Fifty-Two Stories

ABOUT LOVE¹

FOR LUNCH THE NEXT DAY we were served very tasty little patties, crayfish, and lamb cutlets; and while we were eating, the cook Nikanor came upstairs to ask what the guests would like for dinner. He was a man of medium height, with a puffy face and small eyes, clean-shaven, and it seemed that his moustache was not shaved, but plucked.

Alekhin told us that the beautiful Pelageya was in love with this cook. Since he was a drunkard and had a violent temper, she did not want to marry him, but agreed to live just so. He was very pious, and his religious convictions did not allow him to live just so; he demanded that she marry him, and would not have it otherwise, and he yelled at her when he was drunk and even beat her. When he was drunk, she hid upstairs and wept, and then Alekhin and the servants did not leave the house, so as to defend her if need be.

The talk turned to love.

“How love is born,” said Alekhin, “why Pelageya did not fall in love with someone else, who suited her better in her inner and outer qualities, but fell in love precisely with Nikanor, this ugly mug—here everybody calls him ‘ugly mug’—insofar as questions of personal happiness are important in love—all this is unknown and can be interpreted any way you like. Up to now only one unquestionable truth has been uttered about love, that ‘this is a great mystery,’² and all the rest that has been written and said about love is not an answer, but a posing of questions that still remain unanswered. An explanation that seems suited to one case is not suited to a dozen others, and the best thing, in my opinion, is to explain each case separately, without trying to generalize. We ought, as doctors say, to individualize each separate case.”

“Absolutely right,” Burkin agreed.

“We decent Russian people entertain a partiality for these questions that remain without answers. Love is usually poeticized, adorned with roses, with nightingales, but we Russians adorn our loves with these fatal questions, and on top of that choose the most uninteresting of them. In Moscow, when I was still a student, I had a life companion, a nice lady, who, each time I held her in my arms, thought about how much money I’d allow her a month and what was the price of beef per pound. So we, when we love, never stop asking ourselves questions: Is this honorable or dishonorable, intelligent or stupid, what will this love lead to, and so on. Whether it’s a good thing or not, I don’t know, but that it’s disrupting, unsatisfying, annoying—that I do know.”

It looked as though he wanted to tell some story. People who live alone always have something in their hearts that they are eager to tell about. In town, bachelors purposely go to the public baths and to restaurants just in order to talk, and they sometimes tell very interesting stories to the bath attendants and waiters, while in the country they usually pour out their souls to their guests. Now in the window gray sky could be seen and trees wet with rain, and in such weather there was nothing left for us to do but tell and listen.

“I’ve been living in Sofyino and farming for a long time now,” Alekhin began, “ever since I finished university. By upbringing I’m an idler, by inclination an armchair philosopher, but when I came here, there was a big debt on the estate, and since my father had acquired that debt partly because he spent a lot on my education, I decided I wouldn’t leave and would work until I’d paid off the debt. I made that decision, and started working here not without a certain aversion, I must confess. The local soil yields little, and for the farming not to suffer losses, you have to employ the labor of serfs or hired hands, which is almost the same, or else do your farming as peasants do, that is, work the fields yourself, with your family. There’s no middle ground here. But I didn’t enter into such subtleties at the time. I didn’t leave a single scrap of land in peace, I rounded up all the peasants and their women from the neighboring villages, and the work here boiled furiously. I myself also plowed, sowed, mowed, and despite all that was bored and winced squeamishly, like a village cat that’s so hungry it eats cucumbers in the kitchen garden. My body was in pain, and I slept as I walked. At first it seemed to me that I could easily reconcile this working life with my cultural habits; for that, I thought, I had only to observe a certain external order in my life. I settled upstairs, in the main rooms, and ordered coffee and liqueurs to be served after lunch and dinner, and at night, lying in bed, I read The Messenger of Europe.³ But our priest came once, Father Ivan, and at one go drank all my liqueurs; and The Messenger of Europe also went to the priest’s daughters, because in summer, especially during the mowing, I never managed to make it to my bed, and fell asleep in a shed, or the sledge, or in a forester’s hut somewhere—who can read there? I gradually moved downstairs, began to have dinner in the servants’ kitchen, and all that remained of the former luxury was this maid, who had served my father and whom it would have been painful for me to dismiss.

“In those first years here I was elected an honorary justice of the peace. Every now and then I had to go to town and take part in the meetings of the assembly and the circuit court, and that distracted me. When you live here without a break for two or three months, especially in winter, you finally begin to pine for a black frock coat. And in the circuit court there were frock coats, and uniforms, and tailcoats, all lawyers, people who had received a general education; you could talk with them. After sleeping in the sledge, after the servants’ kitchen, to sit in an armchair, in a clean shirt, in light shoes, with a chain on your chest—it was such luxury!

“In town they received me cordially, I eagerly made acquaintances. And of these acquaintances the most solid and, to tell the truth, the most agreeable for me was the acquaintance with Luganovich, the associate chairman of the circuit court. You both know him: the dearest person. It was just after the famous case of the arsonists; the trial had gone on for two days, we were exhausted. Luganovich looked at me and said:

“ ‘You know what? Come to my place for dinner.’

“That was unexpected, because I barely knew Luganovich, only officially, and had never once visited him. I stopped at my hotel room for a moment to change clothes, and went to dinner. And here the chance was presented to me of meeting Anna Alexeevna, Luganovich’s wife. She was very young then, no more than twenty-two, and six months earlier her first child had been born to her. It’s a thing of the past, and now I would have a hard time explaining what, in fact, was so extraordinary in her, what it was in her that I liked so much, but then, at dinner, it was all irrefutably clear to me. I saw a young woman, beautiful, kind, intelligent, charming, such as I had never met before. I immediately felt in her a close, already familiar being, as if I had already seen that face, those friendly, intelligent eyes sometime in my childhood, in the album of photographs that lay on my mother’s chest of drawers.

“In the case of the arsonists, the accused were four Jews, declared to be a gang, in my opinion quite groundlessly. At dinner I was very agitated, it was painful, and I no longer remember what I said, but Anna Alexeevna kept shaking her head and saying to her husband:

“ ‘Dmitri, how can it be?’

“Luganovich was a kindly man, one of those simplehearted people who firmly hold the opinion that, once a person winds up in court, it means he’s guilty, and that expressing doubts about the correctness of a sentence cannot be done otherwise than in the legal way, on paper, and never at dinner or in private conversation.

“ ‘You and I haven’t committed arson,’ he said gently, ‘so we’re not on trial, we’re not being sent to prison.’

“And both of them, husband and wife, tried to make me eat and drink more. From certain small details, for instance, from the way the two of them made coffee together, and the way they understood each other at half a word, I was able to conclude that they lived peacefully, happily, and were glad of their guest. After dinner they played piano four hands, then it grew dark and I went home. It was the beginning of spring. After that I spent the whole summer without leaving Sofyino, and had no time even to think about town, but the memory of the slender blond woman stayed with me all those days. I didn’t think about her, but it was as if her light shadow lay on my soul.

“In late autumn there was a charity performance in town. I went into the governor’s box (where I had been invited during the intermission), I look—there next to the governor’s wife is Anna Alexeevna, and again the same irresistible, striking impression of beauty and sweet, tender eyes, and the same feeling of closeness.

“We sat next to each other, then walked in the foyer.

“ ‘You’ve grown thinner,’ she said. ‘Have you been ill?’

“ ‘Yes. I caught a chill in my shoulder, and I sleep poorly in rainy weather.’

“ ‘You have a listless look. In the spring, when you came to dinner, you were younger, livelier. You were animated then and talked a lot, you were very interesting, and, I confess, I was even a bit taken with you. For some reason you’ve often come back to my memory over the summer, and today, as I was getting ready for the theater, I had a feeling I would see you.’

“And she laughed.

“ ‘But today you have a listless look,’ she repeated. ‘That ages you.’

“The next day I had lunch at the Luganoviches’; after lunch they went to their dacha to make arrangements for the winter, and I went with them. I also came back to town with them, and at midnight had tea with them in a quiet, family atmosphere, with the fireplace burning and the young mother frequently going to see if her little girl was asleep. And after that, each time I came to town, I never failed to visit the Luganoviches. They got used to me, and I got used to them. I usually came in without being announced, like one of the family.

“ ‘Who’s there?’ the drawn-out voice I found so beautiful would reach me from the inner rooms.

“ ‘It’s Pavel Konstantinych,’ the maid or nanny would reply.

“Anna Alexeevna would come out to me with a preoccupied look and ask each time:

“ ‘Why haven’t you come for so long? Has anything happened?’

“Her gaze, the graceful, refined hand she held out to me, her everyday dress, hairdo, voice, steps, made the impression on me each time of something new, unusual in my life, and important. We would talk for a long time, and be silent for a long time, each thinking our own thoughts, or else she would play the piano for me. If there was no one home, I stayed and waited, talked with the nanny, played with the child, or lay down on the Turkish divan in the study and read the newspaper, and when Anna Alexeevna came back, I met her in the front hall, took all her purchases from her, and, for some reason, I carried those purchases each time with such love, such triumph, like a little boy.

“There’s a proverb: a peasant woman had no troubles, so she bought a pig. The Luganoviches had no troubles, so they befriended me. If I did not come to town for a long time, it meant I was sick or something had happened to me, and they both worried greatly. They worried that I, an educated man, with a knowledge of languages, instead of occupying myself with studies or literary work, lived in a village, ran around like a squirrel on a wheel, worked so much, and was always left without a kopeck. It seemed to them that I suffered, and if I talked, laughed, ate, it was only so as to hide my suffering, and even in cheerful moments, when all was well with me, I sensed their searching eyes on me. They were especially touching when things actually became hard for me, when I was pursued by some creditor, or had no money for an urgent payment; the two of them, husband and wife, would whisper by the window, then he would come to me and say with an earnest look:

“ ‘If you’re in need of money right now, Pavel Konstantinovich, my wife and I beg you not to be embarrassed and to take it from us.’

“And his ears would turn red from nervousness. It also happened that, having whispered by the window in the same way, he would come to me with red ears and say:

“ ‘My wife and I insist that you accept this gift from us.’

“And he would give me cuff links, a cigarette case, or a lamp, and in exchange I would send them game, butter, and flowers from the village. Incidentally, they were both well-to-do people. In the beginning I often borrowed money and was none too discriminating, I took wherever I could, but no power could force me to borrow from the Luganoviches. Though why talk about that!

“I was unhappy. At home, and in the fields, and in the shed I thought about her, I tried to understand the mystery of a young, beautiful, intelligent woman who has married an uninteresting man, almost old (the husband was over forty), has children by him—to understand the mystery of this uninteresting man, a kindly, simple soul, who reasoned with such boring sobriety, who kept company at balls with staid people, listless, useless, with a submissive, apathetic expression, as if he had been brought there to be sold, who believed, however, in his right to be happy, to have children with her; and I kept trying to understand why she had met precisely him, and not me, and what made it necessary for such a terrible mistake to happen in our life.

“And coming to town, I saw each time by her eyes that she was expecting me; and she herself would confess to me that she had had some special feeling since morning, that she had guessed I was coming. We had long talks, then fell silent, but we did not declare our love to each other, we concealed it timidly, jealously. We were afraid of everything that might reveal our secret to our own selves. I loved her tenderly, deeply, but I reasoned, I asked myself what our love could lead to, if we had no strength to fight it; it seemed incredible to me that this quiet, sad love of mine should suddenly, crudely interrupt the happy course of the life of her husband, her children, this whole household, where I was so loved and where I was so trusted. Was that honorable? She would have followed me, but where? Where could I take her? It would have been a different thing if I had a beautiful, interesting life, if, for instance, I were fighting for the freedom of my motherland, or was a famous scholar, artist, painter, but as it was I would be taking her from one ordinary, humdrum situation to another just like it, or even more humdrum. And how long would our happiness last? What would become of her in case of my illness, death, or if we simply fell out of love with each other?

“And she apparently reasoned in the same way. She was thinking about her husband, her children, her mother, who loved her husband like her own son. If she were to surrender to her feeling, she would have to lie, or to tell the truth, and in her situation either one would be equally terrible and awkward. And the question tormented her: would her love bring me happiness, would she not complicate my life, difficult and filled with all sorts of misfortunes as it was? It seemed to her that she was no longer young enough for me, not industrious and energetic enough to start a new life, and she often talked with her husband about my needing to marry an intelligent, worthy girl, who would be a good housewife, a helpmate—and immediately added that there was scarcely such a girl to be found in the whole town.

“Meanwhile the years passed. Anna Alexeevna now had two children. When I visited the Luganoviches, the servants smiled affably, the children shouted that Uncle Pavel Konstantinych had come and hung on my neck; everyone was glad. They didn’t understand what was going on in my soul, and thought that I was glad, too. They all saw me as a noble being. Both the adults and the children thought that a noble being was walking through the rooms, and that lent a special charm to their attitude towards me, as if in my presence their life became more pure and beautiful. Anna Alexeevna and I went to the theater together, always on foot; we sat next to each other in the stalls, our shoulders touched, I silently took the opera glasses from her hands and at the same time felt that she was close to me, that she was mine, that we could not be without each other, yet, by some strange misunderstanding, on leaving the theater, we said goodbye each time and parted like strangers. God knows what they were already saying about us in town, but there wasn’t a word of truth in anything they said.

“In later years Anna Alexeevna started going more often to visit her mother or her sister; she was already having bad moods, resulting from the awareness of an unfulfilled, ruined life, when she didn’t want to see either her husband or her children. She was already being treated for a nervous disorder.

“We said nothing, and went on saying nothing, but in front of other people she felt some strange vexation with me; she disagreed with whatever I said, and if I got into an argument, she would take my opponent’s side. When I dropped something, she would say coldly:

“ ‘My congratulations.’

“If I forgot the opera glasses when we went to the theater, she would say afterwards:

“ ‘I just knew you’d forget them.’

“Fortunately or unfortunately, there’s nothing in our life that doesn’t end sooner or later. The time came for parting, because Luganovich had been appointed chairman in one of the western provinces. They had to sell the furniture, the horses, the dacha. When we went to the dacha and then, on the way back, turned to look for a last time at the garden, at the green roof, we all felt sad, and I understood that the time had come to say goodbye not only to the dacha. It was decided that at the end of August we would see Anna Alexeevna off to the Crimea, where the doctors were sending her, and a little later Luganovich would leave with the children for his western province.

“A big crowd of us saw Anna Alexeevna off. When she had already said goodbye to her husband and the children, and there was just a moment left before the third bell, I ran into her compartment to put on the rack one of her baskets, which she had almost forgotten; and I had to say goodbye. When our eyes met there in the compartment, our inner forces abandoned us both, I embraced her, she pressed her face to my breast, and tears poured from her eyes. Kissing her face, shoulders, hands, wet with tears—oh, how unhappy we both were!—I confessed my love to her, and with burning pain in my heart I realized how unnecessary, petty, and deceptive was everything that had hindered our love. I realized that, when you love, your reasonings about that love must proceed from something higher, something of greater importance than happiness or unhappiness, sin or virtue in their ordinary sense, or else you shouldn’t reason at all.

“I kissed her for the last time, pressed her hand, and we parted—forever. The train was already moving. I went to the next compartment—it was empty—sat there until the first stop, and wept. Then I went on foot to my Sofyino…”

While Alekhin was telling his story, it stopped raining and the sun came out. Burkin and Ivan Ivanych went to the balcony; there was a beautiful view from there to the garden and the millpond, which now glistened in the sun like a mirror. They admired it, and at the same time they were sorry that this man with kind, intelligent eyes, who had told them his story with such sincerity, in fact ran around here, on this huge estate, like a squirrel on a wheel, instead of occupying himself with studies or something else that would make his life more agreeable; and they thought of how grief-stricken the young lady’s face must have been, when he was saying goodbye to her and kissing her face and shoulders. They had both met her in town, and Burkin was even acquainted with her and found her beautiful.

1898