Ward No. 6 and Other Stories, 1892-1895

Ward No. 6 and Other Stories

The Grasshopper

I

All Olga Ivanovna’s friends and close acquaintances were at her wedding.

‘Just look at him, don’t you think there’s something about him?’ she was telling them, nodding towards her husband as if eager to explain why on earth she was marrying such a simple, very ordinary and thoroughly undistinguished man.

Her husband, Osip Stepanych Dymov, was a junior doctor who worked at two hospitals. In one of them he was a temporary registrar and in the other a pathologist. Every day, from nine in the morning until noon, he saw out-patients and visited his ward, and in the afternoon he would take a horse tram to the other hospital, where he performed postmortems on patients who had died there. His private practice was quite negligible, bringing in about five hundred roubles a year. That is all. What else can one say about him? On the other hand, Olga Ivanovna and her cronies were not altogether run-of-the-mill people. Every one of them was distinguished in some way, pretty well known, had forged a reputation and was considered a celebrity: and if they weren’t actually famous yet, they showed brilliant promise. There was an actor with outstanding, long-recognized talent – an elegant, intelligent and modest man with a first-class delivery who gave Olga Ivanovna elocution lessons. There was the opera singer, a genial, fat man who would sigh and assure Olga Ivanovna that she was ruining herself and that if she would only stop being so lazy and apply herself she would develop into a remarkable singer. And there were several artists whose leading light was the genre, animal and landscape painter Ryabovsky, an extremely handsome man of about twenty-five, who had held successful exhibitions and whose latest picture had sold for five hundred roubles. He would put the finishing touches to Olga’s sketches and say that perhaps she might make something of herself. Then there was the cellist who could make his instrument weep and who frankly admitted that of all the women he knew Olga Ivanovna alone could accompany him properly. Then there was the writer – young, but already well known – who wrote novellas, plays and short stories. And who else? Well, there was Vasily Vasilych, a gentleman landowner, amateur illustrator and vignettist with a profound feeling for the old Russian style, for folk ballads and epic poetry. This man could produce virtual miracles on paper, china and smoked plates. In this highly artistic, free and easy, spoilt company, sensitive and unpretentious though it was, but which acknowledged the existence of doctors only in times of illness and for which the name Dymov meant absolutely nothing – in this company Dymov was a stranger, a superfluous, diminutive figure, although he was actually tall and broad-shouldered. He seemed to be wearing someone else’s frock coat and his beard was like a shop assistant’s. Had he been a writer or artist, however, people would have said that he positively resembled Zola with that beard of his.

The actor told Olga Ivanovna that with her flaxen hair and in her wedding dress she bore a strong resemblance to a graceful cherry tree in spring when it is festooned with delicate white blossoms.

‘Now, just you listen!’ Olga Ivanovna told him, gripping his arm. ‘How did all this happen so suddenly? Well, just listen, listen… You should know that Father worked in the same hospital as Dymov. When poor Father became ill Dymov sat at his bedside for days and nights. Such self-sacrifice! Now listen, Ryabovsky… And you too, Mr Writer – you’ll find it most interesting. Come closer… Such self-sacrifice, such genuine concern! I too didn’t sleep and stayed with Father. And then – what do you know! That fine young man had fallen for me! My Dymov was head over heels! It’s true, fate can play such strange tricks. Well, after Father died he would come and visit me now and then. Or we’d meet in the street. Then, one fine evening – crash! bang! – he proposes, right out of the blue! I cried all night and I too fell madly in love. And now, as you see, I’m lawful wedded Mrs Dymov. Don’t you think there’s something brawny, something powerful and bear-like about him? Just now he’s three-quarters turned towards us and the light’s wrong, but when he turns round just look at that forehead! Ryabovsky, what do you say to that forehead? Dymov! We’re talking about you!’ she shouted to her husband. ‘Come here. Hold out your honest hand to Ryabovsky… That’s it. I want you two to be friends.’ With a good-humoured, naïve smile Dymov offered his hand to Ryabovsky.

‘Very pleased to meet you,’ he said. ‘There was a Ryabovsky in my last year at university. Could he be a relative of yours?’

II

Olga Ivanovna was twenty-two years old, Dymov thirty-one. After their marriage they settled down to a beautiful life. Olga Ivanovna covered the drawing-room walls with sketches – her own and other people’s, framed and unframed – and she filled every inch of space around the grand piano with a picturesque array of Chinese parasols, easels, brightly coloured bits of material, daggers, small busts and photographs. She pasted cheap folksy prints on the dining-room walls, hung up bast sandals and sickles, and stood a rake and a scythe in one corner to create an effect truly à la Russe. To give their bedroom the appearance of a cave, she draped the ceiling and walls with dark cloth, hung a Venetian lantern over the beds and stationed a figure with a halberd by the door. Everyone thought that the newly-weds had created an awfully sweet nook for themselves.

Every day Olga Ivanovna rose at eleven o’clock and played the piano, but if it was sunny she painted in oils. After twelve she would drive to her dressmaker’s. As both she and Dymov were very hard up, she and her dressmaker had to resort to all kinds of cunning devices so that she could always appear in new dresses to dazzling effect. Very often, from old dyed frocks or worthless scraps of tulle, lace, plush and silk there would emerge something miraculous and truly seductive – a dream of a dress. From the dressmaker Olga would usually drive to some actress friend to discover all the theatre news and at the same time try and get a ticket out of her for a first night or benefit performance. From the actress she would drive to some artist’s studio or to an exhibition of paintings and then on to one of her celebrity friends to invite him home, to return a visit or simply for a chat. Everywhere she was given a joyful, friendly welcome, being assured that she was absolutely wonderful, charming, extra special. Those of her male friends whom she considered ‘celebrated’, great men, treated her as one of themselves, as an equal: with her talent, taste and brains, all unanimously predicted a brilliant future – as long as she didn’t overstretch herself. She sang, played the piano, painted in oils, modelled, acted in amateur dramatics – not anyhow, but with real talent. Whether she made lanterns for illuminations, put on fancy dress or tied someone’s tie, the final effect was always highly artistic, graceful and charming. But nowhere did her talent shine so bright as in her flair for striking up an acquaintance with celebrities and being on intimate terms with them in no time at all. Someone only needed to make some sort of name for himself, however insignificant, or get himself talked about, than she would make sure she was introduced to him right away and she invited him home that very same day.

Every time she made a new acquaintance was a red-letter day for her. She worshipped celebrities, revelled in them and dreamed of them every night. She craved them with a thirst nothing could assuage. Old ones departed the scene and were forgotten, new ones replaced them, but soon she grew used to these too, or was disappointed in them, and eagerly went in search of new and ever newer great men. And when she found them she continued the search. Why did she do this?

At about half past four she would dine at home with her husband. His lack of affectation, common sense and good nature sent her into raptures of delight. She would constantly jump up from the table, impulsively fling her arms around his head and shower it with kisses.

‘You’re such an intelligent man, Dymov, with such high principles, but you have one very serious shortcoming. You’re not in the least bit interested in art. And you reject music and painting too.’

‘I don’t understand them,’ he would say meekly. ‘All my life I’ve been working in natural science and medicine and I’ve never had the time to take an interest in the arts.’

‘But that’s dreadful, Dymov!’

‘How so? Your friends know nothing of the natural sciences and medicine, but you don’t hold it against them, do you? Each to his own. I don’t understand landscape or opera, but I do think that if clever people devote their whole lives to them and other clever people pay vast amounts for them, then they must be important. If I don’t understand, it doesn’t follow that I reject them.’

‘Let me shake your honest hand!’

After dinner Olga would visit friends, then go to the theatre or a concert and return after midnight. And so it went on day after day.

On Wednesdays she was ‘at home’. At these soirées hostess and guests did not play cards or dance, but entertained themselves with all kinds of artistic activity. The actor recited, the opera singer sang, the artists did sketches in albums – of which Olga had countless numbers – the cellist played and the hostess herself sketched, modelled, sang and played accompaniments. In the gaps between the recitation, music and singing they talked and argued about literature, the theatre, painting. Ladies were not invited, since Olga considered all women – actresses and her dressmaker excepted – as vulgar and boring. Not one soirée passed without the hostess giving a start every time the doorbell rang. ‘It’s him!’ she would exclaim triumphantly – and by him she meant some newly invited celebrity. Dymov was never in the drawing-room and no one was even aware of his existence. But at precisely half past eleven the dining-room door would open and Dymov would appear.

‘Supper is served, gentlemen’, he would say, rubbing his hands together.

Everyone would file into the dining-room and would invariably see the same display on the table: a plate of oysters, a joint of ham or veal, sardines, cheese, caviare, mushrooms, vodka and two carafes of wine.

‘My dear maître d’hôtel!’ Olga would say, throwing up her hands in rapture. ‘You’re so lovely! Just look at that face, gentlemen. Dymov! Turn your profile towards us. Just look, gentlemen – the face of a Bengal tiger, but the kindly, lovable expression of a deer. Oh, isn’t he sweet!’

The guests would eat and as they looked at Dymov would think: ‘Actually, a really nice chap!’ But they soon forgot him and carried on talking about the theatre, music, painting.

The young couple were happy and all went swimmingly. However, the third week of their married life was not altogether happy – the reverse, in fact. Dymov caught erysipelas at the hospital, spent six days in bed and had to have his splendid black hair shaved to the roots. Olga sat at his bedside and wept bitterly, but the moment he felt better she draped a white handkerchief over his cropped head and started painting him as a Bedouin. Both found this immense fun. And then, a couple of days after he had recovered and had returned to the hospital, disaster struck again.

‘I’m not having the best of luck, Mother!’ he said one day over dinner. ‘I did four postmortems today and right at the start I cut two fingers. I only noticed it when I got home.’

Olga was scared, but he smiled and said it was absolutely nothing and that he often cut his hands when doing autopsies.

‘I get carried away, Mother, and then I become careless.’

Olga was worried that he might get blood poisoning and prayed every night, but all was well. Once again their quiet, happy life resumed its course without incident or alarm. The present was beautiful enough, but spring was coming to take its place, smiling from afar and bearing the promise of a thousand joys. There would be endless bliss! In April, May and June there would be the holiday cottage a long way from town, walks, sketching, fishing, nightingales and then, from July right up to autumn, a painting trip on the Volga in which Olga too would take part as an indispensable member of the société. She had already had two gingham travelling costumes made, purchased paints, brushes, canvases and a new palette for the trip. Ryabovsky called almost every day to see how she was getting on with her painting. When she showed him her work he would thrust his hands deep in his pockets, purse his lips, sniff loudly and say:

‘Well now… that cloud over there is all wrong. And that’s not evening light. The foreground is a bit chewed up… you know, something’s not right… And that cottage seems to have choked on something, it’s making a pitiful squeaking… And you should have used a darker shade for that corner. But on the whole quite a decent effort… well done!’

And the more unintelligibly he spoke the easier it was for Olga to understand him.

III

On Whit Monday afternoon Dymov bought food and chocolates and went to visit his wife at the cottage. Since he hadn’t seen her for a fortnight he missed her terribly. When he was on the train and later, when he was looking for the cottage in a large wood, he felt hungry and exhausted the whole time and dreamed of a leisurely supper with his wife and then tumbling into bed. Just looking at the parcel, in which he had wrapped the caviare, cheese and white salmon, cheered him up.

By the time he had sought out and recognized the cottage the sun was setting. An ancient housemaid told him that the mistress was out, but that no doubt she’d soon be back. The cottage, which was really hideous to look at, had low ceilings pasted all over with sheets of writing paper and its uneven floorboards were full of gaps. There were only three rooms. In one of them was a bed, in another chairs and windowsills piled high with canvases, paintbrushes and scraps of greasy paper, men’s overcoats and hats, whilst in the third Dymov found three men he had never set eyes on before. Two were dark and had small beards, while the third was fat and clean-shaven – an actor by all appearances. On the table a samovar was boiling away.

‘What can I do for you?’ asked the actor in a bass voice, giving Dymov a chilly look. ‘Looking for Olga Ivanovna? Wait here, she won’t be long.’

Dymov sat down and waited. One of the dark men gave him a languid, sleepy look and poured himself some tea.

‘Perhaps you’d care for a glass?’ he asked.

Dymov was both thirsty and hungry, but he refused the tea, as he did not want to spoil his appetite. Soon he heard footsteps and a familiar laugh. The door slammed open and into the room ran Olga, in a wide-brimmed hat, carrying a box in her hands, followed by the jovial, rosy-cheeked Ryabovsky with a large parasol and a folding-chair.

‘Dymov!’ cried Olga, flushing for joy. ‘Dymov!’ she repeated, laying her head and hands on his chest. ‘It’s you! What took you so long? What?’

‘When could I get away, Mother? I’m always so busy and when I am free the train times are no good.’

‘But I’m so glad to see you. I dreamt of you all night long and I was afraid you might be ill. Oh, if only you knew how sweet you are – and you’ve come at just the right time! You’ll be my salvation. Only you can save me! Tomorrow’, she continued, laughing and tying her husband’s tie, ‘there’s going to be an amazing wedding here. The young telegraph clerk at the railway station, Chikildeyev, is getting married. A handsome young man and quite intelligent. And, do you know, there’s something so powerful, so bear-like about his face… I could paint him as a young Viking. All of us holiday-makers here are taking an interest in him and we’ve given him our word that we’ll be at his wedding… He doesn’t have much money, he’s got no family, he’s shy and it would be shameful not to offer him moral support. Just picture it – the wedding ceremony will be after the church service and then everyone will leave for the bride’s house… You see, there’ll be the woods, birdsong, patches of sunlight on the grass, and all of us will look like variegated patches against a green background. Highly original, in French Expressionist style! But what am I going to wear in church, Dymov?’ she added with a distressed look. ‘I’ve nothing here – literally nothing! No dress, no flowers, no gloves… You must save me. The fact you’ve arrived means the fates themselves have ordered you to rescue me. Now, take the keys, dear, go home and fetch my pink dress from the wardrobe. You remember, it’s hanging in front. And you’ll find two cardboard boxes on the pantry floor, to the right. If you open the top one you’ll find lots and lots of tulle and some bits and pieces… and underneath them some flowers. You must take the flowers out carefully – try not to crush them, darling! I’ll choose the ones I need later. And buy me some gloves.’

‘All right’, Dymov said. ‘I’ll go tomorrow and send them.’

‘Tomorrow?’ Olga said, looking at him in amazement. ‘Tomorrow you won’t have time – the first train leaves here at nine and the wedding’s at eleven! No, my darling, you must go today – today without fail! And if you can’t come yourself tomorrow, send the whole lot by special messenger. Hurry up, you must go now… the passenger train’s due any minute! Don’t miss it, darling!’

‘All right.’

‘Oh, I really don’t like letting you go’, Olga said and tears came to her eyes. ‘And why was I silly enough to promise that telegraph clerk?’

Dymov gulped his tea, grabbed a roll and went off to the station, gently smiling. The caviare, cheese and white salmon were eaten by the two dark men and the actor.

IV

On a tranquil moonlit night in July Olga was standing on the deck of a Volga steamboat, gazing now at the water, then at the beautiful banks. By her stood Ryabovsky: the black shadows on the water, he was telling her, were not shadows, but a fleeting vision. As one gazed at the magical water with its mysterious gleam, at the fathomless sky and those sad, brooding river banks that spoke of the vanity of our lives, of the existence of something loftier, of a world of everlasting bliss, one would be happy enough to swoon, to die, to become but a memory. The past was vulgar and drab, the future of no significance and that wonderful, unique night would soon come to an end and merge with eternity. Why live, then?

And now, as Olga listened to Ryabovsky’s voice, now to the stillness of the night, she fancied she was immortal and could never die. The turquoise water which she had never seen before, the sky, the river banks, the black shadows and that unaccountable joy that filled her heart – all these things told her that she would become a great artist and that somewhere, far beyond the horizon, far beyond this moonlit night, in the boundlessness of space, success, fame, people’s adulation awaited her… When she gazed long and unblinking into the distance she imagined she was seeing crowds, lights, hearing the sound of solemn music, cries of delight, herself in a white dress, and flowers being strewn on her from every side. She thought too that by her side, leaning his elbows on the rail, stood a truly great man, a genius, one of God’s elect… All that he had created up to now was beautiful, new and unusual, but what he would create in time, when his rare talent grew to maturity, would be breathtaking, something incalculably sublime – all this was clear from his face, from the way he expressed himself and in his attitude to Nature. Of shadows, of evening tints and of moonlight he had his own very special way of talking, his own language, so that one could sense the irresistible fascination of his power over Nature. He was very handsome, unconventional and his life, so independent, so free, so remote from all that was mundane, resembled that of a bird.

‘It’s getting chilly’, Olga said, shivering.

Ryabovsky wrapped his cloak around her. ‘I feel I’m in your power’, he said sadly. ‘I’m your slave. Oh, why are you so bewitching tonight?’

He looked at her and he could not take his eyes off her – eyes that were so frightening she was scared to look at him.

‘I love you madly…’ he whispered, breathing on her cheek. ‘Just say the word and I’ll put an end to my life. I’ll give up art…’ he muttered with deep emotion. ‘Love me, love me…’

‘Don’t say such things’, Olga said and closed her eyes. ‘It frightens me. What about Dymov?’

‘Dymov? Why bring Dymov up? What do I care about Dymov? There’s the Volga, the moon, beauty, my love for you, my ecstasy – but there’s no Dymov… Oh, I know nothing. I care nothing for the past, grant me one instant, one fleeting moment…’

Olga’s heart was pounding. She tried to think of her husband, but her entire past, with the wedding, Dymov and her soirées, seemed so small, trivial, dull, unnecessary, and so very, very far away. And in fact what did Dymov matter? Why Dymov? What did she care about Dymov? Did he really exist or was he only a dream?

‘That simple, ordinary man has already had his fair share of happiness’, she thought, covering her face with her hands. ‘Let them condemn me there, let them curse me – to spite the lot of them I’ll follow the path of perdition, become a fallen woman… One must experience everything in life. Heavens, how terrifying – and how marvellous!’

‘Well, what? What do you say?’ muttered the artist, embracing her and greedily kissing her hands with which she feebly tried to push him away. ‘Do you love me? Yes? Yes? Oh, what a night! A magical night!’

‘Yes, what a night!’ she whispered, looking into his eyes that were glistening with tears. Then she quickly looked round, embraced him and kissed him firmly on the mouth.

‘We’re approaching Kineshma!’¹ someone called out on the other side of the deck.

There was a sound of heavy footsteps – it was the bar waiter going past.

‘Listen’, Olga called to him, laughing and crying with happiness. ‘Please bring us some wine.’

Pale with emotion, the artist sat on a bench and looked at Olga with adoring, grateful eyes. As he closed them he said with a languid smile:

‘I’m tired.’

And he leaned his head towards the rail.

V

September the second was warm and calm, but overcast. A light early morning mist was drifting over the Volga and after nine o’clock it began to drizzle. There was no hope of it clearing up. Over breakfast Ryabovsky told Olga that painting was the most thankless and boring art, that he was not an artist and that only fools thought that he had talent. Then, all of a sudden, for no apparent reason, he seized a knife and made scratches on his best sketch. After breakfast he sat gloomily at the window, gazing at the Volga. But the Volga no longer gleamed; it was dull and lustreless, with a cold look. Everything reminded them that dreary, miserable autumn was approaching. Nature seemed to have taken away everything that was showy and flamboyant from the Volga – those luxuriant green carpets on her banks, those diamond-like sunbeams, that crystal clear blue distance – and packed it away in boxes until spring; and the crows that were flying over the river were teasing it for being so bare. As Ryabovsky listened to their cawing he brooded over the fact that he was washed up, his talent had gone, that everything in this world was conditional, relative and stupid, and that he should never have got involved with that woman. In a word, he wasn’t himself at all and he felt very depressed.

Olga sat on the bed behind a screen, running her fingers through her beautiful flaxen hair, picturing herself in her drawing-room, then in her bedroom, then in her husband’s study. Her imagination transported her to the theatre, to the dressmaker, then to her celebrity friends. What would they all be doing now? Did they remember her? The season had already begun and it was time to think of soirées. What about Dymov? Dear Dymov! How gently – as plaintively as a child – he had implored her in his letters to hurry home! Every month he sent her seventy roubles and when she wrote that she owed the other artists one hundred roubles, he sent her that too. Such a kind, generous man! Olga was tired from the journey, bored and longing to get away as fast as she could from those peasants, that damp river smell, and to rid herself of that sensation of physical impurity she had felt all the time she had lived in those peasant huts and wandered from village to village. If Ryabovsky had not promised the artists that he would stay with them until 20 September she could have left that very same day. How lovely that would have been!

‘God, when will the sun ever come out?’ Ryabovsky groaned. ‘How can I do a sunlit landscape without any sun?’

‘But there’s that sketch of yours with a cloudy sky’, Olga said, coming out from behind the screen. ‘Remember? There’s a wood in the right foreground and a herd of cows and some geese on the left. You could finish that one now.’

‘Eh?’ said Ryabovsky, frowning. ‘Finish it!? Do you think I’m so stupid that I don’t know what has to be done?’

‘How you’ve changed towards me!’ sighed Olga.

‘And a jolly good thing too!’

Olga’s face trembled; she went over to the stove and burst into tears.

‘My God! Tears! That’s all I need! Stop it! I’ve a thousand reasons for crying but you won’t catch me at it.’

‘A thousand reasons!’ sobbed Olga. ‘And the main one is that you’re tired of me. Oh yes!’ she said and began sobbing. ‘The truth is, you’re ashamed of our affair. You keep trying to hide it from the others even though it’s impossible to hide – they’ve known about it for ages!’

‘Olga, I ask only one thing of you’, the artist begged and laid his hand on his heart. ‘One thing! Don’t torment me! That’s all I want from you!’

‘But swear you still love me!’

‘This is sheer hell!’ Ryabovsky hissed between his teeth and leapt up. ‘I’ll end up by throwing myself into the Volga or going out of my mind! Leave me alone!’

‘All right then, kill me!’ cried Olga. ‘Go on, kill me!’

Once again she burst out sobbing and went behind the screen. The rain rustled on the thatched roof of the hut. Ryabovsky clutched his head and paced up and down. Then, with a determined look, as if he wanted to prove something to someone, he put on his cap, threw his rifle over his shoulder and went out.

After he had gone Olga lay for a long time on the bed and wept. First she thought it would be a good idea to poison herself, so that Ryabovsky would return to find her dead. But then her thoughts carried her off to her drawing-room, into her husband’s study and she pictured herself sitting quite still at Dymov’s side, enjoying the physical relaxation and cleanliness, and then in the theatre one evening, listening to Masini.² And a yearning for civilization, for the bustle of the city, for famous people, tugged at her heart-strings. A peasant woman entered the hut, and slowly started lighting the stove so that she could prepare dinner. There was a smell of burning and the air filled with blue smoke. The artists returned in their muddy topboots, their faces wet with rain. They inspected each other’s sketches and consoled themselves with the thought that even in bad weather the Volga had a charm of its own. The cheap clock on the wall ticked away monotonously. Chilled flies crowded together and buzzed in the front corner by the icons – and the cockroaches could be heard scurrying about in the thick files underneath the benches.

Ryabovsky returned when the sun was setting. He threw his cap onto the table. With a pale, exhausted look, still wearing his muddy boots, he sank onto a bench and closed his eyes.

‘I’m tired…’ he said, twitching his eyebrows and trying to raise his eyelids.

In an effort to be nice to him and to show that she wasn’t angry, Olga went over, kissed him and without saying a word ran her comb through his hair: she wanted to give it a really good tidy up.

‘What’s this?’ he said, shuddering, as if something cold had touched him. He opened his eyes. ‘What’s this? Leave me in peace, I beg you.’

He pushed her aside and walked away – and his face seemed to show revulsion and irritation, she thought. Just then the peasant woman came in, carefully carrying a bowl of cabbage soup in both hands. Olga could see that the woman had dipped both thumbs in the soup. And that dirty old woman with her tightly belted stomach, the cabbage soup that Ryabovsky greedily started devouring, the hut and that whole life which she had loved so much at first for its simplicity and Bohemian chaos now struck her as downright appalling. Suddenly she felt insulted.

‘We must separate for a while’, she said coldly, ‘or we’ll end up having a serious quarrel from the sheer boredom of it. I’m sick and tired of all this. I’m leaving today.’

‘And how will you go? Ride on a broomstick?’

‘Today’s Thursday, there’s a steamboat at half past nine.’

‘Oh yes, so there is… well, take it then’, Ryabovsky said gently, wiping his mouth on a towel instead of a serviette. ‘It’s boring and there’s nothing for you to do here. It would be terribly selfish of me if I tried to stop you. Go then, we’ll meet after the twentieth.’

Olga gaily packed and her cheeks even glowed with pleasure. Could it be true, she wondered, that soon she would be painting in a drawing-room, sleeping in a bedroom and dining with a cloth on the table? She felt as if a weight had been lifted from her. And no longer did she feel angry with the artist.

‘I’m leaving you my paints and brushes, my dear Ryabovsky’, she said. ‘You can bring anything I’ve left behind… But mind you don’t become lazy when I’ve gone, don’t mope, and get on with your work. You’re a very fine person, my dear old Ryabovsky.’

At nine o’clock Ryabovsky kissed her goodbye, so that he would not have to kiss her on the steamboat in front of the others (so she thought), and he saw her to the landing-stage. The steamboat soon arrived and carried her away.

Two and a half days later she arrived home. Without taking off her hat or raincoat and breathless with excitement she went into the drawing-room and from there into the dining-room. Dymov was sitting at the table without any jacket, his waistcoat unbuttoned, sharpening a knife on a fork. There was a grouse on the plate in front of him. When Olga entered she felt quite convinced that everything must be concealed from her husband and that she had the skill and strength to do this. But now, when she saw his broad, gentle, happy smile and his eyes bright with joy, she felt that to deceive that man would be as vile, detestable and just as inconceivable and beyond her as slandering, stealing or murdering. So in a flash she decided to tell all. After letting him kiss and embrace her she knelt before him and covered her face.

‘What is it? What’s wrong, Mother?’ he asked tenderly. ‘Did you miss me?’

She raised her face that was red with shame and gave him a guilty, imploring look. But fear and guilt prevented her from speaking the truth.

‘It’s nothing’, she said. ‘I’m just…’

‘Let’s sit down’, he said, lifting her to her feet and sitting her at the table. ‘That’s it… Now, have some grouse. You must be starving, you poor thing.’

Eagerly she inhaled the air of home and ate some grouse, while he watched with loving tenderness and laughed for joy.

VI

By the middle of winter it was apparent that Dymov had begun to guess that he was being deceived. Just as if his own conscience was not clear, he could no longer look his wife in the eye, no longer smiled happily when they met, and in order to avoid being alone with her so much would often invite his colleague Korostelev home for a meal. This colleague was a short, close-cropped little man with a wrinkled face who, whenever he spoke to Olga, would keep buttoning and unbuttoning his jacket in embarrassment and then start tweaking the left side of his moustache with his right hand. At dinner both doctors would discuss elevation of the diaphragm being occasionally accompanied by irregular heartbeat, or how common neuritis was these days, or how Dymov had discovered cancer of the pancreas when performing a postmortem the day before on a patient diagnosed to have died of pernicious anaemia. Both seemed to be talking shop only so that Olga could remain silent – in other words, not tell any lies. After dinner Korostelev would sit at the piano.

‘Ah well, my dear chap!’ Dymov would sigh. ‘Play us something sad!’

With his shoulders raised and his fingers spread wide apart, Korostelev would play a few chords and start to sing:

Show me that abode

Where the Russian peasant does not groan.³

Dymov would give another sigh, prop his head on his fist and ponder.

Of late Olga had been behaving with the greatest indiscretion. Every morning she would wake up in the foulest of moods, thinking that she no longer loved Ryabovsky and that it was all over, thank God. But by the time she had drunk her coffee she was inclined to believe that Ryabovsky had alienated her husband and that now she was left without husband or Ryabovsky. Then she would recall her friends saying that Ryabovsky was preparing something quite sensational for an exhibition, a combination of landscape and genre à la Polenov,⁴ which sent every visitor to his studio into raptures. Surely it was thanks to her influence that he had produced such a painting? And in general it was thanks to her that he had improved so dramatically. Her influence was so beneficial, so vital, that if she were to desert him he would probably go right downhill. She also remembered that on his last visit he had worn a kind of grey patterned silk coat and a new tie. ‘Do I look handsome!’ he had languidly asked. And in fact (or so she thought) he was very handsome, so elegant with his long curls and blue eyes. And he had been very nice to her.

After much reminiscing and reflection, Olga would get dressed and – in a great tizzy – take a cab to Ryabovsky’s studio. She would find him in a cheerful mood, in ecstasies over his painting, which was truly splendid. He would jump about, play the fool and reply to all serious questions by joking. Olga was jealous of Ryabovsky’s picture: she hated it, but she would stand before it in silence for five minutes – for politeness’ sake – and then sigh like someone viewing a sacred object.

‘No, you’ve never done anything like it before’, she would softly say. ‘You know, it’s really awe-inspiring!’

Then she would start pleading with him to love her, not to desert her, to take pity on her, poor miserable wretch that she was. She would weep and kiss his hands and insist that he vowed his love for her, and she tried to prove to him that without her good influence he would lose his way and finally meet with disaster. And after dampening his spirits and feeling that she had been humiliated, she would take a cab to her dressmaker’s or an actress friend to try to wangle a free theatre ticket.

Should she not find Ryabovsky in his studio she would leave a letter vowing to poison herself without fail if he didn’t come and see her that very same day. He would panic, go and see her and stay for dinner. Uninhibited by her husband’s presence, he would be impertinent to her – and she would reply in kind. Both found that they were cramping each other’s style, that they were despots and deadly enemies. And they would become furious with one another – and in their fury they failed to notice how badly they were behaving and that even the close-cropped Korostelev knew everything that was going on. After the meal Ryabovsky would make a hasty farewell and leave.

‘Where are you going?’ Olga would ask him in the hall with a venomous look.

Frowning and screwing up his eyes, he would mention some woman they both knew – clearly he was gloating over her jealousy and all he wanted was to annoy her. She would go to her bedroom and lie down on the bed, biting the pillow and sobbing out loud from jealousy, vexation, humiliation and shame. Dymov would leave Korostelev in the drawing-room, go into the bedroom and softly say, embarrassed and dismayed:

‘Don’t cry so loud, Mother. What’s the point? You must say nothing about it… You mustn’t let people see… What’s done cannot be undone – you know that.’

Not knowing how to deaden that nagging feeling of jealousy that even made her head ache and convinced that things could still be put right, she would wash, powder her tear-stained face and fly off to a woman friend. If she didn’t find Ryabovsky there, she would go to another, then to a third. At first she was ashamed of running about like this, but then it became a habit and in a single evening she did the rounds of all the women she knew in her search for Ryabovsky, and all of them were well aware of this.

Once she told Ryabovsky about her husband:

‘That man is crushing me with his magnanimity!’

So delighted was she with this phrase that whenever she met artists who knew of her affair with Ryabovsky she would say of her husband with a sweeping gesture:

‘That man is crushing me with his magnanimity!’

Her routine was just the same as the previous year. On Wednesdays there were the soirées. The actor recited, the artists sketched, the cellist played, the opera singer sang and at half past eleven the dining-room door never failed to open and Dymov would say with a smile:

‘Supper is served, gentlemen!’

And as before, Olga sought out great men, discovered them, found they were not up to scratch and continued searching. And as before she would come home late every night. But unlike the previous year Dymov would not be asleep, but would be sitting in his study working. He would go to bed at three and get up at eight.

One evening, when she was standing in front of her pier-glass before going to the theatre, Dymov entered the bedroom in tails and white tie. He smiled gently and joyfully looked his wife in the eye, just as he used to do. His face was radiant.

‘I’ve just defended my thesis’, he said, sitting down and stroking his knee.

‘Defended?’ asked Olga.

‘Oho!’ he laughed and craned his neck to catch a glimpse of his wife’s face in the mirror, as she was still doing her hair with her back to him. ‘Oho!’ he laughed again. ‘Do you know, it’s very much on the cards that I’m going to be offered a lectureship in general pathology. It certainly looks that way.’

It was plain from his blissful, radiant face that if Olga would only share in his joy and triumph he would forgive her everything, both present and future, and would forget the whole thing. But she had no idea what a lectureship or general pathology were – and besides, she was worried she might be late for the theatre. So she said nothing.

He sat there for another two minutes and then went out with a guilty smile on his face.

VII

It was a very disturbed day.

Dymov had a severe headache. He went without breakfast, did not go to the hospital and lay the whole time on the study sofa. As usual, after twelve, Olga set off for Ryabovsky’s to show him her still-life and to ask why he had not come yesterday. She thought her sketch was rubbish – she had only painted it as an excuse to visit the artist.

She entered his flat without ringing and when she was removing her galoshes in the hall she thought she heard someone quietly running through the studio and the rustle of a woman’s dress. When she hurried to take a look into the studio she caught a brief glimpse of a brown petticoat flashing past and vanishing behind the large painting that was draped – together with the easel – down to the ground with black calico. A woman was hiding there – no doubt about that! How often had Olga herself taken refuge behind that painting! Evidently embarrassed in the extreme and startled at her appearance, Ryabovsky stretched both hands towards her.

‘A-a-a! How very nice to see you’, he said with a forced smile. ‘And what’s the latest news?’

Olga’s eyes filled with tears. She felt ashamed and bitter – not for a million roubles would she have agreed to speak her mind in the presence of a strange woman, her rival, that liar who was now hiding behind the painting and probably enjoying a malicious giggle.

‘I’ve brought you a sketch’, she said timidly, in a thin wispy voice, her lips trembling. ‘A nature morte.’

‘A-a-a! A sketch?’

The artist took the sketch and, still inspecting it, proceeded automaton-like into the next room.

Olga obediently followed him.

‘Nature morte… the best sort’, he muttered, looking for rhymes. ‘Resort, port, ought…’

The sound of footsteps and the rustle of a skirt came from the studio: that meant she had gone. Olga felt like shouting out loud, hitting the artist on the head with a heavy object and making her exit, but she was blinded by tears, overwhelmed with shame and no longer did she feel that she was Olga Ivanovna, no longer an artist, but a small insect.

‘I’m tired’, the artist said languidly, examining the sketch and shaking his head to ward off sleepiness. ‘It’s very charming, of course, but today it’s only a sketch, last year it was a sketch and in a month there’ll be another sketch. How is it you don’t get bored with it all? If I were you I’d give up painting and take up music seriously, or something. You see, you’re not an artist, but a musician. But really, I’m so tired, you know! I’ll order some tea right away… Eh?’

He left the room and Olga could hear him giving his manservant some orders. To avoid farewells and explanations, but mainly to stop herself sobbing, she rushed into the hall before Ryabovsky returned, put on her galoshes and went into the street. There she breathed easily and felt free once and for all from Ryabovsky, from painting, from that tiresome feeling of guilt that had so overwhelmed her in the studio. It was all over!

She drove to her dressmaker, then to Barnay,⁵ who had arrived only yesterday, and from Barnay she went to a music shop, thinking the whole time of the cold, harsh letter, so full of injured pride, she would write to Ryabovsky – and of going with Dymov to the Crimea in the spring or summer, of finally breaking with the past and starting a new life.

When she returned home late that evening she sat down in the drawing-room without changing to write her letter. Ryabovsky had told her that she was no artist and to avenge herself she would tell him that year in year out he painted the same old picture, that every single day he repeated the same thing, that he was in a rut, that he would never be any better than he was now. She also wanted to tell him how much he owed her for her good influence and that if he was acting badly this was only because her influence was being undermined by various personages such as the one who had hidden herself behind the painting earlier that day.

‘Mother!’ Dymov called from his study without opening the door. ‘Mother!’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Mother, don’t come into the study, just come to the door… Well, the day before yesterday I must have caught diphtheria at the hospital and now… I’m feeling rotten. Send for Korostelev right away.’

Olga had always called her husband – like all the men she knew – by his surname instead of his Christian name. She did not like the name Osip, because it reminded her of Gogol’s Osip⁶ and that play upon words: ‘Osip lost his voice from too much gossip.’ But now she cried out:

‘Osip! It’s not possible!’

‘Send for him! I’m not well…’ Dymov said from behind the door and she could hear him going back to the sofa and lying down. ‘Send for him’ – and his voice had a hollow sound.

‘What’s happening?’ Olga thought, turning cold with fright. ‘It’s really dangerous, isn’t it?’

Although she had no need for one, she took a candle and went to her bedroom and there, as she wondered what to do, she happened to catch a glimpse of herself in the pier-glass. Her pale, frightened face, her long-sleeved jacket with those yellow flounces at the breast, her skirt with those bizarrely sloping stripes – all this made her look ghastly and repulsive in her own eyes. Suddenly she felt a sharp twinge of pity for Dymov, for his boundless love for her, for his young life and even for that orphaned bed in which he had not slept for so long. And she remembered his customary smile, so meek and mild. She shed bitter tears and wrote Korostelev an imploring letter. It was two o’clock in the morning.

VIII

At about half past eight next morning, when Olga came out of her bedroom, her head heavy from lack of sleep, her hair uncombed, unappealing and with a guilty expression, a certain black-bearded gentleman – apparently a doctor – entered the hall.

There was a smell of medicine. Korostelev was standing by the study door, tweaking the left side of his moustache with his right hand.

‘I’m sorry, but I can’t let you go in’, he told Olga gloomily. ‘It’s infectious. In fact, there’s no point at all in your going in, he’s delirious.’

‘Is it really diphtheria?’ Olga whispered.

‘Those who play with fire must face the consequences…’ Korostelev muttered, ignoring the question. ‘Do you know how he caught it? On Tuesday he sucked some diphtheria membrane from a little boy through a tube. What for? It was so stupid, he just didn’t think…’

‘Is it dangerous? Very?’ asked Olga.

‘Yes, it’s the serious type. We really ought to send for Shrek.’

There arrived a little red-haired man with a long nose and Jewish accent, then a tall, stooping shaggy gentleman resembling an archdeacon, then a very stout, young, red-faced man with spectacles. These were the doctors who had come to sit at their colleague’s bedside. When Korostelev had done his stint, he stayed on instead of going home, wandering wraith-like through every room. The maid served tea to the doctors at the bedside and was constantly running to the chemist’s. As a result there was no one to tidy the rooms. It was quiet and depressing.

Olga sat in her bedroom and thought that God was punishing her for deceiving her husband. That silent, uncomplaining, mysterious being, deprived of any personality as a result of his own gentleness, so characterless and feeble because of his excessive kindness, was suffering acutely somewhere in his study, on his sofa, without a word of complaint. And were he to complain, even though delirious, the bedside doctors would know that diphtheria alone was not to blame. They only had to ask Korostelev: he knew everything about it – and it was not without reason that he looked at his friend’s wife as if she were the real villain of the piece and as if the diphtheria were merely her accomplice. She had completely forgotten that moonlit night on the Volga, those declarations of love, that romantic life in the peasant’s hut – all she remembered now was that because of some idle whim, from sheer self-gratification, she had soiled herself from head to foot with some sticky filth which she could never wash off…

‘Oh, what two-faced lies I told!’ she thought, recalling her stormy affair with Ryabovsky. ‘Damn all of that!’

At four o’clock she sat at the dinner table with Korostelev. He ate nothing, drank only red wine and kept frowning. She too ate nothing. At times she would offer a silent prayer, vowing to God that if Dymov did recover she would love him again and be a faithful wife. Her thoughts momentarily wandered as she looked at Korostelev and reflected: ‘How terribly boring to be such an ordinary, totally unremarkable, obscure nobody, with a wrinkled face too and such appalling manners!’ And then she felt that God would strike her dead that very moment for never once having gone into her husband’s study for fear of infection. And in general there was that dull feeling of dejection and the conviction that her life was already in ruins and that her situation was beyond redemption.

After dinner it grew dark. When Olga came into the dining-room Korostelev was sleeping on the sofa with a gold-embroidered silk cushion under his head. He was snoring regularly and hoarsely.

And the doctors who came to keep vigil at the bedside went away again without noticing the disorder everywhere. That snoring stranger asleep in the drawing-room, those sketches on the walls, the quaint décor, the uncombed, sloppily dressed mistress of the house – none of this aroused the slightest interest now. One of the doctors happened to laugh at something and his laughter had a strange, restrained ring to it – and this was frightening, even.

When Olga came into the drawing-room again Korostelev was not sleeping, but sitting up and smoking.

‘He has diphtheria of the nasal cavity’, he said in an undertone. ‘And his heart’s not too good. It looks really grim.’

‘You’d better send for Shrek’, Olga said.

‘He’s been. It was he who noticed that the diphtheria had spread to the nose. But what is Shrek, all said and done? He’s an absolute nobody, really. He’s Shrek and I’m Korostelev – that’s all there is to say about it.’

Time dragged on painfully slowly. Olga lay fully dressed, dozing on her bed that had been unmade since early morning. She fancied that the whole flat was filled from floor to ceiling with an enormous lump of iron and that it only had to be removed for everyone to feel cheerful and relaxed. When she woke up she realized that it was not the iron that was weighing down on her but Dymov’s illness.

‘Nature morte… port’, she thought, slipping into semi-consciousness again. ‘Sport… resort… And what about Shrek? Shrek, peck, speck, deck. And where are my friends now? Do they know of our troubles? God help us… save us… Shrek, peck…’

And once again that lump of iron. Time dragged wearily and the ground-floor clock kept striking. The doorbell rang constantly as the doctors arrived. The maid entered with an empty glass on a tray.

‘Shall I make the bed, madam?’ she asked. Receiving no reply, she went out. The clock struck downstairs, Olga dreamt of that rain on the Volga and again someone entered the bedroom – a stranger, it seemed. Olga jumped up and recognized Korostelev.

‘What’s the time?’ she asked.

‘About three.’

‘Well, how is it?’

‘How is it!? I’ve come to tell you he’s dying…’

He began to sob, sat down on the bed beside her and wiped the tears with his sleeve. At first she did not take it in, but then she went cold all over and started slowly crossing herself.

‘He’s dying’, he repeated in a thin little voice and sobbed once more. ‘He’s dying because he sacrificed himself… What a loss for science!’ he said bitterly. ‘Compared with all of us he was a great man, absolutely outstanding! What talent! What hopes all of us had for him!’ Korostelev continued, wringing his hands. ‘God in heaven… he was a true scientist – you won’t find another like him in a month of Sundays! Dear Osip Dymov, Osip Dymov! What have you done? Oh, my God!’

Despairingly, Korostelev covered his face with both hands and shook his head. ‘And what a moral force!’ he continued, growing increasingly angry with someone. ‘A kind, pure, loving soul – no ordinary mortal but a saint! He served science and he died for science. He worked like a horse, day in day out, no one spared him and a young scholar like him, a professor in the making, had to tout for private patients and spend his nights doing translations to pay for these… loathsome rags!’

Korostelev looked hatefully at Olga, seized the sheet in both hands and angrily ripped it, as if it were to blame.

‘He didn’t spare himself and no one spared him! Well, what’s the use of talking?’

‘Yes, he was one in a million!’ someone said in the drawing-room, in a deep voice.

Olga recalled their whole life together, from beginning to end, in every single detail and suddenly she realized that he really had been a truly remarkable and unusual man – a great man compared with every single person she knew. And when she recalled what her late father and all his medical colleagues thought of him she realized that every one of them had seen in him a celebrity of the future. The walls, the ceiling, the lamp and the carpet winked at her mockingly, as if they wished to tell her: ‘You’re too late! You’ve missed your chance!’ She rushed weeping from the bedroom and ran into her husband’s study. He lay motionless on the sofa, covered with a blanket up to his waist. His face had become dreadfully thin and pinched, with that greyish, yellow colour you never find with the living. Only his forehead, his black eyebrows and familiar smile told her that it was Dymov. Olga quickly felt his chest, forehead and hands. His chest was still warm, but his forehead and hands were horribly cold. And his half-open eyes gazed at the blanket – not at Olga Ivanovna.

‘Dymov!’ she called out loud. ‘Dymov!’

She wanted to explain that there had been a mistake, that all was not lost, that life could still be beautiful and happy, that he was a rare, a remarkable, a great man and that she would revere, idolize and go in awe of him all her life…

‘Dymov!’ she called, tugging at his shoulder, unable to believe that he would never wake again. ‘Dymov! Say something!’

Meanwhile, in the drawing-room, Korostelev was telling the maid:

‘Why do you have to ask? Just go to the church lodge and ask where the almswomen live. They’ll wash the body and lay it out, they’ll do all that has to be done.’