The Russian Master and Other Stories

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Chekhov, A. P. The Russian imaster and other sl^^.—(The Wurld's classics) I. TitU 11. Hingky, Rcmald 891.73'3[F] PG3456 ISBN 0-19-281680-2

Library of Cmgreu Catalogmg in Publication Data Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich, 1860-1904. The Ri^&n imaster and otther st^te. (The Wurld's clasics) Bibliography: p. I. Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich, 1860-1904-Tran.rlatioru, English. I. Hinglry, Rcmald. ll. TitU. PG3456.A15H56 1984 891.73'3 83-23719 1SBN 0-19-281680-2 (pbk.)

Printed in Great Britain BPCC HauU Books Ayksbury, Bu.cks

CONTENTS

Introduction vii

Select Bibliography xii

A Chronology of Anton Chckhov xiii

his wife I

{Cynpyza, 1899)

A lady with A dog 7

(/laMa c coĉauKoŭ, i 899)

the duel 22

(Jly9Ab, I 89 I)

a hard case it4

( lfeAoeeK 8 r/Jymjinpe, 1898)

gooseberries 126

(KpblJICOSHUK, 1898)

concerning love 136

(0 Af06eu, I 898)

peasants i44

(MyJICuKu, 1897)

angel I72

(l(ywe11Ka, i 898)

the russian master 183

( Y11umeAb cAosecHocmu, 1894)

terror 203

(Cmpax, 1892)

the prder of st. anne 2i4

(Arma Ha wee, 1895) Notes 227

INTRODUCTION

The clcvcn itcms in this book liavc bccn choscn from the short storics of the author's maturity (1888-1904). Onc of thesc, 'The Russian Master, will bc famili.Tr to somc rcadcrs undcr thc :irgu:ibly in:iccur:ite titlc given to it by othcr translators: l'lie Tcacher of Literatnre. So Chekhovian a work is it that it might almost be called, without disparagemcnt, a parody of the mastcr by himsclf. Hcre wc havc the usual romantic illusions about love and marriagc shipwrcckcd on the usual subnicrgcd rcefs of domestic triviality and provincial vulgarity: all forming a most original sermon on thc themc 'man docs not livc by brcad alonc'.

The Russiati Master has a fascinating history. In 1889 Chckhov publishcd what is now thc first of its two chaptcrs as a sclf- containcd story undcr a diffcrcnt title, Mediocrities. It thcn had thc happy cnding which thc tcxt of Chaptcr I still rctains, cxccpt, of course, that Chaptcr II now follows it, gradually but rcmorsclcssly rcvcrsing any such impression. As it happcns, wc know why Chekhov originally publishcd his story in this incompletc and mislcadingly optimistic form. Hc had read out a draft of what is now Chaptcr I to membcrs of his familv, confiding in them his intention of providing a continuation in which hc would blow his young couplc's happiness 'to smithcrccns'. Only whcn thcse kind- hcartcd listcncrs had appcalcd to him not to spoil the cnding did he agree to publish thc story in truncatcd form. But the happily- ending Mediocrities of 1889 turned out too 'sloppy' in its author's vicw, and by 1894 he was ready with the vcry diffcrcnt vcrsion, cxpandcd and transformcd by the addition of thc astringcnt Chaptcr II, which we have hcrc.

Sincc frustration .so often accompanies love and marriagc in Chekhov wc nccd not be surpriscd at this course of cvcnts. But wc may also note that the unfortunatc Hussian mastcr and bridcgroom Nikitin would have bccn cqually doomcd had he choscn to rejiiain single. That option was onc that Chckhov fully explorcd in Doctor Startsev (1898). Startscv (thc 'Nikitin' of thc later story) rejccts his 'Masha' (Cathcrine Turkin), but only to sink into thc bog of provincial complacency, card-playing and winc-bibbing against which Nikitin prochaims his revolt—with what prospccts of succcss we do not lcarn—in thc last paragraph of The Russiati Master.

Frustration in love, that typical Chekhov thcmc. is Uavishlv rcprcscntcd elscwherc in this volumc.

ln the short but powerful His Wij'e the sick doctor is the victim of his hatcful, prcdatory Olga. In Terror thc woman is morc thc victim of thc man, while The Order ofSt. Antie has a male predator, thc ludicrous Modestc Alckscvcvich, secking to victimize his bcautifu] young wifc, only to have the tablcs turncd on him in the end in onc of the maturc Chckhov's rarc snap conclusions. Yct othcr amorous posturcs .are found in A Lady with a Dog, pcrhaps the bcst-known of all Chckhov's storics. But though cha{!rin d'amoiir docs indecd suffuse this saga ofan expericnced philandcrer uncxpectcdly caught up in .a profound passion. the dcnouement by no mcans excludes somc kind ofhappy solution. Wc are rcminded that A Lady with a Do{! was writtcn during thc carly st.agcs of the author's lovc affair with Olga Knippcr, thc .actress who eventu.illy bcc:imc his wifc. It reflccts Chekhov's own hopcs, but also his irritaition with his inv.ilid condition which forced him to winter in thc south .Tway from hcr—and from thc city of Moscow for which hc oncc said that hc had comc to yearn as much as any of his own Thrcc Sistcrs.

Far more anomalous is the love pattcrn in .another of Chckhov's most rcnowncd storics, which also happens to havc bccn Tolstoy's favouritc: Anl!ef, known to othcr translators as The Darlinl!. Thc hcroinc, another of Chckhov's many Olgas, is rcmarkablc for her haibit of contracting happy marri.Tges or marital unions—threc in all. whcrc.as we may search almost in vain clscwherc for any othcr Chckhov chaTricter who cnjoys cvcn one such s.itisfactory rclation- ship. The story is ex^-ccptional too in th.it Chckhov for once dcscribcs provincial life without thc contempt, unmistak:iblc though rcstraincd, which we dctcct in Doctor Sftutsev, The RHssian Master and cvcn A Lady with a Dof!. And yet we shall err if we rcad solcly .is thc ch:irming study of a kindly, simplc woman whose hc:irt ovcrflows with lovc for her various spouses and the littlc boy whom shc evcntually looks aftcr. We must also be alive, as :ilways with this author, to contrary undcrcurrcnts; not sentimcnt unalloycd but thc tension bctwecn scntimcnt :ind irony is the cluc to Ai1,1!el.

Yct another marital or cohabitational episodc domin:itcs Tlie Duel. includcd hcrc .is :in cspccially fine specimcn of Chckhov's longer work. It also contains the most sustaincd portrayal of a quarrcl to comc from a writcr who was himsclf a notably pcaccable man, but could yct dclincate thc squabblcs of othcrs with admirablc skill. This he docs in pitting The Ducls slovcnly, slippcr-shufflling Laycvsky (paramour of thc no lcss slovenly Nadczhda) against thc forthright, puritanical zoologist von Korcn: that prophct of the survival of the ftttcst. But though von Koren cvcntually finds himself in a position to cxterminatc Laycvsky—dcmonstrably unfit to livc and thcrcforc liquidation-ripc—in a pistols-.at-dawn contcst, that contest fizzlcs out in the prcdictablc Chckhovian fiasco; and thc tcxt cxplicitly makcs thc point that thc hcroic agc of ducls a la Lermontov and Turgcncv has now givcn way to a humdrum era when issucs arc lcss majestically clear-cut. How disappointing, though, that Chckhov should havc fallcn, in the last fcw pagcs of his Duel, from his usual high standards by suddcnly prctcnding that thc problems so succcssfully vcntilated in his first nincty-odd pagcs wcrc in fact no problcms at all. The ^D»el's fccblc last chapter—in which a rcformcd Laycvsky is sccn marricd to a reformcd Nadczhda, and in which both arc forgiven by a rcformcd von Koren—givcs thc answcr to those who complain of Chckhov's many unhappy cndings. Hcrc, aftcr all, is a 'happy' cnding: but onc so unconvincing and banal that, though it cannot spoil so supcrb a story, it yct remains a considcrablc minor blemish.

Peasaiits rcflccts vcry diffcrcnt prcoccupations. Of all Chckhov's works this creatcd thc grcatcst stir among his contemporaries in his own country. It may sccm disappointingly slight on first rcading, being hardly a story at all—rather a sequcncc of skctchcs set in an unprcposscssing Russian villagc pcoplcd by the usual drunkards, wifc-bcatcrs and wiscacrcs. Chckhov had drawn on his own cxpcricnccs as rcsidcnt from 1892 onwards of the village of Mclikhovo ncar Moscow to illustratc all thc most typical clcments in late nincteenth-ccntury Russian rural lifc. And since such down- trodden, backward rustics constituted four-fifths of the total population of the Russian Empirc, numbering about a hundrcd million in all, his Peasants is a document of outstanding social importancc. It also happcns to furnish thc quickcst short cut availablc to understanding a crucial arca of Russian socicty in his day. But if wc choosc, as wcll wc may, to call Peasants a documcntary. wc must add that it is a documcntary of genius. Only suprcmc litcrary skill could purvcy, in a merc thirty pagcs, morc :ibout this complcx socual situ:ition th:in many anothcr :iuthor h:is contrivcd in an cntirc volumc, bcsidcs which Chc:khov's rcstraincd :ind subtle humour givcs Peasams a dimension beyond the rcach of othcr Russian rural studics. As for thc abusc which grcctcd Peasants in Russia on first publication, that too forms a signific:mt commcnt on thc agc. Chckhov had sinncd, in thc opinion of many contcmporary intcllcctuals, by flouting an un- spokcn taboo whcrcby no author might mcntion such unedifying fcatures of vilhagc lifc as dirt, squalor, dunkcnncss, brutality and dcceitfulncss without simultancously proclaiming or implying thc Russi:m muzhik to be a paragon of ccrtain mystcrious virtucs visiblc only to thc cye of faith. But Chckhov's cyc was ahvays that of a critical obscrvcr who, frankly. could not discern these mystcri- ous rustic virtues. Whcther he was discussing pcasants or anything clsc, hc always belicvcd in rcporting accuratcly what he saw. And in any casc his unconvcntional and :ipparcntly unfavourablc picturc of thc muzhik is fundamcntally sympathctic, as must surcly be cvidcnt to any scnsitivc rcadcr of Peasants. Nor was Chckhov thc squirc of Melikhovo in the lcast hostilc to thc local rustics, for his outstanding rccord as dcvotcd village doctor, assiduous school- buildcr and good neighbour dcmonstratcs thc vcry opposite.

Finally thcre are the threc rcmarkablc storics A Hard Case, Gooseberries and Concerninl! Love. Thcy arc sometimes callcd a 'trilogy', bcing unique in Chckhov's fiction in posscssing a single unifying thcmc illustratcd by characters who spill ovcr from onc story to anothcr. Each item in thc trilogy contains as its principal clcment a story-within-thc-story told by onc of thrcc narrators to onc or both of thc others. And all thrcc stories dcnounce the tcndcncy whereby, in Chckhov's vicw, human bcings tcnd arbit- rarily to fettcr thcmsclvcs with supcrfluous cncumbrances— ideology. ambition, love—thus renouncing man's most prccious birth-right, frecdom. Thc hidcbound schoolmastcr Bclikov who tyr:innizcs thc townsfolk in A Hard Case; thc ludicrous Nicholas Chimsha-Gimalaysky who saicriĥccs his wholc lifc for a singlc plate of sour gooscbcrrics; the uncntcrprising Alyokhin who cravcnly rcnounccs the one triic love of his life—all thrcc kcy charactcrs admirably exemplify Chekhov's ccntral thcmc. Thcy havc all madc thc wrong choicc, as hc shows, whilc also rcminding us by implic:ition of somcthing which hc docs not show: that in Chckhov, alas, virtually all choiccs arc wrong. Wh:it if Alyokhin had in fact gone off \vith thc scductive Mrs. Luganovich? What ifthc unfortu- natc Nicholas had ncvcr savcd up to buy his cstatc complccc \vith its gooscbcrry patch, and what if Bclikov had ncvcr taught Grcck or bullicd his collcagucs? Thcy would only havc cmbraccd some othcr activity cqually futilc, equally sclf-limiting. Of this wc m.ay bc ccrtain, for anti-climax and the frustration of illusions rcmain basic to Chckhov's art at its best. And, as wc arc again rcmindcd, thc last pagcs of The Duel arc thcre to show how right hc was to stick to his triie mcticr, how disastrous any attcmpt to brcak out of it might prove. Wc arc also rcminded that Chckhov, at his bcstt, usually focuscs on \vhat docs not—scldom on what docs—h.appcn.

By no mcans all Chckhov's readcrs will agrec in finding failurc and disillusionmcnt to bc such inscparablc fcaturcs of lifc as hc scems to suggcst in his works. And that Chckhov himsclf, as a man, had an outlook far lcss mclancholy than that sccmingly implicd by Chckhov thc artist we know from thc rich sourcc matcrial ofhis biography: his personal lcttcrs, totalling ovcr 4,000, and thc many mcmoirs about him. Nor, in ordcr to cnjoy Chckhov's work, nced readcrs fcel any morc obligcd than did hc himself (in his non-literary capacity) to adopt thc philosophy of all- cmbracing frustration apparcntly dcduciblc from his writings.

Rather may wc marvcl at thc skill with which this arguably distortcd philosophy has bccn uscd as a prism to display thc human prcdicamcnt in so original, so cxhilarating, and abovc all so ultimatcly undistorting a projcction.

RONALD HINGLEY

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

W. H. Bruford, Chekhov and his Russia: A Sociological Study (London, 1948).

The Oxford Chekhov. Tr. and ed. Ronald Hingley. Nine vols (London, 1964-80).

Letters of Anton Chekhov. Tr. Michael Henry Heim in collaboration with Simon Karlinsky. Selection, Commentary and Introduction by Simon Karlinsky (New York, 1973).

Letters of Anton Chekhov. Selected and edited by Avrahm Yarmolinsky (New York, 1973).

T. Eckman, ed., Anton Chekhov, l86«ig6o (Leiden, 1960).

Ronald Hingley, Chekhov: a Biographical aiid Critical Study (London, 1950).

A New Life of Antort Chekhov (London, 1976).

Robert Louis Jackson, ed., Chekhov: a Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1967).

Ka. l D. Kramer, The Chamcleon and the Dream: the Image of Reality iii Cexov's Stories (The Hague, 1970).

Virginia Llewellyn Smith, Antoii Chekhov aiid the Lady with the Dog. Foreword by Ronald Hingley (London, 1973).

A CHRONOLOGY OF ANTON CHEKHOV

All datcs are given old style.

[860 16 or 17 January. Born in Taganrog, a port on the Sea of Azov in south Russia.

1876 His father goes bankrupt. The family movcs to Moscow, leaving Anton to finish his schooling.

Joins family and cnrols in thc Medical Faculty of Moscow University.

Begins to contribute to Strekoza ('Dragonfly'), a St. Pcters- burg comic weekly.

1882 Starts to write short stories and a gossip column for Oskolki ('Splinters') and to depcnd on writing for an mcome.

1884 Graduates in medicine. Shows early symptoms of tuber- culosis.

1885-6 Contributes to Peterburgskaya gazeta ('St. Petersburg Gazette') and Novoye vremya ('New Time').

March. Letter from D. V. Grigorovich encourages him to take writing seriously.

First collection of stories: Motley Stories.

Literary reputation grows fast. Second collection ofstories: /h the Twilight.

19 Novembcr. First Moscow performancc of Ivanov: mixed reception.

First publication (Tiie Steppe) in a serious literary journal, Sevemy vesltiik ('Thc Northern Hcrald').

31 January. First St. Petersburg performance of Ivanov: widely and favourably reviewed.

June. Death of brother Nicholas from tuberculosis.

[890 April-December. Crosses Siberia to visit the pcnal settlc- ment on Sakhalin Island. Returns via Hong Kong, Singaporc and Ccylon.

First trip to wcstern Europe: Italy and Francc.

March. Movcs with family to small country cstate a, Melikhovo, fifty miles south of Moscow.

1895 First mccting with Tolstov

17 Octobcr. First—disastrous—performancc of The Seagu/l in St. Petersburg.

Suffers severe haemorrhage.

1897-8 Winters in France. Champions Zola's dcfence of Dreyfus.

Beginning of collaboration with thc ncwly foundcd Moscow Art Theatre. Mcets. Olga Knippcr. Spends the winter in Yalta, where hc meets Gorky.

17 December. First Moscow Art Theatrc performance of The Seagull: succcssful.

Complctcs the building of a house in Yalta, whcre he settles with mother and sister.

26 October. First performance of Uncle Vanya (written ?i896).

189^1901 First complete edition of his works (10 volumes).

1901 31 January. Three Sisters first performed.

25 May. Marries Olga Knipper.

1904 17 January. First performance of The Cherry Orchard.

2 July. Dies in Badenweiler, Gcrmany.

HIS WIFE

'I thoucht I told you not to tidy my dcsk,' said Nicholas. 'I can't find anything whcn you'vc been round tidying. Wherc 's that tclegram got to? Whcrc did you put it? Would you mind having a look? It's from Kazan, dated ycsterday.'

The maid, a pale, very slim girl, seemed unconcerned. She did find scveral telegrams in the basket under thc desk and handed thcm to the doctor without a word, but those were aU local telegrams from his patients. Thcn they searchcd thc drawing-room and his wife Olga's room.

It was past' midnight. Nicholas knew that his wife would not be back for a long time, not till five in the morning at least. Hc did not trust hcr and felt depressed and could not sleep when she stayed out late. He despised his wife, hcr bed, her looking-glass, her boxes of chocolates and aU these lilics-of-the-vaUey and hyacinths that came from someone every day and made the whole house smell as sickly- sweet as a florist's shop. On nights like this he grew irritable, moody and snappish, and he felt that he simply must have ycsterday's telegram from his brother, though there was nothing in the thing beyond the compliments of the season.

On the table in his. wife's room he did turn up a telegram under a box of writing-papcr and glanced at it. It came from Monte Carlo and was addressed to his wife, care of his mother-in-law. The signature was Michel. The doctor could not make head or tail of it as it was in some foreign language, English apparently.

Who could Michel be? Why Monte Carlo ? And why send it care of his mother-in-law?

Suspicions, conjectures, deductions—seven years of married life had made such things second nature to him and he often thought that he had had enough practice at home to tum him into a first-class detective.

He went back to his study and began thinking things over, where- upon it all came back to him. About eighteen months ago he had been in St. Petersburg with his wife. They had lunched at Cubat's Restaurant with an old school friend ofhis, a transport engineer who had introduced a young man of twenty-two or twenty-three caUed Michael with a short, rather odd sumame—Rees. Two months later the doctor had seen the young man's photograph in his wife's album with some writing in Frcnch: .. In mcmorv ofthc prcscut and in hopc for thc futurc.' Then he had riin across thc man a conplc of times at his mothcr-in- law's. That was when his wifc had taken to going out a lot and coming home at all hours of the morning. She kcpt asking him to lct her have a passport so that she could go abroad. He had refused and for days on end all hcll had been let loose at home and he could hardly face the servants.

Six months ago Nicholas's medical colleagues had decided that he was developing T.D. and advised him to drop everything and go to the Crimea, hearing which Olga put on an air of great alarm and started making up to her husband. She told him how cold and boring the Crimea was and how much better Nice would be. She would go with him and nurse him and see that he had some peace and quiet.

Now he knew why his wife was so set on Nice This Michel lived at Monte Carlo.

He picked up an English-Russian dictionary and gradually put to- gether the foUowing by translating the words and guessing the mean- mg:

drink to my dearly beloved kiss tiny foot thousand times eagerly await arrival

Now he saw what a laughing-stock he would have inade of himself if he had agreed to take his wife to Nice. He was so upset that he was ready to cry, and began stalking from room to room in great distress. A sensitive man of humble origins, he felt wounded in his pride. He clenched his fists and scowled disgustedly, wondering how he—the son of a village priest, brought up at a church school, a plain, blunt man and a surgeon' by profession—could ever have let himself be enslaved. Why this shameful surrender to a creature so feeble, mean- spirited, dishonest and generally beneath contempt?

'Tiny foot!' he muttered, screwing up the telegram. 'Tiny foot my foot!'

Falling in love, proposing, seven years of marriage—nothing re- mained of all that but the memory of long, fragrant hair, clouds of soft lace and a tiny foot. Yes, it actually was very small and pretty. Those early embraces now seemed to have left him with the feel of silk and lace on his hands and face, and nothing else.

Nothing else, that is, unless you count hysteria, screams, reproaches, threats and lies—barefaced, treacherous lies.

At his father's house in the village, he remembered, a bird sometimes chanced to fly in from outside and would crash furiously against the windows and knock things ovcr. And that is what this woman was likc, flying into his life from a complctely different world and creating sheer havoc. The best years ofhis life were over and they had been hell, his hopes of happiness had been dashed and mocked, his health was gone, and his house was full of the paraphernalia of a vulgar coquette. Out of the ten thousand roubles that he earned each year he could not raise even ten to send to his old mother and he was in debt to the tune of fifteen thousand. A gang of thugs could have camped out in his home without making such a total wreck of his life as this woman had done, or so it seemed.

He began coughing and gasping for breath. He should have gone to bed to get warm, but he could not. He kept walking about the house or sitting down at his desk, doodling nervously with a pencil and writing automatically, 'Writing practice. . . . Tiny foot. .. .'

By fve o'clock he felt quite weak and was blaming hinself for everything. He felt that Olga should have married someone else who could have had a good influcnce on her. That might have turned her into a good, decent woman—who knows ?—whereas he was a poor psychologist who knew nothing of the female heart, quite apart from being so dull and insensitive .. ..

Tm not long for this world,' he thought. 'A walking corpse like me shouldn't get in living people's way. To stand out for one's sup- posed rights now—that really would be silly and eccentric. I'll have it out with her. Let her go off with her lover—I'll give her a divorce and take the blame . . . . '

Olga arrived in the end. She came straight into the study without taking off her white coat, hat and galoshes, and flopped down in an armchair.

'Horrid, horrid fat boy!' she panted with a sob. 'Thoroughly dis- honest, I call it! Beastly!' She stamped. 'I can't, I won't, I shan't put up with it!'

'Why, what is it?' asked Nicholas, going towards her.

'A student—Azarbckov—has been seeing me home and he's lost my purse with fifteen roubles that Mother gave me.'

She was crying in real earnest, like a little girl, and not only her handkerchief, but even her gloves were wet with tears.

'It can't be helped,' sighed the doctor. 'If it's lost it's lost and that's that. Do calm down, I want a word with you.'

'I'm not made of money and I can't afford to be so slapdash. He says he'll pay it back, but I don't believe him, he's too poor. . . . '

Hcr husband askcd hcr to calm down and listen, but shc hpt 011 about the student and this missing fiftcen roublc.s.

'Look,' he said irritably, 'I'U let you havc twcmy-fivc roubles in thc morning. Only please do shut up.'

'I must go and change,' she sobbed. 'Well, I can't talk seriously with my coat on, can I? Whatever next!'

Helping her ofi" with her coat and galoshes, hc caught a whiff of the white wine that she liked with oysters—she could certainly put away the food and drink, for al her dainty looks.

She went to her room and came back after a while, having changed her clothca and powdered her face, but with eyes swollen from crying. She sat down and vanished inside her lace ncglige, and all her husband could make out in this. sca of pink biUows was her hair all over the place and that tiny foot in a slipper.

'Well, what iS it?' she asked, rocking herself in the chair.

'I happened to see this,' said the doctor and handed her the telegram.

She read it and shrugged.

'What of it?' she asked, rockuig harder. 'It's an ordinary New Year's greeting, that's all. There's no mystery about it.'

'You're banking on me not knowing English. I know I don't, but I do have a dictionary. That telegram's from Rees. He drinks to his beloved and sends you a thousand kisses. But never mind that, never mind that,' the doctor hurried on. 'I haven't the faintest wish to re- proach you or mal

There was a short silence. She began crying softly.

'I'm giving you your freedom so that you won't need to pretend and lie any more,' went on Nicholas. 'If you love that young man, well then, love him. And if you want to join him abroad, go ahead. You're young and healthy and I'm an invalid, I'm not long for this world. In other words—well, you see what I mean.'

He felt too upset to go on. Weeping, Olga admitted in a self-pitying voice that she did love Rees, had been with him onjaunts out of town, visited in his hotel room—and realy was very keen on this trip abroad.

'You see, I'm not hiding anything,' she sighed. 'I'm putting my cards on the table and I implore you once again to do the decent thing and give me my passport.'

'That's just what I'm teUing you—you'rc free.'

She movcd to a chair ne.ircr him so that shc could look at his face. She distrusted him and wanted to read his innermost thoughts. She never trusted pcople and always suspected them, however well-mean- ing, of being up to some dirty little trick and having an eye to the main chance. As she scrutinized his face her eyes seemcd to flash green like a cat's.

'Then when do I get my passport?' she asked quietly.

'Never,' he suddenly wanted to answer, but took a grip on himself and said, 'Whenever you like.'

'I'm only going for a month.

'You can stay with Rees for good. I'm giving you a divorce and taking the blame, so Rces can marry you.'

Olga looked astonished. 'But I don't want a divorce!' she said force- fully. 'I'm not asking for one. Just give me the passport, that's all.'

'But why no divorce?' The doctor was beginning to lose his temper. 'YoU' a strange woman, I must say. If you're really fond of him and he loves you, you two can't do better than marry, placed as you are. Don't tell me that given the choice you acrually prefer adultcry to marriage!'

'Oh, I see,' she said, moving away. An evil, vindictive expression came into her face. 'I see your little game. You're fed up with me and you just want to get rid ot me by landing me with this divorce. But I'm not quite such a fool as you think, thank you very much. I'm not having a divorce and I'm not leaving you, oh dear me no. Firstly, I want to keep my social position,' she went on quickly as though afraid that he might stop her. 'Secondly, I'm twenty-seven and Rees is only twenty-three. In a year's time he'll tire of me and throw me over. And what's more, I'm not sure I shall be so keen on him much longer, if you want to know.... So there! I'm sitting tight!'

'Then out of this house you go!' shouted Nicholas, stamping. Tll throw you out! You're a vile, disgusting creature.'

'We'U see about chat,' she said and left the room.

It was broad daylight outside, but the doctor stiU sac at his desk doodling and automatically writing, 'My dear Sir.. . . A tiny foot... .'

Or else he walked about, stopping in the drawing-room in front of a photograph taken soon after his wedding seven years ago. He looked at it for some time.

It was a family group. There were his father-in-law, his mother-in- law and his wife Olga, then aged twenty. And there was he in his role of happy young husband. Father-in-law was clean-shaven, plump, dropsical, a senior civil servant, cunning and avaricious. Mother-in law, a stout woman with the small, predatory features of a ferret, loved her daughter to distraction and helped her as much as she could. If her daughter had strangled someone she would not have said a word to the girl, but would just have shielded her behind her apron.

Olga had small, predatory features too, but thcy were bolder and more expressive than her mother's—no ferret she, but a nastier: piece of work altogether!

Nicholas himself looked such a decent, straightforward fellow in the photograph—such a terribly nice chap! A hearty, good-natured, boyish grin lit up his whole face. He looked as if .he believed in his .simple way that this brood of vampires, into which fate had thrust him, was going to bring him adventure, happmess and aU that he had dreamt of when he was a student and sang, "Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.'

Once again he asked himself in utter baffiement how he—son of a vilage priest and brought up at a church school, a plain, straight- forward, blunt man—could have surrendered so abjectly to this con- temptible, lying, vulgar, mean-spirited, wholly alien creature.

At eleven o'clock that morning he was putting on his coat before going to the hospital when the maid came into his study.

'What is it?'

'Madam has just got up. She wants the twenty-five roubles you promised her yesterday.'

A LADY WITH A DOG

I

There was said to be a new arrival on the Esplanade: a lady with a dog.

After spending a fortnight at Yalta, Dmitry Gurov had quite settled in and was now beginning to take an interest in new faces. As he sat outside Vernet's cafe he saw a fair-haired young woman, not tall, walking on the promenade—wearing a beret, with a white Pomeranian dog trotting after her.

Then he encountered her several times a day in the municipal park and square. She walked alone, always with that beret, always with the white Pomeranian. Who she was no one knew, everyone just called her 'the dog lady'.

'If she has no husband or friends here she might be worth picking up,' calculated Gurov.

He was still in his thirties, but had a twelve-year-old daughter and two schoolboy sons. His marriage had been arranged early—during his second college year—and now his wife seemed half as old again as he. She was .a tall, dark-browed woman: outspoken, earnest, stolid and—she maintained—an 'intellectual'. She was a great reader, she favoured spelling reform, she called her husband 'Demetrius' instead of plain 'Dmitry', while he privately thought her narrow-minded, inelegant and slow on the uptake. He was afraid of her, and disliked being at home. He had begun deceiving her long ago, and his in- fidelities were frequent—which is probably why he nearly always spoke so disparagingly of women, caUing them an 'inferior species' when the subject cropped up.

He was, he felt, sufciently schooled by bitter experience to call them any name he liked, yet he still couldn't live two days on end without his 'inferior species'. Men's company bored him, making him ill at ease, tongue-tied and apathetic, whereas with women he felt free. He knew what to talk about, how to behave—he even found it easy to be with them without talking at al. In his appearance and character, in his whole nature, there was an alluring, elusive element which charmed and fascinated women. He knew it, and he was hi^^lf strongly attracted in rc^ra.

As experience multiple and—in the full sense of the word—bitter had long since taught him, every intimacy which so plcasantly divcrsi- fies one's life, which seems so easy, so delightfully adventurous at the outset .. . such an intimacy does, when reasonable people are involved (not least Muscovites—so hesitant and slow off the mark), develop willy-nilly into some vast, extraordinarily complex problem untii the whole business finally bccomcs quite an ordeal. Somehow, though, vn every new encounter with an attractive woman all this experience went for nothing—he wanted a bit of excitement and it all seemed so easy and amusing.

Well, he was eating in an open-air restaurant late one afternoon when the lady in the beret sauntered along and took the next table. Her expression, walk, clothes, hair-style .. . all told him that she was socially presentable, married, in Yalta for the first time, alone—and bored.

Much nonsense is talked about the looseness of morals in these parts, . and he despised such stories, knowing that they were largely fabricated by people who would have been glad to misbehave themselves, given the aptitude! But when the young woman sat do^ at the next table, three paces away, he recalled those tales of trips into the mountains and easy conquests. The seductive thought of a swift, fleeting flffflire—the romance with the stranger whose very name you don't know—sud- denly possessed him. He made a friendly gesture to the dog. It came up. rfe wagged his fmger. The dog growled and Gurov shook his fmger again.

The lady glanced at him, lowered her eyes at once.

'He doesn't bite.' She blushed.

'May I give ^m a bone?'

She nodded.

'Have you been in Yalta long, madam?' he asked courteously.

'Five days.'

'Oh, I've nearly survived my first fortnight.'

There was a short pause.

'Time goes quickly, but it is so boring,' she said, not looking at him.

'That's what they all say, what a bore this place is. Your average tripper from Belyov, Zhizdra or somewhere ... he doesn't know what boredom means tiU he comes here. Then it's "Oh, what a bore! Oh, what dust!" You might think he'd just blo^ in from s^my Spaui!'

She laughed. Then both continued their meal in silence, as strangers.

After dinner, though, they left together and embarked on the bantering chat of people who feel free and easy, who don't mind where they go or what they talk about. As they strolled they discussed the strange light on the sca: the watcr was of a soft, warm, mauve hue, crossed by a stripe of golden moonlight. How sultry it was after the day's hea.t, they said. Gurov described himself as a Muscovite who had studied literature but worked in a bank. He had once trained as an opera singer but had given that up and o^ed two houses in Moscow.

From her he learnt that she had gro^ up in St. Petersburg, but had marned in the provincial to^ where she had now been living for two years, that she was staying in Yalta for another month, that her husband (who also wanted a holiday) might come and fetch her. She was quite unable to explain her husband's job—was it with the County Council or the Rural District?—and even she saw the funny side of this. Gurov also learnt that she was called Anne.

In his hotel room afterwards he thought about her. He was very likely to meet her tomorrow, bound to. As he went to bed he remem- bered that she had not ll)ng left boarding-school, that she had been a schoolgirl like his o^ daughter—remembered, too, how much shyness and stiffuess she still showed when laughing and talking to a stranger. This must be her first time ever alone in such a place, with men following her around, watching her, talking to her: all with a certain privy aim which she could not fail to divine. He remembered her slender, frail neck, her lovely grey eyes.

'You can't help feeling sorry for her, though,' he thought. And dozed off.

II

A week had passed since their first meeting. It was a Sunday or some other holiday. Indoors was stifling, and outside flurries of dust swept the streets, whipping off hats. It was a thirsty day, and Gurov kept calling in at the cafe to fetch Anne a soft d^^ or an ice-cream. There was no escaping the heat.

In the evening things were a little easier, and they went on the pier to watch a steamer come in. There were a lot ofpeople hanging around on the landing-stage: they were here to meet someone, and held bun- ches of flowers. Two features of the Yalta smart set were now thro^n into sharp relief. The older women dressed like young ones. There were lots.ofgenerals.

As the sea was tough the steamer arrived late, after s^uet, and mana:uvred for some time before putting in at thejetty. Anne watched boat and passengers through her lorgnette as if seeking someone she knew. Whenever she turned to Gurov her eyes shone. She spoke a lot, asking quick-fire questions and immediately forgetting what they were. Then she lost her lorgnette: dropped it in the crowd.

Thc gaily-dressed gathering dispersed, no more faces could be seen, and the wind dropped completely while Gurov and Anne stood as if waiting for somcone else to discmbark. Anne had stopped talking, and sniffcd her flowers without looking at Gurov.

'The weather's better now that it's evening,' said he. 'So where shall we go? How about driving somewhere?'

She did not answer.

Then he stared at her hard, embraced her suddenly and kissed her lips. The sccnt of her flowers, their dampncss, enveloped him, and he immediately glanced around fearfully: had they been observed?

'Let's go to your room,' he said softly.

They set off quickly together.

Her room was stuffy and smelt of the scent which she had bought in the Japanese shop.

'What encounters one does have in life,' thought Gurov as he looked at her now.

He still retained memories of the easy-going, light-hearted women in his past: women happy in their love and grateful to him for that happiness, however brieЈ He also recalled those who, like his wife, made love insincerely, with idle chatter, affectations and hystetia, their expressions conveying that this was neither love nor passion but something more significant. He thought of two or three very beautiful frigid women whose faces would suddenly flash a rapacious, stubborn look of lust to seize, to snatch more from life than it can give . . . women no longer young, these: fractious, unreasonable, overbearing and obtuse. When Gurov had cooled towards them their beauty had aroused his hatred, and the bce on their underclothes had looked like a lizard's scales.

In this case, though, all was hesitancy, the awkwardness of inex- perienced youth. There was the impression of her being taken aback, too, as by a sudden knock on the door. Anne, this 'lady with a dog', had her o^ special view—a very serious one—ofwhat had happened. She thought of it as her 'downfall', it seemed, which was all very strange and inappropriate. Her features had sunk and faded, her long hair drooped sadly down each side of her face. She had struck a pensive, despondent pose, like the Woman Taken in Aduhery in an old-fashioned picture.

'This is all wrong,' she said. 'Now you'll completely despise me.'

There was a water-melon on the table. Gurov cut a slice and slowly ate. Half an hour, at least, passed in silence.

He found Anne touching. She had that air of naive innocence of a thoroughly nice unworldly woman. A solitary candle,- burning on the table, barely lit her face, but it was obvious that she was ill at ease.

'Why should I lose respect for you?' asked Gurov. 'You don't know what you're saying.'

'God forgive me,' she said, her eyes brimming with tears. 'This is terrible.'

'You seem very much on the defensive, Anne.'

'How can I defend what I've clone? I'm a bad, wicked woman, I despise myself and I'm not trying to make excuses. It's not my husband, it is myself I've deceived. I don't just mean what happened here, I've been deceiving myself for a long time. My husband may be a good, honourable man, but he is such a worm. What he does at that job of his I don't know—all I know is, he's a worm. I was twenty when I married him—I longed to know more oflife. Then I wanted something better. There must be a different life, mustn't there? Or so I told myself. I wanted a little—well, rather more than a little—excitement. I was avid for experience. You won't understand me, I'm sure, but I could control myself no longer, I swear, something had happened to me, there was no holding me. So I told my husband I was ill and I came here. And I've been going round here in a daze as ifl wasoff my head. But now I'm just another vulgar, worthless woman whom everyone is free to despise.'

Gurov was bored with all this. He was irritated by the naive air, the unexpected, uncalled-for remorse. But for the tears in her eyes he might have thought her to be joking or play-acting.

'I don't understand,' said he softly. 'What is it you want?'

She hid her face on his breast and clung to him.

'Please, please believe me,' she implored. 'I long for a decent, moral life. Sin disgusts me, I don't know what I'm doing myself. The co^rnon people say the "Evil One" tempted them, and now I can say the same: I was tempted by the Evil One.'

'There there, that's enough,' he muttered.

He looked into her staring, frightened eyes, kissed her, spoke softly and gently. She gradually relaxed and cheered up again. Both laughed.

Thcn they wcnt out. Thc promcnadc w.is deserted, thc town with its cyprcsses lookcd quite de:1d, but the sca still ro.ircd, breaking on thc beach. A single launch with a sleepily glinting lamp tossed on the waves.

They found a cab and drove to Oreanda.

'I've only just discovered your surname, downstairs in your hotel,' Gurov told her. '"Von Diederitz", it says on the board. Is your husband German?'

'No, his grandfathcr was, I think, but he's Russian.'

They sat on a bench near thc -church at Orcanda, gazing silently down at the sea. Yalta was barely visible through thc dawn mist, white clouds hung motionless on the mountain peaks. Not a leaf stirred on the trees, cicadas chirped. Borne up from below, the sea's monotonous, muffled boom spoke of peace, of the evcrlasting sleep awaiting us. Bcforc Yalta or Orcanda yet cxisted that surf had bccn thundering down there, it was roaring away now, and it will continue its dull booming with the same unconcern when wc arc no more. This persistence, this utter aloofness from all our lives and deaths ... do they perhaps hold the secret pledge of our eternal salvation, of life's perpetual motion on earth, of its uninterrupted progress? As he sat there, lulled and entranced by the magic panorama—sea, mountains, clouds, broad sky—beside a young woman who looked so beautiful in the dawn, Gurov reflected that everything on earth is beautiful, really, when you consider it—everything except what we think and do our- selves when we forgct the lofty goals of bcing and our human dignity.

Someone—a watchman, no doubt—came up, looked at thcm, went away. Even this incident seemed mysterious—beautiful, too. In the dawn they saw a steamer arrive from Feodosiya, its lights already extinguishcd.

'There's dew on the grass,' Anne said, after a pause.

'Yes, time to go home.'

They went back to town.

After this they met on the promenade each noon, lunchcd, dined, strolled, enthused about the sea together. She complained of sleeping badly, of palpitations. Disturbed by jealousy, and by the fear that he did not rcspect her enough, she kept repeating the same old questions. And often in the Square or Gardens, when there was nobody near them, he would suddenly draw her to him and kiss her ardently. This utter idleness, these kisses in broad daylight, these glancesover the shoulder, this fear of being seen, the heat, the sea's smell, the repeated glimpses of i dle, elegant, sleek persons . .. it all seemed to revitalize him. He told Anne how pretty she was, how provocative. He was impetuous, he was passionate,'he never left her side, while she was for ever brooding and begging him to admit that he did not rcspect her, that he loved her not at all, that he could see in her no more than a very ordinary woman. Late almost every evening they would drive out oftown: to Oreanda or the waterfall. These trips were invariably a great succcss, leaving an impression of majesty and beauty.

They had been expecting the husband to arrive, but he sent a letter to say that he had eye trouble, and begged his wife to come home soon. Anne bestirred herself.

'It's just as well I am leaving,' she told Gurov. 'This is fate.'

She left by carriage and he drove with her. This part of her journey took all day. When she took her seat in the express train, which was due to leave in five minutes, she asked to look at hi'inm once more.

'One last look—that's right.'

She did not cry, but was so sad that she secmed ill. Her face quivered.

'I'll think of you, I'll remembcr you,' she said. 'God blcss and keep you. Don't think ill of me. We'rc parting for ever. We must, because we should never have met at all. God bless you.'

The train dcparted swiftly, its lights soon vanislnng and its noise dying away within a minute, as though everything had conspired to make a quick end of that sweet trance, that madness. Alone on thc platform, gazing into the dark distance, Gurov heard the chirp of grasshoppers and the hum of telegraph wires, feeling as if he had just awoken. Well, there went another adventure or episode in his life, he reflected.-It too had ended, now only the memory was left.

He was troubled, sad, somewhat penitent. This young woman whom he would nevcr see again ... she hadn't been happy with him, now, had she? He had treated hcr kindly and affectionately. And yet his attitude to her, his tone, his caresses had betrayed a faint irony: the rather crude condescension of your conquering male—of a man nearly twice her age into the bargain. She had kept calling him kind, exceptional, noble—so she hadn't scen him as he really was, obviously, and he must havc been deceiving her without meaning to.

Here at the station there was already a whiff of autumn in thc air, and the evening was cool.

'It's time I went north too,' thought Gurov, leaving the platform. 'High time.'

Back home in Moscow it was already likc winter. The stoves were alight. It was dark when his children breakfastcd and got ready for school in the mornings, so their nanny lit the light for a short time. The frosts had begun. It is always such a joy to see the white ground and white roofs when the snow first falls, on that first day of sleigh- riding. The air is so fresh and good to breathe, and you remember the years of your youth. White with frost, the old limes and birches have a kindly look, they are dearer to your heart than any cypresses or palm-trees, and near them you no longer hanker after mountains and sea.

A Moscow man himself, Gurov had come home on a fine frosty day. He put on his fur coat and warm gloves and strolled do^ the Petrovka, he heard church bells pealing on Saturday evening . .. and his reccnt trip, all the places he had visited, lost all charm for him. He plunged deeper and decper into Moscow life. He was zealously reading his thrce newspapers on principle! He felt the lure ofrestaurants, clubs, dinner parties, anniversary celcbrations; he was flattcred to be visitcd by famous lawyers and actors, flattered to play cards with a professor at the Doctors' Club. He could tackle a large helping of'Moscow hot- pot' straight from the pan.

In a month or two's time the memory of ^rne would become blurred, thought he—he would just dream of her, of her adorable smile, occasionally as he used to dream of those other ones. But more than a month passed, real winter set in, and yet everything was still as clear in his mind as if they had parted only yesterday. His memories flared up ever more brightly. When, in the quiet of evening, his chil- dren's voices reached his study as they did their homework, when he heard a sentimental song or a barrel organ in a restaurant, when a blizzard howled in his chi^ey . .. it would all suddenly come back tohim: that business on the pier, the early morning with the mist on the mountains, the Feodosiya steamer, the kisses. He would pace the room for hours, remembering and smiling until these recollections merged into fantasies: until, in his imagination, past fused with future. Though he did not dreamof ^me, she pursued everywhere like his shadow, watching him. If he closed his eyes he could see her vividly—younger, gentler, more beautiful than she really was. He even saw himself as a better man than he had been back in Yalta.

She gazed at him from the book-case in the evenings, from thc hearth, from a corner of the room. He heard her breathing, heard the delightful rustle of her dress. In the street he followed women with his eyes, seeking one like her.

He was plagued, now, by the urge to share his memorieS'. But he could not talk about his love at home, and outside his home there was no one to tell—he couldn't very well discuss it with his tenants or at the bank! What was there to say, anyway? Had he really been in love? Had there really been anything beautiful or idyllic, anything edifying— anything merely interesting, even—in his relations with Anne? He was reduced.to vague remarks about love and women, and no one guessed what he had in mind. His wife just twitched those dark eye- brows and told him that 'the role oflady-killcr doesn't suit you at all, Demetrius'.

As he was leaving the Doctors' Club one night with his partner, a civil servant, he could not help saying that he had 'met such an enchant- ing woman in Yalta—did you but know!'

The civil servant climbed into his sledge and drove off. but suddenly turned round and shouted Gurov's name.

'What is it?'

'You were quite right just now, the sturgeon was a bit off.'

For some reason these words, humdrum though they were, sud- denly infuriated Gurov, striking him as indelicate and gross. What barbarous manners, what faces, what meaningless nights, what dull, featureless days ! Frantic card-playing, guzzling, drunkenness, endless ^atter always on one and the same topic. Futile activities, repetitious talk, talk, talk ... they engross most of your time, your best efforts, and you end up with a sort of botched, pedestrian life: a form of imbecility from which there's no way out, no escape. You might as well be in jail or in a madhouse!

Gurov lay awake all night, fuming—then had a headache all next day. He slept badly on the following nights, too, sitting up in bed th^&ng, or pacing the room. He was fed up with his children, fed up with his bank, there was nowhere he wanted to go, nothing he wanted to talk about.

Towards Christmas he prepared for a journey. He told his wife that he was going to St. Petersburg on a certain young man's business—but he actually went to the town where Anne lived. Why? He didn't really know himself. He wanted to see her, speak to her—make an asi^^tion if he could.

He reached the town one morning and put up at a hotel, in the 'best' room with wall-to-wall carpeting in coarse field-grey material. On the table stood an inkstand, grey with dust and shaped as a horse- man holding his hat up in onc hand and minus a head. The porter' told him what he needed to know: von Diederitz livcd in Old Pottery Street in his own house near the hotel. He did things in style, kept his own horses, was known to everyone in to\wn. The porter pronounced the name as 'Drearydits'. Gurov sauntered off to Old Pottery Street, found the house. Immediately facing it was a long, grey fence cro\wned with nails: 'a fence to run away from', thoughr Gurov, looking from windows to fence and back.

Local government offices were closed today, so the husband was probably at home, Gurov reckoned. In any case it would be tactless to go into the house and create a disturbancc. Ifhe sent a notc, though, it might fall into the husband's hands and ruin everything. Better trust to chancc. He paced the street ncar the fence, awaiting this chance. He saw a beggar go through the gate, saw him set upon by dogs. An hour later he heard the faint, muffled sound of a piano—that must be Anne playing. Suddenly the front door opened, and out came an old woman with the familiar white Pomeranian running after her. Gurov wanted to call the dog, but his heart suddenly raced and he was too excited to remember its name.

He paced about, loathing that grey fence more and more. In his irritation, he fancied that Anne had forgotten him and might be amusing herself with another man—what else could be expected of a young woman compelled to contemplate this confounded fence morning, noon ar.d night? He went back'to his room, sat on the sofa for hours not knowing what to do, then lunched and dozed for hours.

'It's all so stupid and distressing,' he thought, waking up and seeing the dark windows—it was already evening. 'Now I've had a good sleep for some reason, but what shall I do tonight?'

He sat on the bed—it was covered with a cheap, grey hospital blanket.

'So much for your ladies with dogs!' said he in petulant self- mockery. 'So much for your holiday romances—now you're stuck in this dump.'

In the station that morning his eye had been caught by a poster in bold lettering advertising the opening of The Geisha. Recalling this, he drove to the thcatre, reflecting that sheveryprobably attended first nights.

The theatre was full. As usual in provincial theatres a mist hung abovc the chandclicr, while thc gallcry was restive and rowdy. In the first row beforc the performancc bcgan stood thc local gallants, hands clasped behind their backs. In the Governor's box, in front, sat that worthy's daughtcr complete with feather boa, while the Governor himself lurked modestly behind a por/iere, only his hands showing. The curtain shook, the orchestra tuned up protractedly. As the audience came in and took its seats, Gurov peered frantically around.

In came Anne. She sat down in the third row, and when Gurov glimpsed her his heart seemed to miss a beat. He saw clearly, now, that she was nearer, dearcr, more important to him than anyone in the whole world. Lost in the provincial crowd, this very ordinary little woman carrying her vulgar lorgnette now absorbed his whole being. She was his grief, his joy—the only happiness he wanted, now. To the strains of that abominable orchestril with its atrocious, tasteless fiddling he thought how lovely she was . . . thought and brooded.

A young man with short dundrearies, very tall, round-shouldered, hCld come in with Anne and sat down beside her. He kept bobbing his head as if making obeisance with every step hc took. It must be the husband whom, in that bitter outburst back in Yalta, she had dubbed a 'worm'. His lanky figure, his side-whiskers, his small bald patch . .. there actually was something menial and flunkey-like about them. He gave an ingratiating smile, the emblem of somc learned society glinting in his buttonhote like a hotel servant's number.

The husband went for a smoke in the first interval, while she remained seated. Gurov—his seat was also in the stalls—approached her. His voice trembling, forcing a smile; he wished her good evening.

She glanced at him, she blenched. Then she looked again—aghast, not believing her eyes, crushing fan and lorgnette together in her hands in an obvious effort to prevent herself from fainting. Neither spoke. She sat, he remained standing—alarmed by her discomfiture, not venturing to sit do^ beside her. Fiddles and flute started tuning up, and he suddenly panicked: from all the boxes eyes seemed to be staring at them. Then she stood up and quickly made for the exit, while he followed, both walking at random along corridors, up and do^ stairways, glimpsing men in the uniforms of the courts, the schools and the administration of cro^ lands, all wearing their decorations. There were glimpses of ladies and fur coats on pegs. A draught enveloped them with the smell of cigarette ends.

'Oh God—why all these people, this orchertra?' wondered Gurov, his hean pounding.

Suddenly he recalled thc evening when he had seen Anne off at the station, when he had told himself that it was all over and that they would never meet again. How far they were now, though, from any ending!

On a narrow, gloomy staircase labelled entrance to circle she stopped.

'How you did scare me,' she paited, still pale and dazed. 'I nearly died, you scared me so. Why, why, why are you here?'

'Try and understand, Anne,' he said in a rapid undertone. 'Under- stand, I implore you '

She looked at him—fearfully, pleadingly, lovingly. She stared, try- ing to fix his features in her memory.

'I'm so miscrable,' she went on, not hearing him. 'I've thought only of you all this time, my thoughts of you have kept me alive. Oh, I did so want to forget you—why, why, why are you here?'

On a landing higher up two schoolboys were smoking and looking down, but Gurov did not care. He pulled Anne to him, kissed her face, cheek, hands.

'Whatever are you doing?' she askcd—horrified, pushing him from her. 'Wc must bc out of our minds. You must go away today—leave this very instant, I implore you, I beg you in the name of all that is holy. Someonc's coming.'

Somcone indecd was coming upstairs.

'You must leave,' Anne went on in a whisper. 'Do you hear me, Gurov? I'll visit you in Moscow. I've never becn happy, I'm unhappy now, and I shall never, never, never be happy. So don't add to my sufferings. I'll come to Moscow,.I swear it, but we must part now. We must say good-byc, my good, kind darling.'

She pressed his hand and went quickly downstairs, looking back at him, and he could see from her eyes that she really was unhappy. Gurov waited a little, cocked an ear and, when all was quiet, found the peg with his coat and left the theatre.

IV

Anne took to visiting him in Moscow. Once every two or three months shc would leave her home town, telling her husband that she was going to consult a professor about a female complaint. The husband neither believed nor disbelieved her. In Moscow she would put up at the Slav Fair Hotcl, and at once scnd a red-capped messenger to Gurov. Gurov would visit her hotel, and no one in Moscow knew anything about it.

It thus chanced that he was on his way to see her one winter morning —hcr messengcr had called on the previous evening, but had not found him at home. He was walking with his daughter, wanting to take her to her school, which was on his way. There was a heavy do^pour of sleet.

'It's three degrees above zero, yet look at the sleet,' said Gurov to his daughtcr. 'But it's only the ground which is warm, you see—the temperature in the upper strata of the atmosphere is quite different.'

'Why doesn't it thunder in winter, Daddy?'

He explained this too, reflecting as he spoke that he was on his way to an assignation. Not a soul knew about it—or ever would know, probably. He was living two lives. One ofthem^ was open to view by— and known to—the people concerned. It was full of stereotyped truths and stereotyped untruths, it was identical with the life ofhis friends and acquaintances. The other life proceeded in secret. Through some strange and possibly arbitrary chain of coincidences everything vital, interesting and crucial to him, everything which called his sincerity and integrity into play, everything which made up the core of his life . .. all that took place in complete secrecy, whereas everything false about him, the fat;:ade behind which he hid to conceal the truth— his work at the bank, say, his arguments at the club, that 'inferior species' stuff, attending anniversary celebrations with his wife—all that was in the open. Hejudged others by himself, disbelieving the evidence of his eyes, and attributing to everyone a real, fascinating life lived Wlder the cloak of secrecy as in the darkness of the night. Each indivi- dual existence is based on mystery, which is perhaps why civilized man makes such a neurotic fuss about having his privacy respected.

After taking his daughter to school, Gurov made for the Slav Fair. He removed his coat downstairs, went up, tapped on the door. Anne was wearing his favourite grey dress, she was tired by the journey— and by the wait, after expecting him since the previous evening. She was pale, she looked at him without smiling, and no sooner was he in the room than she flung herself against his chest. Their kiss was as protracted and lingering as if they had not met for years.

'Well, how are things with you?' he asked. 'What's the news?'

'Wait, I'll tell you in a moment—I can't now.'

Unable to speak for crying, she turned away and pressed a handker- chief to her eyes.

'Let her cry, I'll nt down for a bit,' thought he, and sat in the arm- chair.

Then he rang and ordered tea. Then he drank it while she still stood with her back to hir,n, facing the window.

She wept as ontf distressed and woefully aware of the melancholy tum which their lives had taken. They met only in secret, they hid from other people like thieves. Their lives were in mins, were they not?

'Now, do stop it,' he said.

He could see that this was no fl.eeting affair—there was no telling when it would end. Anne was growing more and more attached to him. She adored him, and there was no question of telling her that all this must fmish one day. Besides, she would never believe him.

He went up to her, laid his hands on her shoulders, meaning to soothe her with a little banter—and then caught sight of himself in the nurror.

His hair was turning grey. He wondered why he had aged so much in the last few years and lost his looks. The shoulders on which his hands rested were warm and trembling. He pitied this life—still so warm and beautiful, but probably just about to fade and wither like his Why did she love him so? Women had never seen him as he really was. What they loved in him was not his real self but a figment of their o^ imaginations—someone whom they had dreamed of meet- ing all their lives. Then, when they realized their mistake, they had loved him all the same. Yet none of them had been happy with ltim. Time had passed, he haci met new ones, been intimate with them, parted from them. Not once had he been in love, though. He had known everything conceivable—except love, that is.

Only now that his head was grey had he well and truly fallen in love: for the first time in his life.

Anne and he loved each other very, very dearly, like man and wife or bosom friends. They felt themselves predestined for each other. That he should have a wife, and she a husband ... it seemed to make no sense. They were like two migratory birds, a male and a female, caught and put in separate cages. They had forgiven each other the shameful episodes of their past, they forgave each other for the present too, and they felt that their love had transformed them both.

Once, in moments of depression, he had tried to console himself with any argument which came into his head—but now he had no use ior arguments. His deepest sympathies were stirred, hc only wanted to be sincere and tender.

'Stop, darling,' he said. 'You've had your cry—that's enough. Now let's talk, let's think ofsomething.'

Then they consulted at length about avoiding the need for conceal- ment and deception, for living in different towns, for meeting only at rare intervals. How could they break these intolerable bonds? How, how, how?

He clutched his head and asked the question again and again.

Soon, it seemed, the solution would be foimd and a wonderful new life would begin. But both could see that they still had a long, long way to travel—and that the most complicated and difficult part was only just beginning.

THE DUEL

I

It was eight o'clock in the morning—the hour when officers, civil servants and visitors usually took a dip in the sea aftcr the hot, stuffy night, and then wcnt to the Pavilion for their coffcc or tea. Ivan Layevsky—a thin, fair-haired young man of about twenty-eight— arrived for his bathc wearing slippers and the pcaked cap of a treasury official. On thc bcach hc found niany acquaintanccs, among whom was his friend Samoylcnko, an army mcdical officer.

Samoylenko had a large head, close-cropped hair and no neck to speak of. He was ruddy and big-nosed, he had bectling black eye- brows and grey dundreary whiskers. Fat, paunchy, with the deep, raucous voice of a typical army man, he struck every new arrival unpleasantly as a blustering bully. But after two or three days one began to find his face extremely kind and agreeablc—handsome, even. Clumsy and rough though he was, he was also mild, infinitely easy- going, good-humoured and obliging. He was on Christian-name terms with everyone in town, lent them money, gave them medical consulta- tions, arranged their marriages, patchcd up their quarrels, and organized picnics at which he grilled kebabs and brewed a most tasty grey mullet stew. A cheery soul, he was always asking favours on someone's behalf. He was commonly regarded as a paragon, having only two weak points. Firstly, he was ashamed to be so kind, and tried to hide it with his stern look and pretence of rudeness. And, in the second place, he liked medical orderlies and soldiers to call him general, though he was only a colonel.

'Answer me this, Alexander,' Layevsky began when he and Samoy- lenko were both shoulder deep in water. 'You fall in love with a woman, let's say, and have an affair with her. You live with her for over two years, say, and then, as does happen, you fall out of love and start thinking of her as a stranger. What would you do?'

'No problem. "Clear out, old thing," you tell her, and that's that.'

'It's easily said. But say she has nowhere to go? She's alone in the world, she has no family, she's completely broke, she can't get ajob '

'All right then—let her have five hWldred roubles down, or twenty- five a month, and no argument. Very simple.'

'Granted you have five hundred roubles and the twenty-five a month—even so, I'm talking about a proud, educated woman. Could you really bring yourself to offer her money? And how would you set about it?'

Samoylenko made to reply, but a large wave broke over both and crashed on the beach, roaring back downwn the shingle. The friends came out of the water and started dressing.

'Ifyou don't love a woman, it'snot easy to live with her-obviously,' said Samoylenko, shaking sand out of his boot. 'But one must be reasonably humane, Ivan. If it was me, I'd pretend I still did love her, and I'd live with her till my dying day.'

Suddenly ashamed of his words, he pulled himself up.

'If you ask me,' said he, 'we'd be a sight better off without women, blast them!'

The friends finished dressing and went into the Pavilion, where .Samoylenko—one of the regulars—even had his cups, plates and so on. Every morning he was served a tray with a cup of coffee, a tall, cut-glass tumbler oficed water and a glass ofbrandy. First he would sip his brandy, then his hot coffee, then his iced water. They must have tasted good, for a glint would come into his eyes when he-had drunk, and he would stroke his whiskers with both hands.

'Remarkably fine view,' he would say, gazing at the sea.

After a long night frittered away on dism.al, futile thoughts which had kept him awake, seeming to intensify the stifling blackness, Layevsky felt haggard and jaded. His bathe and coffee had done him no good.

'About what we were saying, Alexander,' he said. 'I shan't hide anything, I'll tell you frankly, as a friend. Things are in a bad way v.ith me and Nadezhda, a very bad way. I'm sorry to be confiding in you, but I must get it off my chest.'

Sensing the conversation's drift, Samoylenko lowered his eyes and dr^med his fingers on the table.

'I've lived with her for two years and I don't love her any more,' Layevsky went on. 'Or rather I've come to see that I never did love her. These two years have been a snare and delusion.'

^^le speaking, Layevsky had the trick of scrutinizing the pink palms ofhis hands, biting his nails or crumpling his cuff He did so now.

'You can't help me, that I realize,' he said. 'But I'm telling you be- cause talk's the only escape for us failures and Superfluous Men. I have to base whatever I do on gencral principlcs. I must find an explana- tion, an excuse for my futile life in somebody's theories, in literary types—say in the fact that we, the gentry, are going to the bad, and so on. Last night, for instance, I kept consoling myself with the thought of Tolstoy—he's so right about things, so fiendishly right— and it made me feel better. He's a really great writer, old man—say what you like.'

Ncver having read Tolstoy, but meaning to every day, Samoylenko was abashed..

'Yes,' he said. 'All writers draw on their imagination, but he draws dircct from nature.'

'Ye Gods,' Layevsky sighed. 'How civilization does cripple us! I fall in love with a married woman, she falls in love \vith me. It all starts with kisses, quiet evenings, vows, Herbert Spencer, ideals and common interests. How utterly bogus! Wĉ're really running away from her husband, but we pretend we're escaping from the futility of our life as intellectuals. We see our future as follows. Firstly the Caucasus— getting to know the place and the people. I'm to dress up as a bureau- crat, and do an office job. Then we take a plot of land some\vhere in the v.;de open spaces. We live by the sweat of our face—we dig vineyards, we till fields and all that. In my place you—or your zoologist friend Von Koren—would probably have gone on living with Nadezhda for thirty years, and you'd have left your heirs a prosperous vineyard and a couple of thousand acres of maize. But I felt a complete flop from the fmt day. This town's unbearably hot and boring, there's no one to talk to. Take a trip into the country, and every bush and stone seems to hide monstrous spiders, scorpions and snakes, while further out there's just a wilderness of mountains. Foreign people, foreign scenery, a pathetic level of culture—these things, my friend, are a sight harder to take than dreaming about warm countries as you saunter dov."Tl the main street of St. Petersburg in a fur coat with Nadezhda on your arm. What's needed here is a man who'll fight tooth and nail. But I'm no fighter, I'm just a miserable, namby-pamby neurotic. My ideas about hard work and vineyards add up to damn all, I've known that from the first day. As for love, living with a woman who has read Herbert Spencer :md followed you to the ends of the earth—that'sjust as boring as cohabiting with any more common or garden specimen, you take it from me. There's the same smell of ironing, face-powder and medicines, there are the same curl-papers every morning, there's the same old pretence.'

'You can't run a house without ironing,' said Samoylenko, blushing because he knew the woman of whom Layevsky had spoken so frankly. 'You're in a bad mood this morning, Ivan, I see. Nadezhda's a splendid, cultivated woman and you're a highly intellectual chap yourself. «You two aren't married, of coursc,' Samoylenko went on with a glance at the next tablcs. 'But that's not your fault, is it? Besides, one mustn't be prcjudiced, 'one must move with the timcs. I'm all for civil marriage mysclf, indeed I am. But in my vicw, once you do start living togcther you should kccp it up for the rest of your life.'

'Without lovc?'

'I'll explain,' said Samoylenko. 'Eight ycars ago we had an old shipping-agent here, a highly intelligcnt chap. Wcll, he used to s.ay that the most important thing in family life is paticncc. Hear that, Ivan? Patience—not lovc. Love can't last. You've livcd and loved for a couple of years, and now your domestic life has obviously entcred a phase when you must call on all your patience—to preserve the balance, as i t were. '

'You believe your agent, but the old man's advice makes no sense to me. Perhaps he was only pretending. He may well have been tcsting his powers of endurance, and using his unloved partner as an object esscntial to such exercises. But I haven't yet sunk so low. Should I wish to practise endurance, I shall buy dumb-bclls or a high-spirited horse— and leave human beings out of it.'

Samoylenko ordercd chilled white wine.

'Tell me,' Layevsky asked him suddenly, when each had drunk a glass, 'what is softening of the brain?'

'It's—what shall I say ?—a disease which makes the brain soft, as if it was dissolving.'

'Can it be cured?'

'Yes, ifit hasn't gone too far. It needs cold showers, plasters—oh ycs, and something taken internally.'

'Ah. Well, you see how I'm fixed. I can't live with hcr, it's quite beyond me. When I'm with you I can pass the time of day like this and smile, but at home I'm utterly depressed. I feel so awful that if I was told I had to spend another month with her, say, I think I'd blow my brains out. Yet I can't leave her. She has no one else, she can't get a job, and neither of us has any money. Where can she go, who can she turn to? Ideas fail one. So come on, tell me what to do, can't you?'

'Well, er,' growled Samoylenko, at a loss for a reply. 'Does she love you ?'

'Yes—to the extent that a woman of her age and temperament requires a man. It would be as hard for her to part with me as to give up her face-powder or hair-curlers. I'm an essential component of her boudoir.'

Samoylenko was embarrassed.

'You're out of sorts this morning, Ivan,' he said. 'You must have had a bad night.'

'Yes, I slept badly. I'm in a pretty bad way altogether, old man—I feel so hopeless, my heart sinks, and I'm faint somehow. Must get away!'

'Where will you go?'

'Up north—back to the pines, the mushrooms, the people, the ideas. I'd give half my life to be somewhere in Moscow County or Tula now, plunge in a stream, cool off and then, you know, wander for about three hours with someone—even some dull little undergraduate would do—and talk, talk, talk. Remember the scent of hay? And evening strolls round the garden when you hear a piano in the house, a passing train '

Layevsky gave a delighted laugh. Tears came to his eyes, and to hide them he reached over for a box of matches on the next table without rising from his seat.

'It's eighteen years since I was last up north,' said Samoylenko. 'I've forgotten what it's like. The Caucasus is the fmest place in the world for my money.'

'There's a picture by Vereshchagin of some prisoners under sentence of death wasting away at the bottom of a deep well, and to me your wonderful Caucasus is a similar hell-hole. Given the choice of chimney- sweeping in St. Petersburg or lording it here, I'd take the chimneys every time. '

Layevsky fell into a reverie. Looking at the stooped body, the s.taring eyes, the pale, sweaty face, the sunken temples, the chewed nails and the slipper hanging at the heel to reveal a badly darned sock, Samoylenko was consumed with pity.

'Is your mother still alive?' he asked, probably because Layevsky reminded him of a helpless child. .

'Yes, but we don't see each other. She couldn't forgive me this entanglement.'

Samoylenko was fond of his friend, seeing in Layevsky a good sort, a typical student, a hail-fellow-well-met kind of chap with whom y.ou could have a drink, a laugh and a good talk. What he understood about Layevsky he intensely disliked. Layevsky drank to excess and at the wrong times. He played cards, despised his work, lived beyond his means, was always using bad language, wore his slippers in the street, quarrelled with Nadezhda in public. These were the things that Samoylenko disliked. As for Layevsky's having once belonged to a university arts faculty, subscribing now to two literary reviews, often talking so cleverly that most people couldn't understand him, and living with an educated woman—none of these things did Samoylenko understand, and them he liked. He thought Layevsky his superior, and looked up to him.

'One other point,' Layevsky said, shaking his head. 'But keep this to yourself—I'm not letting on to Nadezhda just yet, so don't blurt it out in front of her. The day before yesterday I had a letter to say that her husband's died of softening of the brain.'

'May he rest in peace,' Samoylenko sighed. 'But why keep it from her?'

'Showing her that letter would be like offering to take her straight to the altar. We must clarify our relations first. Once she's convinced we can't go on living together, I'll show her the letter. It will be safe then.'

'Know what, Ivan?' said Samoylenko, and his face suddenly assumed a sad, pleading look as if he was about to ask a great favour but feared to be turned down. 'You get married, old man.'

'What for?'

'Do the right thing by this wonderful woman. fn her husband's death I see the hand of Providence showing you your way ahead.'

'But, my dear man, that's out of the question, can't you see? Marry- ing without love—it's like an atheist celebrating mass, it's base, it's beneath a man's dignity.'

'But it's your duty.'

'Oh! And why is it my duty?' Layevsky asked irritably.

'You took her from her husband and assumed responsibility.'

'But I tell you in plain language—1 don't love her!'

'Well, in that case show her respect. Pretend a bit '

'Respect? Pretend?' mocked Layevsky. 'Do you take her for a mother superior or something? You're a poor psychologist and physio- logist if you think honour and respect will get you very far where living with a woman's concerned. A woman's chief need is bed!'

'But, my dear Ivan,' said Samoylenko in embarrassment.

'You're an old baby—it's all words with you. Whereas I'm prema- turely senile and actually involved, so we'll never understand each other. Let's change the subject. Mustafa,' Layevsky shouted to the waiter. 'What do we owe you?' 'No, no, no!' panicked the doctor, clutching Layevsky's arm. 'I'll pay, it was my order. Chalk it up to me,' he shouted to Mustafa.

The friends stood up and set off in silence along the front. At the boulevard they stopped to say good-bye and shook hands.

'You're a spoilt lot, gentlemen,' sighed Samoylenko. 'Fate sends you a young, beautiful, educated woman—and you don't want her. But if God sent me even a crippled old crone, I'd be so happy, if she was only affectionate and kind. I'd live with her in my vineyard and '

Samoylenko pulled himself up.

'And the old bitch could damn well keep my samovar going!' said he.

He took farewell of Layevsky, and set off downwn the boulevard. Ponderous, imposing, stern of countenance, in his snow-white tunic and highly-polished boots, he paraded the boulevard, thrusting out a chest which sported the Order of St. Vladimir and ribbon. At such times he was very pleased with himself, feeling as if the whole world enjoyed watching him. He looked from side to side without turning his head, and found the boulevard's amenities excellent. The young cypresses, eucalvptus trees and ugly, spindly palms were fine indeed, and would spread a broad shade in time. The Circassians were a decent, hospitable peoplc.

'Odd how Layevsky dislikes the Caucasus,' he thought. 'Very odd, that.'

He met five soldiers with rifles who saluted him. On the right of the boulevard a civil servant's wife was walking on the pavement with her schoolboy son.

'Morning, Mrs. Bityugov,' Samoylenko shouted with a pleasant smile. 'Been for a dip? Ha, ha, ha! My regards to your husband.'

He walked on, still smiling pleasantly. But seeing an army medical orderly approach, he suddenly frowned and stopped the man.

'Is there anyone in the hospital?' he asked.

'No one, General.' 'Eh?'

'No one, Gcneral.'

'Fine. You run along then.'

Swaying majestically, he made. for a lemonade stand kept by a full- bosomed old Jewcss who tried to pass as a Georgian.

'Kindly give me some soda water!' he yelled in his best parade- ground bark.

II

Layevsky's dislike of Nadezhda was based principally on the falsity— or veneer of falsity, as it seemed to him—of everything she said and did. If he read anything attacking women and love, it always seemed to fit himself, Nadezhda and her husband to perfection.

When he arrived home, she had already dressed and done her hair, and was sitting at the window drinking coffee with an anxious air as she leafed through a literary review. It struck him that the consumption of coffee was not an occasion so earth-shaking as to justify her air of concern, and that it was a waste of her time to cultivate a fashionable hair-style when there was no one around worth pleasing and no point in pleasing anyone anyway. He also thought that intellectual review an affectation. It struck him that just as she dressed and did her hair to make herself look beautiful, so also her reading was designed to make her look intelligent.

'Is it all right ifl bathe today?' she asked.

'Suit yourself. Bathe or don't bathe—1 doubt if the skies will fall either way.'

'I asked in case the doctor might be cross.'

'Then ask the doctor—1 don't happen to be medically qualified.'

What riled Layevsky most about Nadezhda on this occasion was her bare, white neck with the curls at the back. When Anna Karenin ceased to love her husband, he remembered, it was the man's ears that had especially displeased her.

'How true, how very true,' he thought.

Feeling faint and hopeless, he went into his study, lay on the sofa and covered his face with a handkerchief to stop the fies bothering him. Listless, dismal, repetitious thoughts plodded through his brain like a long line of wagons on a foul autunm evening, as he sank into drowsy despondency. Where Nadezhda and her husband were con- cemed, he felt guilty—felt himself to blame for the husband's death. He felt guilty, too, of riiining his own life, and of letting down his high ideals of scholarship and hard work. Not here on this seashore trodden by starving Turks and lazy Abkhazians did that marvellous sphere of activity seem a real possibility, but in the north with its opera, theatre, newspapers and manifold intellectual work. There, and only there, could one be decent, intelligent, high-minded and pure. Not here. He blamed himself for having no ideals, no guiding principle in life, though he did now dimly discern what that meant. Falling in love with Nadezhda two years earlier, he had felt that he only needed to become her lover and take her to the Caucasus to be saved from the shoddy hopelessness of e.xistence. Similarly, he was now convinced that to abandon Nadezhda and leave for St. Petersburg was to satisfy his every need.

'Escape,' he muttered, sitting up and biting his nails. 'Must get away.'

He imagined himself boarding the steamer, lunching, dri^^g cold beer, and talking to the ladies on deck. Then he catches a train in Sevastopol and rides off. Freedom, here we come! Stations flash past in quick succession, the air'grows colder and sharper. Now birches and firs appear. Here is Kursk, here Moscow.

The station buffets have cabbage stew, mutton with kasha, sturgeon, beer—not oriental squalor, in other words, but Russia, the real thing. The passengers on the train discuss business, new singers and the Franco-Russian entente. Everything seems so vital, so cultured and intellectual, so high-spirited.

Faster, faster! Here at last is St. Petersburg's Nevsky Prospekt. Here are Great Morskoy Street and Kovensky Lane, where he had once lived as a student. Here are the dear, grey sky, the dear old drizzle, the drenched cab-drivers.

'Mr. Layevsky,' called someone from the next room, 'are you in?'

'Here,' Layevsky replied. 'What is it?'

'I have some papers.'

Layevsky stood up lazily, his head spinning, and went into the next room, ya^mng and shuffling ifr his slippers. There in the street by the open window stood one of his young colleagues, laying out official documents on his window-sill.

'Very well, old man,' said Layevsky gently, going to look for his ink- well. He returned to the window and signed the papers without reading them.

'It's hot,' he said.

'Yes indeed. Are you coming in today?'

'I doubt it, I don't feel too well. Tell Sheshkovsky I'll call on him after dinner, old man.'

The official left, and Layevsky lay downwn on his sofa again.

'Well,' he thought, 'I must weigh all the factors and work things out. I must pay off my debts before leaving here. I owe two thousand roubles odd. I have no money—but that's not important, of course. I'll pay part of it now somehow or other, and send some of it on later from St. Petersburg. The main thing is Nadczhda. We must fmst clarify our relations, indeed we must.'

A little later he was.reflecting whether he might not do better to go and ask Samoylenko's advice.

'I might do that,' he thought, 'but what would be the usc? I'd only speak out of tum again, all about boudoirs, women and doing the decent thing—or the indecent thing. Why, hang it, how can I possibly discuss what's decent or indecent if my very existence is at stake as I suffocate and fight for my life in these blasted shackles? To go on living like this would be so sordid and cruel as to dwarf all other con- siderations into nothingness, and it's about time that was realized!'

'Escape!' he muttered, sitting up. 'Must get away!'

The deserted beach, the sweltering heat, the monotony of the hazy, mauve mountains—for ever unchanging and silent, for ever lonely— filled him with sadness. They seemed to be lulling him to sleep, frustrating him. Perhaps he was highly intelligent and gifted—a remarkably honest man. Had he not been hemmed in on all sides by sea and mountains, he might have made an excellent rural welfare worker, a statesman, an orator, a publicist, or a great man of action— who could tell? And if so, how stupid to argue whether one .was doing the decent thing or not! Suppose some able, useful person—a musician or artist, say—broke down a wall and tricked his gaolers so that he could escape from prison? In such a situation any action is honourable.

Layevsky and Nadezhda sat down to lunch at two o'clock and the cook served rice soup with tomatoes.

'We have the same thing every day,' Layevsky said. 'Why can't she make cabbage. stew?'

'There's no cabbage.'

'Odd. At Samoylenko's they make cabbage stew, Mary Bityugov makes cabbage stew. Why am I alone forced to eat these sickly slops? It won't do, old girl.'

Like nearly all married couples, Layevsky and Nadezhda had once been unable to get through lunch without tantrums and scenes. But since Layevsky had decided that he was no longer in love, he had tried to let Nadezhda have everything her own way, addressing her gently and politely, smiling and calling her 'old girl'.

'This soup tastes like liquorice,' he said with a smile, but could not keep up this parade of amiability.

'No one does any housekeeping round here,' he said. 'If you're too ill or busy reading, all right—1'l1 handle our meals.'

In the old days she would have told him to go ahead, or said that she could see he only wanted to make a cook out of her. But now she only looked at him timidly and blushed.

'Well, how are you today?' he asked kindly.

'Not bad—a bit feeble, though.'

'Look after yourself, old girl. I'm very worried about you.'

Nadezhda suffered from some complaint. Samoylenko called it undulant fever and fed her quinine. The other doctor, Ustimovich, was a tall, lean, unsociable person who stayed at home by day and strolled quietly along the sea-front of an evening—coughing, with his hands clasped behind him and a cane held downwn his back. Ustimovich decided that she had some female complaint and prescribed hot com- presses. When Layevsky had loved Nadezhda her ill health had alarmed him and made him feel sorry for her, but now he thought even her illness a sham. Nadezhda's yellow, drowsy face, her lifeless look, the yawning fits which came over her after bouts of feverishness, her habit of lying under a rug during these attacks and looking more boyish than feminine—all these things, together with the unpleasantly stuffy smell of her room, wrecked any romantic illusion, he thought, and were a strong argument against love and marriage.

As his second course he was served spinach and hard-boiled eggs, while Nadezhda had jelly and milk because she was unwell. She touched the jelly with her spoon, looking preoccupied, and then began to eat it languidly between sips of milk. Hearing her gulps, Layevsky was seized by such utter loathing that it actually made his scalp tingle. His feelings would be insulting to a dog, even, he realized. But it was not himself he was annoyed with—he was annoyed With Nadezhda for provoking such emotions in him, and he could see why it is that lovers sometimes murder their mistresses. He would never do that himself, naturally—but were he serving on a jury at the moment, he would vote such a murderer not guilty.

'Thanks, old girl,' he said when the meal was over, and kissed Nadezhda on the forehead.

He went to his study, and paced up and downwn for five minutes, glancing sideways at his boots, then sat on the sofa.

'Get .away, must get away,' he muttered. 'Clanfy relations and escape.'

He lay on the sofa, and remembered once again that the death of Nadezhda's husband might be his fault.

'It's silly to blame people for falling in or out of love,' he admonished himself, lying down and.kicking up his legs to put on his riding-boots. 'Love and hate are oiitside om control. As for the husband, I may have been an indirect cause of his death—but once again, can I help it if his wife and I fall in love?'

He stood up, found his cap and went off to Sheshkovsky's—the colleague at whose house local officials met daily to play bridge and drink cold beer.

'I'm as bad as Hamlet,' Layevsky thought on the way there. 'How neatly Shakespeare hit him off—how very true to life.'

III

As there was no hotel in townwn, Dr. Samoylenko kept a sort of eating-house to relieve the general boredom, and meet the urgent needs of newcomers and people living on their who had nowhere else to eat. He had only two guests at present—the young zoologist Von Koren, who came to the Black Sea in summer to study the embryology of the jelly-fish, and Deacon Pobedov, fresh from college and assigned to the little town to stand in for the old deacon who had gone away to take a cure. They each paid twelve roubles a month for lunch and dinner, and Samoylenko made them swear to be punctual for two o'clock lunch.

Von Koren was usually first to arrive. He would sit downwn quietly in the drawing-room, pick up an album from the table, and scrutinize faded snap-shots of unknownwn men in wide trousers and top hats, and of ladies iJl crinolines and mob-caps. Samoylenko could name only a few of them, and of those whom he had forgotten he would sigh: 'Grand fellow, highly intelligent chap.' When he had done with the album, Von Koren would pick up a pistol from the shelves, screw up his left eye and take lengthy aim at a portrait of Prince Vorontsov. Or he would face the mirror and inspect his swarthy face, his large forehead, his black hair as curly as a Negro's, his shirt of neutral- coloured cotton printed with huge flowers like a Persian rug, and his wide leather belt worn instead of a waistcoat. This self-inspection gave him almost greater pleasure than his scrutiny of the snap-shots or of the pistol in its sumptuous case. He was well pleased with his face and handsomely trimmed beard, as with his broad shoulders—witness to good health and a strong frame. He was also delighted with his modish rig, from the tie matching his shirt down to his yellow boots.

While he examined the album and stood in front of the mirror,

Samoylenko was busy in kitchen and pantry. Wearing neither coat nor waistcoat, much excited and bathed in sweat, he was fussing about the tables—preparing salad, a sauce, meat, gherkins and onions for cold soup, while angrily glaring at the orderly who was helping, and brandishing a knife or spoon at him from time to time.

'Vinegar!' he ordered. 'No, not vinegar, I meant salad oiU' he shouted, stamping his feet. 'And where d() you think you're going, you swine?'

'For butter, General,' quavered the disconcerted orderly in a high- pitched voice.

'Then hurry up! It's in the cupbonrd. And tell Darya to put more dill in the gherkin jar. Dill, I say! And cover up that sour cream, you cretin, or the flies will get it.'

The whole house seemed to buzz with his shouts. At ten or fifteen minutes to two, the deacon arrived—a young man of about twenty- two, thin, long-haired and clean-shaven but for a barely formed moustache. Going into the drawihg-room, he crossed himself before the icon, smiled, and held out his hand to Von Koren.

'Good day,' the zoologist said coldly. 'Where have you been?'

'Fishing for gobies in the harbour.'

'I might have -kno\wn it. Obviously you'll never get downwn to a real job of work, Deacon.'

'I don't see why not. It's never too late to put your nose to the grindstone,' said the deacon, smiling and thrusting his hands into the deep pockets of his white cassock.

'You're incorrigible,' the zoologist sighed.

Fifteen or twenty minutes passed without lunch being announced, and the orderly could still be heard scurrying back and forth from pantry to kitchen with a clnttering of boots.

'Put it on the table!' Samoylenko shouted. 'What are you up to? Wash it first!'

Both famished, the deacon and Von Koren began stamping their heels on the floor to show impatience, like a gallery audience in the theatre. At last the door opened and the anguished orderly announced lunch. Crimson in the face, practically steam-cooked by the heat of his kitchen, an incensed Samoylenko greeted them, glared at them, out- rage written on his face, and raised the lid of the soup tureen to serve each a bowl. Only when he was sure that they were eating with relish and enjoying their meal did he utter a faint sigh and sit downwn in his deep arm-chair. His face looked rclnxcd and oily.

He slowly poured himself a glass of vodka.

'To the younger generation,' he said.

After his talk with Layevsky, Samoylenko had spent the whole morning in a fundamentally depressed state despite his high spirits. Sorry for Layevsky, wanting to help him, he gulped down his glass of vodka before the soup and sighed.

'I saw Ivan Layevsky today,' he said. 'Poor chap's rather up against it. Things aren't too good on the material side, but what's got him down is psychological, mainly. I'm sorry for the lad.'

'Now, there's someone I'm not sorry for,' said Von Koren. 'If that charming fellow was drovvning, I'd take a stick and give him an extra shove. "Go ahead and drown, dear boy," I'd say.'

'Oh no you wouldn't.'

'Think not?' the zoologist shrugged. 'You aren't the only one who can do a good deed.'

'Drowning someone a good deed?' the deacon laughed.

'In Layevsky's case—yes.'

'I think I left something out of the soup,' said Samoylenko, wishing to change the subject.

'Layevsky's a downright pest, he's as great a threat to society as the cholera microbe,' Von Koren went on. 'Drowning him would be a public service.'

'It's no credit to you to speak of your neighbour like that. Why do you hate him then?'

'Don't talk rubbish, Doctor. To hate and despise a microbe would be idiotic, while to believe that every chance acquaintance must needs be one's neighbour, and no two ways about it—well, I'm very sorry, but that means refusing to think, refusing to take a reasonable line on people It's washing your hands of them in fact. To my mind friend Layevsky's a bastard. I make no bones about it, and I treat him as such with a completely clear conscience. You consider him your neighbour—all right, slobber over him for all I care. But considering him your neigh- bour means you must have the same attitude to him as to me arid the deacon—you haven't any attitude at all, in other wnrds. You're equally indifferent to everyone.'

'To call the man a bastard!' Samoylenko muttererl, frowning fastidiously. 'That's so shocking—well, words fail me!' '

'One is judged by one's acts,' went on Von Koren. 'Now, judge for yourself, Deacon. I shall address myself to you, Deacon. Mr. Layevsky's activities are openly unrolled before our eyes like a long Chinese scroll, they're an open book from beginning to end. What has he achieved in two years' residencc here? Let's tick it off point by point. Firstly, he's taught the townsfolk to play bridge—the game was unkno^ here two years ago, but now everyone plays it morning noon and night, even women and adolescents. Secondly, he's taught the locals to drink beer, which was also ^^eard ofhere. They're further indebted to him for information on different brands of vodka, with the result that they can now tell a Koshelev from a Smirnov Number Twenty-one with their eyes blindfolded. Thirdly, men used to sleep with other people's wives surreptitiously from the same motive which makes burglars operate furtively and by stealth. It wasn't the thing to flaunt adultery, they'd have been ashamed to. But Layevsky has pioneered this practice by living openly with another man's wife. Fourthlv '

Quickly finishing his cold soup, Von Koren gave the orderly his bowl.

'I rumbled Layevsky's game before I'd known him a month,' he went on, addressing the deacon. 'We arrived here at the same time. His sort are great on friendship, intimacy, solidarity and all that stuff because they always need someone to make up a rubber of bridge, or join them in a drink and a snack. Being talkative, what's more, they need listeners. We became friendly—in other words, he'd slope along to my place every day, interrupt my work and unburden himself on the subject of his concubine. He was so bogus, he simply made me sick— that's what struck me first. Being his "friend", I nagged him. Why did he drink too much? Live above his means? Fall into debt? Why didn't he do anything? Or read anything? Why was he so uncultured, such an ignoramus? At every question I asked he would give a bitter smile and sigh. "I'm a failurc," he'd say. ''I'm a Superfluous Man." Or "What else do you c.vpect from us, old boy, when wc're the waste products of the serf system?" Or: "We're going to sccJ." Or he'd embark on some great palaver about Onegin, Pechorin, Byron's Cain and Bazarov. "Our fathers in flesh and spirit," he'd call them. Do you catch his drift? It's no fault of his, see, if officia! packages lie around unopened for weeks, and if he drinks and gets ochcrs drunk. It's all because of Onegin and Pechorin—and Turgenev for inventing failures and the Superfluous Man. Why is he so utterly degeneratc, so repulsive ? The reason isn't in himself, see—it's somewhere outside lŭm in space. And chcn—and this is the cunning of it—he's not the only one who's debauched, bogus and odious. There is always We. "We men of the eighties." "We, the debilitated, neurotic offspring of the serf system." "Civilization has crippled us."

'One is to take it, in other words, that a grcat man likc byevsky is great even in his fall. His dissipation, his lack of cducation, his dirty ^habits are an evolutionary phcnomenon hallowed by inevitability and based on prcmisses so earth-shaking and elemental that we should all bow down and worship the man as a doomed victim of an era, of trends, of heredity and all that stuff. The local officials and thcir ladiej; all drooled and slobbered over him when he spoke, and I couldn't tcll for ages whether I was dcaling with a cynic or a wily crook. Types like that, resembling intellectuals with their smattering of education, and always going on about how noble they are—they can pass themselves off as cxtremely complex natures.'

'Shut up!' blazed Samoylenko. 'No one shall run down such a thoroughly dccent chap in my presence.'

'You keep out of this, Alexander,' Von Koren said coldly. Tll bc through in a moment. Laycvsky's a fairly simplc organism. His moral framework is as follows. Early morning: slippers, bathing, coffee. Till lunch-time: slippcrs, strolling, convcrsation. Two o'clock: slippers, lunch, liquor. Five o'clock: bathing, tea, liquor—then bridge and bare- faced lying. Ten o'clock: slippers, liquor. After midnight: bed and la femme. His existencc is encased in this narrow timetablc, like an egg in its shell. Whcthcr hc walks, sits, loses his temper, writes or enjoys himself-it all boils down to wine, cards, slippers, woman. Woman plays a fatal and overwhelming part in his life. He was alrcady in love at the age of thirteen, as he'll tell you himself. As a first-year student he lived with a lady who influenced him for the good and gave him his musical education. In his sccoiid year at univcrsity he bought a prosti- tute from a brothel and raised her to his own level—made hcr his mis- tress in othcr words. Shc lived with him for six months and then ran back to her madame, an escape which causcd him no little spiritual anguish. So much did he suffcr, alas, that hc had to leave the university and spend two years at home in idleness. But it all worked out for the best. At home he took up with a widow who advised him to drop law and read an arts subject, so he did. On complcting his studies, he fell passionately in love with this marricd woman, whatever she's called, and had to rush off here with her to the Caucasus—out of idealism, we're told.

'He'll lose interest in her any day now and trot back to St. Peters- burg—and that, too, will be idealism.'

'How can you tell?' grumbled Samoylenko, glaring at thc zoologist. 'Better eat your lunch.'

They served boiled grey mullet a la polouaise, and Samoylenko gave both his guests a whole fish, pouring the sauce himself. Some two minutes passcd in silence.

'Woman plays a crucial p.Trt in every man's life,' said.the deacon. 'You can't get away from that.'

'Yes, but it's a matter of degree. To each of us woman is our mother, sister, wife or friend. But to Laycvsky she's the whole of existence, yet no more than his mistress. She—cohabitarion \vith her, rather—is his bliss, his goal in life. If he's gay, sad, bored, disillusioned, that's woman's doing. If he's tired of life, it's a woman's fault. The dav.:n ofa new life glows, ideals have appeared on the scene—and once again there must be a woman somewherc about.

'Only those writings or pictures satisfy him which feature a woman. Ours is a bad period in his view—worse than the forties and the sixties —just because we don't know hov.^r to abandon ourselves utterly to love's ecstasy and passion. These voluptuaries must have some special growth in their heads, a tumour which has crushed the brain and con- trols the whole nervous system. Try watching Layevsky when he's in ĉompany. Sec what happens if you raise some general topic in his presence—cells or instincts, say. He sits on one side, he says nothing, he doesn't hear. He looks limp and blase. Nothing intcrests him, it's all stale and trivial. But you start talking about male and female—about the female spider's habit of eating the male after mating, say—and his eyes light up with curiosity, his face brightens. The fellow comes to life, in short. All his ideas, be they never so cxalted, lofty or dis- interested, have this onc focal point. You might walk down the street with him and meet a donkey, say.

"'Do tell me," says he. "What would happen if you crossed a donkey with a camel?"

'And his dreams! Has he told you about those? They're priceless! First he dreams he's being married to the moon, then he's summoned to a police station and ordered to cohabit with a guitar '

The deacon gave a ringing chortle. Samoylenko's brow clouded and he frowned angrily to stop himself laughing, but he could not keep it up and burst out laughing all the same.

'What rubbish,' he said, wiping away his tears. 'God, what rubbish!'

IV

The deacon was easily amused. Any trifle made him laugh till he had a stitch in his side aJ?.d nearly fell over. He only seemed to enjoy company because people had their funny side and he could give them absurd nicknames. He called Samoylenko 'the Tarantub', his orderly was 'Drake', and he was tickled pink when Von Koren once referred to Layevsky and Nadczhda as a couple of baboons. He stared eagerly into people's faces, listened without blinking, and one could see his eyes fill with laughter and his face grow tense as he waited till he could let himself go and roar with laughter.

'He's a corrupt, perverted individual,' went on the zoologist, while the deacon gaped at him, anticipating some amusing remark. 'You don't often meet such a nonentity. Physically he's flabby, feeble and senile. Intellectually he's the exact equal of a fat woman—a shopkeeper's wife who does nothing but guzzle food and drink, sleeps on a feather bed, and takes her coachman as a lover.'

The deacon again burst out laughing.

'Don't laugh, Deacon, that's just silly,' said Von Koren. 'I'd over- look the man's insignificance,' he went on, after waiting for the deacon to stop. 'I'd ignore him were he less pernicious and dangerous. His most noxious feature is his success with women, which means that he threatens to have descendants, thus presenting the world with a dozen Layevskys as puny and perverted as himself. Secondly, he's highly contagious—I'vc already mentioned the bridge and beer business. In a couple of years he'll conquer the whole Caucasian coast- line. You know how the masses, especially their middle strata, believe in intellectualism, university education, good manners and speaking correctly. Whatever filthy trick he plays, everyone thinks it's perfectly right and proper because he's an intellectual, a liberal, a university man. He's also a failure, a Superfluous Man, a neurotic, a victim of the age— which means he can do as he pleases. Hc's a nice chap, a good sort, and so genuinely tolerant of human weakncss. He's accommodating, easy- going, adaptable and free from pride. You can share a drink with him, swap the occasional dirty story or bit of scandal.

'The masses always tend towards anthropomorphism in religion and morals, and they prefcr their idols to share their own \vcaknesses. So you can sec how wide a ficld he h:^s to blight. Besides, he's a fair actor, a smart operator—oh yes, he has things prettv \vcil sized up. You take his twists and turns—his attitude to civilization, say. He never so much as caught a whiff of civilization, but you listen to him! "Oh, how civilization has crippled us!" "Oh, how I envy savages—children of nature untouched by civilization!" We're to take it that he was once heart and soul for civilization in the old days, see? He served it, he knew it inside out, but it wearied him—disillusioned and cheated him. He's a Faust, get it ? A second Tolstoy.

'As for Schopenhauer and Spencer, they're just schoolboys to him. He patronizes them, claps them on the shoulder. "How is everything, Spencer, old bean ?" He's never read Spencer, ofcourse, but how charm- ing he is when he says with that casual air, that nonchalant irony, that his- lady friend "has read her Spencer"! And people listen to him. And no one will see that this charlatan has no right to kiss the sole of Spencer's foot, let alone speak about him in that tone. The subversion of civilization, authority and other people's idols, the mud-slinging, the jocular wink designed solely to justify and conceal your own spinelessness and moral bankruptcy—only an animal, a selfish, base, foul animal, could do such things.'

'I don't know what you want out of him, Nicholas,' said Samoy- lenko, now looking at the zoologist more guiltily chan in anger. 'He's just like anyone else. He has his faults, of course, but he is abreast of the times, he does do a job, and he's a useful citizen. Ten years ago we had an old shipping-agent here, a highly intellectual chap. Well, he used to say '

'Oh, come off it, really!' the zoologist broke in. 'You say he does a job. But how does he do it? Has his arrival on the scene improved things? Has it made officials more punctilious, honest and courteous? Far from that, Layevsky has only sanctioned their slovenliness with the authority of an intellectual, a university man. Only on the twentieth of the month, when he collects his salary, is he punctual. On other days he merely shuffles about in his slippers at home and cultivates the expression ofone conferring a great favour on the Russian government by residing in the Caucasus. No, Alexander, don't you stick up for him. You're insincere all the way through. The great thing is this— if you really liked him and considered him your neighbour, you wouldn't be so lukewarm about his faults. You wouldn't be so lenient towards them, you'd try to render him harmless for his own good.'

'Meaning what?'

'Neutralize him. Since he's incurable, there's only one way to do that.'

And Von Koren drew a finger across his throat.

'Or else one might dro^ him,' he added. 'For humanity's sake— and for their o^ sake too—such people should be exterminated, make no mistake about it.'

'What talk is this ?' muttered Samoylenko, standing up and gaping at the zoologist's calm, cold face. 'What is he saying, Deacon? Are you in your right mind?'

'I won't insist on the death penalty,' said Von Koren. 'If that's been discredited, devise something else. If Layevsky can't be exterminated, then isolate him, deprive him of his individuality, put him to work for the community.'

'What talk is this?' Samoylenko was outraged. 'With pepper, with pepper!' he shouted desperately, seeing that the deacon was eating his stuffed marrows without pepper. 'You're a highly intelligent chap, but what are you saying? This is our friend, a proud man, an intellectu.il, and you want to make him do forced labour!'

'Yes, and ifhe's so proud that he won't knuckle under, then throw him in irons.'

Samoylenko was past all speech, and could only twiddle his fingers. Glancing at his bewildered face, which certainly did look funny, the deacon burst out laughing.

'Let's change the subject,' said the zoologist. 'But just bear one thing in mind, Alexander—primitive man was protected from types like Layevsky by the struggle for existence and by natural selection. Now that modern civilization has rendered the struggle and the natural selection process considerably less intense, we must attend to the exter- mination of the sickly and unfit ourselves. Otherwise, once the Layevskys multiply, civilization will perish, mankind will degenerate utterly—and it will all be our fault.'

'If we're going to drown and hang pcople, then to blazes with your civilization, and to blazes with mankind!' said Samoylenko. 'To hell with them! You're a highly learned, highly intelligent chap, and your country can be proud of you, but you've been ruined by Germans, I'd have you know. Dy Germans, sir, by Germans!'

Since leaving Dorpat, where he had studied medicine, Samoylenko had rarely set eyes on a German and had not read a single Gcrman book. Yet Germany was the root of all evil in politics and science, to his way of thinking. Even he couldn't say where he had picked up the idea, but he held it tenaciously.

'Yes indeed, Germans!' he repeated. 'Come and have tea.'

The three men stood up, put on their hats, went into the little garden and sat down in the shade of some pale maples, pear-trees and a chesmut. Zoologist .ind deacon took a bench near the table, while Samoylcnko sank into a wicker arm-chair with a wide, sloping back. The orderly served tea, preserves and a bottle of syrup.

It was very hot, about ninety in the shade. The air was sweltering, stagnant, sluggish. From the chestnut a long spider's \veb hung to the ground, drooping limp and inert.

The deacon picked up a guitar—always to be found on the ground near the table—and tuned it.

'Around ye olde hostelry Did stand ye college lads,'

—he began singing in a soft, reedy voice.

But it was so hot that he stopped at once, mopped his brow and glanced up at the blazing blue sky.

Samoylenko dozed off. He felt weak and drunk from the heat, the quiet and the sweet afternoon drowsiness which rapidly overpowered all his limbs. His arms dangled, his eyes grew small, his head sank on his chest, and he gazed at Von Koren and the deacon with maudlin sentimentality.

'The younger generation,' he muttered. 'A scientific notability and an ecclesiastical luminary. This long-skirted hierophant will very likely shoot up to become metropolitan, and we'll have to kiss his hand. And why not? Good luck to '

Soon he was heard snoring. Von Koren and the deacon finished their tca and went out in the street.

'Going back to the harbour to catch gobies ?' asked the zoologist.

'No, it's on the hot side.'

'Come round to my place then. You can make up a parcel for me, copy one or two things. And we can discuss what you might be doing while we're about it. You must work, Deacon, this will never do.'

'That's very fair and reasonable,' said the deacon. 'But my sloth ĥnds its justification in my present" l iving conditions. As you know, unce^ ainty about one's situation does much to promote a state of apathy. Am I here temporarily? Or for ever? God alone knows. I live here in ignorance, while my wife pines away at her father's, feeling lonely. And this heat has addled my brain, I must admit.'

'Rubbish,' said the zoologist. 'You can get used to the heat and to living without your lady deacon. Don't be so spoilt—you must take yourself in hand.'

v

Nadezhda went for a morning bathe, followed by her cook Olga who carried a jug, a copper bowl, towels and a sponge. Two strange steamers with dirty white smoke-stacks were anchored in the roads— foreign freighters, obviously. Some men in white, wearing white boots, were walking on the quay, shouting loudly in French, and people were shouting back from the steamers. From the town's small church came a brisk peal of bells.

'It's Sunday,' Nadezhda remembered delightedly.

She felt very healthy, and was in gay, festive mood, thinking herself most fetching in her loose new dress of coarse tussore and large straw hat with its brim bent sharp forward over her ears, so that her face seemed to peep out of a little box. There was only one young, beautiful, intellectual woman in the town, she refi.ected—herself. She alone had the knack of dressing inexpensively, elegantly and tastefully. This dress, for instance, had cost only twenty-two roubles, yet it was charming. She was the one attractive woman in a town full of men, so they were all bound to envy Layevsky, like it or not.

She was glad that Layevsky had been cold and icily polite to her of late—and at times brusque and rough, even. Her response to his out- bursts and cold, contemptuous—or odd and mysterious—glances would once have been tcars, reproaches and threats to leave him or starve herself to death. But now she only reacted by blushing, looking guilty and welcoming his lack of aficction. Had he sworn at her, threatened her—that would havc becn even bctter, even more delightful, for where he was concerncd she felt herself hopelessly in the wrong. In the first place, it was hcr fault, shc felt, that she lackcd sympathy for his dreams about a life of toil—dreams which had made him give up St. Pctersburg and come out here to the Caucasus. This was the real reason why hc had been so angry with her lately, she was sure of that. On hcr way out to the Caucasus she had felt certain of discovering some secluded seaside spot on her vcry first day there—some cosy, shady, little gardcn with birds and brooks, where you could plant flowers and vegctables, keep ducks and chickens, ask the ncighbours in, dose poor pcasants and give them books to read. But the Caucasus turned out to consist of bald mountains, forests and huge valleys—a place where you must be forever making choices, stirring things up, building things. There itvre no neighbours, it was all very hot, you were liable to be burgled. Layevsky had been in no hurry to acquire his plot of land, and she was glad of that—there might have been an unspoken pact betwecn them never to mention that life of honest toil. He said nothing ofit—in other words, he was angry with hcr for s.aying nothing of i t, shc thought.

The second point was this. She had, without Laycvsky's knowledge, picked up during thcse two ycars various triĥcs to the tunc of thrce hundred roublcs in Achmianov's shop. Cloth, silk, a parasol—she had taken the stutf picccmcal, and the dcbt had piled up unnoticed.

'I'll tell him tod.iy,' she decided, but at once realized that with Laycvsky in his present mood this was hardly the best of times to tell him of his debts.

Thirdly, she had, in Laycvsky's absencc, twicc entertained Inspector Kirilin of the local police force—oncc on a morning when Layevsky had gone for a bathe, once at midnight when he had been pl'aying cards. Rcmcmbcring this, Nadezhda Aushed and glanced at the cook, as if afraid of the woman reading hcr mind. These long, intolerablc, sweltering, irksome days, these superb, languid cvenings, these stiAing nights, this whole existencc when time hung on your hands from dawn to dusk and you couldn't think what to do with it, this obsession with being the youngcst and lovcliest woman in to\wn, this feeling of frittcring away her youth, and Laycvsky himself—a decent, idealistic but humdrum pcrson for ever shuffling about in his slippers, biting his nails and annoying hcr with his tantrums ... all thcsc things gradually made hcr a prcy to desire, until, like some madwoman, she could think of only one thing morning noon and night. In her breathing, in her way of looking, speaking and walking, she was obsessed by desire. . The wash of wavcs spoke to her of the need to love, the darkness of evening carried the same messagc—as did the mountains too.

So when Kirilin had begun making up to her, she had been unable and unwilling to resist—it was beyond her powers—and had given herself to him.

These foreign steamers and white—lad people somehow reminded her of a hugc ballroom. French conversation mingled in her ears with the strains of a waltz, and her breast trembled with instinctive delight. She felt like dancing and speaking French. There was nothing so very terrible in being unfaithful, she was happy to think, nor had her heart been involved in that betrayal. Shc still lovcd Layevsky—witness her jealousy of him, her fondness for him, and the fact that she missed him when he was away. As for Kirilin, he had been nothing special, as it turned out—a bit common, good-looking as he was. She had already broken with him and it wouldn't happen again. It was over and done with, it was no one else's business, and if it came to Layevsky's ears he wouldn't believe it.

On the beach there was only one bathing-house—for ladies. The men swam out in the open. Going into the bathing-house, Nadezhda encountered a middle-agcd woman, Mary Bityugov—a civil servant's wife—and her fiftcen-year-old schoolgirl daughter Katya. They sat on a bench undressing. Mary Bityugov was a kind, effusive, gcnteel person who spoke with a drawl, and tended to over-dramatize things. She had been a governess up to the age of thirty-two, when she had married Bityugov, a small, bald official of cxtremc docility who brushed his hair over his temples. She was still in love with him, was still jealous, still blushcd at the word love, and told everyone how happy she was.

'My dear,' she said effusively, seeing Nadczhda and assuming an expression termed sugary by all her friends. 'My dear, how very nice to see you! We'll bathe together—how pcrfectly swcet!'

Olga quickly threw off her own dress and blouse and began un- dressing her mistress.

'Not quite so hot today, is it?' said Nadezhda, shrinking at the crudc touch of her naked cook. 'It was sweltering yesterday, I nearly died.'

'Yes, dear. I could hardly breathe myself. Do you know, I bathed three times yesterday—thrce, can you believc it? Even Mr. Bityugov was worried.'

'How can people be so ugly?' thought Nadezhda, as she lookcd at Olga and Bityugov's wife. She glanced at Katya. 'That girl's figurc isn't bad,' she thought.

'Your husband's terribly nice,' she told Mary Bityugov. 'I'm quite crazy about him.'

Mary Bityugov uttered a hollow laugh. 'Ha! ha! ha! How sweet!'

Released from her clothes, Nadezhda felt that she wanted to fly, felt that she had only to beat her arms to become air-borne. In her undress, she noticed Olga observing her white body with distaste. Olga, a young soldier's wife, lived with hcr lawful husband, and so thought herself a cut above Nadezhda. Nadezhda also sensed that Mary Bityugov and Katya feared hcr and looked down on her. This was disagreeable, and she decided to raise her standing in thcir eyes.

'At home in St. Petersburg the holiday season's in full swing just now,' she said. 'My husband and I know so many people, \vc rcally should pop over and sec them.' 'Your husband's an engineer, isn't he?' asked Mary Bityugov timidly.

'I mean Layevsky. He knows a lot of people, but his mother's no end of a snob, unluckily, and not quite all there '

Without fmishing what she was saying, Nadezhda plunged into the watcr followed by Mary Bityugov and Katya.

'Society's so prejudiced, we find,' Nadezhda went on. 'People⁷ aren't as easy to get on with as you might think.'

Having becn a governess in upper-class faiilies, Mary Bityugov kncw the ways of the world.

'Yes, indeed,' she said. 'Now, can you bclieve it, dear, at the Gara- tynskys' you had to dress for lunch and dinner, so I was paid a special dress allowance like an actrcss.'

She stood betwccn Nadezhda and Katya as if protecting her daughter from thc watcr which lapped Nadezhda. Through the open doorway to the sea someone could be seen swimming about a hundred yards from the bathing-house.

'It's Kostya, Mother,' said Katya.

'Dear, oh dear!' clucked the horrorstruck Mary Bityugov. 'Kostya!' shc shouted. 'Come back! Come back, Kostya!'

Kostya, a boy of about fourteen, plunged and swam on further to show offin front of his mother and sister, but then tired and hurried back. His earnest, strained expression showed that he did not trust his own strength.

'Boys are so much trouble, dear,' said Mary, relieved. 'He always seems about to brcak his neck. Oh, how nice to be a mother, dear— but how worrying too. Onc is afraid of evcrything.'

Putting on hcr straw hat, Nadezhda plunged out to sea. She swam .about tcn yards, thcn floated on her back. She could see the sea as far as thc horizon, the steamcrs, thc peoplc on the bcach, the town—all of which, combined with hcat and thc caress of translucent waves, aroused hcr, whispering that she needed a bit of life and cxcitemcnt.

Past hcr spcd a sailing boat, vigorously clcaving waves and air. The hclmsman looked at hcr—how nice to be looked at, she fclt.

After thcir bathe thc ladies drcssed and went off togethcr.

'I run a tcmperaturc every other day, but I don't lose wcight,' said Nadezhda, licking lips salty aftcr her bathe, and greeting acquaintances' bows with a smilc. 'I always was plump, and now I'm cven more so, I think.'

'It's a matter of disposition, dcar. If someone isn't disposed to plumpness—like me, say—no aniount of food makes any diffcrcnce. But your hat's sopping wct, dcar.'

'Never nind, it'll dry.'

Once again Nadezhda saw the white-clad, French-spcaking strollers on the promenade, and ag.iin felt happiness vaguely stirring within hcr as she dimly remcmbcred some huge ballroom where shc had once danced—or had she dreamt it? And something whispcrcd from thc depths of her being in blurred, muted toncs that shc was a pctty, vulgar, worthless, insignificamt woman.

Stopping by her gate, Mary Bityugov asked Nadezhda to come in and sit down.

'Come in, dear,' she pleaded, looking anxiously at Nadezhda—and expecting her to refuse, with any luck.

'I'd love to,' Nadezhda agrccd. 'You know I like visiting you.'

She went in, and Mary asked hcr to sit down. She gavc her coffec, fed her on milk rolls, then showcd her snapshots of her former charges— the Garatynsky girls, who were married now. She also displayed Katya's and Kostya's exaiination marks. They were excellent, but to make thent seem better still she sighed about how difficult school work was nowadays.

She made her guest welcome—yet pitied her, while worrying lest her presence have an adverse effect on Kostya's and Katya's morals. She was glad that her Nicodemus was not at home. All men fell in love with women of that typc, she thonght, and so Nadczhda might adversely affect Mr. Bityugov too.

While talking to her guest, Mary Bityugov kept remembering that they were going picnicking that evening, and that Von Koren had particularly asked her not to mention the fact to the 'baboons'—to Layevsky and Nadezhda, that is. But she accidentally let it out, and blushed to the roots of her hair.

'I do hope you'll come,' she said awkwardly.

VI

They had arranged to drive about five miles out of town on the road south and stop by the inn at the junction of two streams, Black Brook and Yellow Brook, where they would cook a fish stew. They left just after five o'clock, Samoylenko and Layevsky leading the way in a cabriolet followed by Mary Bityugov, Nadezhda, Katya and Kostya irt a carriage dra-wn by three horses—they had the picnic basket and crockery. Thc next vehicle bore Inspector Kirilin and young Ach- mianov—son of the shopkeeper to whom Nadezhda owed the three hundred roubles. On thc bench opposite thcm, his fect tucked under- neath him, cringcd Nicodcmus Bityugov, a dappcr little person with his hair brushed over the temples. Von Koren and the deacon brought up the rcar, and the deacon had a basket of fish at his feet.

'Drive on the r-r-right, can't you?' Samoylenko shouted at the top of his voice whencver they encountered a native cart or an Abkha.zian on his donkey.

'In two years, when I'vc got the resourccs and people togethcr, I'll set off on my expedition,' Von Koren told the deacon. Tll follow thc coast from Vladivostok to thc Bcring Straits, thcn go on w the mouth of the Yenisey. We'll make a map, study wild life, conduct detailed gcographic.al, anthropological and ethnographical investiga- tions. Whethcr you comc along or not is up to you.'

'I can't,' the deacon said.

'\Vhy not?'

'I'm not my o^ mastcr, I'm marricd.'

'Your wife will let you go—we'll see she's looked after. Or better still, why not persuade hcr to become a niin as a matter of social duty? Then you could be a monk and join the expedition in that capacity. I can fix it.'

The deacon did not answer.

'How's your theology? Pretty good?' asked the zoologist.

'Anvthing but.'

'H'm. I can't give you any wrinkles in that line myself, not being much vcrsed in the subject. You make out a list of the books you need, and I'll scnd thcm from St. Petersburg ne.xt winter. You'll also need to rcad missionaries' memoirs—thcy've thrown up quite a fcw good ethnologists and oricntal linguists. You'll find it easier to tackle thc job whcn you're familiar with thcir approach. Now, thcrc's no need to wastc time whilc you're waiting for the books. Come round to my pbce—wc'll srudy the compass, and do metcorology. It's all essential stutf.'

'Very well then,' muttcred the deacon and laughcd. 'I asked for a place in the midlands, and my unclc, who's a supefintcndcnt pricst, has promised to help me. If I go with you I'll have troubled him for nothing.'

'I can't undcrstand thi.s shilly-shallying. As an ordinary. dcacon, obliged to conduct scrvice only on Sundays and saints' days and to rest from his labours at other times, you'll be just the same in tcn ycars' time—plus whiskers and a beard, maybe—whereas the expedition will make another man of you ten years from now . . . one enriched by knowing that he's achieved a thing or two!'

From the ladies' carriage shrieks ofhorror and delight were heard. The vehicles were now on a road scoopcd out of a sheer cliff, and all had the sensation of careering along a shelf tacked to a high wall. The carriages seemed ready to fall into the gorge any moment. To their right spread the sea, on their left was a rough brown wall with black blotches, red veins and creeping roots. From above gazed frizzy conifers as if in fear and curiosity. A minute later they were shrieking and laughing again as they had to drive under a huge, over-hanging rock.

'I don't know what the hell I'm doing here,' said Layevsky. 'This is so stupid and trivial. I ought to go back north, break free, get away. But I'm taking part in this imbecile picnic instead, heaven knows why.'

'Now, just look at that view,' said Samoylenko when the carriages had made a left turn, to reveal Yellow Brook Valley where the brook itself flashed—yellow, muddied, demented.

'I see nothing good about it, Alexander,' answered Layevsky. 'To keep on gushing about scenery is only to reveal the poverty of your own imagination. Now, compared to the fruits of my imagination, all these ditches and rocks are no more than a load of trash.'

The carriages were already skirtiP.g the brook. Gradually the tower- ing banks converged, and the valley narrowed, looming canyon-like ahead of them. They were passing a great crag assembled by nature from huge rocks exerting on each other pressure so fantastic that the mere sight always drew a grunt from Samoylcnko. The superb, gloomy mountainside was criss-crossed by narrow crevasses and chines exhaling an air of damp and mystery on passers-by. Through clefts loomed other mountains, brown, pink and mauve, hazy or bathed in brilliance. Passing the gullies, they sometimes heard water cascading from a height and splashing on the rocks.

'Bloody mountains,' sighed Layevsky. 'What a bore.'

At the point where Black Brook fell into Yellow, where iiik-black water stained yellow and fought it, there stood, away from the road, Kerbalay's Tatar inn with a Russian flag aloft and chalked signboard: 'Good Inn'. Ncar by was a small garden with a wattle fence. It contained tables and benches, and from a wretched thorn thicket ascendcd a lone cypress, beautiful and dark.

K,erbalay, a small, agile Tatar, stood in the road, blue-shirted and white-aproncd. Hc clutched his stomach and made a dccp obeisance to the approaching carriages, flashing his white teeth in a brilliant grin.

'Hallo, Kerbalay, old man,' shoutcd Samoylenko. 'We're going on a bit farther. You bring a samovar and some chairs, will you ? And look slippy!'

Kerbalay nodded his shaven head and muttered. Only those in the last carriage could make out the words: 'There's trout today, General.'

'Then let's have 'em,' said Von Korcn.

The carriages stopped about ĥvc hundred yards past the inn. SamoyIenko picked a small meadow dotted with stones for sitting on. Felled by a storm, a tree lay there with matted roots exposed and dry yellow pine-needlcs. A rickety woodcn bridge crossed the brook, and on the far bank just opposite there stood a little shack on four low posts—a barn for drying maizc, it looked like something out of a fairy tale. A laddcr lcd downwn from the door.

What struck them fmst was that there seemcd no way out of the place. On all sides mountains loomcd glowering whcrever onc lookcd, and from thc inn and dark cypress evcning shadows swiftly advanced, making Black Brook's narrow, twisted gorgc seem narrower still and the mountains tower yet higher. The brook gurgled, cicadas kept up their ceaSelcss chatter.

'How perfectly swcet!' said Mary Bityugov, sucking in hcr breath rapturously. 'Now, isn't that nice, children? And how quiet it is!'

'Yes, very nice indecd,' agreed Layevsky, who liked the view. Looking at the sky, and then at blue smoke issuing from the inn's chimney, he suddenly fclt sad for some reason. 'Ycs, very nice,' he repeated.

'Do describe the view for us, Mr. Laycvsky,' Mary Bityugov asked plaintively.

'Now, why should I?' replied Layevsky. 'The impact beggars all description. This wealth of colour and sound which we all receive from nature through our senses—writcrs only make a hideous, dis- torted mess of it.'

'Think so?' askcd Von Koren coldly, choosing thc largest rock near the water and trying to climb up and sit on it.

'Think so, do you?' he repeatcd, staring at Layevsky. 'What of Romeo andJnliet? Or Pushkin's "'Ukrainian Night", say? Nature should come and do homage to them.'

'Pcrhaps,' Layevsky agrecd, too lazy to think of a rejoinder.

'What are Romeo and Juliet, anyway?' he added a littlc latcr.

'Romanric, poetical, sacred love—that's really only roses strewn over corruption to hide it. Romeo's an animal like anyone else.'

'Whatever one discusses with you, you always bring it down to '

Von Koren looked at Katya and left his remark unfinishcd.

'What do I bring it downwn to?' asked Layevsky.

'One remarks "What a fine bunch of grapes," say. "Yes," say you. "But how ugly when they've been chewed up and digested in people's stomachs." Why say it? It's not original, and—it's a pretty odd way to talk, anyway.'

Layevsky fcared Von Koren, aware as he was of the other man's dislike. In Von Koren's presence people seemed inhibited, he felt, as if each had someone breathing down his neck. Layevsky walked away without answering, and regretted having come.

'Quick march, everyone! Fetch wood for the fire!' commanded Samoylenko.

All went off this way and that, only Kirilin, Achmianov and Mr. Bityugov remaining behind. Kerbalay brought some chairs, spread a rug on the ground, and set downwn several bottles of wine. Inspector Kirilin, a tall, imposing man, who wore a cloak over his tunic in all weathers, resembled a young provincial chief constable in his self- important bearing, dignified gait and thick, rather raucous voice. He looked dejected and sleepy, as ifhe had just been woken up against his will.

'What's that you've brought, you swine?' he asked Kerbalay, enunciating each word dowly. 'I told you to serve Kvarel, but what have you brought, you Tatar bastard? Eh? What?'

'We have plenty of wine of our ownwn, Mr. Kirilin,' Mr. Bityugov observed nervously and politely.

'What of it? I want you to have some of my wine. I'm one of the party, and I presume I'm fully entitled to contribute my whack. I presume so, sir! Bring ten bottles of Kvarel!'

'But why so many?' wondered Mr. Bityugov, knowing that Kirilin had no money.

'Twenty bottles! Thirty!' shouted Kirilin.

'Never mind, let him do it,' Achmianov whispered to Bityugov. 'I'll pay.'

Nadezhda was in gay, skittish mood. She felt like skipping, laughing, shouting, teasing, flirting. In her cheap cotton dress with blue polka dots, red shoes and the same straw hat, she felt tiny, artless, light and airy as a butterfly. R^^ng over the rickety little bridge, she looked at the water for a minute to make herself dizzy, then shrieked and ran laughing towards the barn on the far bank, feeling that all the men, even Kerbalay, could not take their eyes off hcr. When the rapid onset of dusk had merged trees and mountains, horses and carriages, while a gleam of light showed in the windows of the inn, she climbed a wind- ing path between rocks and thorns up the hillside, and sat on a rock. Down below the fire was alrcady ablaze.

The deacon pottered ncar it, his sleeves rolled up and his long black shadow moving in a radius round the flames. He added brush- wood and stirred the pot with a spoon tied to a long stick. Samoylenko, his face copper-red, was bustling about near the fire as if in his own kitchen.

'Where's the salt, you people?' he shouted. 'Forgot it, eh? Why loll around? Think you're the lords of crearion? Am I to do all the work?'

Layevsky and Nicodemus Bityugov sat side by side on the fallen tree, gazing pensively at the fire. Mary Bityugov, Katya and Kostya took the tea things and the bowls out of the baskets. Folding his arms and putting one foot on a rock, Von Koren stood wrapped in thought on the bank near the very edge of thc water. Shadows and red patches thrown by the bonfire flickered on the ground near the dark shapes of people and quivered on mountain, trees, bridge and barn. The precipi- tous, rutted, opposite bank was brightly lit, its glimmerings reflected in the water, but cut to shreds by the churning torrent.

The deacon went to fetch the fish which Kerbalay was cleaning and washing on the bank, but stopped half-way to look around.

'God, how wonderful!' he thought. 'People, rocks, fire, dusk, misshapen tree—that's all, but isn't it beautiful!'

A group of strangers appeared near the barn on the far bank. The flickering of the light and the bonfire smoke blown across the brook blurred the group as a whole, but details of it could be discerned— here a shaggy fur cap and a grey beard, there a navy-blue skirt, else- where rags from shoulder to knee, and a dagger across the stomach, or a young swarthy face with black brows thick and sharp as if drawn in charcoal. About fivc people sat down in a circle on the ground, and anothcr half dozen went into the barn. Hands thrust behind him, one man stood in thc doorway with his back to the fire, and began to tell a story. That it was a fascinating talc was shown v.rhen Samoy- lcnko added wood to the fire and it flared up, flashing sparks and casting a bright light on the barn—whereupon two faces, calm but expressing rapt attention, were seen looking through the door, while those sitting in the circle had turned round and were listening too. A little later the sitters quietly intoned a leisurely, tuneful song like the chanting at a church service in Lent.

As he listened, the deacon imagined himself returning from the expedition in about ten years' time. He is a young monk, a missionary, a celebrated author with a glorious p.ist. He is made archimandrite, then bishop. He conducts a cathedral service in his golden mitre with his bishop's insignia worn on a chain round his neck, stepping forward to the ambo and making the sign of the cross over the assembled people with his triple and his double candelabrum.

'O God, look do-wn from heaven,' he proclaims. 'Behold and visit this vineyard which Thy right hand hath planted.' In angelic voices children sing the response: 'Holy God '

'Where's that fish, Deacon?' Samoylenko was heard to say.

Returning to the fire, the deacon pictured a church procession on a dusty road oil a hot July day, led by peasants carrying banners, followed by women and girls with icons, and then by choir-boys and the church clerk, with his cheek bandaged and straw in his hair. He is followed in due order by the deacon himself and the priest with his velvet cap and cross, while a throng of peasants—men, women and boys—raises the dust belind them. There, in the crowd, is the priest's wife and the deacon's o-wn wife, both in kerchiefs. The choir sings, children bawl, quails shriek, a lark carols.

Now they stop to sprinkle the herd with holy water.

They move on and pray for rain on bended knee. Food and conversa- tion follow.

'Not such a bad prospect either,' the deacon reflected.

VII

Kirilin and Achmianov climbed the path up the mountainside. Achmianov lagged behind and stopped, but Kirilin went up to Nadezhda.

'Good evening,' he saia, saluting.

'Good evening.'

'Yes indeed,' said Kirilin, thoughtfully gazing at the sky.

'And what does that signify?' asked Nadezhda after a brief silence, noticing that Achmianov was observing them both.

'It signifies,' the police officer slowly enunciated, 'that our love has withered—without even flowering, so to speak. What am I to make of that, pray? Some brand of flirtatiousness on yout part? Or do you take me for a booby whom you can treat as you like?'

'It was a mistake. Leave me alone,' Nadezhda said sharply, looking at him panic-stricken on this wonderful, magical evening, and wonder- ing in bewilderment whether there could really have been a moment when chis person had attracted her and seemed close to her.

'Yes indeed,' said Kirilin, and stood in silence for a while.

'Never mind,' he said after a moment's thought. 'Lct's wait till you're in a better mood. In the meantime, I am a man of honour, as I venture to assure you, and I shall permit no doubts to arise on that score. No one triAes with me, madam. I bid you a very good day!'

He saluted and withdrew, thrcading his way between bushes. A little later Achmianov made a hesitant approach.

'Nice evening,' he said with a slight Armenian accent.

He was not bad-looking, hc dressed smartly and had a well-bred youth's ease of manner, but Nadczhda dislikcd him because she owed his father three hundred roubles. She was also displeased that this shop- kccper had becn invitcd on thc picnic—displeased, too, that he should accost her on the very evening when shc felt so pure in heart.

'Thc picnic's rather a succcss,' he said after a while.

'Isn't it?' she agrccd.

'Oh yes,' shc went on casu.ally, as if she had just rcmembercd hcr debt, 'will you tcll them in your shop that Mr. Layevsky will look in within a day or two and pay that thrcc hundred roubles or whatevcr it was?'

'I'd bc glad to lcnd you anothcr three hundrcd just to stop you bringing up that dcbt cvery day. Why so prosaic?'

Nadczhda laughed. Thc absurd idca had occurred to hcr that she could dischargc that debt in onc minutc if she so desired and was sufficientlv immoral. How about making this handsome young imbecile infatuatcd with hcr? How amusing and ridiculous, actually—how crazy!

And she suddcnly wantcd to make him lovc her—thcn rob him, cast him asidc and await the scqucl.

'May I givc you somc advicc?' Achmianov askcd ncrvously. 'Do bcwarc of Kirilin, I bcg you. Hc's going round saying horriblc things about you.'

'I don't carc to know \vhat evcry idiot says about mc,' rcmarked Nadczhda coldly. She \vas seizcd with anxiety and thc amusing thought of having some sport with this pretty boy Achmianov suddcnly lost its charm.

'We must go down,' she said. 'They're calling us.'

Do-wn below the fish stew was now cooked. They poured it into bowls and ate with that ritual air peculiar to picnics. Everyone found the stew very tasty, saying that they had never eaten anything so delicious at home. As happens on picnics, they floundered in a welter of napkins, bundles and surplus bits of greasy papcr drifting about in the wind, they didn't know whose glass or picce of bread was where, thcy spilt wine on the rug and their knees, they scattered salt about. Meanwhile it had grown dark around them, the fire was dying down, and evcryone was too lazy to get up and put on more wood. They all drank wine, and they gave half a glass to Kostya and Katya. Drinking one glass after another, Nadezhda became intoxicated and forgot Kirilin.

'Grand picnic, enchanting evening,' said Layevsky, waxing merry in his cups. 'But I'd rather have a good winter than all this.

"His beaver collar sparkles silver And coruscates with frosty dust."'

'That's a matter of taste,' observed Von Koren.

Layevsky felt a ccrtain unease. The heat of the fire beat into his back, while Von Koren's hatred assailed his chest and face. He felt humiliated and enfeebled by this decent, intelligent man's loathing— based, probably, on some sound, hidden reason. Powerless to with- stand it, he spoke in a wheedling voice.

'I'm crazy about nature,' said he. 'I'm only sorry that I'm not a scientist myself. I envy you.'

'Well, I'm not sorry or envious,' said Nadezhda. 'I don't see how one can seriously study bugs and beetles while the common people are suffering.'

Layevsky shared her view. Totally ignorant of the natural sciences himself, he could not abide the authoritative tone and air of erudite profundity affected by those who study ants' whiskers and cock- roaches' legs. And it had always annoyed him that such people used these whiskers, legs and a thing called protoplasm—somehow he pictured it resembling an oyster—as a basis for solving problems embracing man's origin and life. But Nadezhda's words rang false to him, and he spoke only in order to contradict her.

'It's not thc bugs that matter—it's what you deduce from them.'

VIII

It was l.ate—after ten o'clock—whcn they began climbing into their c.arri.agcs to drivc home. All took thcir scats, the only dcfaultcrs being Nadczhd.a and Achmianov who wcre dashing about on thc other side of thc brook, chasing cach othcr and laughing.

'Hcy therc, hurry up!' Samoylcnko shouted.

'One shouldn't offcr ladics wine,' said Von Korcn softly.

Exhaustcd by thc picnic, by Von Koren's hatred and by his own thoughts, Laycvsky went to meet gay, merry Nadczhda, who felt light as thistlcdown, brcathlcss and roaring with laughter as she seizcd him by both hands and placcd her head on his chcst. He took a step back- wards.

'You're bchaving like a cheap t.art,' he said harshly.

The effect was so very rude that he cven felt sorry for her. On his angry, wcary facc she saw hatred, pity, annoyance with himself—and suddenly her heart sank. She realized that she had gonc too far, hcr behaviour had been too frce and easy. Feeling saddened, cumbrous, fat, coarse, drunk, she mounted the first cmpty carriagc along with Achmianov. Layevsky got in with Kirilin, the zoologist with Samoy- lenko, the deacon with the ladics—and the convoy moved off".

'How typical of thc baboons,' began Von Korcn, wrapping his cloak around him and shutting his eycs. 'You heard what she said—she wouldn't want to study bugs and beetles because of the common people's sufferings. That's how all baboons judge my kind of person. They're a servilc, sly breed, and they've been tcrrorized by knoutings and punchings for ten generations. They cower, thcy gush, thcy fawn —but only under the spur of violence. Now, you let your baboon loose somcwhere whcrc no one's going to take him by the scruff" of the neck —and you just watch him let himself go and throw his wcight about! Watch how bold he is at painting exhibitions, in museums and theatres, or when he passes judgement on sciencc. He rears up, stands on his hind legs, censures, criticizes. Above all, he criticizes—the mark of a slave, that! You just listcn, and you'll fmd that members of the liberal professions are more vilified than any criminal. And why? Because three quarters of society consists of slavcs—of baboons like thcse. Never would such a slave shake hands with you and thank you sin- cerely for your work.'

'I don't know what you expect,' said Samoylcnko, yawning. 'The poor girl is naive enough to want to talk to you scriously and you jump to these conclusions. You have it in for him for some reason, so you drag her in for good measure. But shc's a fine person.'

'Oh, come off it. She's just an ordinary debauched, vulgar, kept woman. Look hcrc, Alexandcr, if you mct a common peasant woman who wouldn't live with her husband and did nothing but giggle and titter, you'd tcll her to go and do a job. Then why be so timid now, so mealy-mouthed? Can it be just because Nadczhda's a civil servant's mistress, not a sailor's?'

'Well, what am I to do about hcr—bcat her?' askcd Samoylenko angrily.

'Don't flatter vice. We only condcmn vice when its back is turned, which is like putting your tongue out at someone when he isn't looking. I'm a zoologist—or a sociologist, which is exactly the samc thing—and you're a doctor. Society trusts us, and it's our job to draw society's attention to the fcarful threat to its wclfare—and to that of future generations—posed by thc cxistence of thesc Nadezhda Ivanovnas.'

'Nadezhda Fyodorovna,' Samoylenko correctcd. 'But what should society do?'

'Do? That's up .to society. But if you ask me, thc surest and most straightforward means is forcc. Shc should bc sent back to her husband undcr military escort. And if the husband won't have her, shc should be sentcnced to pcnal scrvitude, or bc put in some housc of correction.'

'Whew!' Samoylenko sighcd, and was silent for a moment. 'You were saying the other day that people like Layevs.ky should be extcrmi- natcd,' he remarked gently. 'Tell mc, if, cr, the statc or society, say, gave you thejob of extcrminating him, could you—bring yourself to?'

'I wouldn't hesitate for one second.'

IX

Layevsky and Nadezhda arrivcd homc and went into their dark, stuffy, depressing rooms. Neithcr spokc. Layevsky lit a candle, while Nadezhda sat down and raised her mournful, guilty eyes to him with- out taking off hcr coat and hat.

Hc knew that she wanted to havc things out with him, but that would have bccn so tedious, so pointless, so fatiguing, and he fclt depressed bccause he h.ad lost his temper and spokcn to her roughly.

He chanced to feel in his pocket the lctter which he had been mean- ing to read to hcr for days, and it occurrcd to him that he could distract her attention by showing it to her now.

'It's time we clarified our relations,' he thought. 'I'll givc it to her, come what may.'

He took out thc letter and gave it to her. 'Read this. It concerns you.'

With these words he went into his study, and lay on the sofa in the dark without a pillow. Nadezhda read the lettcr, and felt as if the cciling had fallen and the walls had closed in on hcr. She suddcnly fclt hemmcd in' by darkness, by fear—and rapidly crossed herself thrce times.

'May he rest in peace,' she said. 'May he rest in pcacc.'

She burst into tears.

'Ivan!' she called. 'Ivan!'

Therc was no answer. Thinking that Layevsky had comc in and was standing behind her chair, she sobbcd like a child.

'Why didn't you tell me of his dcath beforc?' she asked. 'I wouldn't havc gonc on that picnic, wouldn't have laughed in that awful way. The men made vulgar rcmarks to me. What a sinful thing to do. Save me, Ivan, save me, I'm out of my mind, I'm ru.ined '

Laycvsky heard her sobbing. He fclt ready to choke, and his heart pounded. In his anguish hc rose, stood in. the middlc of the room, groped about in the darkncss for the arm-chair ncar the table, and sat down.

'This is like prison,' hc thought. 'I must go away, can't stand any more '

It was too latc to go and play cards, and there were no restaurants in to\wn. He lay do^ again, and blocked his ears to shut out the sobs— then suddenly remembered that he could call on Samoylenko. To avoid passing Nad:zhda, he climbcd through the window into the garden, scaled the fence and sct off down thc street.

It was dark, and some steamer—a big passcnger ship, judging by hcr lights—had just put in.

The anchor-chain clattcred, and a red light sped from shore to ship— the customs boat.

'The passengers arc asleep in their cabins,' thought Layevsky, envying the strangers their rest.

The windows were open in Samoylenko's house, and Layevsky peered through one, and then another. The house was dark and quiet inside.

'Are you asleep, Alexander?' he called. 'Alexander Samoylenko!'

A cough was heard, and an anxious cry.

'Who's there? What the blazes?' 'It's me, Alcxander—forgive me.'

A little later the door opencd. A lamp flashed its soft light, and Samoylenko's bulk appeared, all in white including a white night-cap.

'What is it?' he asked, half asleep, brcathing heavily and scratching himself. 'Wait, I'll open up in a second.'

'Don't bother, I'll come through the window.'

Laycvsky climbcd through a window, went_up to Samoylenko and gripped him by the hand.

'Alcxander,' hc said shakily, 'you must savc me! I bcg you, I implore you—try to undcrstand me! My situation's shccr agony. Ifit lasts even a day or two longer I'll hang myself like—likc a dog.'

'One moment—what exactly are you on about?'

'Light a candle.'

'Ah mc,' sighcd Samoylcnko, lighting one. 'Oh, God—it's turncd one o'clock, old man.'

'Forgive mc, but I can't stay at home,' said Layevsky, much relievcd by the light and by Samoylenko's presence. 'You'rc my best friend, Alexander, the only onc I have. You'rc my only hopc. Whether you want to or not, for God's sakc rescue me. I must lcave hcre at all costs, so lend mc somc money.'

'Oh, my God,' sighed Samoylcnko, scratching himself. 'I'm falling aslccp, thcn I hcar thc whistle of thc stcamcr putting in,. and now you come. Do you need much?'

'Thrcc hundred roublcs at lcast. I must lcave her a hundred, and I nced two hundred for thc journey. I owe you about four hundred alrcady, but I'll send you it all, cvery bit of it '

Samoylenko clutchcd both his sidc-whiskers in one hand, straddled his lcgs and pondercd.

'Yes,' hc muttercd pensively. 'Three hundred—. Vcry well. But I haven't got that much, I'll have to borrow.'

'Then borrow, in God's name!' said Layevsky, who could tcll from Samoylcnko's cxprcssion that hc wishcd to—and dcfmitely would— makc thc loan. 'Borrow. I'll pay you back without fail—I'll send it you from St. Petersburg as soon as I arrive, don't worry. Tell you what, Alexandcr,' he said, chccring up. 'Let's have some winc.'

'Well—all right then.'

They went into the dining-room.

'But what about Nadezhda ?' asked Samoylcnko, placing thrce bottlcs and a dish of pcachcs on thc table. 'Shc won't stay on here, surely?'

Tll fix all that, don't worry,' said Layevsky in a sudden transport of dclight. 'I'll send her moncy later, and shc'll join me. Then we'll clarify our relations. Your hcalth, old pal.'

'Just a sccond,' said Samoylcnko. 'Try this first, it's from my own vincyard. Thnt bottlc's from Navaridzc's and this othcr's from Akha- tulov. Try all thrcc, and givc m^ your honcst opinion. Minc sccms a bit on thc sour side, ch ? What do you think ?'

'Yes. You'vc chccrcd mc up, Alcxandcr. Thank you. I fccl a new man.'

'On thc sour side, ch?'

'Hcll, I don't know, bm you'rc a marvcllous, splcndid fcllow.'

Looking at Laycvsky's palc, troublcd, amiablc fncc, Samoylcnko rccallcd Von Korcn's vicw that such pcoplc should bc extcrminated, and Laycvsky struck him as a wcak, defcncclcss child whom anyone could injure or destroy.

'And whcn you do go, you must makc your peace with your mother,' hc said. 'That's a bad busincss.'

'Oh v cs. Without fail.'

/

Therc was a bricf pausc.

'You might patch things up with Von Korcn too,' said Samoylenko whcn they had finishcd thc first bottlc. 'You'rc both grand, highly intclligcnt chaps, but you ahvays sccm to bc at loggcrhcads.'

'Ycs, hc is 3 grand, highly intelligcnt chap,' agrecd Layevsky, now rcady to praisc and forgivc cvcryone. 'Hc's a splcndid fellow, but I can't gct on tcrms with him, indccd I can't. Our charactcrs are too dissimilar. Mine is sluggish, fecblc, subnlissivc nature. I might hold out my hand to him at somc auspicious moment, but he'd tum his back on me—with contcmpt.'

Layevsky sipped his winc and paced up and do\wn.

'I imdcrstand Von Koren vcry wcll indccd,' he went on, standing in the middle of thc room. 'He's a hard, strong man, a tyrant. You've heard all his talk about that cxpcdition, and thosc arc no empty words. He rcquircs a wildcrness, a moonlit night. All around, in tents and undcr the opcn sky, slecp his hungry, sick Cossacks, worn out by punishing marchcs—his guidcs, his bearcrs, his doctor, his priest. He alone shuns slecp, sitting on his camp stool likc Stanlcy, fccling lord of thc waste land and mastcr of thcse pwplc. On, on, on hc prcsses. His people groan and dic onc aftcr the othcr, but he still drives on until hc himsclf perishes in thc end—yct still remains thc tyrant, the lord of the waste land bccause thc cross on his gravc can bc sccn by caravans thirty or forty miles away, dominating the desert. I'm sorry the man isn't in the army, he'd have made a first-rate general, a military genius. He could have drowned his cavalry in a river, built bridges of corpses—and such boldness is more important in war than all your fortifications and tactics. Oh, I understand him through and through. But tell me—why is he kicking his heels around hcre? What is he after?'

'He's studying marine life.'

'No, no, that's not it, old man,' sighed Layevsky. 'From what I gathered from a passcnger on the steamer, a scientist, the Black Sea's poor in fauna, and organic life can't cxist in its depths owing to thc excess of hydrogen sulphidc. All serious students of the subject work in the biological stations of Naples or Villcfranche. But Von Korcn's independent and stubborn. He works on the Black Sea because no one else does. He has broken with the university, and will have nothing to do with scicntists and colleagues bccause he's first and foremost a tyrant, and only secondly a zoologist. And he'll go far, you'll find. He sees himself smoking all intrigucs and mediocrity out of oqr universi- ties when he gets back from his expedition—dreams of making mince- meat of thosc acadcmics. Tyranny is just as potent in the acadcmic world as it is in war. But he's now spcnding his second summer in this stinking dump, because it's bctter to be first man in a vilhige than play second fiddle in town. Hcrc hc's monarch of all he siirveys. He keeps a tight rein on all the locals, crushing them with his authority. He has taken everyone in hand, he mcddles in other peoplc's affairs, he makes everything his own conccni, and hc has evcryone scared of him. I'm now slipping out ofhis clutches—he scnses that and hates me. Hasn't he told you that I should bc exterminated or made to do forced labour for the community?'

'Yes,' laughed Samoylenko.

Layevsky also laughcd and drank some winc.

'His ideals arc tyrannical too,' he said, laughing and nibbling a peach. 'When ordinary mortals work for the common weal, they're thinking of their neighbour—mc, you . . . human beings, in a word. But for Von Koren pcople arc small fry, nobodies—crcatures too petty to form his purposc in lifc. His work, this cxpedition on which he'll break his neck—thcsc things arcn't done out of love for his neighbour, but in the name of abstractions likc mankind, future generations, an ideal racc of mcn. His job is to improve thc human breed, in which context wc'rc no more than slaves in his eycs—cannon- fodder, beasts of burden. Some of us hc'd exterminate, or put to hard labour, on others he'd imposc rigid discipline, making them gct up and go to bed to driim rolls likc Arakcheycv. He'd post eunuchs to guard our ch.nstity and moralitv, and give orders to fire at anyonc who steppcd outside the circlc of our narrow, conscrvative morality— all this in thc namc ofbettcring the human race. But what is thc human racc? An illusion, a mirage. Tyrants have always bcen illusionists. I undcrstand him through and through, old man. I appreciatc him, I don't deny his importance. The world depends on such people. Were it handed ovcr entircly to our sort, wc'd make as big a hash ofit as the flies are making of that picturc, for all our kindncss and good intcntions. Ycs indced.'

Layevsky sat down by Samoylcnko's side.

'I'm a paltry, trivial wreck of a man,' he said with real fccling. 'The air I breathc, this winc, lovc—the whole of lifc, in sum—I have so far purchased thcse things with lies, laziness and cowardicc. So far I've bcen cheating others and myself, and I'vc suflcred in consequencc. But my vcry sufferings havc bccn chcap and second-rate. I meekly bow my head to Von Koren's hatrcd because there are times whcn I hatc and despise myself.'

Layevsky again paced thc room cxcitedly.

'I'm glad I sec my own faults so clearly and admit thcm,' he said. 'This will help mc to be born ancw and make a fresh start. If you knew how ardently, v.:ith what ycaming I long to be transformcd, old man. I shall be a propcr person, I shall—I swear it! I don't know whether it's the effect of the \vinc, or whcthcr it really is so, but it's ages since I remember having momcnts as bright and pure as I'm now enjoying here with you.'

'It's bed-time, old boy,' said Samoylcnko.

'Yes, yes—forgivc me, I'll only be a moment.'

Layevsky bustled round the furniture and windows looking for his cap.

'Thanks,' he muttered with a sigh. 'Thank you. Affection and kind words—there's no better charity than those. You've made me a new man.'

He found his cap, paused and looked guiltily at Samoylenko.

'Alexander!' he implorcd.

'What is it?'

'May I spend the night here, old man?'

'You're most welcome—certainly.'

Layevsky lay down to sleep on the sofa, and his conversation with the doctor continued for some time.

X

Three days after the picnic, Mary Bityugov unexpectedly called on Nadezhda Fyodorovna. Without uttering a word of grecting or removing her hat, she seized N adezhda by both hands and pressed them to her bosom.

'My dear, I'm so excited, I'm thunderstruck,' she said with tremen- dous emotion. 'Yesterday our nice, kind doctor told my Nicodemus that your husband has died. Tell me, tell me, dear—is this true?'

'Yes, it's true,' answered Nadezhda. 'He died.'

'How simply frightful, darling! But every cloud has its silver lining. Your husband was probably a wonderful, splendid, saintly person, but such are more necded in heaven than on earth.'

Every point and feature on Mary Bityugov's face quivered, as if tiny needles were leaping under her skin. She gave her sugary smile.

'This means you're free, dear,' she said in brcathless ecstasy. 'Now you can hold your head up and look people in the eye. Henceforward God and man will bless your union with Ivan Layevsky. How per- fectly sweet! I'm trembling withjoy, I'm lost for words. I shall arrange your wedding, dear. Nicodemus and I -have always been so fond of you, you must allow us to bless your lawful, chaste union. When, oh when is the wedding day?'

'I haven't given it a thought,' said Nadezhda, freeing her hands.

'That can't be so, dear. You have thought, now haven't you?'

'I haven't, honestly,' laughed Nadezhda. 'Why should we marry? I see no need—we'll carry on as we have so far.'

'What words are these?' Mary Bityugov was horrified. 'What are you saying, in God's name?'

'Marrying won't improve things—far from it. It would make them worse, actually—\ve'd lose our freedom.'

'How can you talk like that, dearest?' cried Mary Bityugov, stepping backwards and flinging up her arms. 'You're quite outrageous! Think what you're saying! Compose yourself!'

'Compose myself? I havcn't lived yet, and you want me to compose myself!'

Nadezhda reflected that shc really hadn't had much of a life so far. She had bcen to a girls' boarding school, and married a man whom she didn't love. Then she had gone off with Layevsky, and spent her time with him on this boring, deserted coast in hopes of something better. Could you call that living?

'We should gct marricd, though,' she thought—but chcn remembercd Kirilin and Achmianov and blushed.

'No, it's impossiblc,' she sa!d. 'Even if Ivan asked me on bendcd knee, I'd still refuse.'

Mary Bityugov sac sadly and solc^^y on the sofa for a minute without speaking, staring fixedly at one point. Thcn she stood up.

'Good-byc, dear,' shc said coldly. 'I'm sorry I bothered you. Now, this isn't easy for mc to say, but I must tcll you that all is over between us from now on. Dcspitc my great rcspcct for Mr. Layevsky, the door of my home is closed to you.'

She brought this out solcmnly, herself overcome by her o^ earnest- ncss. Then hcr facc quivcrcd again, adopting its soft, sugary exprcssion, and she stretched out her hands to the tcrrified, cmbarrassed Nadezhda.

'My dcar,' she implored, 'pernit mc to speak to you for a minute as your mothcr or clder sister. I'll be as outspokcn as a mother.'

Nadezhda felt warmth, joy and self-pity in her breast, as if hcr mothcr actually had risen from thc. dead and stood bcfore her. She embraccd Mary Bityugov impctuously, burying hcr face in Mary's shoulder. Both wcpt, sitting on the sofa and sobbing for scvcral minutes —not looking at each other, bcrcft of spccch.

'My dcar child,' bcgan Mary. 'I'm going to tcll you somc homc truths without sparing you.'

'Yes, do, for God's sake do!'

'Trust me, dear. I'm the only one of the ladies here, you'll remembcr, who has askcd you to hcr home. I was tcrribly shockcd by you from your first day hcrc, but I hadn't the heart to look do\wn on you likc the others. I suffcred for dc.ar, kind Mr. Layevsky as for my own son. A young man in a strange country, inexpcrienced, wcak, without his mother—I cndured agonics. My husband was against the acquaintance, but I convinccd him, won him ovcr. So we bcgan to invitc Mr. Layevsky—and you too, of course, or clse he'd have been offendcd. I have a daughter and a son—. A child's tcnder nind, you know, its pure heart—"Whosoever shall offend onc of these littlc ones" and all that. I rcceived you—but trembled for my childrcn. Oh yes, you'll understand my fears whcn you're a mothcr yoursclf. Now, everyone was surprised at my recciving you—forgive mc—like a respectable woman. They hinted as much—and thcrc was gossip and conjecture, of course. In my innermost sclf I condc^ed you, but you were so wretched and pathetic, your behaviour was so monstrous, that my hcart bled for you.'

'But why?' asked Nadczhda Fyodorovn.a, trembling al! over. 'Why? What havc I done to anyone?'

'You committed a fearful sin. You broke thc vow made to your husband at the altar. You scduccd a fme young man who would perhaps have taken a lawful spouse from a good family in his own station, had hc nevcr met you, and would now be living a normal life. You have wrecked his youth. Now, don't say anything—don't speak, dear. I can't believe any man has ever been to blame for our sins, it's always the woman's fault. Men are so frivolous about family life, they live by their minds, not by the heart—they understand prccious little. But the woman understands everything. It all depends on hcr. Much has been given her, and much shall be asked of her. You know, dear, if the woman was sillier or weaker than the man in these matters, God would never have entrusted her with the upbringing of Iittle boys and girls. And then you trod the path of vice, dear, you lost all sense of shame. In your place any other woman would have hidden her face and stayed at home behind locked doors, never secn but in the Lord's temple—pale, in mourning dress, weeping. "Lord, this fallen angel hath returned to Thee," all would have cried, sincerely mortified. But you threw off all discretion, my sweet, you lived openly, outrageously—as if flaunting your sin. You frolicked and made meriy while I shuddered with horror as I watched, fearing lest thunder from heaven strike our house during one of your visits.

'Don't say anything, dear—please!' shouted Mary, seeing that Nadezhda was about to speak. 'Trust me, I won't deceive you, and I won't hide one single truth from your inner eyes. Now, listen, dear. God puts His mark on great sinners and you bear His mark. Remember what appalling clothes you've always worn!'

Nadezhda, who had always thought her clothes particu!arly good, stopped crying and looked at Mary Bityugov in amazement.

'Yes, appalling!' went on Mary Bityugov. 'Those grotesque, gaudy dresses—people canjudge your behaviour by them. Everyone sniggered when they saw you, and shrugged their shoulders—but I suffered agonies. Then forgive me, dear, but you're a bit careless in your personal habits. When we met in the bathing-house, you had me in quite a dither. Your top clothes aren't all that bad, but your petticoat and chemise—I can only blush, dear. Besides, no one ever tics Mr. Layevsky's tie properly, and look at the poor man's linen and boots—one can see he's not being looked after at home. Then you never give him enough to eat, darling. And if there's no one at home to see to the samovar and coffee, you know. one's bound to run through half onc's salary in thc Pavilion. And your house is frightful—ghastly! No one else in town has flies, but your place is crawling with them—the plates and saucers are all black. And just look at your window-sills and tables! The dust, the dead flies, the glasses! Why leave glasscs there? And you stillhaven't cleared the table, my sweet. As for your bedroom, one's ashamed to go in there, what with your underwear scattered all over the place, your various rubber things hanging on the walls, and an, er, utensil standing about—rea//y, my dear! The husband must know nothing and the wife must be as pure as a dear little angel in his sight. I wake up every morning at dawn and wash my face in cold water so that Nicodemus shan't see me looking sleepy.'

'These are all trivialities,' sobbed Nadezhda. 'If only I was happy— but I'm so wretched!'

'Yes, yes, you indeed are wretched,' sighed Mary Bityugov, hardly able to hold back her own tears. 'And great grief awaits you in the future—a loncly old age, illnesses, and then you must answer at the Day of Judgement. It's appalling, appalling. And now the very fates hold out a helping hand, you foolishly reject it. You must get married —and quickly!'

'Yes, yes, I should,' said Nadezhda. 'But it's out of the question.'

'Oh. Why?'

'It's impossible—ah, if you did but know!'

Nadezhda wanted to tell her about Kirilin, about meeting that good-looking young Achmianov by the harbour on the previous evening, about her mad, absurd idea of discharging her three-hundred- rouble debt, abo.ut how funny it had all seemed, and about how she had arrived home late at night feeling like one irretricvably ruined—a whore, in fact. She herself didn' t know how it had come about. Now she wanted to swcar to Mary Bityugov that she would pay thc debt without fail, but could not speak because she was sobbing so—and felt so ashamed.

Tll leave this place,' she said. 'Ivan can stay, but I'll go.'

'Go where?'

'To central Russia.'

'But what will you live on? You have no money, have you?'

'I'll do some translating, or—open a little library '

'Don't bc absurd, dear. You nced money to run a library. Ah well, I'll leave you now. Now, you calm down and think things over, then come and see me tomorrow in a bppy little mood. That will be perfectly sweet. Well, good-bye, cherub. Let me kiss you.'

Mary Bityugov kissed Nadezhda on the forche.id, made the sign of the cross over her, and quietly left. It was alrcady growing dark, and Olga had lit the kitchen lamp. Still crying, Nadczhda wcnt into the bedroom and by on the bcd. She was running a high fever. She undressed in a lying position, crumpling her dress down to her feet and curling_up under the blanket. She was thirsty, but there was no one to bring her a drink.

'I'll pay it back,' she told hcrself, imagining in her dclirious state that she was sitting beside some sick woman in whom she recognizcd herself. 'I'll pay. How silly to think that for money I would—. I'll leave here and send him the money from St. Petersburg. First one hundred, then another hundred, then another '

Layevsky came in later that night.

'First a hundred,' Nadczhda told him. 'Then another hundred '

'You should take quinine,' he said.

'Tomorrow's Wcdnesday,' he thought, 'and the boat will sail without me. That means I'm stuck here till Saturday.'

Nadezhda knelt up in bed.

'Did I say anything just now?' she asked, smiling and screwing up her eyes in the candle-light.

'No. We'll have to send for the doctor tomorrow morning. You go to sleep.'

He picked up a pillow and made for the door. Having taken the definite decision to depart and desert Nadezhda, he now fbund that she stirred his pity and remorse. He felt a certain compunction in her presence, as if she were a horse which was to be put do-wn because of sickness or old age. He stopped in the doorway and glanced back at her.

'I was annoyed at the picnic and spoke rudely to you. Forgive me, for God's sake.'

Saying this, he went into his study and lay down, but was unable to sleep for some time.

On the following morning Samoylenko—sporting full parade uni- form, epaulettes and medals since today was an official holiday—felt Nadezhda's pulse and looked at her tongue. When he came out of the bedroom, Layevsky was standing by the door.

'Well now, how about it?' he asked anxiously, his expression a mixture of fear, extreme unease and hope.

'Don't worry, it's nothing serious,' Samoylenko said. 'Just the usual chill.' 'That's not what I meant.' L:lyevsky frovwned impatiently. 'Did you get the money?'

'Forgive me, dear old boy,' whispercd Samoylen.ko, glancing at the door and betraying cmbarrassmcnt. 'Forgive me, for heavcn's sake. No onc has any spare cash, and so far I could only pick up five or tcn roubles hcre and there—a hundrcd and ten altogether. I'll speak to onc or two more peoplc today. Be patient.'

'But Saturday's the final date,' whispercd Layevsky, quivering with impatience. 'Get it by Saturday—in the name of all that's holy! If I can't lcave thcn you needn't bother, becausc I shan't want it. How a doctor can be without money—that's what I don't see.'

'Oh Lord, have it your own way,' hisscd Samoylen.ko so rapidly and with such urgency that his throat actually squeaked. 'I've been robbed left right and centre, I'm owed seven thousand and I'm in debt all round myself. Can I help that?'

'You'll have the money by Saturday then?'

'I'll do my bcst.'

'Please do, old man. Just see that I have that money in my hands by Friday morning.'

Samoylenko sat down and prcscribcd a solution of quinine, kaliunt bromatum, infusion of rhubarb, tincture of gentian and aqua foeniculi— all in one mixture. Hc addcd rose syrup to swcctcn it, and left.

XI

'You look as if you'vc comc to arrcst me,' said Von Korcn when he saw Samoylenko comc into the place in full parade uniform.

'I was just passing,' said Samoylenko, 'and I thought, why don't I pop in and see how zoology's doing.' He sat down at the big table which the zoologist had knocked together himself out of plain boards.

'Greetings, your revercncc,' he nodded to thc dcacon who sat by the window copying. Tll stay a moment, thcn dash home to arrange lunch. It's alrcady time—. I do hopc I'm not disturbing you?'

'Not at all,' answered the zoologist, spreading out some papers covered with fine handwriting on the. tablc. 'We'rc busy copying.'

'I see—. Oh, good grief!' sighed Samoylenko, cautiously pulling from the table a dusty book with a dead, dry, spidcr-like insect on it.

'Well, really!' hc said. 'Imagine you'rc some littlc grccn beetle going about your business—and you suddenly run into this monstrosity. That must bc terrifying, I should think.'

'Oh, I suppose so.'

'Is it equipped with poison to defcnd itsdf from its enemies?'

'Yes, for self-defence—and also for attack.'

'Well, well, well,' sighed Samovlenko. 'So evervthing in nature is functional and rational, is it then, boys? But therc's one thing I don't see. You're a highly intelligent chap, so explain it, won't you? There exist certain small creatures—no larger than a rat, yoii know, pretty- looking little things ... but vicious and immoral in the iiltimate degree, believe you me. One such little beast might be walking through a wood, say. He sees a bird. So he catches it and cats it. He moves on and sees a nest full of eggs in the grass. He's no longer hungry—he's had plenty to eat—still, he chews up an egg and knocks the others out of the nest with his paw. Then he meets a frog and has some sport with that. After torturing the frog he moves on, licking his lips—and meets a beetle. One blow of his paw, and that beetle—. Whatever he meets he maims and exterminates. He pushes into other beasts' lairs, wrecks ant-hills for the hell of it, cracks open snails. Ifhe meets a rat he starts a fight, if he sees a small snake or mouse, he has to strangle it. And so it goes on all day. Now, tcll me—what's the purpose of such a creature? Why was it created ?'

'I don't know what creature you mean,' Von Koren said. 'It must be one of the insectivores. Very well then. The bird was caught because it was careless. The nest of eggs was destroyed because the bird wasn't clever enough—made its nest badly and didn't succeed in disguising it. The frog probably had some defect in its colouring, or else it wouldn't have been seen—and so on. Your beast destroys only the weak, the clumsy and the careless—in a word, creatures possessing defects which nature holds it unnecessary to transmit to posterity. Only the fittest, the most cautious, powerful and developed survive. Thus your little beast unconsciously serves the great aim of perfecting the species.'

'Yes, yes, I see. By the way, old man,' Samoylenko said casually, 'could you lend me a hundred roubles?'

'Very weU. Now, there are some most interesting specimens among the insectivores. Take the mole. It's said to be useful because it destroys insect" pests, and there's a story that some German once sent Kaiser Wilhelm I a moleskin coat—but that the Kaiser gave orders to reprimand him for destroying so many valuable animals. Still, the mole is every bit as cruel as your creature, and it's a great pest too—does enormous damage to the fields.'

Von Koren opened a cashbox and took out a hundred-rouble note.

'The mole has a powerful thorax—like the bat,' he went on, locking the box. 'It has frightfullv well-developed bones and muscles, and an exceprionally powerful mouth. If it were as big as an elephant, there'd be no stopping it, it would trample everything underfoot. It's interest- ing that when two moles meet underground, both start digging a plat- form, as if by common consent—they need it as a convenient place to fight. When it's finished, they join battle fiercely and fight till the weaker drops. Well, take your himdred roubles,' said Von Koren, lowering his voice, 'but only on condition that you don't want it for Layevsky.'

'Suppose it is for Layevsky ?' exploded Samoylenko. 'What business is that of yours?'

'I can't provide money for Layevsky's benefit. I know you like lending money—you'd make a loan to some notorious lighwayman if he asked you. .Bit I can't help you in that direction, sorry.'

'Yes, it is for Layevsky, sir,' said Samoylenko, standing up and brandishing his right hand. 'Yes, sir, it's for Layevsky. Hell and damnation—no one has the right to tell me how to dispose of my own money! So you won't lend it me, eh?'

The deacon burst out laughing.

'Don't get so worked up—use your brain,' said the zoologist. 'Conferring favours on friend Layevsky—in my view, that makes about as much sense as watering weeds or feeding locusts.'

'Well, in my view it's our duty to help our neighbours,' shouted Sarnoylenko.

'Then why not help that starving Turk who lies beneath the fence? He's a worker, he's more valuable and useful chan friend Layevsky. Why not give him that hundred roubles? Or put a hundred towards my expedition ?'

'Look here, are you making me that loan or aren't you?'

'Tell me frankly—what does he need it for?'

'There's no secret about it, he has to go to St. Petersburg on Saturday.'

'So that's it,' said Von Koren slowly. 'Well, well, well! I see. Will she be going with him then?'

'She stays here for the time being. He'll settle his afiairs in St. Petersburg and send her money, and then she'll go too.'

'Very neat,' said the zoologist, and gave a short, high-pitched laugh. 'Neat indeed—a very bright idea.'

He went quickly up to Samoylenko, stood facing him and stared into his eyes.

'Tell me frankly,' he said. 'Has he got tired of her, eh? He has, hasn't he?'

'Yes,' said Samoylenko, and broke out in a sweat.

'How nauseating!' said- Von Korcn, disgust written on his face. 'Now, there are two possibilities, Alexander. Either you and he have <;ooked this up together, or else you're a half-wit, if you'll pardon my saying so. Can't you see he's making a fool of you—treating you like a child, and in the most unscrupulous way? He wants to get rid ofher, abandon her here—why, it sticks out a mile. She'll be left on your hands, and then you'll have to send her to St. Petersburg at your own expense—that's as clear as daylight. Surely your good friend hasn't so dazzled you with his virtues that you can't see what's staring you in the face!'

'But these arc merest conjectures,' said Samoylcnko, sitting down.

'Oh, arc they ? Then why is he travelling alone? Why isn't she going with him? And why, you might ask him, shouldn't she go on ahead? And he come on afterwards? C^^ng bastard!'

Overwhelmed by sudden doubts and suspicions of his friend, Samoylenko immediately lost heart and lowered his voice.

'But this is impossible,' he said, remembering the night which Layevsky had passed in his house. 'The man suffers so.'

'What of it? Burglars and fire-raisers also suffer.'

'Let's suppose you're right,' Samoylenko said pensively. 'Even so, he's still a young fellow in a strange country, a university man. We were students ourselves once, and there's no one to stand up for him here besides us.'

'To abet his filthy tricksjust because you both attended university at different periods, and both wasted your time there—what utter nonsense!'

'Wait, let's reason this out coolly. We might do it this way, I think,' calculated Samoylcnko, flicking his fingers. 'I'll make him the loan, sec? But I'll insist he gives his word of honour to send Nadezhda her travelling expenses within one week.'

'Oh, he'll give you his word ofhonour all right, he'll throw in a few tears, even—and he'll mean every bit ofit. But what's his word worth? He won't keep it, and when you mect him on the Nevsky Prospekt in a couple of years with his new mistress on his arm, he'll make the excuse that civilization lits crippled him, and that he's a chip off the same block as Turgencv's Rudin. For God's sake drop him! Leavc that muck alone—don't wallow in it!'

Samoylenko thought for a moment.

Tll still lend him the money,' he said resolutely. 'Say what you like, but I can't refuse a man on the basis of mere conjecture.'

'Fine. And you can go and slobber all over him for all I care.'

'So let me have that hundred roubles,' Samoylenko said nervously.

'Not likely.'

Silence ensued. Samoylenko felt utterly crestfallen. He assumed a guilty, shamefaced, wheedling expression, and it was strange somehow to see this huge man with his epaulettes and medals looking so pathetic and embarrassed, like a small child.

'The local bishop tours his diocese on horseback, not by carriage,' said the deacon, laying down his pen. 'He looks extraordinarily moving on horseback—the very picture of simplicity and modesty infused with biblical grandeur.'

'Is he a good man?' asked Von Koren, welcoming the change of subject.

'Obviously yes. Would he have been consecrated bishop othernise ?'

'There are some very fine bishops—most able men,' said Von Koren. 'The trouble is, though, a lot of them have this foible of posing as pillars of the state. One tries to spread the Russian way of life, another criticizes science. What has that to do with them? They should pay more attention to diocesan affairs.'

'Laymen may not judge bishops.'

'Why not though, Deacon? A bishop's a man like me.'

'Yes and no,' said the deacon, taking umbrage and picking up his pen. 'Had you been such a man, God's grace would have alighted upon you—you'd be a bishop yourself. Since you aren't one, you can't be such a man.'

'Don't burble, Deacon,' said Samoylenko, much distressed and turning to Von Koren. 'I have an idea,' he went on. 'No need for you to lend me that hundred. You'll be eating at my place for another three months more before winter, so pay me a quarter in advance.'

'No.'

Samoylenko blinked and flushed crimson. Automatically reaching for the book with the spider on it, he gave it a glance, then stood up and took his cap. Von Koren felt sorry for him.

'Fancy having to live and work with such people,' he said, kicking a piece of paper into the comer in his indignation. 'This isn't kindness or love, can't you see? It's craven corruption—sheer poison, it is! What reason builds up, your futile, debilitated emotions pull down. I contracted enteric fever as a schoolboy, and my aunt felt so sorry for me that she stuffed me with pickled mushrooms till I nearly died. Can't you and dear auntie get it into your heads that love of mankind mustn't be located in the heart, >nor in the pit of the stomach, nor yet in the small of the back? It should be up here!' And Von Koren slapped his forehead.

'Take the thing!' he said, and tossed over a hundred-rouble note.

'No need to lose your temper, Nicholas,' said Samoylenko meekly, folding the note. 'I know what you mean all right, but—put yourself m my posmon.'

'You're an old woman, that's what it comes to.'

The deacon guffawed.

'Listen, Alexander, I have one last request,' said Von Koren heatedly. 'When you give that twister the money, make one proviso—he either takes his mistress with him, or he sends her on ahead. Don't let him have it otherwise. You make no bones about it! You tell him that, and if you don't I'll go to his office and throw him downstairs, by God I will, and I'll have nothing more to do with you either—and that's flat!'

'All right then. If he takes her with him or sends her ahead, it'll actually suit him better,' said Samoylenko. 'He'll be glad to, even. Good-bye then.'

He took a fond farewell and left the room, but looked back at Von Koren before closing the door behind him.

'You've been spoilt by Germans, old man,' he said with a terrifying grimace. 'By Germans, sir!'

XII

On the following day, a Thursday, Mary Bityugov was celebrating her son Kostya's birthday. Everyone had been invited for pie at noon and chocolate in the evening. When Layevsky and Nadezhda arrived that evening, the zoologist was already in the dining-room drinking chocolate.

'Have you spoken to him?' he asked Samoylenko.

'Not yet.' '

'Don't stand on ceremony, mind. But the creatures' impudence—it beats me! They're well aware what the Bityugovs here think of their liaison, yet they still barge in.'

'If one were to truckle to every superstition, one couldn't go any- where,' said Samoylenko.

'The aversion of the masses to licentiousness and love outside marriage—you call that superstition?'

'Of course I do. Superstition and sheer ill will. Soldiers whistle and cackle when they see a loose woman, but you try asking them a few questions about their o^ behaviour!'

'They have reason to whistle. Unmarried girls smother their illegiti- mate babies and go to prison. Anna Karenin threw herself under the train, and in the villages people tar women's gates' to show they're immoral. You and I are attracted by Katya's innocence, goodness knows why. And everyone feels a vague need for pure love, though he knows there isn't such a thing. Superstition is it, all this? No, old boy, it's all we have left of natural selection. Were it not for this obscure force regulating relations between the sexes, the Laycvskys of this world would soon see you in kingdom come, and humanity would go to the bad in a couple of years.'

Layevsky went into the drawing-room and said good evening to everyone, producing a sickly smile as he shook Von Koren's hand.

'Excuse me, Alexander, I must have a word with you,' he told Samoylenko, after choosing a convenient moment.

Samoylenko stood up and put his arm round Layevsky's waist. They both went into Nicodemus Bityugov's study.

'Tomorrow's Friday,' said Layevsky, biting his nails. 'Have you got me what you promised?'

'I've only managed two hundred and ten. The rest I'll have today or tomorrow, never fear.'

'Thank God,' sighed Layevsky, his hands shaking in his joy. 'You're my salvation, Alexander. As I hope to be happy, I'll send you that money the moment I arrive, by God—I swear by anything you like. And I'll pay off my old debt too.'

'One thing, Ivan,' said Samoylenko with a blush, taking him by a button. 'Excuse my med^mg in your private affairs, but—why not take Nadezhda along?'

'Don't be silly, how can I? One of us has got to stay here, or my creditors will raise hell—1 do owe seven hundred roubles or more to the shops, you know. Butjust wait, I'll send them the money. I'll shut their mouths—and then she can leave too.'

'I see—but why not send her on ahead?'

'Good grief, how can I?' asked Layevsky in horror. 'She's a woman, isn't she? What can she do there on her o^? What does she under- stand ? It would be a sheer waste of time and money.' 'That's reasonable,' Samoylenko thought, but remembered his con- versation with Von Koren and dropped his eyes.

'I can't agree,' he said gloomily. 'You must go with her or send her on ahead. Or else—or else I won't give you the money, and that's my last word.'

Retreating, he backed imo the door, and entered the drawing-room red in the face and appallingly embarrassed.

'Friday, Friday,' thought Layevsky as he returned to the drawing- room. 'Friday.'

He was handed a cup of chocolate, and burnt his lips and tongue on the hot drink.

'Friday, Friday,' he thought.

He had Friday on the brain somehow, he couldn't get it out of his mind. A!l he knew—not in his mind, but somewhere deep inside him— was that a Saturday departure was out of the question. He was con- fronted by dapper little Nicodemus Bityugov, his hair brushed forward on to his temples.