Novels, Tales, Journeys

We Were Spending the Evening at the Dacha

We were spending the evening at the dacha of Princess D.

The conversation somehow touched upon Mme de Staël.1 Baron D., in poor French, told very poorly a well-known joke: her question to Bonaparte about whom he considered the foremost woman in the world, and his amusing reply: “The one who has had the most children” (“Celle qui a fait le plus d’enfants”).

“What a fine epigram!” one of the guests observed.

“And it serves her right!” one lady said. “How could she fish so clumsily for a compliment?”

“But it seems to me,” said Sorokhtin, who was dozing in a Gambs armchair,2 “it seems to me that Mme de Staël was no more thinking of madrigals than Napoleon was of epigrams. She asked the question out of simple curiosity, quite understandably; and Napoleon literally expressed his own personal opinion. But you don’t believe in the artlessness of genius.”

The guests began to argue, and Sorokhtin dozed off again.

“Really, though,” said the hostess, “whom do you consider the foremost woman in the world?”

“Careful, now: you’re fishing for a compliment…”

“No, joking aside…”

Here a discussion set in: some named Mme de Staël, others the Maid of Orleans, still others Elizabeth, the queen of England, Mme de Maintenon, Mme Roland, and so on…3

A young man standing by the fireplace (because in Petersburg a fireplace is never superfluous) mixed into the conversation for the first time.

“For me,” he said, “the most astonishing woman is Cleopatra.”

“Cleopatra?” said the guests. “Yes, of course…Why, though?”

“There is a feature in her life which is so engraved in my imagination that I can hardly glance at any woman without thinking at once of Cleopatra.”

“What is this feature?” asked the hostess. “Tell us.”

“I can’t; it’s a tricky thing to tell.”

“Why so? Is it indecent?”

“Yes, like almost everything that vividly portrays the terrible morals of antiquity.”

“Ah, tell us, tell us!”

“Ah, no, don’t tell us,” interrupted Volskaya, a divorced woman, primly lowering her fiery eyes.

“Enough,” cried the hostess with impatience. “Qui est-ce donc que l’on trompe ici?^*1 Yesterday we saw Antony, and I have La Physiologie du mariage lying there on the mantelpiece.4 Indecent! Find something else to frighten us with! Stop addling our brains, Alexei Ivanych! You’re not a journalist. Tell us simply what you know about Cleopatra…though…keep it decent, if you can…”

Everybody laughed.

“By God,” said the young man, “I feel timid: I’ve become as bashful as our censorship. Well, so be it…You should know that among Latin historians there was a certain Aurelius Victor, whom you’ve probably never heard of.”

“Aurelius Victor?” interrupted Vershnev, who once studied with the Jesuits. “Aurelius Victor was a fourth-century writer. His works have been ascribed to Cornelius Nepos and even to Suetonius.5 He wrote the book De Viris Illustribus—about the famous men of the city of Rome, I know…”

“Exactly,” Alexei Ivanych went on. “His little book is quite worthless, but in it is found the story of Cleopatra that struck me so much. And, remarkably enough, in that passage the dry and dull Aurelius Victor equals Tacitus in power of expression: ‘Haec tantae libidinis fuit ut saepe prostiterit; tanta pulchritudinis ut multi noctem illius morte emerint…’ ”^*2

“Wonderful!” exclaimed Vershnev. “It reminds me of Sallust—remember? ‘Tantae…’ ”6

“What is this, gentlemen?” asked the hostess. “Now you’re so good as to talk in Latin! How pleasant for us! Tell me, what is the meaning of your Latin phrase?”

“The point is that Cleopatra sold her beauty and that many bought a night with her at the price of their lives…”

“How terrible!” said the ladies. “What do you find astonishing about it?”

“You ask what? It seems to me that Cleopatra was no banal coquette and did not value herself cheaply. I suggested to * * * that he make a poem out of it; he did begin one, but dropped it.”

“And he did well.”

“What did he want to draw from it? What was the main idea here—do you remember?”

“He begins with the description of a banquet in the gardens of the Egyptian queen.”

Dark, sultry night envelops the African sky; Alexandria has fallen asleep; its squares are quiet, its houses dark. The distant Pharos burns solitarily in its vast harbor, like a lamp at the head of a sleeping beauty’s bed.

Bright and noisy are the halls of the Ptolemies’ palace: Cleopatra is receiving her friends; the table is surrounded by ivory couches; three hundred youths serve the guests, three hundred maidens bring them amphorae filled with Greek wines; three hundred black eunuchs silently oversee them.

The porphyry colonnade open to the south and to the north awaits the wafting of Eurus; but the air is still; the flaming tongues of lamps burn motionlessly; the smoke of incense rises straight up in a motionless stream; the sea, like a mirror, lies motionless at the pink steps of the semicircular porch. The gilded claws and granite tails of the guardian sphinxes are reflected in it…only the sounds of cithara and flute stir the lights, the air, and the sea.

Suddenly the queen fell to thinking and sadly hung her wondrous head; the bright banquet was darkened by her sadness, as the sun is darkened by a cloud.

What makes her sad?

Why does sorrow weigh her down?

What lacks ancient Egypt’s crown?

In her resplendent capital,

Protected by a crowd of thralls,

Peacefully her power she wields.

The earthly gods to her do yield,

Filled with wonders are her halls.

Let Africa’s scorching noon befall,

Let the cool shade of night descend,

At every hour on her attend

Luxury and art to gratify

Her drowsy senses, and to her fly

From all lands, over all the seas,

Offerings of rich finery,

Which she keeps changing in delight:

Now she shines with rubies bright,

Now chooses, like the women of Tyre,

A purple chiton for attire,

Now on the flood of hoary Nile,

Shaded by a splendid sail,

On her golden-decked trireme

She floats like Cypris in a dream.

Hourly before her eyes

Banquet after banquet flies,

And who in his soul can guess aright

All the mysteries of her nights?…

In vain! Her heart in languor moans,

She longs for pleasures yet unknown –

Exhausted, surfeited is she,

Ill with insensibility…

Cleopatra awakens from her pensiveness.

The feast dies down as in a daze,

But she again her head does raise,

Fire is in her haughty eyes,

And with a sudden smile she cries:

“You find my love a blissful force?

Pay heed, then, to the terms I set,

And luck perhaps will still be yours.

All inequality I can forget.

I challenge you: who will say aye?

My nights I offer for a fee:

Say, which of you agrees to buy

At the price of life one night with me?”

“This subject should be given to the marquise George Sand,7 as shameless a woman as your Cleopatra. She would rework your Egyptian anecdote for present-day morals.”

“Impossible. It would have no verisimilitude. This anecdote is perfectly antique. Such an exchange is as unfeasible now as building pyramids.”

“Why unfeasible? Can it be that among present-day women not one can be found who would wish to test in reality the truth of what is repeated to her every moment—that her love is dearer to them than life?”

“Let’s say it would be interesting to find out. But how can this scientific testing be organized? Cleopatra had every possibility of making her debtors pay. But we? We certainly can’t write such terms down on official paper and have it notarized in the civil court.”

“In that case we could rely on word of honor.”

“How so?”

“The woman can take her lover’s word of honor that he’ll shoot himself the next day.”

“And the next day he goes abroad, and she’s left a fool.”

“Yes, if he agrees to remain forever dishonored in the eyes of the woman he loves. And are the terms themselves really so harsh? Is life such a treasure that one is sorry to buy happiness at the cost of it? Judge for yourself: the first prankster to come along, whom I despise, says something about me that cannot harm me in any way, and I offer my head to his bullet—I have no right to deny this satisfaction to the first bully who comes along and decides to test my sang-froid. Am I going to play the coward when it comes to my own bliss? What is life, if it’s poisoned by dejection and empty desires! And what good is it, if its pleasures are exhausted?”

“Are you really capable of entering into such a contract?”

At that moment Volskaya, who had been sitting silently all the while with lowered eyes, quickly shot a glance at Alexei Ivanych.

“I’m not speaking about myself. But a man who is truly in love will of course not hesitate for a single moment…”

“What? Even for a woman who doesn’t love you? (And one who would agree to your terms surely doesn’t love you.) The thought alone of such brutality must destroy the wildest passion…”

“No, I would see in her acceptance only a fervid imagination. As for requited love…I don’t demand that of her: if I love, whose business is it?…”

“Stop it—God knows what you’re saying. So this is what you didn’t want to tell about—”

The young countess K., a chubby, homely thing, tried to give an important expression to her nose, which resembled an onion stuck onto a turnip, and said:

“Even nowadays there are women who value themselves more highly…”

Her husband, a Polish count, who had married her for her money (mistakenly, they say), lowered his eyes and drank off his cup of tea.

“What do you mean by that, Countess?” asked the young man, barely holding back a smile…

“I mean,” the countess K. replied, “that a woman who respects herself, who respects…” Here she became confused; Vershnev came to her aid.

“You think that a woman who respects herself does not desire the death of a sinner8—isn’t it so?”

The conversation changed course.

Alexei Ivanych sat down beside Volskaya, bent over as if studying her embroidery, and said to her in a half whisper: “What do you think of Cleopatra’s terms?”

Volskaya said nothing. Alexei Ivanych repeated his question.

“What can I tell you? Nowadays, too, some women value themselves highly. But nineteenth-century men are too coldblooded, too reasonable, to agree to such terms.”

“Do you think,” Alexei Ivanych said in a suddenly altered voice, “do you think that in our time, in Petersburg, here, a woman can be found who would have enough pride, enough inner strength, to lay down Cleopatra’s terms to her lover?…”

“I think so; I’m even certain.”

“You’re not deceiving me? Just think: that would be too cruel, more cruel than the terms themselves…”

Volskaya looked at him with fiery, piercing eyes and in a firm voice said: “No.”

Alexei Ivanych stood up and disappeared at once.

*1 “Who is being fooled here?”

*2 ‘She had so much lust that she often sold herself; so much beauty that many bought a night with her at the price of death.’