’t like going alone, devil take it. Ryabovich, wouldn’t you like to make a promenazh? Eh?”

Receiving no reply, he came back, slowly undressed, and lay down. Merzlyakov sighed, set aside The Messenger of Europe, and blew out the candle.

“Hm—yes, sir…,” Lobytko murmured, lighting up a cigarette in the dark.

Ryabovich pulled the covers over his head, curled up, and began gathering together the images flitting through his imagination and uniting them into a single whole. But nothing came of it. Soon he fell asleep, and his last thought was that someone had caressed him and made him happy, that in his life something extraordinary, stupid, but extremely good and joyful had happened. This thought did not leave him even in sleep.

When he woke up, the sensation of oil on his neck and of menthol coolness near his lips was not there, but the wave of joy surged up in his breast as the day before. He gazed rapturously at the window frames gilded by the rising sun and listened to the movement outside. There was loud talk just by the window. Ryabovich’s battery commander, Lebedetsky, had just caught up with the brigade, and, being unaccustomed to speaking softly, was talking very loudly with his sergeant.

“And what else?” shouted the commander.

“During yesterday’s shoeing, Your Honor, Golubchik got pricked. The paramedic applied clay and vinegar. They lead him to one side now on a bridle. And also, Your Honor, the workman Artemyev got drunk yesterday, and the lieutenant punished him by sitting him on the front of a spare gun carriage.”

The sergeant also reported that Karpov forgot about new cords for the bugles and stakes for the tents, and that last night the officers visited General von Rabbek. In the middle of the conversation, the red-bearded head of Lebedetsky appeared in the window. He squinted at the officers’ sleepy physiognomies and greeted them.

“All well?” he asked.

“The shaft horse has a sore on his withers from the new yoke,” Lobytko said, yawning.

The commander sighed, thought a moment, and said loudly:

“And I think I’ll still go to see Alexandra Evgrafovna. I must call on her. Well, goodbye. I’ll catch up with you in the evening.”

A quarter of an hour later the brigade set out on its way. As it moved down the road past the barns of the estate, Ryabovich looked to the right at the house. The blinds were drawn. Evidently the house was still asleep. Asleep, too, was the girl who had kissed Ryabovich yesterday. He wanted to picture her sleeping. The bedroom window wide open, green branches peeking through the window, the morning freshness, the smell of poplars, lilacs, and roses, a bed, a chair, and on it the dress that had rustled yesterday, little shoes, a watch on the table—all this he portrayed to himself clearly and distinctly, but the features, the sweet, sleepy smile, precisely what was important and specific, evaded his imagination, like quicksilver under a finger. Having gone half a mile, he turned to look back: the yellow church, the house, the river, and the garden were flooded with light; the river with its bright green banks reflected the blue sky and, silvery here and there from the sun, was very beautiful. Ryabovich looked at Mestechki for the last time and felt as sad as if he were parting with something very near and dear.

And before his eyes on the road lay only long familiar, uninteresting scenes…To right and left fields of young rye and buckwheat, with hopping rooks; look ahead—you see dust and napes, look behind—you see the same dust and faces…In front march four men with sabers—this was the vanguard. Behind them a crowd of singers, and behind them buglers on horseback. The vanguard and the singers, like torchbearers in a funeral procession, keep forgetting about the regulation distance and march far ahead…Ryabovich is placed by the first gun of the fifth battery. He can see all four of the batteries marching ahead of him. For a civilian, this long, heavy file formed by the moving brigade looks like an intricate and incomprehensible mess; it is incomprehensible why one gun is surrounded by so many people, and why it is pulled by so many horses, entangled in strange harness, as if it were indeed so frightening and heavy. For Ryabovich it was all comprehensible, and therefore extremely uninteresting. He had long known why, at the head of each battery, beside the officer, rides an imposing firemaster, and why he is called the carrier; behind the back of this firemaster he can see the riders of the first, then of the middle team; Ryabovich knows that the horses to the left, which they ride on, are called saddle horses, and to the right, helpers—all very uninteresting. After the riders come two shaft horses. One of them is mounted by a rider with yesterday’s dust on his back and with a clumsy, extremely ridiculous piece of wood on his right leg; Ryabovich knows the purpose of this piece of wood, and to him it does not seem ridiculous. The riders, all of them, mechanically swing their whips and shout now and then. The gun itself is ugly. In front lie sacks of oats covered with canvas, and the gun itself is all hung with kettles, kit bags, pouches, and has the look of a small, harmless animal, surrounded for some unknown reason by people and horses. At its flank, on the leeward side, swinging their arms, march six gunners. Following the gun, new carriers, riders, shaft horses begin again, and behind them drags another gun, as ugly and unimpressive as the first. The second is followed by a third, a fourth; by the fourth an officer, and so on. There are six batteries in a brigade, and four guns in each battery. The file stretches out for half a mile. It ends with a supply train, next to which, his long-eared head thoughtfully lowered, marches a highly sympathetic character—the donkey Magar—whom one of the battery commanders brought from Turkey.

Ryabovich looked indifferently ahead and behind, at the napes and at the faces; any other time he would have dozed off, but now he was all immersed in his new, pleasant thoughts. At first, when the brigade had just set out, he wanted to persuade himself that the incident with the kiss was interesting only as a small, mysterious adventure, that it was essentially worthless, and to think seriously about it was stupid, to say the least; but he soon waved logic away and gave himself up to dreaming…Now he imagined himself in Rabbek’s drawing room next to a girl who resembled the lilac young lady and the blond girl in black; then he closed his eyes and saw himself with another totally unknown girl with very indefinite features; mentally he talked to her, caressed her, leaned down to her shoulder, imagined to himself war and separation, then reunion, a supper with his wife, children…

“Mind the swingletrees!” The command rang out each time they went down a hill.

He, too, cried, “Mind the swingletrees!” and worried that this cry might break up his dream and bring him back to reality…

Passing by some landowner’s estate, Ryabovich looked through the paling into the garden. His eyes caught sight of a long alley, straight as a ruler, sprinkled with yellow sand and lined with young birches…With the avidity of a daydreamer, he pictured to himself a woman’s small feet walking on the yellow sand, and, quite unexpectedly, in his imagination there clearly appeared the girl who had kissed him and whom he had managed to picture to himself yesterday at dinner. This image had stayed in his brain and now did not leave him.

At noon a cry came from the rear by the supply train:

“Attention! Eyes left! Officers!”

In a carriage with a pair of white horses, the brigade general rolled by. He stopped at the second battery and shouted something nobody understood. Several officers rode up to him, Ryabovich among them.

“How’s things? Eh?” asked the general, blinking his red eyes. “Any sick?”

Having received answers, the general, short and skinny, munched, pondered, and said, turning to one of the officers:

“The shaft rider of the third carriage took his knee-guard off and hung it on the front, the canaille. Slap a penalty on him.”

He raised his eyes to Ryabovich and went on:

“And your breeching strap looks much too long…”

After making several more dull observations, the general looked at Lobytko and grinned.

“And you, Lieutenant Lobytko, look very sad today,” he said. “Missing Lopukhova, eh? Gentlemen, he’s missing Lopukhova!”

Lopukhova was a very corpulent and very tall lady, well past forty. The general, who nursed a predilection for large women, whatever age they might be, suspected this same predilection in his officers. The officers smiled deferentially. The general, pleased that he had said something very funny and caustic, laughed loudly, tapped his driver’s back, and saluted. The carriage rolled on…

“Everything I’m dreaming about now, and that now seems impossible and unearthly to me, is essentially quite ordinary,” thought Ryabovich, looking at the clouds of dust in the wake of the general’s carriage. “It’s all quite ordinary and experienced by everyone…For instance, this general loved in his time, is married now, has children. Captain Vakhter is also married and loved, though he has a very ugly red nape and no waist…Salmanov is brutish and too much of a Tartar, but he, too, had a love affair that ended in marriage…I’m like everybody else, and sooner or later will experience the same thing everybody does…”

And the thought that he was an ordinary man and had an ordinary life gladdened and encouraged him. Now he boldly pictured her and his happiness as he wished, and nothing hindered his imagination…

When the brigade reached its destination in the evening and the officers were resting in their tents, Ryabovich, Merzlyakov, and Lobytko sat around a trunk having supper. Merzlyakov ate unhurriedly and, chewing slowly, read The Messenger of Europe, holding it on his knees. Lobytko talked incessantly and kept topping up his glass of beer, while Ryabovich, who had a fog in his head from dreaming all day long, said nothing and drank. After three glasses, he became tipsy, weak, and had an irrepressible desire to share his new sensations with his comrades.

“A strange happening happened to me at those Rabbeks’…,” he began, trying to give his voice an indifferent and mocking tone. “I went to the billiard room, you know…”

He started telling in great detail about the incident with the kiss and after a minute fell silent…In that minute he had told everything, and he was terribly surprised that it had taken so little time to tell it. It had seemed to him that he could tell about the kiss till morning. Having heard him out, Lobytko, who lied a lot and therefore did not believe anyone, looked at him mistrustfully and smirked. Merzlyakov raised his eyebrows and calmly, not tearing his eyes from The Messenger of Europe, said:

“God knows!…Throwing herself on your neck without any warning…Must be some kind of psychopath.”

“Right, must be a psychopath…,” Ryabovich agreed.

“Something similar once happened to me…,” said Lobytko, making frightened eyes. “I was going to Kovno last year…I had a second-class ticket…The car was overcrowded, it was impossible to sleep. I gave the conductor fifty kopecks…He took my luggage and brought me to a separate compartment…I lie down and cover myself with a blanket…It’s dark, you see. Suddenly I feel somebody touch my shoulder and breathe into my face. I move my hand and feel somebody’s elbow…I open my eyes and, can you imagine—a woman! Dark eyes, red lips like fine salmon, nostrils breathing passion, bosom—a buffer…”

“Excuse me,” Merzlyakov interrupted calmly, “I understand about the bosom, but how could you see the lips if it was dark?”

Lobytko began to dodge and laughed at Merzlyakov’s obtuseness. This jarred on Ryabovich. He left the trunk, lay down, and promised himself never to be openhearted.

Camp life began…Days flowed by, one very much like another. During all those days, Ryabovich felt, thought, and behaved like a man in love. Every morning, when the orderly brought him a full washbasin, he poured the cold water over his head, remembering each time that there was something good and warm in his life.

In the evenings, when his comrades started talking about love and women, he listened, moved closer, and assumed the expression that the faces of soldiers have when they hear stories of battles they themselves took part in. And on those evenings when carousing officers, with setter-Lobytko at their head, made donjuanesque raids on the “outskirts,” Ryabovich, taking part in the raids, was sad each time, felt himself deeply guilty, and mentally asked her forgiveness…In leisure hours or on sleepless nights, when the urge came over him to remember his childhood, father, mother, all that was near and dear, he unfailingly remembered Mestechki, the strange horse, Rabbek, his wife, who resembled the empress Eugénie, the dark room, the bright crack in the door…

On the thirty-first of August he was returning from camp, now not with his brigade, but with two batteries. He dreamed all the way and was excited, as if he were going to his native land. He passionately wanted to see again the strange horse, the church, the insincere Rabbek family, the dark room; the “inner voice” that so often deceives lovers whispered to him for some reason that he was sure to see her…And he was tormented by questions: How would he meet her? What would he talk about with her? Would she not have forgotten about the kiss? In the worst outcome, he thought, even if he did not run into her, it would already be pleasant enough for him to walk through the dark room and remember…

Towards evening the familiar church and white barns appeared on the horizon. Ryabovich’s heart began to pound…He was not listening to the officer who was riding next to him and saying something. He forgot about everything and greedily peered at the river glistening in the distance, the roof of the house, the dovecot over which pigeons circled, lit by the setting sun.

Approaching the church and then listening to the quartermaster, he waited every second for a rider to appear from behind the wall and invite the officers to tea, but…the quartermaster’s report ended, the officers dismounted and wandered off to the village, and the rider did not appear…

“Rabbek will find out at once from his peasants that we have come and will send for us,” Ryabovich thought, going into the cottage and not understanding why his comrade was lighting a candle and the orderlies were hurrying to start the samovars…

A heavy anxiety came over him. He lay down, then got up again and looked out the window to see if the rider was coming. But there was no rider. He lay down again, got up half an hour later, and, unable to bear his anxiety, went outside and walked towards the church. The square by the wall was dark and deserted…Three soldiers stood in a row at the very top of the slope and were silent. Seeing Ryabovich, they roused themselves and saluted. He returned the salute and started down the familiar path.

On the other bank, the whole sky was flooded with crimson color: the moon was rising; two peasant women, talking loudly, walked about in the kitchen garden tearing off cabbage leaves; beyond the kitchen garden, several cottages showed darkly…On the near bank everything was the same as in May: the path, the bushes, the willows hanging over the water…only the brave nightingale was not singing and there was no smell of poplars and young grass.

On reaching the garden, Ryabovich looked through the gate. The garden was dark and quiet…He could only see the white trunks of the nearest birches and a small part of the alley; the rest all merged into a black mass. Ryabovich greedily listened and peered, but after standing there for a quarter of an hour and not hearing or seeing anything, he trudged back…

He approached the river. Before him the general’s bathhouse and the sheets hanging on the rails of the little bridge showed white. He went up on the little bridge, stood there, and without any need touched a sheet. The sheet turned out to be rough and cold. He looked down at the water…The river flowed swiftly and the gurgling around the pilings of the bathhouse was barely audible. The red moon was reflected near the left bank; little ripples ran across its reflection, spreading it, tearing it to pieces, and, it seemed, wishing to carry it off…

“How stupid! How stupid!” thought Ryabovich, looking at the flowing water. “Not smart at all!”

Now, when he expected nothing, the incident with the kiss, his impatience, vague hopes, and disappointment appeared to him in a clear light. It no longer seemed strange to him that he had not gone on waiting for the general’s rider and that he would never see the one who had accidentally kissed him instead of someone else; on the contrary, it would be strange if he were to see her…

The water flowed who knows where and why. It had flowed the same way in May; from the small river in the month of May it had poured into a big river, from the river into the sea, then it evaporated, turned into rain, and maybe that same water was now flowing again before Ryabovich’s eyes…What for? Why?

And the whole world, the whole of life appeared to Ryabovich as an incomprehensible, pointless joke…And taking his eyes from the water and looking at the sky, he again recalled how fate in the person of an unknown woman had unwittingly been kind to him, recalled his summer dreams and images, and his life seemed to him extraordinarily meager, miserable, and colorless…

When he went back to his cottage, he did not find any of his comrades. The orderly reported that they had all gone to “General Fontryabkin,” who had sent a rider for them…For a moment joy rose in Ryabovich’s breast, but he extinguished it at once, went to bed, and to spite his fate, as if wishing to vex it, did not go to the general’s.

1887