The Complete Short Novels

Samoilenko blinked and turned purple, mechanically drew the book with the phalangid towards him and looked at it, then got up and took his hat. Von Koren felt sorry for him.

‘‘Just try living and having anything to do with such gentlemen!’’ said the zoologist, and he kicked some paper into the corner in indignation. ‘‘Understand that this is not kindness, not love, but pusillanimity, license, poison! What reason achieves, your flabby, worthless hearts destroy! When I was sick with typhoid as a schoolboy, my aunt, in her compassion, overfed me with pickled mushrooms, and I nearly died. Understand, you and my aunt both, that love for man should not be in your heart, not in the pit of your stomach, not in your lower back, but here!’’

Von Koren slapped himself on the forehead.

‘‘Take it!’’ he said and flung the hundred-rouble bill.

‘‘You needn’t be angry, Kolya,’’ Samoilenko said meekly, folding the bill. ‘‘I understand you very well, but ... put yourself in my position.’’

‘‘You’re an old woman, that’s what!’’

The deacon guffawed.

‘‘Listen, Alexander Davidych, one last request!’’ von Koren said hotly. ‘‘When you give that finagler the money, set him a condition: let him leave together with his lady or send her on ahead, otherwise don’t give it. There’s no point in being ceremonious with him. Just tell him that, and if you don’t, on my word of honor, I’ll go to his office and chuck him down the stairs, and you I’ll have nothing more to do with. Be it known to you!’’

‘‘So? If he goes with her or sends her ahead, it’s the more convenient for him,’’ said Samoilenko. ‘‘He’ll even be glad. Well, good-bye.’’

He affectionately took his leave and went out, but before closing the door behind him, he turned to look at von Koren, made an awful face, and said:

‘‘It’s the Germans that spoiled you, brother! Yes! The Germans!’’

XII

THE NEXT DAY, Thursday, Marya Konstantinovna celebrated her Kostya’s birthday. At noon everyone was invited for cake, and in the evening for hot chocolate. When Laevsky and Nadezhda Fyodorovna came in the evening, the zoologist, already sitting in the drawing room and drinking chocolate, asked Samoilenko:

‘‘Did you speak to him?’’

‘‘Not yet.’’

‘‘Watch out, don’t be ceremonious. I don’t understand the impudence of these people! They know very well this family’s view of their cohabitation, and yet they keep coming here.’’

‘‘If you pay attention to every prejudice,’’ said Samoilenko, ‘‘you won’t be able to go anywhere.’’

‘‘Is the loathing of the masses for licentiousness and love outside marriage a prejudice?’’

‘‘Of course. Prejudice and hatefulness. When soldiers see a girl of light behavior, they guffaw and whistle, but ask them what they are themselves.’’

‘‘It’s not for nothing that they whistle. That sluts strangle their illegitimate children and go to hard labor, and that Anna Karenina threw herself under a train, and that they tar people’s gates in the villages, and that you and I, for some unknown reason, like Katya’s purity, and that everyone vaguely feels the need for pure love, though he knows that such love doesn’t exist—is all that a prejudice? That, brother, is all that’s left of natural selection, and if it weren’t for this obscure force that regulates relations between the sexes, the Messers Laevsky would show us what o’clock it is, and mankind would turn degenerate in two years.’’

Laevsky came into the drawing room; he greeted everyone and, shaking von Koren’s hand, gave him an ingratiating smile. He waited for an opportune moment and said to Samoilenko:

‘‘Excuse me, Alexander Davidych, I must have a couple of words with you.’’

Samoilenko got up, put his arm around his waist, and the two went to Nikodim Alexandrych’s study.

‘‘Tomorrow is Friday ...’ said Laevsky, biting his nails. ‘‘Did you get what you promised?’’

‘‘I got only two hundred and ten. I’ll get the rest today or tomorrow. Don’t worry.’’

‘‘Thank God! ...’ sighed Laevsky, and his hands trembled with joy. ‘‘You are saving me, Alexander Davidych, and, I swear to you by God, by my happiness, and by whatever you like, I’ll send you this money as soon as I get there. And the old debt as well.’’

‘‘Look here, Vanya ...’ said Samoilenko, taking him by a button and blushing. ‘‘Excuse me for interfering in your family affairs, but ... why don’t you take Nadezhda Fyodorovna with you?’’

‘‘You odd fellow, how could I? One of us certainly has to stay, otherwise my creditors will start howling. I owe some seven hundred roubles in various shops, if not more. Wait, I’ll send them the money, stick it in their teeth, and then she can leave here.’’

‘Well... But why don’t you send her on ahead?’’

‘‘Ah, my God, how can I?’’ Laevsky was horrified. ‘‘She’s a woman, what will she do there alone? What does she understand? It would just be a loss of time and an unnecessary waste of money.’’

‘Reasonable ...’ thought Samoilenko, but he remembered his conversation with von Koren, looked down, and said sullenly:

‘‘I can’t agree with you. Either go with her or send her on ahead, otherwise ... otherwise I won’t give you the money. That is my final word...’

He backed up, collided with the door, and went out into the drawing room red-faced, in terrible embarrassment.

‘‘Friday . . . Friday,’’ thought Laevsky, returning to the drawing room. ‘‘Friday . . .’’

He was handed a cup of chocolate. He burned his lips and tongue with the hot chocolate and thought:

‘‘Friday . . . Friday . . .’’

For some reason, he could not get the word ‘‘Friday’’ out of his head; he thought of nothing but Friday, and the only thing clear to him, not in his head but somewhere under his heart, was that he was not to leave on Saturday. Before him stood Nikodim Alexandrych, neat, his hair brushed forward on his temples, and begging him:

‘‘Eat something, I humbly beg you, sir . . .’’

Marya Konstantinovna showed her guests Katya’s grades, saying in a drawn-out manner:

‘‘Nowadays it’s terribly, terribly difficult to study! So many requirements . . .’’

‘‘Mama!’’ moaned Katya, not knowing where to hide from embarrassment and praise.

Laevsky also looked at her grades and praised her. Bible studies, Russian, conduct, A’s and B’s began leaping in his eyes, and all of it, together with the importunate Friday, Nikodim Alexandrych’s brushed-up temples, and Katya’s red cheeks, stood before him as such boundless, invincible boredom that he almost cried out in despair and asked himself: ‘‘Can it be, can it be that I won’t leave?’’

They set two card tables next to each other and sat down to play postman’s knock. Laevsky also sat down.

‘‘Friday . . . Friday . . .’’ he thought, smiling and taking a pencil from his pocket. ‘‘Friday . . .’’

He wanted to think over his situation and was afraid to think. It frightened him to admit that the doctor had caught him in the deception he had so long and so thoroughly concealed from himself. Each time he thought of his future, he did not give free rein to his thoughts. He would get on the train and go—that solved the problem of his life, and he did not let his thoughts go any further. Like a faint, far-off light in a field, from time to time the thought glimmered in his head that somewhere, in one of Petersburg’s lanes, in the distant future, in order to break with Nadezhda Fyodorovna and pay his debts, he would have to resort to a small lie. He would lie only once, and then a complete renewal would come. And that was good: at the cost of a small lie, he would buy a big truth.

Now, though, when the doctor crudely hinted at the deceit by his refusal, it became clear to him that he would need the lie not only in the distant future but today, and tomorrow, and in a month, and maybe even to the end of his life. Indeed, in order to leave, he would have to lie to Nadezhda Fyodorovna, his creditors, and his superiors; then, in order to get money in Petersburg, he would have to lie to his mother and tell her he had already broken with Nadezhda Fyodorovna; and his mother would not give him more than five hundred roubles—meaning that he had already deceived the doctor, because he would not be able to send him the money soon. Then, when Nadezhda Fyodorovna came to Petersburg, he would have to resort to a whole series of small and large deceptions in order to break with her; and again there would be tears, boredom, a hateful life, remorse, and thus no renewal at all. Deception and nothing more. A whole mountain of lies grew in Laevsky’s imagination. To leap over it at one jump, and not lie piecemeal, he would have to resolve upon a stiff measure—for instance, without saying a word, to get up from his place, put on his hat, and leave straightaway without money, without a word said, but Laevsky felt that this was impossible for him.

‘‘Friday, Friday . . .’’ he thought. ‘‘Friday . . .’’

They wrote notes, folded them in two, and put them in Nikodim Alexandrych’s old top hat, and when enough notes had accumulated, Kostya, acting as postman, went around the table handing them out. The deacon, Katya, and Kostya, who received funny notes and tried to write something funny, were delighted.

‘‘We must have a talk,’’ Nadezhda Fyodorovna read in her note. She exchanged glances with Marya Konstantinovna, who gave her almond-butter smile and nodded her head.

‘‘What is there to talk about?’’ thought Nadezhda Fyodorovna. ‘‘If it’s impossible to tell everything, there’s no point in talking.’’

Before going to the party, she had tied Laevsky’s necktie, and this trifling thing had filled her soul with tenderness and sorrow. The anxiety on his face, his absentminded gazes, his paleness, and the incomprehensible change that had come over him lately, and the fact that she was keeping a terrible, repulsive secret from him, and that her hands had trembled as she tied his necktie—all this, for some reason, told her that they would not be living together for long. She gazed at him as at an icon, with fear and repentance, and thought: ‘‘Forgive me, forgive me . . .’’ Atchmianov sat across the table from her and did not tear his black, amorous eyes from her; desires stirred her, she was ashamed of herself and feared that even anguish and sorrow would not keep her from yielding to the impure passion, if not today, then tomorrow, and that, like a drunkard on a binge, she was no longer able to stop.

So as not to prolong this life, which was disgraceful for her and insulting to Laevsky, she decided to leave. She would tearfully implore him to let her go, and if he objected, she would leave him secretly. She would not tell him what had happened. Let him preserve a pure memory of her.

‘‘Love you, love you, love you,’’ she read. This was from Atchmianov.

She would live somewhere in a remote place, work, and send Laevsky, ‘‘from an unknown person,’’ money, embroidered shirts, tobacco, and go back to him only in his old age or in case he became dangerously ill and needed a sick nurse. When, in his old age, he learned the reasons why she had refused to be his wife and had left him, he would appreciate her sacrifice and forgive her.

‘‘You have a long nose.’’ That must be from the deacon or from Kostya.

Nadezhda Fyodorovna imagined how, in saying good-bye to Laevsky, she would hug him tight, kiss his hand, and swear to love him all, all her life, and later, living in a remote place, among strangers, she would think every day that she had a friend somewhere, a beloved man, pure, noble, and lofty, who preserved a pure memory of her.

‘‘If tonight you don’t arrange to meet me, I shall take measures, I assure you on my word of honor. One does not treat decent people this way, you must understand that.’’ This was from Kirilin.

XIII

LAEVSKY RECEIVED TWO NOTES; he unfolded one and read: ‘‘Don’t go away, my dear heart.’’

‘‘Who could have written that?’’ he wondered. ‘‘Not Samoilenko, of course...And not the deacon, since he doesn’t know I want to leave. Von Koren, maybe?’’

The zoologist was bent over the table, drawing a pyramid. It seemed to Laevsky that his eyes were smiling.

‘‘Samoilenko probably blabbed . . .’’ thought Laevsky.

The other note, written in the same affected handwriting, with long tails and flourishes, read: ‘‘Somebody’s not leaving on Saturday.’’

‘‘Stupid jeering,’’ thought Laevsky. ‘‘Friday, Friday...’’

Something rose in his throat. He touched his collar and coughed, but instead of coughing, laughter burst from his throat.

‘‘Ha, ha, ha!’’ he guffawed. ‘‘Ha, ha, ha!’’ (‘‘Why am I doing this?’’ he wondered.) ‘‘Ha, ha, ha!’’

He tried to control himself, covered his mouth with his hand, but his chest and neck were choking with laughter, and his hand could not cover his mouth.

‘‘How stupid this is, though!’’ he thought, rocking with laughter. ‘‘Have I lost my mind, or what?’’

His laughter rose higher and higher and turned into something like a lapdog’s yelping. Laevsky wanted to get up from the table, but his legs would not obey him, and his right hand somehow strangely, against his will, leaped across the table, convulsively catching at pieces of paper and clutching them. He saw astonished looks, the serious, frightened face of Samoilenko, and the zoologist’s gaze, full of cold mockery and squeamishness, and realized that he was having hysterics.

‘‘How grotesque, how shameful,’’ he thought, feeling the warmth of tears on his face. ‘‘Ah, ah, what shame! This has never happened to me before . . .’’

Then they took him under the arms and, supporting his head from behind, led him somewhere; then a glass gleamed in front of his eyes and knocked against his teeth, and water spilled on his chest; then there was a small room, two beds side by side in the middle, covered with snow-white bedspreads. He collapsed onto one of the beds and broke into sobs.

‘‘Never mind, never mind . . .’’ Samoilenko was saying. ‘‘It happens...It happens . . .’’

Cold with fear, trembling all over, and anticipating something terrible, Nadezhda Fyodorovna stood by the bed, asking:

‘‘What’s wrong with you? What is it? For God’s sake, speak . . .’’

‘‘Can Kirilin have written him something?’’ she wondered.

‘‘Never mind . . .’’ said Laevsky, laughing and crying. ‘‘Go away . . . my dove.’’

His face expressed neither hatred nor revulsion: that meant he knew nothing. Nadezhda Fyodorovna calmed down a little and went to the drawing room.

‘‘Don’t worry, dear!’’ Marya Konstantinovna said, sitting down beside her and taking her hand. ‘‘It will pass. Men are as weak as we sinners. The two of you are living through a crisis now . . . it’s so understandable! Well, dear, I’m waiting for an answer. Let’s talk.’’

‘‘No, let’s not . . .’’ said Nadezhda Fyodorovna, listening to Laevsky’s sobbing. ‘‘I’m in anguish . . . Allow me to leave.’’

‘‘Ah, my dear, my dear!’’ Marya Konstantinovna was alarmed. ‘‘Do you think I’ll let you go without supper? We’ll have a bite, and then you’re free to leave.’’

‘‘I’m in anguish . . .’’ whispered Nadezhda Fyodorovna, and to keep from falling, she gripped the armrest of the chair with both hands.

‘‘He’s in convulsions!’’ von Koren said gaily, coming into the drawing room, but, seeing Nadezhda Fyodorovna, he became embarrassed and left.

When the hysterics were over, Laevsky sat on the strange bed and thought:

‘‘Disgrace, I howled like a little girl! I must be ridiculous and vile. I’ll leave by the back stairs . . . Though that would mean I attach serious significance to my hysterics. I ought to downplay them like a joke . . . ’’

He looked in the mirror, sat for a little while, and went to the drawing room.

‘‘Here I am!’’ he said, smiling; he was painfully ashamed, and he felt that the others were also ashamed in his presence. ‘‘Imagine that,’’ he said, taking a seat. ‘‘I was sitting there and suddenly, you know, I felt an awful, stabbing pain in my side...unbearable, my nerves couldn’t stand it, and...and this stupid thing occurred. This nervous age of ours, there’s nothing to be done!’’

Over supper he drank wine, talked, and from time to time, sighing spasmodically, stroked his side as if to show that the pain could still be felt. And nobody except Nadezhda Fyodorovna believed him, and he saw it.

After nine o’clock they went for a stroll on the boulevard. Nadezhda Fyodorovna, fearing that Kirilin might start talking to her, tried to keep near Marya Konstantinovna and the children all the time. She grew weak from fright and anguish and, anticipating a fever, suffered and could barely move her legs, but she would not go home, because she was sure that either Kirilin or Atchmianov, or both of them, would follow her. Kirilin walked behind her, next to Nikodim Alexandrych, and intoned in a low voice:

‘‘I will not alo-o-ow myself to be to-o-oyed with! I will not alo-o-ow it!’’

From the boulevard they turned towards the pavilion, and for a long time gazed at the phosphorescent sea. Von Koren began to explain what made it phosphoresce.

XIV

‘‘HOWEVER, IT’S TIME for my vint... They’re waiting for me,’’ said Laevsky. ‘‘Good night, ladies and gentlemen.’’

‘‘Wait, I’ll go with you,’’ said Nadezhda Fyodorovna, and she took his arm. They took leave of the company and walked off. Kirilin also took his leave, said he was going the same way, and walked with them.

‘‘What will be, will be . . .’’ thought Nadezhda Fyodorovna. ‘‘Let it come . . .’’

It seemed to her that all her bad memories had left her head and were walking in the darkness beside her and breathing heavily, while she herself, like a fly that had fallen into ink, forced herself to crawl down the sidewalk, staining Laevsky’s side and arm with black. If Kirilin does something bad, she thought, it will not be his fault, but hers alone. There was a time when no man would have talked to her as Kirilin had done, and she herself had snapped off that time like a thread and destroyed it irretrievably—whose fault was that? Intoxicated by her own desires, she had begun to smile at a totally unknown man, probably only because he was stately and tall, after two meetings she had become bored with him and had dropped him, and didn’t that, she now thought, give him the right to act as he pleased with her?

‘‘Here, my dove, I’ll say good-bye to you,’’ said Laevsky, stopping. ‘‘Ilya Mikhailych will see you home.’’

He bowed to Kirilin and quickly headed across the boulevard, went down the street to Sheshkovsky’s house, where there were lights in the windows, and then they heard the gate slam.

‘‘Allow me to explain myself to you,’’ Kirilin began. ‘‘I’m not a boy, not some sort of Atchkasov, or Latchkasov, or Zatchkasov . . . I demand serious attention!’’

Nadezhda Fyodorovna’s heart was beating fast. She made no reply.

‘‘At first I explained the abrupt change in your behavior towards me by coquetry,’’ Kirilin went on, ‘‘but now I see that you simply do not know how to behave with respectable people. You simply wanted to toy with me as with this Armenian boy, but I am a respectable person, and I demand to be treated as a respectable person. And so I am at your service . . .’’

‘‘I’m in anguish . . .’’ said Nadezhda Fyodorovna, and she turned away to hide her tears.

‘‘I am also in anguish, but what follows from that?’’

Kirilin was silent for a while and then said distinctly, measuredly:

‘‘I repeat, madam, that if you do not grant me a meeting tonight, then tonight I shall make a scandal.’’

‘‘Let me go tonight,’’ said Nadezhda Fyodorovna, and she did not recognize her own voice, so pathetic and thin it was.

‘‘I must teach you a lesson...Forgive me this rude tone, but it’s necessary for me to teach you a lesson. Yes, ma’am, unfortunately I must teach you a lesson. I demand two meetings: tonight and tomorrow. After tomorrow you are completely free and can go wherever you like with whom-ever you like. Tonight and tomorrow.’’

Nadezhda Fyodorovna went up to her gate and stopped.

‘‘Let me go!’’ she whispered, trembling all over and seeing nothing before her in the darkness except a white tunic. ‘‘You’re right, I’m a terrible woman . . . I’m to blame, but let me go . . . I beg you . . .’’ she touched his cold hand and shuddered, ‘‘I implore you . . .’’

‘‘Alas!’’ sighed Kirilin. ‘‘Alas! It is not in my plans to let you go, I merely want to teach you a lesson, to make you understand, and besides, madam, I have very little faith in women.’’

‘‘I’m in anguish . . .’’

Nadezhda Fyodorovna listened to the steady sound of the sea, looked at the sky strewn with stars, and wished she could end it all quickly and be rid of this cursed sensation of life with its sea, stars, men, fever...

‘‘Only not in my house . . .’’ she said coldly. ‘‘Take me somewhere.’’

‘‘Let’s go to Miuridov’s. That’s best.’’

‘‘Where is it?’’

‘‘By the old ramparts.’’

She walked quickly down the street and then turned into a lane that led to the mountains. It was dark. On the pavement here and there lay pale strips of light from lighted windows, and it seemed to her that she was like a fly that first fell into ink, then crawled out again into the light. Kirilin walked behind her. At one point he stumbled, nearly fell, and laughed.

‘‘He’s drunk . . .’’ thought Nadezhda Fyodorovna. ‘‘It’s all the same...all the same...Let it be.’’

Atchmianov also soon took leave of the company and followed Nadezhda Fyodorovna so as to invite her for a boat ride. He went up to her house and looked across the front garden: the windows were wide open, there was no light.

‘‘Nadezhda Fyodorovna!’’ he called.

A minute passed. He called again.

‘‘Who’s there?’’ came Olga’s voice.

‘‘Is Nadezhda Fyodorovna at home?’’

‘‘No. She hasn’t come yet.’’

‘‘Strange...Very strange,’’ thought Atchmianov, beginning to feel greatly worried. ‘‘She did go home . . .’’

He strolled along the boulevard, then down the street, and looked in Sheshkovsky’s windows. Laevsky, without his frock coat, was sitting at the table and looking intently at his cards.

‘‘Strange, strange . . .’’ murmured Atchmianov, and, recollecting the hysterics that had come over Laevsky, he felt ashamed. ‘‘If she’s not at home, where is she?’’

And again he went to Nadezhda Fyodorovna’s apartment and looked at the dark windows.

‘‘Deceit, deceit . . .’’ he thought, remembering that she herself, on meeting him that noon at the Bitiugovs’, had promised to go for a boat ride with him in the evening.

The windows of the house where Kirilin lived were dark, and a policeman sat asleep on a bench by the gate. As he looked at the windows and the policeman, everything became clear to Atchmianov. He decided to go home and went, but again wound up by Nadezhda Fyodorovna’s. There he sat down on a bench and took off his hat, feeling his head burning with jealousy and offense.

The clock on the town church struck only twice a day, at noon and at midnight. Soon after it struck midnight, he heard hurrying footsteps.

‘‘So, tomorrow evening at Miuridov’s again!’’ Atchmianov heard, and recognized Kirilin’s voice. ‘‘At eight o’clock. Good-bye, ma’am!’’

Nadezhda Fyodorovna appeared by the front garden. Not noticing Atchmianov sitting on the bench, she walked past him like a shadow, opened the gate, and, leaving it open, walked into the house. In her room, she lighted a candle, undressed quickly, yet did not go to bed, but sank onto her knees in front of a chair, put her arms around it, and leaned her forehead against it.

Laevsky came home past two o’clock.

XV

HAVING DECIDED NOT to lie all at once, but piecemeal, Laevsky went to Samoilenko the next day after one o’clock to ask for the money, so as to be sure to leave on Saturday. After yesterday’s hysterics, which to the painful state of his mind had added an acute sense of shame, remaining in town was unthinkable. If Samoilenko insists on his conditions, he thought, he could agree to them and take the money, and tomorrow, just at the time of departure, tell him that Nadezhda Fyodorovna had refused to go; he could persuade her in the evening that the whole thing was being done for her benefit. And if Samoilenko, who was obviously under the influence of von Koren, refused entirely or suggested some new conditions, then he, Laevsky, would leave that same day on a freighter or even a sailboat, for Novy Afon or Novorossiisk, send his mother a humiliating telegram from there, and live there until his mother sent him money for the trip.

Coming to Samoilenko’s, he found von Koren in the drawing room. The zoologist had just come for dinner and, as usual, had opened the album and was studying the men in top hats and women in caps.

‘‘How inopportune,’’ thought Laevsky, seeing him. ‘‘He may hinder everything.’’

‘‘Good afternoon!’’

‘‘Good afternoon,’’ replied von Koren without looking at him.

‘‘Is Alexander Davidych at home?’’

‘‘Yes. In the kitchen.’’

Laevsky went to the kitchen, but, seeing through the doorway that Samoilenko was busy with the salad, he returned to the drawing room and sat down. He always felt awkward in the zoologist’s presence, and now he was afraid he would have to talk about his hysterics. More than a minute passed in silence. Von Koren suddenly raised his eyes to Laevsky and asked:

‘‘How do you feel after yesterday?’’

‘‘Splendid,’’ Laevsky replied, blushing. ‘‘Essentially there was nothing very special . . .’’

‘‘Until last night I assumed that only ladies had hysterics, and so I thought at first that what you had was Saint Vitus’s dance.’’

Laevsky smiled ingratiatingly and thought:

‘‘How indelicate on his part. He knows perfectly well that it’s painful for me...’’

‘‘Yes, it was a funny story,’’ he said, still smiling. ‘‘I spent this whole morning laughing. The curious thing about a fit of hysterics is that you know it’s absurd, and you laugh at it in your heart, and at the same time you’re sobbing. In our nervous age, we’re slaves to our nerves; they’re our masters and do whatever they like with us. In this respect, civilization is a dubious blessing...’’

Laevsky talked, and found it unpleasant that von Koren listened to him seriously and attentively, and looked at him attentively, without blinking, as if studying him; and he felt vexed with himself for being unable, despite all his dislike of von Koren, to drive the ingratiating smile from his face.

‘‘Though I must confess,’’ he went on, ‘‘there were more immediate causes of the fit, and rather substantial ones. My health has been badly shaken lately. Add to that the boredom, the constant lack of money...the lack of people and common interests . . . My situation’s worse than a governor’s.’’

‘‘Yes, your situation’s hopeless,’’ said von Koren.

These calm, cold words, containing either mockery or an uninvited prophecy, offended Laevsky. He remembered the zoologist’s gaze yesterday, full of mockery and squeamishness, paused briefly, and asked, no longer smiling:

‘‘And how are you informed of my situation?’’

‘‘You’ve just been talking about it yourself, and your friends take such a warm interest in you that one hears of nothing but you all day long.’’

‘‘What friends? Samoilenko, is it?’’

‘‘Yes, him, too.’’

‘‘I’d ask Alexander Davidych and my friends generally to be less concerned about me.’’

‘‘Here comes Samoilenko, ask him to be less concerned about you.’’

‘‘I don’t understand your tone . . .’’ Laevsky murmured; he was gripped by such a feeling as though he had only now understood that the zoologist hated him, despised and jeered at him, and that the zoologist was his worst and most implacable enemy. ‘‘Save that tone for somebody else,’’ he said softly, unable to speak loudly from the hatred that was already tightening around his chest and neck, as the desire to laugh had done yesterday.

Samoilenko came in without his frock coat, sweaty and crimson from the stuffiness of the kitchen.

‘‘Ah, you’re here?’’ he said. ‘‘Greetings, dear heart. Have you had dinner? Don’t be ceremonious, tell me: have you had dinner?’’

‘‘Alexander Davidych,’’ said Laevsky, getting up, ‘‘if I turned to you with an intimate request, it did not mean I was releasing you from the obligation of being modest and respecting other people’s secrets.’’

‘‘What’s wrong?’’ Samoilenko was surprised.

‘‘If you don’t have the money,’’ Laevsky went on, raising his voice and shifting from one foot to the other in agitation, ‘‘then don’t give it to me, refuse, but why announce on every street corner that my situation is hopeless and all that? I cannot bear these benefactions and friendly services when one does a kopeck’s worth with a rouble’s worth of talk! You may boast of your benefactions as much as you like, but no one gave you the right to reveal my secrets!’’

‘‘What secrets?’’ asked Samoilenko, perplexed and beginning to get angry. ‘‘If you came to abuse me, go away. You can come later!’’

He remembered the rule that, when angry with your neighbor, you should mentally start counting to a hundred and calm down; and he started counting quickly.

‘‘I beg you not to be concerned about me!’’ Laevsky went on. ‘‘Don’t pay attention to me. And who has any business with me and how I live? Yes, I want to go away! Yes, I run up debts, drink, live with another man’s wife, I’m hysterical, I’m banal, I’m not as profound as some are, but whose business is that? Respect the person!’’

‘‘Excuse me, brother,’’ said Samoilenko, having counted up to thirty-five, ‘‘but . . .’’

‘‘Respect the person!’’ Laevsky interrupted him. ‘‘This constant talk on another man’s account, the ohs and ahs, the constant sniffing out, the eavesdropping, these friendly commiserations . . . devil take it! They lend me money and set conditions as if I was a little boy! I’m treated like the devil knows what! I don’t want anything!’’ cried Laevsky, reeling with agitation and fearing he might have hysterics again. ‘‘So I won’t leave on Saturday,’’ flashed through his mind. ‘‘I don’t want anything! I only beg you, please, to deliver me from your care! I’m not a little boy and not a madman, and I beg you to relieve me of this supervision!’’

The deacon came in and, seeing Laevsky, pale, waving his arms, and addressing his strange speech to the portrait of Prince Vorontsov, stopped by the door as if rooted to the spot.

‘‘This constant peering into my soul,’’ Laevsky went on, ‘‘offends my human dignity, and I beg the volunteer detectives to stop their spying! Enough!’’

‘‘What . . . what did you say, sir?’’ asked Samoilenko, having counted to a hundred, turning purple, and going up to Laevsky.

‘‘Enough!’’ said Laevsky, gasping and taking his cap.

‘‘I am a Russian doctor, a nobleman, and a state councillor!’’ Samoilenko said measuredly. ‘‘I have never been a spy, and I will not allow anyone to insult me!’’ he said in a cracked voice, emphasizing the last words. ‘‘Silence!’’

The deacon, who had never seen the doctor so majestic, puffed up, crimson, and fearsome, covered his mouth, ran out to the front room, and there rocked with laughter. As if through a fog, Laevsky saw von Koren get up and, putting his hands in his trouser pockets, stand in that pose as if waiting for what would happen next. Laevsky found this relaxed pose insolent and offensive in the highest degree.

‘‘Kindly take back your words!’’ cried Samoilenko.

Laevsky, who no longer remembered what words he had spoken, answered:

‘‘Leave me alone! I don’t want anything! All I want is that you and these Germans of Yid extraction leave me alone! Otherwise I’ll take measures! I’ll fight!’’

‘‘Now I see,’’ said von Koren, stepping away from the table. ‘‘Mr. Laevsky wants to divert himself with a duel before his departure. I can give him that satisfaction. Mr. Laevsky, I accept your challenge.’’

‘‘My challenge?’’ Laevsky said softly, going up to the zoologist and looking with hatred at his swarthy forehead and curly hair. ‘‘My challenge? If you please! I hate you! Hate you!’’

‘‘Very glad. Tomorrow morning early, by Kerbalai’s, with all the details to your taste. And now get out of here.’’

‘‘I hate you!’’ Laevsky said softly, breathing heavily. ‘‘I’ve hated you for a long time! A duel! Yes!’’

‘‘Take him away, Alexander Davidych, or else I’ll leave,’’ said von Koren. ‘‘He’s going to bite me.’’

Von Koren’s calm tone cooled the doctor down; he somehow suddenly came to himself, recovered his senses, put his arm around Laevsky’s waist, and, leading him away from the zoologist, mumured in a gentle voice, trembling with agitation:

‘‘My friends . . . good, kind friends . . . You got excited, but that will do...that will do . . . My friends...’’

Hearing his soft, friendly voice, Laevsky felt that something unprecedented and monstrous had just taken place in his life, as if he had nearly been run over by a train; he almost burst into tears, waved his hand, and rushed from the room.

‘‘To experience another man’s hatred of you, to show yourself in the most pathetic, despicable, helpless way before the man who hates you—my God, how painful it is!’’ he thought shortly afterwards, sitting in the pavilion and feeling something like rust on his body from the just experienced hatred of another man. ‘‘How crude it is, my God!’’

Cold water with cognac cheered him up. He clearly pictured von Koren’s calm, haughty face, his gaze yesterday, his carpetlike shirt, his voice, his white hands, and a heavy hatred, passionate and hungry, stirred in his breast and demanded satisfaction. In his mind, he threw von Koren to the ground and started trampling him with his feet. He recalled everything that had happened in the minutest detail, and wondered how he could smile ingratiatingly at a nonentity and generally value the opinion of petty little people, unknown to anyone, who lived in a worthless town which, it seemed, was not even on the map and which not a single decent person in Petersburg knew about. If this wretched little town were suddenly to fall through the earth or burn down, people in Russia would read the telegram about it with the same boredom as the announcement of a sale of secondhand furniture. To kill von Koren tomorrow or leave him alive was in any case equally useless and uninteresting. To shoot him in the leg or arm, to wound him, then laugh at him, and, as an insect with a torn-off leg gets lost in the grass, so let him with his dull suffering lose himself afterwards in a crowd of the same nonentities as himself.

Laevsky went to Sheshkovsky, told him about it all, and invited him to be his second; then they both went to the head of the post and telegraph office, invited him to be a second as well, and stayed with him for dinner. At dinner they joked and laughed a great deal; Laevsky made fun of the fact that he barely knew how to shoot, and called himself a royal marksman and a Wilhelm Tell.

‘‘This gentleman must be taught a lesson . . .’’ he kept saying.

After dinner they sat down to play cards. Laevsky played, drank wine, and thought how generally stupid and senseless dueling was, because it did not solve the problem but only complicated it, but that sometimes one could not do without it. For instance, in the present case, he could not plead about von Koren before the justice of the peace! And the impending duel was also good in that, after it, he would no longer be able to stay in town. He became slightly drunk, diverted himself with cards, and felt good.

But when the sun set and it grew dark, uneasiness came over him. It was not the fear of death, because all the while he was having dinner and playing cards, the conviction sat in him, for some reason, that the duel would end in nothing; it was a fear of something unknown, which was to take place tomorrow morning for the first time in his life, and a fear of the coming night . . . He knew that the night would be long, sleepless, and that he would have to think not only about von Koren and his hatred but about that mountain of lies he would have to pass through and which he had neither the strength nor the ability to avoid. It looked as though he had unexpectedly fallen ill; he suddenly lost all interest in cards and people, began fussing, and asked to be allowed to go home. He wanted to go to bed quickly, lie still, and prepare his thoughts for the night. Sheshkovsky and the postal official saw him off and went to von Koren to talk about the duel.

Near his apartment, Laevsky met Atchmianov. The young man was breathless and agitated.

‘‘I’ve been looking for you, Ivan Andreich!’’ he said. ‘‘I beg you, let’s go quickly ...’’

‘‘Where?’’

‘‘A gentleman you don’t know wishes to see you on very important business. He earnestly requests that you come for a moment. He needs to talk to you about something . . . For him it’s the same as life and death . . . ’’

In his excitement, Atchmianov uttered this with a strong Armenian accent, so that it came out not ‘‘life’’ but ‘‘lafe.’’

‘‘Who is he?’’ asked Laevsky.

‘‘He asked me not to give his name.’’

‘‘Tell him I’m busy. Tomorrow, if he likes . . .’’

‘‘Impossible!’’ Atchmianov became frightened. ‘‘He wishes to tell you something very important for you . . . very important! If you don’t go, there will be a disaster.’’

‘‘Strange . . .’’ murmured Laevsky, not understanding why Atchmianov was so agitated and what mysteries there could be in this boring, useless little town. ‘‘Strange,’’ he repeated, pondering. ‘‘However, let’s go. It makes no difference.’’

Atchmianov quickly went ahead, and he followed. They walked down the street, then into a lane.

‘‘How boring this is,’’ said Laevsky.

‘‘One moment, one moment . . . It’s close by.’’

Near the old ramparts they took a narrow lane between two fenced lots, then entered some big yard and made for a little house.

‘‘That’s Miuridov’s house, isn’t it?’’ asked Laevsky.

‘‘Yes.’’

‘‘But why we came through the back alleys, I don’t understand. We could have taken the street. It’s closer.’’

‘‘Never mind, never mind . . .’’

Laevsky also found it strange that Atchmianov led him to the back door and waved his hand as if asking him to walk softly and keep silent.

‘‘This way, this way . . .’’ said Atchmianov, cautiously opening the door and going into the hallway on tiptoe. ‘‘Quiet, quiet, I beg you... They may hear you.’’

He listened, drew a deep breath, and said in a whisper:

‘‘Open this door and go in . . . Don’t be afraid.’’

Laevsky, perplexed, opened the door and went into a room with a low ceiling and curtained windows. A candle stood on the table.

‘‘Whom do you want?’’ someone asked in the next room. ‘‘Is that you, Miuridka?’’

Laevsky turned to that room and saw Kirilin, and beside him Nadezhda Fyodorovna.

He did not hear what was said to him, backed his way out, and did not notice how he ended up in the street. The hatred of von Koren, and the uneasiness—all of it vanished from his soul. Going home, he awkwardly swung his right arm and looked intently under his feet, trying to walk where it was even. At home, in his study, he paced up and down, rubbing his hands and making angular movements with his shoulders and neck, as though his jacket and shirt were too tight for him, then lighted a candle and sat down at the table . . .

XVI

‘‘THE HUMANE SCIENCES, of which you speak, will only satisfy human thought when, in their movement, they meet the exact sciences and go on alongside them. Whether they will meet under a microscope, or in the soliloquies of a new Hamlet, or in a new religion, I don’t know, but I think that the earth will be covered with an icy crust before that happens. The most staunch and vital of all humanitarian doctrines is, of course, the teaching of Christ, but look at how differently people understand even that! Some teach us to love all our neighbors, but at the same time make an exception for soldiers, criminals, and madmen: the first they allow to be killed in war, the second to be isolated or executed, and the third they forbid to marry. Other interpreters teach the love of all our neighbors without exception, without distinguishing between pluses and minuses. According to their teaching, if a consumptive or a murderer or an epileptic comes to you and wants to marry your daughter— give her to him; if cretins declare war on the physically and mentally healthy—offer your heads. This preaching of love for love’s sake, like art for art’s sake, if it could come to power, in the end would lead mankind to total extinction, and thus the most grandiose villainy of all that have ever been done on earth would be accomplished. There are a great many interpretations, and if there are many, then serious thought cannot be satisfied by any one of them, and to the mass of all interpretations hastens to add its own. Therefore never put the question, as you say, on philosophical or so-called Christian grounds; by doing so, you merely get further away from solving it.’’

The deacon listened attentively to the zoologist, pondered, and asked:

‘‘Was the moral law, which is proper to each and every person, invented by philosophers, or did God create it along with the body?’’

‘‘I don’t know. But this law is common to all peoples and epochs to such a degree that it seems to me it ought to be acknowledged as organically connected with man. It hasn’t been invented, but is and will be. I won’t tell you that it will one day be seen under a microscope, but its organic connection is proved by the evidence: serious afflictions of the brain and all so-called mental illnesses, as far as I know, express themselves first of all in a perversion of the moral law.’’

‘‘Very well, sir. Meaning that, as the stomach wants to eat, so the moral sense wants us to love our neighbor. Right? But our nature, being selfish, resists the voice of conscience and reason, and therefore many brain-racking questions arise. To whom should we turn for the solution of these questions, if you tell me not to put them on philosophical grounds?’’

‘‘Turn to the little precise knowledge we have. Trust the evidence and the logic of facts. True, it’s scanty, but then it’s not as flimsy and diffuse as philosophy. Let’s say the moral law demands that you love people. What, then? Love should consist in renouncing everything that harms people in one way or another and threatens them with danger in the present and the future. Our knowledge and the evidence tell you that mankind is threatened by danger on the part of the morally and physically abnormal. If so, then fight with the abnormal. If you’re unable to raise them to the norm, you should have enough strength and skill to render them harmless, that is, destroy them.’’

‘‘So love consists in the strong overcoming the weak.’’

‘‘Undoubtedly.’’

‘‘But it was the strong who crucified our Lord Jesus Christ!’’ the deacon said hotly.

‘‘The point is precisely that it was not the strong who crucified Him but the weak. Human culture has weakened and strives to nullify the struggle for existence and natural selection; hence the rapid proliferation of the weak and their predominance over the strong. Imagine that you manage to instill humane ideas, in an undeveloped, rudimentary form, into bees. What would come of it? The drones, which must be killed, would remain alive, would eat the honey, would corrupt and stifle the bees—the result being that the weak would prevail over the strong, and the latter would degenerate. The same is now happening with mankind: the weak oppress the strong. Among savages, still untouched by culture, the strongest, the wisest, and the most moral goes to the front; he is the leader and master. While we, the cultured, crucified Christ and go on crucifying Him. It means we lack something... And we must restore that ‘something’ in ourselves, otherwise there will be no end to these misunderstandings.’’

‘‘But what is your criterion for distinguishing between the strong and the weak?’’

‘‘Knowledge and evidence. The consumptive and the scrofulous are recognized by their ailments, and the immoral and mad by their acts.’’

‘‘But mistakes are possible!’’

‘‘Yes, but there’s no use worrying about getting your feet wet when there’s the threat of a flood.’’

‘‘That’s philosophy,’’ laughed the deacon.

‘‘Not in the least. You’re so spoiled by your seminary philosophy that you want to see nothing but fog in everything. The abstract science your young head is stuffed with is called abstract because it abstracts your mind from the evidence. Look the devil straight in the eye, and if he is the devil, say so, and don’t go to Kant or Hegel for explanations.’’

The zoologist paused and went on:

‘‘Two times two is four, and a stone is a stone. Tomorrow we’ve got a duel. You and I are going to say it’s stupid and absurd, that dueling has outlived its time, that an aristocratic duel is essentially no different from a drunken brawl in a pot-house, and even so, we won’t stop, we’ll go and fight. There is, therefore, a power that is stronger than our reasonings. We shout that war is banditry, barbarism, horror, fratricide, we cannot look at blood without fainting; but the French or the Germans need only insult us and we at once feel a surge of inspiration, we most sincerely shout ‘hurrah’ and fall upon the enemy, you will call for God’s blessing on our weapons, and our valor will evoke universal, and withal sincere, rapture. So again, there is a power that is if not higher, then stronger, than us and our philosophy. We can no more stop it than we can stop this storm cloud moving in from over the sea. Don’t be a hypocrite, then, don’t show it a fig in the pocket, and don’t say: ‘Ah, how stupid! Ah, how outdated! Ah, it doesn’t agree with the Scriptures!’ but look it straight in the eye, acknowledge its reasonable legitimacy, and when it wants, for instance, to destroy the feeble, scrofulous, depraved tribe, don’t hinder it with your pills and quotations from the poorly understood Gospel. In Leskov there’s a conscientious Danila,²⁸ who finds a leper outside of town and feeds him and keeps him warm in the name of love and Christ. If this Danila indeed loved people, he would have dragged the leper further away from the town and thrown him into a ditch, and would have gone himself and served the healthy. Christ, I hope, gave us the commandment of reasonable, sensible, and useful love.’’

‘‘What a one you are!’’ laughed the deacon. ‘‘You don’t believe in Christ, so why do you mention Him so often?’’

‘‘No, I do believe. Only in my own way, of course, not in yours. Ah, Deacon, Deacon!’’ the zoologist laughed; he put his arm around the deacon’s waist and said gaily: ‘‘Well, what then? Shall we go to the duel tomorrow?’’

‘‘My dignity doesn’t permit it, otherwise I would.’’

‘‘And what does that mean—‘dignity’?’’

‘‘I’ve been ordained. Grace is upon me.’’

‘‘Ah, Deacon, Deacon,’’ von Koren repeated, laughing. ‘‘I love talking with you.’’

‘‘You say you have faith,’’ said the deacon. ‘‘What kind of faith is it? I have an uncle, a priest, who is such a believer that, if there’s a drought and he goes to the fields to ask for rain, he takes an umbrella and a leather coat so that he won’t get wet on the way back. That’s faith! When he talks about Christ, he gives off a glow, and all the peasants burst into sobs. He could stop this storm cloud and put all your powers to flight. Yes...faith moves mountains.’’

The deacon laughed and patted the zoologist on the shoulder.

‘‘So there . . .’’ he went on. ‘‘You keep teaching, you fathom the depths of the sea, you sort out the weak and the strong, you write books and challenge to duels—and everything stays where it was; but watch out, let some feeble little elder babble one little word by the Holy Spirit, or a new Mohammed with a scimitar come riding out of Arabia on a stallion, and everything of yours will go flying topsy-turvy, and in Europe there will be no stone left upon stone.’’

‘‘Well, Deacon, that’s written in the sky with a pitchfork!’’

‘‘Faith without works is dead, but works without faith are worse still,²⁹ merely a waste of time and nothing more.’’

The doctor appeared on the embankment. He saw the deacon and the zoologist and went up to them.

‘‘Everything seems to be ready,’’ he said, out of breath. ‘‘Govorovsky and Boiko will be the seconds. They’ll call at five o’clock in the morning. It’s really piling up!’’ he said, looking at the sky. ‘‘Can’t see a thing! It’ll rain soon.’’

‘‘You’ll come with us, I hope?’’ asked von Koren.

‘‘No, God forbid, I’m worn out as it is. Ustimovich will come in my place. I’ve already talked with him.’’

Far across the sea, lightning flashed, and there was a muffled roll of thunder.

‘‘How stifling it is before a storm!’’ said von Koren. ‘‘I’ll bet you’ve already been to Laevsky’s and wept on his bosom.’’

‘‘Why should I go to him?’’ the doctor said, embarrassed. ‘‘What an idea!’’

Before sunset he had walked several times up and down the boulevard and the street, hoping to meet Laevsky. He was ashamed of his outburst and of the sudden kindly impulse that had followed the outburst. He wanted to apologize to Laevsky in jocular tones, to chide him, to placate him, and tell him that dueling was a leftover of medieval barbarism, but that providence itself had pointed them to a duel as a means of reconciliation: tomorrow the two of them, most excellent people, of the greatest intelligence, would exchange shots, appreciate each other’s nobility, and become friends. But he never once met Laevsky.

‘‘Why should I go to him?’’ Samoilenko repeated. ‘‘I didn’t offend him, he offended me. Tell me, for mercy’s sake, why did he fall upon me? Did I do anything bad to him? I come into the drawing room and suddenly, for no reason: spy! Take that! Tell me, how did it start between you? What did you tell him?’’

‘‘I told him that his situation was hopeless. And I was right. Only honest people and crooks can find a way out of any situation, but somebody who wants to be an honest man and a crook at the same time has no way out. However, it’s already eleven o’clock, gentlemen, and we have to get up early tomorrow.’’

There was a sudden gust of wind; it raised the dust on the embankment, whirled it around, roared, and drowned out the sound of the sea.

‘‘A squall!’’ said the deacon. ‘‘We must go, we’re getting dust in our eyes.’’

As they left, Samoilenko sighed and said, holding on to his cap:

‘‘Most likely I won’t sleep tonight.’’

‘‘Don’t worry,’’ the zoologist laughed. ‘‘You can rest easy, the duel will end in nothing. Laevsky will magnanimously fire into the air, he can’t do anything else, and most likely I won’t fire at all. Ending up in court on account of Laevsky, losing time—the game’s not worth the candle. By the way, what’s the legal responsibility for dueling?’’

‘‘Arrest, and in case of the adversary’s death, imprisonment in the fortress for up to three years.’’

‘‘The Peter-and-Paul fortress?’’³⁰

‘‘No, a military one, I think.’’

‘‘I ought to teach that fellow a lesson, though!’’

Behind them, lightning flashed over the sea and momentarily lit up the rooftops and mountains. Near the boulevard, the friends went different ways. As the doctor disappeared into the darkness and his footsteps were already dying away, von Koren shouted to him:

‘‘The weather may hinder us tomorrow!’’

‘‘It may well! And God grant it!’’

‘‘Good night!’’

‘‘What—night? What did you say?’’

It was hard to hear because of the noise of the wind and the sea and the rolling thunder.

‘‘Never mind!’’ shouted the zoologist, and he hurried home.

XVII

. . . in my mind, oppressed by anguish, Crowds an excess of heavy thoughts; Remembrance speechlessly unrolls Its lengthy scroll before me; And, reading through my life with loathing, I tremble, curse, and bitterly complain, And bitter tears pour from my eyes, But the sad lines are not washed away.

—Pushkin³¹

Whether they killed him tomorrow morning or made a laughingstock of him, that is, left him to this life, in any case he was lost. Whether this disgraced woman killed herself in despair and shame or dragged out her pitiful existence, in any case she was lost . . .

So thought Laevsky, sitting at the table late at night and still rubbing his hands. The window suddenly opened with a bang, a strong wind burst into the room, and papers flew off the table. Laevsky closed the window and bent down to pick up the papers from the floor. He felt something new in his body, some sort of awkwardness that had not been there before, and he did not recognize his own movements; he walked warily, sticking out his elbows and jerking his shoulders, and when he sat down at the table, he again began rubbing his hands. His body had lost its suppleness.

On the eve of death, one must write to one’s family. Laevsky remembered that. He took up a pen and wrote in a shaky hand:

‘‘Dear Mother!’’

He wanted to write to his mother that, in the name of the merciful God in whom she believed, she should give shelter and the warmth of her tenderness to the unfortunate woman he had dishonored, lonely, poor, and weak; that she should forgive and forget everything, everything, everything, and with her sacrifice at least partially redeem her son’s terrible sin; but he remembered how his mother, a stout, heavy old woman in a lace cap, went out to the garden in the morning, followed by a companion with a lapdog, how his mother shouted in a commanding voice at the gardener, at the servants, and how proud and arrogant her face was—he remembered it and crossed out the words he had written.

Lightning flashed brightly in all three windows, followed by a deafening, rolling clap of thunder, first muted, then rumbling and cracking, and so strong that the glass in the windows rattled. Laevsky got up, went to the window, and leaned his forehead against the glass. Outside there was a heavy, beautiful thunderstorm. On the horizon, lightning ceaselessly hurled itself in white ribbons from the clouds into the sea and lit up the high black waves far in the distance. Lightning flashed to right and left, and probably directly over the house as well.

‘‘A thunderstorm!’’ whispered Laevsky; he felt a desire to pray to someone or something, if only to the lightning or the clouds. ‘‘Dear thunderstorm!’’

He remembered how, in childhood, he had always run out to the garden bareheaded when there was a thunderstorm, and two fair-haired, blue-eyed little girls would chase after him, and the rain would drench them; they would laugh with delight, but when a strong clap of thunder rang out, the girls would press themselves trustfully to the boy, and he would cross himself and hasten to recite: ‘‘Holy, holy, holy . . .’’ Oh, where have you gone, in what sea have you drowned, you germs of a beautiful, pure life? He was no longer afraid of thunderstorms, did not love nature, had no God, all the trustful girls he had ever known had already been ruined by him or his peers, he had never planted a single tree in his own garden, nor grown a single blade of grass, and, living amidst the living, had never saved a single fly, but had only destroyed, ruined, and lied, lied . . .

‘‘What in my past is not vice?’’ he kept asking himself, trying to clutch at some bright memory, as someone falling into an abyss clutches at a bush.

School? University? But that was a sham. He had been a poor student and had forgotten what he was taught. Serving society? That was also a sham, because he did nothing at work, received a salary gratis, and his service was a vile embezzlement for which one was not taken to court.

He had no need of the truth, and he was not seeking it; his conscience, beguiled by vice and lies, slept or was silent; like a foreigner, or an alien from another planet, he took no part in the common life of people, was indifferent to their sufferings, ideas, religions, knowledge, quests, struggles; he had not a single kind word for people, had never written a single useful, nonbanal line, had never done a groat’s worth of anything for people, but only ate their bread, drank their wine, took away their wives, lived by their thoughts, and, to justify his contemptible, parasitic life before them and before himself, had always tried to make himself look higher and better than them... Lies, lies, lies...

He clearly recalled what he had seen that evening in Miuridov’s house, and it gave him an unbearably creepy feeling of loathing and anguish. Kirilin and Atchmianov were disgusting, but they were merely continuing what he had begun; they were his accomplices and disciples. From a weak young woman who trusted him more than a brother, he had taken her husband, her circle of friends, and her native land, and had brought her here to the torrid heat, to fever, and to boredom; day after day, like a mirror, she had had to reflect in herself his idleness, depravity, and lying—and that, that alone, had filled her weak, sluggish, pitiful life; then he had had enough of her, had begun to hate her, but had not had the courage to abandon her, and he had tried to entangle her in a tight mesh of lies, as in a spiderweb... These people had done the rest.

Laevsky now sat at the table, now went again to the window; now he put out the candle, now he lighted it again. He cursed himself aloud, wept, complained, asked forgiveness; several times he rushed to the desk in despair and wrote: ‘‘Dear Mother!’’

Besides his mother, he had no family or relations; but how could his mother help him? And where was she? He wanted to rush to Nadezhda Fyodorovna, fall at her feet, kiss her hands and feet, beg for forgiveness, but she was his victim, and he was afraid of her, as if she was dead.

‘‘My life is ruined!’’ he murmured, rubbing his hands. ‘‘Why am I still alive, my God! . . .’’

He dislodged his own dim star from the sky, it fell, and its traces mingled with the night’s darkness; it would never return to the sky, because life is given only once and is not repeated. If it had been possible to bring back the past days and years, he would have replaced the lies in them by truth, the idleness by work, the boredom by joy; he would have given back the purity to those from whom he had taken it, he would have found God and justice, but this was as impossible as putting a fallen star back into the sky. And the fact that it was impossible drove him to despair.

When the thunderstorm had passed, he sat by the open window and calmly thought of what was going to happen to him. Von Koren would probably kill him. The man’s clear, cold worldview allowed for the destruction of the feeble and worthless; and if it betrayed him in the decisive moment, he would be helped by the hatred and squeamishness Laevsky inspired in him. But if he missed, or, to mock his hated adversary, only wounded him, or fired into the air, what was he to do then? Where was he to go?

‘‘To Petersburg?’’ Laevsky asked himself. ‘‘But that would mean starting anew the old life I’m cursing. And he who seeks salvation in a change of place, like a migratory bird, will find nothing, because for him the earth is the same everywhere. Seek salvation in people? In whom and how? Samoilenko’s kindness and magnanimity are no more saving than the deacon’s laughter or von Koren’s hatred. One must seek salvation only in oneself, and if one doesn’t find it, then why waste time, one must kill oneself, that’s all . . .’’

The noise of a carriage was heard. Dawn was already breaking. The carriage drove past, turned, and, its wheels creaking in the wet sand, stopped near the house. Two men were sitting in the carriage.

‘‘Wait, I’ll be right there!’’ Laevsky said out the window. ‘‘I’m not asleep. Can it be time already?’’

‘‘Yes. Four o’clock. By the time we get there . . .’’

Laevsky put on his coat and a cap, took some cigarettes in his pocket, and stopped to ponder; it seemed to him that something else had to be done. Outside, the seconds talked softly and the horses snorted, and these sounds, on a damp early morning, when everyone was asleep and the sky was barely light, filled Laevsky’s soul with a despondency that was like a bad presentiment. He stood pondering for a while and then went to the bedroom.

Nadezhda Fyodorovna lay on her bed, stretched out, wrapped head and all in a plaid; she did not move and was reminiscent, especially by her head, of an Egyptian mummy. Looking at her in silence, Laevsky mentally asked her forgiveness and thought that if heaven was not empty and God was indeed in it, He would protect her, and if there was no God, let her perish, there was no need for her to live.

She suddenly jumped and sat up in her bed. Raising her pale face and looking with terror at Laevsky, she asked:

‘‘Is that you? Is the thunderstorm over?’’

‘‘It’s over.’’

She remembered, put both hands to her head, and her whole body shuddered.

‘‘It’s so hard for me!’’ she said. ‘‘If you only knew how hard it is for me! I was expecting you to kill me,’’ she went on, narrowing her eyes, ‘‘or drive me out of the house into the rain and storm, but you put it off . . . put it off . . .’’

He embraced her impulsively and tightly, covered her knees and hands with kisses, then, as she murmured something to him and shuddered from her memories, he smoothed her hair and, peering into her face, understood that this unfortunate, depraved woman was the only person who was close, dear, and irreplaceable to him.

When he left the house and was getting into the carriage, he wanted to come back home alive.

XVIII

THE DEACON GOT UP, dressed, took his thick, knobby walking stick, and quietly left the house. It was dark, and for the first moment, as he walked down the street, he did not even see his white stick; there was not a single star in the sky, and it looked as though it was going to rain again. There was a smell of wet sand and sea.

‘‘If only the Chechens don’t attack,’’ thought the deacon, listening to his stick tapping the pavement and to the resounding and solitary sound this tapping made in the stillness of the night.

Once he left town, he began to see both the road and his stick; dim spots appeared here and there in the black sky, and soon one star peeped out and timidly winked its one eye. The deacon walked along the high rocky coast and did not see the sea; it was falling asleep below, and its invisible waves broke lazily and heavily against the shore and seemed to sigh: oof! And so slowly! One wave broke, the deacon had time to count eight steps, then another broke, and after six steps, a third. Just as before, nothing could be seen, and in the darkness, the lazy, sleepy noise of the sea could be heard, the infinitely far-off, unimaginable time could be heard when God hovered over chaos.

The deacon felt eerie. He thought God might punish him for keeping company with unbelievers and even going to watch their duel. The duel would be trifling, bloodless, ridiculous, but however it might be, it was a heathen spectacle, and for a clergyman to be present at it was altogether improper. He stopped and thought: shouldn’t he go back? But strong, restless curiosity got the upper hand over his doubts, and he went on.

‘‘Though they’re unbelievers, they are good people and will be saved,’’ he reassured himself. ‘‘They’ll surely be saved!’’ he said aloud, lighting a cigarette.

By what measure must one measure people’s qualities, to be able to judge them fairly? The deacon recalled his enemy, the inspector of the seminary, who believed in God, and did not fight duels, and lived in chastity, but used to feed the deacon bread with sand in it and once nearly tore his ear off. If human life was so unwisely formed that everyone in the seminary respected this cruel and dishonest inspector, who stole government flour, and prayed for his health and salvation, was it fair to keep away from such people as von Koren and Laevsky only because they were unbelievers? The deacon started mulling over this question but then recalled what a funny figure Samoilenko had cut that day, and that interrupted the course of his thoughts. How they would laugh tomorrow! The deacon imagined himself sitting behind a bush and spying on them, and when von Koren began boasting tomorrow at dinner, he, the deacon, would laugh and tell him all the details of the duel.

‘‘How do you know all that?’’ the zoologist would ask.

‘‘It just so happens. I stayed home, but I know.’’

It would be nice to write a funny description of the duel. His father-in-law would read it and laugh; hearing or reading something funny was better food for him than meat and potatoes.

The valley of the Yellow River opened out. The rain had made the river wider and angrier, and it no longer rumbled as before, but roared. Dawn was breaking. The gray, dull morning, and the clouds racing westward to catch up with the thunderhead, and the mountains girded with mist, and the wet trees—it all seemed ugly and angry to the deacon. He washed in a brook, recited his morning prayers, and wished he could have some tea and the hot puffs with sour cream served every morning at his father-in-law’s table. He thought of his deaconess and ‘‘The Irretrievable,’’ which she played on the piano. What sort of woman was she? They had introduced the deacon to her, arranged things, and married him to her in a week; he had lived with her for less than a month and had been ordered here, so that he had not yet figured out what kind of person she was. But all the same, he was slightly bored without her.

‘‘I must write her a little letter . . .’’ he thought.

The flag on the dukhan was rain-soaked and drooping, and the dukhan itself, with its wet roof, seemed darker and lower than it had before. A cart stood by the door. Kerbalai, a couple of Abkhazians, and a young Tartar woman in balloon trousers, probably Kerbalai’s wife or daughter, were bringing sacks of something out of the dukhan and putting them in the cart on cornhusks. By the cart stood a pair of oxen, their heads lowered. After loading the sacks, the Abkhazians and the Tartar woman began covering them with straw, and Kerbalai hastily began hitching up the donkeys.

‘‘Contraband, probably,’’ thought the deacon.

Here was the fallen tree with its dried needles, here was the black spot from the fire. He recalled the picnic in all its details, the fire, the singing of the Abkhazians, the sweet dreams of a bishopric and a procession with the cross...The Black River had grown blacker and wider from the rain. The deacon cautiously crossed the flimsy bridge, which the muddy waves already reached with their crests, and climbed the ladder into the drying shed.

‘‘A fine head!’’ he thought, stretching out on the straw and recalling von Koren. ‘‘A good head, God grant him health. Only there’s cruelty in him . . .’’

Why did he hate Laevsky, and Laevsky him? Why were they going to fight a duel? If they had known the same poverty as the deacon had known since childhood, if they had been raised in the midst of ignorant, hard-hearted people, greedy for gain, who reproached you for a crust of bread, coarse and uncouth of behavior, who spat on the floor and belched over dinner and during prayers, if they had not been spoiled since childhood by good surroundings and a select circle of people, how they would cling to each other, how eagerly they would forgive each other’s shortcomings and value what each of them did have. For there are so few even outwardly decent people in the world! True, Laevsky was crackbrained, dissolute, strange, but he wouldn’t steal, wouldn’t spit loudly on the floor, wouldn’t reproach his wife: ‘‘You stuff yourself, but you don’t want to work,’’ wouldn’t beat a child with a harness strap or feed his servants putrid salt beef—wasn’t that enough for him to be treated with tolerance? Besides, he was the first to suffer from his own shortcomings, like a sick man from his sores. Instead of seeking, out of boredom or some sort of misunderstanding, for degeneracy, extinction, heredity, and other incomprehensible things in each other, wouldn’t it be better for them to descend a little lower and direct their hatred and wrath to where whole streets resound with the groans of coarse ignorance, greed, reproach, impurity, curses, female shrieks...

There was the sound of an equipage, and it interrupted the deacon’s thoughts. He peeked out the door and saw a carriage, and in it three people: Laevsky, Sheshkovsky, and the head of the post and telegraph office.

‘‘Stop!’’ said Sheshkovsky.

All three got out of the carriage and looked at each other.

‘‘They’re not here yet,’’ said Sheshkovsky, shaking mud off himself. ‘‘So, then! While the jury’s still out, let’s go and find a suitable spot. There’s hardly room enough to turn around here.’’

They went further up the river and soon disappeared from sight. The Tartar coachman got into the carriage, lolled his head on his shoulder, and fell asleep. Having waited for about ten minutes, the deacon came out of the drying shed and, taking off his black hat so as not to be noticed, cowering and glancing around, began to make his way along the bank among the bushes and strips of corn; big drops fell on him from the trees and bushes, the grass and corn were wet.

‘‘What a shame!’’ he muttered, hitching up his wet and dirty skirts. ‘‘If I’d known, I wouldn’t have come.’’

Soon he heard voices and saw people. Laevsky, hunched over, his hands tucked into his sleeves, was rapidly pacing up and down a small clearing; his seconds stood just by the bank and rolled cigarettes.

‘‘Strange . . .’’ thought the deacon, not recognizing Laevsky’s gait. ‘‘Looks like an old man.’’

‘‘How impolite on their part!’’ said the postal official, looking at his watch. ‘‘Maybe for a learned man it’s a fine thing to be late, but in my opinion it’s swinishness.’’

Sheshkovsky, a fat man with a black beard, listened and said:

‘‘They’re coming.’’

XIX

‘‘THE FIRST TIME in my life I’ve seen it! How nice!’’ said von Koren, emerging into the clearing and holding out both arms to the east. ‘‘Look: green rays!’’

Two green rays stretched out from behind the mountains in the east, and it was indeed beautiful. The sun was rising.

‘‘Good morning!’’ the zoologist went on, nodding to Laevsky’s seconds. ‘‘I’m not late?’’

Behind him came his seconds, two very young officers of the same height, Boiko and Govorovsky, in white tunics, and the lean, unsociable Dr. Ustimovich, who was carrying a bundle of something in one hand and put the other behind him; as usual, he was holding his cane up along his spine. Setting the bundle on the ground and not greeting anyone, he sent his other hand behind his back and began pacing out the clearing.

Laevsky felt the weariness and awkwardness of a man who might die soon and therefore attracted general attention. He would have liked to be killed quickly or else taken home. He was now seeing a sunrise for the first time in his life; this early morning, the green rays, the dampness, and the people in wet boots seemed extraneous to his life, unnecessary, and they embarrassed him; all this had no connection with the night he had lived through, with his thoughts, and with the feeling of guilt, and therefore he would gladly have left without waiting for the duel.

Von Koren was noticeably agitated and tried to conceal it, pretending that he was interested most of all in the green rays. The seconds were confused and kept glancing at each other as if asking why they were there and what they were to do.

‘‘I suppose, gentlemen, that there’s no need to go further,’’ said Sheshkovsky. ‘‘Here is all right.’’

‘‘Yes, of course,’’ agreed von Koren.

Silence ensued. Ustimovich, as he paced, suddenly turned sharply to Laevsky and said in a low voice, breathing in his face:

‘‘They probably haven’t had time to inform you of my conditions. Each side pays me fifteen roubles, and in case of the death of one of the adversaries, the one who is left alive pays the whole thirty.’’

Laevsky had made this man’s acquaintance earlier, but only now did he see distinctly for the first time his dull eyes, stiff mustache, and lean, consumptive neck: a moneylender, not a doctor! His breath had an unpleasant, beefy smell.

‘‘It takes all kinds to make a world,’’ thought Laevsky and replied:

‘‘Very well.’’

The doctor nodded and again began pacing, and it was clear that he did not need the money at all, but was asking for it simply out of hatred. Everyone felt that it was time to begin, or to end what had been begun, yet they did not begin or end, but walked about, stood, and smoked. The young officers, who were present at a duel for the first time in their lives and now had little faith in this civil and, in their opinion, unnecessary duel, attentively examined their tunics and smoothed their sleeves. Sheshkovsky came up to them and said quietly:

‘‘Gentlemen, we should make every effort to keep the duel from taking place. They must be reconciled.’’

He blushed and went on:

‘‘Last night Kirilin came to see me and complained that Laevsky had caught him last night with Nadezhda Fyodorovna and all that.’’

‘‘Yes, we also know about that,’’ said Boiko.

‘‘Well, so you see...Laevsky’s hands are trembling and all that... He won’t even be able to hold up a pistol now. It would be as inhuman to fight with him as with a drunk man or someone with typhus. If the reconciliation doesn’t take place, then, gentlemen, we must at least postpone the duel or something . . . It’s such a devilish thing, I don’t even want to look.’’

‘‘Speak with von Koren.’’

‘‘I don’t know the rules of dueling, devil take them all, and I don’t want to know them; maybe he’ll think Laevsky turned coward and sent me to him. But anyhow, he can think what he likes, I’ll go and speak with him.’’

Irresolutely, limping slightly, as though his foot had gone to sleep, Sheshkovsky went over to von Koren, and as he walked and grunted, his whole figure breathed indolence.

‘‘There’s something I’ve got to tell you, sir,’’ he began, attentively studying the flowers on the zoologist’s shirt. ‘‘It’s confidential . . . I don’t know the rules of dueling, devil take them all, and I don’t want to know them, and I’m reasoning not as a second and all that but as a human being, that’s all.’’

‘‘Right. So?’’

‘‘When seconds suggest making peace, usually nobody listens to them, looking on it as a formality. Amour propre and nothing more. But I humbly beg you to pay attention to Ivan Andreich. He’s not at all in a normal state today, so to speak, not in his right mind, and quite pitiful. A misfortune has befallen him. I can’t bear gossip,’’ Sheshkovsky blushed and looked around, ‘‘but in view of the duel, I find it necessary to tell you. Last night, in Miuridov’s house, he found his lady with . . . a certain gentleman.’’

‘‘How revolting!’’ murmured the zoologist; he turned pale, winced, and spat loudly: ‘‘Pah!’’

His lower lip trembled; he stepped away from Sheshkovsky, not wishing to hear any more, and, as if he had accidentally sampled something bitter, again spat loudly, and for the first time that morning looked at Laevsky with hatred. His agitation and awkwardness passed; he shook his head and said loudly:

‘‘Gentlemen, what are we waiting for, may I ask? Why don’t we begin?’’

Sheshkovsky exchanged glances with the officers and shrugged his shoulders.

‘‘Gentlemen!’’ he said loudly, not addressing anyone. ‘‘Gentlemen! We suggest that you make peace!’’

‘‘Let’s get through the formalities quickly,’’ said von Koren. ‘‘We’ve already talked about making peace. What’s the next formality now? Let’s hurry up, gentlemen, time won’t wait.’’

‘‘But we still insist on making peace,’’ Sheshkovsky said in a guilty voice, like a man forced to interfere in other people’s business; he blushed, put his hand to his heart, and went on: ‘‘Gentlemen, we see no causal connection between the insult and the duel. An offense that we, in our human weakness, sometimes inflict on each other and a duel have nothing in common. You’re university and cultivated people, and, of course, you yourselves see nothing in dueling but an outdated and empty formality and all that. We look at it the same way, otherwise we wouldn’t have come, because we can’t allow people to shoot at each other in our presence, that’s all.’’ Sheshkovsky wiped the sweat from his face and went on: ‘‘Let’s put an end to your misunderstanding, gentlemen, offer each other your hands, and go home and drink to peace. Word of honor, gentlemen!’’

Von Koren was silent. Laevsky, noticing that they were looking at him, said:

‘‘I have nothing against Nikolai Vassilievich. If he finds me to blame, I’m ready to apologize to him.’’

Von Koren became offended.

‘‘Obviously, gentlemen,’’ he said, ‘‘you would like Mr. Laevsky to return home a magnanimous and chivalrous man, but I cannot give you and him that pleasure. And there was no need to get up early and go seven miles out of town only to drink to peace, have a bite to eat, and explain to me that dueling is an outdated formality. A duel is a duel, and it ought not to be made more stupid and false than it is in reality. I want to fight!’’

Silence ensued. Officer Boiko took two pistols from a box; one was handed to von Koren, the other to Laevsky, and after that came perplexity, which briefly amused the zoologist and the seconds. It turned out that of all those present, not one had been at a duel even once in his life, and no one knew exactly how they should stand and what the seconds should say and do. But then Boiko remembered and, smiling, began to explain.

‘‘Gentlemen, who remembers how it’s described in Lermontov?’’ von Koren asked, laughing. ‘‘In Turgenev, too, Bazarov exchanged shots with somebody or other . . .’’

‘‘What is there to remember?’’ Ustimovich said impatiently, stopping. ‘‘Measure out the distance—that’s all.’’

And he made three paces, as if showing them how to measure. Boiko counted off the paces, and his comrade drew his saber and scratched the ground at the extreme points to mark the barrier.

In the general silence, the adversaries took their places.

‘‘Moles,’’ recalled the deacon, who was sitting in the bushes.

Sheshkovsky was saying something, Boiko was explaining something again, but Laevsky did not hear or, more precisely, heard but did not understand. When the time for it came, he cocked and raised the heavy, cold pistol, barrel up. He forgot to unbutton his coat, and it felt very tight in the shoulder and armpit, and his arm was rising as awkwardly as if the sleeve was made of tin. He remembered his hatred yesterday for the swarthy forehead and curly hair, and thought that even yesterday, in a moment of intense hatred and wrath, he could not have shot at a man. Fearing that the bullet might somehow accidentally hit von Koren, he raised the pistol higher and higher, and felt that this much too ostentatious magnanimity was neither delicate nor magnanimous, but he could not and would not do otherwise. Looking at the pale, mockingly smiling face of von Koren, who had evidently been sure from the very beginning that his adversary would fire into the air, Laevsky thought that soon, thank God, it would all be over, and that he had only to squeeze the trigger harder . . .

There was a strong kick in his shoulder, a shot rang out, and in the mountains the echo answered: ka-bang!

Von Koren, too, cocked his pistol and glanced in the direction of Ustimovich, who was pacing as before, his hands thrust behind him, paying no attention to anything.

‘‘Doctor,’’ said the zoologist, ‘‘kindly do not walk like a pendulum. You flash in my eyes.’’

The doctor stopped. Von Koren started aiming at Laevsky.

‘‘It’s all over!’’ thought Laevsky.

The barrel of the pistol pointing straight at his face, the expression of hatred and contempt in the pose and the whole figure of von Koren, and this murder that a decent man was about to commit in broad daylight in the presence of decent people, and this silence, and the unknown force that made Laevsky stand there and not run away—how mysterious, and incomprehensible, and frightening it all was! The time von Koren took to aim seemed longer than a night to Laevsky. He glanced imploringly at the seconds; they did not move and were pale.

‘‘Shoot quickly!’’ thought Laevsky, and felt that his pale, quivering, pitiful face must arouse still greater hatred in von Koren.

‘‘Now I’ll kill him,’’ thought von Koren, aiming at the forehead and already feeling the trigger with his finger. ‘‘Yes, of course, I’ll kill him . . .’’

‘‘He’ll kill him!’’ a desperate cry was suddenly heard somewhere very nearby.

Just then the shot rang out. Seeing that Laevsky was standing in the same place and did not fall, everyone looked in the direction the cry had come from, and saw the deacon. Pale, his wet hair stuck to his forehead and cheeks, all wet and dirty, he was standing on the other bank in the corn, smiling somehow strangely and waving his wet hat. Sheshkovsky laughed with joy, burst into tears, and walked away...

XX

A LITTLE LATER, von Koren and the deacon came together at the little bridge. The deacon was agitated, breathed heavily, and avoided looking him in the eye. He was ashamed both of his fear and of his dirty, wet clothes.

‘‘It seemed to me that you wanted to kill him . . .’’ he mumbled. ‘‘How contrary it is to human nature! Unnatural to such a degree!’’

‘‘How did you get here, though?’’ asked the zoologist.

‘‘Don’t ask!’’ the deacon waved his hand. ‘‘The unclean one led me astray: go, yes, go . . . So I went and almost died of fright in the corn. But now, thank God, thank God...I’m quite pleased with you,’’ the deacon went on mumbling. ‘‘And our grandpa tarantula will be pleased...Funny, so funny! Only I beg you insistently not to tell anyone I was here, or else I may get it in the neck from my superiors. They’ll say: the deacon acted as a second.’’

‘‘Gentlemen!’’ said von Koren. ‘‘The deacon asks you not to tell anybody you saw him here. He may get in trouble.’’

‘‘How contrary it is to human nature!’’ sighed the deacon. ‘‘Forgive me magnanimously, but you had such a look on your face that I thought you were certainly going to kill him.’’

‘‘I was strongly tempted to finish the scoundrel off,’’ said von Koren, ‘‘but you shouted right then, and I missed. However, this whole procedure is revolting to someone unaccustomed to it, and it’s made me tired, Deacon. I feel terribly weak. Let’s go . . .’’

‘‘No, kindly allow me to go on foot. I’ve got to dry out, I’m all wet and chilly.’’

‘‘Well, you know best,’’ the weakened zoologist said in a weary voice, getting into the carriage and closing his eyes. ‘‘You know best . . .’’

While they were walking around the carriages and getting into them, Kerbalai stood by the road and, holding his stomach with both hands, kept bowing low and showing his teeth; he thought the gentlemen had come to enjoy nature and drink tea, and did not understand why they were getting into the carriages. In the general silence, the train started, and the only one left by the dukhan was the deacon.

‘‘Went dukhan, drank tea,’’ he said to Kerbalai. ‘‘Mine wants eat.’’

Kerbalai spoke Russian well, but the deacon thought the Tartar would understand him better if he spoke to him in broken Russian.

‘‘Fried eggs, gave cheese . . .’’

‘‘Come in, come in, pope,’’ Kerbalai said, bowing, ‘‘I’ll give you everything . . . There’s cheese, there’s wine . . . Eat whatever you like.’’

‘‘What’s God in Tartar?’’ the deacon asked as he went into the dukhan.

‘‘Your God and my God are all the same,’’ said Kerbalai, not understanding him. ‘‘God is one for everybody, only people are different. Some are Russian, some are Turks, or some are English—there are many kinds of people, but God is one.’’

‘‘Very good, sir. If all people worship one God, why do you Muslims look upon Christians as your eternal enemies?’’

‘‘Why get angry?’’ said Kerbalai, clasping his stomach with both hands. ‘‘You’re a pope, I’m a Muslim, you say you want to eat, I give . . . Only the rich man sorts out which God is yours, which is mine, but for a poor man, it’s all the same. Eat, please.’’

While a theological discussion was going on in the dukhan, Laevsky drove home and remembered how eerie it had been to drive out at dawn, when the road, the cliffs, and the mountains were wet and dark and the unknown future seemed as frightening as an abyss with no bottom to be seen, while now the raindrops hanging on the grass and rocks sparkled in the sun like diamonds, nature smiled joyfully, and the frightening future was left behind. He kept glancing at the sullen, tear-stained face of Sheshkovsky and ahead at the two carriages in which von Koren, his seconds, and the doctor rode, and it seemed to him as though they were all coming back from a cemetery where they had just buried a difficult, unbearable man who had interfered with all their lives.

‘‘It’s all over,’’ he thought about his past, carefully stroking his neck with his fingers.

On the right side of his neck, near the collar, he had a small swelling, as long and thick as a little finger, and he felt pain, as if someone had passed a hot iron over his neck. It was a contusion from a bullet.

Then, when he got home, a long, strange day, sweet and foggy as oblivion, wore on for him. Like a man released from prison or the hospital, he peered at long-familiar objects and was surprised that the tables, the windows, the chairs, the light and the sea aroused a living, childlike joy in him, such as he had not experienced for a long, long time. Nadezhda Fyodorovna, pale and grown very thin, did not understand his meek voice and strange gait; she hurriedly told him everything that had happened to her... It seemed to her that he probably listened poorly and did not understand her, and that if he learned everything, he would curse and kill her, yet he listened to her, stroked her face and hair, looked into her eyes, and said:

‘‘I have no one but you...’’

Then they sat for a long time in the front garden, pressed to each other, and said nothing, or else, dreaming aloud of their happy future life, they uttered short, abrupt phrases, and it seemed to him that he had never spoken so lengthily and beautifully.

XXI

A LITTLE MORE than three months went by.

The day von Koren had appointed for his departure came. Cold rain had been falling in big drops since early morning, a northeast wind was blowing, and the sea churned itself up in big waves. People said that in such weather the steamer could hardly put into the roads. According to the schedule, it should have come after nine, but von Koren, who went out to the embankment at noon and after dinner, saw nothing through his binoculars but gray waves and rain obscuring the horizon.

Towards the end of the day, the rain stopped, and the wind began to drop noticeably. Von Koren was already reconciled with the thought that he was not to leave that day, and he sat down to play chess with Samoilenko; but when it grew dark, the orderly reported that lights had appeared on the sea and a rocket had been seen.

Von Koren began to hurry. He shouldered a bag, kissed Samoilenko and then the deacon, went around all the rooms quite needlessly, said good-bye to the orderly and the cook, and went out feeling as though he had forgotten something at the doctor’s or at his own place. He went down the street side by side with Samoilenko, followed by the deacon with a box, and behind them all came the orderly with two suitcases. Only Samoilenko and the orderly could make out the dim lights on the sea; the others looked into the darkness and saw nothing. The steamer had stopped far from shore.

‘‘Quick, quick,’’ von Koren urged. ‘‘I’m afraid it will leave!’’

Passing by the three-windowed little house Laevsky had moved into soon after the duel, von Koren could not help looking in the window. Laevsky, bent over, was sitting at a desk, his back to the window, and writing.

‘‘I’m astonished,’’ the zoologist said softly. ‘‘How he’s put the screws to himself !’’

‘‘Yes, it’s worthy of astonishment,’’ sighed Samoilenko. ‘‘He sits like that from morning till evening, sits and works.

He wants to pay his debts. And brother, he lives worse than a beggar!’’

Half a minute passed in silence. The zoologist, the doctor, and the deacon stood by the window, and they all looked at Laevsky.

‘‘So he never left here, poor fellow,’’ said Samoilenko. ‘‘Remember how he fussed about?’’

‘‘Yes, he’s really put the screws to himself,’’ repeated von Koren. ‘‘His marriage, this all-day work for a crust of bread, some new expression in his face, and even his gait—it’s all extraordinary to such a degree that I don’t even know what to call it.’’ The zoologist took Samoilenko by the sleeve and went on with agitation in his voice: ‘‘Tell him and his wife that I was astonished at them as I was leaving, wished them well . . . and ask him, if it’s possible, not to think ill of me. He knows me. He knows that if I could have foreseen this change then, I might have become his best friend.’’

‘‘Go in to him, say good-bye.’’

‘‘No. It’s awkward.’’

‘‘Why? God knows, maybe you’ll never see him again.’’

The zoologist thought a little and said:

‘‘That’s true.’’

Samoilenko tapped softly on the window with his finger. Laevsky gave a start and turned to look.

‘‘Vanya, Nikolai Vassilyich wishes to say good-bye to you,’’ said Samoilenko. ‘‘He’s just leaving.’’

Laevsky got up from the desk and went to the front hall to open the door. Samoilenko, von Koren, and the deacon came in.

‘‘I’ve come for a moment,’’ the zoologist began, taking off his galoshes in the front hall and already regretting that he had given way to his feelings and come in uninvited. (‘‘As if I’m forcing myself on him,’’ he thought, ‘‘and that’s stupid.’’) ‘‘Forgive me for bothering you,’’ he said, following Laevsky into his room, ‘‘but I’m just leaving, and I felt drawn to you. God knows if we’ll ever see each other again.’’

‘‘I’m very glad... I humbly beg you,’’ said Laevsky, and he awkwardly moved chairs for his visitors, as if he wished to bar their way, and stopped in the middle of the room, rubbing his hands.

‘‘I should have left the witnesses outside,’’ thought von Koren, and he said firmly:

‘‘Don’t think ill of me, Ivan Andreich. To forget the past is, of course, impossible, it is all too sad, and I haven’t come here to apologize or to insist that I’m not to blame. I acted sincerely and have not changed my convictions since . . . True, as I now see, to my great joy, I was mistaken concerning you, but one can stumble even on a smooth road, and such is human fate: if you’re not mistaken in the main thing, you’ll be mistaken in the details. No one knows the real truth.’’

‘‘Yes, no one knows the truth . . .’’ said Laevsky.

‘‘Well, good-bye . . . God grant you all good things.’’

Von Koren gave Laevsky his hand; he shook it and bowed.

‘‘So don’t think ill of me,’’ said von Koren. ‘‘Give my greetings to your wife, and tell her I was very sorry I couldn’t say good-bye to her.’’

‘‘She’s here.’’

Laevsky went to the door and said into the other room:

‘‘Nadya, Nikolai Vassilievich wishes to say good-bye to you.’’

Nadezhda Fyodorovna came in; she stopped by the door and looked timidly at the visitors. Her face was guilty and frightened, and she held her arms like a schoolgirl who is being reprimanded.

‘‘I’m just leaving, Nadezhda Fyodorovna,’’ said von Koren, ‘‘and I’ve come to say good-bye.’’

She offered him her hand irresolutely, and Laevsky bowed.

‘‘How pitiful they both are, though!’’ thought von Koren. ‘‘They don’t come by this life cheaply.’’

‘‘I’ll be in Moscow and Petersburg,’’ he asked, ‘‘do you need to have anything sent from there?’’

‘‘Need anything?’’ said Nadezhda Fyodorovna, and she exchanged alarmed glances with her husband. ‘‘Nothing, I believe . . .’’

‘‘No, nothing . . .’’ said Laevsky, rubbing his hands. ‘‘Say hello for us.’’

Von Koren did not know what else could or needed to be said, yet earlier, as he was coming in, he thought he would say a great many good, warm, and significant things. He silently shook hands with Laevsky and his wife and went out with a heavy feeling.

‘‘What people!’’ the deacon was saying in a low voice, walking behind. ‘‘My God, what people! Truly, the right hand of God planted this vineyard! Lord, Lord! One defeated thousands and the other tens of thousands. ³² Nikolai Vassilyich,’’ he said ecstatically, ‘‘know that today you have defeated the greatest human enemy—pride!’’

‘‘Come now, Deacon! What kind of victors are we? Victors look like eagles, but he’s pitiful, timid, downtrodden, he keeps bowing like a Chinese doll, and I ... I feel sad.’’

There was the sound of footsteps behind them. It was Laevsky catching up to see them off. On the pier stood the orderly with the two suitcases, and a little further off, four oarsmen.

‘‘It’s really blowing, though . . . brr!’’ said Samoilenko. ‘‘Must be a whale of a storm out at sea—aie, aie! It’s not a good time to be going, Kolya.’’

‘‘I’m not afraid of seasickness.’’

‘‘That’s not the point... These fools may capsize you. You ought to have gone in the agent’s skiff. Where’s the agent’s skiff ?’’ he shouted to the oarsmen.

‘‘Gone, Your Excellency.’’

‘‘And the customs skiff ?’’

‘‘Also gone.’’

‘‘Why wasn’t it announced?’’ Samoilenko got angry. ‘‘Dunderheads!’’

‘‘Never mind, don’t worry . . .’’ said von Koren. ‘‘Well, good-bye. God keep you.’’

Samoilenko embraced von Koren and crossed him three times.

‘‘Don’t forget me, Kolya . . . Write . . . We’ll expect you next spring.’’

‘‘Good-bye, Deacon,’’ said von Koren, shaking the deacon’s hand. ‘‘Thanks for the company and the good conversation. Think about the expedition.’’

‘‘Lord, yes, even to the ends of the earth!’’ laughed the deacon. ‘‘Am I against it?’’

Von Koren recognized Laevsky in the darkness and silently gave him his hand. The oarsmen were already standing below, holding the boat, which kept knocking against the pilings, though the pier sheltered it from the big swells. Von Koren went down the ladder, jumped into the boat, and sat by the tiller.

‘‘Write!’’ Samoilenko shouted to him. ‘‘Take care of yourself !’’

‘‘No one knows the real truth,’’ thought Laevsky, turning up the collar of his coat and tucking his hands into his sleeves.

The boat briskly rounded the pier and headed into the open. It disappeared among the waves, but shot up at once out of the deep hole onto a high hill, so that it was possible to make out the people and even the oars. The boat went ahead about six yards and was thrown back four.

‘‘Write!’’ shouted Samoilenko. ‘‘What the deuce makes you go in such weather!’’

‘‘Yes, no one knows the real truth . . .’’ thought Laevsky, looking with anguish at the restless, dark sea.

‘‘The boat is thrown back,’’ he thought, ‘‘it makes two steps forward and one step back, but the oarsmen are stubborn, they work the oars tirelessly and do not fear the high waves. The boat goes on and on, now it can no longer be seen, and in half an hour the oarsmen will clearly see the steamer’s lights, and in an hour they’ll already be by the steamer’s ladder. So it is in life... In search of the truth, people make two steps forward and one step back. Sufferings, mistakes, and the tedium of life throw them back, but the thirst for truth and a stubborn will drive them on and on. And who knows? Maybe they’ll row their way to the real truth...’’

‘‘Good-by-y-ye!’’ shouted Samoilenko.

‘‘No sight or sound of them,’’ said the deacon. ‘‘Safe journey!’’

It began to drizzle.

1891

THE STORY OF AN UNKNOWN MAN

I

FOR REASONS OF which now is not the time to speak in detail, I had to go to work as the servant of a certain Petersburg official by the name of Orlov. He was about thirty-five years old and was called Georgiy Ivanych.

I went to work for this Orlov on account of his father, a well-known statesman whom I regarded as a serious enemy of my cause. I reckoned that, from the conversations I would hear and the papers and notes I might find on the desk while living at the son’s, I could learn the father’s plans and intentions in detail.

Ordinarily, at around eleven o’clock the electric bell rattled in my servants’ quarters, letting me know that the master had awakened. When I came to the bedroom with brushed clothing and boots, Georgiy Ivanych would be sitting motionless on the bed, not sleepy, but rather worn out from sleep, and staring at a single spot, showing no pleasure on the occasion of his awakening. I would help him to dress, and he would reluctantly submit to me, silent and not noticing my presence; then, his head wet from washing and smelling of fresh perfume, he would go to the dining room and have coffee. He would sit at the table, drink his coffee, and leaf through the newspapers, while the maid Polya and I stood deferentially by the door and watched him. Two grown-up persons had to watch with the most serious attention as a third drank coffee and nibbled rusks. This is, in all probability, ridiculous and wild, but I did not see anything humiliating to myself in having to stand by the door, though I was as noble and educated a man as Orlov himself.

At that time I had the beginnings of consumption, and along with it something else perhaps more important than consumption. I don’t know whether it was under the influence of illness or of a beginning change in worldview, which I hadn’t noticed then, but day after day I was overcome by a passionate, nagging thirst for ordinary, humdrum life. I craved inner peace, health, good air, satiety. I was becoming a dreamer and, like a dreamer, did not know what in fact I wanted. One time I wanted to go to a monastery and sit there for whole days at the window, looking out at the trees and fields; then I imagined myself buying some fifteen acres and living like a landowner; then I vowed to take up science and unfailingly become a professor at some provincial university. I’m a retired lieutenant of the navy; I daydreamed of the sea, of our squadron, of the corvette that had taken me around the world. I wanted to experience once again that inexpressible feeling when you’re strolling in a tropical forest or watching the sunset on the Bay of Bengal, swooning with rapture and at the same time longing for your motherland. I dreamed of mountains, women, music, and with curiosity, like a boy, peered into faces, listened to voices. And when I stood by the door and watched Orlov drinking coffee, I felt I was not a servant but a man to whom everything in the world was interesting, even Orlov.

Orlov had a Petersburg appearance: narrow shoulders, long waist, sunken temples, eyes of an indeterminate color, and a skimpy, drab growth of hair, beard, and mustache. His face was sleek, worn, and unpleasant. It was especially unpleasant when he was deep in thought or asleep. To describe an ordinary appearance is hardly proper; besides, Petersburg is not Spain, a man’s appearance is of no great importance here, even in amorous matters, and is needful only for impressive servants and coachmen. I began speaking of Orlov’s face and hair only because there was something worth mentioning in his appearance, namely: when Orlov took up a newspaper or book, whatever it might be, or met people, whoever they might be, his eyes began to smile ironically, and his whole face acquired an expression of light, unmalicious mockery. Before reading or listening to something, he prepared his irony each time, like a savage his shield. This was habitual irony of an old cast, and lately it had appeared on his face without any participation of his will, most likely, but as if by reflex. But of that later.

After noon, with an expression of irony, he would take his briefcase stuffed with papers and drive off to work. He would dine out and return home after eight. I would light the lamp and some candles in his study, and he would sit in an armchair, his legs stretched out on a chair, and, sprawled like that, begin to read. Almost every day he brought home new books or had them sent from the shops, and in my servants’ quarters in the corners and under my bed lay a host of books in three languages, not counting Russian, already read and discarded. He read with extraordinary speed. They say, tell me what you’ve read and I’ll tell you who you are. That may be true, but it was positively impossible to judge Orlov by the books he read. It was some sort of hodgepodge. Philosophy, French novels, political economy, finance, the new poets, publications of The Mediator—and he read it all with equal speed and with the same ironic look in his eyes.

After ten, he would dress carefully, often in a tailcoat, very rarely in his kammerjunker’s uniform,¹ and drive off. He would return towards morning.

We lived quietly and peacefully, and there were no misunderstandings between us. Ordinarily he did not notice my presence, and when he spoke to me, there was no ironic expression on his face—evidently he did not regard me as a human being.

Only once did I see him angry. One time—this was a week after I went to work for him—he came back from some dinner at around nine o’clock, his face was capricious, weary. As I followed him into the study to light the candles there, he said to me:

‘‘It stinks of something in our rooms.’’

‘‘No, the air is clean,’’ I replied.

‘‘And I tell you it stinks,’’ he repeated irritably.

‘‘I air the rooms every day.’’

‘‘Don’t talk back, blockhead!’’ he shouted.

I was offended and was about to object, and God knows how it would have ended if Polya, who knew her master better than I, had not intervened.

‘‘Indeed, what a bad smell!’’ she said, raising her eyebrows. ‘‘What could it be? Stepan, open the windows in the drawing room and start the fire.’’

She ah’d and fussed and went around all the rooms, rustling her skirts and hissing with atomizers. But Orlov was still in bad spirits; he obviously kept himself from being angry out loud, sat at the desk, and quickly began writing a letter. After writing several lines, he snorted angrily and tore up the letter, then began writing again.

‘‘Devil take them!’’ he muttered. ‘‘They want to leave me with a monstrous memory!’’

Finally the letter got written; he stood up from the desk and said, turning to me:

‘‘Go to Znamenskaya Street and deliver this letter to Zinaida Fyodorovna Krasnovsky, into her own hands. But first ask the porter whether the husband, that is, Mr. Krasnovsky, has returned. If he has, don’t deliver the letter, and come back. Wait! . . . In case she asks if there are any people at my place, tell her that some two gentlemen have been sitting with me and writing something since eight in the morning.’’

I went to Znamenskaya Street. The porter told me that Mr. Krasnovsky had not returned yet, and I went to the third floor. A tall, fat, drab servant with black side-whiskers opened the door for me and sleepily, sluggishly, and rudely, as only a servant can speak to a servant, asked me what I wanted. Before I had time to reply, a lady in a black gown quickly came into the front hall from the drawing room. She narrowed her eyes at me.

‘‘Is Zinaida Fyodorovna at home?’’ I asked.

‘‘That’s me,’’ said the lady.

‘‘A letter from Georgiy Ivanych.’’

She impatiently unsealed the letter and, holding it in both hands, displaying her diamond rings for me, began to read. I made out a white face with soft features, a prominent chin, long dark eyelashes. By the looks of her, I would have given this lady no more than twenty-five years.

‘‘Greet him and thank him for me,’’ she said when she finished reading. ‘‘Is there anyone with Georgiy Ivanych?’’ she asked softly, joyfully, and as if ashamed of her mistrust.

‘‘Some two gentlemen,’’ I replied. ‘‘Writing something.’’

‘‘Greet him and thank him for me,’’ she repeated, and inclining her head to one side and reading the letter on the way, she noiselessly went out.

I was meeting few women then, and this lady, whom I had seen fleetingly, made an impression on me. Going back home on foot, I recalled her face and the subtle scent of perfume and dreamed. When I returned, Orlov was no longer at home.

II

AND SO MY master and I lived quietly and peacefully, but all the same, the impure and offensive thing I had been so afraid of when I went to work as a servant was there and made itself felt every day. I did not get along with Polya. She was a well-nourished, pampered creature, who adored Orlov because he was a master, and despised me because I was a servant. Probably, from the point of view of a real servant or a cook, she was seductive: ruddy cheeks, upturned nose, narrow eyes, and a fullness of body that verged on plumpness. She used powder, painted her eyebrows and lips, wore tight corsets and a bustle, and a coin bracelet. She walked with small, bouncy steps; as she went, she twitched or, as they say, wagged her shoulders and behind. In the mornings, when she and I tidied the rooms, the rustling of her skirts, the creaking of her corset, and the jingling of her bracelet, and that boorish smell of lipstick, toilet water, and perfume stolen from her master, aroused a feeling in me as though she and I were doing something loathsome together.

Because I didn’t steal with her, or didn’t show any desire to become her lover, which probably insulted her, or maybe because she sensed a stranger in me, she conceived a hatred for me from the first day on. My ineptitude, my nonservant appearance, and my illness seemed pathetic to her and made her feel squeamish. I coughed badly then and sometimes prevented her from sleeping at night, since her room and mine were separated only by a wooden partition, and every morning she said to me:

‘‘Again you didn’t let me sleep. You should be in the hospital, not in a gentleman’s house.’’

She believed so sincerely that I was not a human being but something placed immeasurably beneath her, that, like Roman matrons, who were not embarrassed to bathe in the presence of their slaves, she sometimes went around in front of me in nothing but her shift.

Once over dinner (we had soup and roast brought from a tavern every day), when I was in a splendid dreamy mood, I asked:

‘‘Polya, do you believe in God?’’

‘‘As if I didn’t!’’

‘‘So then you believe,’’ I went on, ‘‘that there will be a last judgment and we will answer to God for each of our bad acts?’’

She said nothing in reply and only made a scornful grimace, and, looking this time into her cold, sated eyes, I realized that for this wholesome, fully finished nature, there was neither God, nor conscience, nor laws, and that if I had needed to kill, steal, or set a fire, money couldn’t have bought me a better accomplice.

In an inhabitual situation, and unaccustomed as I was to being addressed informally and to constant lying (saying ‘‘The master is not at home’’ when he was), my first week of life at Orlov’s wasn’t easy. In a servant’s tailcoat, I felt as if I was wearing armor. But then I got used to it. I served, tidied the rooms, ran and drove about on all sorts of errands like a real servant. When Orlov didn’t feel like going to a rendezvous with Zinaida Fyodorovna, or when he forgot that he had promised to call on her, I went to Znamenskaya, delivered a letter there into her own hands, and lied. And the result was not at all what I had expected on becoming a servant; each day of this new life of mine turned out to be a waste both for me and for my cause, since Orlov never spoke of his father, nor did his guests, and of the activity of the well-known statesman all I knew was what I managed, as before, to glean from the newspapers and correspondence with friends. The hundreds of notes and documents I found in the study and read, did not have even a remote connection with what I was looking for. Orlov was totally indifferent to his father’s much-touted activity and looked as if he had never heard of it, or as if his father had died long ago.

III

ON THURSDAYS WE received guests.

I would order a roast from a restaurant and telephone Eliseev ² to have them send us caviar, cheese, oysters, and so forth. I would buy cards. Since morning Polya would be preparing the tea things and laying the supper table. To tell the truth, this slight activity diversified our idle life somewhat, and Thursdays were our most interesting days.

Only three guests used to come. The most solid and perhaps the most interesting was a guest by the name of Pekarsky, a tall lean man of about forty-five, with a long hooked nose, a big black beard, and a bald spot. He had large protruding eyes and a serious, pensive expression on his face, like a Greek philosopher’s. He worked in railway administration and in a bank, was a legal adviser in some important government institution, and maintained business relations with a number of private persons as a trustee, committee chairman, and so on. He was of quite low rank and modestly referred to himself as an attorney-at-law, but his influence was enormous. His calling card or a note was enough for you to be received without waiting by a famous doctor, a railway director, or an important official; it was said that through his patronage you even could obtain a fourth-class post or hush up any unpleasant matter you liked. He was considered a very intelligent man, but his was some sort of special, strange intelligence. In an instant he could multiply 213 by 373 or calculate the exchange of sterling for marks without the aid of a pencil or any tables, had an excellent knowledge of the railway business and finance, and nothing that concerned administration held any secrets for him; in civil cases, he was said to be a most skillful lawyer, and it was not easy to go up against him. But this extraordinary intelligence was totally uncomprehending of much that is known even to some stupid men. Thus he decidedly could not comprehend why people get bored, weep, shoot themselves, and even kill others, why they worry over things and events that do not concern them personally, and why they laugh when they read Gogol or Shchedrin³... All that is abstract, vanishing into the realm of thought and feeling, was incomprehensible and boring for him, like music for someone with no ear. He looked at people only from a business point of view, and divided them into the capable and the incapable. No other divisions existed for him. Honesty and decency merely constitute a sign of capability. To carouse, play cards, and indulge in depravity is possible but only so long as it doesn’t interfere with business. To believe in God is not intelligent, but religion should be protected as a necessary restraining principle for the people, otherwise they won’t work. Punishment is needed only to instill fear. There’s no reason for going to country houses, since it’s quite nice in the city. And so on. He was a widower, had no children, but lived in grand family style and paid three thousand a year in rent.

The second guest, Kukushkin, an actual state councillor⁴ of the younger generation, was not very tall and was distinguished by a highly unpleasant expression, which came from the disproportion between his fat, pudgy body and his small, lean face. His lips were shaped like a little heart, and his trimmed little mustache looked as though it had been stuck on with varnish. He was a man with the manner of a lizard. He did not walk but somehow crept in with tiny mincing steps, swaying and tittering, and he bared his teeth when he laughed. He was an official on special assignment to someone, and did nothing, though he earned a big salary, particularly during the summer, when special business trips were invented for him. He was a careerist, not to the marrow of his bones but much deeper, to the last drop of blood and with that, a petty careerist, unsure of himself, who had built his career on nothing but handouts. For some small foreign cross, or for having it published in the newspapers that he had been present at a memorial or a prayer service together with certain high-ranking individuals, he was ready for any humiliation, ready to beg, flatter, promise. He flattered Orlov and Pekarsky out of cowardice, because he considered them powerful, flattered Polya and me because we served an influential person. Each time I relieved him of his fur coat, he tittered and asked me: ‘‘Are you married, Stepan?’’—and then came scabrous banalities, as a sign of special attention to me. Kukushkin flattered Orlov’s weaknesses, his depravity, his satiety; to please him, he pretended to be a godless and wicked scoffer, criticized with him those before whom, in other places, he was a slavish hypocrite. When there was conversation about love and women over supper, he pretended to be a refined and subtle debauchee. In general, it must be noted, Petersburg philanderers enjoy talking about their extraordinary tastes. Your actual state councillor of the younger generation is excellently well satisfied with the caresses of his scullery maid or some wretched girl strolling on Nevsky Prospect, ⁵ but to listen to him, he is contaminated by all the vices of Orient and Occident, is an honorary member of a whole dozen secret reprehensible societies, and is under police surveillance. Kukushkin lied shamelessly about himself, and it was not that they didn’t believe him, but all his fabrications somehow went right past their ears.

The third guest was Gruzin, son of a respectable, learned general, Orlov’s peer, long-haired and weak-sighted, blond, with gold spectacles. I recall his long pale fingers, like a pianist’s; and in his whole figure there was something of the musician, the virtuoso. Such figures play first violin in orchestras. He coughed and suffered from migraine, and generally seemed sickly and frail. At home they probably helped him to dress and undress like a child. He graduated from law school and served first in the Justice Department, then was transferred to the Senate,⁶ left there and received through connections a post in the Ministry of State Property, and soon left again. In my time he was serving in Orlov’s department, was a chief clerk, but kept saying that he would soon go back to the Justice Department. He treated his service and his migrations from place to place with a rare light-mindedness, and when people spoke seriously about ranks, decorations, and salaries in his presence, he smiled good-naturedly and repeated an aphorism from Prutkov:⁷ ‘‘One learns the truth only in government service!’’ He had a small wife with a shriveled face, a very jealous woman, and five skinny children; he was unfaithful to his wife, loved his children only when he saw them, and in general was quite indifferent to his family and made fun of them. He and his family lived in debt, borrowing wherever and from whom-ever at every convenient opportunity, not excluding even his superiors and porters. He was of a flimsy nature, lazy to the point of total indifference to himself, and drifted with the current, no one knew where or why. Wherever he was taken, he went. If he was taken to some dive, he went; if wine was put in front of him, he drank; if not, he didn’t; if wives were denounced in his presence, he denounced his, maintaining that she had ruined his life; but if they were praised, he also praised his and said sincerely: ‘‘I love the poor thing very much.’’ He had no winter coat and always wore a plaid, which smelled of the nursery. When he lapsed into thought over supper, rolling little balls of bread and drinking a good deal of red wine, then, strangely enough, I was almost certain that there was something sitting in him which he probably sensed vaguely himself, but which, because of bustle and banalities, he never managed to understand and appreciate. He played the piano a little. He would sit down at the piano, strike two or three chords, and sing softly:

What does the morrow hold for me?⁸

but then at once, as if frightened, he would get up and move further away from the piano.

The guests usually arrived by ten o’clock. They would play cards in Orlov’s study while Polya and I served them tea. Only here could I properly perceive all the sweetness of lackeydom. To stand at the door for a stretch of four or five hours, seeing that no glasses remained empty, changing ashtrays, running to the table to pick up a dropped piece of chalk or a card, but, above all, to stand, to wait, to be attentive, not daring to speak or cough or smile—that, I can assure you, is harder than any hard peasant labor. I once stood a four-hour watch through stormy winter nights, and I find standing watch incomparably easier.

They would play cards till two, sometimes till three, then, stretching, would go to the dining room to have supper, or, as Orlov used to say, a bite to eat. They talked over supper. It usually began with Orlov, his eyes laughing, initiating a conversation about some acquaintance, about a recently read book, about a new appointment or project; the flattering Kukushkin would pick up in the same tone, and there would begin, for the mood I was then in, a most disgusting music. The irony of Orlov and his friends knew no bounds and spared no one and nothing. If they talked about religion—irony; if about philosophy and the meaning and aims of life—irony; if anyone raised the question of the people—irony. In Petersburg there exists a peculiar breed of people who are specially occupied with making fun of every phenomenon of life; they cannot even pass by a starveling or a suicide without uttering some banality. But Orlov and his friends did not joke or make fun, they spoke with irony. They said there is no God and at death a person vanishes completely; immortals exist only in the French Academy. ⁹ There is no true good and cannot be, because its existence depends on human perfection, and the latter is a logical absurdity. Russia is as dull and squalid a country as Persia. The intelligentsia is hopeless; in Pekarsky’s opinion, the vast majority of it consists of incapable and good-for-nothing people. The folk are drunken, lazy, thievish, and degenerate. We have no science, our literature is bumpkinish, trade survives by swindling: ‘‘No deceit—no sale.’’ And all of it in the same vein, and all of it funny.

Wine made them merrier towards the end of supper, and they would go on to merry conversations. They would make fun of Gruzin’s family life, of Kukushkin’s conquests, or of Pekarsky, whose account book supposedly had a page with the heading For Works of Charity, and another For Physiological Needs. They said there were no faithful wives; there was no wife from whom, given a certain knack, one could not obtain caresses without leaving the drawing room, with the husband sitting right next door in his study. Adolescent girls are depraved and already know everything. Orlov keeps the letter of one fourteen-year-old schoolgirl; on her way home from school, she ‘‘hitched up with a little officer on Nevsky’’ who supposedly took her to his place and let her go only late at night, and she hastened to write to a friend about it in order to share her rapture. They said that there is not and never has been any purity of morals, that it is obviously not needed; mankind has so far done perfectly well without it. The harmfulness of so-called depravity is undoubtedly exaggerated. The perversity specified in our penal code did not keep Diogenes¹⁰ from being a philosopher and a teacher; Caesar and Cicero were debauchees and at the same time great men. Old Cato¹¹ married a young girl and, even so, went on being considered a strict faster and observer of morals.

At three or four o’clock, the guests would go home or drive out of town together, or to Ofitserskaya Street to visit some Varvara Osipovna, and I would go to my room in the servants’ quarters and lie awake for a long time with a headache and a cough.

IV

A BOUT THREE WEEKS after I went to work for Orlov, on a Sunday morning, as I recall, someone rang the bell. It was past ten o’clock, and Orlov was still asleep. I went to open the door. You can imagine my amazement: outside on the landing stood a lady in a veil.

‘‘Is Georgiy Ivanych up?’’ she asked.

And by her voice I knew it was Zinaida Fyodorovna, to whom I brought letters on Znamenskaya. I don’t remember whether I had time or was able to answer her—I was confused by her appearance. But she had no need of my answer. In an instant she darted past me, and, having filled the front hall with the fragrance of her perfume, which to this day I remember perfectly well, she went in, and the sound of her footsteps died away. For at least half an hour after that, nothing was heard. But then someone rang again. This time some spruced-up girl, apparently a maid from a wealthy house, and our porter, both out of breath, brought in two suitcases and a wicker trunk.

‘‘For Zinaida Fyodorovna,’’ said the girl.

And she left without saying another word. All this was mysterious and evoked a sly smile in Polya, who stood in awe of her master’s pranks. It was as if she meant to say: ‘‘See how we are!’’—and she went around all the while on tiptoe. Finally footsteps were heard; Zinaida Fyodorovna quickly came into the front hall and, seeing me in the doorway of my servants’ quarters, said:

‘‘Stepan, go and dress Georgiy Ivanych.’’

When I came into Orlov’s room with his clothes and boots, he was sitting on his bed, his feet dangling on the bearskin rug. His whole figure expressed confusion. He didn’t notice me, and my servant’s opinion didn’t interest him: obviously he was confused and abashed before himself, before his own ‘‘inner eye.’’ He dressed, washed, and then fussed silently and unhurriedly with his brushes and combs, as if giving himself time to think over and figure out his situation, and even by his back you could see that he was confused and displeased with himself.

They had coffee together. Zinaida Fyodorovna poured for herself and for Orlov, then leaned her elbows on the table and laughed.

‘‘I still can’t believe it,’’ she said. ‘‘When you travel for a long time and then arrive at a hotel, it’s hard to believe there’s no need to keep going. It’s nice to breathe easy.’’

With the expression of a little girl who wants very much to do some mischief, she breathed easy and laughed again.

‘‘Excuse me,’’ said Orlov, nodding towards the newspapers. ‘‘Reading over coffee is an invincible habit of mine. But I can do the two things at once: read and listen.’’

‘‘Read, read . . . Your habits and your freedom will remain yours. But why do you have such a lenten look? Are you always this way in the mornings, or just today? You’re not glad?’’

‘‘On the contrary. But I confess I’m a little stunned.’’

‘‘Why? You had time to prepare for my invasion. I’ve been threatening you every day.’’

‘‘Yes, but I didn’t expect you to carry out your threat precisely today.’’

‘‘I didn’t expect it myself, but it’s better so. Better, my friend. To pull the aching tooth all at once and—be done.’’

‘‘Yes, of course.’’

‘‘Ah, my dear!’’ she said, closing her eyes. ‘‘All’s well that ends well, but before it ended well, how much grief there was! Never mind that I laugh; I’m glad, happy, but I feel more like weeping than laughing. Yesterday I went through a whole battle,’’ she continued in French. ‘‘God alone knows how hard it was for me. But I’m laughing because I find it hard to believe. It seems to me that I’m sitting and having coffee with you not in reality but in a dream.’’

Then, continuing to speak in French, she told him how she broke up with her husband the day before, and her eyes now filled with tears, now laughed and looked admiringly at Orlov. She told him that her husband had long suspected her but was avoiding an explanation; they quarreled very often, and usually, at the height of a quarrel, he would suddenly fall silent and go to his study, so as not to voice his suspicions in a sudden outburst, and so that she herself would not begin to explain. Zinaida Fyodorovna felt guilty, worthless, incapable of a bold, serious step, and that made her hate herself and her husband more strongly every day and to suffer as if in hell. But yesterday, during a quarrel, when he cried out in a tearful voice: ‘‘My God, when will it all end?’’— and went to his study, she chased after him like a cat after a mouse and, keeping him from closing the door behind him, cried out that she hated him with all her soul. Then he let her into the study, and she told him everything and confessed that she loved another man, that this other man was her true, most lawful husband, and she considered it a duty of conscience to move to his place that very day, despite anything, even if she had to go through cannon fire.

‘‘There’s the strong pulse of a romantic vein in you,’’ Orlov interrupted her, not taking his eyes from the newspaper.

She laughed and went on with her story, not touching her coffee. Her cheeks were burning, this embarrassed her slightly, and she kept glancing abashedly at me and Polya. From her further account I learned that her husband had answered her with reproaches, threats, and finally with tears, and it would have been more correct to say that it was not she but he who had gone through a battle.

‘‘Yes, my friend, while my nerves were aroused, it all went beautifully,’’ she told him, ‘‘but as soon as night came, I lost heart. You don’t believe in God, Georges, but I believe a little, and I’m afraid of retribution. God demands patience of us, magnanimity, self-sacrifice, and here I refuse to suffer and want to set up my life in my own way. Is that good? But what if it’s suddenly not good from God’s point of view? At two o’clock in the morning my husband came into my room and said: ‘You won’t dare to leave. I’ll summons you back with a scandal, through the police.’ And a short time later, I see he’s in the doorway again, like a shadow. ‘Have mercy on me. Your running away may harm my career.’ Those words had a rude effect on me, they made me feel covered with rust, I thought the retribution was already beginning, and I began to weep and tremble with fear. It seemed to me that the ceiling was going to collapse on me, that I’d be taken to the police at once, that you would stop loving me—in short, God knows what! I’ll go to a convent, I thought, or be a sick-nurse somewhere, and renounce my happiness, but here I remembered that you loved me and that I had no right to dispose of myself without your knowledge, and everything in my head began to get muddled, and I was in despair, I didn’t know what to think or do. But the sun rose, and I became cheerful again. I waited till morning and came racing to you. Ah, how worn out I am, my dear! I haven’t slept for two nights in a row!’’

She was weary and excited. She wanted at the same time to sleep and talk endlessly, and laugh, and cry, and go to a restaurant for lunch, so as to feel herself free.

‘‘Your apartment is cozy, but I’m afraid it will be too small for two,’’ she said after coffee, quickly walking through all the rooms. ‘‘Which room will you give me? I like this one, because it’s next to your study.’’

After one, she changed her clothes in the room next to the study, which after that she began to call hers, and drove off with Orlov to have lunch. They also dined in a restaurant and spent the long stretch between lunch and dinner driving from shop to shop. I kept opening the door to shop clerks and messengers till late in the evening, receiving various purchases. Among other things, they brought a magnificent pier glass, a toilet table, a bed, and a splendid tea service, which we didn’t need. They brought a whole family of copper pots, which we placed side by side on a shelf in our empty, cold kitchen. As we unwrapped the tea service, Polya’s eyes lit up, and she glanced at me two or three times with hatred and fear that maybe not she but I would be the first to steal one of those graceful little cups. They brought a lady’s desk, very expensive but uncomfortable. Evidently Zinaida Fyodorovna had the intention of lodging firmly with us as mistress of the house.

She and Orlov came back after nine. Filled with the proud awareness of having accomplished something brave and extraordinary, passionately in love, and, as it seemed to her, loved passionately, languorous, anticipating a sound and happy sleep, Zinaida Fyodorovna reveled in her new life. Overflowing with happiness, she clasped her hands tightly, convinced that everything was beautiful, and vowed that she would love eternally, and these vows, and her naïve, almost childlike confidence that she was also truly loved and would be loved eternally, made her five years younger. She talked sweet nonsense and laughed at herself.

‘‘There’s no higher good than freedom!’’ she said, forcing herself to say something serious and significant. ‘‘How preposterous it is, if you stop to think! We give no value to our own opinion, even if it’s intelligent, but we tremble before the opinion of various fools. Up to the last minute, I was afraid of other people’s opinion, but as soon as I listened to myself and decided to live in my own way, my eyes were opened, I overcame my foolish fear, and now I’m happy and wish everyone such happiness.’’

But her train of thought immediately broke off, and she began talking about a new apartment, wallpaper, horses, traveling to Switzerland and Italy. Orlov, however, was weary from driving around to restaurants and shops, and continued to feel the same confusion before himself that I had noticed in him that morning. He smiled, but more out of politeness than pleasure, and when she said something serious, he ironically agreed: ‘‘Oh, yes!’’

‘‘Stepan, you must find a good cook at once,’’ she turned to me.

‘‘No point hurrying with kitchen matters,’’ said Orlov, giving me a cold look. ‘‘We’ll have to move to a new apartment first.’’

He had never kept a cook or horses because, as he put it, he didn’t want to ‘‘install any mess around him,’’ and he tolerated Polya and me in his apartment only out of necessity. The so-called family hearth with its ordinary joys and squabbles offended his taste, as a banality; to be pregnant or have children and talk about them was bad tone, philistinism. And I now found it extremely curious to picture how these two beings would get along in the same apartment—she, housewifely and practical, with her copper pans and dreams of a good cook and horses, and he, who had often said to his friends that, like a good ship of war, the apartment of a decent, clean man should have nothing superfluous in it— no women, no children, no rags, no kitchenware . . .

V

NOW I’LL TELL you what happened the next Thursday. On that day Orlov and Zinaida Fyodorovna dined at Contan’s or Donon’s. Orlov returned home alone, while Zinaida Fyodorovna, as I learned later, went to her old governess on the Petersburg side, to wait out the time while we were having guests. Orlov didn’t want to show her to his friends. I realized it in the morning over coffee, when he began assuring her that, for the sake of her peace, it would be necessary to cancel the Thursdays.

The guests, as usual, arrived at almost the same time.

‘‘And is the lady at home?’’ Kukushkin asked me in a whisper.

‘‘No, sir,’’ I replied.

He went in with sly, unctuous eyes, smiling mysteriously and rubbing his hands from the cold.

‘‘I have the honor of congratulating you,’’ he said to Orlov, his whole body trembling with obsequious, servile laughter. ‘‘I wish you to be fruitful and multiply like the cedars of Lebanon.’’ ¹²

The guests went to the bedroom and there exercised their wit at the expense of the woman’s slippers, the rug between the two beds, and the gray bed jacket that was hanging on the back of one bed. They found it funny that this stubborn man, who scorned everything ordinary in love, had suddenly been caught in a woman’s net in such a simple and ordinary way.

‘‘What thou hast mocked, that hast thou also served,’’ Kukushkin repeated several times, having, incidentally, the unpleasant affectation of flaunting Church Slavonic texts.¹³ ‘‘Quiet!’’ he whispered, putting his finger to his lips, as they went from the bedroom to the room next to the study. ‘‘Shhh! Here Margarete dreams of her Faust.’’¹⁴

And he rocked with laughter, as if he had said something terribly funny. I peered at Gruzin, expecting that his musical soul would be unable to bear that laughter, but I was mistaken. His kind, lean face beamed with pleasure. When they sat down to play cards, he said, swallowing his R’s and spluttering with laughter, that to attain full family happiness, it now only remained for Georginka to acquire a cherry-wood chibouk and a guitar. Pekarsky chuckled sedately, but it could be seen from his concentrated expression that he found Orlov’s new love story unpleasant. He did not understand what in fact had happened.

‘‘But what about the husband?’’ he asked in perplexity when they had played three rubbers.

‘‘I don’t know,’’ Orlov replied.

Pekarsky combed his big beard with his fingers and fell to thinking and was silent afterwards right up until supper. When they sat down to supper, he said slowly, drawing out each word:

‘‘Generally, excuse me, but I don’t understand the two of you. You could be in love with each other and break the seventh commandment as much as you like—that I understand. Yes, that I understand. But why initiate the husband into your secrets? Was it really necessary?’’

‘‘But does it make any difference?’’

‘‘Hm . . .’’ Pekarsky fell to thinking. ‘‘I’ll tell you this, my gentle friend,’’ he went on with evident mental strain, ‘‘if I ever get married a second time, and you decide to make me a cuckold, do it so that I don’t notice. It’s much more honest to deceive a man than to spoil the order of his life and his reputation. I understand. You both think that by living openly, you are acting with extraordinary honesty and liberalism, but with this...how is it called? . . . with this romanticism I cannot agree.’’

Orlov made no reply. He was out of sorts and did not want to talk. Pekarsky, continuing to be perplexed, drummed the table with his fingers, thought, and said:

‘‘I still don’t understand the two of you. You’re not a student, and she’s not a seamstress. You’re both people of means. I suppose you could arrange a separate apartment for her.’’

‘‘No, I couldn’t. Go and read Turgenev.’’¹⁵

‘‘Why should I read him? I already have.’’

‘‘Turgenev teaches in his works that every noble-hearted, honest-minded girl should go to the ends of the earth with the man she loves and serve his idea,’’ Orlov said, narrowing his eyes ironically. ‘‘The end of the world is licentia poëtica: the whole world, with all its ends, is located in the apartment of the man she loves. Therefore, not to live in the same apartment with the woman who loves you—means to reject her in her lofty purpose and not to share her ideals. Yes, my dear fellow, Turgenev wrote this porridge, and now I have to slop it up for him.’’

‘‘I don’t understand what Turgenev has to do with it,’’ Gruzin said softly and shrugged his shoulders. ‘‘But do you remember, Georginka, how, in ‘Three Meetings,’ he’s walking late in the evening somewhere in Italy and suddenly hears: ‘Vieni pensando a me segretamente!’ ’’⁵ Gruzin sang. ‘‘That’s good!’’

‘‘But she didn’t force herself on you,’’ said Pekarsky. ‘‘You wanted it yourself.’’

‘‘Well, that’s a good one! I not only didn’t want it, I didn’t even think it would ever happen. When she said she’d move in with me, I thought it was a nice joke.’’

They all laughed.

‘‘I couldn’t want it,’’ Orlov went on in such a tone as if he felt forced to justify himself. ‘‘I’m not a Turgenev hero, and if I ever need to liberate Bulgaria,¹⁶ I won’t want the company of women. I look at love first of all as a need of my organism, low and hostile to my spirit; it should be satisfied reasonably or renounced entirely, otherwise it will introduce elements as impure as itself into your life. So that it will be an enjoyment and not a torment, I try to make it beautiful and surround it with a host of illusions. I will not go to a woman if I’m not convinced beforehand that she will be beautiful, attractive; nor will I go to her if I’m not at my best myself. And it’s only under those conditions that we manage to deceive each other, and it seems to us that we love and are happy. But can I want copper pans and uncombed hair, or that I should be seen when I’m unwashed and out of sorts? Zinaida Fyodorovna, in the simplicity of her heart, wants to make me love something I’ve been hiding from all my life. She wants my apartment to smell of cooking and dishwashing; she needs to move noisily to a new apartment, drive around with her own horses; she needs to count my linen and look after my health; she needs to interfere in my private life every moment and watch over my every step, and at the same time to assure me sincerely that my habits and freedom will remain my own. She’s convinced that we’ll

take a trip in the nearest future, like newlyweds; that is, she wants to be with me constantly on the train and in hotels, and yet I like to read when I travel and can’t bear talking.’’

‘‘But you can admonish her,’’ said Pekarsky.

‘‘How? Do you think she’d understand me? Mercy, we think so differently! In her opinion, to leave her papa and mama or her husband for the man she loves is the height of civic courage, but in my opinion, it’s childishness. To fall in love, to become intimate with a man, means starting a new life for her, but in my opinion, it doesn’t mean anything. Love and a man constitute the main essence of her life, and maybe in this respect the philosophy of the unconscious¹⁷ is at work in her. Try convincing her that love is only a simple need, like food and clothing, that the world is by no means perishing because husbands and wives are bad, that one can be a debauchee, a seducer, and at the same time a man of genius and nobility, and, on the other hand, that one can renounce the pleasures of love and at the same time be a stupid, wicked animal. The contemporary cultured man, even if he stands very low—a French worker, for instance— spends ten sous a day on dinner, five sous on wine to go with dinner, and from five to ten sous on a woman, while giving his mind and nerves entirely to his work. Zinaida Fyodorovna gives not sous but her whole soul to love. I could perhaps admonish her, but in reply, she’ll cry out sincerely that I have ruined her, that she has nothing left in life.’’

‘‘Don’t say anything to her,’’ said Pekarsky, ‘‘simply rent a separate apartment for her. That’s all.’’

‘‘It’s easy to say . . .’’

A brief silence ensued.

‘‘But she’s sweet,’’ said Kukushkin. ‘‘She’s charming. Such women imagine they’re going to love eternally and give themselves with pathos.’’

‘‘But you’ve got to have a head on your shoulders,’’ said Orlov, ‘‘you’ve got to reason. All the experiences known to us from everyday life, and set down in the scrolls of countless novels and plays, unanimously confirm that no adulterous relations and cohabitations among decent people, however great their love is in the beginning, last longer than two years, three at the most. She should know that. And so all these moves, pots and pans, and hopes for eternal love and harmony, are nothing more than a wish to deceive herself and me. She’s sweet and charming—who’s arguing? But she has upset the applecart of my life. What I’ve considered stuff and nonsense till now, she forces me to raise to the degree of a serious question, I serve an idol I’ve never considered a god. She’s sweet and charming, but for some reason now, when I come home from work, I’m uneasy at heart, as if I expect to encounter some discomfort at home, like stove-makers who have dismantled all the stoves and heaped up mountains of bricks. In short, it’s not sous that I give for love now, it’s part of my peace and my nerves. And that’s bad.’’

‘‘And what if she could hear this villain!’’ sighed Kukushkin. ‘‘My dear sir,’’ he said theatrically, ‘‘I shall release you from the onerous duty of loving this charming being! I shall woo Zinaida Fyodorovna away from you!’’

‘‘Go ahead . . .’’ Orlov said carelessly.

For half a minute Kukushkin laughed in a thin little voice and shook all over, then he said:

‘‘Watch out, I’m not joking! Please don’t play the Othello afterwards!’’

They all began talking about how indefatigable Kukushkin was in amorous affairs, how irresistible he was for women and dangerous for husbands, and how devils would roast him on hot coals in the other world for his dissolute life. He kept silent and narrowed his eyes, and when ladies of his acquaintance were named, he shook his little finger threateningly—meaning, don’t give away other people’s secrets. Orlov suddenly looked at his watch.

The guests understood and made ready to leave. I remember Gruzin, drunk on wine, this time was painfully long getting dressed. He put on his coat, which resembled the capotes they used to make for children in unwealthy families, raised his collar, and began telling something lengthy; then, seeing that no one was listening to him, he threw his plaid that smelled of the nursery over his shoulder, and asked me, with a guilty, pleading look, to find his hat.

‘‘Georginka, my angel!’’ he said tenderly. ‘‘Listen to me, dearest, let’s take a drive out of town!’’

‘‘You go, I can’t. I have the status of a married man now.’’

‘‘She’s nice, she won’t be angry. My kindly superior, let’s go! The weather’s splendid, a little blizzard, a little frost . . . Word of honor, you need shaking up, you’re out of sorts, devil knows . . .’’

Orlov stretched, yawned, and looked at Pekarsky.

‘‘Will you go?’’ he asked, reconsidering.

‘‘Don’t know. Perhaps.’’

‘‘At least get drunk, eh? All right, I’ll go,’’ Orlov decided after some hesitation. ‘‘Wait, I’ll go and get some money.’’

He went to his study, and Gruzin trudged after him, dragging his plaid behind him. A moment later, they both came back to the front hall. Gruzin, tipsy and very pleased, crumpled a ten-rouble note in his hand.

‘‘We’ll settle up tomorrow,’’ he said. ‘‘And she’s kind, she won’t be angry... She’s my Lizochka’s godmother, I love her, poor woman. Ah, my dear man!’’ he suddenly laughed joyfully and pressed his forehead to Pekarsky’s back. ‘‘Ah, Pekarsky, my soul! Attornissimus, dry as a dry rusk, but he sure likes women . . .’’

‘‘Add: fat ones,’’ said Orlov, putting on his fur coat. ‘‘However, let’s go, or else we’ll meet her in the doorway.’’

‘‘Vieni pensando a me segretamente! ’’ sang Gruzin.

They finally left. Orlov did not spend the night at home and came back only by dinnertime the next day.

VI

ZINAIDA FYODOROVNA’S GOLDEN watch, once given to her by her father, disappeared. This disappearance astonished and frightened her. For half a day she walked through all the rooms, looking in perplexity at the tables and windowsills, but the watch had vanished into thin air.

Soon after that, about three days later, Zinaida Fyodorovna, having come back from somewhere, forgot her purse in the front hall. Fortunately for me, it was not I who helped her out of her things but Polya. When the purse was found missing, it was no longer in the front hall.

‘‘Strange!’’ Zinaida Fyodorovna was puzzled. ‘‘I remember perfectly well taking it out of my pocket to pay the cabby...and then putting it here by the mirror. Wonders!’’

I hadn’t stolen it, but a feeling came over me as if I had stolen it and had been caught. Tears even came to my eyes. When they sat down to dinner, Zinaida Fyodorovna said to Orlov in French:

‘‘We have ghosts here. Today I lost my purse in the front hall, but I looked just now, and it was lying on my desk. But it was not an unmercenary trick the ghosts played. They took a gold piece and twenty roubles for their work.’’

‘‘First your watch disappeared, and now it’s money . . .’’ said Orlov. ‘‘Why does nothing like that ever happen with me?’’

A minute later, Zinaida Fyodorovna no longer remembered the trick the ghosts had played, and was laughingly telling how she had ordered some stationery a week ago but had forgotten to leave her new address in the shop, and the stationery had been sent to her husband at the old apartment, and her husband had had to pay the bill of twelve roubles. And she suddenly rested her gaze on Polya and looked at her intently. With that, she blushed and became confused to such a degree that she started talking about something else.

When I brought coffee to the study, Orlov was standing by the fireplace with his back to the fire, and she was sitting in an armchair facing him.

‘‘I’m not at all in a bad mood,’’ she was saying in French. ‘‘But I’ve started to figure it out now, and it’s all clear to me.

I can name you the day and even the hour when she stole my watch. And the purse? There can be no doubts here. Oh!’’ she laughed, taking the coffee from me. ‘‘Now I understand why I lose my handkerchiefs and gloves so often. As you like, but tomorrow I’ll let the magpie go and send Stepan for my Sofya. She’s not a thief, and she doesn’t have such a...repugnant look.’’

‘‘You’re out of sorts. Tomorrow you’ll be in a different mood, and you’ll understand that it’s impossible to dismiss a person only because you suspect her of something.’’

‘‘I don’t suspect, I’m certain,’’ said Zinaida Fyodorovna. ‘‘All the while I suspected that proletarian with the wretched face, your servant, I never said a word. It’s too bad you don’t believe me, Georges.’’

‘‘If you and I think differently about something, it doesn’t mean I don’t believe you. You may be right,’’ said Orlov, turning to the fire and throwing his cigarette into it, ‘‘but even so, you oughtn’t to get excited. Generally, I must confess, I didn’t expect that my small household would cause you so many serious cares and worries. A gold piece disappeared—well, God be with it, take a hundred of mine, but to change the order, to bring in a new maid from outside, wait till she gets used to it here—it’s all long, boring, and not in my character. True, our present maid is fat and maybe has a weakness for gloves and handkerchiefs, but to make up for it, she’s quite decent, disciplined, and doesn’t squeal when Kukushkin pinches her.’’

‘‘In short, you can’t part with her . . . Just say so.’’

‘‘Are you jealous?’’

‘‘Yes, I’m jealous!’’ Zinaida Fyodorovna said resolutely.

‘‘Thanks.’’

‘‘Yes, I’m jealous!’’ she repeated, and tears glistened in her eyes. ‘‘No, it’s not jealousy but something worse . . . I have a hard time naming it.’’ She put her hands to her temples and went on impulsively: ‘‘You men are sometimes so vile! It’s terrible!’’

‘‘I see nothing terrible here.’’

‘‘I haven’t seen it, I don’t know, but they say still in childhood you men begin with maids and then out of habit don’t feel any disgust at it. I don’t know, I don’t know, but I’ve even read . . . Georges, you’re right, of course,’’ she said, going up to Orlov and changing her tone to a tender and pleading one, ‘‘in fact, I am out of sorts today. But understand that I can’t be otherwise. I find her repugnant, and I’m afraid of her. It’s painful for me to see her.’’

‘‘Is it really impossible to rise above this pettiness?’’ said Orlov, shrugging his shoulders in perplexity and stepping away from the fireplace. ‘‘Nothing could be simpler: don’t pay attention to her, and she won’t be repugnant, and there will be no need for you to make a whole drama out of a trifle.’’

I left the study and do not know what reply Orlov received. Be that as it may, Polya stayed with us. After that, Zinaida Fyodorovna would not address her for anything and obviously tried to do without her services; whenever Polya handed her something, or even merely passed by, jingling her bracelet and rustling her skirts, she shuddered.

I think that if Gruzin or Pekarsky had asked Orlov to dismiss Polya, he would have done it without the slightest hesitation, not troubling himself with any explanations; he was tractable, like all indifferent people. But in his relations with Zinaida Fyodorovna, for some reason, he showed a stubbornness, even in petty things, which at times went as far as tyranny. I just knew that if Zinaida Fyodorovna liked something, he was bound not to like it. When she came back from shopping and hastened to boast to him of her new purchases, he would glance fleetingly at them and say coldly that the more superfluous things there were in the apartment, the less air there was. It would happen that, having already put on his tailcoat to go out somewhere and having already taken leave of Zinaida Fyodorovna, he would suddenly stay home out of stubbornness. It seemed to me then that he was staying home only to feel miserable.

‘‘Why did you stay?’’ Zinaida Fyodorovna would say with affected vexation and at the same time beaming with pleasure. ‘‘Why? You’re used to spending your evenings out, and I don’t want you to change your habits for my sake. Go, please, if you don’t want me to feel guilty.’’

‘‘Is anyone blaming you?’’ Orlov would say.

With a victimized look, he would sprawl on the armchair in his study and, shielding his eyes with his hand, pick up a book. But the book would soon drop from his hands, he would turn heavily on the chair and again shield his eyes as if from the sun. Now he was vexed that he had not gone out.

‘‘May I come in?’’ Zinaida Fyodorovna would say, hesitantly coming into the study. ‘‘You’re reading? And I got bored and came for one little minute . . . to have a look.’’

I remember on one of those evenings she came in that way, hesitantly and inopportunely, and lowered herself onto the rug by Orlov’s feet, and by her timid, soft movements, it was clear that she did not understand his mood and was afraid.

‘‘And you keep reading . . .’’ she began ingratiatingly, evidently wishing to flatter him. ‘‘Do you know, Georges, what is another secret of your success? You’re very educated and intelligent. What book have you got there?’’

Orlov told her. Several minutes of silence passed, which seemed very long to me. I stood in the drawing room, observing them both from there and afraid I might start coughing.

‘‘I wanted to say something to you . . .’’ Zinaida Fyodorovna said quietly and laughed. ‘‘Shall I tell you? Perhaps you’ll start laughing and call it self-delusion. You see, I’d like terribly, terribly much to think that you stayed home tonight for my sake...to spend the evening together. Yes? May I think so?’’

‘‘Please do,’’ said Orlov, shielding his eyes. ‘‘The truly happy man is the one who thinks not only about what is but even about what is not.’’

‘‘You said something long, and I didn’t quite understand it. That is, you want to say that happy people live by imagination? Yes, that’s true. I like to sit in your study in the evening and be carried far, far away in my thoughts... It’s sometimes nice to dream. Let’s dream aloud, Georges!’’

‘‘I never went to a girls’ institute, I never learned that science.’’

‘‘Are you out of sorts?’’ Zinaida Fyodorovna asked, taking Orlov by the hand. ‘‘Why, tell me? I’m afraid when you’re like this. I can’t tell whether you’ve got a headache or are angry with me . . .’’

Several more long minutes passed in silence.

‘‘Why have you changed?’’ she said softly. ‘‘Why are you no longer cheerful and tender as you were on Znamenskaya? I’ve lived with you for almost a month, but it seems to me we haven’t begun to live yet and have never once talked properly. You answer me each time with little jokes, or else cold and long, like a teacher. And there’s something cold in your jokes . . . Why have you stopped talking seriously with me?’’

‘‘I always talk seriously.’’

‘‘Well, let’s talk, then. For God’s sake, Georges... let’s talk.’’

‘‘Yes, let’s. But about what?’’

‘‘Let’s talk about our life, about the future . . .’’ Zinaida Fyodorovna said dreamily. ‘‘I keep making plans for life, I keep making them—and I feel so good! I’ll begin with a question, Georges: when will you leave your service?’’

‘‘Why would I do that?’’ asked Orlov, taking his hand away from his forehead.

‘‘You can’t be in the service with your views. You’re out of place there.’’

‘‘My views?’’ asked Orlov. ‘‘My views? By conviction and by nature, I’m an ordinary official, a Shchedrin hero. You take me for someone else, I daresay.’’

‘‘You’re joking again, Georges!’’

‘‘Not in the least. The service doesn’t satisfy me, maybe, but still it’s better for me than anything else. I’m used to it, the people there are the same as I am; I’m not superfluous there, in any case, and feel tolerably well.’’

‘‘You hate the service, and it sickens you.’’

‘‘Does it? If I hand in my resignation, start dreaming aloud, and fly off to another world, do you think that world will be less hateful to me than the service?’’

‘‘You’re even ready to slander yourself in order to contradict me.’’ Zinaida Fyodorovna was hurt and got up. ‘‘I’m sorry I started this conversation.’’

‘‘Why are you angry? I’m not angry that you are not in the service. Each of us lives as he likes.’’

‘‘But do you really live as you like? Are you really free? Spending your whole life writing papers that are contrary to your convictions,’’ Zinaida Fyodorovna went on, clasping her hands in despair, ‘‘obeying, wishing your superiors a happy New Year, then cards, cards, cards, and, above all, serving an order that cannot be sympathetic to you—no, Georges, no! Don’t joke so crudely. This is terrible. You’re a man of ideas and should serve only your idea.’’

‘‘Truly, you take me for someone else,’’ Orlov sighed.

‘‘Tell me simply that you don’t want to talk with me. I’m repulsive to you, that’s all,’’ Zinaida Fyodorovna said through her tears.

‘‘Here’s what, my sweet,’’ Orlov said admonishingly, sitting up in his chair. ‘‘You yourself kindly observed that I am an intelligent and educated man, and to instruct the instructed only does harm. I’m well acquainted with all the ideas, great and small, that you have in mind when you call me a man of ideas. Which means that if I prefer the service and cards to those ideas, I probably have reasons for doing so. That’s one thing. Second, as far as I know, you have never served, and your judgment of government service can only be drawn from anecdotes and bad novels. Therefore it will do us no harm to agree once and for all not to talk about what has long been known to us, or about what does not fall within the circle of our competence.’’

‘‘Why do you speak to me like that?’’ Zinaida Fyodorovna said, stepping back as if in horror. ‘‘Why? Come to your senses, Georges, for God’s sake!’’

Her voice trembled and broke off; she apparently wanted to hold back her tears, but suddenly burst into sobs.

‘‘Georges, my dear, I’m perishing!’’ she said in French, quickly sinking down before Orlov and resting her head on his knees. ‘‘I’m tormented, weary, I can’t stand it anymore, I can’t... In my childhood, a hateful, depraved stepmother, then my husband, and now you . . . you . . . You respond to my mad love with irony and coldness . . . And this dreadful, insolent maid!’’ she went on, sobbing. ‘‘Yes, yes, I see: I’m not a wife to you, not a friend, but a woman you do not respect because she has become your mistress . . . I’ll kill myself !’’

I did not expect these words and this weeping to make such a strong impression on Orlov. He blushed, shifted restlessly in his chair, and in place of irony a dull, boyish fear showed on his face.

‘‘My dear, you haven’t understood me, I swear to you,’’ he murmured in perplexity, touching her on the hair and shoulders. ‘‘Forgive me, I beg you. I was wrong and... I hate myself.’’

‘‘I offend you with my complaints and whining . . . You’re an honest, magnanimous... rare person, I’m aware of that every moment, but all these days I’ve suffered anguish . . .’’

Zinaida Fyodorovna impulsively embraced Orlov and kissed his cheek.

‘‘Only don’t cry, please,’’ he said.

‘‘No, no . . . I’ve cried my fill, and I feel better.’’

‘‘As for the maid, tomorrow she will not be here,’’ he said, still shifting restlessly in his chair.

‘‘No, she must stay, Georges! Do you hear? I’m no longer afraid of her . . . One must be above such pettiness and not think stupid things. You’re right! You’re a rare . . . an extraordinary person!’’

She soon stopped crying. With still-undried tears on her lashes, sitting on Orlov’s knees, in a low voice she told him something touching, like her memories of childhood and youth, and stroked his face with her hand, kissed and studied attentively his hands with their rings and the seals on his watch chain. She got carried away by her story, and by the nearness of the person she loved, and, probably because her recent tears had purified and refreshed her soul, her voice sounded remarkably pure and sincere. And Orlov played with her chestnut hair and kissed her hands, touching them noiselessly with his lips.

Then they had tea in the study, and Zinaida Fyodorovna read some letters aloud. They went to bed past midnight.

That night I had a bad pain in my side, and right up till morning was unable to get warm and fall asleep. I heard Orlov go from the bedroom to his study. After sitting there for about an hour, he rang. Pain and fatigue made me forget all social rules and decencies, and I went to the study barefoot and in nothing but my underwear. Orlov, in his dressing gown and nightcap, was standing in the doorway waiting for me.

‘‘You should arrive dressed when you’re rung for,’’ he said sternly. ‘‘Bring more candles.’’

I was about to apologize but suddenly had a bad fit of coughing and held on to the door frame with one hand so as not to fall.

‘‘Are you ill, sir?’’ asked Orlov.

I think that, in all the time of our acquaintance, this was the first time he had addressed me like that. God knows why. Probably, in my underwear and with my face distorted by coughing, I played my part badly and hardly resembled a servant.

‘‘If you’re sick, why do you work?’’ he said.

‘‘So as not to starve,’’ I replied.

‘‘How vile this all really is!’’ he said quietly, going to his desk.

While I, having thrown on my frock coat, set up and lit new candles, he sat by the desk and, with his legs stretched out on the armchair, cut the pages of a book.

I left him immersed in his reading, and the book no longer dropped from his hands, as in the evening.

VII

NOW, AS I WRITE these lines, my hand is restrained by a fear nurtured in me since childhood—of appearing sentimental and ridiculous; when I would like to caress and speak tenderly, I’m unable to be sincere. It is precisely owing to this fear and lack of habit that I am quite unable to express with complete clarity what then happened in my soul.

I was not in love with Zinaida Fyodorovna, but the ordinary human feeling I nursed for her was much younger, fresher, and more joyful than Orlov’s love.

In the mornings, working with the shoe brush or the broom, I waited with bated breath till I would at last hear her voice and footsteps. To stand and watch her as she had her coffee and then her breakfast, to help her into her fur coat in the front hall and put galoshes on her little feet while she leaned on my shoulder, then to wait till the porter rang from downstairs, to meet her at the door, rosy, chilled, powdered with snow, to hear her broken exclamations about the cold or the cabby—if you only knew how important it was for me! I would have liked to fall in love, to have my own family, would have liked my future wife to have exactly such a face, such a voice. I dreamed over dinner, and when I was sent out on some errand, and at night when I didn’t sleep. Orlov squeamishly thrust aside female rags, children, cooking, copper pans, and I picked it all up and carefully cherished it in my reveries, loved it, asked fate for it, and dreamed of a wife, a nursery, a garden path, a little house...

I knew that, if I fell in love with her, I would not dare to count on such a miracle as requital, but this consideration did not trouble me. In my modest, quiet feeling, which resembled ordinary attachment, there was neither jealousy of Orlov nor even envy, since I realized that, for a crippled man like me, personal happiness was possible only in dreams.

When Zinaida Fyodorovna, waiting for her Georges at night, gazed fixedly into a book without turning the pages, or when she gave a start and grew pale because Polya was crossing the room, I suffered with her, and it would occur to me to lance this painful abscess quickly, to make it so that she should quickly learn all that was said here on Thursdays over supper, but—how to do it? More and more often it happened that I saw tears. During the first weeks, she laughed and sang her little song, even when Orlov was not at home, but after another month, there was a dreary silence in our apartment, broken only on Thursdays.

She flattered Orlov, and to obtain an insincere smile or a kiss from him, she went on her knees before him, fawning like a little dog. Going past a mirror, even when her heart was very heavy, she could not help glancing at herself and straightening her hair. It seemed strange to me that she continued to be interested in clothes and went into raptures over her purchases. It somehow didn’t go with her genuine sorrow. She observed fashion and had costly dresses made. For what and for whom? I especially remember one new dress that cost four hundred roubles. To pay four hundred roubles for a superfluous, unnecessary dress, while our working women do hard labor at twenty kopecks a day without board, and Venetian and Brussels lace-makers are paid only half a franc a day with the understanding that they will make up the rest by debauchery! And it was strange to me that Zinaida Fyodorovna was not aware of it, it was vexing to me. But she had only to leave the house and I forgave everything, explained everything, and waited for the porter downstairs to ring for me.

She behaved towards me as towards a servant, a lower being. One can pet a dog and at the same time not notice it. I was given orders, asked questions, but my presence was not noticed. The masters considered it indecent to talk with me more than was proper; if, while serving supper, I had mixed into the conversation or laughed, they would probably have considered me mad and dismissed me. But all the same, Zinaida Fyodorovna was benevolent towards me. When she sent me somewhere, or explained how to handle a new lamp or something of that sort, her face was extraordinarily bright, kind, and affable, and her eyes looked directly into my face. Each time it happened, it seemed to me that she remembered gratefully how I had carried letters for her to Znamenskaya. When she rang, Polya, who considered me her favorite and hated me for it, would say with a caustic smile:

‘‘Go, she’s calling you.’’

Zinaida Fyodorovna behaved towards me as towards a lower being and did not suspect that, if anyone in the house was humiliated, it was she alone. She didn’t know that I, a servant, suffered for her and asked myself twenty times a day what the future held for her and how it would all end. Things were becoming noticeably worse every day. After that evening when they talked about his work, Orlov, who disliked tears, obviously began to fear and avoid conversation; when Zinaida Fyodorovna started arguing or pleading, or was about to weep, he would find some plausible excuse to go to his study or leave the house altogether. He spent the night at home more and more rarely, and dined more rarely still; on Thursdays he himself asked his friends to take him away somewhere. Zinaida Fyodorovna still dreamed of her own kitchen, of a new apartment and a trip abroad, but her dreams remained dreams. Dinner was brought from a restaurant, Orlov asked that the apartment question not be raised till they came back from abroad, and about traveling he said that they could not go before he had grown his hair long, because dragging oneself from hotel to hotel and serving the idea was impossible without long hair.

To crown it all, in Orlov’s absence, Kukushkin began to call on us in the evenings. There was nothing special in his behavior, but I was still quite unable to forget that conversation in which he said he would win Zinaida Fyodorovna away from Orlov. He was offered tea and red wine, and he tittered and, wishing to say something pleasant, maintained that civil marriage was higher than church marriage in all respects, and that indeed all decent people should now come to Zinaida Fyodorovna and bow down at her feet.

VIII

CHRISTMASTIME WENT BY boringly, in vague expectation of something bad. On New Year’s Eve, over morning coffee, Orlov unexpectedly announced that his superiors were sending him with special powers to a senator who was inspecting some province.

‘‘I don’t want to go, but I can’t think up an excuse!’’ he said vexedly. ‘‘I’ll have to go, there’s no help for it.’’

At this news, Zinaida Fyodorovna’s eyes instantly turned red.

‘‘For how long?’’ she asked.

‘‘Five days or so.’’

‘‘I’ll confess I’m glad you’re going,’’ she said after some thought. ‘‘You’ll be diverted. You’ll fall in love with someone on the way and tell me afterwards.’’

She tried at every opportunity to give Orlov to understand that she was not hampering him in the least and that he could dispose of himself in any way he liked, and this simple, transparent policy deceived no one and only reminded Orlov once again that he was not free.

‘‘I’ll leave tonight,’’ he said and began reading the newspapers.

Zinaida Fyodorovna was going to accompany him to the train, but he talked her out of it, saying that he was not going to America, and it was not for five years but only five days or even less.

The leave-taking took place after seven o’clock. He embraced her with one arm and kissed her forehead and lips.

‘‘Be a good girl, and don’t mope without me,’’ he said in a tender, heartfelt tone, which moved me, too. ‘‘May the Creator protect you.’’

She peered greedily into his face, so that his dear features would be firmly engraved in her memory, then gracefully put her arms around his neck and laid her head on his chest.

‘‘Forgive me our misunderstandings,’’ she said in French. ‘‘A husband and wife can’t help quarreling if they love each other, and I love you madly. Don’t forget . . . Send me lots of telegrams full of details.’’

Orlov kissed her once more and, without saying a word, left in confusion. When the lock clicked behind the door, he stopped hesitantly in the middle of the stairs and looked up. It seemed to me that if a single sound had come from upstairs at that moment, he would have gone back. But it was quiet. He straightened his overcoat and began irresolutely to go down.

The cabs had been waiting by the front porch for a long time. Orlov got into one, and I with two suitcases got into the other. It was freezing cold, and bonfires sent up smoke at the intersections. The chill wind from fast driving nipped my face and hands, my breath was taken away, and closing my eyes, I thought: What a magnificent woman she is! How she loves! Nowadays people even collect useless things in courtyards and sell them for charitable purposes, even broken glass is considered good wares, but such a precious, such a rare thing as the love of a graceful, young, intelligent, and decent woman goes completely for naught. One oldtime sociologist looked upon every bad passion as a force which, given the knowhow, could be turned to the good, but with us, even a noble, beautiful passion is born and then dies, powerless, not turned anywhere, misunderstood or trivialized. Why is that?

The cabs stopped unexpectedly. I opened my eyes and saw that we were standing on Sergievskaya Street, by the big house where Pekarsky lived. Orlov got out of the sledge and disappeared through the doorway. About five minutes later, Pekarsky’s servant appeared in the doorway without his hat and shouted to me, angry at the cold.

‘‘Are you deaf or what? Dismiss the cabs and go upstairs. You’re being called!’’

Understanding nothing, I went up to the second floor. I had been at Pekarsky’s apartment before; that is, I had stood in the front hall and looked into the drawing room, and each time, after the wet, gloomy street, the gleaming of its picture frames, bronze, and costly furniture had struck me. Now, amidst this gleaming, I saw Gruzin, Kukushkin, and a little later, Orlov.

‘‘It’s like this, Stepan,’’ he said, coming up to me. ‘‘I’ll be living here till Friday or Saturday. If there are any letters or telegrams, bring them here each day. At home, of course, you’ll say I left and asked you to convey my greetings. Go with God.’’

When I returned home, Zinaida Fyodorovna was lying on the sofa in the drawing room and eating a pear. Only one candle was burning, stuck in a candelabra.

‘‘You weren’t late for the train?’’ asked Zinaida Fyodorovna.

‘‘Not at all. The master sends his greetings.’’

I went to my room in the servants’ quarters and also lay down. There was nothing to do, and I didn’t want to read. I was not surprised or indignant but simply strained my mind to understand why this deception was necessary. Only adolescents deceive their mistresses that way. Could it be that he, a man who had read and reflected so much, was unable to think up anything more intelligent? I confess, I did not have a bad opinion of his mind. I thought that if he had found it necessary to deceive his minister or some other powerful person, he would have put a lot of energy and art into it, while here, to deceive a woman, he obviously seized upon the first thing that came into his head; if the deception works—good; if not—it was no great disaster, he could lie as simply and quickly a second time without racking his brain.

At midnight, when they began moving chairs and shouting ‘‘Hurrah!’’ on the floor above us, celebrating the New Year, Zinaida Fyodorovna rang for me from the room next to the study. Sluggish from lying down for so long, she sat at the table writing something on a scrap of paper.

‘‘I must send a telegram,’’ she said and smiled. ‘‘Drive to the station quickly and ask them to send it after him.’’

Going outside then, I read on the scrap: ‘‘Happy New Year, and best wishes. Wire soon, miss you terribly. A whole eternity has gone by. Pity I can’t wire you a thousand kisses and my heart itself. Be cheerful, my joy. Zina.’’

I sent the telegram and gave her the receipt the next morning.

IX

WORST OF ALL was that Orlov unthinkingly initiated Polya into the secret of his deception as well, telling her to bring his shirts to Sergievskaya. After that she looked at Zinaida Fyodorovna with gloating and with a hatred that I found unfathomable, and never stopped snorting with satisfaction in her room and in the front hall.

‘‘She’s overstayed her time here, enough’s enough!’’ she said with delight. ‘‘She ought to understand it herself . . .’’

She could already smell that Zinaida Fyodorovna would not be with us much longer, and so as not to miss the moment, she pilfered whatever caught her eye—flacons, tortoiseshell pins, kerchiefs, shoes. On the second day of the new year, Zinaida Fyodorovna summoned me to her room and told me in a low voice that her black dress had disappeared. And afterwards she walked through all the rooms, pale, with a frightened and indignant face, talking to herself:

‘‘How about that? No, how about that? What unheard-of boldness!’’

At dinner she wanted to ladle soup for herself, but she couldn’t—her hands were trembling. Her lips were trembling, too. She kept glancing helplessly at the soup and the pirozhki, waiting for the trembling to calm down, and suddenly couldn’t help herself and looked at Polya.

‘‘You may go, Polya,’’ she said. ‘‘Stepan will do by himself.’’

‘‘No matter, I’ll stay, ma’am,’’ Polya replied.

‘‘There’s no need for you to stay. Leave here altogether... altogether!’’ Zinaida Fyodorovna went on, getting up in great agitation. ‘‘You may find yourself another place. Leave at once!’’

‘‘I can’t leave without my master’s orders. He hired me. It will be as he orders.’’

‘‘I’m also ordering you! I’m the mistress here!’’ said Zinaida Fyodorovna, and she turned all red.

‘‘Maybe you’re the mistress, but only the master can dismiss me. He hired me.’’

‘‘Don’t you dare stay here another moment!’’ cried Zinaida Fyodorovna, and she banged her knife on her plate. ‘‘You’re a thief! Do you hear?’’

Zinaida Fyodorovna flung her napkin on the table and, with a pitiful, suffering face, quickly left the dining room. Polya, sobbing loudly and muttering something, also left. The soup and grouse got cold. And for some reason, all this restaurant luxury on the table now seemed to me paltry, thievish, like Polya. Two pirozhki on a little plate had the most pathetic and criminal look: ‘‘Today we’ll be taken back to the restaurant,’’ they seemed to be saying, ‘‘and tomorrow we’ll be served for dinner again to some official or famous diva.’’

‘‘A grand lady, just think!’’ came to my ears from Polya’s room. ‘‘If I wanted, I’d have been just as much of a lady long ago, but I have some shame! We’ll see who’ll be the first to go! Oh, yes!’’

Zinaida Fyodorovna rang the bell. She was sitting in her room, in the corner, with such an expression as if she had been put in the corner as a punishment.

‘‘Have they brought a telegram?’’ she asked.

‘‘No, ma’am.’’

‘‘Ask the porter, maybe there’s a telegram. And don’t leave home,’’ she said after me, ‘‘I’m frightened to be left alone.’’

After that I had to run downstairs to the porter almost every hour to ask whether there was a telegram. It was an eerie time, I must confess! So as not to see Polya, Zinaida Fyodorovna took dinner and tea in her room, slept there on a short couch resembling the letter E, and made her bed herself. For the first few days, it was I who took the telegrams, but, receiving no answer, she stopped trusting me and went to the telegraph office herself. Looking at her, I also waited impatiently for a telegram. I hoped he would invent some lie, for instance, arrange to have a telegram sent to her from some station. If he was too busy playing cards, I thought, or had already managed to become infatuated with another woman, then of course Gruzin and Kukushkin would remind him of us. But we waited in vain. Five times a day I went to Zinaida Fyodorovna’s room to tell her the whole truth, but she looked like a goat, her shoulders drooping and her lips moving, and I went away without saying a word. Compassion and pity robbed me of all my courage. Polya, cheerful and content, as though nothing had happened, tidied up the master’s study, the bedroom, rummaged in the cupboards and clattered the dishes, and, when going past Zinaida Fyodorovna’s door, hummed some tune and coughed. She liked being hidden from. In the evenings she went off somewhere and rang the bell at two or three in the morning, and I had to open the door for her and listen to her remarks about my coughing. There would at once be another ring, I would run to the room next to the study, and Zinaida Fyodorovna, thrusting her head out the door, would ask: ‘‘Who rang?’’ And she would look at my hands to see if there wasn’t a telegram in them.

When at last the bell rang downstairs on Saturday and a familiar voice was heard on the stairs, she was so glad that she burst into sobs; she rushed to meet him, embraced him, kissed his chest and sleeves, said something that couldn’t be understood. The porter brought in the suitcases, Polya’s cheerful voice was heard. As if somebody had come on vacation!

‘‘Why didn’t you send me any telegrams?’’ Zinaida Fyodorovna said, breathing heavily with joy. ‘‘Why? I was tormented, I barely survived this time . . . Oh, my God!’’

‘‘Very simple! The senator and I went to Moscow that first day, I never received your telegrams,’’ said Orlov. ‘‘After dinner, my heart, I’ll give you a most detailed report, but now sleep, sleep, sleep . . . I got worn out on the train.’’

It was obvious that he hadn’t slept all night: he probably played cards and drank a lot. Zinaida Fyodorovna put him to bed, and after that, we all went around on tiptoe till evening. Dinner passed quite successfully, but when they went to the study for coffee, a talk began. Zinaida Fyodorovna spoke of something quickly, in a low voice; she spoke in French, and her speech bubbled like a brook, then came a loud sigh from Orlov and the sound of his voice.

‘‘My God!’’ he said in French. ‘‘Don’t you have any fresher news than this eternal song about the villainous maid?’’

‘‘But my dear, she stole from me and said all sorts of impudent things.’’

‘‘But why doesn’t she steal from me and say impudent things? Why do I never notice maids, or caretakers, or servants? My dear, you’re simply capricious and don’t want to show character... I even suspect you’re pregnant. When I offered to dismiss her for you, you demanded that she stay, and now you want me to chase her out. But I’m also stubborn on such occasions: I answer caprice with caprice. You want her to go, well, and now I want her to stay. It’s the only way to cure you of your nerves.’’

‘‘Well, all right, all right!’’ Zinaida Fyodorovna said fearfully. ‘‘Let’s stop talking about it . . . Let’s put it off till tomorrow. Now tell me about Moscow... What’s happening in Moscow?’’

X

AFTER LUNCH THE next day—it was the seventh of January, the day of John the Baptist—Orlov put on a black tailcoat and a decoration to go to his father and wish him a happy name day. He was to go by two, but when he finished dressing, it was only half past one. How to spend this half hour? He paced about the drawing room and declaimed the congratulatory verses he used to read to his father and mother as a child. Zinaida Fyodorovna, who was about to go to the seamstress or the store, was sitting there and listening to him with a smile. I don’t know how the conversation started, but when I brought Orlov his gloves, he was standing in front of Zinaida Fyodorovna, saying to her with a capricious, pleading face:

‘‘For God’s sake, for the sake of all that’s holy, don’t talk about something that’s already known to each and every one! What is this unfortunate ability our intelligent, thinking ladies have to speak with passion and an air of profundity about something that has long since set even schoolboys’ teeth on edge? Ah, if only you could exclude all these serious questions from our marital program! What a favor it would be!’’

‘‘We women should not dare our own judgment to bear.’’¹⁸

‘‘I give you full freedom, be liberal and quote any authors you like, but make me one concession, do not discuss these two things in my presence: the perniciousness of high society and the abnormality of marriage. Understand, finally. High society is always denounced, so as to contrast it with the society in which merchants, priests, tradesmen, and muzhiks live—all sorts of Sidors and Nikitas. Both societies are loathsome to me, but if, in all conscience, I were offered the choice between the one and the other, I would choose high society without a second thought, and it would not be a lie or an affectation, because all my tastes are on its side. Our society is trite and trivial, but at least you and I speak decent French, read this and that, and don’t start poking each other in the ribs, even when we’re having a bad quarrel, while with the Sidors, the Nikitas, and their honors, it’s sure thing, right-o, a belt in the gob, and totally unbridled pot-house manners and idolatry.’’

‘‘The muzhiks and merchants feed you.’’

‘‘Yes, and what of it? That’s a poor recommendation not only for me but for them. They feed me and kowtow to me, meaning they don’t have enough intelligence and honesty to act otherwise. I’m not denouncing or praising anybody, I only want to say: high society and low—both are better. In my heart and mind, I’m against them both, but my tastes are on the side of the former. Well, ma’am, and as for the abnormalities of marriage now,’’ Orlov went on, glancing at his watch, ‘‘it’s time you understood that there are no abnormalities, but as yet there are only indefinite demands on marriage. What do you want of marriage? In lawful and unlawful cohabitation, in all unions and cohabitations, good or bad, there is one and the same essence. You ladies live only for this essence, it’s everything for you, without it your existence would have no meaning for you. You need nothing except this essence, and that’s what you take, but now that you’ve read yourselves up on novels, you’ve become ashamed of taking it, and you rush about hither and thither, recklessly changing men, and to justify this turmoil, you’ve begun to talk about the abnormalities of marriage. Since you cannot and do not want to eliminate the essence, your chief enemy, your Satan, since you go on serving it slavishly, what serious conversation can there be? Whatever you say to me will be nonsense and affectation. I won’t believe you.’’

I went to find out from the porter whether the cab was there, and when I came back, I found them quarreling. As sailors say, the wind had picked up.

‘‘I see you want to astound me with your cynicism today,’’ Zinaida Fyodorovna was saying, pacing the drawing room in great agitation. ‘‘I find it disgusting to listen to you. I am pure before God and men and have nothing to repent of. I left my husband for you, and I’m proud of it. Proud of it, I swear to you on my honor!’’

‘‘Well, that’s splendid.’’

‘‘If you’re an honorable, decent man, you also should be proud of my act. It raises me and you above thousands of people who would like to act in the same way as I, but don’t dare to out of faintheartedness or petty calculation. But you’re not a decent man. You’re afraid of freedom and make fun of an honorable impulse for fear that some ignoramus might suspect you of being an honorable man. You’re afraid to show me to your acquaintances, there’s no higher punishment for you than to drive down the street with me . . . What? Isn’t it true? Why have you still not introduced me to your father and your cousin? Why? No, I’m tired of it, finally!’’ cried Zinaida Fyodorovna, and she stamped her foot. ‘‘I demand what belongs to me by right. Be so good as to introduce me to your father!’’

‘‘If you need him, introduce yourself to him. He receives every morning from ten to ten-thirty.’’

‘‘How base you are!’’ said Zinaida Fyodorovna, wringing her hands in despair. ‘‘Even if you’re not sincere and aren’t saying what you think, for this cruelty alone one could come to hate you! Oh, how base you are!’’

‘‘We keep circling around and can’t talk our way to the real essence. The whole essence is that you were mistaken and don’t want to admit it out loud. You imagined I was a hero and had some sort of extraordinary ideas and ideals, but it turned out in reality that I’m a most ordinary official, a cardplayer, and have no interest in any ideas. I’m the worthy offspring of that same rotten society you fled from, outraged at its triviality and triteness. Confess it and be fair: get indignant not with me but with yourself, since it was you who were mistaken, not I.’’

‘‘Yes, I confess: I was mistaken!’’

‘‘That’s splendid. We’ve talked our way to the main thing, thank God. Now listen further, if you like. I can’t raise myself up to you, because I’m too corrupt; neither can you lower yourself to me, because you’re too high. There remains, then, one thing . . .’’

‘‘What?’’ Zinaida Fyodorovna asked quickly, with bated breath and suddenly turning white as paper.

‘‘There remains the resort to the aid of logic . . .’’

‘‘Georgiy, why are you tormenting me?’’ Zinaida Fyodorovna suddenly said in Russian, with a cracked voice. ‘‘Why? Understand my suffering . . .’’

Orlov, frightened of tears, quickly went to the study and, I don’t know why—wishing to cause her some extra pain, or remembering that this was the practice in such cases— locked the door behind him with a key. She cried out and ran after him, her dress rustling.

‘‘What does this mean?’’ she asked, knocking on the door. ‘‘What . . . what does this mean?’’ she repeated in a thin voice breaking with indignation. ‘‘Ah, is that how you are? Then know that I hate and despise you! Everything’s finished between us! Everything!’’

Hysterical weeping and laughter followed. Something small fell off the table in the drawing room and broke. Orlov stole from the study to the front hall by another door and, with a cowardly glance behind him, quickly put on his overcoat and top hat and left.

Half an hour went by, then an hour, and she was still weeping. I remembered that she had no father, no mother, no family, that she was living now between a man who hated her and Polya, who stole from her—and how joyless her life appeared to me! Not knowing why myself, I went to her in the drawing room. Weak, helpless, with beautiful hair, she who seemed to me the image of tenderness and grace suffered like a sick person; she was lying on the sofa, hiding her face, and her whole body shaking.

‘‘Madam, wouldn’t you like me to go for the doctor?’’ I asked quietly.

‘‘No, no need... it’s nothing,’’ she said and looked at me with tearful eyes. ‘‘I have a slight headache... Thank you.’’

I went out. But in the evening she wrote letter after letter and sent me now to Pekarsky, now to Kukushkin, now to Gruzin, and finally wherever I liked, so long as I found Orlov quickly and gave him the letter. When I came back each time with the letter, she scolded me, pleaded with me, put money in my hand—as if in a fever. And at night she didn’t sleep but sat in the drawing room and talked to herself.

The next day Orlov came back for dinner, and they made peace.

On the first Thursday after that, Orlov complained to his friends about his unbearably hard life; he smoked a lot and said with irritation:

‘‘This isn’t life, it’s an inquisition. Tears, shouts, wise words, pleas for forgiveness, again tears and shouts, and as a result—I now have no place of my own, I’m worn out and I’ve worn her out. Can it be I’ll have to live like this for another month or two? Can it be? And yet it’s possible!’’

‘‘Why don’t you talk it over with her?’’ said Pekarsky.

‘‘I’ve tried, but I can’t. You can boldly speak any truth you like to an independent, reasoning man, but here you have to do with a being who has no will, no character, no logic. I can’t stand tears, they disarm me. When she cries, I’m ready to vow eternal love and start crying myself.’’

Pekarsky did not understand, scratched his wide brow, and said: