Ward No. 6 and Other Stories, 1892-1895

A Woman’s Kingdom

I

ON THE EVE

Here was a thick wad of banknotes from her forest manager: he had enclosed fifteen hundred roubles with his letter – the proceeds of winning a court appeal. Anna Akimovna disliked and feared such words as ‘appeal’, ‘winning’ and ‘court’. She knew that justice had to be administered, but for some reason, whenever Nazarych, her works manager, or her forest manager – two inveterate litigants – won a case for her, she always felt bad about it and rather ashamed. And now too she felt apprehensive and embarrassed, and she wanted to put those fifteen hundred roubles away somewhere, out of sight.

She thought regretfully about women of her own age (she was twenty-five) who were busy in the house, who slept soundly because they were tired, and who would wake up tomorrow in truly festive mood. Many of them were long since married and had children. Somehow she alone was obliged to bury herself in these letters like an old woman, making notes on them, penning answers and then doing nothing the entire evening, right up to midnight, except wait until she felt sleepy. All next day people would be wishing her merry Christmas and asking for favours, and the day after that there was bound to be some trouble at the works – someone would be beaten up or someone would die from vodka and she would feel somehow conscience-stricken. After the holidays Nazarych would dismiss about twenty workers for absenteeism and all twenty would huddle together bare-headed at her front door. She would feel too ashamed to go out to them and they would be driven away like dogs. And everyone she knew would talk about it behind her back and send her anonymous letters, saying that she was a millionairess, an exploiter, that she was ruining people’s lives and squeezing the last drop out of them.

Over there was a pile of letters that had been read and put to one side. They were appeals for money. The people here were hungry, drunken, burdened with large families, ill, humiliated, unrecognized. Anna Akimovna had already specified on each letter that one man was to get three roubles, another five. These letters would be taken to the office today, where the dispensation of charity – ‘feeding-time at the zoo’ as the clerks called it – would take place.

They would also distribute, in fiddling amounts, four hundred and seventy roubles – this was the interest on the capital that the late Akim Ivanych had left to the poor and needy. There would be nasty pushing and shoving. A queue, a long file of peculiar-looking people with animal-like faces, ragged, frozen stiff, hungry and already drunk, would stretch from the factory gates right down to the office. Hoarsely they would call out the name of their ‘mother’, their benefactress, Anna Akimovna and her parents. Those at the rear would jostle the ones in front, those in front would swear at them. The clerk would grow tired of the noise, swearing and general wailing, leap out of his office and cuff someone’s ear – much to everyone’s enjoyment. But her own people – workers who had been paid their wages without any holiday bonus and had already spent the lot, down to the last copeck – would be standing in the middle of the yard looking and laughing, some enviously, others sarcastically.

‘Industrialists, especially women, feel more for beggars than their own workers’, Anna Akimovna thought. ‘That’s always the case.’

Her glance fell on the wad of money. It would be nice to hand out this unnecessary filthy lucre to the workers tomorrow, but one couldn’t give them something for nothing, otherwise they would ask for more the next time. And what did those fifteen hundred roubles in fact amount to, since there were more than eighteen hundred workers at the factory, not counting wives and children? Perhaps she could pick out someone who had written a pleading letter, some miserable wretch who had long lost any hope of a better life, and give him the fifteen hundred roubles. The poor devil would be stunned by the money, as if he’d been struck by a thunderbolt, and perhaps would consider himself happy for the first time in his life. This thought appeared original, amusing and entertaining. She picked one letter at random from the pile and read it. Some clerk by the name of Chalikov, long jobless and ill, was living in Gushchin’s house. His wife was consumptive and there were five young daughters. Anna Akimovna was very familiar with that four-storey building belonging to Gushchin where Chalikov lived – and what an evil, rotten, unhealthy place it was!

‘I’ll give this Chalikov something’, she decided. ‘But I’d better take it myself rather than send it, to avoid any unnecessary dramas.’

‘Yes’, she reasoned, hiding the fifteen hundred roubles in her pocket, ‘I’ll go and have a look and perhaps fix the little girls up with something too.’

Cheered at this thought, she rang the bell and ordered the horses to be brought round.

It was after six in the evening when she got into her sledge. The windows in every factory block were brightly lit and this made the enormous yard seem very dark. Electric lamps glowed by the gates, in the remote part of the yard, near the storehouses and workers’ huts.

Anna Akimovna disliked and feared those dark, gloomy blocks, storehouses and workers’ huts. Since her father died she had only once visited the main block. Those high ceilings with iron girders, dozens of huge, rapidly turning wheels, drive-belts and levers, the piercing hiss, the screech of steel, clattering trolleys, the harsh breath of steam; faces that were pale, crimson, or black with coal dust, shirts wet with sweat; the glitter of steel, copper and fire; the smell of coal and oil; the wind that was scorching and cold in turn – all this made the place seem like hell to her. She thought that the wheels, levers and hot, hissing cylinders were trying to break loose from their couplings and destroy people, while anxious-looking men ran around without hearing each other, fussing with the machinery in an attempt to bring its terrible movements to a halt. They showed Anna Akimovna some object which they respectfully explained. She remembered a piece of white-hot iron being drawn out of the furnace in the forge shop; how an old man with a strap round his head and another – younger, in a dark-blue blouse with a chain on his chest, angry-faced and probably a foreman – struck a piece of iron with hammers, making golden sparks fly in all directions; and how, a little later, they had rolled an enormous piece of sheet iron in front of her with a sound like thunder. The old man stood to attention and smiled, while the younger one wiped his wet face on his sleeve and explained something to her. And she could still remember a one-eyed old man in another section scattering filings as he sawed the piece of iron, and a red-haired workman in dark glasses and with holes in his shirt working away at the lathe making something from a piece of steel. The lathe roared and screeched and whistled, and all this noise made Anna feel sick and as if something were boring into her ears. She looked and listened without understanding, smiled graciously and felt ashamed. To earn one’s living and receive thousands of roubles from a business one didn’t understand and which one couldn’t bring oneself to like – how strange this was!

Not once had she visited the workers’ blocks, where there was said to be damp, bed-bugs, debauchery, lawlessness. Amazingly, thousands were spent every year on their upkeep, but if the anonymous letters were to be believed, the workers’ lot deteriorated with every year that passed.

‘Things were better organized when Father was alive’, Anna Akimovna thought as she drove out of the yard, ‘because he was a factory worker himself and he knew what had to be done. But I know nothing and only do stupid things.’

Again she felt bored and no longer pleased at having made the journey. The thought of that lucky man, suddenly to be showered with fifteen hundred roubles like manna from heaven, did not seem original or amusing any more. Going to see this Chalikov while a million-rouble business at home gradually declined and fell apart, while the workers lived worse than convicts in their blocks – that was a stupid act and it meant she was trying to cheat her conscience. Workers from the neighbouring cotton and paper mills were crowding along the high road and across the nearby fields on their way to the lights in town. Laughter and cheerful conversation rang out in the frosty air. As she looked at the women and young ones, Anna Akimovna suddenly yearned for simplicity, roughness, overcrowding. She vividly pictured those far-off times when she was a little girl called Annie, sharing her mother’s blanket, while their lodger – a laundress – worked away in the next room. From the adjoining flats she could hear laughter, swearing, children crying, an accordion, the buzzing of lathes and sewing-machines which penetrated the thin walls, while Akim Ivanych, her father and jack-of-all-trades, did some soldering at the stove or drew plans, or worked with his plane oblivious of the cramped conditions and the noise. And now she had a strong urge to wash and iron, to run back and forwards to shop and pub as she had done every day when she lived with her mother. Rather be a worker than a factory owner! Her large house with its chandeliers and paintings, her footman Misha with his coat and tails, and small, velvety moustache, the grand Barbara, the toadying Agafya, the young people of both sexes who came almost every day to beg for money and with whom she always felt somewhat guilty, those civil servants, doctors, ladies dispensing charity on her behalf, flattering her and at the same time despising her humble origin – how boring and alien all this was!

She came to the level crossing and barrier. Houses alternated with vegetable gardens. Here at last was the broad street where Gushchin’s celebrated house stood. The normally quiet street was very busy, as it was Christmas Eve. A great deal of noise came from the pubs and bars. If some stranger to the district, someone from the middle of the town, had driven down the street, then he would have seen only filthy, drunken, foul-mouthed people. But Anna Akimovna, who had lived in the district from childhood, imagined she could see her late father, then her mother, then her uncle in the crowd. Her father had been a gentle, vague soul, something of a dreamer, carefree and light-headed. He had no liking for money, position or power. He often used to say that working men had no time to think of holidays or going to church. But for his wife, he might never have observed the fasts and would have eaten meat during Lent. In contrast, her Uncle Ivan Ivanych had been a man of steel. In everything that was connected with religion, politics or morals he had been strict and unbending, and made sure that not only he himself practised what he preached, but the servants and his acquaintances too. Heaven help anyone coming into his room without making the sign of the cross. He kept the luxurious apartment where Anna Akimovna now lived under lock and key, opening it only on special holidays, for important guests, while he himself lived in that poky little icon-filled room which was his office. He believed in the Old Creed,¹ always entertaining bishops and priests who believed as he did, although he had been christened and married and had buried his wife according to the rites of the Orthodox Church. He did not like his brother Akim – his sole heir – for his frivolous attitude, calling it simple-minded and stupid, and for his indifference to religion. He had treated him badly, just like a workman, paying him sixteen roubles a month. Akim would speak to his brother most respectfully, and at Shrovetide went with his whole family to prostrate himself before him. But three years before he died Ivan relented, forgave him and told him to engage a governess for Anna.

The gates to Gushchin’s house were dark, deep, and had a terrible stench about them. Men could be heard coughing near the walls. Leaving her sledge in the street, Anna Akimovna entered the yard, where she asked the way to flat No. 46, where Chalikov the clerk lived. She was directed to the last door on the right, on the second floor. In the yard, and near the last door, even on the staircase, there was the same terrible smell as at the gates. In her childhood, when her father was a simple workman, Anna Akimovna had lived in similar houses. Then, when her circumstances changed, she often visited them as a charity worker. The filthy narrow stone staircase with a landing on each floor, the greasy lamp in the stair-well, the stench, the slop-basins, pots, rags outside doors on the landings – all this she was long familiar with. One door was open and she could see Jewish tailors, wearing caps, sitting on top of tables and sewing. She met people on the stairs, but she did not think for one moment that they could do her any harm. She feared workmen and peasants, whether drunk or sober, as little as she did her own cultivated friends.

Flat No. 46 had no hall and opened straight into the kitchen. Factory workers’ and craftsmen’s flats usually smell of varnish, tar, leather or smoke, depending on the occupant’s trade. But flats belonging to impoverished gentlefolk and clerks can be recognized by their dank, rather acrid smell. Hardly had Anna Akimovna crossed the threshold than she was enveloped in this revolting stench. A man in a frock-coat was sitting at a table in one corner, his back to the door – most probably Chalikov himself. With him were five little girls. The eldest, broad-faced and thin, with a comb in her hair, looked about fifteen, while the youngest was a plump little girl with hair like a hedgehog and not more than three. All six were eating. Near the stove, with an oven-fork in her hands, stood a small, very thin, sallow-faced woman in a skirt and white blouse. She was pregnant.

‘I didn’t expect such disobedience from you, Liza’, the man said reproachfully. ‘It’s a disgrace! Would you like Daddy to give you a good hiding? Yes?’

When she saw a strange lady on the threshold, the thin woman shuddered and put down her oven-fork.

‘Vasily Nikitich!’ she called out in a hollow voice, after a moment’s hesitation – as though she could not believe her eyes.

The man looked round and jumped up. He was a bony, narrow-shouldered person with sunken temples and a flat chest. His eyes were small, deep-set, with dark rings round them; his nose was long, bird-like and slightly twisted to the right; his mouth was wide and his forked beard and clean-shaven upper lip made him look more like a footman than a clerk.

‘Does Mr Chalikov live here?’ Anna Akimovna asked.

‘That’s right, lady’, Chalikov replied gruffly, but then he recognized Anna Akimovna and cried out ‘Miss Glagolev! Anna Akimovna!’, and suddenly he gasped for breath and threw his arms up as if scared out of his wits. ‘Our saviour!’

Groaning and mumbling like a paralytic as he ran over to her (there was cabbage on his beard and he smelt of vodka), he laid his forehead on her muff and seemed to lose consciousness.

‘Your hand, your divine hand!’ he gasped. ‘It’s a dream, a beautiful dream! Children, wake me up!’

He turned towards the table and waved his fists.

‘Providence has heard our prayers!’ he sobbed. ‘Our rescuer, our angel has come! We’re saved! Children, on your knees! On your knees!’

For some reason Mrs Chalikov and the girls – with the exception of the youngest – began hurriedly clearing the table.

‘You wrote that your wife was very ill’, Anna Akimovna said, and she felt ashamed and annoyed. ‘I won’t give him that fifteen hundred’, she thought.

‘That’s her, that’s my wife!’ Chalikov said in a shrill, woman’s voice, and he seemed about to burst into tears. ‘There she is, the poor woman, with one foot in the grave! But we’re not complaining, ma’am. Death is better than a life like that. Die, you miserable woman!’

‘Why is he putting on such an act?’ Anna Akimovna wondered indignantly. ‘I can see right away that he’s used to dealing with rich people.’

‘Please talk to me properly, I don’t like play-acting’, she said.

‘Yes, ma’am. Five orphans round their mother’s coffin, with the funeral candles burning! You call that play-acting! Oh, God!’ Chalikov said bitterly and turned away.

‘Shut up!’ his wife whispered, tugging him by the sleeve. ‘It’s a terrible mess here, ma’am’, she said to Anna Akimovna. ‘Please forgive us. Please understand… it’s a family matter. It’s so overcrowded, but we mean no offence.’

‘I won’t give them the fifteen hundred’, Anna Akimovna thought again.

To make a quick escape from these people and that acrid smell, she took out her purse and decided to leave them twenty-five roubles – and no more. But suddenly she felt ashamed of having travelled so far and having troubled these people for nothing.

‘If you’d like to give me some paper and ink I’ll write straight away to a doctor, a very good friend of mine, and tell him to call’, she said, blushing. ‘He’s a very good doctor. And I’ll leave you some money for medicine.’

Mrs Chalikov hurriedly began wiping the table down.

‘It’s filthy in here! What are you doing?’ Chalikov hissed, giving her a vicious look. ‘Take her to the lodger’s room. Please, ma’am, go into the lodger’s room, if you don’t mind’, he said, turning to Anna Akimovna. ‘It’s clean there.’

‘Osip Ilich says no one’s to go into his room!’ one of the little girls said sternly.

But Anna Akimovna had already been led out of the kitchen, through a narrow, intercommunicating room, between two beds. From the position of these beds she could tell that two people slept lengthways on one of them and three crossways on the other. The next room, where the lodger lived, really was clean. There was a tidy bed with a red woollen cover, a pillow in a white case, even a special little holder for a watch. There was a table covered with a linen cloth, and on this stood a milky-white ink-pot, pens, paper, framed photographs – all neatly arranged. And there was another table, which was black, with watchmaker’s instruments and dismantled watches neatly laid out on it. On the walls hung little hammers, pincers, gimlets, chisels, pliers and so on. And there were three wall clocks, all ticking away. One of them was quite huge, with the kind of fat pendulum weights you see in taverns.

As she started on the letter, Anna Akimovna saw a portrait of her father, and one of herself, on the table in front of her, which surprised her.

‘Who lives here?’ she asked.

‘The lodger, ma’am. Pimenov works at your factory.’

‘Really? I thought a watchmaker must be living here.’

‘He repairs watches privately, in his spare time. It’s his hobby, ma’am.’

After a brief silence, during which only the ticking of the clocks and the scraping of pen on paper could be heard, Chalikov sighed and said in a disgruntled, sarcastic voice, ‘There’s no getting away from it, you can’t make much money from being a gentleman or office clerk. You can wear decorations on your chest, you can have a title, but you’ll still starve. If you ask me, if some ordinary man from the lower classes helps the poor, he’s much more of a gentleman than some Chalikov who’s bogged down in poverty and vice.’

To flatter Anna Akimovna he produced a few more sentences that were derogatory to his own social position, and he was obviously trying to lower himself, since he considered he was her superior. Meanwhile she had finished the letter and sealed it. The letter would be thrown away, the money would not be spent on medicine – all this she knew and yet she still put twenty-five roubles on the table, adding two ten-rouble notes after further reflection. Mrs Chalikov’s gaunt yellow hand flashed before her like a hen’s claw, crumpling the money.

‘You’ve been kind enough to give us money for medicine’, Chalikov said in a trembling voice. ‘But please lend me a helping hand – and my children as well’, he added, sobbing. ‘My poor, poor children! I don’t fear for myself, but for my daughters. I fear the Hydra of corruption!’

As she tried to open her purse with its jammed lock, Anna Akimovna grew flushed with embarrassment. She felt ashamed that people were standing there before her, looking at her hands, waiting, and most probably silently laughing at her. Just then someone entered the kitchen and stamped his feet to shake the snow off.

‘The lodger’s back’, Mrs Chalikov said.

Anna Akimovna grew even more embarrassed. She did not want any of the factory workers to find her in that ridiculous situation. And then, at the worst possible moment, the lodger came into his room – just as she had finally managed to break the lock open and was handing Chalikov some banknotes, while that same Chalikov bellowed like a paralytic and moved his lips as if looking for somewhere to kiss her. She recognized the lodger as that workman who had once made an iron sheet clatter in front of her in the foundry and had explained things to her. Clearly, he had come straight from the works, as his face was smudged with soot. His hands were completely black and his unbelted shirt gleamed with greasy dirt. He was a broad-shouldered man, about thirty, of medium height, with black hair and he was obviously very strong. Anna Akimovna immediately recognized that foreman whose wages were not less than thirty-five roubles a month. He was a harsh, loud-mouthed man who knocked workmen’s teeth out – that was plain from the way he stood, from the pose he suddenly, instinctively, assumed when he saw a lady in his room, but chiefly from his habit of wearing his trousers outside his boots, from the pockets on the front of his shirt, from his sharp, beautifully trimmed beard. Although her late father Akim Ivanych had been the owner’s brother, he had been scared of foremen like this lodger and tried to keep in their good books.

‘Excuse me, we seem to have set up house here while you were out’, Anna Akimovna said.

The workman gave her a surprised look, smiled awkwardly, but did not say a word.

‘Please speak a bit louder, ma’am’, Chalikov said softly. ‘When he comes home of an evening Mr Pimenov’s a bit hard of hearing.’

But Anna Akimovna, pleased now that there was nothing more to do there, nodded and left quickly. Pimenov saw her out.

‘Have you been working for us long?’ she asked in a loud voice, without looking at him.

‘Since I was nine. I got my job in your uncle’s time.’

‘That was ages ago! My uncle and father knew all the workers, but I know hardly any of them. I’ve seen you before, but I didn’t know that your name is Pimenov.’

Anna Akimovna felt that she should defend herself by pretending she hadn’t been serious just before, when she gave the money away – that it was only a joke.

‘Oh, this poverty!’ she sighed. ‘We do good deeds every single day, but it makes no sense. I think it’s pointless trying to help people like Chalikov.’

‘How right you are’, Pimenov agreed. ‘Everything you give him will go on drink. And now that husband and wife will spend the whole night squabbling and trying to take the money away from each other’, he added, laughing.

‘Yes, our acts of charity are useless, tiresome and ludicrous, I must admit. However, one can’t just give up the struggle; something has to be done. Now, what can be done about those Chalikovs?’

She turned to Pimenov and stopped, waiting for his answer. He stopped too and slowly shrugged his shoulders without saying a word. Evidently he knew what should be done about the Chalikovs, but this was so crude and inhuman that he could not bring himself to mention it. For him, the Chalikovs were so boring and mediocre that a moment later he had forgotten all about them. As he looked into Anna Akimovna’s eyes he smiled with pleasure, like someone having a wonderful dream. Only now as she stood close to him could Anna Akimovna tell from his face, particularly his eyes, how exhausted and sleepy he was.

‘I should give him the fifteen hundred!’ she thought, but the idea struck her as rather absurd, and insulting to Pimenov.

‘You must be aching all over from that work, but it doesn’t stop you seeing me out’, she said, going downstairs. ‘Please go back.’

But he did not hear. When they came out into the street he ran on ahead, unbuttoned the sledge cover and said ‘Happy Christmas!’ to Anna Akimovna as he helped her into her seat.

II

MORNING

‘The bells stopped ringing ages ago! There’ll be no one left in church by the time you get there! Heaven help us! Please get up!’

‘Two horses running, running…’ Anna Akimovna said as she woke up. Masha, her red-haired maid, was standing before her with a candle. ‘What’s the matter? What do you want?’

‘The service is over already!’ Masha said despairingly. ‘It’s the third time I’ve tried to wake you! I don’t care if you sleep till evening, but you yourself asked me to wake you.’

Anna Akimovna raised herself on her elbow and looked out of the window. Outside it was still quite dark, apart from the lower edge of the window frame that was white with snow. The rich, deep ringing of bells could be heard, but it came from a parish church some distance away. The clock on the small table showed three minutes past six.

‘All right, Masha… Just two minutes’, Anna Akimovna pleaded, covering her head with the blanket.

She pictured the snow by the porch, the sledge, the dark sky, the crowded church and the smell of juniper, but despite the misgivings this filled her with she decided to get up right away and go to early service. The whole time she lay there in her warm bed, struggling against sleep – sleep is so sweet when one has to get up – and conjuring up visions of a huge garden on a hill, Gushchin’s house, there was the nagging thought that she should get up immediately and go to church.

But when she did get up it was quite light and the clock showed half past nine. During the night a great deal of fresh snow had piled up, the trees were clothed in white and the air was unusually bright, clear and serene, so that when Anna Akimovna looked through the window she wanted first to take a very deep breath. But as she was washing herself, a vestige of the joy she had felt as a child on Christmas Day stirred within her – and then she felt easier, free and pure at heart, as if her soul itself had been cleansed or dipped in white snow. In came Masha, in her best clothes and tightly corseted, and wished her happy Christmas, after which she spent a long time combing her hair and helping her to dress. The smell and feel of that beautiful, magnificent new dress, with its rustle, and the smell of fresh perfume all excited Anna Akimovna.

‘So, it’s Christmas’, she gaily told Masha. ‘Now let’s do some fortune-telling.’

‘Last year it came out that I would marry an old man. Three times it came out like that, it did.’

‘Don’t worry, God is merciful.’

‘I’m not so sure, ma’am. As I see it, I’d be better off married to an old man than running around getting nowhere’, Masha sighed sadly. ‘I’m past twenty now and that’s no joke.’

Everyone in the house knew that red-haired Masha was in love with Misha the butler and that this deep but hopeless passion had lasted for three years now.

‘Don’t talk such nonsense’, Anna Akimovna said consolingly. ‘I’ll soon be thirty, but I still intend marrying someone young.’

While the mistress of the house was dressing, Misha – in his new tailcoat and lacquered boots – paced the ballroom waiting for her to come out so that he could wish her happy Christmas.

He had his own peculiar manner of walking, and treading softly and delicately. If you watched his legs, arms and the angle of his head you might have thought that he wasn’t just walking, but practising the first figure of the quadrille. Despite his fine, velvety moustache and his handsome, even rather roguish exterior, he was as staid, sober-minded and pious as an old man. He always prostrated himself when praying and he loved burning incense in his room. He respected and revered the rich and influential, but he despised the poor and any kind of humble petitioner with the whole might of his ‘holier-than-thou’ flunkey’s soul. Under his starched shirt was a flannel vest which he wore winter and summer – he attached great importance to his health. His ears were stuffed with cottonwool.

When Anna Akimovna and Masha came across the ballroom, he leant his head downwards, slightly to one side, and said in a pleasant, sugary voice, ‘I have the honour, ma’am, to offer my compliments on the solemn occasion of Jesus Christ’s nativity.’

Anna Akimovna gave him five roubles and poor Masha was stunned. His festive appearance, his pose, his voice and what he said astounded her with their elegance and beauty. As she followed her mistress she had no thoughts, saw nothing, smiling first blissfully and then bitterly.

The upper storey was called ‘the best rooms’ or ‘the apartment’, whereas the lower floor, where Aunt Tatyana Ivanovna held sway, was called the ‘tradesmen’s’, ‘old people’s’ or simply the ‘women’s quarters’. In the best rooms they usually received upper-class, educated people, and in the downstairs section ordinary people and Auntie’s personal friends. Beautiful, buxom, healthy, still young and fresh, and highly conscious of her magnificent dress, which, she felt, was radiating light in all directions, Anna Akimovna went down to the lower floor.

There she was greeted with reproaches: an educated person like her had forgotten God, had missed morning service by oversleeping and had not come down to break her fast. All clasped their hands and assured her most sincerely that she was exceptionally pretty. She took them at their word and laughed, kissed them and gave them one, three or five roubles each, depending on the person. She liked it downstairs. Wherever she looked there were icon-cases, icons, icon-lamps, portraits of church dignitaries. It smelt of monks. Knives clattered in the kitchen and a rich, very savoury smell spread everywhere. The yellow stained floors shone and narrow rugs with bright blue stripes stretched like little paths from the doors to the corners where the icons were. The sun blazed through the windows.

Some old women – strangers – were sitting in the dining-room. In Barbara’s room there were old women as well, together with a deaf and dumb girl who appeared very shy and who kept making a mumbling sound. Two skinny little girls who had been asked over from the orphanage for the holidays came up to kiss Anna Akimovna’s hand but stopped, dumbfounded by the richness of her dress. She noticed that one of the girls was a little cross-eyed, and although she was in a relaxed, holiday mood, her heart suddenly sank at the thought that the girl would be ignored by the young men and would never marry. Five huge peasants in new shirts – not factory workers but relatives of the kitchen servants – were sitting over the samovar in Agafya the cook’s room. As soon as they saw Anna Akimovna the peasants jumped up and stopped chewing, out of politeness, although all had a full mouth. Stefan her chef, in white hat and knife in hand, came out from the kitchen to wish them merry Christmas. House porters in felt boots arrived and offered their good wishes too. A water-carrier with icicles on his beard showed his face but dared not enter.

Anna Akimovna walked through all the rooms, the whole assembly following her: Auntie, Barbara, Nikandrovna, Martha the seamstress, and ‘downstairs Masha’. Slim and slender, taller than anyone else in the house, dressed all in black and smelling of cypress wood and coffee, Barbara crossed herself and bowed before the icon in every room. Each time you looked at her you were somehow reminded that she had prepared her own shroud for the day she died, and that in the same trunk where she kept this shroud she had hidden her lottery tickets.

‘Come on, Anna dear, show some Christmas spirit!’ she said, opening the kitchen door. ‘Forgive that miserable wretch! What a crowd!’

Panteley the coachman, who had been dismissed for drunkenness in November, was on his knees in the middle of the kitchen. A kind man, he was liable to become violent when drunk. Then he just couldn’t sleep and he marched round the factory blocks shouting menacingly ‘I know everything!’ From his bloated lips, puffy face and bloodshot eyes it was plain that he had been on the bottle non-stop since November.

‘Please forgive me, Anna Akimovna!’ he said hoarsely, banging his forehead on the floor and revealing a neck like a bull’s.

‘It was my aunt who dismissed you, so go and ask her.’

‘Did you say “aunt”?’ asked Auntie as she came puffing and panting into the kitchen. She was so fat one could have put a samovar and tray of cups on her chest. ‘What’s all this about your aunt? You’re mistress here, so you see to it. I’d rather these ruffians cleared out of here altogether. Come on, get up, you great pig!’ she shouted, losing patience. ‘Out of my sight! I’ll forgive you this one last time, but if it happens again don’t expect any mercy.’

They went into the dining-room for coffee. People could be heard blowing their noses and there was a low, deep coughing and a sound of footsteps as if newly shod horses were being led into the anteroom near the ballroom. All was quiet for about half a minute, then suddenly the carol singers shrieked so loud that everyone jumped. While they sang, the almshouse priest arrived with the deacon and lay reader. As he put on his stole the priest slowly declared that ‘it had snowed during the night when the bells were ringing for early morning service’, that ‘it hadn’t been cold but towards morning the frost began to harden, confound it, and it was twenty below, in all likelihood’.

‘Many people, however, maintain that winter is healthier than summer’, the deacon said, but he immediately assumed a serious expression and followed the priest in singing ‘Thy Nativity, Oh, Christ Our Lord’.²

Shortly after, the priest from the factory sickbay arrived, then nurses from the community hospital and children from the orphanage. The singing went on almost non-stop. They sang, they ate, they left.

About twenty of the works staff came to offer their compliments of the season. They were all senior men – engineers, their assistants, pattern-makers, the accountant and so on. All looked eminently respectable in their new black frock-coats and they were all fine men, the select few, and each knew his worth. If any one of them were to lose his job that day, another factory would be only too pleased to take him on tomorrow. They seemed to take a great liking to Anna Akimovna’s aunt, since they were relaxed with her and even smoked, while the accountant put his arm around her ample waist as they all crowded over to the food. Perhaps they felt so free and easy because Barbara, who had wielded great power in the old man’s day and had been custodian of the servants’ morals, now had no authority at all in the house. Perhaps another reason was that many of them still remembered the time when Aunt Tatyana, who was kept on a tight rein by her brothers, had dressed like a simple peasant, in the same style as Agafya, and when even Miss Anna had run round the yard near the factory blocks and everyone had called her Annie.

The factory staff ate their food, talked and glanced at Anna Akimovna in bewilderment. How she had grown up, how pretty she had become! But this elegant girl, brought up by governesses and tutors, was a stranger to them, a mystery, and they could not help staying close to the aunt, who spoke to them as though they were on her level, constantly urged them to eat and drink and clinked glasses with them, having already drunk two glasses of rowanberry vodka. Anna Akimovna had always feared that they might think she was vain, an upstart, a crow in peacock’s feathers. And now, as the staff crowded around the food, she stayed in the dining-room, where she took part in the conversation. She asked Pimenov, whom she had met the day before, ‘Why are there so many clocks in your room?’

‘I repair them’, he replied. ‘It’s something I do in my spare time, during holidays, or when I can’t sleep.’

‘So, if my watch goes wrong I can ask you to repair it?’ Anna Akimovna asked, laughing.

‘Of course, that would give me great pleasure’, Pimenov said, and he seemed deeply touched when, without knowing why, she unhooked her magnificent watch from her corsage and handed it to him. Silently he inspected it. ‘Why, yes, with pleasure’, he repeated. ‘I don’t usually repair pocket watches nowadays. My eyes are bad and the doctor advised me not to do any close work. But for you I’ll make an exception.’

‘Doctors are liars’, the accountant said. Everyone burst out laughing. ‘Don’t you believe what they say’, he continued, flattered by the laughter. ‘Last year, during Lent, a cog-wheel flew out of a drum and hit old Kalmykov right on the head; you could see his brains. The doctor said he would die, but he’s still alive and working, only he talks with a stutter after what happened.’

‘Doctors can talk rubbish, I do agree, but not that much’, Auntie sighed. ‘Pyotr Andreyevich, God rest his soul, lost his sight. Like you, he worked all day in the factory near a hot furnace and he went blind. Heat damages the eyes. Well, what’s the use of talking?’ She gave a start. ‘Let’s have a drink! Merry Christmas, my dears! I don’t usually drink, but I’ll have one with you. God forgive me! Cheers!’

After what had happened yesterday, Anna Akimovna felt that Pimenov despised her as a ‘do-gooder’, but that, as a woman, she enchanted him. She glanced at him and it seemed he was behaving very nicely and was properly dressed for the occasion. True, his coat sleeves were rather short, the waist was too high and the trousers not broad, according to the latest style. On the other hand his tie was knotted with tasteful neglect and it wasn’t as loud as the others’. And he clearly was a good-natured man, for he obediently ate everything that Auntie put on his plate. She remembered how black he had looked the day before, how much he had wanted to sleep, and for some reason the memory of it moved her.

When the staff were ready to leave, Anna Akimovna offered Pimenov her hand and wanted to ask him to visit her some time, but her tongue would not obey her and she could not produce one word. In case his workmates thought she had taken a fancy to Pimenov, she offered them her hand as well.

Then the boys arrived from the school of which she was a governor. All of them had short hair and all were dressed in identical grey smocks. Their master, a tall young man, without a moustache and his face covered in red blotches, obviously felt nervous and made his pupils stand in rows. The boys began to sing in harmony, but their voices were harsh and unpleasant. Nazarych, the works manager, a bald, eagle-eyed believer in the Old Creed, had never got on with the schoolmasters, but he really hated and despised this teacher, who was fussily giving directions with his arm. Why this was so, he himself couldn’t say. He treated him arrogantly and rudely, withheld his wages, interfered with the teaching. In an effort to get rid of him for good, he had appointed a distant relative of his own wife as school caretaker – a drunken peasant who disobeyed the schoolmaster in front of the boys.

Anna Akimovna knew all about this, but she was unable to help, as she herself was scared of Nazarych. Now she wanted at least to be kind to the schoolmaster and tell him that she was very satisfied with him. But when the singing was over and he embarked on a highly embarrassed apology for something, and after Auntie had spoken to him like a little boy and unceremoniously bundled him over to the table, she felt bored and awkward. After leaving instructions for the children to receive their presents she went upstairs to her own part of the house.

‘There’s really a great deal of cruelty about these festivities’, she said aloud to herself a little later as she looked through the window at the crowd of boys on their way from the house to the gates, shrinking from the cold and putting their furs and coats on as they went. ‘On holidays all one wants is some rest, to be at home with the family, but those poor boys, that schoolmaster, the staff – for some reason they’re obliged to go out into the freezing cold to wish you merry Christmas and convey their respects. They feel awkward…’

Misha, who was standing just by the ballroom doors, heard this. ‘We didn’t start it’, he said, ‘and it won’t finish with us. Of course, I’m not an educated man, Anna Akimovna, but as I see it the poor always have to pay their respects to those what’s rich. They say God puts his mark on rogues. You’ll only find poor folk in prisons, doss-houses, pubs, but respectable folk are always the rich ones, you see. Money comes to money, that’s what they say about the rich.’

‘Misha, you always talk such boring stuff that it’s impossible to understand you’, Anna Akimovna said and went to the far end of the ballroom.

It was only just twelve o’clock. The silence of those huge rooms, broken only now and then by the sound of singing that drifted up from the ground floor, made one feel like yawning. The bronzes, the albums, the paintings on the walls depicting an ocean scene with small ships, a meadow with cows, views of the Rhine, were really so dull, one’s eyes swiftly glided over them without seeing a thing. The holiday mood had already begun to pall. Anna Akimovna still considered herself as beautiful, kind and exceptional as before, but she felt these virtues were useless to anyone. It seemed that there had been no point at all in wearing that expensive dress. Whom did she want to please? And as usually happened on every holiday, she began to tire of the loneliness and was unsettled by the nagging thought that her beauty, health and wealth were nothing but an illusion, since she was a superfluous sort of person, unwanted, unloved by anyone. She walked through all her rooms, humming and looking through the windows. Stopping in the hall she could not help starting a conversation with Misha.

‘I really don’t know, Misha, who you think you are’, she sighed. ‘God will surely punish you for this.’

‘What do you mean, ma’am?’

‘You know very well. Forgive me for interfering with your personal affairs, but I have the impression you’re ruining your life out of sheer obstinacy. Don’t you agree it’s the right time for you to marry now, she’s such a beautiful, deserving girl? You won’t find a better. She’s beautiful, clever, gentle, devoted… And as for her looks! If she were one of our circle, or in high society, everyone would love her for her wonderful red hair alone. Just look how her hair suits her complexion! God, you understand nothing and don’t know yourself what you want’, Anna Akimovna said bitterly, the tears welling up in her eyes. ‘That poor girl. I feel so sorry for her! I know you’re looking for someone with money, but I’ve already told you that I’ll give Masha a dowry.’

Misha imagined that his future wife could only be someone tall, buxom, well-shaped and religious, with a walk like a peacock’s and never without a long shawl on her shoulders. But Masha was thin, delicate, tightly corseted and with an unpretentious walk. Most important, she was too seductive and at times Misha did feel strongly attracted to her. However, according to him, that kind of thing was only conducive to loose behaviour, not marriage. He had hesitated a little when Anna Akimovna promised a dowry. But then some poor student with a brown coat over his tunic³ had arrived with a letter for Anna Akimovna and had been so enraptured with Masha that he couldn’t control himself and had embraced her near the coat hooks downstairs. She had given a faint cry. Misha saw what happened from the staircase above and ever since had felt aversion for her. A poor student! Who knows, things might have turned out quite differently if some rich student or officer had embraced her instead…

‘Why don’t you marry her?’ Anna Akimovna asked. ‘What more do you want?’

Misha did not answer and stood quite still staring at an armchair, eyebrows raised.

‘Do you love someone else?’

Silence. In came red-haired Masha with some letters and visiting cards on a tray. She guessed that they were talking about her and blushed until the tears came.

‘The postmen are here’, she muttered. ‘And there’s a clerk called Chalikov, he’s waiting downstairs. Says you told him to come here today for something.’

‘What impertinence!’ Anna Akimovna said furiously. ‘I told him nothing of the sort! Tell him to clear off, I’m not at home!’

The doorbell rang: the priests from her own parish had arrived. They were always received in the best part of the house – and that was upstairs. They were followed by Nazarych the works manager and the factory doctor. Then Misha announced the inspector of secondary schools. The reception had begun.

Whenever she had a free moment, Anna Akimovna would sit deep in an armchair in the drawing-room, close her eyes and conclude that her loneliness was something quite natural, since she had not married and never would. But this wasn’t her fault. Fate itself had taken her from an ordinary working-class background (where, if her memory was to be trusted, she felt so comfortable and at home) and thrown her into these vast rooms where she never knew what to do with herself. Nor could she understand why so many people were dashing in and out. The present events struck her as of no consequence, fruitless, since they had never brought her a moment’s happiness and they never could.

‘If only I could fall in love’, she thought, stretching herself, and this thought alone warmed her heart. ‘And if I could get rid of that factory’, she brooded, imagining all those ponderous blocks, those barracks, that school, being eased from her conscience. Then she remembered her father and thought that had he lived longer he would surely have married her to some ordinary man, like Pimenov, and that would have been that. It would have been a good thing, as the factory would have fallen into the right hands.

She pictured his curly hair, the bold profile, those fine, mocking lips, the strength – the terrible strength – of his shoulders, arms and chest, and how moved he had been when he inspected her watch earlier in the day. ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘I can’t see anything against it. Yes, I’d marry him.’

‘Anna Akimovna!’ Misha called as he noiselessly entered the drawing-room.

‘What a fright you gave me!’ she said, trembling all over. ‘What do you want?’

‘Anna Akimovna’, he repeated, putting his hand to his heart and raising his eyebrows. ‘You are the lady of the house, my benefactress, and you alone can tell me whom to marry, as you’re like a mother to me. But please tell them to stop teasing me, laughing at me downstairs. They don’t give me a moment’s peace!’

‘And how do they tease you?’

‘They keep calling me Masha’s Misha!’

‘Ugh, what rubbish!’ Anna Akimovna said, getting angry. ‘What a stupid lot you all are! You included, Misha. I’m sick and tired of you and I don’t want to see you!’

III

DINNER

Like the previous year, the last guests to come were actual state councillor⁴ Krylin and Lysevich, the well-known lawyer. When they arrived it was quite dark already. Krylin, in his sixties, had a wide mouth, grey mutton-chop whiskers and the face of a lynx. He was in uniform and white trousers, and wore the ribbon of St Anne.⁵

He held Anna Akimovna’s hand for a long time in both of his, staring into her face and moving his lips. Finally he said in a slow, deliberate voice pitched on one note, ‘I respected your uncle… and your father, and they were well-disposed towards me. Now, as you can see, I consider it my pleasant duty to convey seasonal greetings to their respected heiress, despite my being ill and having to travel so far. And I’m delighted to see you looking so well.’

Lysevich the barrister, a tall, handsome fair-haired man, with slightly greying temples and beard, was celebrated for his exceptionally refined manners. He would dance into the room, execute an apparently reluctant bow, twitch his shoulders as he spoke, all this being executed with the lazy grace of a spoilt horse grown idle from standing about. He was well-fed, extremely healthy and rich. Once he won as much as forty thousand roubles, but didn’t breathe a word about it to his friends. He loved eating well, especially cheese, truffles, grated radish with hempseed oil, and he maintained he had eaten fried, uncleaned giblets in Paris. He spoke articulately, smoothly, never hesitating, and only rarely allowed himself a simpering pause or click of the fingers, as if indicating he was at a loss for the mot juste. He had long stopped believing anything he was called upon to say in court: perhaps he did believe what he said, but attached no importance to it: it was all such old hat, so trivial. He believed only in the esoteric, the unusual. Copy-book ethics, expressed in an original form, reduced him to tears. His two notebooks were crammed with unusual sayings culled from various authors, and whenever he felt in need of some expression, he would nervously rummage in both books, usually failing to find what he wanted. Once old Akim Ivanych, in a moment of euphoria and wanting to go one better than his competitors, had engaged him as lawyer at the works, at a fixed salary of twelve thousand. But the only legal matters that cropped up there were a few minor cases that Lysevich delegated to his assistants.

Anna Akimovna knew that there was no work for him at the factory, but could not bring herself to dismiss him – she did not have the courage, and, what was more, had grown used to him. He termed himself her ‘legal adviser’, calling his salary – which he sent for every first day of the month, on the dot – that ‘mundane affair’. Anna Akimovna knew that after her father died and the forest was sold for timber to make railway sleepers, Lysevich had made more than fifteen thousand from the sale and split it with Nazarych. When she found out about the swindle she wept bitterly but then accepted the fact.

After wishing her happy Christmas and kissing both her hands, Lysevich looked her up and down and frowned.

‘There’s no need for it’, he said with genuine distress. ‘I said, my dear, that there’s no need for it!’

‘What are you talking about, Viktor Nikolaich?’

‘What I said was, you shouldn’t put on weight. Your whole family has this unfortunate tendency. There’s no need for it’, he pleaded again and kissed her hand. ‘You’re such a good person! You’re so wonderful!’ He turned to Krylin and said, ‘My dear sir, I can recommend the only woman in this world I ever loved seriously.’

‘That doesn’t surprise me. At your age, to know Anna Akimovna and not to love her is impossible.’

‘I adore her!’ the lawyer continued with complete sincerity, but with his usual lazy gracefulness. ‘I love her – not because I’m a man and she’s a woman. When I’m with her I feel as if she is some third kind of sex, and myself a fourth, and we seem to be whirling away into the realm of the most delicate hues, where we blend into one spectrum. Leconte de Lisle⁶ is best at defining such relationships. He has a wonderful passage, somewhere, it’s really amazing.’

Lysevich rummaged first in one book, then the other. Not managing to find the passage, he grew quiet. They began discussing the weather, the opera, Duse’s⁷ imminent arrival. Anna Akimovna remembered that Lysevich and (so she thought) Krylin had dined with her the previous Christmas. Now, as they prepared to leave, she urged them in the most genuinely pleading voice to stay for dinner, arguing that they had no more visits to make. After a moment’s hesitation they agreed.

Besides the usual dinner, consisting of cabbage soup, roast sucking-pig, goose with apples and so on, a French or ‘chef’s special’ dinner was prepared in the kitchen on major holidays, in case any of the upstairs guests felt like indulging themselves. When the clatter of crockery came from the dining-room, Lysevich began to show visible excitement. He rubbed his hands, twitched his shoulders, screwed up his eyes and talked with great feeling about the dinners the old men used to give and the superb turbot matelote⁸ the present chef could produce – more a divine revelation than a matelote! He was so looking forward to the dinner, mentally relishing and savouring it in advance. When Anna Akimovna took his arm and led him into the dining-room and he had drunk his glass of vodka and popped a tiny slice of salmon into his mouth, he even purred with pleasure. He chewed noisily and disgustingly, making curious sounds through his nose, while his eyes became oily and greedy.

It was a sumptuous hors-d’œuvre. Among other things there were fresh white mushrooms in sour cream and sauce provençale made with fried oysters and crayfish tails well flavoured with sour pickles. The main meal consisted of delicately refined dishes with a festive flavour, and the wines were excellent. Misha served like someone in a trance. Whenever he placed a fresh dish on the table and removed the lid from a glittering tureen, or poured out wine, he performed it with the solemnity of a professor of black magic. From his expression and the way he walked, he seemed to be executing the first figure of a quadrille, and the lawyer thought to himself several times ‘What an idiot!’

After the third course Lysevich turned to Anna Akimovna.

‘A fin de siècle woman – I mean young and rich, of course – must be independent, clever, refined, intelligent, bold and rather corrupt. I say rather corrupt, just a little bit, since, as you’ll agree, anything in excess becomes exhausting. And you, my dear, you must not vegetate, you must not live like all the others, but must relish life, and moderate dissipation is the spice of life. Bury yourself deep in flowers of overpowering fragrance, choke on musk, eat hashish, but above all, you must love, love… The first thing I would do, if I were in your place, would be to have seven men, one for each day of the week. One would be called Monday, the next Tuesday, the third Wednesday and so on, each would know his allotted day.’

What he said disturbed Anna Akimovna. She did not eat a thing and drank only one glass of wine.

‘Let me have my say!’ she exclaimed. ‘Personally, I don’t recognize love without the family. I’m lonely, lonely as the moon in the sky above – a waning moon, what’s more, and for all you say I’m convinced, I feel intuitively, that this waning can only be reversed by love in its usual meaning. This kind of love defines my responsibilities, my work, it illumines my view of life. I require spiritual peace and calm from love. I want to escape as far as possible from musk, your occultism and fin de siècle hocus-pocus. Briefly’, she added, growing embarrassed, ‘I want a husband and children.’

‘You want to get married? All right, that’s also possible’, Lysevich agreed. ‘You must try everything – marriage, jealousy, the sweetness of the first infidelity, children even… But do hurry up and live, my dear. Hurry! Time’s passing, it won’t wait.’

‘Then I shall marry!’ she said angrily, glancing at his smooth, self-satisfied face. ‘I shall marry in the most ordinary, the most vulgar way and I’ll be radiant with happiness. And I’ll marry some simple working man, a mechanic or a draughtsman, if you can imagine that.’

‘That wouldn’t be a bad idea either. A princess falls for a swineherd – being a princess she can do that. And you too will be allowed to do the same, as you’re no ordinary person. If you want to love a Negro or Arab, my dear, don’t be shy, go and order a Negro. Don’t deny yourself a thing. You should be as bold as your own desires, don’t lag behind them.’

‘Why do you find me so hard to understand?’ Anna Akimovna said in amazement, her eyes glistening with tears. ‘Please try and understand. I have an enormous business on my hands, I’m responsible for two thousand workers before God. People who work for me go blind and deaf. Life terrifies me, just terrifies me! While I’m suffering like this you can be so heartless as to talk about some Negro or other and smile!’ Anna Akimovna thumped her fist on the table. ‘To continue living as I do now, to marry someone as idle, feckless as myself would be criminal. I can’t go on living like this’, she said furiously, ‘I just can’t!’

‘How pretty she is!’ Lysevich said, enraptured. ‘Good God, how pretty! But why are you so angry, my dear? I admit I could be wrong, but do you think it will make things any better for the workers if, for the sake of ideals, which I happen to respect deeply, you’re miserable all the time and renounce all joy in life? Not one little bit. There has to be depravity, dissipation!’ he said determinedly. ‘You must be corrupt, it’s your duty! Have a good think about that, my dear.’

Anna Akimovna was glad that she had spoken her mind and she cheered up. She was pleased to have spoken so eloquently and now she was convinced that if Pimenov, for example, were to fall in love with her she would be delighted to marry him.

Misha poured some champagne.

‘You irritate me, Viktor Nikolaich’, she said, clinking glasses with the lawyer. ‘It annoys me that you can offer advice when you have no knowledge of life at all. You seem to think that mechanics or draughtsmen are ignorant peasants. But they’re terribly clever, they’re really remarkable!’

‘I knew your father and uncle… and I respected them’, Krylin said with slow deliberation. He was sitting as rigid as a statue and had been eating non-stop the whole time. ‘They were people of the highest intellect and… the loftiest moral qualities.’

‘All right, we know all about those qualities’, the lawyer muttered and asked permission to smoke.

When dinner was over, Krylin was led off to sleep. Lysevich finished his cigar and followed Anna Akimovna into her study, walking unsteadily after all the food he had eaten. He had no love for cosy nooks with photographs, fans on the walls, the inevitable pink or light-blue lamp in the middle of the ceiling, considering them the expression of a dull, unoriginal kind of personality. Furthermore, memories of certain previous affairs, of which he was now ashamed, were bound up with that type of lamp. But he did like Anna Akimovna’s study with its bare walls and tasteless furniture. It was soft and comfortable sitting there on the sofa, looking at Anna Akimovna, who usually sat on the carpet in front of the hearth, her knees clasped in her hands as she pensively stared into the fire. At that moment he felt that her peasant, Old Believer’s blood⁹ was throbbing in her veins now.

After dinner, when coffee and liqueurs were served, he would always liven up and tell her various bits of literary news. He used the florid, inspired style of someone carried away by his own oratory as she listened and – as always – concluded that she would pay him not twenty thousand but three times as much for the entertainment. And she would forgive him for everything she found unlikeable in him. At times he told her the plots of short stories, even novels, and on those occasions two or three hours would pass like minutes without them noticing. Now he began in a somewhat listless, feeble voice, his eyes closed.

‘It’s a long time since I read anything, my dear,’ he said when she asked him to tell her some story. ‘However, I sometimes read Jules Verne.’¹⁰

‘And I thought you had something new to tell me.’

‘Hm… new,’ Lysevich murmured sleepily and sank even further into the corner of the sofa. ‘None of modern literature is for you or me, dear lady. Of course, it is what it is and can’t be anything else. Not to accept it would be the same as rejecting the natural order of things, and I do accept it, but…’

Lysevich seemed to have fallen asleep, but soon his voice was heard again: ‘The whole of modern literature is like the autumn wind in the chimney, moaning and groaning: “Oh, you’re so unhappy! Oh, your life is a prison. Oh, how dark and damp for you there! Oh, you are doomed, there’s no escape!” That’s all very nice, but I would prefer a literature that teaches you how to escape from prison. The only contemporary writer I read now and then is Maupassant.’¹¹ Lysevich opened his eyes. ‘A good writer, an excellent writer!’ Lysevich slid forward a little on the sofa. ‘A remarkable artist! A terrifying, monstrous, supernatural artist!’ Lysevich got up from the sofa and raised his right arm. ‘Maupassant!’ he exclaimed rapturously. ‘Read Maupassant, my dear! One page of his will give you more than all the world’s riches. Every line is a new horizon! The most subtle, tender movements of the soul alternate with violent, tempestuous sensations, as if a forty-thousand-fold atmospheric pressure had been brought to bear on it, turning it into an insignificant particle of some indeterminate pinkish matter which might taste sharp and sensuous if you could put it on the tongue. Such frenzied transitions, motifs, melodies! You are resting on a bed of lilies and roses when suddenly a terrifying, beautiful, irresistible thought descends on you out of the blue, like a locomotive enveloping you in hot steam and deafening you with its whistle. Read, read Maupassant! My dear, I insist!’

Lysevich waved his arms and walked up and down in great agitation. ‘No, it’s not possible,’ he said, as if in desperation. ‘His last work exhausted, intoxicated me!¹² But I’m afraid you’ll be indifferent to it. In order to be carried away you have to savour it, slowly squeeze the juice from each line, drink. Yes, you must drink it!’

After a long preamble full of many phrases like ‘demoniac sensuality,’ ‘network of the most delicate nerves,’ ‘simoom,’¹³ ‘crystal’ and so on, he finally began to tell her the novel’s plot. He no longer indulged in flowery language and he went into great detail, quoting entire descriptive passages and conversations. He was enchanted by the characters and assumed different poses as he described them, altering his voice or facial expression, like a true actor. In his delight he would laugh out loud, first in a low-pitched voice, then very shrilly, clasping his hands or clutching his head as if he expected it to burst any minute. Although she had read the book, she listened enchanted, finding the lawyer’s rendering far more beautiful and complex than the novel itself. He directed her attention to various fine points and emphasized exquisitely turned expressions and profound thoughts. But she could only see real life itself there, and herself, as if she were one of the characters in the book. She cheered up, laughed out loud and clasped her hands like him, thinking it was impossible to go on with the life she had been leading, that there was no need to lead a wretched existence when one could live beautifully. She remembered what she had said and thought during dinner and she was proud of it. When the figure of Pimenov suddenly loomed large in her mind, she felt gay and wanted him to love her.

When he had finished his exposition, Lysevich sank back exhausted on the sofa.

‘What a wonderful, beautiful person you are!’ he began a little later, in a feeble, ailing voice. ‘I’m happy when I’m near you, my dear. But why am I forty-two and not thirty? Your tastes and mine don’t coincide. You should be dissipated, but I’ve long outlived that phase and I desire the most refined kind of love, as insubstantial as a sunbeam. I mean to say, I’m no damned good to a woman of your age.’

He said that he liked Turgenev, the bard of virginal love, youth and the melancholy Russian countryside. But his fondness for this ‘virginal love’ was not something directly experienced, but only something he had heard speak of, abstract, beyond the bounds of reality. Now he was trying to convince himself that his love for Anna Akimovna was platonic, idealistic, although he didn’t know the meaning of the words. He felt comfortable, warm and at ease, though, and Anna Akimovna seemed enchanting in her eccentricity. He thought that this pleasant feeling of wellbeing generated by his surroundings was identical with that so-called ‘platonic love’.

He pressed his cheek to her hand and asked in the kind of voice usually resorted to in order to win over young children, ‘Why have I been punished, my dear?’

‘How? When?’

‘I didn’t receive my Christmas bonus.’

Anna Akimovna had never heard of lawyers receiving Christmas bonuses and now she felt awkward, not knowing how much to give him. But give she must, as he was expecting it, even as he looked at her with loving eyes.

‘Nazarych must have forgotten’, she said. ‘But it’s not too late to rectify matters.’

Suddenly she remembered yesterday’s fifteen hundred roubles that were lying on her bedroom dressing-table. When she brought down that loathsome money and handed it to the lawyer, who stuffed it into a side pocket, with effortless grace, it was all so charming and natural. That unexpected reminder of the bonus, the fifteen hundred roubles – all this seemed so right for Lysevich.

‘Merci’, he said, kissing her finger.

Krylin entered with a blissful, sleepy look, and without his ribbons. He and Lysevich sat for a little longer, drank a glass of tea each and prepared to leave. Anna Akimovna was in something of a quandary: she had completely forgotten where Krylin worked and she wondered if she should give him money as well. If so, should she give it him there and then, or send it in an envelope?

‘Where does he work?’ she whispered to Lysevich.

‘Damned if I know’, the lawyer muttered, yawning.

Anna Akimovna concluded that if Krylin had visited her uncle and father to pay his respects, it would not have been for nothing. Obviously he had acted for them in performing good deeds, having been employed by some charitable institution. As she said goodbye, she thrust three hundred roubles into his hand. He seemed amazed at this and stood looking at her for a short while in silence, with lustreless eyes. But then he seemed to cotton on.

‘But, my dear Anna Akimovna, I can’t give you a receipt before the New Year.’

Lysevich had grown quite limp and he staggered as Misha helped him into his fur coat. As he went downstairs he looked completely enervated and it was plain that he would fall asleep the moment he was in his sledge.

‘My dear sir’, he asked Krylin languidly, stopping halfway down, ‘have you ever had the feeling that some invisible power was stretching you out, making you longer and longer until you finally turned into the finest wire? Subjectively speaking it’s a special, voluptuous sensation that you can’t compare with anything else.’

Anna Akimovna could see them both hand Misha a banknote.

‘Now don’t forget me! Goodbye!’ she shouted after them and ran into her bedroom.

Quickly she threw off that dress which she was now tired of, put on her house-coat. Like a child she made her feet clatter as she ran downstairs. She desperately wanted some fun and games.

IV

EVENING

Auntie, in a loose cotton-print dress, Barbara and two old women were having supper in the dining-room. On the table in front of them was a large chunk of salt-beef, a ham, and various other salted delicacies. Steam rose to the ceiling from the very fat, tasty-looking salt-beef. Downstairs they did not drink wine, but there was a large assortment of spirits and fruit liqueurs. Agafya the cook, a plump, fair-haired, well-fed woman, was standing at the door with her arms crossed, talking to the old women, while ‘downstairs Masha’ – a brunette with a crimson ribbon in her hair – took the dishes round and served. The old women had been gorging themselves since morning, and an hour before supper had eaten a sweet, rich pie with their tea, so that now they were forcing themselves to eat, as if it were their duty.

‘Oh, dear me!’ Auntie sighed when Anna Akimovna suddenly dashed into the dining-room and sat on the chair next to her. ‘You nearly frightened the life out of me!’

The whole household was pleased when Anna Akimovna was in good spirits and started playing the fool, which never failed to remind them that the old men were dead, that the old women no longer held power in that house and that they could all do as they liked without fear of being mercilessly made to answer for it. Only the two old women whom Anna Akimovna didn’t know squinted at her in amazement: she was singing – and singing at table was a sin.

‘Our mistress is as pretty as a picture’, Agafya droned in a sugary voice. ‘Our precious jewel! So many came to see our princess today, Lord be praised! Generals, and officers, and gentlemen… I kept looking through the window, trying to count them all I was, but I couldn’t keep up, so I stopped.’

‘I’d rather those rogues had stayed at home’, Auntie said. She gazed sadly at her niece and added, ‘All they’ve done is waste the poor girl’s time.’

Anna Akimovna was starving, having eaten nothing since the morning. They poured her a very bitter-tasting fruit cordial, which she drank; and she ate some salt-beef with mustard and found it exceptionally tasty. Then ‘downstairs Masha’ served turkey, soused apples and gooseberries. This she liked too. What was unpleasant was the heat pouring out of the tiled stove in waves, which made the room stuffy, and everyone’s cheeks were burning. After supper they took the cloth away and put dishes of mint cakes, nuts and raisins on the table.

‘Come on, sit down with us!’ Auntie told the cook.

Agafya sighed and sat down at the table. Masha stood a cordial glass in front of her too and Anna Akimovna had the impression that as much heat was coming from Agafya’s white neck as from the stove. Everyone said how difficult it was to marry these days, and that at one time men had at least been tempted by money; now it was hard to tell what they wanted. At one time only hunchbacks and cripples had been left on the shelf; nowadays even the rich and beautiful were ignored. Auntie began by saying that this immoral situation arose from people not fearing God, but then she suddenly remembered that her brother Ivan and Barbara had both led devout lives and both believed in God. For all that they had had children from illicit unions and packed them off to a home. Then she suddenly pulled herself up and changed the subject to someone who had once courted her, a factory worker, and how she had loved him. But her brothers had forced her to marry a widowed icon-painter, who died two years later, thank God. ‘Downstairs Masha’ also took a seat at the table and told them, with a very mysterious look, that a black-moustached stranger in a black coat with a lambskin collar had started appearing in their yard every morning for the past week. He would come into the yard, look at the windows of the big house, and then go on to the factory blocks. He was a fine figure of a man, quite handsome, in fact…

All this talk gave Anna Akimovna a sudden urge to get married – so strong it was quite painful. She felt that she would give half her life and all her wealth just to know that there was a man upstairs closer to her than anyone in the world, who loved her deeply and who yearned for her. The thought of such an enchanting intimacy, so impossible to put into words, excited her. And the healthy instincts of a young woman flattered her with the false message that the true poetry of life had not yet arrived, but lay ahead, and she believed it. She leant back in her chair so that her hair hung loose and she started laughing, which made the others follow suit. For a long time the dining-room was filled with inconsequential laughter.

Someone then announced that ‘Beetle’ had come to spend the night. With Pasha or Spiridonovna as her real names, this small, pious lady of about fifty, in her black dress and white shawl, was sharp-eyed, sharp-nosed and sharp-chinned. She had cunning, spiteful eyes and seemed to look right through people. Her lips were pursed. Because she was so spiteful and hateful she was known as ‘Beetle’ in merchants’ houses.

After she came into the dining-room she went straight over to the icons without so much as a glance at anyone and sang in an alto voice ‘Thy Nativity,’ then ‘Virgin this Day’ and ‘Christ Is Born,’ after which she turned around and gave everyone a piercing look.

‘Happy Christmas!’ she said, kissing Anna Akimovna on the shoulder. ‘It was an awful job, really awful, getting here, my ladies of charity.’ She kissed Auntie on the shoulder. ‘I set off this morning, but on my way I stopped at some kind people’s house for a little rest. “Please stay,” they said. It was evening before I noticed it.’

As she didn’t eat meat she was served caviare and salmon. She scowled at everyone as she ate, and she drank three glasses of vodka. When she had finished she said a little prayer and bowed low to Anna Akimovna. They started playing Kings, as they had done the previous year and the year before that. Every single servant from the two floors crowded at the door to watch the game. Anna Akimovna thought that she twice glimpsed Misha, with that condescending smile of his, in the crowd of common peasant men and women. First to be king was ‘Beetle’. Anna Akimovna, a soldier, had to pay her a forfeit. Then Auntie became king and Anna Akimovna was a peasant or ‘yokel,’ which delighted everyone, while Agafya became a prince and was embarrassed at feeling so pleased. Another card game started at the far end of the table: both Mashas, Barbara and Martha the seamstress (whom they specially woke up to play Kings and who looked sleepy and irritable).

During the game the conversation turned to men, to how difficult it was to find a good man nowadays, whether a spinster was better off than a widow.

‘You’re a pretty, healthy, strong lass’, Beetle told Anna Akimovna. ‘Only I just don’t understand who you’re saving yourself for, my girl.’

‘What can I do if no one will have me?’

‘Perhaps you made a vow never to marry’, Beetle continued as if she had not heard. ‘All right, that’s fine, don’t marry…’ she repeated, eyeing her cards attentively, viciously. ‘Stay as you are… yes… But spinsters, bless their hearts, come in all shapes and sizes’, she sighed, dealing a king. ‘Oh, all shapes and sizes, my dear! There’s some what live like nuns, pure as angels they are. But if one of them happens to sin, the poor girl goes through such torments you just couldn’t bring yourself to tell her off. And there’s others as wear black and make their own shrouds, while they love rich old men on the sly. Yes, my little songbirds, there’s witches who’ll put spells on an old man and keep him under their thumbs. Oh, yes, my dears, they’ll call the tune, do what they like with him and as soon as they’ve pinched his money and lottery tickets they’ll bewitch him, so he dies.’

All Barbara did was sigh in reply to these remarks and look at the icon. Her face was filled with Christian humility.

‘There’s a girl I know, my fierce enemy’, Beetle went on, surveying everyone triumphantly. ‘She’s always sighing away and looking at the icons, the she-devil. When she had an old man under her thumb and you went to see her, she’d give you a little something to eat and order you to bow down to the ground while she read out loud “A Virgin brought forth”. On holidays she’d give you a morsel to eat, but on ordinary days she’d tell you off. So, now I’m off to have a good laugh at her, my little pets!’

Barbara looked at the icons again and crossed herself.

‘No one will have me, Spiridonovna’, Anna Akimovna said, to change the subject. ‘What can I do?’

‘It’s your own fault, dear. The only thing is to wait for a gentleman, someone educated. You should marry your own kind, a businessman.’

‘We don’t want a businessman, God help us’, Auntie said in alarm. ‘A gentleman’ll squander all your money, but he won’t be too hard on you, you silly woman! But a businessman’ll be so strict with you that you’ll never feel at home in your own house. You’ll be wanting to snuggle up close to him, but he’ll be after your money. If you sit down at table with him, the oaf’ll blame you for eating all his food – and in your own house! Go and marry a gentleman!’

Everyone spoke at once, noisily interrupting each other, while Auntie banged the nutcrackers on the table.

‘You don’t need a businessman’, she said, angry and red-faced. ‘If you bring one into this house I’ll go into a workhouse!’

‘Shush! Be quiet!’ Beetle shouted. When everyone was silent she screwed up one eye and said ‘Do you know what, Anna, my precious? There’s no point in your marrying like ordinary folk do. You’re rich, free, your own mistress. But I don’t think it’s right for you to stay an old maid, my child. I’ll go and find you some useless fool whom you’ll marry for show – and then off on the town! Oh, you’ll shove five or ten thousand under your husband’s nose and let him go back where he belongs and then you’ll be mistress in your own house. And then you’ll be able to love who you like and no one can say a word about it. You’ll be able to love your educated gentlemen all right then. Oh, you’ll be living in clover!’ Beetle clicked her fingers and whistled. ‘Go and have a good time, dear!’

‘But that would be sinning!’ Auntie said.

‘So, it’s a sin then’, Beetle said grinning. ‘She’s educated, she understands. Of course it’s a sin cutting someone’s throat or bewitching an old man, but loving your boyfriend is no sin. What is it, after all? No sin in it at all! All that was thought up by pious old women to hoodwink simple folk. I’m always saying that a sin is a sin, but I don’t know why.’

Beetle drank some fruit liqueur and cleared her throat. ‘Go and have a good time’, she said, evidently talking to herself this time. ‘For thirty years I’ve been thinking about sin and was always scared of it, but now I seem to have missed out. I’ve let my chance slip. Oh, what a fool I am!’ she sighed. ‘A woman’s life is short and she should treasure every day. You’re beautiful, Anna, and very rich into the bargain, but when your thirty-fifth or fortieth birthday comes along, that’ll be the end of you. Now don’t listen to what people say, dear, go and enjoy yourself until you’re forty – there’ll be plenty of time for praying, for making amends and sewing shrouds. Let your hair down! Well, what do you say? Do you want to give pleasure to some man?’

‘I do’, Anna Akimovna laughed. ‘But I couldn’t care less now, I’d marry an ordinary working man.’

‘Yes, and that would be a good thing too. Oh, then you could take your pick!’ Beetle frowned and shook her head. ‘By heaven you could!’

‘That’s what I keep telling her’, Auntie said. ‘If you can’t wait for a gentleman, then don’t go and marry a businessman, but someone more ordinary. At least we’d have a man in the house. And there’s no shortage of good men, is there? Just take some of our own factory workers, all sober and respectable.’

‘And how!’ Beetle agreed. ‘All wonderful lads. What if I arranged a match for Anna with Vasily Lebedinsky, Auntie?’

‘Well, Vasily’s got long legs’, Auntie said seriously. ‘He’s very dull, nothing much to look at.’

The crowd at the door laughed.

‘Well, Pimenov then. Would you like to marry Pimenov?’

‘Yes, marry me to Pimenov.’

‘Do you mean it?’

‘Yes, go ahead and arrange it’, Anna Akimovna said determinedly and thumped the table. ‘I’ll marry him, word of honour!’

‘You really will?’

Anna Akimovna suddenly felt ashamed that her cheeks were burning and that everyone was looking at her. She mixed up the cards on the table and tore out of the room. After she had dashed upstairs, reached the upper floor and sat by the grand piano in the drawing-room, she heard a rumbling from down below, like the roar of the sea. They must be talking about her and Pimenov, and perhaps Beetle was taking advantage of her absence to insult Barbara – and of course she wouldn’t be too particular about her language.

Only one lamp was lit on the whole upper floor – in the ballroom – and its dim light found its way through the doorway into the dark drawing-room. It was about ten, no later. Anna Akimovna played a waltz, then a second, then a third, without stopping. She peered into the dark corner behind the piano, smiled, imagined she was calling out to someone, and then she had an idea: why not go at once to town and visit just anyone – Lysevich, for example – and tell him what was going on in her heart? She wanted to talk non-stop, to laugh, play the fool, but that dark corner behind the piano was gloomily silent; and all around her, in every room on that floor, it was quiet and deserted.

She loved sentimental songs, but as her voice was rough and untrained, she could only play accompaniments and she sang barely audibly, in gentle breaths. She sang one song after the other in a whisper, and all of them were mainly about love, parting, lost hope. She imagined herself stretching out her hands: ‘Pimenov, take this burden from me!’ she would tearfully plead. And then, as if her sins had been forgiven, she would feel joyful and relieved. A free and perhaps happy life would follow. In an agony of expectation she bent over the keys and longed for the change in her life to come right away, that very minute. She was terrified to think that her present way of life would continue for some time to come. Then she began to play again and she sang barely audibly, while all around it was quiet. No longer could she hear the roar from downstairs; they must all have gone to bed. It had struck ten ages ago. A long, lonely, tedious night was approaching.

Anna Akimovna paced through all the rooms, lay down on the study sofa and read some letters delivered that evening. There were twelve wishing her happy Christmas and three anonymous ones, unsigned. In one of these an ordinary workman complained, in dreadful, barely decipherable handwriting, that, in the factory shop, workers were sold only rancid vegetable oil that smelt of kerosene. In another, someone politely denounced Nazarych for accepting a thousand-rouble bribe when buying iron at an auction. In another she was abused for her inhumanity.

The mood of festive excitement was fading now and in an attempt to maintain it Anna Akimovna sat at the piano and quietly played a new waltz. Then she remembered how cleverly and frankly she had reasoned and expressed her thoughts over dinner. She looked round at the dark windows, at the paintings on the walls, at the weak light coming from the ballroom and suddenly, quite unexpectedly, she burst into tears. She was upset because she was so alone, because she had no one to talk to and to whom she could turn for advice. She tried to cheer herself up by picturing Pimenov in her mind, but she was unsuccessful.

The clock struck twelve. In came Misha, wearing a jacket now and no longer in tailcoat; silently he lit two candles. Then he left and a minute later returned with a cup of tea on a tray.

‘What’s funny?’ she asked, seeing the smile on his face.

‘I was downstairs and heard you joking about Pimenov’, he said, covering his laughing face with one hand. ‘You should have invited him to dinner along with Viktor Nikolayevich and the general, he would have died of fright.’ Misha’s shoulders shook with laughter. ‘He probably doesn’t even know how to hold a fork.’

The servant’s laughter, what he said, his jacket and his little whiskers, all left Anna Akimovna with an impression of dirtiness. She closed her eyes so as not to have to look at him, and she could not help imagining Pimenov dining with Lysevich and Krylin. And then Pimenov’s subservient, stupid appearance struck her as pathetic, helpless, and filled her with revulsion. Only now did she understand clearly – and for the first time that day – that all she had thought and said about Pimenov, about marrying an ordinary workman, was senseless, absurd and opinionated. In an effort to convince herself that the opposite was the case, and to overcome her disgust, she wanted to remember exactly what she had said during dinner, but was unable to. The feeling of shame at her own thoughts and behaviour, the fear that she might have said something stupid, revulsion at her own lack of nerve – all these things troubled her deeply. She took a candle and dashed downstairs as if someone were chasing her; she woke Spiridonovna and assured her that she had been joking. Then she went to her bedroom. Red-headed Masha, who had been drowsing in an armchair near the bed, jumped up to arrange the pillows. Her face was weary and sleepy, and her magnificent hair had fallen to one side.

‘That clerk Chalikov was here again this evening’, she said, yawning. ‘But I didn’t dare tell you. He was dead drunk. Says he’ll come back tomorrow.’

‘What does he want from me?’ Anna Akimovna said angrily, flinging her comb on the floor. ‘I don’t want to see him, I don’t!’

She concluded that there was nothing in her life besides this Chalikov now. He would never stop hounding her – a daily reminder of how boring and absurd her life was.

Without undressing, she lay down and burst out sobbing from shame and boredom. Most annoying and ridiculous of all, she thought, was the fact that earlier in the day her thoughts about Pimenov had been decent, noble, honourable. But at the same time she felt that Lysevich and even Krylin were closer to her than Pimenov and all the factory workers put together. Now she thought that if it were only possible to reproduce that long day she had just gone through in a painting, then everything that was nasty and cheap – the dinner, for example, what the lawyer had said, the game of Kings – would have been the truth, whereas her dreams and the conversation about Pimenov would have stood out as something false and artificial.

And she thought that now it was too late to dream of happiness, that it was impossible to return to that kind of life where she had slept in her mother’s bed, to devise some new, special lifestyle.

Red-headed Masha was kneeling in front of the bed looking at her sadly and in astonishment. Then she too burst into tears and pressed her face to her hand. There was no need for words to express why she felt so distressed.

‘We’re a pair of fools, you and I’, Anna Akimovna said, both crying and laughing. ‘We’re fools! Oh, what fools!’