Fifty-Two Stories

THE NAME-DAY PARTY

I

After her husband’s name-day dinner, with its eight courses and endless conversation, his wife, Olga Mikhailovna, went out to the garden. The obligation of constant smiling and talking, the clatter of dishes, the witlessness of the servants, the long breaks between courses, and the corset she had put on to conceal her pregnancy from the guests, had wearied her to the point of exhaustion. She wanted to get far away from the house, to sit in the shade and rest in thoughts of the baby who was to be born to her in about two months. She was used to having these thoughts come to her when she turned from the big avenue to the narrow path on the left; there, in the dense shade of plum and cherry trees, dry branches scratched her shoulders and neck, cobwebs clung to her face, and in her thoughts arose the image of a little person of indefinite sex, with vague features, and it would begin to seem to her that it was not the cobwebs tenderly tickling her face and neck, but that little person; and when, at the end of the path, a flimsy wattle fence appeared, and beyond it fat-bellied beehives with tile lids, when the motionless, stagnant air began to smell of hay and honey, and she could hear the meek buzzing of bees, the little person would take complete possession of Olga Mikhailovna. She would sit down on the bench by a hut of woven willow and begin to think.

This time, too, she came to the bench, sat down, and began to think; but instead of the little person, her imagination pictured the big people whom she had just left. It troubled her deeply that she, the hostess, had abandoned her guests; she also remembered how at dinner her husband Pyotr Dmitrich and her uncle Nikolai Nikolaich had argued over trial by jury, publishing, and women’s education. Her husband, as usual, had argued in order to show off his conservative views before the guests, and above all in order to disagree with her uncle, whom he disliked. Her uncle had contradicted him and picked on his every word, in order to show the guests that he, the uncle, in spite of his fifty-nine years, still preserved a youthful freshness of spirit and freedom of thought. And towards the end of the dinner Olga Mikhailovna herself could not hold back and began a lame defense of women’s education, not because such education needed defending, but simply because she wanted to annoy her husband, who, in her opinion, was not right. The guests were tired of the argument, but they all found it necessary to mix in and talked a great deal, though none of them cared either about trial by jury or about women’s education…

Olga Mikhailovna was sitting on the near side of the wattle fence by the hut. The sun was hidden behind the clouds, the trees and the air were overcast, as before rain, but despite that it was hot and stifling. The hay that had been cut under the trees on the eve of St. Peter’s day¹ had not been gathered and lay sadly, dotted with faded flowers, giving off a heavy, sickly smell. It was quiet. Beyond the wattle fence bees buzzed monotonously…

Unexpectedly, she heard footsteps and voices. Someone was walking down the path to the apiary.

“It’s stifling!” a woman’s voice said. “Do you think it will rain?”

“It will, my sweet, but not before nightfall,” languidly replied a very familiar male voice. “There’ll be a good downpour.”

Olga Mikhailovna decided that if she quickly hid in the hut, they would not notice her and would pass by, and she would not have to talk and force herself to smile. She picked up her skirt, bent over and went into the hut. Instantly she felt hot, stifling air, like steam, on her face, neck, and arms. Had it not been for the stuffiness and the stale smell of rye bread, dill, and willow, which took her breath away, here, under the thatched roof and in the semi-darkness, would have been an excellent place to hide from the guests and think about the little person. Cozy and quiet.

“What a nice little spot this is!” said the woman’s voice. “Let’s sit here a while, Pyotr Dmitrich.”

Olga Mikhailovna began to look through a gap between two willow switches. She saw her husband, Pyotr Dmitrich, and a guest, Lyubochka Scheller, a seventeen-year-old girl who had recently graduated from boarding school. Pyotr Dmitrich, his hat pushed back on his head, languid and lazy from having drunk a lot at dinner, slouched about by the wattle fence, raking the hay into a pile with his foot; Lyubochka, rosy from the heat and as pretty as ever, stood with her hands behind her back and followed the lazy movements of his big, handsome body.

Olga Mikhailovna knew that her husband was pleasing to women, and—did not like to see him with them. There was nothing special about Pyotr Dmitrich lazily raking up hay so as to sit on it with Lyubochka and chat about trifles; there was nothing special about pretty Lyubochka looking meekly at him; and yet Olga Mikhailovna was annoyed with her husband, and felt frightened and pleased to be able to eavesdrop now.

“Sit down, enchantress,” said Pyotr Dmitrich, lowering himself onto the hay and stretching. “That’s right. Well, so tell me something.”

“Oh, yes! I’ll start telling, and you’ll fall asleep.”

“Me fall asleep? Allah kerim!² Could I fall asleep when such pretty eyes are looking at me?”

Neither in her husband’s words, nor in his sprawling with his hat pushed back in the presence of a guest, was there anything unusual. He was spoiled by women, knew that they liked him, and adopted a special tone in dealing with them, which everyone said was becoming to him. With Lyubochka he was behaving just as he did with all women. But Olga Mikhailovna was still jealous.

“Tell me, please,” Lyubochka began after a brief silence, “is it true what they say about you being taken to court?”

“Me? Yes, it’s true…I’ve been numbered among the transgressors,³ my sweet.”

“But what for?”

“For nothing, just…more from politics,” Pyotr Dmitrich yawned. “The struggle between left and right. I, an obscurantist and routineer, dared to use expressions in official papers that were insulting to such infallible Gladstones⁴ as Vladimir Pavlovich Vladimirov and our local justice of the peace, Kuzma Grigoryevich Vostryakov.”

Pyotr Dmitrich yawned again and went on:

“The way things are with us, you can speak disapprovingly about the sun, the moon, anything you like, but God forbid you touch the liberals! God forbid! A liberal is the same as one of those nasty dry toadstools that, if you accidentally touch it with your finger, showers you with a cloud of dust.”

“What happened to you?”

“Nothing special. The whole to-do flared up over a mere trifle. Some teacher, a runty fellow with a churchy background, addressed Vostryakov with a complaint against a tavernkeeper, accusing him of offensive words and acts in a public place. By all tokens, both the teacher and the tavernkeeper were drunk as fish, and both behaved themselves equally badly. If there was an offense, in any case it was mutual. Vostryakov should have fined them both for disturbing the peace and kicked them out of court—that’s all. But how is it with us? With us what always comes first is not the person, the fact, but the trademark and the label. A teacher, no matter how rascally he is, is always right, because he’s a teacher; a tavernkeeper is always guilty, because he’s a tavernkeeper and a moneygrubber. Vostryakov sentenced the tavernkeeper to jail, so the man turned to the appellate court. The appellate court solemnly confirmed Vostryakov’s sentence. Well, I stuck to my own opinion…Got a little worked up…That’s all.”

Pyotr Dmitrich spoke calmly, with casual irony. In fact, the impending trial worried him greatly. Olga Mikhailovna remembered how, on returning from the ill-fated appellate court, he had tried his best to conceal from the family how hard it was for him and how displeased he was with himself. As an intelligent man, he could not help feeling that he had gone too far in his own opinion, and how much deception he needed to hide this feeling from himself and from other people! So many unnecessary conversations, so much grumbling and insincere laughter at something that was not funny! Having learned that he was being taken to court, he suddenly felt tired and lost heart, slept poorly, stood at the window more often than usual and drummed on the glass with his fingers. And he was ashamed to admit to his wife that it was hard for him, and that annoyed her…

“They say you were in Poltava province?” asked Lyubochka.

“Yes, I was,” replied Pyotr Dmitrich. “I came back two days ago.”

“It must be nice there?”

“Nice. Even very nice. I must tell you, I got there just during the haymaking, and in the Ukraine, haymaking is the most poetic time. Here we have a big house, a big garden, lots of people and fuss, so you don’t see them making hay; here everything goes by imperceptibly. On my farm there, the forty acres of fields are like in the palm of your hand; whichever window you stand at, you see the mowers from everywhere. They mow the field, they mow in the garden, there are no guests, no fuss either, so that like it or not all you hear, see, and feel is the haymaking. The yard and the rooms smell of hay, from dawn to dusk the scythes ring. Generally Khokhlandia⁵ is a nice country. Would you believe it, when I was drinking water from the wells, or foul vodka in the Jews’ taverns, when the sounds of a Ukrainian fiddle and tambourine reached me on a quiet evening, an enchanting thought tempted me—to settle on my farm and live there as long as I could stand it, away from these court sessions, clever conversations, philosophizing women, drawn-out dinners…”

Pyotr Dmitrich was not lying. It was hard for him and he really wanted to rest. He had gone to Poltava province only so as not to see his study, servants, acquaintances, and all that could remind him of his wounded vanity and his mistakes.

Lyubochka suddenly jumped up and waved her arms in fright.

“Ah, a bee, a bee!” she shrieked. “It’ll sting me!”

“Nonsense, it won’t sting!” said Pyotr Dmitrich. “What a coward you are!”

“No, no, no!” cried Lyubochka and, looking back at the bee, she quickly walked away.

Pyotr Dmitrich walked behind her and followed her with his eyes tenderly and sadly. Looking at her, he must have been thinking of his farm, of solitude, and—who knows?—maybe even of how warm and cozy his life on the farm would be if his wife were this girl—young, pure, fresh, unspoiled by education, not pregnant…

When the voices and footsteps died away, Olga Mikhailovna came out of the hut and headed for the house. She felt like crying. She was now intensely jealous over her husband. She understood that Pyotr Dmitrich was tired, displeased with himself, and ashamed, and when people are ashamed they hide first of all from their near ones and confide in strangers; she also understood that Lyubochka was not a threat, no more so than all the women who were now having coffee in the house. But in general everything was incomprehensible, frightening, and it now seemed to Olga Mikhailovna that Pyotr Dmitrich only half belonged to her…

“He has no right!” she murmured, trying to make sense of her jealousy and her vexation with her husband. “He has no right at all! I’ll speak my mind to him at once!”

She decided to find her husband at once and speak her mind to him: it was vile, utterly vile, that he pleased other women and sought it out like manna from heaven; it was unfair and dishonest that he gave to others what by right belonged to his wife, that he hid his soul and conscience from his wife and revealed them to the first pretty face that came along. What wrong had his wife done him? Where was her fault? Finally, she had long been sick of his lying: he was constantly showing off, mincing, flirting, saying things he did not mean, and trying to appear as other than what he was and what he ought to be. Why this lying? Was it becoming in a decent man? If he lied, he insulted himself and those to whom he lied, and showed no respect for the things he lied about. Did he not understand that if he minced and posed at the court bench or theorized over dinner about the prerogatives of authority only so as to spite her uncle—did he not understand that by doing that he was belittling the court, and himself, and all those who heard and saw him?

Coming out to the big avenue, Olga Mikhailovna put on an expression as if she had just gone about some household necessity. On the terrace the men were drinking liqueur and eating berries; one of them, a court prosecutor, a stout old man, a banterer and wit, must have been telling some dirty joke, because, seeing the hostess, he suddenly clapped his hand to his fat lips, goggled his eyes, and hunched over. Olga Mikhailovna did not like provincial functionaries. She did not care for their clumsy, ceremonious wives, who gossiped, paid frequent visits, and flattered her husband, whom they all hated. And now, when they were drinking, had eaten well, and were not about to leave, she felt their presence wearisome to the point of anguish, but, so as not to appear ungracious, she smiled affably to the prosecutor and shook her finger at him. She crossed the reception room and the drawing room smiling and with a look as if she were going to give orders and take care of things. “God forbid someone stops me!” she thought, but she forced herself to stop in the drawing room and out of politeness listened to the young man who was playing the piano. She stood there for a moment, cried, “Bravo, Monsieur Georges!” and, after clapping twice, went on.

She found her husband in his study. He was sitting at his desk and thinking about something. His face was stern, pensive, and guilty. This was no longer the Pyotr Dmitrich who had argued over dinner and whom his guests knew, but a different one—tired, guilty, and displeased with himself—who was known only to his wife. He must have gone to his study to get cigarettes. Before him lay an open cigarette case full of cigarettes, and one hand was lowered into the desk drawer. As he was taking out cigarettes, he had frozen like that.

Olga Mikhailovna felt sorry for him. It was clear as day that the man was anguished and on edge, perhaps struggling with himself. Olga Mikhailovna silently approached the desk; wishing to show that she had forgotten the dinnertime argument and was no longer angry, she closed the cigarette case and put it in his pocket.

“What shall I say to him?” she thought. “I’ll say that lying is like a forest: the further in you go, the more difficult it is to get out. I’ll say: you got carried away with your false role and went too far; you offended people who are attached to you and have done you no wrong. Go and apologize to them, laugh at yourself, and you’ll feel better. And if you want peace and solitude, we’ll go away together.”

Meeting his wife’s eyes, Pyotr Dmitrich suddenly gave his face the expression it had had at dinner and in the garden—indifferent and slightly mocking—yawned, and stood up.

“It’s past five,” he said, glancing at his watch. “If our guests are merciful and leave at eleven, we’ve still got another six hours to wait. Good fun, to say the least!”

And, whistling some tune, slowly, with his usual dignified gait, he left the study. She could hear his dignified footsteps as he walked through the reception room, then through the drawing room, laughed dignifiedly at something, and said “Bra-o! Bra-o!” to the young man at the piano. Soon his footsteps died away: he must have gone out to the garden. And now it was not jealousy or vexation, but a real hatred of his footsteps, his insincere laughter and voice, that came over Olga Mikhailovna. She went to the window and looked out at the garden. Pyotr Dmitrich was already walking down the avenue. One hand in his pocket, snapping the fingers of the other, his head thrown slightly back, he walked with dignity, looking as if he were quite satisfied with himself, his dinner, his digestion, and nature…

Two small schoolboys appeared in the avenue, the children of the landowner Madame Chizhevskaya, who had just arrived, and with them a student-tutor in a white tunic and very tight trousers. Going up to Pyotr Dmitrich, the children and the student stopped and probably congratulated him on his name-day. Handsomely moving his shoulders, he patted the children’s cheeks and casually shook the student’s hand without looking at him. The student probably praised the weather and compared it with Petersburg, because Pyotr Dmitrich said loudly and in a tone as if he were talking not to a guest, but to a court usher or a witness:

“Well, sir, so it’s cold in your Petersburg? And here, my good man, we have seasonable weather and abundance of the fruits of the earth.⁶ Eh? What?”

And, putting one hand in his pocket and snapping the fingers of the other, he walked on. All the while, until he disappeared behind the hazelnut bushes, Olga Mikhailovna gazed at the back of his head in perplexity. Where did this thirty-four-year-old man get such a dignified generalissimo’s gait? Where did he get such a weighty, handsome way of walking? Where did he get such a superior vibration in his voice—“well, sir,” “hm-yes, sir,” “my good man,” and all that?

Olga Mikhailovna recalled how, in the first months of marriage, so as not to be bored alone at home, she had driven to the appellate court, where Pyotr Dmitrich occasionally presided in place of her godfather, Count Alexei Petrovich. On the presidential chair, in his uniform, with a chain on his chest, he was totally transformed. Majestic gestures, a thundering voice, “well, sir” and “hm-yes, sir,” the condescending tone…All that was ordinarily human, his own, that Olga Mikhailovna was used to seeing in him at home, was swallowed up in grandeur, and it was not Pyotr Dmitrich who sat in the chair, but some other man, whom everyone called Mister President. The consciousness that he was in power kept him from sitting calmly in his place, and he looked for an occasion to ring the bell, glance sternly at the public, shout…Whence came this nearsightedness and deafness, when he would suddenly begin to see and hear poorly, and, wincing majestically, demanded that people speak louder and come closer to the table. From the height of his grandeur he poorly distinguished faces and sounds, so it seemed that if Olga Mikhailovna herself had come up to him in those moments, even to her he would have shouted, “What is your last name?” He spoke familiarly to peasant witnesses, yelled so loudly at the public that his voice could be heard outside, and behaved impossibly with lawyers. If an attorney happened to speak, Pyotr Dmitrich sat slightly sideways to him and squinted at the ceiling, wishing to show thereby that there was no need for any attorney here and that he did not recognize or listen to him; if a gray-clad local attorney spoke, Pyotr Dmitrich was all ears, and looked the attorney up and down with a mocking, annihilating gaze: now here’s a real lawyer for you! “What do you mean to say by that?” he would interrupt. If a grandiloquent attorney used some sort of foreign word and, for instance, said “factitious” instead of “fictitious,” Pyotr Dmitrich would suddenly perk up and ask: “How’s that, sir? What? Factitious? What might that mean?”—and then observe didactically: “Do not use words you don’t understand.” And the attorney, finishing his speech, would leave the table red-faced and all in a sweat, while Pyotr Dmitrich, with a self-contented smile, would throw himself against the back of his chair in celebration of his victory. In his treatment of lawyers he imitated Count Alexei Petrovich somewhat, but when the count said, for instance, “Defense, keep quiet for a little!” it came out unaffectedly and with elderly good nature, while from Pyotr Dmitrich it sounded rude and forced.

II

Applause was heard. The young man had finished playing. Olga Mikhailovna remembered about her guests and hastened to the drawing room.

“Listening to you, I forgot myself,” she said, going to the piano. “I forgot myself. You have an astonishing ability! But don’t you find our piano out of tune?”

At that moment the two schoolboys came into the drawing room and the student along with them.

“My God, Mitya and Kolya?” Olga Mikhailovna said drawlingly and joyfully, going to meet them. “How big you’ve become! I hardly recognized you! And where is your mama?”

“Congratulations on your husband’s name-day,” the student began casually. “I wish you all the best. Ekaterina Andreevna sends her best wishes and her apologies. She’s not feeling well.”

“How unkind of her! I’ve been waiting all day for her. And did you come from Petersburg long ago?” Olga Mikhailovna asked the student. “How’s the weather there now?” And without waiting for an answer, she looked tenderly at the boys and repeated, “How big you’ve grown! Just recently they came here with a nanny, and now they’re already schoolboys! The old grow older, and the young grow up…Have you eaten?”

“Ah, don’t go to any trouble, please!” said the student.

“So you haven’t eaten?”

“For God’s sake, don’t go to any trouble!”

“But don’t you want to eat?” Olga Mikhailovna asked in a rude and harsh voice, impatiently and with vexation—it came out of her inadvertently, but she immediately coughed, smiled, and blushed. “How big you’ve grown!” she said softly.

“Don’t go to any trouble, please!” the student said again.

The student asked her not to go to any trouble, the children said nothing; obviously, all three wanted to eat. Olga Mikhailovna took them to the dining room and told Vassily to set the table.

“Your mother is unkind!” she said, seating them. “She’s completely forgotten me. Unkind, unkind, unkind…Tell her so. And what are you studying?” she asked the student.

“Medicine.”

“Well, and I have a weakness for doctors, just imagine. I’m very sorry my husband isn’t a doctor. What courage one must have, for instance, to do surgery or cut up corpses! Terrible! You’re not afraid? I think I’d die of fear. You’ll have some vodka, of course?”

“Don’t go to any trouble, please.”

“After traveling, you need a drink. I’m a woman, but I sometimes drink, too. Mitya and Kolya will have Malaga. It’s weak wine, don’t worry. What fine fellows, really! Fit to be married off.”

Olga Mikhailovna talked non-stop. She knew from experience that, in entertaining guests, it was much easier and more relaxing to talk than to listen. When you talk, there is no need to strain your attention, to invent answers to questions and change the expression of your face. But she had inadvertently asked a serious question, the student began to reply at length, and like it or not she had to listen. The student knew that she had once taken some courses, and therefore, in addressing her, he tried to seem serious.

“What are you studying?” she asked, forgetting that she had already asked this question.

“Medicine.”

Olga Mikhailovna remembered that she had not been with the ladies for a long time.

“Are you? Meaning you’re going to be a doctor?” she said, getting up. “That’s good. I’m sorry I didn’t take courses in medicine. So have your dinner here, gentlemen, and then come out to the garden. I’ll introduce you to the young ladies.”

As she went out, she glanced at her watch: it was five minutes to six. She was surprised that time passed so slowly and dreaded the thought that midnight, when the guests would leave, was still six hours away. How to kill those six hours? What phrases to speak? How to behave with her husband?

There was not a soul in the drawing room or on the terrace. All the guests had wandered off to the garden.

“I’ll have to offer them a stroll in the birch grove before tea, or a boat ride,” Olga Mikhailovna thought, hurrying to the croquet ground, where voices and laughter could be heard. “And the old ones can sit and play whist…”

The footman Grigory came walking towards her from the croquet ground carrying empty bottles.

“Where are the ladies?” she asked.

“In the raspberry patch. The master’s there, too.”

“Oh, my God!” someone shouted in exasperation on the croquet ground. “I’ve told you the same thing a thousand times! To know the Bulgars, you have to see them! You can’t judge by the newspapers!”

Owing to this shout, or to something else, Olga Mikhailovna suddenly felt a great weakness all through her body, especially in her legs and shoulders. She suddenly wanted not to speak, not to hear, not to move.

“Grigory,” she said wearily and with effort, “when you’re serving tea or whatever, please don’t address me, don’t ask, don’t speak about anything…Do everything yourself and…and don’t stamp your feet. I beg you…I can’t, because…”

She did not finish and walked off to the croquet ground, but on the way she remembered the ladies and turned to the raspberry patch. The sky, the air, and the trees were still overcast and promised rain; it was hot and sultry; huge flocks of crows, anticipating bad weather, circled cawing over the garden. The closer to the kitchen garden, the more overgrown, dark, and narrow were the pathways; in one of them, which was hiding in a thicket of wild pear trees, crabapples, young oaks, and hops, whole clouds of tiny black flies surrounded Olga Mikhailovna; she covered her face with her hands and forced herself to imagine the little person…In her mind’s eye flashed Grigory, Mitya, Kolya, the faces of the peasants who had come in the morning with congratulations…

She heard someone’s footsteps and opened her eyes. Her uncle Nikolai Nikolaich was quickly walking towards her.

“It’s you, dear? I’m very glad…,” he began breathlessly. “Just a couple of words…” He wiped his clean-shaven red chin with a handkerchief, then suddenly stepped back, clasped his hands, and rolled his eyes. “My dear, how long will this go on?” he said quickly, spluttering. “I ask you: where are the limits? I’m not even saying that his overbearing views demoralize the milieu, that he insults all that is best and most sacred in me and in any honest, thinking man—I’m not saying that, but let him at least be decent! What is it? He shouts, he roars, he minces, he acts like some sort of Bonaparte, won’t let anyone say a word…devil knows about him! Some sort of majestic gestures, generalissimo laughter, condescending tone! Allow me to ask: Who is he? I ask you: Who is he? His wife’s husband, a small landowning titular councillor, who had the luck to marry a rich girl! An upstart, a junker, like so many others! Shchedrin described the type!⁷ I swear to God, it’s one of two things: either he’s suffering from megalomania, or that imbecilic old rat, Count Alexei Petrovich, is right when he says that today’s children and young people take a long time growing up, and play at being cabbies or generalissimos till they’re forty years old!”

“That’s true, true…,” Olga Mikhailovna agreed. “Let me pass.”

“Now judge for yourself, what will come of it?” her uncle went on, blocking her way. “How will this playing the conservative and the generalissimo end? He’s already being taken to court! To court! I’m very glad! His shouting and showing off have landed him in the dock! And not in the circuit court or whatever, but in the appellate court! It’s hard to think up anything worse! Second, he’s quarreled with everybody! Today is his name-day and, look, neither Vostryakov, nor Yakhontov, nor Vladimirov, nor Shevud, nor the count has come…It seems there’s nobody more conservative than Count Alexei Petrovich—and even he hasn’t come. And he’ll never come again! You’ll see, he won’t come!”

“Ah, my God, but what have I got to do with it?” Olga Mikhailovna asked.

“What do you mean, what? You’re his wife! You’re intelligent, you’ve taken courses, it’s in your power to make an honest worker of him!”

“My courses didn’t teach how to influence difficult people. It seems I’ll have to apologize to you all for having taken courses!” Olga Mikhailovna said sharply. “Listen, Uncle, if you heard the same scales being played right in your ear all day long, you wouldn’t just sit and listen, you’d run away. All year round, all day long, I hear the same thing over and over. You must finally take pity, gentlemen!”

Her uncle assumed a very serious expression, then looked at her inquisitively and twisted his lips into a mocking smile.

“So that’s how it is!” he intoned in an old-womanish voice. “Sorry, ma’am!” he said and bowed ceremoniously. “If you yourself have fallen under his influence and changed your convictions, you should have told me sooner. Sorry, ma’am!”

“Yes, I’ve changed my convictions!” she cried. “Rejoice!”

“Sorry, ma’am!”

Her uncle bowed ceremoniously for a last time, somehow sideways, and, hunching up, scraped his foot and went back inside.

“Fool,” thought Olga Mikhailovna. “Let him take himself home.”

She found the ladies and the young people in the raspberry patch by the kitchen garden. Some were eating raspberries; others, who were already sick of raspberries, wandered through the beds of strawberries or rummaged among the sweet peas. A little to one side of the raspberry patch, by a sprawling apple tree, propped up all around with palings pulled from an old fence, Pyotr Dmitrich was mowing the grass. His hair fell over his forehead, his necktie was untied, his watch chain hung from the buttonhole. His every step and swing of the scythe showed skill and the presence of enormous physical strength. Next to him stood Lyubochka and the daughters of a neighbor, Colonel Bukreev, Natalya and Valentina, or, as everybody called them, Nata and Vata, anemic and unhealthily fat blond girls of about sixteen or seventeen, in white dresses, looking remarkably alike. Pyotr Dmitrich was teaching them to mow.

“It’s very simple…,” he was saying. “You need only know how to hold the scythe and not get too excited, that is, not use more strength than necessary. Like this…Want to give it a try?” He offered the scythe to Lyubochka. “Go on!”

Lyubochka clumsily took hold of the scythe, suddenly blushed and laughed.

“Don’t be shy, Lyubov Alexandrovna!” Olga Mikhailovna shouted loudly enough for the other ladies to hear her and know she was with them. “Don’t be shy! You must learn! You’ll marry a Tolstoyan, and he’ll make you mow.”⁸

Lyubochka raised the scythe, but burst out laughing again and, weak from laughter, lowered it at once. She was embarrassed and pleased to be spoken to as a grown-up. Nata, not smiling and not embarrassed, with a cold, serious face, took the scythe, swung it, and got it tangled in the grass; Vata, also not smiling, cold and serious like her sister, silently took the scythe and stuck it into the ground. Having accomplished that, the two sisters linked arms and silently went off to the raspberry patch.

Pyotr Dmitrich laughed and frolicked like a little boy, and this childishly frolicksome mood, when he became exceedingly good-natured, suited him much more than any other. Olga Mikhailovna loved him like that. But his boyishness usually did not last long. And this time, too, having frolicked with the scythe, he found it necessary for some reason to give a serious tinge to his frolicking.

“When I’m mowing, I feel myself more healthy and normal,” he said. “If I were forced to be content only with intellectual life, I think I’d go out of my mind. I feel that I wasn’t born a cultivated man! I want to mow, to plow, to sow, to break in horses…”

And a conversation began between Pyotr Dmitrich and the ladies about the advantages of physical work, about culture, then about the harmfulness of money, of property. Listening to her husband, Olga Mikhailovna for some reason remembered about her dowry.

“The time will come,” she thought, “when he will not forgive me for being richer than he is. He’s proud and touchy. He may well come to hate me because he owes me so much.”

She stopped near Colonel Bukreev, who was eating raspberries and also taking part in the conversation.

“Come,” he said, making way for Olga Mikhailovna and Pyotr Dmitrich. “The ripest are here…And so, sir, according to Proudhon,” he went on, raising his voice, “property is theft.⁹ But I must confess that I don’t acknowledge Proudhon and don’t consider him a philosopher. For me the French have no authority, God help them!”

“Well, when it comes to these Proudhons and various Buckles, I’m a washout,” said Pyotr Dmitrich. “Concerning philosophy, address yourself to her, my spouse. She took some courses and knows all these Schopenhauers and Proudhons inside out…”¹⁰

Olga Mikhailovna felt bored again. She again went through the garden, down the narrow path, past the apple and pear trees, and again she looked as if she were going about a very important chore. Here was the gardener’s cottage…On the porch sat the gardener’s wife, Varvara, and her four small children with big, close-cropped heads. Varvara was also pregnant and was to give birth, by her calculations, around the day of Elijah the prophet.¹¹ Having greeted her, Olga Mikhailovna silently looked at her and her children and asked:

“Well, how do you feel?”

“All right…”

Silence ensued. It was as if the two women silently understood each other.

“It’s scary giving birth for the first time,” Olga Mikhailovna said, after some thought. “I keep feeling I won’t come through it, I’ll die.”

“It seemed that way to me, too, but here I am alive…We imagine all sorts of things!”

Varvara, already pregnant for the fifth time and experienced, looked down somewhat on her mistress and spoke to her in a didactic tone, and Olga Mikhailovna could not help feeling her authority; she wanted to talk about her fear, about the baby, about her feelings, but she was afraid that to Varvara it would seem petty and naïve. And she kept silent and waited for Varvara to say something herself.

“Olya, let’s go home!” Pyotr Dmitrich called from the raspberry patch.

Olga Mikhailovna liked keeping silent, waiting, and looking at Varvara. She would have agreed to stand like that, silently and needlessly, until nightfall. But she had to go. She no sooner stepped away from the cottage than Lyubochka, Nata, and Vata came running to meet her. The latter two stopped a few feet away and stood as if rooted to the spot, but Lyubochka ran up to her and hung on her neck.

“My dearest! My darling! My precious!” She started kissing her face and neck. “Let’s go and have tea on the island!”

“On the island! On the island!” the identical Nata and Vata both said at once without smiling.

“But it’s going to rain, my dears.”

“It won’t, it won’t!” Lyubochka cried, making a tearful face. “Everybody’s agreed to go! My dearest, my darling!”

“They’re all going to go and have tea on the island,” said Pyotr Dmitrich, coming up. “Give the orders…We’ll all go by boat, and the samovars and the rest should be sent with the servants in a carriage.”

He walked beside his wife and took her under the arm. Olga Mikhailovna wanted to say something unpleasant to her husband, something sharp, maybe even to mention the dowry—the harsher the better, she felt. She thought a little and said:

“Why is it Count Alexei Petrovich didn’t come? Such a pity!”

“I’m very glad he didn’t come,” Pyotr Dmitrich lied. “That holy fool bores me stiff.”

“But you waited for him so impatiently before dinner!”

III

Half an hour later all the guests were already crowding on the bank by the piling where the boats were moored. They all talked and laughed a lot, and fussed about so much that they were unable to settle into the boats. Three boats were already crammed full of passengers, and two stood empty. The keys for these two had disappeared somewhere, and messengers kept running from the river to the house in search of them. Some said Grigory had the keys, others that they were with the steward, and a third group advised sending for a blacksmith and breaking the locks. They all talked at once, interrupting and drowning each other out. Pyotr Dmitrich paced up and down the bank and shouted:

“Devil knows what’s going on! The keys should always lie on the windowsill in the entryway! Who dared take them from there? The steward can get his own boat if he wants!”

The keys were finally found. Then it turned out that two oars were missing. There was more turmoil. Pyotr Dmitrich, who was bored with pacing up and down, jumped into a long, narrow dugout made from a poplar trunk, rocked, nearly fell into the water, and pushed off. One by one the other boats set out after him, to the loud laughter and shrieking of the young ladies.

The white cloudy sky, the riverbank trees, the bulrushes, and the boats with people and oars were reflected in the water as in a mirror; under the boats, far down in the depths, in the bottomless abyss, there was also a sky and flying birds. One bank, on which the manor house stood, was high, steep, and all covered with trees; on the other, gently sloping, wide water-meadows showed greenly and creeks glistened. The boats went some hundred yards and, beyond the mournfully drooping willows, on the sloping bank, appeared cottages and a herd of cows; there was singing, drunken shouting, and the sounds of a concertina.

Boats darted here and there on the river with fishermen going to set their nets for the night. In one little boat sat some reveling music-lovers, playing homemade violins and cellos.

Olga Mikhailovna sat at the tiller. She smiled affably and talked a lot to entertain her guests, while casting sidelong glances at her husband. He floated in his dugout ahead of everybody, standing and working one oar. His light, sharp-prowed little dugout, which the guests all called a deathtrap, and Pyotr Dmitrich for some reason called Penderaklia,¹² raced along quickly; it had a lively, cunning expression and seemed to hate the heavy Pyotr Dmitrich, waiting for an appropriate moment to slip from under his feet. Olga Mikhailovna kept glancing at her husband, and was repulsed by his good looks, which everyone admired, the nape of his neck, his pose, his familiar manner with women; she hated all the women sitting in her boat, was jealous, and at the same time kept jumping every moment, afraid that the unsteady little dugout might turn over and cause a disaster.

“Easy, Pyotr!” she cried, her heart sinking with fear. “Get into the boat. We believe you’re brave without that!”

She was also uneasy about the people sitting in the boat with her. They were all ordinary people, not bad, like many others, but now each of them seemed extraordinary and bad to her. In each of them she saw nothing but falseness. “Take,” she thought, “that brown-haired young man with gold-rimmed spectacles and a handsome little beard, now working an oar: he’s a rich, well-nourished, and eternally happy mama’s boy, whom everyone considers an honest, freethinking, progressive man. It’s not even a year since he finished university and came to live in the district, but he already says of himself: ‘We zemstvo activists.’¹³ But a year will go by, and he, like so many others, will get bored, leave for Petersburg, and, to justify his flight, will go around saying that the zemstvo is good for nothing and he’s disappointed. And from the other boat his young wife never takes her eyes off him, and believes that he’s a ‘zemstvo activist,’ just as she’ll believe a year from now that the zemstvo is good for nothing. Or take that plump, clean-shaven gentleman in the straw hat with a wide ribbon and with an expensive cigar in his teeth. That one likes to say: ‘It’s time we abandoned fantasies and got down to business!’ He has Yorkshire pigs, Butlerov’s beehives,¹⁴ rapeseed, pineapples, an oil press, a cheese dairy, and Italian double-entry bookkeeping. Yet every summer, in order to spend the fall with his mistress in Crimea, he sells some forest for felling and mortgages his land bit by bit. Or take Uncle Nikolai Nikolaich, who is angry with Pyotr Dmitrich and yet for some reason doesn’t go home!”

Olga Mikhailovna kept looking at the other boats, and saw in them only uninteresting cranks, play-actors or small-minded people. She recalled all those she knew in the district, and could not recall a single person of whom she could say or think anything good. To her they all seemed giftless, bland, limited, narrow-minded, false, heartless, they all said what they did not think and did what they did not want. Boredom and despair stifled her; she wanted to suddenly stop smiling, jump up and shout: “I’m sick of you!” and then leap from the boat and swim ashore.

“Gentlemen, let’s take Pyotr Dmitrich in tow!” someone shouted.

“In tow! In tow!” all the others chimed in. “Olga Mikhailovna, take your husband in tow.”

To take him in tow, Olga Mikhailovna, who was sitting at the tiller, had to seize the moment and deftly catch hold of the Penderaklia by the chain at the bow. As she leaned over for the chain, Pyotr Dmitrich winced and looked at her in alarm.

“I hope you won’t catch cold here!” he said.

“If you fear for me and the child, why do you torment me?” thought Olga Mikhailovna.

Pyotr Dmitrich admitted defeat and, not wishing to be towed, jumped from the Penderaklia into the boat, which was already crammed with passengers, and he jumped so carelessly that the boat heeled over badly and everyone cried out in terror.

“He jumped like that to please the women,” Olga Mikhailovna thought. “He knows it looks good…”

From boredom, as she thought, from vexation, forced smiles, and the discomfort she felt in her whole body, her hands and feet began to tremble. To conceal this trembling from the guests, she tried to speak louder, to laugh, to move…

“If I suddenly happen to burst into tears,” she thought, “I’ll say I have a toothache…”

But here, finally, the boats pulled in at the island of “Good Hope.” That was the name of the peninsula formed by a sharp bend in the river, covered by an old grove of birches, oaks, willows, and poplars. Tables were already standing under the trees, there was smoke from the samovars, and Vassily and Grigory, in tailcoats and white knitted gloves, were already busy setting the places. On the other bank, across from “Good Hope,” stood the wagons that had delivered the provisions. The baskets and bags of provisions were ferried across from the wagons to the island in a little dugout closely resembling the Penderaklia. The footmen, the drivers, even the peasant who sat in the dugout had solemn name-day expressions on their faces, such as only children and servants have.

While Olga Mikhailovna was brewing the tea and filling the first glasses, the guests busied themselves with liqueurs and sweets. Then the turmoil set in that is usual during the tea-drinking at picnics, very boring and tiresome for hostesses. Grigory and Vassily had barely had time to serve when hands were already reaching out to Olga Mikhailovna with empty glasses. One asked for it without sugar, another wanted it stronger, another weaker, another said no thank you. Olga Mikhailovna had to remember and then call out: “Ivan Petrovich, it was you without sugar?” or “Gentlemen, who asked for it weak?” But the one who asked for it weak or without sugar no longer remembered and, carried away by a pleasant conversation, took the first glass that came along. A short distance from the table, dejected figures wandered about like shadows, pretending to be looking for mushrooms in the grass or reading the labels on boxes—they were those for whom there were not enough glasses. “Have you had tea?” Olga Mikhailovna would ask, and the one to whom she addressed the question would beg her not to worry and say, “I can wait,” though for the hostess it was better if the guests did not wait, but hurried.

Some, caught up in conversation, drank their tea slowly, clinging to their glasses for half an hour, while others, especially those who had drunk a lot at dinner, stood by the table and drank off glass after glass, so that Olga Mikhailovna barely had time to refill them. One young joker drank his tea through a lump of sugar and kept saying: “Sinner that I am, I love to indulge in the Chinese herb.” Again and again he asked with a deep sigh: “One more little shardful, please!” He drank a lot, bit his sugar loudly, and thought it was all funny and original and that he imitated a merchant perfectly. No one realized that all these trifles were a torment for the hostess, and it was hard to realize, because Olga Mikhailovna smiled affably all the while and babbled nonsense.

And she was not feeling well…She was vexed by the crowd, the laughter, the questions, the joker, the dazed servants who were run off their feet, the children’s fidgety presence by the table; she was vexed that Vata looked like Nata, Kolya like Mitya, and it was impossible to tell which of them had had tea and which had not. She felt that her forced welcoming smile was turning into an angry expression, and it seemed to her that she might burst into tears any moment.

“Rain, ladies and gentlemen!” someone shouted.

They all looked up at the sky.

“Yes, rain indeed…,” Pyotr Dmitrich confirmed and wiped his cheek.

The sky let fall only a few drops, there was no real rain yet, but the guests abandoned the tea and began to hurry. At first they all wanted to go in the carriages, but they changed their minds and headed for the boats. Olga Mikhailovna, on the pretext of having to quickly make arrangements for supper, asked permission to leave the company behind and drive home in a carriage.

Sitting in the carriage, first of all she let her face rest from smiling. She drove through the village with an angry face, and with an angry face responded to the bowing of the peasants she met. On reaching home, she went by the back door to the bedroom and lay down on her husband’s bed.

“Good God,” she whispered, “why this forced labor? Why do these people mill around here and pretend they’re having fun? Why do I smile and lie? I don’t understand, I don’t understand!”

She heard footsteps and voices. It was the guests returning.

“Let them,” thought Olga Mikhailovna. “I’ll lie here a while longer.”

But a maid came into the bedroom and said:

“Marya Grigorievna’s leaving, ma’am.”

Olga Mikhailovna leaped up, straightened her hair, and hurried out.

“What’s this, Marya Grigorievna?” she began in an offended voice, going up to Marya Grigorievna. “Where are you rushing off to?”

“I must, darling, I must! I’ve stayed too long as it is. I have children waiting at home.”

“That’s unkind! Why didn’t you bring your children with you?”

“My dear, if you’ll allow me, I’ll bring them to you some weekday, but today…”

“Ah, please do,” Olga Mikhailovna interrupted. “I’ll be very glad! Your children are so sweet! Kiss them all for me…But, really, you hurt my feelings! Why the hurry, I don’t understand.”

“I must, I must…Goodbye, dear. Take care of yourself. Knowing the condition you’re in now…”

The two women kissed. After accompanying the guest to her carriage, Olga Mikhailovna went to the ladies in the drawing room. There the lamps were already lit, and the gentlemen were sitting down to play cards.

IV

The guests began to leave after supper, at a quarter past midnight. Seeing her guests off, Olga Mikhailovna stood on the porch and said:

“You really should take a shawl! It’s getting a bit chilly. God forbid you should catch cold!”

“Don’t worry, Olga Mikhailovna,” the guests replied, seating themselves. “Well, goodbye! Mind yourself, we’ll be expecting you! Don’t disappoint us!”

“Who-o-a!” The coachman held back the horses.

“Off we go, Denis! Goodbye, Olga Mikhailovna!”

“Kiss the children for me!”

The carriage set off and disappeared at once into the darkness. In the red circle that the lamp cast on the road a new pair or troika of impatient horses would appear, and the silhouette of a driver with his arms stretched forward. Again kisses and reproaches began, and entreaties to come again or to take a shawl. Pyotr Dmitrich kept running out from the front hall to help the ladies get into the carriages.

“You go by Efremovshchina now,” he instructed the coachman. “It’s closer by Mankino, but the road is worse. God forbid you should overturn the carriage…Goodbye, my sweet! Mille compliments to your artist!”

“Goodbye, Olga Mikhailovna, darling! Go inside or you’ll catch cold! It’s damp!”

“Who-o-a! Behave yourself!”

“What horses have you got here?” asked Pyotr Dmitrich.

“Bought from Khaidarov during Lent,” the coachman replied.

“Fine horsies…”

And Pyotr Dmitrich patted the outrunner on the rump.

“Well, off you go! God be with you!”

Finally the last guest left. The red circle on the road swayed, floated to one side, shrank, and went out—this was Vassily taking the lamp from the porch. On previous occasions, after seeing off their guests, Pyotr Dmitrich and Olga Mikhailovna usually began leaping about face to face in the reception room, clapping their hands and singing: “Gone! gone! gone!” But this time Olga Mikhailovna was not up to it. She went to the bedroom, undressed, and got into bed.

It seemed to her that she would fall asleep at once and sleep soundly. Her legs and shoulders ached, her head was heavy from talking, and, as earlier, she felt some sort of discomfort all over her body. She covered her head, lay there for some three minutes, then peeked from under the blanket at the icon lamp, listened to the silence, and smiled.

“Very nice, very nice…,” she whispered, bending her legs, which seemed longer to her because she had walked so much. “Sleep, sleep…”

Her legs refused to lie still, her whole body felt ill at ease, and she turned on the other side. A big fly buzzed around the bedroom, restlessly beating against the ceiling. There were also the sounds of Grigory and Vassily in the reception room, stepping cautiously as they cleared the tables. It seemed to Olga Mikhailovna that she would fall asleep and feel comfortable only when these noises died down. And she again turned impatiently on the other side.

Her husband’s voice reached her from the drawing room. Someone must have stayed for the night, because Pyotr Dmitrich was addressing whoever it was and speaking loudly:

“I wouldn’t say that Count Alexei Petrovich is a false man. But he can’t help seeming to be, because you gentlemen are all trying to see him as not what he really is. In his play-acting you see an original mind; in his unceremonious manners—good nature; in his total lack of opinion you see conservatism. Let’s even allow that he is indeed a sterling conservative. But what essentially is conservatism?”

Pyotr Dmitrich, angry with Count Alexei Petrovich, and with his guests, and with himself, was now unburdening his heart. He denounced the count and the guests, and, in vexation with himself, was ready to say and preach anything at all. Having bid the guest good night, he paced up and down the drawing room, walked through the dining room, the corridor, the study, the drawing room again, and went into the bedroom. Olga Mikhailovna was lying on her back, covered with the blanket only up to her waist (it now seemed hot to her), and with an angry face was watching the fly as it knocked against the ceiling.

“Has someone stayed for the night?” she asked.

“Egorov.”

Pyotr Dmitrich undressed and got into his bed. He silently lit a cigarette and also started watching the fly. His gaze was stern and troubled. For about five minutes Olga Mikhailovna silently looked at his handsome profile. It seemed to her for some reason that if her husband suddenly turned his face to her and said, “Olya, it’s hard for me,” she would burst out crying or laughing, and would feel better. She thought that her legs ached and her whole body was ill at ease because her soul was strained.

“Pyotr, what are you thinking about?” she asked.

“Nothing really…,” her husband replied.

“You’ve been keeping some sort of secrets from me lately. That’s not good.”

“Why is it not good?” Pyotr Dmitrich replied drily and not at once. “Each of us has a personal life, so we must also have secrets.”

“Personal life…secrets…That’s all just words! Understand that you’re insulting me!” said Olga Mikhailovna, sitting up on her bed. “If your soul is heavy, why do you conceal it from me? Why do you find it more comfortable to be open with other women, and not with your wife? I heard you pour yourself out today to Lyubochka.”

“Well, congratulations. I’m very glad you heard me.”

This meant: Leave me alone, don’t interfere when I’m thinking! Olga Mikhailovna was indignant. The vexation, hatred, and anger that had accumulated in her in the course of the day suddenly boiled over: she wanted to tell her husband everything at once, not put it off till the next day, to insult him, to take her revenge…Trying hard not to shout, she said:

“Know, then, that this is all vile, vile, vile. I’ve been hating you all day today—that’s what you’ve done!”

Pyotr Dmitrich also sat up.

“Vile, vile, vile!” Olga Mikhailovna went on, beginning to tremble all over. “Don’t go congratulating me! Better if you congratulate yourself! A shame, a disgrace! You’ve been lying so much that you’re ashamed to be in the same room with your wife! False man! I see through you and understand your every step!”

“Olya, when you’re out of sorts, please warn me. Then I’ll sleep in my study.”

Having said that, Pyotr Dmitrich took his pillow and left the bedroom. Olga Mikhailovna had not foreseen that. For several minutes, her mouth open and her whole body trembling, she silently stared at the door through which her husband had disappeared and tried to understand what it meant. Was it one of the methods that false people use in arguments when they’re wrong, or was it an insult deliberately inflicted on her pride? How was she to understand it? Olga Mikhailovna recalled her cousin, an officer, a merry fellow, who often told her laughingly that when, during the night, his “dear spouse began to carp at him,” he usually took his pillow and went whistling off to his study, leaving his wife in a stupid and ridiculous position. This officer was married to a rich, capricious, and stupid woman, whom he did not respect but merely tolerated.

Olga Mikhailovna leaped out of bed. In her opinion, only one thing was left for her now: to dress quickly and leave this house forever. The house belonged to her, but so much the worse for Pyotr Dmitrich. Without considering whether or not there was any need for it, she quickly went to the study to inform her husband of her decision (“Women’s logic!” flashed through her mind), and to say something insulting and sarcastic to him in farewell…

Pyotr Dmitrich was lying on the sofa pretending to read a newspaper. On a chair beside him a candle was burning. His face was hidden behind the newspaper.

“Would you care to explain the meaning of this? I ask you, sir!”

“Sir…,” Pyotr Dmitrich repeated mockingly, not showing his face. “I’m sick of it, Olga! Honestly, I’m tired and can’t deal with it right now…We can quarrel tomorrow.”

“No, I understand you perfectly well!” Olga Mikhailovna went on. “You hate me! Yes, yes! You hate me for being wealthier than you! You’ll never forgive me for it and will always lie to me!” (“Women’s logic!” again flashed through her mind.) “Right now, I know, you’re laughing at me…I’m even sure you married me only so as to have property qualifications,¹⁵ and those trashy horses…Oh, I’m so unhappy!”

Pyotr Dmitrich dropped the newspaper and sat up. The unexpected insult startled him. With a childishly helpless smile he gave his wife a lost look, and, as if shielding himself from a blow, reached his arms out to her and said pleadingly:

“Olya!”

And expecting her to say something else terrible, he pressed himself to the back of the sofa, and his big figure now seemed as helplessly childish as his smile.

“Olya, how could you say that?” he whispered.

Olga Mikhailovna came to her senses. She suddenly felt her mad love for this man, remembered that he was her husband, Pyotr Dmitrich, without whom she could not live a single day, and who also loved her madly. She burst into loud sobs, in a voice not her own, clutched her head, and ran back to the bedroom.

She fell on the bed, and her short, hysterical sobs, which hindered her breathing and caused cramps in her arms and legs, filled the bedroom. Remembering that three or four rooms away a guest was spending the night, she hid her head under the pillow to stifle her sobs, but the pillow fell on the floor, and she herself nearly fell leaning over to pick it up; she pulled the blanket towards her face, but her hands did not obey her and tore convulsively at everything she took hold of.

It seemed to her that all was already lost, that the lie she had told to insult her husband had broken her whole life to smithereens. Her husband would not forgive her. The insult she had inflicted on him was of the sort that cannot be smoothed over by any caresses or oaths…How would she persuade her husband that she herself did not believe what she had said?

“It’s all over, all over!” she cried, not noticing that the pillow had fallen on the floor again. “For God’s sake, for God’s sake!”

The guest and the servants must already have been awakened by her cries; tomorrow the whole district would know that she had had hysterics, and everyone would blame Pyotr Dmitrich. She made efforts to restrain herself, but her sobs grew louder and louder every minute.

“For God’s sake!” she cried in a voice not her own, not understanding why she cried it. “For God’s sake!”

It seemed to her that the bed collapsed under her and her feet got entangled in the blanket. Pyotr Dmitrich came into the bedroom in a dressing gown and with a candle in his hand.

“Come now, Olya!” he said.

She rose and, kneeling on the bed, squinting at the candle, managed to say through her sobs:

“Understand…understand…”

She wanted to say that she was worn out from the guests, from his lying, her lying, that it was seething inside her, but all she could produce was:

“Understand…understand!”

“Here, drink!” he said, offering her water.

She obediently took the glass and started to drink, but spilled the water on her hands, breast, knees…“I must be terribly ugly now!” she thought. Pyotr Dmitrich silently laid her back in bed and covered her with the blanket, then took the candle and went out.

“For God’s sake!” Olga Mikhailovna cried again. “Pyotr, understand, understand!”

Suddenly something pressed her below the stomach and in the back with such force that her weeping broke off and she bit the pillow from pain. But the pain soon left her and she started sobbing again.

A maid came in and, straightening her blanket, asked in alarm:

“Mistress, dearest, what’s the matter?”

“Get out of here!” Pyotr Dmitrich said sternly, going to the bed.

“Understand, understand…,” Olga Mikhailovna began.

“Olya, I beg you, calm down!” he said. “I didn’t mean to offend you. I wouldn’t have left the bedroom if I knew it would affect you like this. It was simply hard for me. I’m telling you as an honest man…”

“Understand…You lied, I lied…”

“I understand…Well, well, come now! I understand…,” Pyotr Dmitrich said tenderly, sitting down on her bed. “You said it in a fit of temper, it’s understandable…I swear to God I love you more than anything in the world, and when I married you, I never once gave a thought to your being rich. I loved you boundlessly—that’s all…I assure you. I was never poor and never knew the value of money, and so I never felt any difference between your fortune and mine. It always seemed to me that we were equally rich. But it’s true, of course, that I was false in small things. My life so far has been organized so frivolously that it was somehow impossible to do without petty lies. I myself find it hard now. Let’s drop this conversation, for God’s sake!…”

Olga Mikhailovna again felt intense pain and seized her husband by the sleeve.

“It hurts, it hurts, it hurts,” she said quickly. “Oh, it hurts!”

“Devil take these guests!” Pyotr Dmitrich muttered, getting up. “You shouldn’t have gone to the island today!” he cried. “And how is it I didn’t stop you, fool that I am? Lord God!”

He scratched his head in vexation, waved his hand, and left the bedroom.

Afterwards he came back a few times, sat by her on the bed, and talked a lot, now very tenderly, now angrily, but she hardly heard him. Her sobbing alternated with terrible pain, and each new pain was stronger and lasted longer. At first during the pain she held her breath and bit the pillow, but then she started to scream in an indecent, rending voice. Once, seeing her husband by her, she remembered that she had insulted him and, without considering whether it was delirium or the real Pyotr Dmitrich, she seized his hand in both of hers and started kissing it.

“You lied, I lied…,” she began to justify herself. “Understand, understand…I was exhausted, driven out of all patience…”

“Olya, we’re not alone here!” said Pyotr Dmitrich.

Olga Mikhailovna raised her head and saw Varvara, who was kneeling by the chest of drawers, pulling open the lowest drawer. The upper ones were already open. Finishing with the drawers, Varvara stood up and, red from the strain, her face cold and solemn, set about opening a little box.

“Marya, I can’t open it!” she said in a whisper. “Maybe you can try.”

The maid Marya, who was poking in a candlestick with scissors so as to put in a new candle, came over to Varvara and helped her to open the little box.

“There should be nothing closed…,” Varvara whispered. “Open this box, too, old girl. Master,” she turned to Pyotr Dmitrich, “send word to Father Mikhail, tell him to open the Royal Doors!¹⁶ You must!”

“Do whatever you like,” said Pyotr Dmitrich, gasping for breath, “only, for God’s sake, quickly bring a doctor or a midwife! Has Vassily gone? Send someone else. Send your husband!”

“I’m giving birth,” Olga Mikhailovna realized. “Varvara,” she moaned, “but he won’t be born alive.”

“It’s all right, it’s all right, ma’am…,” Varvara whispered. “God willing, he’ll be borned alive!” (That was how she said it.) “Borned alive.”

The next time Olga Mikhailovna recovered from pain, she no longer sobbed and thrashed, but only moaned. She could not keep from moaning even in the intervals when there was no pain. The candles were still burning, but morning light was already breaking through the blinds. It was probably about five o’clock in the morning. In the bedroom, at a round table, sat an unknown woman in a white apron and with a very modest physiognomy. By the way she was sitting, one could see that she had been there for a while. Olga Mikhailovna guessed that she was the midwife.

“Will it be over soon?” she asked, and in her voice she heard a sort of special, unfamiliar note, such as had never been there before. “I must be dying in childbirth,” she thought.

Pyotr Dmitrich, dressed for daytime, warily came into the bedroom and stood by the window, his back to his wife. He raised the blind and looked out the window.

“Heavy rain!” he said.

“What time is it?” Olga Mikhailovna asked, in order to hear the unfamiliar note in her voice again.

“A quarter to six,” the midwife answered.

“What if I really am dying?” Olga Mikhailovna thought, looking at her husband’s head and at the window panes, against which the rain was beating. “How will he live without me? With whom will he drink tea, have dinner, talk in the evening, sleep?”

And he looked small to her, orphaned; she felt sorry for him and wanted to say something nice, gentle, comforting. She remembered that in the spring he had intended to buy some hounds, and that she, considering hunting a cruel and dangerous pastime, had prevented him from doing it.

“Pyotr, buy yourself those hounds!” she moaned.

He lowered the blind and went to the bed, was about to say something, but just then Olga Mikhailovna felt pain and cried out in an indecent, rending voice.

The pain, the frequent cries and moans, stupefied her. She could hear, see, she sometimes spoke, but she understood little, and only knew that she was in pain, or was about to be in pain. It seemed to her that the name-day party was long, long past, not yesterday, but maybe a year ago, and that her new life of pain had lasted longer than her childhood, boarding school, studies, marriage, and would still go on for a long, long time, endlessly. She saw how the midwife was served tea, how she was invited to have lunch at noon, and then to have dinner; she saw how Pyotr Dmitrich got accustomed to coming in, standing by the window for a long time, then going out; saw how some unknown men, the maid, Varvara got accustomed to coming in…Varvara just repeated “borned alive,” and got angry when somebody closed the drawers. Olga Mikhailovna saw how the light changed in the room and in the windows: it would be twilight, then murky, like fog, then bright daylight, as it had been the day before at dinner, then twilight again…And each of these changes lasted a long time, like childhood, studies at boarding school, the institute…

In the evening two doctors—one bony, bald, with a broad red beard, the other with a Jewish face, swarthy and in cheap spectacles—performed some sort of surgery on Olga Mikhailovna. She remained totally indifferent to the fact that strange men were touching her body. She no longer had any shame, any will, and people could do whatever they wanted with her. If at that time someone had attacked her with a knife, or insulted Pyotr Dmitrich, or taken away her right to the little person, she would not have said a word.

During the operation she was given chloroform. When she woke up later, the pain still went on and was unbearable. It was night. And Olga Mikhailovna remembered that there had already been exactly such a night, with silence, with an icon lamp, with a midwife sitting motionless by her bed, with open drawers, with Pyotr Dmitrich standing by the window, but sometime very, very long ago…

V

“I didn’t die…,” thought Olga Mikhailovna, when she began to recognize her surroundings again and there was no longer any pain.

A bright summer day looked through the two wide-open windows of the bedroom; in the garden outside the windows, sparrows and magpies chattered without stopping for a second.

The drawers of the chest were now closed, her husband’s bed was made. The midwife, Varvara, and the maid were not in the bedroom; only Pyotr Dmitrich stood motionless at the window as before, looking out into the garden. No baby’s crying was heard, no one offered congratulations or rejoiced: evidently the little person had not been born alive.

“Pyotr!” Olga Mikhailovna called to her husband.

Pyotr Dmitrich turned to look. It must have been a very long time since the last guest had left and Olga Mikhailovna had insulted her husband, because Pyotr Dmitrich had grown noticeably haggard and thin.

“What is it?” he asked, going to the bed.

He looked aside, moved his lips, and gave a childishly helpless smile.

“Is it all over?” Olga Mikhailovna asked.

Pyotr Dmitrich wanted to reply, but his lips trembled, and his mouth twisted like an old man’s, like her toothless uncle Nikolai Nikolaich’s.

“Olya!” he said, wringing his hands, and big tears suddenly welled up in his eyes. “Olya! I don’t need any qualifications, or court sessions” (he sobbed) “…or special opinions, or guests, or your dowry…I don’t need anything! Why didn’t we take care of our baby? Ah, what’s there to talk about!”

He waved his hand and left the bedroom.

But for Olga Mikhailovna nothing mattered anymore. There was a fog in her head from the chloroform, her soul was empty…That dull indifference to life, which she had felt when the two doctors performed the operation, still had not left her.

1888