The Shooting Party

THE SHOOTING PARTY

(From the Memoirs of an Investigating Magistrate)

I

‘A husband murdered his wife! Oh, you’re so stupid! Now, will you please give me some sugar!’

This cry woke me up. I stretched myself and felt a heavy weight and lifelessness in every limb. You can get pins and needles in the legs and arms by lying on them, but now I felt that I’d made my whole body go to sleep, from head to foot. An after-dinner nap, in a stuffy, dry atmosphere, with flies and mosquitoes buzzing around, has a debilitating rather than invigorating effect. Jaded and bathed in sweat, I got up and went over to the window. It was after five in the afternoon. The sun was still high and was burning just as zealously as three hours earlier. The sunset and the cool of evening were still a long way off.

‘A husband murdered his wife!’

‘Enough of your nonsense, Ivan Demyanych!’ I said, giving Ivan Demyanych’s beak a gentle flick. ‘Husbands murder their wives only in novels or in the tropics, where African passions run high, dear chap. We’ve enough of such horrors as burglaries or false identities as it is…’

‘Burglaries…’ Ivan Demyanych intoned through his hooked beak. ‘Oh, you’re so stupid!’

‘But what can I do about it, dear chap? How are we humans to blame if we’re born with limited brainpower? What’s more, Ivan Demyanych, there’s nothing to be ashamed of if one behaves like an idiot in temperatures like these. You’re my clever little birdie, but it seems that your brains have curdled and grown stupid in this heat.’

My parrot’s called Ivan Demyanych, not Pretty Polly or any other bird name. He acquired this name purely by chance. My servant Polikarp was once cleaning his cage when he suddenly made a discovery without which my noble bird would have been called Pretty Polly to this day. For no apparent reason, it suddenly struck that lazy servant of mine that my parrot’s beak closely resembled the nose of Ivan Demyanych, our village shopkeeper, and ever since the name and patronymic of that long-nosed shopkeeper has stuck to my parrot. Thanks to Polikarp the entire village christened my remarkable bird Ivan Demyanych; thanks to Polikarp the bird became a real person, while the shopkeeper lost his real name: to the end of his days he’ll be spoken of by country bumpkins as the ‘magistrate’s parrot’.

I bought Ivan Demyanych from the mother of my predecessor, investigating magistrate Pospelov, who passed away shortly before my appointment. I bought him together with some old-fashioned oak furniture, sundry trashy kitchen utensils and in general all the various household effects left by the deceased. To this day my walls are embellished with photographs of his relatives, and a portrait of the former owner still hangs over my bed. The deceased, a lean, wiry man with red moustache and thick underlip, sits goggling at me from his discoloured walnut frame, never taking his eyes off me while I’m lying there in his bed. I haven’t taken down one photograph from the walls – briefly, I’ve left the flat exactly as I found it. I’m too lazy to think of my own comfort and I would have no objection to the living as well as the dead hanging on my walls – if the living should so desire.^*

Ivan Demyanych found it as stifling as I did. He ruffled his feathers, spread his wings and screeched phrases out loud that he had learned from my predecessor Pospelov and from Polikarp. To occupy myself somehow during my post-prandial leisure time I sat down in front of the cage and started observing the movements of my parrot, who was making a determined effort to escape from the torments inflicted by the stifling heat and the insects that resided in his feathers, but without success. The poor thing seemed as miserable as sin.

‘What time does ’e get up?’ boomed a voice from the hall.

‘It all depends!’ Polikarp replied. ‘Sometimes he’ll wake up at five, sometimes he’ll carry on sleeping till morning. There’s nothing I can do about it, you know.’

‘Are you ’is valet?’

‘His house servant. Now, don’t bother me and shut up… Can’t you see I’m reading?’

I peeped into the hall. There was my Polikarp, lolling on the large red trunk and reading some book, as usual. Peering into it with his drowsy, unblinking eyes, he kept twitching his lips and frowning. He was clearly irritated by the presence of that stranger – a tall, bearded peasant who was standing by the trunk and trying in vain to engage him in conversation. On my appearance the peasant took one step away from the trunk and stood to attention like a soldier. Polikarp pulled a dissatisfied face and rose slightly without taking his eyes off his book.

‘What do you want?’ I asked the peasant.

‘I’m from the Count, yer ’onner. The Count begs to send ’is compliments and asks you to come over right away.’

‘Is the Count back?’ I asked in amazement.

‘That’s right, yer ’onner. Came back last night, ’e did. ’Ere’s a letter for you, sir.’

‘Just look what the devil’s brought in!’ exclaimed my Polikarp. ‘For two years we led nice quiet lives while he was away and now he’ll go and turn the whole district into a pigsty again. There’ll be no end to the shameful goings-on!’

‘Shut up, I’m not asking you!’

‘You don’t have to ask me! I’m telling you straight. You’ll leave his place filthy drunk and then you’ll go swimming in the lake, just as you are, with your suit on. And I’m the one who’ll have to clean it afterwards! That’s at least a three-day job!’

‘What’s the Count doing just now?’ I asked the peasant.

‘ ’E was just sitting down to ’is dinner when ’e sends me over. Before that ’e was fishing in the bathing-pool, sir. What shall I tell ’im?’

I opened the letter and read the following:

My dear Lecoq!⁶

If you’re still alive and well and haven’t forgotten your ever-intoxicated friend, don’t waste another minute, attire yourself and ride over post-haste! I got back only last night, but already I die of boredom! The impatience I wait for you with knows no bounds. I wanted to come for you myself and carry you off to my lair, but the heat has fettered my limbs! All I can do is sit still and fan myself. Well, how are you? And how is that very clever Ivan Demyanych of yours? Do you still do battle with that old pedant Polikarp? Come quickly and tell me everything…

Your A. K.

I didn’t need to look at the signature to recognize in that large, ugly scrawl the drunken hand of my friend, Count Karneyev, who rarely put pen to paper. The brevity of the letter, its pretensions to a certain degree of playfulness and liveliness, showed beyond doubt that my dull-witted friend had torn up a large quantity of notepaper before managing to complete it. Pronouns such as ‘which’ were absent from the letter and all gerunds were sedulously avoided – the Count rarely managed to employ both at one sitting.

‘What answer shall I give, sir?’ asked the peasant.

I didn’t reply to this question immediately and any decent man in my place would have hesitated as well. The Count was very fond of me and most sincerely thrust his friendship upon me. But I felt nothing like friendship for him and I even disliked him. Therefore it would have been more honest to reject his friendship once and for all than go and visit him and play the hypocrite. Besides, going over to the Count’s meant plunging once again into the kind of life that my Polikarp dignified by the name of ‘pigsty’ and which, for the entire two years before the Count left his estate for St Petersburg, had been shattering my robust health and drying my brains out. That dissipated, abnormal life, so full of dramatic incident and mad drunkenness, had failed to undermine my organism. But on the other hand it made me notorious all over the province… I was popular…

My reason told me the whole truth, the basic truth; a blush of shame for my recent past spread over my face and my heart sank at the thought that I wouldn’t have the courage to say no to that trip to the Count’s. But I didn’t hesitate for long: the struggle lasted no longer than a minute.

‘Convey my respects to the Count,’ I told the messenger, ‘and thank him for thinking of me… tell him I’m busy and that… tell him I’m…’

And just at that moment, when a definitive ‘no’ was about to roll off my tongue, I was suddenly overcome by a painful feeling. A young man, so full of life, strength and desire, cast by fate into that rural backwater, was gripped by feelings of melancholy and loneliness…

I remembered the Count’s garden, with all the splendour of its cool conservatories, and the semidarkness of its narrow, neglected avenues. These avenues, protected from the sun by a canopy of the green, intertwined branches of ancient limes, know me very well. And they know those women who sought my love and the semidarkness… I remembered the luxurious drawing-room with the sweet repose of its velvet sofas, those heavy curtains and carpets soft as down, that indolence so adored by healthy young animals… I recalled my drunken recklessness that knew no bounds, my satanic pride and contempt for life. And my large body, weary with sleep, once more yearned for movement.

‘Tell him I’m coming.’

The peasant bowed and left.

‘I wouldn’t have let that devil in had I known!’ Polikarp growled as he swiftly and aimlessly turned the pages of his book.

‘Put that book down and go and saddle Zorka,’ I said sternly. ‘And look lively!’

‘Lively? Oh, of course… I’ll dash off and see to it right away… There’d be some excuse if he was going there on business, but he’ll ride over and bring the old devil to his knees!’

This was said in an undertone, but loud enough for me to hear. My servant who had whispered this impertinence stood erect, scornfully smirking and expecting some retaliatory outburst, but I pretended not to have heard. Silence was my most effective, my sharpest weapon in my battles with Polikarp. The contemptuous way I usually turned a deaf ear to his vitriolic remarks would disarm him and take the wind out of his sails. As a punishment it worked better than any clout on the ear or torrent of abuse. When Polikarp had gone out into the yard to saddle Zorka, I peeped into the book I had stopped him reading. It was The Count of Monte Christo,⁷ Dumas’ spine-chilling novel. My cultured fool read everything, from pub signs to Auguste Comte,⁸ who was lying in my trunk together with my other abandoned, unread books. Out of all that mass of printed and written matter, however, he recognized only terrifying, extremely exciting novels with distinguished ‘personages’, with poison and subterranean passages – everything else he styled ‘rubbish’. I shall have occasion to discuss his reading later on, but now it was time to go!

A quarter of an hour later my Zorka’s hoofs were already raising dust along the road from the village to the Count’s estate. The sun was close to its resting place for the night, but the heat and humidity continued to make themselves felt. The burning air was motionless and dry, despite the fact that my path skirted the banks of the most enormous lake. To the right I could see a great watery expanse; to the left the young vernal foliage of an oak grove caressed my eyes, but at the same time my cheeks had to endure a Sahara-like heat.

‘There’s sure to be a storm!’ I reflected, having visions of a fine, cooling downpour.

The lake was peacefully sleeping. It did not greet Zorka’s flight with a single sound and only the cry of a young woodcock broke the sepulchral silence of that motionless giant. The sun looked at itself in it as though it were a huge mirror and flooded its entire breadth, from the road to the far bank, with its blinding light. To my dazzled eyes nature seemed to be receiving its light from the lake instead of from the sun.

The stifling heat also lulled into drowsiness the life in which the lake and its green banks were so rich. The birds were in hiding, the fish made no splash in the water, the grasshoppers and crickets were quietly waiting for the cool to set in. All around everything was deserted. Only now and then did my Zorka bear me into a thick cloud of mosquitoes that lived along the banks; and far out on the lake there barely stirred the three little black boats belonging to old Mikhey, our fisherman, who had fishing rights to the whole lake.

II

I did not ride in a straight line, but followed the curving banks of the circular lake. Travelling in a straight line was possible only by boat, but those who went overland were forced to describe a great circle, which meant a detour of about six miles. As I rode along and glanced at the lake, I had a continuous view of the clayey bank on the far side, where the white strip of a blossoming cherry orchard gleamed, while beyond the cherry trees were the Count’s barns, dotted with many-coloured doves, and then the white belfry of the Count’s church. By the clayey bank stood a bathing-hut, its sides nailed down with canvas; sheets were hanging up to dry on the railings. As I surveyed all this, a mere half mile appeared to separate me from my friend the Count, whereas in fact I had to ride about another ten miles to reach the estate.

On the way I considered my peculiar relationship with the Count. I found it interesting to take stock of this, to try and see where the two of us stood. But alas! This exercise was beyond my powers. However much I reflected, in the end I was forced to conclude that I was a poor judge of myself and of people in general. Those who knew both the Count and myself interpreted our mutual relationship in different ways. Those with limited brainpower, who couldn’t see further than their noses, were fond of claiming that the distinguished Count had found an excellent drinking companion and stooge in that ‘poor and undistinguished examining magistrate’. As they saw it, I, the author of these lines, went crawling and grovelling around the Count’s table for a few crumbs and titbits! In their opinion, that distinguished Croesus, the bugbear, the envy of the whole of S— district, was extremely intelligent and liberal-minded. Otherwise, the fact that he so graciously condescended to be friends with an impoverished investigating magistrate, together with the genuine tolerance with which he accepted my over-familiarity with him, would have been incomprehensible. But those who were more intelligent explained our great intimacy as ‘community of spiritual interests’. The Count and I were contemporaries. We had both graduated from the same university, we were both lawyers and we both knew very little. I myself knew a few things, but the Count had forgotten or drowned in alcohol all he had ever known. We were both proud men and for reasons known only to ourselves we lived like recluses, shunning society. We were both indifferent to what society thought of us (I mean the society in S— district), we were both immoral and we would both certainly come to a bad end. Such were the ‘spiritual interests’ that bound us. Those who knew us could have said no more than this about our relationship.

Of course, they would have had more to say had they known how spineless, pliant and complaisant my friend’s nature was – and how strong and firm I was. They would have had a great deal to say had they known how fond that vain man was of me and how I detested him! He was first to offer me his friendship and I was first to address him as an intimate – but what a difference in tone! In an excess of noble feelings he had embraced me and humbly begged my friendship. But on one occasion, overcome by contempt and disgust, I told him:

‘That’s enough rubbish from you!’⁹

And he considered this familiarity an expression of friendship and took advantage of it, repaying me with his own honest, brotherly brand.

Yes, I would have acted more honestly and decently if I’d turned my Zorka around and ridden back to Polikarp and Ivan Demyanych. Later on I thought more than once about how many misfortunes I could have avoided bearing on my shoulders, how much good I could have done those who were close to me, if only I’d had the determination that evening to turn back, if only Zorka had bolted and borne me far away from that terrifying, vast lake! How many painful memories would not be oppressing my brain now, making me constantly drop my pen and clutch my head! But I shall not anticipate, especially as later I shall be compelled to dwell many more times on pain and sorrow: now for cheerful matters!

My Zorka bore me right up to the gates of the Count’s courtyard. Just as we were going through she stumbled, so that I lost a stirrup and was almost thrown to the ground.

‘A bad omen, sir!’ shouted some peasant who was standing by one of the doors in the Count’s long row of stables.

I believe that anyone who falls from his horse can break his neck, but I don’t believe in omens. Handing the bridle to the peasant and beating the dust off my riding-boots with my whip, I ran into the house. No one was there to greet me. The windows and doors of the rooms were wide open, but despite that there was an oppressive, peculiar smell in the air – a blend of the odours of ancient, deserted apartments with the pleasant if pungent, narcotic scent of hothouse plants that had recently been brought into the rooms from the conservatories. In the drawing-room, on one of the sofas upholstered in light-blue silk, lay two crumpled cushions and on a round table in front of it I saw a glass containing a few drops of liquid that smelt of potent Riga balsam.¹⁰ All this led me to believe that the house was inhabited, but I did not meet a living soul in any of the eleven rooms through which I passed. The same desolation that surrounded the lake reigned in that house.

From the so-called ‘mosaic’ drawing-room, large French windows led into the garden. They made a loud noise as I opened them and went down the marble terrace steps into the garden. After I’d taken a few strides along the avenue I met Nastasya, an old crone of about ninety who had been the Count’s nanny. She was a tiny, wrinkled creature whom death had forgotten, with bald head and piercing eyes. Whenever you looked at her face you couldn’t help remembering the nickname that the other servants had given her: Owlet. When she saw me she shuddered and almost dropped the jug of cream she was carrying in both hands.

‘How are you, Owlet?’ I asked.

She gave me a sidelong glance and silently walked past. I grasped her shoulder.

‘Don’t be scared, you old fool… where’s the Count?’

The old woman pointed at her ears.

‘Are you deaf? Have you been like that long?’

Despite her advanced age the old crone could hear and see very well, but she found it not unprofitable to calumniate her sensory organs. I wagged my finger and let her go.

After a few more steps I heard voices and before long I saw people. Just where the avenue widened out into an open space, surrounded by cast-iron benches and shaded by tall, white acacias, stood a table with a gleaming samovar on it. People were sitting around the table, talking. I quietly made my way across the grass to the little open space, hid behind a lilac bush, and sought out the Count with my eyes.

My friend, Count Karneyev, was sitting at the table on a folding cane chair, drinking tea. He was wearing that same multicoloured dressing-robe in which I’d seen him two years before, and a straw hat. His face had an anxious, preoccupied look and was deeply furrowed, so that those who didn’t know him might have thought that some grave thought or problem was troubling him at that precise moment. In appearance the Count hadn’t changed one bit during our two-year separation: there was that same small, thin body, as frail and sluggish as a corncrake’s, those same narrow, consumptive’s shoulders and that small head with reddish hair. His nose was as red as ever, and his cheeks were the same as they had been two years ago, sagging like limp rags. There was nothing bold, strong or manly in his face. Everything was weak, apathetic and flaccid. Only his long, drooping moustache made any impression. Someone had told my friend that a long moustache suited him: he believed him and every morning he would measure how much that hairy growth over his pale lips had lengthened. That moustache put you in mind of a bewhiskered but very young and puny kitten.

Next to the Count, at the same table, sat a stout gentleman I didn’t know, with a large, closely cropped head and jet-black eyebrows. This gentleman’s face was plump and shiny as a ripe melon. His moustache was longer than the Count’s, his forehead low, his lips tightly pressed and his eyes were gazing lazily at the sky. His features had run to fat, but despite that they were as stiff as dried-up leather. He wasn’t the Russian type. This stout gentleman was without jacket or waistcoat and simply wore a smock stained with dark patches of sweat. He was drinking seltzer water instead of tea.

At a respectful distance from the table stood a portly, stocky man with a plump red neck and protruding ears. This was Urbenin, the Count’s estate manager. In honour of His Excellency’s arrival he had donned a new black suit and was now suffering agonies. The sweat simply streamed from his red, sunburnt face. Next to the manager stood the peasant who had brought me the letter. It was only then that I noticed that he had one eye missing. Holding himself stiffly to attention and not daring to budge, he stood there like a statue as he waited to be questioned.

‘I’d like to take your whip from you, Kuzma, and thrash the living daylights out of you,’ the manager was telling him in a drawling, admonitory, soft, deep voice. ‘How can you be so slapdash about the Master’s orders? You should have asked the gentleman to come right away and found out exactly when we could expect him.’

‘Yes, yes,’ agreed the Count nervously. ‘You should have found everything out! So, he told you he’d come. But that’s not good enough! I need him here, this very minute! Right away – wi-th-out fail! He couldn’t have understood you when you asked him.’

‘Why do you need him so badly?’ the stout gentleman asked the Count.

‘I have to see him!’

‘Is that all? If you ask me, Aleksey, that investigating magistrate of yours would be best advised to stay at home today. I don’t feel up to visitors at the moment.’

I opened my eyes wide. What did that imperious, peremptory ‘I’ imply?

‘But he’s not just a visitor,’ my friend pleaded. ‘He won’t prevent you from resting after your journey. You don’t have to stand on ceremony with him – you’ll soon see what a fine fellow he is. You’ll take to him immediately and you’ll be the best of friends, my dear chap!’

I emerged from my hiding place behind the lilac bush and went towards the table. When the Count saw me and recognized me his face lit up with a smile.

‘Here he is, here he is!’ he exclaimed, flushed with pleasure and leaping from the table. ‘It’s so very nice of you to come!’ After running up to me he performed a little jig, embraced me and scratched my cheeks several times with his bristly moustache. The kisses were followed by prolonged handshaking and peering into my eyes.

‘You haven’t changed one bit, Sergey! Still just the same! As handsome and as strong as ever! Thanks for doing me the favour of coming!’

Freeing myself from the Count’s embrace, I greeted the manager, whom I knew very well, and took my place at the table.

‘Ah, my dear chap!’ the Count continued, at once anxious and overjoyed. ‘If you only knew how pleasant it is to behold your grave countenance!… You haven’t met? Allow me to introduce you – my good friend Kaetan Kazimirovich Pshekhotsky… And this is…’ he went on, introducing me to the fat gentleman, ‘my good, long-standing friend Sergey Petrovich Zinovyev! He’s our district investigating magistrate.’ The stout, black-browed gentleman rose slightly and offered me his chubby, dreadfully sweaty hand.

‘Delighted!’ he mumbled, eyeing me up and down. ‘Absolutely delighted!’

After he had unbosomed himself and calmed down, the Count poured me a glass of cold, dark-brown tea and pushed a box of biscuits towards me.

‘Help yourself… I bought them at Eynem’s¹¹ as I was passing through Moscow. But I’m angry with you, Seryozha – so angry that I even felt like terminating our friendship! It’s not simply that you haven’t written me a single line over the past two years – you haven’t even deigned to answer any of my letters. That’s not very friendly!’

‘I’m no good at writing letters,’ I said. ‘And besides, I don’t have time for letter-writing. Please tell me – what was there to write about?’

‘There must have been plenty of things!’

‘But there weren’t, honestly. I acknowledge only three kinds of letter: love letters, congratulatory letters and business letters. I didn’t write the first, as you’re not a woman and I’m not in love with you. You don’t need the second and we can do without the third, as neither of us has had any mutual business since the day we were born.’

‘That may well be true,’ replied the Count, who was ready and willing to agree to everything. ‘All the same, you could at least have written a line. And on top of that, as Pyotr Yegorych so rightly says, for those entire two years you never once set foot here, just as if you were living a thousand miles away or as if… you were put off by my wealth. You could have lived here, done a spot of shooting. Just think what might have happened while I was away!’

The Count spoke a great deal and at great length. Once he started, his tongue would wag incessantly, interminably, however footling and trivial the subject.

He was as indefatigable as my Ivan Demyanych in his articulation of sounds and for me this ability made him barely tolerable. On this occasion he was stopped by his servant Ilya, a lanky, thin man in shabby, badly stained livery, who brought the Count a wine glass of vodka and half a tumbler of water on a silver tray. The Count downed the vodka, took a sip of water, frowned and shook his head.

‘So, you still haven’t lost your habit of swilling vodka at the first opportunity!’ I remarked.

‘No, I haven’t, Seryozha!’

‘Well, you could at least give up that drunken frowning and waggling your head! It’s frightful!’

‘I’m giving everything up, old man. My doctors have forbidden me to drink. I’m only having a little drink now as it’s unhealthy to kick bad habits all in one go… it has to be done gradually…’

I looked at the Count’s sickly, worn face, at the wine glass, at the footman in yellow shoes; I looked at the black-browed Pole who from the very start for some reason struck me as a scoundrel and crook; at the one-eyed peasant standing to attention – and I felt uneasy, stifled. Suddenly I had the urge to escape from that filthy atmosphere, but not before opening the Count’s eyes to my boundless antipathy towards him. For one moment I was actually on the point of getting up and leaving there and then. But I didn’t leave. I’m ashamed to admit that sheer physical laziness held me back.

‘Bring me a glass of vodka too!’ I ordered Ilya.

Oblong-shaped shadows began to fall on the avenue and on the open space where we were sitting. And now the distant croaking of frogs, the cawing of crows and the song of orioles greeted the setting sun. The spring evening was drawing in.

‘Let Urbenin sit down,’ I told the Count. ‘He’s standing there in front of you like a little boy.’

‘Oh, how thoughtless of me, Pyotr Yegorych!’ the Count exclaimed, turning to his manager. ‘Please take a seat, you’ve been standing there long enough!’

Urbenin sat down and looked at me with grateful eyes. Invariably healthy and cheerful, this time he struck me as ill and depressed. His face had a wrinkled, sleepy look and his eyes gazed at us lazily and reluctantly.

‘What’s new, Pyotr Yegorych?’ Karneyev asked him. ‘What’s new? Anything special to report, anything out of the ordinary?’

‘Everything’s the same, Your Excellency…’

‘Are there any… nice new girls around, Pyotr Yegorych?’

The deeply virtuous Pyotr Yegorych blushed.

‘I don’t know, Your Excellency. I don’t concern myself with such things.’

‘There are a few, Your Excellency,’ boomed one-eyed Kuzma; who had been silent up to now. ‘And very nice ones they be too!’

‘Pretty?’

‘There’s all kinds, Your Excellency, for every taste. Dark ones, fair ones… all sorts.’

‘You don’t say! Hold on a minute… I remember you now, you’re that former Leporello¹² of mine, the clerk at the council offices… Your name’s Kuzma, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right, sir.’

‘I remember, I remember. So, which ones would you recommend? All village girls, I dare say?’

‘Oh yes, most of ’em, but there’s some what’s better-class, like.’

‘And where did you find these “better-class” ones?’ asked Ilya, winking at Kuzma.

‘At Holy Week the postman’s sister-in-law came to stay… her name’s Nastasya Ivanna… A well-oiled girl she is. I’d ’ave taken a bite meself, but I didn’t ’ave no money. All rosy-cheeked – and everything in the right place! And there’s an even better one… She’s been waiting for you, Your Excellency. Ever so young, nice and plump, very jolly – a real smasher! Such a smasher as you’ve never seen the likes of, even in St Pittiburg, Your Excellency!’

‘Who is she?’

‘Olenka, the forester Skvortsov’s little daughter.’

Urbenin’s chair cracked under him. Supporting himself with his hands on the table and turning purple, the manager slowly stood up and turned towards one-eyed Kuzma. The expression of weariness and boredom on his face gave way to violent anger.

‘Shut up, you oaf!’ he snarled. ‘You one-eyed reptile! You can say what you want, but don’t you dare talk about respectable people like that!’

‘I weren’t talking about you, Pyotr Yegorych!’ replied Kuzma, quite unruffled.

‘I don’t mean myself, you idiot! Oh, please forgive me, Your Excellency,’ the manager said, turning to the Count. ‘Forgive me for making a scene, but I would ask Your Excellency to stop that Leporello of yours – as you were pleased to call him – from extending his enthusiasm to people who are in every way deserving of respect!’

‘It’s all right,’ babbled the naïve Count. ‘He didn’t say anything particularly bad.’

Insulted and excited beyond all measure, Urbenin walked away from the table and stood sideways to us. With his arms crossed on his chest and blinking, he hid his purple face from us behind some small branches and became very thoughtful: did this man foresee that in the very near future his moral feelings would have to suffer insults a thousand times more bitter?

‘I can’t understand why he’s taking it so badly,’ the Count whispered. ‘What a queer fish! Nothing offensive was said at all.’

After two years of sobriety the glass of vodka had a slightly intoxicating effect on me. A feeling of lightness, of pleasure, flooded my brain and my whole body. What’s more, I began to feel the cool of evening gradually replacing the stifling heat of the day. I suggested going for a stroll. The Count and his new Polish friend’s jackets were brought from the house and off we went, with Urbenin following us.

III

The Count’s garden, through which we were strolling, deserves a very special description on account of its striking luxuriance. In botanical, horticultural and many other respects it is richer and grander than any other garden I have seen. Besides the romantic avenues described above, with their green vaults, you’ll find everything there that the most fastidious eye might demand from a garden. Here there is every possible kind of indigenous and foreign fruit tree, ranging from cherry and plum, to apricot trees with enormous fruit the size of goose eggs. Mulberries, barberries, French bergamot trees and even olives are to be found at every step. Here there are half-ruined mossy grottoes, fountains, small ponds reserved for goldfish and tame carp, little hillocks, summer-houses, expensive hothouses. And this uncommon luxury, assembled by the hands of grandfathers and fathers, this wealth of large, full roses, of romantic grottoes and endless paths, had been barbarously neglected and left to the mercy of weeds, thieves’ axes and the crows that unceremoniously built their ugly nests on the rare trees. The lawful proprietor of this domain walked at my side and not one muscle of his haggard and self-satisfied face twitched at the sight of all that neglect and blatant human slovenliness, just as though he wasn’t the owner of that garden. Only once, for want of something to do, did he tell the manager that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to scatter a little sand over the paths. Yes, he could pay attention to the absence of sand that no one needed, but he didn’t notice the bare trees that had died during the cold winter and the cows that were straying through the garden! To this observation Urbenin replied that it would take ten workers to look after the garden, and, since His Excellency didn’t wish to live on his estate, any money spent on the garden would be an unnecessary and unproductive luxury. Of course, the Count agreed with this argument.

‘And I must confess – I don’t have the time!’ Urbenin said dismissively. ‘I have to work in the fields in summer, in winter I have to sell grain in town. There’s no time for gardens in this place!’

The main, so-called ‘general’ avenue, whose whole charm lay in its broad lime trees and masses of tulips that stretched in two multicoloured strips along its entire length, ended in the distance in a yellow patch. This was the yellow stone summer-house where once there had been a bar and billiard table, skittles and Chinese board games. Aimlessly, we walked towards it. At the entrance we were met by a living creature that rather unsettled the nerves of my not very courageous companions.

‘A serpent!’ the Count suddenly screamed, gripping my shoulder and turning pale. ‘Just look!’

The Pole took a step backwards, stopped as if rooted to the spot and spread his arms out, just as though he were barring the path of a ghost. On the topmost step of the dilapidated flight of stone steps lay a young snake – a common Russian viper. When it spotted us it raised its tiny head and started moving. The Count screamed again and hid behind my back.

‘Don’t be afraid, Your Excellency!’ Urbenin said lazily, planting his foot on the first step.

‘What if it bites me?’

‘It won’t bite… Incidentally, the harm from this type of snakebite is usually greatly exaggerated. I was once bitten by an old snake and – as you can see – I didn’t die. Human bites are more dangerous than a snake’s!’ sighed Urbenin, unable to resist pointing a moral.

And in fact the manager barely had time to climb two or three more steps before the snake stretched to its full length and darted into a crevice between two flagstones with lightning speed. When we entered the summer-house we saw another living creature. On the old, faded, torn baize of the billiard table lay an old, shortish man, in blue jacket, striped trousers and jockey cap. He was sleeping sweetly and serenely. Around his toothless, cavernous mouth and sharp nose, flies were disporting themselves. As thin as a skeleton, motionless and open-mouthed, he resembled a corpse just brought from the morgue for dissection.

‘Franz!’ Urbenin said, nudging him. ‘Franz!’

After five or six nudges, Franz closed his mouth, sat up, looked round at all of us and lay down again. A minute later his mouth was wide open again and the flies that had been frolicking near his nose were once again disturbed by the gentle tremors of his snoring.

‘He’s sleeping, the dissolute pig!’ sighed Urbenin.

‘Isn’t that our gardener, Tricher?’ asked the Count.

‘The man himself… he gets into this state every day. During the day he sleeps like a log and at night he plays cards. I’m told that last night he played until six in the morning.’

‘What does he play?’

‘Games of chance… mainly stukolka.’¹³

‘Yes, men of his sort are bad at their work. They get paid for doing absolutely nothing.’

‘I didn’t say that by way of complaint or to express my dissatisfaction, Your Excellency… I simply… well… I just felt sorry that such an able man should be slave to his passions. Besides, he’s hard-working – a good man, who earns his money.’

We looked once more at Franz the cardsharp and left the summer-house. From there we headed for the garden gate that led out into the fields.

There are few novels where garden gates don’t play a leading part. If you haven’t noticed this, then ask my Polikarp – he has devoured piles of dreadful and not so dreadful novels in his time and will no doubt confirm that trivial but nonetheless basic fact.

My novel isn’t free of garden gates either. But my gate is different from the others in that my pen will be leading through it many unfortunate wretches and hardly a single happy person – the reverse of what happens in other novels. And worst of all, I’ve already had occasion to describe this gate once, not as a novelist but as an investigating magistrate. In my novel it will let more criminals than lovers pass through.

A quarter of an hour later, leaning on our walking-sticks, we were trudging up the hill that we all knew as ‘Stone Grave’. In neighbouring villages there exists the legend that under this pile of stones rests the body of a Tatar khan who, fearing that his enemies might desecrate his ashes after his death, left instructions in his will for a heap of stones to be piled up over him. But this legend has little truth in it. Those layers of stone, their size and relation to each other, rule out the agency of human hands in the origin of the hill. It stands by itself in a field and resembles an upturned night-cap.

When we had clambered to the top we could see the entire lake in all its enchanting expanse and indescribable beauty. The sun was no longer reflected in it – it had set, leaving a broad crimson strip that illuminated everything around with a pleasant pinkish-yellow light. At our feet lay the Count’s estate, with manor house, church and garden, while in the distance, on the far side of the lake, was the small greyish village where fate had decreed I should reside. As before, the surface of the lake was motionless. Old Mikhey’s little boats had separated from each other and were hurrying towards the bank.

To one side of my little village was the dark railway station, where small clouds of steam rose from locomotives, while behind us, on the other side of Stone Grave, a new vistas opened up. At the foot of Stone Grave stretched a road, bordered by lofty, ancient poplars. This road led to the Count’s forest, that reached to the very horizon.

The Count and I stood on the top of the hill. Urbenin and the Pole, being rather unadventurous people, preferred to wait for us on the road down below.

‘Who’s that bigwig?’ I asked the Count, nodding towards the Pole. ‘Where did you fish him out from?’

‘He’s a very nice chap, Seryozha, very nice!’ the Count said in alarm. ‘You’ll soon be best of friends!’

‘Oh, I hardly think so. Why does he never say a word?’

‘He’s quiet by nature. But he’s really very clever!’

‘And what sort of person is he?’

‘I met him in Moscow. He’s very nice. I’ll tell you all about it later, don’t ask me now. Shall we go down?’

We descended Stone Grave and walked along the road towards the forest. It was growing noticeably darker. From the forest came the cries of cuckoos and the warbling of a tired and probably young nightingale.

‘Ooh! Ooh!’ came the shrill cry of a child as we approached the forest. ‘Try and catch me!’

Out of the forest ran a little girl of about five, in a light-blue frock, her hair as white as flax. When she saw us she laughed out loud, skipped over to Urbenin and put her arms around his knee. Urbenin lifted her and kissed her on the cheek.

‘It’s my daughter Sasha,’ he said. ‘A lovely girl!’

In hot pursuit of Sasha, Urbenin’s fifteen-year-old schoolboy son dashed out of the forest. The moment he saw us he hesitantly doffed his cap, put it on and then pulled it off again. A patch of red slowly followed him. At once our attention was riveted by this patch.

‘What a magical vision!’ exclaimed the Count, grasping my hand. ‘Just look! How charming. Who is this girl? And I never knew that such naiads dwelt in my forest!’

I glanced at Urbenin to ask him who the girl was and – strange to relate – only then did I notice that the estate manager was terribly drunk. Red as a lobster, he gave a wild lurch and grabbed my elbow, enveloping me in alcoholic fumes as he whispered in my ear:

‘Sergey Petrovich, I beg you, please stop the Count from making any more remarks about this girl. He might go too far – from sheer habit! That girl’s a most worthy person, in the highest degree!’

This ‘most worthy person, in the highest degree’ was a girl of about nineteen, with beautiful fair hair, kind blue eyes and long curls. She was dressed in a bright red frock, halfway between a child’s and a young girl’s. Her little legs, as straight as needles in their red stockings, reposed in tiny, almost childish shoes. The whole time I admired her, those round shoulders kept shrinking coquettishly, as if they were cold and as if my gaze were biting them.

‘What a well-developed figure for a girl with such a young face!’ whispered the Count. Ever since his earliest days he had lost all capacity for respecting women and could only look upon them from the viewpoint of a depraved animal.

As for me, I well remember the fine feelings that began to glow within me. I was still a poet and in the presence of forests, a May evening and the first glimmerings of the evening star I could only view women with the eyes of a poet. I looked at the ‘girl in red’ with the same veneration with which I was accustomed to look at the forests, at the azure sky. At that time I still possessed a modicum of sentimentality, inherited from my German mother.

‘Who is she?’ asked the Count.

‘She’s the daughter of Skvortsov the forester, Your Excellency,’ replied Urbenin.

‘Is she the same Olenka whom the one-eyed peasant was talking about?’

‘Yes, he did mention her name,’ the manager replied, looking at me with large, beseeching eyes.

The girl in red let us go by without paying us the least attention, it seemed. Her eyes were looking somewhere to the side, but as someone who was an expert on women I felt that the pupils of her eyes were fixed on me.

‘Which one is the Count?’ I heard her whisper behind me.

‘The one with the long moustache,’ the schoolboy replied.

And we heard silvery laughter behind us. But it was the laughter of disenchantment. She had thought that I was the Count, owner of those vast forests and the wide lake – not that pigmy with the haggard face and long moustache.

I heard a deep sigh from Urbenin’s chest. That man of iron could barely move.

‘Tell your manager to go away,’ I whispered to the Count. ‘He’s either ill… or drunk.’

‘You don’t look very well, Pyotr Yegorych,’ the Count said, turning to Urbenin. ‘I don’t need you just now, so I won’t detain you.’

‘Don’t worry, Your Excellency. Thank you for your concern, but I’m not ill.’

I looked back. The red patch didn’t move and watched us as we left.

Poor little fair-haired girl! Did I imagine for one moment, on that serenest of May nights, that she would later become the heroine of my troubled novel?

And now, as I write these lines, the autumn rain angrily lashes my warm windows and somewhere above me the wind is howling. I gaze at the dark window and against a background of nocturnal gloom I try hard to recapture in my imagination that dear heroine of mine. I can see her with her innocently childlike, naïve, kind little face and loving eyes, and I want to throw down my pen, tear up, burn all that I have written so far. Why disturb the memory of that young, innocent creature?

But here, next to my inkwell, is her photograph. There that fair little head appears with all the vain grandeur of a beautiful woman who has plumbed the depths of depravity. Her eyes, so weary but proud in that depravity, are motionless: here she is that very snake, the harmfulness of whose bite Urbenin would not have considered exaggerated.

She blew a kiss to that storm – and the storm broke the flower off at its very root. Much was taken – but then, too high a price had been paid. The reader will forgive her sins.

IV

We walked through the forest.

Pine trees are boring in their silent monotony: they are all the same height, they all look exactly the same and they do not change with the seasons, knowing neither death nor vernal renewal. On the other hand they are attractive in their very gloominess – so still, so silent, as if they are thinking melancholy thoughts.

‘Shouldn’t we go back?’ suggested the Count.

This question was unanswered. The Pole couldn’t have cared less where he went, Urbenin didn’t think he had any say in the matter and I was only too delighted with the cool of the forest and the resinous air to turn back. Besides, we had to while away the time somehow until nightfall, even if this meant simply strolling about. The very thought of the wild night that was approaching was accompanied by a delicious sinking of the heart. I’m ashamed to admit this, but I was dreaming of it and already mentally anticipating its pleasures. Judging by the impatience with which the Count constantly looked at his watch, it was obvious that he too was going through agonies of expectation. We felt that we understood one another.

Near the forester’s cottage that nestled in a small clearing among the pines, we were greeted by the loud melodious barking of two flame-coloured dogs, glossy and as supple as eels, and of a breed that was unfamiliar to me. When they recognized Urbenin they joyfully wagged their tails and ran towards him, from which I gathered that the manager was a frequent visitor to the forester’s cottage. Next to the cottage we were met by a bootless and capless lad with large freckles on his astonished face. For a minute he surveyed us in silence, with wide-open eyes and then, when he recognized the Count, he produced a loud ‘Ah!’ and dashed headlong into the cottage.

‘I know why he ran off,’ laughed the Count. ‘I remember him… it’s Mitka.’

The Count was not mistaken. Less than a minute later Mitka emerged from the cottage with a glass of vodka and half a tumbler of water on a tray.

‘Your good health, Your Excellency,’ he said, smiling all over his stupid, surprised face as he served the Count.

The Count downed the vodka and then took a drink of water – but for once he didn’t frown. About a hundred paces from the cottage stood an iron bench, as old as the pines. We sat down on it and contemplated the May evening in all its tranquil beauty. Frightened crows flew cawing above our heads, the song of nightingales drifted towards us from all sides – nothing else broke the all-pervading silence.

The Count was incapable of remaining silent, even on calm evenings in May, when the voice of humans is least agreeable.

‘I don’t know whether you’ll be satisfied,’ he said, turning to me. ‘I’ve ordered fish soup and game for supper. We’ll have some cold sturgeon and sucking-pig with horseradish to go with the vodka.’

As if they were angered by these prosaic words, the poetic pines suddenly shook their crowns and a gentle rustle ran through the forest. A fresh breeze wafted over the clearing and played with the grass.

‘Down boys!’ Urbenin shouted to the flame-coloured dogs that were preventing him from lighting his cigarette with their endearments. ‘I think it’s going to rain tonight, I can feel it in the air. It’s been so terribly hot today that you don’t have to be a learned professor to forecast rain. It will be good for the corn.’

‘And what’s the good of corn to you,’ I wondered, ‘if the Count’s going to squander the money on drink? No point in the rain troubling itself either.’

Again a breeze ran through the forest, but this time it was stronger. The pines and grass made a louder murmur.

‘Let’s go home.’

We stood up and lazily ambled back to the cottage.

‘It’s better to be a fair-haired Olenka,’ I said, turning to Urbenin, ‘and live here among the wild animals than an investigating magistrate and live among people. It’s more peaceful… isn’t that so, Pyotr Yegorych?’

‘It doesn’t matter what you are, as long as you have peace of mind, Sergey Petrovich.’

‘And does this pretty Olenka have peace of mind?’

‘The secrets of another’s soul are known to God alone, but it strikes me that she has no reason to fret – no sorrow, and her sins are simply those of a child. She’s a very good girl! Well, at last the heavens are talking of rain!’

We could hear a rumble, rather like a distant carriage or the clatter of skittles. From somewhere, far beyond the forest, came a great thunderclap. Mitka, who had been following us the whole time, shuddered and quickly crossed himself.

‘A thunderstorm!’ exclaimed the Count in alarm. ‘I didn’t expect that! Now we’ll be caught in the rain on our way back. And it’s got so dark! I said we should go back. But no, we carried on.’

‘We can wait in the cottage until it’s passed over,’ I suggested.

‘Why the cottage?’ asked Urbenin, blinking peculiarly. ‘It’s going to rain all night, so do you really want to stay so long in the cottage? Now, please don’t worry. Mitka will run on ahead and send the carriage to collect you.’

‘It’s all right – perhaps it won’t rain all night,’ I said. ‘Storm clouds usually pass over very quickly. Besides, I don’t know the new forester yet and I’d like to have a little chat with this Olenka, to find out what kind of dicky-bird she is.’

‘No objections!’ agreed the Count.

‘But how can you go there if the place is all in a mess?’ Urbenin anxiously babbled. ‘Why sit in that stuffy place, Your Excellency, when you could be at home? I can’t imagine what pleasure it can give you. And how can you get to know the forester if he’s ill?’

It was patently obvious that the manager was violently opposed to our entering the forester’s cottage. He even spread out his arms as if wanting to bar our way. I could see from his face that he had reasons for stopping us. I respect other people’s reasons and secrets, but on this occasion my curiosity was greatly excited. I insisted – and into the cottage we went.

‘Into the parlour, please!’ barefooted Mitka said with a peculiar hiccup, almost choking with delight.

Imagine the tiniest parlour in the world, with unpainted wooden walls hung with oleographs from The Cornfield,¹⁴ photographs in mother-of-pearl (as we call them here ‘cockleshell’) frames, and testimonials: one expressed a certain baron’s gratitude for many years of service; the remainder were for horses. Here and there ivy made its way up the walls. In one of the corners, in front of a small icon, a tiny blue flame, faintly reflected in its silver mounting, was softly burning. Along the wall, chairs, evidently recently purchased, were ranged closely together. In fact, more had been bought than were needed, but they had still been placed there as there was nowhere else to put them. Crowded together were armchairs, a couch with snow-white, lace-frilled covers, and a round, polished table. A tame hare was dozing on the couch. It was cosy, clean and warm. A woman’s presence was evident everywhere. Even the bookcase had an innocent, feminine look, as if it too wanted to declare that nothing but undemanding novels and light poetry were on its shelves. The charm of such warm, cosy little rooms is felt not so much in spring as in autumn, when you seek refuge from the cold and damp.

With much puffing and panting, and noisy striking of matches, Mitka lit two candles and placed them on the table as carefully as if they were milk. We sat down in the armchairs, exchanged glances and burst out laughing.

‘Nikolay Yefimych is ill in bed,’ Urbenin said, explaining the master’s absence. ‘And Olga Nikolayevna must have gone off to accompany my children.’

‘Mitka! Are the doors locked!’ came a weak tenor voice from the next room.

‘Yes, they are, Nikolay Yefimych!’ Mitka shouted hoarsely and rushed headlong into the next room.

‘Good! See that every door is properly shut,’ said that same feeble voice. ‘And securely locked as well. If thieves should try to get in you must tell me… I’ll shoot those devils with my rifle… the bastards!’

‘Without fail, Nikolay Yefimych!’

We burst out laughing and looked quizzically at Urbenin. He turned red and started tidying the window curtains to hide his embarrassment. What was the meaning of this ‘dream’? Once more we looked at each other.

But there was no time for wondering. Outside hurried footsteps could be heard again, followed by a noise in the porch and a door slamming. The girl in red flew into the room.

‘ “I lo-ove the storms of early Ma-ay”,’¹⁵ she sang in a shrill, strident soprano, punctuating her high-pitched singing with laughter. But the moment she saw us she suddenly stopped and fell silent. Deeply embarrassed, she went as meek as a lamb into the room from which we had just heard the voice of her father, Nikolay Yefimych.

‘She wasn’t expecting you!’ laughed Urbenin.

Shortly afterwards she quietly returned, sat on the chair nearest the door and started inspecting us. She looked at us boldly, intensely, as if we were zoo animals and not new faces to her. For a minute we too looked at her, silently, without moving. I would willingly have sat there for a year, quite still, just to gaze at her, so beautiful did she look that evening. Her flushed cheeks as fresh as the air, that rapidly breathing, heaving bosom, those curls scattered over her forehead and shoulders and over that right hand with which she was adjusting her collar, her big, sparkling eyes – all this in one small body that you could take in at a single glance. Just one look at this tiny creature and you would see more than if you stared at the boundless horizon for centuries. She looked at me seriously, questioningly, with an upward glance. But when her eyes turned from me to the Count or the Pole, I began to read in them the complete reverse: a downward glance… and laughter.

I was the first to speak.

‘Allow me to introduce myself,’ I said, getting up and going over to her. ‘Zinovyev… And this is my good friend Count Karneyev. Please do forgive us for barging into your pretty little cottage uninvited. Of course, we would never have done this if we hadn’t been forced to take shelter from the storm.’

‘But you won’t make the cottage fall down!’ she said, laughing and offering her hand.

She revealed her beautiful teeth. I sat down on a chair next to her and told her how we had been caught by a storm on our walk, quite unexpectedly. We started discussing the weather – the beginning of all beginnings. While we were chatting, Mitka had already managed to bring the Count two glasses of vodka and the water that invariably accompanied it. Taking advantage of the fact that I wasn’t looking at him, the Count sweetly wrinkled his face after both glasses and shook his head.

‘Perhaps you’d like some refreshments?’ Olenka asked – and she left the room without waiting for a reply.

The first drops of rain beat against the panes. I went over to the window. By now it was completely dark and through the glass I could see nothing but raindrops trickling down and the reflection of my own nose. Lightning flashed and illuminated several of the nearest pines.

‘Are the doors locked?’ came that weak tenor voice again. ‘Mitka! Come here you little devil and lock the doors! Oh God, this is sheer torment!’

A peasant woman with a bulging, tightly belted stomach and a stupid, worried face entered the parlour, bowed low to the Count and spread a white cloth over the table. Mitka gingerly followed her with the hors d’oeuvres. A minute later vodka, rum, cheese and a dish with some kind of roast fowl made their appearance on the table. The Count drank a glass of vodka but he did not start eating. The Pole sniffed the bird suspiciously and started carving.

‘It’s simply pelting now. Just look at that!’ I told Olenka, who had come into the room again.

The girl in red came over to my window and just then, for one fleeting moment, we were lit up by a white radiance. There was a fearful crackling sound from above and something large and heavy seemed to have been ripped from its place in the sky, plummeting to earth with a great crash. The window panes and the wine glasses that were standing in front of the Count tinkled. It was an extremely violent thunderclap.

‘Are you scared of storms?’ I asked Olenka.

She pressed her cheek to her round shoulder and looked at me with the trustfulness of a child.

‘Yes I am,’ she whispered after a moment’s thought. ‘My mother was killed by a storm. It was even in the papers… Mother was crossing an open field and she was crying. She led a really wretched life in this world. God took pity on her and killed her with his heavenly electricity.’

‘How do you know there’s electricity in heaven?’

‘I’ve learned about it. Did you know that people killed in storms or in war, and women who have died after a difficult labour, go to paradise! You won’t find that in any books, but it’s true. My mother’s in paradise now. I think that one day I’ll be killed in a storm and I too will go to paradise. Are you an educated man?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you won’t laugh at me. Now, this is how I’d like to die. To put on the most fashionable, expensive dress – like the one I saw that rich, local landowner Sheffer wearing the other day – and deck my arms with bracelets… Then to stand on the very top of Stone Grave and let myself be struck by lightning, in full view of everyone. A terrifying thunderclap, you know, and then – the end!’

‘What a wild fantasy!’ I laughed, peering into those eyes that were filled with holy terror at the thought of a terrible but dramatic death. ‘So, you don’t want to die in an ordinary dress?’

‘No,’ replied Olenka, with a shake of the head. ‘To die, so that everyone can see me!’

‘The frock you’re wearing now is nicer than any fashionable and expensive dress. It suits you. It makes you look like a red flower from the green woods.’

‘No, that’s not true,’ Olenka innocently sighed. ‘It’s a cheap dress, it can’t possibly be nice.’

The Count came over to the window with the obvious intention of having a little chat with pretty Olenka. My friend can speak three European languages, but he can’t speak to women. He looked somewhat out of his element as he came and stood near us, smiled inanely, mumbled an inarticulate ‘Hmmm… y-y-yes…’ and then retraced his steps to the carafe of vodka.

‘When you came into the room,’ I told Olenka, ‘you were singing “I love the storms of early May”. Haven’t those lines been set to music?’

‘No, I just sing all the poetry I know, after my own fashion.’

Just then I happened to look round. Urbenin was watching us. In his eyes I could read hatred and malice, which didn’t in the least suit his kind, gentle face. ‘He can’t be jealous, can he?’ I wondered.

The poor devil noted my quizzical look, rose from his chair and went out into the hall to fetch something. Even from his walk it was obvious that he was highly agitated. The thunderclaps, each louder and more resounding than the last, became more and more frequent. The lightning continually tinted the sky, the pines and the wet earth with its pleasant but dazzling light. It would be ages before the rain stopped. I walked away from the window to the book stand and started inspecting Olenka’s library. ‘Tell me what you read and I’ll tell you what you are’ – but for all that wealth of books, arranged in perfect symmetry on those shelves, it was difficult to assess in any way Olenka’s intellectual level and ‘educational attainments’. It was all a rather peculiar hotchpotch: three readers; one of Born’s books;¹⁶ Yevtushevsky’s Mathematics Problem Book;¹⁷ Lermontov (vol. 2); Shklyarevsky; the journal The Task;¹⁸ a cookery book; Miscellany.¹⁹ I could enumerate even more books, but just as I was taking Miscellany from the shelf and began turning the pages, the door to the other room opened and in came a person who immediately distracted my attention from Olenka’s ‘educational attainments’. This was a tall, muscular man in cotton-print dressing-gown, tattered slippers and with a rather original face: a mass of dark blue veins, it was embellished with a pair of sergeant’s whiskers and sideburns, and on the whole it put me in mind of a bird’s. The entire face seemed to have thrust itself forward in an apparent attempt to converge at the tip of the nose. Such faces, I think, are called ‘pitcher-snouts’.²⁰ This character’s small head reposed on a long, thin neck with a large Adam’s apple and rocked like a starling-box in the wind. With his dull green eyes this strange man surveyed us, and then he stared at the Count.

‘Are all the doors locked?’ he asked in a pleading voice.

The Count glanced at me and shrugged his shoulders.

‘Don’t worry, Papa!’ Olenka said. ‘They’re all locked. Go back to your room.’

‘Is the barn locked?’

‘He’s a bit funny in the head… he gets like that sometimes,’ Urbenin whispered, appearing from the hall. ‘He’s afraid of burglars and as you can see he’s always fussing about the doors. Nikolay Yefimych!’ he said, turning to this strange individual. ‘Go back to your room and sleep. Don’t worry, everything’s locked.’

‘Are the windows locked?’

Nikolay Yefimych quickly went to every window, checked the locks and then, without so much as a glance at us, shuffled back to his room in his slippers.

‘Now and then he comes over all peculiar, poor devil,’ Urbenin started explaining the moment he’d left the room. ‘He’s a fine, decent chap really, a family man… it’s really very sad. Almost every summer he goes a bit dotty.’

I glanced at Olenka. Sheepishly, hiding her face from us, she began tidying the books I had disturbed. She was obviously ashamed of her crazy father.

‘The carriage is here, Your Excellency!’ Urbenin announced. ‘You can drive back now if you wish.’

‘But how on earth did that carriage get here?’ I asked.

‘I sent for it.’

A minute later I was sitting in the carriage with the Count, fuming as I listened to the peals of thunder.

‘So, that Pyotr just bundled us out of the cottage, blast him!’ I growled, getting really angry. ‘He didn’t let us have a proper look at Olenka! I wouldn’t have eaten her! Silly old fool! He was simply bursting with jealousy the whole time. He’s in love with that girl.’

‘Oh yes! Fancy that – I noticed it too! And he was so jealous he didn’t want to let us into the cottage – he only sent for the carriage out of sheer jealousy! Ha ha!’

‘ “The later love comes the more it burns”… Really, it’s very hard not to fall for that girl in red, my friend, if you see her every day as we saw her today! She’s devilishly pretty! Only, she’s not his sort. He ought to understand that and not be so egotistically jealous. All right, love if you like, but don’t stop others – all the more so if you realize the girl’s not meant for you! Really, what a blockhead!’

‘Do you remember how he flared up when Kuzma mentioned her name over tea?’ sniggered the Count. ‘I thought he was going to thrash the lot of us then – you don’t go defending a woman’s good name so fiercely if you’ve no feelings for her.’

‘But some men will do that… however, that’s not the point. The crux of the matter is this: if he could order us around like that today, how does he treat small fry who are at his beck and call? He probably won’t let stewards, managers, huntsmen and other nobodies of this world go anywhere near her. Love and jealousy can make a man unjust, callous, misanthropic. I’ll wager that because of Olenka he’s tormented the life out of more than one servant under his command. Therefore you’d do well to take his complaints about your poor employees, about the need to dismiss this one or the other, with a pinch of salt. In general, his authority must be curbed for the time being. Love will pass – and then there’ll be nothing to fear. He’s really quite a decent fellow.’

‘And how do you like her papa?’ laughed the Count.

‘He’s insane… should be in a lunatic asylum, not managing forests. You wouldn’t be far wrong if you went and hung the sign “Lunatic Asylum” on the gates to your estate. It’s sheer Bedlam here! This forester, Owlet, that card-mad Franz, that old man in love, an overexcited girl, a drunken Count – what more do you want?’

‘And I pay that forester wages! How can he work if he’s insane?’

‘It’s obvious that Urbenin’s keeping him on solely because of the daughter. Urbenin says that Nikolay Yefimych goes off his rocker every summer. But that’s not so… that forester’s constantly off his rocker, not only during the summer. Fortunately your Pyotr Yegorych rarely lies and he’d soon give himself away if he did.’

‘Last year Urbenin wrote to inform me that our old forester Akhmetyev was going to Mount Athos²¹ to become a monk and he recommended the “experienced, honest and worthy Skvortsov”. Of course, I agreed, as I invariably do. After all, letters aren’t faces: they don’t show it if they lie!’

The carriage drove into the courtyard and stopped at the main entrance. We climbed out. By now it had stopped raining. Giving off flashes of lightning and angrily rumbling, a storm cloud was racing towards the north-east, revealing an ever-increasing expanse of starry blue sky. It seemed as if some heavily armed power, having wrought wholesale devastation and exacted terrible tribute, was now rushing on to new conquests. Small clouds that had been left behind hurried after it in hot pursuit, as if afraid they would not catch up with it. Peace was being restored to Nature.

And this peace was apparent in the calm aromatic air, filled with languor and nightingale melodies, in the silence of the sleeping garden, in the caressing light of the rising moon. The lake awoke after its daytime slumbers and made itself audible to man with its gentle murmur.

At such times it is pleasant to drive through open country in a comfortable carriage, or to row on a lake. But we went into the house: there a different kind of poetry was awaiting us.

V

The man who, under the influence of mental pain or plagued with unbearable suffering, puts a bullet in his brains is called a suicide. But for those who give full rein to their pathetic, spiritually debasing passions during the sacred days of their youth there is no name in the language of man. Bullets are followed by the peace of the grave, ruined youth is followed by years of grief and agonizing memories. Anyone who has profaned his youth will understand my present state of mind. I’m not old yet, I’m not grey, but I’m no longer alive. Psychiatrists tell of a soldier who, wounded at Waterloo, went mad, subsequently assuring everyone (and he believed it himself) that he had been killed at Waterloo and that the person they now took to be him was merely his ghost, an echo of the past. And now I’m experiencing something similar to that half-death.

‘I’m very glad you didn’t have anything to eat at the forester’s and haven’t spoilt your appetite,’ the Count told me as we entered the house. ‘We’re going to have an excellent supper, just like old times. You can serve us now,’ he told Ilya, who was helping him off with his jacket and putting on his dressing-robe.

Off we went to the dining-room. Here, on a side-table, life was already ‘bubbling away’. Bottles of every colour and conceivable size stood in rows, as they do on the shelves of theatre bars, reflecting the light from the lamps and awaiting our attention. Salted, marinaded meats, all kinds of savouries stood on another table, together with a carafe of vodka and another of English bitters.²² Close to the wine bottles were two dishes: one with sucking-pig, the other with cold sturgeon.

‘Well, gentlemen,’ began the Count, filling three glasses and shuddering as if he felt cold. ‘Good health! Take your glass, Kaetan Kazimirovich!’

I emptied mine, but the Pole shook his head negatively. He drew the sturgeon closer to him, sniffed it and started eating.

Here I must crave the reader’s forgiveness, for now I have to describe something which is not in the least ‘poetic’.

‘Well now, you’ve had your first,’ said the Count, refilling the glasses. ‘Be bold, my dear Lecoq!’

I took my glass, glanced at it and put it down. ‘To hell with it, it’s ages since I last had a drink,’ I said. ‘Why not remember the good old days?’ And without further hesitation I filled five glasses and, one after the other, poured their contents down my throat. That was the only way I knew how to drink. Little schoolboys learn from big ones how to smoke cigarettes. The Count looked at me as he poured himself five glasses, arched his body, wrinkled his face, shook his head and tossed them all back. My own five glasses struck him as an act of bravado, but I didn’t drink at all to flaunt my talent for drinking: far from it. I craved intoxication, pure and utter intoxication such as I had not known for a very long time, living as I did in a tiny little village. After drinking my fill I sat at the table and started on the sucking-pig.

Intoxication was not long in coming. Soon I felt a slight dizziness. Then I experienced a pleasant, cool sensation in my chest – this was the start of a blissful, expansive state. Suddenly, without any particularly noticeable transition, I became extremely merry. My feelings of boredom and emptiness gave way to a sensation of perfect joy and euphoria. I started smiling. Suddenly I yearned for conversation, laughter, people. As I chewed the sucking-pig I began to experience life in all its plenitude, almost complete contentment with life, almost perfect happiness.

‘Why aren’t you drinking?’ I asked the Pole.

‘He doesn’t drink,’ said the Count. ‘Don’t try and force him.’

‘All the same, you must at least drink something!’ I exclaimed. The Pole popped a large slice of sturgeon into his mouth and shook his head dismissively. His silence only egged me on.

‘Listen, Kaetan… what’s your second name?… why do you never say a word?’ I asked. ‘So far I haven’t had the pleasure of hearing your voice.’

His eyebrows rose like a swallow in flight and he looked at me.

‘Do you vish me to speak?’ he asked with a strong Polish accent.

‘I vish very much.’

‘And vy is zat?’

‘Vy indeed! On board ship, during dinner, strangers and people who’ve never met manage to get into conversation. But we, who have known each other for several hours now, simply gape at one another – and so far we haven’t spoken a single word to each other. It’s unheard of!’

The Pole said nothing.

‘But vy are you so silent?’ I asked after a brief interval. ‘Give me some sort of reply.’

‘I don’t vish to reply. I can detect laughter in your voice and I don’t like being ridiculed.’

‘But he’s not laughing at you at all!’ the Count said in alarm. ‘Where did you get that idea from, Kaetan? He’s just being friendly.’

‘Counts and princes have never taken zat tone with me!’ Kaetan said, frowning. ‘I don’t like zat tone.’

‘So, you won’t honour us with a little conversation?’ I persisted, polishing off another glass and laughing.

‘Do you know my real reason for coming back here?’ interrupted the Count, wishing to change the subject. ‘Haven’t I told you yet? In St Petersburg I went to see a doctor friend who’s always treated me, complaining about not feeling well. He listened, tapped, poked me all over and asked: “You’re not a coward, are you?” Well, although I’m no coward, I went white and replied that I wasn’t.’

‘Cut it short, old man, you’re boring me!’

‘He diagnosed that I would die very soon if I didn’t leave St Petersburg and go abroad. My whole liver was diseased from chronic drinking. So I decided to come here. Yes, it would have been stupid to have stayed on there. This estate is magnificent, so rich… the climate alone is priceless! Here one can at least get on with some work! Hard work is the best, the most effective medicine. Isn’t that so, Kaetan? I’ll do a spot of farming and give up drink. The doctor forbade me a single glass… not even one glass!’

‘Then don’t drink!’

‘I don’t drink any more – today’s the very last time, just to celebrate my reunion’ – here the Count leant over and gave me a resounding kiss on the cheek – ‘with my dear, good friend. But not a drop tomorrow! Today Bacchus takes leave of me forever! So, how about a little farewell glass of brandy, Sergey?’

We drank some brandy.

‘I’ll get well again, my dear Seryozha, and I’ll busy myself with farming. Rationalized farming! Urbenin is a good, kind man, he understands everything – but is he really the managerial type? No, he’s simply a slave to routine! We should subscribe to journals, read, follow all the news, exhibit at agricultural shows. But he’s too ignorant for that! Surely he can’t be in love with Olenka? Ha ha! I’ll take charge of things myself and make him my assistant. I’ll take part in the elections, cheer local society up a bit… eh? Come off it, you’re laughing! Yes, laughing! Really, it’s impossible to discuss anything with you.’

I felt cheerful and amused. The Count, the candles, the bottles, the plaster hares and ducks that adorned the dining-room walls all amused me. The only thing that didn’t amuse me was Kaetan’s sober physiognomy. That man’s presence irritated me.

‘Can’t you tell your lousy Pole to go to hell?’ I whispered to the Count.

‘What did you say? For God’s sake!’ mumbled the Count, seizing both my arms as if I were about to thrash that Pole of his. ‘Leave him alone!’

‘But I just can’t bear the sight of him!’ I said. ‘Listen,’ I went on, turning to Pshekhotsky. ‘You refuse to talk to me, but please forgive me – I haven’t abandoned all hope yet of gaining a closer acquaintance with your conversational ability…’

‘Stop it!’ exclaimed the Count, tugging my sleeve. ‘I beg you!’

‘I won’t leave you alone until you reply to my questions,’ I continued. ‘Vy are you frowning? Do you detect laughter in my voice even now?’

‘If I’d drunk as much as you, I’d be able to have a conversation vith you. But I’m not your sort,’ the Pole growled.

‘ “Not my sort” – that’s exactly what needs to be proven… that’s exactly what I meant to say. A goose is no companion for a pig… a drunkard cramps a sober man’s style and the sober man cramps the drunkard. In the next room there are the most excellent soft sofas! You can go and sleep off your sturgeon with horseradish. You won’t be able to hear me from there. Don’t you vish to head in zat direction?’

The Count clasped his hands in despair, blinked and walked up and down the dining-room. He was a coward and scared of ‘angry exchanges’. But when I was drunk, misunderstandings and unpleasantness only amused me.

‘I don’t understand. I don’t under-stand!’ moaned the Count, at a loss what to say or do.

He knew that I would take some stopping.

‘I don’t really know you yet,’ I continued. ‘Perhaps you are a very fine person and therefore I wouldn’t want to start quarrelling with you so early in the day. I don’t have any quarrel with you, I’m simply inviting you to try and get into your head that there’s no place for the sober amongst the drunk. The presence of a sober person has an irritating effect on the drunken organism! Please understand that!’

‘You can say vot you like,’ Pshekhotsky sighed. ‘Nothing you say vill get my back up, young man!’

‘Nothing? What if I called you an obstinate pig – wouldn’t you take offence at that?’

The Pole turned crimson – and that was all. White as a sheet, the Count came over to me with an imploring look and opened his arms wide.

‘Please moderate your language, I beg you!’

I was now relishing my drunken role and wanted to carry on, but fortunately for the Count and the Pole some footsteps rang out and into the dining-room came Urbenin.

‘I wish you good appetite!’ he began. ‘I’ve come to inquire if you have any orders for me, Your Excellency.’

‘None at the moment, but I do have a request,’ replied the Count. ‘I’m really delighted you’ve come, Pyotr Yegorych. Sit down and have some supper with us and let’s discuss farming.’

Urbenin sat down. The Count quaffed some brandy and started explaining his plans for the future ‘rational’ management of the estate. He spoke lengthily, tiresomely, constantly repeating himself and changing the subject. Urbenin listened to him attentively, as serious people listen to the chatter of women and children. He ate some fish soup and sadly gazed into his plate.

‘I’ve brought some first-class plans back with me,’ the Count said. ‘Remarkable plans! Would you like me to show you them?’

Karneyev jumped up and ran to his study to fetch them. Taking advantage of his absence, Urbenin quickly poured himself half a tumbler of vodka and swallowed it, without taking any food with it.

‘Vodka’s a disgusting drink!’ he said, looking hatefully at the carafe.

‘Why don’t you drink while the Count’s here, Pyotr Yegorych?’ I asked him. ‘You’re not scared, are you?’

‘Sergey Petrovich, it’s better to play the hypocrite and drink on the sly, than when you’re with the Count. You know he’s very odd. If I were to steal twenty thousand from him and he got to know, he wouldn’t be concerned and he’d say nothing. But if I forgot to account for a ten-copeck piece that I’d spent, or if I drank some vodka in front of him, he’d start moaning that his manager was a crook. You know very well what he’s like.’

Urbenin poured himself another half tumbler and swallowed it.

‘You never used to drink, Pyotr Yegorych,’ I said.

‘No – but I do now. A hell of a lot!’ he whispered. ‘A hell of a lot, day and night, never stopping for a breather! Even the Count never drank as much as I do now. Things are very hard for me, Sergey Petrovich. God alone knows how heavy my heart is. That’s exactly why I drink – to drown my sorrows… I’ve always been fond of you and respected you, Sergey Petrovich, and to tell you quite frankly… I’d willingly go and hang myself!’

‘Why is that?’

‘Because of my own stupidity. It’s not only children who are stupid… there are fools at fifty. Don’t ask the reason.’

The Count came in again and put a stop to his effusions.

‘A most excellent liqueur!’ he exclaimed, putting a pot-bellied bottle with the Benedictine seal on the table instead of his ‘first-class plans’. ‘I picked it up at Depré’s²³ when I was passing through Moscow. Would you care for a drop, Seryozha?’

‘But I thought you’d gone to fetch the plans,’ I said.

‘Me? What plans? Oh yes! But the devil himself couldn’t sort my suitcases out, old chap. I kept rummaging and rummaging but I gave it up as a bad job. It’s a very nice liqueur. Would you care for a drop?’

Urbenin stayed a little longer, then he said goodbye and left. When he had gone we started on the red wine: this completely finished me off. I was intoxicated exactly the way I wanted to be when I was riding to the Count’s. I became extremely high spirited, lively, unusually cheerful. I wanted to accomplish some truly extraordinary, amusing, dashing deed… At such moments I felt I could have swum right across the lake, solved the most complicated case, conquered any woman. The world, with all its diversity of life, sent me into raptures. I loved it, but at the same time I wanted to find fault with someone, to sting with venomous witticism, to mock… I simply had to ridicule that black-browed Pole and the Count, to wear them down with biting sarcasm, to make mincemeat of them.

‘Why are you so quiet?’ I began. ‘Speak and I’ll listen! Ha ha! I simply adore it when people with serious, respectable physiognomies spout puerile nonsense! It’s such a mockery, such a mockery of the human brain! Your faces don’t correspond to your brains! To tell the truth, you should have the physiognomies of idiots, but you have the faces of Greek sages!’

I didn’t finish. My tongue became tied in knots at the thought that I was talking to nobodies who weren’t even worth a mention! I needed a crowded ballroom, brilliant women, thousands of lights… I got up, took my glass and started wandering through all the rooms. On a drunken spree you don’t set limits to your space, you don’t restrict yourself to a dining-room, but roam over the whole house, even the entire estate.

I selected an ottoman in the ‘mosaic’ room, lay down and surrendered myself to fantasies and building castles in the air. Drunken dreams, each more grandiose and boundless than the last, took possession of my young brain. Now I could see a new world, full of stupefying pleasures and beauty beyond description. All that was lacking was for me to talk in rhyme and start having hallucinations.

The Count came up to me and sat on the edge of the ottoman. He wanted to tell me something. I had begun to read in his eyes this desire to communicate something rather unusual very soon after the above-mentioned five glasses: I knew what he wanted to discuss.

‘I’ve had so much to drink today!’ he told me. ‘For me it’s more harmful than any poison. But today’s the last time. Word of honour, the last time! I do have will-power.’

‘Of course, of course.’

‘For the last… for the last time, Seryozha, old chap, shouldn’t we send a telegram to town?’

‘By all means… send one…’

‘Let’s have a real orgy – for the last time. Come on, get up and write it.’

The Count had no idea how to write telegrams – they always turned out too long and incomplete. So I got up and wrote:

TO LONDON RESTAURANT GIPSY CHOIR OWNER KARPOV DROP EVERYTHING COME IMMEDIATELY TWO O’CLOCK TRAIN THE COUNT

‘It’s a quarter to eleven now,’ the Count said. ‘My man can ride to the station in three quarters of an hour – one hour maximum. Karpov will get the telegram before one. So he’ll have time to catch the express. Should he miss it he can take the goods train. Yes?’

VI

One-eyed Kuzma was dispatched with the telegram, Ilya was instructed to send carriages to the station one hour later. To kill time I slowly started lighting the lamps and candles in every room. Then I opened the grand piano and tried a few notes.

And then I remember lying on the same ottoman, thinking of nothing and silently waving away the Count, who was pestering me with his incessant chatter. I was in a kind of semi-conscious state, half-asleep, aware only of the bright light from the lamps and my serene and cheerful state of mind. A vision of the girl in red, her little head inclined towards her shoulder, her eyes filled with horror at the prospect of that dramatic death, appeared before me and gently shook its tiny finger at me. A vision of another girl, in black dress and with a pale, proud face, drifted past and looked at me half-imploringly, half-reproachfully.

Then I heard noise, laughter, people running about. Deep black eyes came between me and the light. I could see their sparkle, their laughter. A joyful smile flickered on luscious lips… it was my gipsy girl Tina smiling at me.

‘Is it you?’ she asked. ‘Are you asleep? Get up, my darling… I haven’t seen you for ages.’

Without a word I pressed her hand and drew her to me.

‘Let’s go into the other room… we’ve all arrived.’

‘Let’s stay here… I like it here, Tina…’

‘But there’s too much light… you’re crazy… someone might come in.’

‘If anyone does I’ll wring their neck. I like it here, Tina. It’s two years since I last saw you.’

Someone was playing the piano in the ballroom.

‘Ah, Moscow, Moscow,

Moscow with your white stone walls…’²⁴

several voices bawled at once.

‘Can you hear? They’re all in there singing… no one will come in.’

My encounter with Tina roused me from my half-conscious state. Ten minutes later she led me into the ballroom, where the choir was standing in a semicircle. The Count was straddling a chair and beating time with his hands. Pshekhotsky stood behind his chair, watching those songbirds with astonished eyes. I grabbed Karpov’s balalaika from his hands, performed a wild flourish and started singing:

‘Down Mo-other Vo-olga

Do-own the Riv-er Vo-olga…’²⁵

And the choir responded:

‘Oh burn, oh speak… speak!’²⁶

I waved my arm and in an instant, as quick as lightning, there followed another rapid transition:

‘Nights of madness, nights of gladness…’²⁷

Nothing stimulates and titillates my nerves so much as abrupt transitions like these. I trembled with delight. With one arm around Tina and waving the balalaika in the other, I sang Nights of Madness to the end. The balalaika crashed to the floor and broke into small splinters…

‘More wine!’

After that my memories verge on the chaotic. Everything becomes muddled, confused, everything grows vague and blurred… I remember the grey sky of early morning… We are in rowing-boats. The lake is slightly ruffled and seems to be grumbling at the sight of our debauchery. I stand reeling in the middle of the boat. Tina tries to convince me that I’ll fall into the water and she begs me to sit down. But I complain out loud that there are no waves on the lake as high as Stone Grave and my shouts frighten the martins that dart like white spots over the blue surface.

Then follows a long, hot day with its interminable lunch, ten-year-old liqueurs, bowls of punch, drunken brawls. I remember but a few moments of that day, I remember rocking on the garden swing with Tina. I’m standing at one end of the seat, she at the other. I work with my whole body, in a wild frenzy, with my last ounce of strength and I cannot really say whether I want Tina to fall off the swing and be killed, or to fly right up to the clouds. Tina stands there as pale as death, but she is proud and vain, and has clenched her teeth in order not to betray her fear with the least sound. Higher and higher we fly and I cannot remember how it all ended. Then came a stroll with Tina down that distant avenue with the green vault screening it from the sun. Poetic half-light, black locks, luscious lips, whispers… And then at my side there walks a small contralto singer, a fair-haired girl with a sharp little nose, the eyes of a child and a very slender waist. I stroll with her until Tina, who has been following us, comes along and makes a scene. The gipsy girl is pale and furious. She damns me and is so offended that she prepares to return to town. Pale-faced and with trembling hands, the Count runs around us and as usual cannot find the words to persuade Tina to stay. Finally Tina slaps my face. It’s strange: the most innocuous, barely offensive words spoken by a man send me into a frenzy, but I’m quite indifferent to the slaps women give me… And then again those long hours after dinner, again that snake on the steps, again sleeping Franz with flies around his mouth, again that garden gate. The girl in red stands on the top of Stone Grave but disappears like a lizard as soon as she sees us.

By evening Tina and I are once again friends. There follows the same wild night, music, rollicking songs with titillating, nerve-tingling transitions… and not one moment’s sleep!

‘This is self-destruction!’ whispers Urbenin, who has dropped in for a moment to listen to our singing.

Of course, he was right. I later recalled the Count and myself standing in the garden, face to face, arguing. Nearby strolls that black-browed Kaetan, who had taken no part in our jollification but who nevertheless had not slept and who kept following us like a shadow. The sky is pale now and the rays of the rising sun are already beginning to shed their golden light over the highest tree top. All around I can hear the chatter of busy sparrows, the singing of starlings, rustling, the flapping of wings that had grown heavy during the night. I can hear the lowing herd and shepherds’ cries. Close by is a small, marble-topped table. A Shandor candle²⁸ stands on it, burning with a pale light… there are cigarette ends, sweet wrappers, broken glasses, orange peel…

‘You must take this!’ I say, handing the Count a bundle of banknotes. ‘I shall force you to take them!’

‘But it was I who invited the gipsies, not you!’ cries the Count, trying to grab one of my buttons. ‘I’m master here, I treated you… so why on earth should you pay? Please understand that I even take this as an insult!’

‘But I engaged them too, so I’ll pay half. You refuse to accept it? Well, I don’t understand the reason for these favours! Surely you don’t think that because you’re stinking rich you have the right to offer me such favours? Damn it – I engaged Karpov, so I’ll pay him! I don’t need your “half”. And I wrote the telegram!’

‘In a restaurant, Seryozha, you can pay as much as you like, but my house isn’t a restaurant. And then, I really don’t understand why you’re making all this fuss, I don’t understand why you’re so eager to pay. You don’t have much money, but I’m rolling in it. Justice itself is on my side!’

‘So you won’t take it? No? Well, don’t!’

I hold the banknotes up to the faint candlelight, set fire to them and throw them on the ground. A groan suddenly bursts from Kaetan’s chest. He becomes wide-eyed, turns pale and falls heavily to the floor, trying to put out the flames with the palms of his hands… in this he succeeds.

‘I don’t understand!’ he says, stuffing the singed banknotes into his pocket. ‘Burning money! Just as if it were last year’s chaff or love letters! Better give it all away to some beggar than consign it to the flames.’

I enter the house… there, in every room, sprawled over sofas and carpets, sleep the gipsies – exhausted, completely worn out. My Tina is sleeping on the ottoman in the ‘mosaic’ drawing-room.

She lies stretched out and she’s breathing heavily. Her teeth are clenched, her face pale. She’s probably dreaming of swings. Owlet wanders through all the rooms, looking malignantly with her sharp eyes at those who had so rudely disturbed the deathly silence of that forgotten estate. Not for nothing does she go around tiring her old bones.

That’s all that remains in my memory after two wild nights – the rest either hasn’t been preserved by my inebriated brain cells or cannot be described here with any decency. But enough of that!

Never before had Zorka borne me so zealously as on that morning after the burning of the banknotes. She too wanted to go home. The lake gently rolled its foamy waves: reflecting the rising sun, it was preparing for its daytime slumber. The woods and willows along the banks were motionless, as if at morning prayer. It is difficult to describe my state of mind at the time. Without going into too much detail I shall merely say that I was delighted beyond words – and at the same time I was almost consumed with shame when, as I turned out of the Count’s estate, I saw by the lakeside old Mikhey’s saintly face, emaciated by honest toil and illness. Mikhey resembles a biblical fisherman. His hair is as white as snow, he has a large beard and he gazes contemplatively at the sky. When he stands motionless on the bank, following the racing clouds with his eyes, you might fancy he sees angels in the sky… I’m very fond of such faces!

When I saw him I reined in Zorka and gave him my hand, as if wishing to cleanse myself through contact with his honest, calloused hand. He looked up at me with his small, sagacious eyes and smiled.

‘Good morning, sir!’ he said, awkwardly offering me his hand. ‘Why’ve you come galloping over here again? Is that old layabout back?’

‘He is.’

‘I thought so, I can see it from your face. ’Ere I be standing and looking. What a world! Vanity of vanities, says I! Just look! That German deserves to die – all ’e bothers ’isself with is worthless things. Can you see ’im?’

The old man pointed his stick at the Count’s bathing-place. A rowing-boat was swiftly moving away from it and a man in a jockey cap and blue jacket was sitting in it. It was Franz the gardener.

‘Every morning ’e takes something out to the island and hides it. That fool can’t get it into ’is head that sand and money are worth the same as far as ’e’s concerned – can’t take ’em with ’im when ’e dies. Please give me a cigarette, sir!’

I offered him my cigarette case. He took three out and stuffed them into his breast pocket.

‘They’re for me nephew…’e can smoke ’em.’

My impatient Zorka gave a start and flew off. I bowed to the old man, thankful that he’d let my eyes rest upon his face. For a long time he stood there watching me go.

VII

At home I was greeted by Polikarp. With a contemptuous, crushing look, he inspected my noble body, as if trying to find out whether on this occasion I’d been bathing fully dressed in my suit or not.

‘Congratulations!’ he growled. ‘I can see you had a good time!’

‘Shut up, you fool!’ I replied.

I was incensed by his stupid face. After quickly undressing I covered myself with a blanket and closed my eyes.

My head was in a spin and the world became enveloped in mist. In that mist familiar shapes flashed by… the Count, the snake, Franz, those flame-coloured dogs, the girl in red, crazy Nikolay Yefimych…

‘A husband murdered his wife! Oh, how stupid you are!’ The girl in red wagged her finger at me, Tina blotted out the light with her black eyes and I… I fell asleep.

‘How sweetly, how peacefully he sleeps! When you look at that innocent child’s smile and listen closely to that regular breathing you might think that this is no investigating magistrate lying there on the bed but the living embodiment of a pure conscience! You might even think that Count Karneyev hadn’t returned, that there had been neither drunkenness nor gipsy girls, nor scandals on the lake. Get up, you most spiteful of men! You are not worthy of enjoying such bliss as peaceful slumber. Arise!’

I opened my eyes and stretched myself voluptuously. From the window to my bed streamed a broad ray of sunlight in which minute white specks of dust were chasing each other in great agitation, so that the ray itself seemed tinted dull white. The sunbeam kept disappearing from sight, then reappearing, depending on whether our charming district doctor, Pavel Ivanovich Voznesensky – who was walking around my bedroom – entered or left the field of light. In his long, unbuttoned frock-coat that hung loosely, as if from a clothes peg, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his unusually long trousers, the doctor paced from corner to corner, from chair to chair, from portrait to portrait, screwing up his short-sighted eyes at everything they happened to fall upon. True to his habit of poking his nose and snooping into everything wherever he could, he would bend down and then stand bolt upright again, peering at the wash basin, at the folds of the lowered curtains, at chinks in the door, at the lamp, just as if he were looking for something or wanting to satisfy himself that all was in order. As he stared through his spectacles at some chink, or some stain on the wallpaper, he would frown, assume a worried expression, sniff with his long nose and studiously scratch away with his fingernail. All this he performed mechanically, involuntarily, from sheer habit. Nevertheless, he gave the impression of a surveyor carrying out some inspection as his eyes swiftly passed from one object to the other.

‘Get up! You’re being spoken to!’ he said, waking me up with his melodious tenor voice, peering into the soap dish and removing a hair from the soap with his fingernail.

‘A… a… a… good morning, Dr Screwy!’ I yawned when I spotted him bending over the washstand. ‘It’s been ages since Hast saw you!’

The whole district teased the doctor by calling him ‘Screwy’ on account of his habit of constantly screwing up his eyes. And I too teased him with that nickname. When he saw that I was awake, Voznesensky came over to me, sat on the edge of the bed and immediately raised a matchbox to his screwed-up eyes.

‘Only idlers or those with a clear conscience sleep like you do,’ he said. ‘And as you’re neither one nor the other, it might be more becoming if you got up a bit earlier, dear chap.’

‘What’s the time?’

‘Just gone eleven.’

‘To hell with you, silly old Screwy! No one asked you to wake me so early! Do you know, it was after five when I got to bed and if it hadn’t been for you I’d have slept until this evening.’

‘That’s right!’ came Polikarp’s deep voice from the next room. ‘As if he hasn’t slept enough! It’s the second day he’s been sleeping, but it’s still not enough! Do you know what day it is?’ Polikarp asked, entering the bedroom and looking at me the way clever people look at fools.

‘It’s Wednesday,’ I said.

‘Oh yes, of course it is! They’ve arranged for a week to have two Wednesdays, specially for you!’

‘Today’s Thursday!’ said the doctor. ‘So, my dear chap, you managed to sleep through the whole of Wednesday! Very nice! Very nice! And how much did you have to drink, may I ask?’

‘I hadn’t slept for two days and I drank – I just can’t remember how much I drank.’

After I had dismissed Polikarp I started dressing and describing to the doctor those recently experienced ‘nights of madness, wild words’ that are so fine, so touching in songs but so ugly in reality. In my description I tried not to overstep the limits of the ‘light genre’, to keep to the facts and not to lapse into moralizing, although all this was alien to the nature of one with a passion for summarizing and making deductions. As I spoke I pretended to be talking about trifles that didn’t worry me in the least. Respecting Pavel Ivanovich’s chaste ears and conscious of his revulsion for the Count, I concealed a great deal, touched on many things only superficially – but for all that, despite my playful tone and grotesque turn of phrase, the doctor looked me gravely in the eye throughout my narrative, constantly shaking his head and impatiently jerking his shoulders. Not once did he smile. Evidently my ‘light genre’ made a far from light impression on him.

‘Why aren’t you laughing, Screwy?’ I asked after I’d finished my description.

‘If it weren’t you who was telling me all this, and if it hadn’t been for a certain incident, I’d never have believed a word of it. But it’s absolutely shocking, old man!’

‘What incident are you talking about?’

‘The peasant whom you so indelicately treated to a taste of the oar called on me yesterday evening… Ivan Osipov…’

‘Ivan Osipov?’ I said, shrugging my shoulders. ‘It’s the first I’ve heard of him.’

‘He’s tall, red-haired, with freckles. Try to remember! You hit him on the head with an oar.’

‘I’m really at a complete loss… I don’t know any Osipov. I never hit anyone with an oar. You must have been dreaming, old boy!’

‘If only it were a dream! He came to me with an official letter from the Karneyev district authorities and asked for a medical certificate. In the letter it states – and he’s not telling any lies – that it was you who inflicted the wound. Still don’t remember? You bruised him above the forehead, just at the hairline – went right down to the bone, dear chap!’

‘I can’t remember,’ I whispered. ‘Who is he? What does he do?’

‘He’s just an ordinary peasant from the Karneyev estate. He was one of the oarsmen when you were making merry on the lake.’

‘Hm… it’s possible… I can’t remember. I was probably drunk… and then, somehow, by accident…’

‘No sir, it wasn’t by accident. He says that you lost your temper with him for some reason, kept swearing at him – and then you became really furious, leapt over and struck him in front of witnesses. What’s more, you shouted: “I’ll kill you, you rotten bastard!” ’

I went red and paced from corner to corner.

‘For the life of me I can’t remember,’ I said, making a great effort of memory. ‘I can’t remember! You say I lost my temper – when I’m drunk I’m usually unforgivably loathsome!’

‘So, what more need I say!?’

‘That peasant obviously wants to create a scandal, but that’s not what’s important… what’s important is the fact itself, the blow I inflicted. Surely you don’t think I’m capable of fighting? And why should I strike a miserable peasant?’

‘Well, my dear sir… Of course, I couldn’t refuse him a medical certificate, but I didn’t forget to advise him to come and see you about it. You’ll sort it all out with him one way or the other. It’s only a slight bruise, but from an official point of view any head wound penetrating the skull is a serious matter. You frequently come across cases where apparently the most trivial head wound that had been considered relatively minor led to necrosis of the skull bones and therefore a journey ad patres.’²⁹

Carried away, Screwy stood up, paced the room close to the walls, waved his arms and started expounding his knowledge of surgical pathology for my benefit. Necrosis of the skull bones, inflammation of the brain, death and other horrors, simply poured from his lips, together with interminable explanations of the macroscopic and microscopic processes that are normally to be found in that hazy terra incognita³⁰ which was of no interest to me.

‘That’s enough, you old windbag!’ I said, putting an end to his medical chatter. ‘Don’t you realize how boring all this stuff is for me!’

‘Boring or not – that isn’t the point. You must listen and show a little remorse. Perhaps you’ll be more careful another time and not do such stupid, unnecessary, things. You could lose your job because of that oaf Osipov – if you don’t patch things up with him. For one of the high priests of Themis³¹ to be taken to court for common assault would be simply scandalous!’

Pavel Ivanovich is the only person whose pronouncements I can listen to with a light heart, without frowning, whom I can allow to peer into my eyes questioningly and to lower his probing hand into the convolutions of my soul. We’re friends in the very best sense of the word and we respect one another, although there do exist between us grievances of an unpleasant, rather ticklish nature. Like a black cat, a woman had come between us. This eternal casus belli³² had given rise to many conflicts, but it didn’t make us fall out and we continued to live in peace. Screwy is a very fine fellow… I love his simple and far from supple face with its big nose, screwed-up eyes and thin, small, reddish beard. I love his tall, slim, narrow-shouldered figure from which his frock-coat and overcoat dangle as if from a clothes peg.

His badly made trousers hang in ugly folds at the knees and his boots are shamelessly down at heel. His white tie is never in the right place. But please don’t think he’s slovenly. One look at his kind, serious face is enough to tell you that he has no time to bother about his appearance – and he wouldn’t know how to, anyway. He’s young, honest, unpretentious and he loves medicine. He’s always on the go – that suffices to explain in his favour all the shortcomings of his unpretentious attire. Like an artist, he doesn’t know the value of money: without turning a hair he sacrifices his own comfort and life’s blessings to some trivial vices of his own, and as a result he gives the impression of a man without means, of someone who can barely make ends meet. He neither smokes nor drinks; he doesn’t spend money on women. All the same, the two thousand he earns from hospital work and private practice passes through his hands as quickly as my own money does when I’m on a drinking spree. Two passions drain his resources: one is lending money, the other is ordering items from newspaper advertisements. He’ll lend money to anyone who asks, without a murmur, without any mention of repayment. No tool could ever root out his reckless faith in people’s conscientiousness and this faith is even more blatantly obvious in his perpetual ordering of items extolled in newspaper advertisements. He orders everything, whether he needs it or not. He writes away for books, telescopes, humorous magazines, hundred-piece dinner services, chronometers. And it’s not surprising that patients who call on Pavel Ivanovich take his room for an arsenal or a museum. He’s always been cheated and is still being cheated, but his faith remains as firm and rocklike as ever. He’s really a splendid fellow and we shall meet him more than once in the pages of this novel.

‘Heavens, I’ve really outstayed my welcome!’ he suddenly realized, looking at the cheap watch with one lid that he’d ordered from Moscow – it had a ‘five-year guarantee’ but nonetheless had twice been back to the repairer’s. ‘Well, time I was off, old man! Goodbye – and mark my words, these sprees of the Count’s will get you into hot water! And I don’t only mean your health! Ah, yes! Are you going to Tenevo tomorrow?’

‘What’s happening there tomorrow?’

‘A church fête! Everyone will be there. You simply must come! I promised that you’d come, without fail. Now, don’t make me out to be a liar.’

To whom he had given his word there was no need to ask. We understood each other. After saying goodbye the doctor put on his shabby coat and drove off.

I was left alone. To stifle the unpleasant thoughts that were starting to swarm around my head, I went over to my writing-desk and started opening my letters, trying not to think or take stock. The first envelope that caught my eye contained the following letter:

My darling Seryozha,

I’m sorry to trouble you, but I’m so stunned I don’t know whom to turn to. It’s really shocking! Of course, I can’t get them back now and I have no regrets, but just judge for yourself: if you let thieves have their way, then a respectable woman can’t feel safe anywhere. After you left I woke up on the couch and found lots of my things were missing: they’d stolen a bracelet, a gold stud, ten pearls from my necklace and about a hundred roubles were taken from my purse. I wanted to complain to the Count, but as he was asleep I left. It’s shocking! The house of a Count, yet they steal there as if it were a pub. You must tell the Count.

Love and kisses

Your affectionate Tina

That His Excellency’s house was alive with thieves was nothing new to me and I added Tina’s letter to the information on that score I’d already preserved in my memory. Sooner or later I would be obliged to put this information into action. I knew who the thieves were…

VIII

Black-eyed Tina’s letter, her florid, flamboyant handwriting reminded me of the mosaic drawing-room and gave me the urge, so it seemed, to have a ‘morning-after drink’. But I took a grip on myself and by sheer willpower forced myself to work. At first I found it boring beyond words to decipher the bold handwriting of district police officers, but then my attention gradually became fixed on a burglary and I began to enjoy my work. All day long I sat at my desk, while Polikarp constantly walked past, incredulously watching me at work. He had no confidence in my powers of abstinence and expected me to get up from my desk any minute and order him to saddle Zorka. But towards evening, when he saw how doggedly I was working, he was reassured and that sullen look of his gave way to an expression of satisfaction. He started walking around on tiptoe and speaking in whispers. When some youths went past the windows playing their accordions, he went out into the street and shouted:

‘What you devils making such a racket for? Can’t you go down another street? Or don’t you know, you infidels, that the Master’s working?’

When he brought the samovar into the dining-room that evening, he quietly opened the door and amiably asked me to come and have some tea.

‘Please have some tea!’ he said, gently sighing and respectfully smiling.

And while I was drinking it he quietly came up behind me and kissed me on the shoulder.

‘Now, that’s better, Sergey Petrovich,’ he muttered. ‘To hell with that tow-haired devil, may he damned well… Is it right for someone of your lofty intellect, an educated man like you, to concern himself with such weak characters? Your work is noble. Everyone should respect your wishes, fear you, but if you go around with that devil, breaking people’s heads and swimming fully clothed in the lake, people will say: “He’s got no brains at all! What a trivial man!” And this reputation will follow you everywhere! One expects irresponsible behaviour from a shopkeeper, but not from a gentleman! Gentlemen need to be knowledgeable, they have a job of work to do…’

‘All right! Enough is enough!’

‘Don’t get mixed up with that Count, Sergey Petrovich. If you need a friend, then why not Dr Pavel Ivanych. I know he goes around like a tramp, but he’s really highly intelligent!’

Polikarp’s sincerity touched me deeply. I wanted to say a few kind words to him.

‘What novel are you reading now?’ I asked.

‘The Count of Monte Christo. Now, there’s a Count for you! A real Count, not like that scruffy devil of yours!’

After tea I got down to work again and carried on until my eyelids began to droop and my weary eyes began to close. When I went to bed I told Polikarp to wake me at five o’clock.

IX

After five o’clock next morning, gaily whistling and knocking the heads off the flowers in the meadows with my walking-stick, I made my way on foot to Tenevo, where the church fête was being held and to which my friend Screwy had invited me. It was a delightful morning. Happiness itself seemed to be hovering over the earth – it was reflected in every diamond-like drop of dew and was beckoning the soul of every passer-by. Bathed in morning sunlight, the woods were quiet and motionless, as if listening to my footsteps and to the chirping of the feathered fraternity who greeted me by voicing their mistrust and alarm. The air was saturated with the exhalations of vernal greenery and caressed my healthy lungs with its softness. I breathed it in, and as I surveyed the open prospect with my enraptured eyes, I sensed the presence of spring, of youth – and it seemed that those young birches, the grass by the wayside and the incessantly humming cockchafers were sharing my feelings.

‘But why is it back there, in the world,’ I reflected, ‘that men herd themselves together in wretched, cramped hovels, confine themselves to narrow, constricting ideas, while there’s such freedom and scope for life and thought here? Why don’t they come out here?’

And my imagination that had waxed so poetic had no desire to encumber itself with thoughts of winter and earning a living – those two afflictions that drive poets into cold, prosaic St Petersburg and filthy Moscow, where they pay fees for poetry, but provide no inspiration.

Peasants’ carts and landowners’ carriages, hurrying to Mass and the fête, kept passing me. Constantly I had to doff my cap and acknowledge friendly bows from peasants and some squires I knew. Everyone offered me a lift, but walking was better than riding and I refused all their offers. Amongst others, the Count’s gardener Franz, in his blue jacket and jockey cap, passed me in a racing droshky. He lazily glanced at me with his sleepy, sour-looking eyes. Tied to the droshky was a twelve-gallon, iron-hooped barrel evidently containing vodka. Franz’s repulsive mug and his vodka barrel somewhat spoiled my poetic mood, but poetry soon triumphed again when I heard the sound of carriage wheels behind me. As I looked back, I saw a lumbering wagonette drawn by a pair of little bays. On a leather, box-shaped seat in the wagonette I saw my new acquaintance, the ‘girl in red’, who two days before had spoken to me of the ‘electricity’ that had killed her mother. Olenka’s pretty, freshly washed and rather sleepy little face shone and flushed slightly when she saw me striding out along the boundary path that separated the forest from the road. She nodded cheerfully to me and smiled welcomingly, the way only old friends smile at each other.

‘Good morning!’ I shouted to her.

She waved her hand and disappeared from sight, together with the lumbering wagonette, without giving me the chance to have a good look at her pretty, fresh little face. This time she wasn’t dressed in red, but in some dark-green costume with large buttons, and a broad-brimmed straw hat. Despite this, I liked her no less than before. It would have given me great pleasure to talk to her and listen to her voice. I wanted to peer into her blue eyes in the brilliance of the sunlight, just as I had looked into them that evening when the lightning was flashing. I wanted to take her down from that ugly wagonette and suggest she walk the rest of the way with me – I would certainly have done so but for the conventions of society. For some reason I felt that she would have eagerly agreed to my suggestion. Not for nothing did she look back twice at me when the wagonette turned off behind some tall alders.

It was about four miles from my abode to Tenevo – an almost negligible distance on a fine morning for a young man. Shortly after six o’clock I was already making my way between carts and booths to the church there. The air was already filled with the sound of trade, despite the early hour and the fact that Mass hadn’t finished. The creaking of carts, neighing of horses, lowing of cows, blowing of toy trumpets – all this mingled with the shouts of the gipsy horse dealers and the songs of peasants who had already managed to ‘get sozzled’, as they say. So many cheerful, festive faces, so many different types! So much charm and movement in the mass of people, with their brightly coloured clothes, bathed in the morning sunshine! By the thousand, these people swarmed and moved around, making a great din, trying to complete their business in a few hours and disperse by evening, leaving behind them on the open space – as if they were mementoes – scattered wisps of hay, oats spilled here and there, nutshells… People were flocking in dense crowds to and from the church.

The cross on the church gave off golden rays as bright as the sun itself. It glittered and seemed to be burning with golden fire. Below it the cupola was aflame with the same fire and the newly painted green dome gleamed in the sun, while beyond the glittering cross the transparent blue sky stretched into the far distance.

I passed through the crowded churchyard and made my way into the church. Mass had only just started and when I entered they were still reading from the Gospels. In the church silence reigned, broken only by the reader’s voice and the footsteps of the priest with his censer. The congregation stood humbly, motionless, gazing reverentially at the wide-open holy altar gates and listening to the long drawn-out reading. Rural etiquette – rather, rural propriety – clamps down very heavily on any violation of the awesome quiet of a church. I always used to feel ashamed when something there made me smile or speak. Unfortunately, only on rare occasions did I fail to meet some of my friends in church and of these, I regret to say, I had great numbers. Usually, the moment I entered the church, some member of the local ‘intelligentsia’ would immediately come up to me and, after a long preamble about the weather, would start talking about his own footling, trivial affairs. I would usually reply yes or no, but I’m so punctilious that I could never bring myself to ignore that person altogether. And my punctiliousness cost me dear. I would chat away and look awkwardly at my neighbours at prayer, afraid that they would take offence at my idle prattle.

And on this occasion too I failed to escape from my friends.

Just as I was entering the church I saw my heroine – that very same ‘girl in red’ whom I had met on my way to Tenevo. That poor girl, red as a lobster and perspiring, was standing in the middle of the congregation, looking around at all those faces with imploring eyes, in search of a deliverer. She was stuck fast in that dense crowd; unable to move either forwards or backwards, she resembled a bird held tightly squeezed in a fist. When she saw me she smiled bitterly and nodded at me with her pretty little chin.

‘For goodness’ sake, take me to the front!’ she said, seizing my sleeve. ‘It’s terribly stuffy and cramped here… I beg you!’

‘It’s just as crowded at the front!’ I replied.

‘But there everyone’s well dressed and respectable, while here there’s only common peasants. Besides, we have a place reserved for us at the front. And you should be there too.’

So, she wasn’t red in the face because it was stuffy and crowded in the church – oh no! Her pretty little head was tormented by thoughts of precedence! I took note of that vain girl’s entreaties and by carefully pushing people aside managed to lead her as far as the pulpit, where the whole flower of our provincial beau monde³³ had already assembled. After settling Olenka in a position that was in keeping with her aristocratic pretensions, I stationed myself behind the beau monde and began observing all that was going on.

As usual, the ladies and gentlemen were whispering and giggling. Kalinin, the Justice of the Peace, gesticulating with his fingers and rolling his head, was telling Squire Deryaev about his ailments in an undertone. Deryaev was cursing doctors in an almost inaudible voice and advised the JP to go and get treatment from a certain Yevstrat Ivanych. When the ladies saw Olenka they seized upon her as a good subject for gossip and started whispering among themselves. Only one girl was apparently praying. She was kneeling and kept moving her lips as she stared in front of her with her blue eyes. She didn’t notice the lock of hair that had come loose under her hat and was hanging untidily over her pale temple. She didn’t notice when Olenka and I came and stood beside her.

She was Nadezhda Nikolayevna, the JP’s daughter. When I spoke earlier of the woman who had run like a black cat between myself and the doctor, I was referring to her. The doctor loved her as only such fine natures as my dear old Screwy’s were capable of loving. Now he stood beside her, stiff as a poker, hands on trouser seams and craning his neck. Now and then he cast his loving, questioning eyes on her intent face. It was as if he were watching over her prayers and in his eyes there shone a melancholy, passionate yearning to be the object of her prayers. But, sadly for him, he knew for whom she was praying… it was not for him.

I motioned to Pavel Ivanovich when he looked round and we both left the church.

‘Let’s have a little wander around the fair,’ I suggested.

We lit our cigarettes and went over to the booths.

‘How’s Nadezhda Nikolayevna?’ I asked the doctor as we entered a tent where they sold toys.

‘All right… I think she’s well,’ the doctor replied, screwing up his eyes at a toy soldier with lilac face and crimson uniform. ‘She was inquiring about you.’

‘And what precisely was she inquiring about?’

‘Well, things in general… she’s angry with you for not having visited them for so long. She wants to see you and discover the reasons for this sudden cooling off towards their house. You used to go there every day and then – well, I ask you! It’s as if you’d simply cut them off… and you don’t even bow when you meet them…’

‘That’s nonsense, Screwy. In fact, I stopped visiting the Kalinins as I didn’t have the time. The truth is the truth. My relationship with that family is as excellent as ever. I always bow if I happen to meet one of them.’

‘But when you met her father last Thursday, for some reason you didn’t think it necessary to acknowledge his greeting.’

‘I don’t care for that blockhead of a JP,’ I replied, ‘and I just can’t look at his ugly mug calmly. All the same, I still have the strength to bow to him and shake his outstretched hand. I probably didn’t notice him last Thursday, or I didn’t recognize him. You’re not yourself today, Screwy, and you keep picking on me.’

‘I’m fond of you, dear chap,’ Pavel Ivanovich sighed, ‘but I don’t believe you. “Didn’t notice, didn’t recognize…” – I need neither your explanations nor your excuses. What’s the point of them if there’s so little truth in them? You’re a splendid, fine fellow, but in your sick brain there’s some section which, I’m sorry to say, is capable of any mean trick.’

‘My most humble thanks.’

‘Now don’t get angry, dear chap. I hope to God that I’ve made a mistake, but you strike me as something of a psychopath. Sometimes, against your better judgement and the general tenor of your fine nature, you suddenly have such cravings, you act so wildly that everyone who knows you as a respectable man is completely baffled. It’s simply staggering how those lofty moral principles of yours, with which I have the honour to be acquainted, can coexist with these sudden urges that culminate in such blatant abominations! What kind of animal is this?’ Pavel Ivanovich suddenly asked the stall-keeper in a completely different tone of voice as he raised to his eyes a wooden creature with human nose, a mane and grey stripes down its back.

‘It’s a lion,’ yawned the stall-keeper. ‘But it could be some other animal. Damned if I know!’

From the toy stalls we went to the textile stalls, where business was already in full swing.

‘Those toys only mislead children,’ observed the doctor. ‘They give the most distorted ideas about flora and fauna. That lion, for example. It’s striped, it’s purple and it squeaks. Whoever heard of squeaking lions?!’

‘Listen, Screwy,’ I said. ‘It’s obvious that you’ve something to tell me, but you can’t bring yourself to do it. Out with it! I enjoy listening to you, even when you say unpleasant things!’

‘Whether it’s pleasant or not, old boy, you must listen. There’s a lot I have to tell you.’

‘Fire away… I’m turning into one enormous ear.’

‘I’ve already told you that I suspect you’re a psychopath. Now, would you care to hear the evidence? I shall express myself frankly and perhaps rather harshly at times. My words will jar on you, but please don’t get angry, old chap. You know how I feel towards you – I’m fonder of you than anyone else in the district and I respect you. I’m telling you this not by way of reproach or criticism, or even to hurt you. Let’s both be objective, old man. Let’s examine your psyche with an impartial eye, as if it were the liver or stomach.’

‘Fine, let’s be objective,’ I agreed.

‘Excellent. So, let’s begin with your relationship with the Kalinins. If you care to consult your memory, it will tell you that you started visiting the Kalinins immediately on your arrival in our blessed district. They did not seek your acquaintance. From the start, the JP didn’t take to you because of your arrogant look, your sarcastic tone and your friendship with that raffish Count – and you would never have been invited there if you yourself hadn’t first paid them a visit. Do you remember? You got to know Nadezhda Nikolayevna and started going to the JP’s house almost every day. Whenever I visited the house you were invariably there… They gave you the warmest of welcomes. Those people were as nice as pie to you… both the father and mother, and the little sisters. They grew attached to you, as if you were one of the family. They were in raptures over you, they pampered you, they went into fits of laughter over your feeblest joke. For them you were the very paragon of wit, high-mindedness, gentlemanliness. You seemed to be aware of this and you repaid attachment with attachment – you used to go there every single day, even on the eve of church festivals when they were busy cleaning and up to their eyes in preparations. Finally, the ill-fated love you aroused in Nadenka is no secret to you – isn’t that so? Knowing full well that she was head over heels in love with you, you went there day after day. And what then, old man? A year ago, for no earthly reason, you suddenly stopped visiting them. They waited a week, a month – they’re still waiting, but you never turn up. They write to you, but you don’t reply. Finally, you don’t even send them your regards. For someone like you, who attaches so much importance to etiquette, your behaviour must appear the height of rudeness! What prompted you to steer clear of the Kalinins, so abruptly, so dramatically? Had they offended you? Did you get bored with them? In that case you could have broken away gradually, not in that insultingly brusque, quite uncalled-for manner.’

‘So, I’ve stopped visiting them,’ I laughed, ‘and therefore I’ve joined the ranks of psychopaths! How naïve you are, Screwy! Isn’t it all the same whether one ends a friendship suddenly or gradually? It’s even more honest if you make a clean break – it’s not so hypocritical. But all this is so trivial!’

‘Let’s admit it’s all very trivial, or that some hidden reasons that are no concern of an outside observer compelled you to cold-shoulder them so abruptly. But how can one explain this latest action of yours?’

‘What, for instance?’

‘For instance, one day you turned up at a local government meeting – I don’t know what business you had there – and when the chairman asked why you were no longer to be seen at the Kalinins you replied – just try and remember what you said! – “I’m scared of being married off!” That’s what slipped off your tongue! And you said this during a meeting, loud and clear, so that all hundred members in the room could hear you. Your remark met with laughter and obscene jokes about fishing for husbands. Some rotter catches up your words, goes to the Kalinins and repeats them to Nadezhda while they are all having dinner. Why all these insults, Sergey Petrovich?’

Pavel Ivanovich barred my way, planting himself in front of me and continuing to stare into my face with imploring, almost tearful eyes.

‘Why such insults? For what? Because this fine girl loves you? Let’s admit that her father – like every father – has designs on you. Like a good father he has everyone in his sights – you, me, Markuzin… All parents are alike. There’s no doubt that she was head over heels with you and perhaps hoping to become your wife. So why give her such a resounding slap in the face? Weren’t you responsible for these designs on your person? You went there every day – ordinary visitors don’t call so frequently. During the day you went fishing with her, in the evening you strolled in the garden, jealously keeping your little tête-à-têtes a secret. You discovered that she loved you – and you didn’t alter your behaviour one little bit! After that, could anyone have doubted your intentions? I was convinced that you would marry her! And you… you complained, you laughed. What for? What has she done to you?’

‘Don’t shout, Screwy, people are looking,’ I said, walking around Pavel Ivanovich. ‘Let’s finish this conversation, old man, it’s all old women’s talk. But I’ll just say a few things – and then I don’t want to hear any more from you! I used to visit the Kalinins because I was bored and because I was interested in Nadenka. She’s a fascinating girl. Perhaps I might even have married her, but when I found out that you preceded me as aspirant for her heart, that you were not indifferent towards her, I decided to retire from the scene. It would have been cruel on my part to have cramped the style of such a splendid chap as you!’

‘Merci for the favour! I didn’t ask for this very gracious indulgence and as far as I can tell from your expression you’re not telling the truth now, you’re talking idly, not thinking about what you’re saying. And then the fact that I’m a splendid chap didn’t prevent you – on one of your last visits – from suggesting something to Nadenka in the summer-house which wouldn’t have done this “splendid chap” any good, had he married her!’

‘Hold on! How did you find out about my “suggestion”, Screwy? So, things can’t be so bad with you if people can trust you with such secrets! But you’ve turned white with rage and it almost looks as if you’re about to hit me any minute. And just now you agreed to be objective! How funny you are, Screwy! Come, enough of this nonsense… Let’s go to the post office.’

We set off for the post office, which looked gaily onto the market place with its three little windows. Through the grey fence we could see the many-coloured flowerbed of our postmaster Maksim Fyodorovich, famous throughout the district for his expertise in laying out flowerbeds, borders, lawns, etc.

We found Maksim Fyodorovich very pleasantly occupied. Red-faced and beaming with pleasure, he was sitting at his green table leafing through a thick bundle of one-hundred rouble notes as if they were a book. Clearly, even the sight of someone else’s money was capable of lifting his spirits.

‘Hullo, Maksim Fyodorovich!’ I greeted him. ‘Where did you get that pile of money from?’

‘Well now, it’s to be sent to St Petersburg,’ the postmaster replied, smiling sweetly and pointing his chin at the corner where a dark figure was sitting on the only chair in the post office. When it saw me the figure rose and came over to me. I recognized it as my newly created enemy whom I had so deeply offended when getting drunk at the Count’s.

‘My most humble respects,’ he said.

‘Good morning, Kaetan Kazimirovich,’ I replied, pretending not to notice his outstretched hand. ‘How’s the Count?’

‘Well, thank God… but he’s rather in the dumps. He’s expecting you over any minute.’

On Pshekhotsky’s face I could detect a desire to have a little chat with me. What could the reason be for this, seeing that I’d called him ‘pig’ that evening? And why such a change in his attitude?

‘That’s a lot of money you’ve got there,’ I said, looking at the packets of hundred-rouble notes he was preparing for dispatch.

And it was just as if someone had prodded my grey matter! On one of those banknotes I saw charred edges, with one corner completely burnt off. It was that very same one-hundred rouble note that I had wanted to burn on the Shandor candle when the Count refused to accept it from me in payment for the gipsies and which Pshekhotsky had picked up when I had thrown it on the floor.

‘I’d do better giving it to some beggar than consigning it to the flames’ he had said then.

To which ‘beggars’ was he sending it now?

‘Seven thousand five hundred roubles,’ Maksim Fyodorovich said, taking ages to count them. ‘Exactly right!’

It’s awkward prying into someone else’s secrets, but I desperately wanted to know whose money it was and to whom in St Petersburg that black-browed Pole was sending it. In any event, the money wasn’t his – and the Count had no one in St Petersburg to send it to.

He’s cleaned that drunken Count out, I thought. If that stupid, deaf Owlet can rob the Count, then what problem will this goose have thrusting his paw into his pocket?

‘Oh, by the way, I’m sending some money off too,’ Pavel Ivanovich suddenly remembered. ‘Do you know what, gentlemen? You’ll never believe it! For fifteen roubles you can get five items, carriage paid. A telescope, chronometer, calendar and some other things. Maksim Fyodorych, please lend me a sheet of paper and an envelope.’

Screwy sent off his fifteen roubles. I collected my newspapers and letters and we left the post office.

We set off for the church. Screwy strode along behind me, pale and miserable as an autumn day. Contrary to expectations, he was deeply distressed by the conversation in which he had attempted to portray himself as ‘objective’.

In the church they were ringing the bells. A dense and apparently endless crowd was descending the porch steps and above it rose ancient banners and the dark cross that headed the procession. The sun played gaily on the priests’ vestments and the icon of the Holy Virgin gave off dazzling rays.

‘There’s our lot,’ said the doctor, pointing to our local beau monde that had detached itself from the crowd and was standing to one side.

‘Your lot, not mine,’ I said.

‘It’s all the same… let’s go and join them.’

I went up to my friends and exchanged bows. Kalinin the JP, a tall, broad-shouldered man with a grey beard and crab-like, bulging eyes, stood in front of everyone, whispering something in his daughter’s ear. Pretending not to notice me, he did not make one movement in acknowledgement of the ‘general’ salutation I aimed in his direction.

‘Goodbye, my sweet little angel!’ he said tearfully, kissing his daughter’s pale forehead. ‘Drive home on your own – I’ll be back by evening. My visits won’t take very long.’

After kissing his daughter once more and sweetly smiling at the beau monde, he frowned grimly and turned sharply on one heel towards a peasant with a village constable’s badge who was standing behind him.

‘Will I ever get my carriage and horses?’ he said hoarsely.

The constable shuddered and waved his arms.

‘Watch out!’ Kalinin shouted.

The crowd that was following the procession made way and the JP’s carriage drove up to Kalinin in great style, the bells of the horses jingling away. Kalinin climbed in, bowed majestically, alarming the crowd with his ‘Watch out!!’, and disappeared from view without so much as a glance at me.

‘What a majestic swine!’ I whispered in the doctor’s ear. ‘Let’s get out of here!’

‘But surely you want a word with Nadezhda Nikolayevna?’ Pavel Ivanych asked.

‘No, I must be off… I haven’t the time…’

The doctor gave me an angry look, sighed and turned away. I performed a ‘general’ bow and went over to the booths. As I fought my way through the dense crowd I turned round to glance at the JP’s daughter. She followed me with her eyes and seemed to be trying to see if I could bear her pure, penetrating gaze, so full of bitter resentment and reproach.

‘But why?’ her eyes were saying.

Something stirred within me and I felt pained and ashamed of my stupid behaviour. Suddenly I had the urge to go back and, with all the strength of my gentle (and so far not completely corrupted) soul, to caress and fondle that girl who loved me so passionately and whom I had so dreadfully insulted, and to tell her that it was not I who was to blame, but my damned pride, which prevented me from living, from breathing and from taking the decisive step. That stupid, foppish pride of mine, so brimful of vanity! Could such a shallow person as myself hold out an olive branch, when I knew and could see very well that the eyes of the local gossips and sinister old crones³⁴ were watching my every movement? Rather let them shower her with scornful looks and smiles than lose faith in that ‘inflexibility’ and pride of mine, which silly women found so pleasing.

When I discussed earlier with Pavel Ivanych the reasons that made me suddenly stop visiting the Kalinins, I was being dishonest and quite inaccurate. I concealed the real reason – I concealed it because I was ashamed of its triviality. This reason, as flimsy as gossamer, was as follows. On my last visit, after I had handed Zorka to the coachman, the following phrase reached my ears as I was entering the Kalinins’ house:

‘Nadya, where are you? Your fiancé’s arrived!’

These words were spoken by her father, the JP, who had probably not expected me to hear him. But hear him I did and my vanity was aroused.

‘Me a fiancé?’ I asked myself. ‘Who allowed you to call me a fiancé? And on what basis?’

And something seemed to snap deep inside me… My pride welled up and I forgot all that I had remembered when riding to the Kalinins… I forgot that I had captivated the girl and that I in turn had been so taken with her that I was unable to spend a single evening without her company. I forgot her lovely eyes that never left my memory day and night, her kind smile, her melodious voice. I forgot those quiet summer evenings which would never be repeated, either for me or for her… Everything crumbled under the pressure of devilish arrogance, aroused by that stupid phrase of her simpleton father. Infuriated, I had swept out of the house, mounted Zorka and galloped off, vowing to be revenged on Kalinin, who had dared enlist me as fiancé for his daughter without my permission.

‘Besides, Voznesensky’s in love with her,’ I thought, trying to justify my sudden departure as I rode home. ‘He started buzzing around her before me and he was already considered her fiancé when I first met her. I won’t cramp his style!’

From that time onwards I never set foot in Kalinin’s house again, although there were moments when I suffered from longings for Nadya and my heart was yearning, simply yearning, for a renewal of the past. But the whole district knew about the break that had occurred, knew that I had ‘cut and run’ from marriage. But my vanity could not make any concessions!

Who can tell? If Kalinin hadn’t used that phrase and if I hadn’t been so foolishly vain and touchy, perhaps there would have been no need for me to look back, or for her to look at me with such eyes. But better such eyes, better that feeling of injury and reproach than what I saw in them several months after the meeting in the church at Tenevo. The sadness that was shining now in the depths of those black eyes was only the beginning of that terrible disaster which wiped the girl off the face of the earth, like a sudden, onrushing train. It was like comparing little flowers to the berries that were already ripening in order to pour awful venom into her frail body and pining heart.

After leaving Tenevo, I took the same road I had walked along that morning. From the sun I could tell that it was already noon. As they had done earlier that morning, peasant carts and landowners’ carriages seduced my ears with their creaking and the metallic jingle of their bells. Once again gardener Franz drove past with his sour eyes and touched his cap. His revolting face jarred on me, but this time the disagreeable impression from meeting him was erased at one stroke by the appearance of Olenka, the forester’s daughter, who had caught up with me in her cumbersome wagonette.

‘Give me a lift!’ I shouted to her.

She nodded gaily at me and stopped the vehicle. I sat beside her and the wagonette rumbled noisily along the road that ran like a bright strip across a two-mile cutting in the Tenevo forest. For two minutes we silently surveyed each other.

‘How pretty she really is!’ I thought, glancing at her slender neck and plump little chin. ‘If I were asked to choose between Nadenka and her I’d settle for this one. She’s more natural, fresher, her nature is more expansive and happy-go-lucky. If she fell into the right hands one could do a lot with her! As for the other one, she’s so gloomy, so dreamy, so cerebral!’

Two pieces of linen and several parcels were lying at Olenka’s feet.

‘So many purchases!’ I said. ‘Why do you need so much linen?’

‘I don’t really need all of it right now,’ Olenka replied. ‘I just bought it, amongst other things. You just can’t imagine the running around I’ve had to do! Today I spent a whole hour walking all over the fair and tomorrow I have to go shopping in town. And then there’s the sewing on top of it. Listen – do you know any women who could come and do some sewing for me?’

‘No, I don’t. But why did you have to go and buy so much? Why all this sewing? For heaven’s sake, your family’s not so big, is it? You can count them on one hand!’

‘How strange you men are! You understand nothing, you’d be angry enough if your wife came to you dressed like a slut right after getting married. I know Pyotr Yegorych isn’t hard up, but still, it would be a bit embarrassing if I didn’t look like a decent housewife right from the start.’

‘What’s Pyotr Yegorych got to do with it?’

‘Hm… you’re laughing – as if you didn’t know!’ Olenka said, blushing slightly.

‘You, young lady, are talking in riddles.’

‘Surely you must have heard? I’m going to marry Pyotr Yegorych!’

‘Marry?’ I asked in a startled voice, opening my eyes wide. ‘Which Pyotr Yegorych?’

‘For heaven’s sake! Why… Urbenin!’

I glanced at her blushing, smiling face.

‘You… getting married… to Urbenin? I see you like to have your little joke!’

‘It’s not a joke at all… I really don’t see what’s so surprising or peculiar about it,’ Olenka said, pouting.

A minute passed in silence. I looked at that beautiful girl, at her young, almost childish face and I was amazed – how could she make such awful jokes? At once I pictured that elderly, fat, red-faced Urbenin standing next to her with his protruding ears and rough hands, whose touch could only scratch a young female body that had just begun to live. Surely the thought of such a sight must scare this pretty, sylvan fairy, who could look at the sky with romantic eyes when lightning flashed across it and thunder angrily rumbled. I was really frightened!

‘True, he’s on the elderly side,’ Olenka sighed, ‘but then he loves me. His love is the reliable sort.’

‘It’s not a question of reliability, but of happiness.’

‘I’ll be happy with him. He’s not short of money, thank God. He’s not some sort of beggar, but a gentleman. Of course, I’m not in love with him, but are only those who marry for love happy? I know all about these love matches!’

‘My child!’ I exclaimed, looking at her bright eyes in horror. ‘When did you manage to stuff your poor little head with this terrible worldly wisdom? Granted you’re only telling me jokes, but where did you learn to joke so crudely, like an old man! Where? When?’

Olenka looked at me in amazement and shrugged her shoulders. ‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about,’ she said. ‘You don’t like it when a young girl marries an old man. True?’

Olenka suddenly blushed, her chin twitched nervously and without waiting for a reply she hastened to add:

‘You don’t like it? Then please go into the forest yourself, into that boredom, where there’s nothing but merlins and a mad father, sitting and twiddling your thumbs until a young fiancé turns up! You liked it there that evening, but you should take a look in winter – then you’re glad that death is round the corner.’

‘Oh, all this is so silly, Olenka, so immature, so stupid! If you’re not joking then… I really don’t know what to say, really I don’t! You’d better say nothing and not pollute the air with your little tongue! In your position I would have hanged myself on seven aspens, but you calmly go and buy linen… and you’re smiling! A-ah!’

‘At least he’ll get treatment for my father with the money he’s got,’ she whispered.

‘How much do you need for your father’s treatment?’ I shouted. ‘Take the money from me! A hundred? Two hundred? A thousand? You’re lying, Olenka! It’s not treatment for your father that you need!’

The news conveyed by Olenka excited me so much that I didn’t notice that our wagonette had passed my village, driven into the Count’s courtyard and stopped at the manager’s front door. When I saw the children running out and the smiling face of Urbenin, who had jumped up to help Olenka out, I leapt from the wagonette and ran into the Count’s house without even saying goodbye. Here some fresh news awaited me.

‘Well timed! Well timed!’ the Count greeted me, scratching my face with his long, prickly moustache. ‘You couldn’t have picked a better time! We’ve only this minute sat down to lunch. Of course, you’ve met… perhaps you’ve had more than one little confrontation in the legal department… ha ha!’

With both hands the Count pointed out two gentlemen sitting in soft armchairs and eating cold tongue. One of them I had the pleasure of recognizing as Kalinin, the JP. But the other, a little grey-haired old gentleman with a large, moon-shaped bald patch, was my good friend Babayev, a rich landowner who held the position of permanent member in our district council. After I had exchanged bows I looked at Kalinin in astonishment. I knew how much he hated the Count and the rumours he had spread in the district about the man at whose house he was now tucking into tongue and peas with such relish and drinking ten-year-old liqueurs. How could any self-respecting man explain this visit of his? The JP caught my glance – and most likely he clearly guessed its meaning.

‘I’ve devoted today to visits,’ he told me. ‘I’ve been running around the whole district. And, as you can see, I’ve also dropped in on His Excellency.’

Ilya brought the fourth course. I sat down, drank a glass of vodka and started lunch.

‘It’s bad, Your Excellency… very bad!’ Kalinin said, continuing the conversation which had been interrupted by my arrival. ‘For us small fry it’s no sin, but you’re rich, a brilliant celebrity – it’s a sin to neglect things as you do.’

‘That’s true, it’s a sin,’ agreed Babayev.

‘What’s all this about?’ I asked.

‘Nikolay Ignatych has given me a good idea,’ the Count said, nodding towards the JP. ‘Here he comes visiting me, sits down to lunch and I complain to him that I’m bored…’

‘Yes, he complains he’s bored,’ Kalinin interrupted the Count. ‘He’s bored, miserable, this and that. In short, he’s disenchanted. A kind of Onegin.³⁵ “But you yourself are to blame, Your Excellency,” I say. “And why is that?” Very simple. “You,” I tell him, “should do a spot of work to avoid being bored, you should busy yourself with farming. Farming is excellent, wonderful.” He replies that he intends taking it up, but he’s still bored. He lacks – in a manner of speaking – a stimulating, uplifting element. He lacks… what shall I say?… er… powerful sensations!’

‘Well, what sort of idea did you give him?’

‘As a matter of fact, I didn’t give him any idea, but simply ventured to rebuke His Excellency. “How is it, Your Excellency,” I say, “that such a young, educated, brilliant man can shut himself off like this? Surely it’s a sin? You never go anywhere, you’re like some old man or hermit. How much effort would it take to arrange social gatherings, at-homes, so to speak?” I ask.’

‘Why should he give “at-homes”,’ I asked.

‘You ask why? Firstly, His Excellency would get acquainted with local society if he held at-homes, he’d learn all about it, so to speak. Secondly, society in turn would have the honour of becoming more closely acquainted with one of our richest landowners. There would be a mutual exchange of ideas, so to speak, conversation, conviviality. Come to think of it, how many educated young ladies, how many gallants we have among us! What musical evenings, dances, picnics could be arranged – just think of it! The rooms here are enormous, there’s summer-houses in the garden, and so on. Such amateur dramatics and concerts could be given that were never dreamt of in this province. Yes, I swear it. Judge for yourselves! And now all this is almost going for naught, buried in the ground. But then… you must only try and understand! If I had His Excellency’s means I’d show you all how to live! And he says he’s bored! My God, just listening to him makes me laugh… ashamed even!’

And Kalinin blinked – he wanted to show that he really did feel ashamed.

‘That’s all perfectly true,’ the Count said, getting up and thrusting his hands into his pockets. ‘I could give superb evenings… concerts, private theatricals – all that could in fact be arranged most charmingly. What’s more, these evenings would not only amuse society, they would have an educational influence as well! Isn’t that so?’

‘Oh yes,’ I agreed. ‘The moment our young ladies see your mustachioed physiognomy they’d be immediately saturated with the spirit of civilization.’

‘You’re always joking, Seryozha,’ said the Count, taking offence. ‘But you never give me friendly advice! Everything’s a joke with you! It’s time, my friend, you dropped these student habits of yours!’

The Count started pacing from corner to corner and describing to me in lengthy, boring terms the benefit that his parties might bestow on humanity. Music, literature, drama, riding, hunting. Hunting alone could bring together all the local elite!

‘We’ll talk about it later!’ the Count told Kalinin, taking leave of him after lunch.

‘So, if I may make so bold, the district has grounds for hope, Your Excellency?’ the JP asked.

‘Of course, of course… I’ll work on the idea, I’ll make an effort… I’m delighted, absolutely delighted. You can tell everyone that.’

One should have seen the utter bliss written all over the JP’s face when he took his seat in his carriage and said: ‘Let’s go!’ He was so pleased that he even forgot our disagreements and when we parted called me ‘dear chap’ and firmly shook my hand.

After the visitors had left, the Count and I sat at the table and continued our lunch. We lunched until seven o’clock in the evening, when the crockery was removed from the table and dinner was served. Young drunkards are expert at whiling away the long intervals between meals! We drank continuously, taking small nibbles in between, which enabled us to preserve our appetites, which would have been lost had we stopped eating altogether.

‘Did you send some money to anyone today?’ I asked the Count, remembering the packets of one-hundred rouble notes I’d seen that morning in the Tenevo post office.

‘To no one.’

‘Can you please tell me – is your new friend – what’s his name… that… Kazimir Kaetanych or Kaetan Kazimirovich… is he wealthy?’

‘No, Seryozha. He’s an out-and-out pauper. But what a fine soul he has, what a heart! It’s not right that you should speak contemptuously of him and… bully him. You must learn to be discerning with people, dear chap! Shall we have another glass?’

Pshekhotsky returned towards dinner-time. When he saw me sitting at the table drinking he frowned and after hovering for a while around our table considered it prudent to retire to his room. He declined dinner, pleading a headache, but he offered no objection when the Count advised him to have dinner in his room, in bed.

Urbenin made his entry during the second course. I barely recognized him. His broad, red face was beaming with pleasure. A contented smile seemed to be playing even on his protruding ears and on the thick fingers with which he constantly kept adjusting his dashing new tie.

‘One of our cows is poorly, Your Excellency. I sent for our own vet but he seems to have gone away somewhere. Should we send for the vet in town, Your Excellency? If I send for him he won’t take any notice and he won’t come, but it would be a different matter if you wrote to him. It’s probably something trivial, on the other hand it might be serious.’

‘Very well, I’ll write to him,’ muttered the Count.

‘My congratulations, Pyotr Yegorych,’ I said, standing up and offering the estate manager my hand.

‘On what?’

‘You’re getting married, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, fancy that – he’s getting married,’ said the Count, winking at the blushing Urbenin. ‘What do you think of him! Ha ha! He kept it all hush-hush and then suddenly – right out of the blue! And do you know who he’s marrying? Both of us guessed it that evening, didn’t we? We, Pyotr Yegorych, had decided even then that something highly improper was brewing in your rascally heart! And when Sergey Petrovich looked at you and Olenka he even said that nice fellow’s smitten! Ha ha! Sit down and have some dinner with us, Pyotr Yegorych!’

Urbenin gingerly and respectfully took his seat and motioned to Ilya with his eyes to bring him some soup.

I poured him a glass of vodka.

‘I don’t drink,’ he said.

‘Rubbish! You drink more than we do!’

‘I used to drink, sir, but not any more,’ the manager smiled. ‘I don’t need to drink now, I’ve no reason to. Thank God everything’s turned out so well, everything’s settled to my heart’s desire – even better than I could ever have hoped.’

‘Well, you could at least drink this to celebrate,’ I said, pouring him some sherry.

‘Well, perhaps I will. I used to drink a great deal, in fact. Now I can admit it in front of His Excellency. I used to drink from dawn to dusk. The moment I got up my first thought was drink. Well, naturally, I’d go straight to the cabinet. But now, thank God, I’ve no reason to drown my sorrows in vodka!’

Urbenin downed the sherry. I poured him another. He drank that too and imperceptibly grew tipsy.

‘I just can’t believe it,’ he said, suddenly laughing happily, like a child. ‘As I look at this ring I recall her words when she gave her consent – and I still can’t believe it! It’s even quite funny – how could someone of my age and with my looks ever have dreamed that this worthy girl wouldn’t turn her nose up at becoming my… the mother of my little orphans? Really, she’s a beauty, as you saw for yourselves, an angel in the flesh! It’s a sheer miracle!… Is that some more sherry you’ve poured me? Well, why not, for the very last time. I used to drink to drown my sorrows, now I’m drinking to celebrate. And how I suffered, gentlemen, what I went through! I first saw her a year ago and – would you believe it? – since then I didn’t have one good night’s sleep, not one day passed without my drowning that silly weakness of mine in vodka, without my blaming myself for my stupidity. I would look at her through the window and admire her – and I’d tear my hair out. I could have hanged myself at the time… But thank God I took a chance. I proposed and – you know – you could have knocked me down with a feather! Ha ha! I listened and I just couldn’t believe my ears. She said: “I consent”, but I thought she said: “Go to hell, you old fogey!” But afterwards, when she kissed me, I was certain…’

As he recalled the first time he kissed poetic Olenka the fifty-year-old Urbenin closed his eyes and blushed like a schoolboy. I found all this disgusting.

‘Gentlemen,’ he said, looking at us with happy, friendly eyes. ‘Why don’t you get married? Why are you wasting your lives, throwing them out of the window? Why are you avoiding the greatest blessing for any mortal on this earth? Surely the pleasure you derive from debauchery can’t provide a fraction of what a quiet family life might offer! You’re a young man, Your Excellency. And you too, Sergey Petrovich. I’m happy now and – as God is my witness – I’m so very fond of you both! Please forgive this stupid advice of mine, but I only want both of you to be happy. Why don’t you get married? Family life is a blessing… it’s every man’s duty!’

The blissful, melting look of that elderly man who was about to marry a young girl and who was now advising us to exchange our dissipated existence for a quiet family life became too much to bear.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘family life is a duty. I agree with you. So, you’re fulfilling this duty for the second time?’

‘Yes, for the second time. In general, I like family life. To be a bachelor or widower is only half a life for me. Whatever you may say, gentlemen, matrimony is a wonderful thing!’

‘Well, of course… even when the husband is almost three times his wife’s age?’

Urbenin flushed. The hand bearing the spoonful of soup to his lips trembled and the soup spilled back into the plate.

‘I understand what you wish to say, Sergey Petrovich,’ he mumbled. ‘Thank you for being so frank. And in fact I do ask myself: isn’t this all rather low? Yes, I’m going through hell! But why should I question myself, make problems for myself when I feel constantly happy, when I can forget my old age and ugliness… everything! Homo sum,³⁶ Sergey Petrovich! And when the question of age difference enters my old noddle for one fleeting moment, I’m not lost for a reply and I calm myself as best I can. I feel that I’ve made Olenka happy, that I’ve given her a father and my children a mother. However, it’s all rather like in a novel… my head’s going round! You shouldn’t have made me drink all that sherry!’

Urbenin got up, wiped his face with his napkin and sat down again. A minute later he downed another sherry at one gulp, gave me a long, pleading look as if asking for protection – and then his shoulders suddenly began to shake and he began sobbing like a child.

‘It’s nothing, sir, nothing,’ he muttered, trying to overcome his tears. ‘Now don’t you worry. After what you said my heart was filled with some vague forebodings. But it’s nothing, sir.’

Urbenin’s forebodings were realized so soon that I hardly have time to change my pen and start a new page. With the next chapter my tranquil muse will exchange the serene expression on her face for one of anger and grief. The Preface is finished and the drama begins. The criminal will of man now comes into its own.

X

I remember a fine Sunday morning. Through the windows of the Count’s church the diaphanous blue sky was visible and a dull shaft of light, where clouds of incense gaily played, lay across the church, from its painted cupola right down to the floor. Through the windows and doors came the songs of swallows and starlings. One sparrow, clearly a very bold fellow, flew in through the doorway; after circling and chirping over our heads and dipping several times into the beam of light, it flew out of the window. There was singing in the church too… The choir sang harmoniously, with feeling, and with that same enthusiasm of which our Ukrainian singers are capable when they feel that they are the heroes of the moment and that all eyes are constantly on them. Most of the tunes were cheerful and lively, like those tiny patches of sunlight that played on the walls and the clothes of the congregation. Despite the cheerful wedding melodies, my ear seemed to detect a note of melancholy in that unpolished, yet soft tenor voice, as if the singer felt sorry that pretty, romantic Olenka was standing beside that ponderous, bear-like has-been, Urbenin. And it was not only the tenor who felt sorry at the spectacle of that ill-matched couple. Even an idiot could have read pity on those numerous faces that filled my field of vision, however hard they tried to appear cheerful and unconcerned.

Attired in my new dress suit, I stood behind Olenka and held the garland over her head. I was pale and not feeling too well… yesterday’s carousal and outing on the lake had given me a splitting headache and I constantly had to check that my hand wasn’t trembling as it held the garland. Deep down I felt miserable and apprehensive, as if I were in a forest on a rainy, autumn night. I felt annoyed, repelled, regretful, I felt a nagging anxiety, as if I were suffering pangs of conscience. There in the depths, at the very bottom of my heart, dwelt a little demon that stubbornly, persistently whispered to me that if Olenka’s marriage to that clumsy Urbenin was a sin, then I was guilty of it. Where could such thoughts have come from? Couldn’t I have saved that silly young girl from the unbelievable risk she had taken, from her undoubted mistake?

‘Who knows?’ whispered the little demon. ‘You should know this better than me!’

I’d seen many unequal marriages in my time, I’d stood more than once before Pukirev’s picture,³⁷ read many novels based on disparity between husband and wife. Finally, I knew all about physiology, which peremptorily punishes unequal marriages – but not once in my life had I experienced such an appalling state of mind, that I could not shake off, however hard I tried, now as I stood behind Olenka, fulfilling a best man’s duties. If my heart was troubled by regret alone, then why hadn’t I felt this regret earlier, when I attended other weddings?

‘It’s not regret,’ whispered the little demon. ‘It’s jealousy!’

But one can be jealous only of those one loves – and did I love that girl in red? If I were to love all the girls I met living under the moon, then my heart would not be large enough and I would really have been overreaching myself!

At the back of the church, just by the door, behind the churchwarden’s cupboard, stood my friend Count Karneyev, selling candles. His hair was smoothed down and heavily greased, and it gave off a narcotic, stifling smell of perfume. Today he looked such a dear that I couldn’t resist remarking when I greeted him:

‘Aleksey! You look the perfect quadrille dancer today!’

He escorted everyone who came in or out with a sugary smile and I could hear the clumsy compliments with which he rewarded every lady who bought a candle from him. He, that spoilt darling of fortune, who never kept brass coins and who had no idea how to use them, was constantly dropping five-and three-copeck coins on the floor. Nearby, leaning on the cupboard, stood the majestic Kalinin, with the Order of Stanislas around his neck. His face was radiant and shining – he was glad that his idea about ‘at-homes’ had fallen on such fertile soil and was already beginning to bear fruit. In his heart of hearts he was showering Urbenin with a thousand thanks: although the wedding was an absurdity, it was easy to seize upon it as an opportunity to arrange the first ‘at-home’.

Vain Olenka must have been in her seventh heaven. From the nuptial lectern, right up to the main doors, stretched two rows of female representatives from our local ‘flower-garden’. The lady guests were dressed as they would have been if the Count himself were getting married – one couldn’t have wished for more elegant outfits. The majority of these ladies were aristocrats – not one priest’s wife, not one shopkeeper’s wife. There were ladies to whom Olenka had never before thought that she even had the right to curtsy. Olenka’s groom was an estate manager, merely a privileged servant, but that could not have wounded her vanity. He was of the gentry and owned a mortgaged estate in the neighbouring district. His father had been district marshal of the nobility and he himself had already been a JP for nine years in his native district. What more could an ambitious daughter of a personal nobleman have wanted? Even the fact that her best man was celebrated throughout the whole province as a bon vivant³⁸ and a Don Juan could tickle her pride: all the ladies were ogling him. He was as impressive as forty thousand best men put together³⁹ and – more significant than anything else – had not refused to be best man to a simple girl like her, when it was a known fact that he had even refused aristocratic ladies when they invited him to be their best man!

But vain Olenka did not rejoice. She was as pale as the linen she had recently brought back from Tenevo fair. The hand which held the candle trembled slightly, now and then her chin quivered. Her eyes were filled with a kind of stupor, as if she had suddenly been surprised or frightened by something. There was not a trace of that gaiety that had shone in her eyes when, even as recently as yesterday, she had run around the garden and enthusiastically discussed the kind of wallpaper she would like to have in her drawing-room, on what days she would receive visitors, and so on. Now her face was far too serious – much more than the solemnity of the occasion demanded.

Urbenin was wearing a new dress suit. Although he was decently attired, his hair was brushed the way Orthodox Russians used to brush their hair back in 1812. As usual, he was red-faced and serious. His eyes seemed to be praying and the signs of the cross he made after each ‘Lord have mercy’ were not performed mechanically.

Behind me stood Urbenin’s children from his first marriage – the schoolboy Grisha and a fair-haired little girl called Sasha. They were gazing at their father’s red neck and protruding ears, and their faces resembled question marks. They just couldn’t understand what their father wanted with that woman and why he was taking her into their house. Sasha was merely surprised, but fourteen-year-old Grisha was frowning and scowling. He would definitely have said ‘no’ if his father had asked his permission to marry.

The wedding ceremony was performed with particular solemnity. Three priests and two deacons were officiating. The service was long – so long that my arms grew weary from holding the garland, and the ladies, who normally like to witness weddings, let their eyes wander from the bridal pair. The rural dean read the prayers slowly, in measured tones, without omitting a single one. The choir sang an extremely long hymn from their music books. Taking the opportunity to show off his deep bass voice, the clerk read from the Acts of the Apostles with a ‘doubly emphatic drawl’. But finally the senior priest took the garland from my hand, the couple kissed. The guests grew excited, the regular rows broke up, the sound of congratulations, kisses and sighing filled the air. Radiant and smiling, Urbenin took his young bride on his arm and we all went out into the fresh air.

If anyone who was with me in the church should find this account incomplete and not totally accurate, let him ascribe any omission to my headache and the above-mentioned depression that prevented me from observing and taking note of the proceedings. Of course, had I known at the time that I would be writing a novel, I wouldn’t have gazed at the floor as I did that morning and I would have ignored my headache completely!

Fate sometimes allows itself to play bitter, nasty tricks. The bridal pair had barely left the church when they were greeted by an unwelcome and unexpected surprise. As the wedding procession – so gay in the sunshine with hundreds of different tints and colours – was making its way from the church to the Count’s house, Olenka suddenly took a step backwards, stopped and tugged her husband’s elbow so violently that he staggered.

‘They’ve let him out!’ she cried out loud, looking at me in horror.

Poor girl! Her insane father, the forester Skvortsov, was running down the avenue to meet her. Waving his arms and stumbling, rolling his eyes like one demented, he made quite a disagreeable spectacle. Even this would probably have been acceptable had he not been wearing his cotton-print dressing-gown and bedroom slippers, whose decrepitude clashed terribly with his daughter’s luxurious wedding-gown. His face was sleepy, his hair fluttered about in the wind, his nightshirt was undone…

‘Olenka!’ he babbled as he approached the couple. ‘Why have you left me?’

Olenka blushed and gave the smiling ladies a sidelong glance. The poor girl was burning with shame.

‘Mitka didn’t lock the doors!’ the forester continued, turning to us. ‘Do you think burglars would have any trouble getting in? Last year they stole the samovar from the kitchen and now she wants us to be robbed again!’

‘I don’t know who let him out!’ Urbenin whispered to me. ’I gave orders for him to be locked in. Sergey Petrovich, my dear chap, please do us a favour and get us out of this mess somehow!’

‘I know who stole your samovar,’ I told the forester. ‘Come on, I’ll show you.’

Putting my arm around Skvortsov’s waist, I led him towards the church. After taking him into the churchyard I talked to him, and when (according to my calculations) the wedding procession should have arrived back at the house, I left him, without showing him where his stolen samovar was.

However unexpected and extraordinary that encounter with the madman was, it was nevertheless soon forgotten. A new surprise that fate had in store for the couple was even weirder…

XI

An hour later we were all sitting down and having dinner at long tables.

Anyone who was used to the cobwebs, mildew and the uninhibited whooping of gipsies in the Count’s apartments must have found it strange looking at that everyday, pedestrian crowd, now shattering the silence of those ancient, deserted rooms with its banal chatter. That gaily coloured, noisy crowd resembled a flock of starlings that had suddenly flown down to rest for a fleeting moment in a neglected cemetery or (and may that noble bird forgive the comparison!) a flight of migratory storks that had come to roost in their twilight days on the ruins of an abandoned castle.

I sat there, full of loathing for that crowd which was inspecting the decaying wealth of Count Karneyev with such idle curiosity. Those mosaic walls, the moulded ceilings, the luxurious, splendid Persian carpets and rococo furniture aroused delight and amazement. The Count’s mustachioed face continually grinned with a self-satisfied smile. He accepted the rapturous flattery of his guests as something well deserved, although in fact he had not contributed one bit to the riches and luxury of his neglected mansion. On the contrary, he deserved the bitterest reproaches – contempt even – for his barbaric, grossly indifferent attitude to all the wealth assembled by his father and forefathers, which had taken decades rather than days to accumulate! Only the spiritually blind or poor could fail to see on every grey marble slab, in every painting, in every dark corner of the Count’s garden, the sweat, tears and calloused hands of the people whose children now sheltered in those miserable little huts in the Count’s wretched village. And among that vast assembly now seated at the wedding table – wealthy, independent people whom nothing was preventing from uttering the harshest truth – there wasn’t a soul who would have informed the Count that his self-satisfied smile was stupid and inappropriate. Everyone found it necessary to smile obsequiously and sing his praises. If this was ‘elementary’ politeness (we love to lump the blame for many things on politeness and propriety) then I would have preferred ill-mannered louts who eat with their hands, take bread from someone else’s plate at table and blow their noses between two fingers, to those fops.

Urbenin was smiling, but he had his own reasons for that. He smiled obsequiously and respectfully – and happily, like a child. His broad smile was a substitute for the happiness of a dog – a loyal, affectionate dog that had been petted and made happy, and which was wagging its tail now, cheerfully and devotedly, as a token of gratitude.

Like Risler Senior in Alphonse Daudet’s novel,⁴⁰ beaming and rubbing his hands with pleasure, he gaped at his loving wife and was so overcome with emotion that he could not resist asking himself question after question.

‘Who would have thought that this young beauty would fall in love with an old fogey like me? Surely she could have found someone a little younger and more refined? A woman’s heart passes all understanding!’

And he even had the nerve to turn to me and blurt out:

‘Just think – the times we live in! He he! When an old man can carry off such a beautiful fairy from under the noses of young men! Why didn’t you keep your eyes open!? He he! The young men of today aren’t what they were!’

Unable to stem the flood of gratitude that was bursting from his broad chest, he kept leaping up and holding out his glass to the Count’s. In a voice that was trembling with emotion he said: ‘You know how I feel towards you, Your Excellency. You’ve done so much for me today that my fondness for you seems a mere nothing, a trifle. What have I done to deserve such consideration from Your Excellency, such concern for my happiness? Only counts and bankers celebrate their weddings in such style! Such luxury, so many distinguished guests! Ah, what can I say? Believe me, Your Excellency, I’ll never forget you, just as I’ll never forget the best, the happiest day of my life!’

And so on. Evidently Olenka didn’t care for her husband’s flamboyant show of respect. She was noticeably pained by his speechifying, which produced smiles on the diners’ faces, and she even seemed ashamed of it. Despite the glass of champagne she had drunk she was as gloomy and miserable as ever: there was that same pallor as in the church, that same dread in her eyes. She said nothing, replied lazily to all questions, forced herself to smile at the Count’s jokes and barely touched those expensive dishes. As much as Urbenin (who was gradually getting drunk) considered himself the happiest of mortals, so her pretty little face was unhappy. Just looking at it made me feel sorry, and to avoid the sight of that little face I tried to fix my eyes on my plate.

How could this sadness of hers be explained? Was regret beginning to gnaw away at that poor girl? Or perhaps she was so vain that she expected even more pomp and ceremony?

When I glanced up at her during the second course I was so upset that my heart really began to ache for her. As she answered one of the Count’s stupid questions, that poor girl tried hard to swallow. Sobs welled up in her throat. Instead of taking her napkin from her mouth she timidly, like a small, frightened animal, kept looking at us to see whether we had noticed how close she was to tears.

‘Why are you looking so sour-faced today?’ asked the Count. ‘Hey, Pyotr Yegorych, it’s your fault! Now please be good enough to cheer your wife up. Gentlemen, I demand a kiss. Ha ha! Not for myself, of course, but… I want them to kiss each other. Oh, it’s so sad!’

‘So sad!’ repeated Kalinin.

Smiling all over his red face, Urbenin stood up and blinked. Prompted by the guests’ whooping and exclamations, Olenka rose slightly and offered her motionless, lifeless lips to Urbenin. He kissed her. Olenka pressed her lips tightly together, as if afraid they might be kissed a second time and glanced at me. Most probably she didn’t like the way I looked at her: taking note of this she suddenly blushed, reached for her handkerchief and started blowing her nose in an attempt to hide her terrible confusion one way or the other. It occurred to me that she felt ashamed in front of me, ashamed of that kiss, of her marriage.

‘Why should I worry about you?’ I thought. But at the same time I didn’t let her out of my sight as I tried to find the reason for her confusion.

My gaze was too much for the poor girl. True, the blushes of shame soon vanished from her face, but then tears poured from her eyes – real tears, that I had never seen before. With her handkerchief pressed to her face she stood up and ran out of the dining-room.

‘Olga Nikolayevna has a headache,’ I hurriedly explained her exit. ‘She was already complaining about it this morning.’

‘Come off it, old man!’ joked the Count. ‘Headaches have nothing to do with it. It was the kiss that was to blame and embarrassed her. Ladies and gentlemen! I demand that the bridegroom be sternly reprimanded! He hasn’t trained his wife in the art of kissing. Ha ha!’

Delighted by the Count’s witticism, the guests burst out laughing. But it wasn’t right of them to laugh…

Five minutes, ten minutes, passed and still the young bride did not return. Everything became quiet. Even the Count stopped joking. Olenka’s absence was all the more noticeable because she had departed so suddenly, without saying one word. Not to mention the question of etiquette, which, more than anything else, had been badly breached, Olenka had left the table immediately after the kiss, as if she were angry at having been forced to kiss her husband. One could not assume that she had left out of embarrassment. It’s possible to be embarrassed for a minute, for two minutes, but not for an eternity, which the first ten minutes of her absence appeared to be. So many evil, nasty thoughts must have flashed through the men’s tipsy heads, so much slanderous talk was already on the lips of those charming ladies! The bride had risen from the table and left – what a dramatic and effective scene for a novel of provincial high society!

Urbenin started anxiously looking around.

‘It’s nerves,’ he muttered. ‘Or perhaps part of her dress has come undone. Who can understand them, these women! She’ll be back in a jiffy, any minute now…’

But after another ten minutes had passed and she still hadn’t appeared, he looked at me with such unhappy, imploring eyes that I felt sorry for him.

‘What if I went to look for her?’ his eyes said. ‘Will you help me out of this dreadful mess, old chap? You’re the most intelligent, the boldest and most resourceful man here – please help me!’

I noted the entreaty in his unhappy eyes and decided to help him. How I helped him the reader will discover later. All I shall say now is that the bear in Krylov’s fable⁴¹ that did a hermit a good turn, loses (in my opinion) all its animal majesty, pales and turns into innocent infusoria,⁴² when I remind myself of the ‘obliging fool’ role I played. The only resemblance between myself and the bear consisted in both of us going to help someone, with sincere motives, without anticipating any nasty consequences as a result. But the difference between us was enormous: the stone that I hurled at Urbenin’s head was much heavier.

‘Where’s Olga Nikolayevna?’ I asked the footman who was serving me some salad.

‘She’s gone into the garden, sir,’ he replied.

‘This is simply unheard of, mesdames,’ I told the ladies in a jocular tone of voice. ‘The bride’s left and my wine’s turned sour! I must go and find her and bring her back, even if all her teeth are aching! A best man is like an official – and this one’s going to demonstrate his authority!’

I stood up and to the loud applause of my friend, the Count, went from the dining-room into the garden. The direct, burning rays of the afternoon sun beat on my head that was inflamed with wine. Suffocating heat and humid air breathed right into my face. I walked haphazardly along one of the side paths, whistling some kind of tune and giving ‘full steam ahead’ to my investigatory capabilities as a simple detective. I checked all the bushes, summer-houses, grottoes and, just as I was beginning to feel pangs of regret at having turned right instead of left, I suddenly heard a strange noise. Someone was either laughing or crying. These sounds came from a grotto that I had left until last. I quickly entered and was immediately enveloped in dampness, the smell of mildew, mushrooms and lime – and then I saw the object of my search.

She was standing there, leaning against a wooden column that was covered in black moss, looking at me with eyes full of horror and despair, and tearing her hair. Tears poured from her eyes as from a squeezed sponge.

‘What have I done?’ she muttered. ‘What have I done?’

‘Yes, Olenka, what have you done?’ I said, standing behind her with arms folded.

‘Why did I marry him? Where were my eyes? Where were my brains?’

‘Yes, Olya… the step you took is hard to explain. To put it down to inexperience is too lenient, to explain it by depravity – that I don’t want to do!’

‘Only today did I come to understand – only today! Why didn’t I understand this yesterday? Now everything is irrevocable, all is lost! Everything, everything! And I could have married a man I love and who loves me!’

‘And who might that be, Olya?’ I asked.

‘You!’ she said, looking at me openly, directly. ‘But I was in too much of a hurry! I was stupid! You’re clever, high-minded, young… you’re rich! You seemed so unattainable!’

‘That’s enough, Olya,’ I said, taking her hand. ‘Now, wipe your little eyes and let’s go back. They’re waiting for us. Come on, enough of those tears, enough!’ I kissed her hand. ‘Now, that’s enough, little girl! You did something silly and now you must pay for it. It’s your own fault… Come on, that’s enough… calm down.’

‘But you do love me, don’t you? You’re so big, so handsome! You do love me, don’t you?’

‘It’s time to go, my dear,’ I said, noticing to my great horror that I was kissing her forehead, putting my arm around her waist, that she was scorching me with her hot breath, and hanging on my neck.

‘That’s enough!’ I muttered. ‘Enough of this!’

XII

Five minutes later, when I had carried her out of the grotto in my arms and, wearied by new sensations, had set her down, I spotted Pshekhotsky almost at the entrance. He was standing there maliciously eyeing me and silently applauding. I looked him up and down, took Olenka by the arm and returned to the house.

‘You’ll be out of here today!’ I told Pshekhotsky as I looked around. ‘You won’t get away with this spying!’

My kisses had probably been very passionate, as Olenka’s face was burning as if it were on fire. There was no trace of the tears she had just shed.

‘Now I couldn’t give a damn, as the saying goes,’ she murmured as she walked back with me towards the house, convulsively squeezing my elbow. ‘This morning I didn’t know what to do, I was so horrified… and now, my good giant, I’m beside myself with happiness. My husband’s sitting back there, waiting for me. Ha ha! What do I care? Even if he were a crocodile or a terrible serpent… I’m afraid of nothing! I love you and that’s all that matters.’

I looked at her face that was glowing with happiness, at her eyes that were full of joyful, satisfied love – and my heart sank with fears for the future of that pretty, blissful creature. Her love for me was only another push into the abyss. What would become of that smiling woman who had no thought for the future? My heart sank, turned over from a feeling that could be called neither pity nor compassion – it was stronger than both of these. I stopped and took Olenka by the shoulder. Never before had I seen a more beautiful and graceful creature, nor one that was at the same time more pathetic. There was no time for deliberating, weighing things up, taking stock. Overcome with emotion I told her:

‘Let’s go to my place right away, Olga! This very minute!’

‘What? What did you say?’ she asked, puzzled by my rather solemn tone.

‘Let’s go to my place right away.’

Olga smiled and pointed back towards the house.

‘Well, what’s the matter?’ I asked. ‘Isn’t it all the same whether I take you away today or tomorrow? The sooner the better… let’s go!’

‘But it’s all rather peculiar…’

‘Are you afraid of a scandal, little girl? Yes, there’ll be an almighty, magnificent scandal – but a thousand scandals are better than your staying here! I won’t leave you here! I can’t leave you here! Do you understand, Olga? Forget your faintheartedness, your female logic and do what I say! Obey me, if you don’t desire your own ruin!’

Olga’s eyes told me that she didn’t understand. Meanwhile, time did not stand still and ran its course, so that now it was impossible to stay in the avenue a moment longer, while they were waiting for us back there. A decision had to be made. I pressed the ‘girl in red’ to me (she was virtually my wife now) and at the time it struck me that I really did love her, that I loved her with a husband’s love, that she was mine and that her fate rested on my conscience. I could see that I was bound up with that creature for ever, irrevocably.

‘Listen to me, my darling, my treasure!’ I said. ‘This is a bold step. It will set us at loggerheads with our close friends, it will bring down on our heads a thousand reproaches and tearful complaints. It might even ruin my career, cause me thousands of insurmountable vexations! But it’s all decided, my darling. You will be my wife. I couldn’t ask for a better one and all those other women can go to hell! I shall make you happy, I’ll look after you, like the apple of my eye, as long as I live. I’ll educate you, make a woman of you. This I promise you – here is my honest hand on it!’

I spoke with genuine enthusiasm, with feeling, like a jeune premier⁴³ acting the most dramatic part of his role. I spoke beautifully – and as if to emphasize my words a female eagle flying over our heads touched me with its wings. My Olya took my outstretched hand, held it in her tiny hands and tenderly kissed it. But it wasn’t a sign of consent: the stupid little face of that unworldly woman, who had never heard speeches before, expressed only bewilderment. Still she didn’t understand me.

‘You say that I should come to your place,’ she said, thinking hard. ‘I don’t quite understand you. Surely you realize what he would have to say about it?’

‘And how does what he would have to say concern you?’

‘Concern me? No, Seryozha, you’d better not say any more. You must stop this, please! You love me and I need nothing more. With a love like yours I could live in hell…’

‘But what will you do, you silly little girl?’

‘I shall go on living here and you can ride over every day! I shall come out of the house to meet you.’

‘I can’t imagine that kind of life without shivers running up and down my spine! At night there’ll be him; during the day – me No, it’s impossible, Olya. I love you so much now that… I’m even madly jealous… I didn’t suspect for one moment that I was capable of such feelings.’

Such indiscretion! There I was, holding her around the waist and she was tenderly stroking my hand when at any moment someone might come down the avenue and see us.

‘Let’s go,’ I said, taking my hands away. ‘Put your coat on and let’s go.’

‘But you’re in such a hurry,’ she murmured tearfully. ‘You’re hurrying as if you’re rushing to a fire… And God only knows what you’ve thought up! Running away right after my wedding! What will people say!’

And Olenka shrugged her shoulders. Her face was filled with such consternation, amazement and incomprehension that I gave everything up as hopeless and postponed my decision regarding this question of vital importance for her until the next time. Besides, there was no time to continue our conversation – as we went up the stone steps of the terrace we could hear people talking. Olenka tidied her hair at the dining-room door, checked her dress and went in. Her face showed no sign of embarrassment. Contrary to what I was expecting, she made a really brave entry.

‘Gentlemen! I’ve brought you back the fugitive!’ I announced, entering and taking my place at the table. ‘I had great difficulty finding her… I’m absolutely exhausted. I went into the garden and looked around – and there she was, strolling down the avenue, if you please! “What are you doing here?” I asked. “Well, it’s so stuffy in there!” she replied.’

She glanced at me, at the guests, at her husband and burst out laughing. Suddenly she felt amused, high-spirited. In her face I could read her longing to share the happiness that had come her way with all the company of diners. Unable to express it in words, she poured it out in her laughter.

‘How ridiculous I am!’ she said. ‘Here I am laughing and I myself don’t know the reason. Count, will you please laugh!’

‘It’s so sad!’ Kalinin shouted.

Urbenin coughed and looked quizzically at Olenka.

‘Well?’ she asked with a fleeting frown.

‘They keep shouting “It’s so sad”,’ Urbenin said as he got up, smirking and wiping his lips with his napkin.

Olenka stood up and let him kiss her motionless lips. It was an impersonal kiss, but it only kindled all the more the fire that was smouldering in my breast and threatening to burst into flames any moment. I turned away, pressed my lips together and waited for the dinner to finish. Fortunately the end came quickly, otherwise I could have stood it no longer.

‘Come here!’ I said rudely, going over to the Count after the dinner.

The Count looked at me in amazement and followed me into the empty room where I led him.

‘What do you want, old chap?’ he said, unbuttoning his waistcoat and belching.

‘You must choose one of us,’ I replied, barely able to stand from the anger that gripped me. ‘It’s either me or Pshekhotsky! If you don’t promise me that this scoundrel will be out of your estate within the hour I shall never set foot here again! I give you thirty seconds to reply!’

The Count let his cigar fall from his mouth and spread his arms out.

‘What’s the matter, Seryozha?’ he asked, opening his eyes wide. ‘You look terrible!’

‘Please don’t beat about the bush! I can’t stand that spy, that scoundrel, that rotter, that friend of yours – Pshekhotsky – and for the sake of our good relations I insist he clears out immediately!’

‘But what’s he done to you?’ the Count asked, greatly alarmed. ‘Why are you attacking him like this?’

‘I’m asking you: either me or him.’

‘But my dear chap, you’re putting me in an awfully ticklish position… wait, there’s a little feather on your coat… You’re asking me the impossible!’

‘Goodbye,’ I said. ‘You’re no longer a friend of mine.’

Turning sharply on my heels I went into the hall, put on my overcoat and hurried out of the house. As I was crossing the garden and making my way towards the servants’ kitchen, where I wanted to give orders for my horse to be saddled, something made me stop. Nadezhda Kalinin was coming towards me with a small cup of coffee in her hand. She too had been at Urbenin’s wedding, but some vague fear made me avoid conversation with her and the whole day I hadn’t once gone up to her or said a single word.