Forty Stories

On Love

AT breakfast the next day they served very tasty pirozhki, crayfish, and mutton cutlets, and while we were eating, Nicanor the cook came in to ask what the guests would like for dinner. He was a man of middle height with a puffy face and small eyes, and though clean-shaven he somehow looked as though his mustache had been plucked rather than shaved.

Alyokhin told us that the beautiful Pelageya was in love with Nicanor. As he was a drunkard with a violent temper, she did not want him for a husband, but was prepared to live with him. He was a very devout man, and his religious convictions did not permit him to live in this way, and so he insisted upon marriage and refused any other solution, and when he was drunk he used to curse her and even beat her. Sometimes she would hide upstairs and fall into fits of weeping, and on such occasions Alyokhin and the servants remained in the house to defend her if it should become necessary.

They started talking about love.

“How love is born,” Alyokhin was saying, “why Pelageya has not fallen in love with someone closer to her both inwardly and outwardly, why she fell in love with ‘Dog-face’ Nicanor—for we all call him ‘Dog-face’—and to what extent personal happiness counts in love—all these things are unknown and you can argue about them as much as you please. So far there has been only one incontestably true statement made on the subject of love, and that is the statement that love is the most wonderful thing in the world: everything else which has been written or spoken on the subject of love is incomplete and inconclusive, nothing more than a list of unanswered questions. The explanation which seems to fit one case fails to fit a dozen others, and in my opinion the very best thing is to offer explanations in particular cases rather than generalizations. As the doctors say, each case should receive individual treatment.”

“Perfectly true,” Burkin assented.

“We educated Russians have a partiality for unanswered questions. We usually poeticize love, prettifying it with roses and nightingales, and so we Russians prettify our love affairs with these fatal questions, and usually we choose the least interesting questions. In Moscow when I was a student I had a girl, a charming creature, who was always thinking about the monthly allowance I would give her and the price of a pound of beef whenever I embraced her. So, too, when we are in love, we never weary of asking ourselves questions about whether it is honorable or dishonorable, sensible or stupid, and where this love affair will lead us, and things like that. I don’t know whether this is a good thing or not, but I do know these questions get in the way, and are irritating and unsatisfying.”

He had the appearance of a man who wants to tell a story. People who lead lonely lives always have something on their minds they are eager to talk about. Bachelors living in town visit bathhouses and restaurants for no other reason except to talk, and sometimes they tell exceedingly interesting stories to the waiters and bathhouse attendants; and in the country they will usually pour out their hearts to their guests. Through a window we could see a gray sky and trees drenched in rain. It was the kind of weather which makes it impossible to go anywhere, when the only thing to do is to tell stories and to listen to them. So Alyokhin began his story:

I have been living and farming at Sofino for a long time, ever since I finished at the university. By education I belong to the class of idlers, and by avocation to the study. When I came here I found the estate heavily mortgaged, and since my father had got into debt partly because he had spent so much money on my education, I decided to remain and work until the debt was paid off. That was what I decided to do, but I must confess that I did not settle down to work without some repugnance. The land here does not yield very much, and unless you are going to farm at a loss you have to employ serfs and hired hands, which is about the same thing, or else you have to work like the peasants—I mean, you and your whole family working in the fields. There is no middle way. But in those days I wasn’t concerned with such subtleties. I did not leave a single clod of earth unturned, I gathered together all the peasants and the peasant women from the neighboring villages, and work went on at a furious pace. I myself plowed, sowed, and reaped, and was bored by it all, and frowned with disgust, like a village cat driven by hunger to eat cucumbers in the kitchen garden. My body ached, and I would fall asleep while walking. At first I thought it would be easy to reconcile my life as a toiler with my educated habits. To do this, I thought, it was only necessary to lead an outwardly orderly life. So I settled down here, upstairs in the best rooms, and bade them serve me coffee and liqueurs after breakfast and dinner, and every night when I went to bed I read The Messenger of Europe. But one day our priest, Father Ivan, came on a visit and at one sitting he drank up my entire supply of liqueurs, and The Messenger of Europe went to the priest’s daughters, because in summer and especially at mowing time, I never succeeded in getting to bed at all, but slept on a sleigh in the barn or in the forester’s hut in the woods: so how could I do any reading? Then little by little I moved downstairs and began eating in the servants’ kitchen, and of all my former luxury nothing is left except the servants who were once in my father’s service or those it was too painful to discharge.

During those first years I was elected honorary justice of the peace. Sometimes I would have to go to town to take part in the assizes—the circuit courts—and this pleased and delighted me. When you have lived here for two or three months without ever leaving the place, then—and this happens especially in winter—you finally come to yearn for the sight of a black coat. Now, uniforms and black coats and frock coats were in evidence at the circuit courts; they were worn by lawyers, who are men who have received a liberal education; and there were people to talk to. After sleeping in a sleigh and eating in the servants’ kitchen it was the purest luxury to sit in an armchair wearing clean linen and soft boots, with a chain of office round one’s neck.

I was warmly received in the town, and eagerly made friends. Of these friendships the most intimate and, to speak truthfully, the most delightful for me was my friendship with Luganovich, the vice-chairman of the circuit court. You both know him, of course—a wonderfully charming fellow. All this happened after a celebrated case of arson. The preliminary investigation lasted two days, leaving us exhausted. Luganovich looked over to me and said: “Look here, come and have dinner with me.”

This was an unexpected invitation because I scarcely knew Luganovich except in his official capacity, and I had never been to his house. I returned to my hotel room for a few moments to change, and then went off to dinner. And there it happened that I met Anna Alexeyevna, Luganovich’s wife. In those days she was still a very young woman, no more than twenty-two, and her first child had been born only six months before. This all happened a long time ago, and nowadays I would find it hard to understand what was so remarkable about her, and what attracted me to her, but during the dinner it was all perfectly clear to me. I saw a young woman who was kind, beautiful, clever, fascinating, such as I had never met before. I felt her as a being who was close to me, and already familiar to me: it was as though I had seen her face and those friendly intelligent eyes long ago in the days of my childhood, in the album which lay on my mother’s chest of drawers.

In the arson case, four Jews, said to be members of a gang, were placed on trial; in my opinion they were completely innocent. At dinner I was very much agitated and disturbed, and I no longer remember what I said. All I recall is that Anna Alexeyevna kept shaking her head and saying to her husband: “Dmitry, how can this be?”

Luganovich was a good-natured fellow, one of those simple-minded people who hold firmly to the opinion that once a man is brought before the court he must be guilty, and that one should not express any doubts about the correctness of a judgment unless all legal formalities have been complied with, and never over a dinner or in the course of a private conversation.

“You and I did not set fire to the place,” he said softly, “and as you see, we are not on trial, and we are not in prison.”

Both the husband and the wife tried to make me eat and drink as much as possible. From little things that happened—for example, the way they made coffee together, the way they understood one another without finishing their words or sentences—I came to the conclusion they were living peacefully and in harmony together, and were glad to welcome a visitor. After dinner they played a duet on the piano, then it grew dark and I drove home. It was then the beginning of spring. After that I spent the whole summer at Sofino without a break, and I had no time even to think of the town, but the memory of that handsome fair-haired woman remained with me through all those days. I did not think about her, but it was as though her shadow lay lightly over my soul.

In the late autumn a theatrical performance was given for charity in the town. I went to the governor’s box, having been invited during the entr’acte, and looked and saw Anna Alexeyevna sitting with the governor’s wife; and again there was the same overwhelming and irresistible impression of beauty, and the adorable caressing eyes, and again the same feeling of closeness.

We sat side by side, and later went out in the foyer.

“You have grown thinner,” she said. “Have you been ill?”

“Yes, I have had rheumatism in my shoulder, and in rainy weather I sleep atrociously.”

“You look worn out. When you came to dinner with us in the spring, you seemed younger, livelier. You were excited, and you talked a good deal, and you were very interesting, and I confess I was a little carried away by you. For some reason during the summer I often found myself thinking about you, and today when I was getting ready for the theater I felt sure I would see you.”

And she laughed.

“You look tired tonight,” she repeated. “It makes you look older.”

The next day I had lunch at the Luganoviches’, and after lunch they drove out to their summer villa to make arrangements for the winter, and I went with them. And then we all returned to town, and at midnight drank tea together in quiet domesticity, while the fire blazed and the young mother kept going to see if her little girl was asleep. And after that, whenever I went to town, I would always visit with the Luganoviches. They became accustomed to me, and I to them. I would usually go unannounced, as one of the family.

“Who is there?” would come a voice from some distant room, a soft lingering voice which seemed very sweet to me.

“It is Pavel Konstantinovich,” the maid or the nurse would answer.

And then Anna Alexeyevna would come out to meet me with a preoccupied air, and invariably she would say: “Why is it so long since you came? Is something wrong?”

Her gaze, and the elegant, aristocratic hands she offered me, her house dress, her hair style, her voice, her step, all these always produced on me the impression of something new and quite extraordinary in my life, and very meaningful. We would talk for a long time, and for a long time we would surrender to silences, thinking our own thoughts, or else she would play for me on the piano. If there was no one at home, I stayed and waited till they returned, talked to the nurse, played with the child, or lay down on the Turkish divan in the study to read the newspaper, and when Anna Alexeyevna returned I would go out and meet her in the hall and take all her parcels from her, and for some reason I always found myself carrying these parcels with as much love, as much pride, as though I were a boy.

There is a proverb which runs: “Women with no worries go off and buy pigs.” The Luganoviches had no worries, so they made friends with me. If there were long intervals between my visits to town, they would think I was ill or something had happened to me, and they would be worried to death. It distressed them that I, an educated man with a knowledge of languages, instead of devoting myself to scholarship or literary work, lived in the country, ran around like a squirrel in a cage, and worked hard without a penny to show for it. They thought I was unhappy, and that I only talked, laughed, and ate in order to conceal my sufferings, and even during those happy moments when everything went well with me, I was aware of their searching gaze. They were especially touching at times when I was really depressed, when I was being hounded by creditors, or when it happened that I was unable to make a payment which fell due. Then husband and wife could be seen whispering together by the window, and afterward they would come over to me with grave faces and say: “If you are in any need of money, Pavel Konstantinovich, I and my wife beg you not to stand on ceremony, and to borrow from us.”

As he spoke, his ears would turn red with emotion. Sometimes, after whispering with her at the window, he would approach me with red ears and say: “My wife and I earnestly beg you to accept this little present from us.”

Then he would give me studs, a cigar case, or a lamp, and in return I would send them flowers, poultry, and butter from the country. Both of them, by the way, possessed considerable private means. In those early days I was often borrowing money and was not very particular where it came from, borrowing wherever I could, but nothing in the world would have induced me to borrow from the Luganoviches. But why talk about that?

I was unhappy. At home, in the fields, in the barn, I would find myself dreaming about her and trying to understand the mystery of a beautiful and intelligent young woman marrying such a dull man verging on old age (her husband was over forty) and having children by him—to understand the mystery of this dull, kindly, simple-minded man, who reasoned with such a boring and wholesome good sense, and who at balls and evening parties kept close to the solid citizens, looking listless and superfluous, wearing a submissive and apathetic expression, as though he had been brought there to be put on sale, even though he believed in his right to happiness, his right to have children by her; and I kept trying to understand why she had met him first and not me, and why it was necessary that such a terrible mistake should have occurred in our lives.

Every time I came to town I saw in her eyes that she had been waiting for me, and she would confess to me herself that from the early morning she had had a peculiar feeling and had guessed that I would come. We talked for a long time and fell into silences, and we never confessed our love for one another, but instead timidly and jealously concealed it. We were afraid of everything that would reveal our secret even to ourselves. I loved her tenderly, deeply, but I reflected and kept asking myself what our love could lead to if we lacked the strength to fight against it: it seemed to me beyond belief that my gentle and melancholy love could crudely obliterate the happy course of their lives, the lives of her husband and her children and the entire household where I was loved and trusted. Would it be honorable? She would go away with me, but where? Where could I take her? It would have been a different matter if I led a beautiful and interesting life, or if I had been struggling for the emancipation of my country, or if I were a famous scholar, actor, or painter; but as things stood, it meant removing her from one humdrum life to another which was equally humdrum, or perhaps more so. How long would our happiness last? What would happen to her if I became ill or died, or if we no longer loved one another?

I had the feeling that she was reasoning in the same way. She thought of her husband, her children, and her mother, who loved the husband like a son. If she surrendered to her feelings, she would be forced to lie or tell the truth, and in her position both would have been equally inconvenient and terrible. She was tormented, too, by the question whether her love would bring me happiness—whether she would not complicate my life, which was already difficult enough and filled with all sorts of troubles. She imagined she was not young enough for me, nor sufficiently energetic and industrious to begin a new life, and she often spoke to her husband about how I needed to marry some worthy and intelligent girl who would make a good housekeeper and companion for me—and she would immediately add that such a girl was unlikely to be found in the whole town.

Meanwhile the years passed. Anna Alexeyevna already had two children. Whenever I arrived at the Luganoviches’, the servants put on cheerful smiles, the children shouted that Uncle Pavel Konstantinovich had come, and hung on my neck; everyone was happy. They did not understand what was going on inside me, and thought that I, too, must be happy. They all regarded me as a gentlemanly person. Grownups and children alike felt that a fine gentleman was walking about the room, and this gave a peculiar charm to their relationship with me, as though in my presence their lives became purer and more beautiful. Anna Alexeyevna and I would go to the theater together, always on foot, and we would sit side by side, our shoulders touching, and without saying a word I would take the opera glasses from her hands, and feel her very close to me, knowing she was mine and that we could not live without one another, but when we left the theater, by some misunderstanding, we always said good-by and went our separate ways like complete strangers. God knows what people were saying about us in the town, but there was not a word of truth in it all.

In later years Anna Alexeyevna paid frequent visits to her mother and sister, suffered from spells of melancholia, and came to realize that there were no satisfactions in her life, which was now ruined, and at such times she had no desire to see either her husband or her children. She was also being treated for a nervous breakdown.

We continued to say nothing, to be silent, and in the presence of strangers she displayed toward me a strange irritation: she would contradict everything I said, no matter what it was, and if I engaged in an argument, she would take the side of my opponent. If I dropped something, she would say coldly: “Congratulations!” Or else if I forgot to take the opera glasses when we were going to the theater, she would say later: “I knew you would forget!”

Luckily or unluckily there is nothing in our lives which does not sooner or later come to an end. At last the time for parting came, when Luganovich was appointed chief justice in one of the western provinces. They sold their furniture, their summer villa, and their horses. When for the last time they drove out to the villa and then turned and looked back at the garden and the green roof, everyone was sad, and I realized that the time had come to say good-by not only to the villa. It was decided that at the end of August we should see Anna Alexeyevna off to the Crimea, where the doctors were sending her, and a little while later Luganovich and the children would set off for the western province.

A great crowd of us came to see Anna Alexeyevna off. She said good-by to her husband and children, and then there were only a few moments left before the ringing of the third bell, and I ran into her compartment to put on the rack one of her baskets which she had almost forgotten; and then it was time to say good-by. There, in the compartment, our eyes met, our spiritual fortitude deserted us, I threw my arms round her, and she pressed her face against my chest, and wept. Kissing her face, her shoulders, her hands all wet with tears—oh, how unhappy we were!—I confessed my love for her, and with a burning pain in my heart I realized how needless and petty and deceptive were all those things which had kept us from loving one another. I came to realize that when you are in love, then in all your judgments about love you should start from something higher and more important than happiness or unhappiness, virtue and sin in all their accepted meanings, or you should make no judgments at all.

I kissed her for the last time, pressed her hand, and we parted—forever. The train was already in motion. I went into the next compartment, which was empty, and stayed there crying until we came to the next station. Then I got out and walked back to Sofino.

While Alyokhin was telling his story, the rain stopped and the sun came out. Burkin and Ivan Ivanich went out on the balcony, and from there gazed on the beautiful view over the garden and the river gleaming in the sun like a mirror. They admired the view, and at the same time they were full of pity for the man with the kind, intelligent eyes who had told them his story with so much forthrightness, and they were sorry he was rushing hither and thither over his vast estate like a squirrel in a cage instead of devoting himself to science or to some similar occupation which would have made his life more pleasant; and they thought of the sorrowful face the young woman must have shown when he said good-by to her in the compartment and kissed her face and shoulders. Both of them had met her in the town, and Burkin was well acquainted with her and thought her quite beautiful.

1898