“Yes.”
“Then you’ll probably laugh at me. Here’s how I want to die. I want to get dressed up in the most expensive and fashionable dress, the one I saw on Lady Sheffer. Then I will stand on top of the mountain, and let the lightning kill me, so everyone will see. A terrible thunderstorm, you know, and then the end.”
“What a wild fantasy.” I smiled, looking into her eyes filled with the sacred horror of an effective death. “And you don’t wish to die in an ordinary dress?”
“No,” Olga shook her head decisively, “And I want everyone to see me go.”
“The dress you’re wearing is better that all those expensive gowns. It suits you very well. You look like a red flower in a green forest.”
“No that’s not true, this is a cheap one. This dress is no good,” Olga sighed.
I was so excited by Olga’s news that I did not notice that we’d arrived in the front entrance area of the count’s mansion and stopped in front of the manager’s door. When I saw the manager, Mr. Urbenin, run out with his children joining him to help Olga with her purchases, I headed for the mansion’s main entrance, without saying good-bye to her or greeting him.
CHAPTER TWO THE WEDDING
I was sitting at the table, hating the crowd of guests who gazed with curiosity and admiration at the vast, corrupt decadence of Count Korneev’s inherited wealth. The walls were covered with rich mosaics, the rooms had sculptured ceilings, and the luxurious Persian rugs and Louis XIV–style rococo furniture aroused everyone’s esteem.
A perpetual vain smile covered the count’s mustachioed face. He accepted his guests’ approbation as his due, but he’d never made the slightest effort to accumulate these riches; instead, he deserved scorn and opprobrium for his indifference to the riches created by his father, his grandfathers, and his great-grandfathers over many generations.
Many in the crowd were sufficiently rich and independent that they could afford to judge objectively, but no one said a single critical word—all admired and smiled at the Count.
Mr. Urbenin was smiling, too, but he had his own reasons for doing so. He wore the grin of a happy child, talking about his young wife and asking questions like these:
“Who’d have thought that a young beauty like this could fall in love with an old man like me, three times her age? Couldn’t she find someone younger and better-looking? There’s no understanding women’s hearts!”
He even turned to me and remarked in passing,
“We’re living in strange times. Ha-ha! An old man like me steals a fairy-tale creature right out from under the nose of a young man like you! What were you waiting for? Ha! Young men these days—they’re not like we used to be.”
Gratitude swelled his huge chest as he spoke, and he bowed and raised his wineglass to the Count:
“You know my feelings toward you, my lord. You have done so much for me—all your attention. Only aristocrats and oligarchs could celebrate a wedding in this fashion. All this luxury, and all these famous guests—what can I say? This is the happiest day of my life!” And he went on like this.
Olga, however, disliked his obsequious speeches; she forced a smile at the Count’s jokes and left the delicacies on her plate untouched. As Mr. Peter Egorovich Urbenin became drunker and happier, she grew more and more unhappy.
During the second course of the banquet, I looked at her and was so surprised that my heart beat faster. She pressed a napkin to her mouth, almost crying. She glanced around, frightened that someone might notice that she was nearly in tears.
“Why are you so sour today, Olga?” the Count asked. “Peter Egorovich, you’re to blame. You haven’t pleased your wife. Ladies and gentlemen, let the groom kiss the bride! Yes, I demand a kiss. Not that she should kiss me—ha-ha-ha, no, they should kiss each other!”
“Let them kiss each other!” the judge Kalinin repeated.
Forced by the cheers of the guests, Olga rose. Mr. Urbenin also stood, listing a bit to one side. She turned her cold, motionless lips to him. He kissed her, and she quickly turned away and tightened her mouth into a line so that he could not kiss her again.
I watched her carefully. She could not stand my glance. She put a napkin to her face, slipped away from the table, and ran out of the living room into the back garden.
“Olga has a headache,” I tried to explain. “She complained to me about it earlier this morning.”
“Listen, brother,” the Count joked. “Headache has nothing to do with it. It’s that kiss that did it, and she’s all confused. I may have to give a verbal reprimand to this groom. He hasn’t broken his wife in to his kissing yet. Ha-ha-ha!”
The guests enjoyed the joke and laughed uproariously. But they should not have been laughing. Five minutes passed, and then ten, but she did not return. Silence fell. The jokes stopped. Her absence was profound because she had not excused herself as she left. She had simply stood up, right after the kiss, as if she were angry that they had forced her to kiss her husband. She did not seem to be confused, because one can only be confused for a moment; this was different—the bride stood up, walked out. It was a nice plot twist for a comedy of manners.
Mr. Urbenin glanced around nervously.
“My friends,” he mumbled, “maybe something in her gown has come undone. It’s a woman thing.” But several more minutes passed, and he gazed at me with such unhappiness in his eyes that I decided to enter the scene.
I met his eyes. “Maybe you can find her and get me out of this spot. You’re the best man here,” his eyes said.
I decided to respond to his desperate need and to come to the rescue.
“Where’s Olga?” I asked the waiter who was serving the salad.
“She’s gone into the garden,” he said.
“The bride has left us and my wine grows sour,” I addressed the ladies at the table. “I must go and search for her, and bring her back even if all her teeth are aching. I am the best man at this wedding, and I have duties to fulfill.
I stood up, walked past the applauding count, and went out into the garden.
I looked in side alleys, little caves and gazebos.
Suddenly, off to the right, I heard someone either laughing or crying. I found the bride in a little grotto. She was leaning on a moss-covered wooden column and her face was shining with tears, as though a new spring had burst forth from the earth.
“What have I done? What have I done!” she cried.
“Yes, Olga, what have you done?” I said as she flung her head on my chest.
“Where were my eyes, where was my head?”
“Yes, Olga, this is a good question.” I told her, “I can’t explain this as just being spoiled.”
“And now everything is ruined and there’s no going back. Everything! I could have married the man I love, the man who loves me!”
“Who could you have married? Who is this man, Olga?” I asked.
“It’s you!” she said, looking directly into my eyes. “I was so stupid! You’re clever, you’re noble, and you’re young … You’re rich, too—you seemed to me—so far from me.”
“Stop it, Olga,” I said. “Wipe your eyes, stop crying, stop it! Stop this, my dear, you’ve made a silly mistake and now you have to face it. Calm down; calm down, please!”
“You are such a nice man, such a beautiful man. Yes?”
“Let it go, my dear,” I said, noticing to my terrible surprise that I was kissing her forehead, that I held her slender waist, that she was leaning on my neck. “Stop it, please!”
Five minutes later, tired by new impressions, I carried her out of the cave in my arms.
A short distance away, I saw the Count’s manager Mr. Kazimir applauding quietly as he watched us go.
CHAPTER THREE HORSEBACK RIDING
On a beautiful evening in June, when the sun had already set, but the wide orange line still covered the faraway west, I went to Mr. Urbenin’s house.
I found Mr. Urbenin himself there, sitting on the steps of his porch w
ith his chin resting in both hands, looking away into the distance. He was very gloomy; his small talk came only unwillingly, so I chatted instead with his daughter, Alexandra.
“Where is your new mother?” I asked her.
“She went horseback riding with the Count. She rides with him every day.”
“Every day,” mumbled Mr. Urbenin with a sigh.
There was a lot in his sigh. Olga’s conscience was clouded, but I could not understand what was going on as I looked into her guilty eyes when she came secretly to see me, twice during the past week.
“I hope that your new mother is in good health?” I asked Alexandra.
“Yes, she is,” answered the little girl. “But last night she had a toothache, and she was crying.”
“She was crying?” Mr. Urbenin asked, puzzled. “You saw it? Well, you must have dreamed it, my dear.”
I knew that Olga’s teeth were fine. If she’d been crying, it was from something else.
I wanted to talk to Alexandra a bit more, but we heard galloping hooves, and we saw two figures, an awkward male rider and a graceful Amazon. I lifted Alexandra into my arms, trying to hide my happiness at seeing Olga, caressed her blond curly hair with my fingers, and kissed the little girl on her head.
“You’re such a pretty girl, Alexandra,” I said, “You have such lovely curls!”
Olga looked at me briefly, nodded politely, and, holding the Count by the elbow, went into the mansion. Mr. Urbenin stood up and followed her. A few minutes later, the Count stepped out. His face looked fresh, and he was joyful in a way I’d never seen before.
“Please congratulate me, my friend,” he said taking my arm under the elbow.
“What for?”
“A victory!”
“One more ride like that, and I will—I swear it on the dust of my noble ancestors—I will pluck the petals from this flower!”
“You haven’t picked them yet?” I asked.
“Not yet, but I’m almost there,” the Count said. “Wait, my dear—will you have a swig of vodka? My throat is very dry.”
I asked the butler to bring the vodka. The Count drank two shots in quick succession, sat down on the couch, and continued his chatter.
“You know, I’ve just spent some time with Olga, and I am starting to hate this Mr. Urbenin! This means that I am beginning to like Olga, you know I do. She’s a damned attractive woman. I’m going make some serious advances before long.”
“You should never touch a married woman.” I sighed.
“Well, yes, but Peter Egorovich is an old man, and it’s not such a sin to amuse his wife a bit. She’s no match for him. He’s a dog in the manger—he won’t eat it himself, and he won’t let any one else near it either. The campaign will begin later today, and I’m not going to take no for an answer. She is such a woman, I’m telling you! This is first-class, brother. You’re going to love hearing about it.”
The Count downed a third shot of vodka, and continued,
“You know what? I’m going to throw a party. We’ll have music, amateur theater, and literature—all for her, to invite her in and make it with her there. As for today, well, Olga and I were just out riding, and you know what? It was for ten minutes”—and then the Count started singing, ‘Your hand was in my hand’—“and she didn’t even try to take her little hand away. I kissed it everywhere. But just wait until tomorrow, and for now let’s go in. They’re waiting for me. Oh, yes! I need to talk to you, my good man, about one thing. Tell me, please, is it true what people are saying about you—that you have intentions for Nadine Kalinina, the daughter of the old judge?”
“What if it is?”
“Well, if this is true, then I won’t get in your way. To be a rival in such affairs—this is not my game. But if you have no special interest in her, then it’s different!”
“I have no plans for her.”
“Merci, my dear friend!”
The count wanted to kill two sparrows with one stone, thinking that he would do this with ease. In the end, he did kill two sparrows, but he didn’t get the feathers, nor the skin.
(…)
I saw how the Count secretly tried to take Olga’s hand when she entered, and greeted him with a friendly smile. Then, to show that he had no secrets from me, he kissed her hand wetly in front of me.
“What a fool!” she whispered in my ear, wiping her wet hand with disgust.
“Listen Olga,” I said as soon we were alone. “It seems to me that you’d like to tell me something. Am I right?”
I looked questioningly into her face. She blushed and started blinking her eyes, as frightened as a cat caught lapping the cream.
“Yes, I would like to tell you something,” she whispered, pressing my hand. “I love you, I cannot live without you … but you mustn’t try to visit me anymore, my darling. You must not love me anymore, and you cannot address me as a familiar. I can’t go on like this anymore. We cannot do this. You must not even show that you love me.”
“But why?”
“I want it to be this way. You don’t need to know the reasons, and I’m not going to tell you. Well, for what it’s worth, if I hadn’t married Mr. Urbenin, I could’ve married the Count by now. And then the Count and I would live together in the capital, and you could pay us visits. Hush! They’re coming. Step back from me.”
I did not step back, I was furious; so she had to do it to stop our conversation. Then she took her husband by the hand as he passed, and with a hypocritical smile, she nodded her head to me and left.
CHAPTER FOUR AT THE COUNT’S HOUSE
Late at night I was sitting at the Count’s house, drinking. I was a bit drunk myself, but the Count was deeply intoxicated.
“Today, I was allowed to touch her waist in passing.” The Count was mumbling. “Today, we will keep on moving even further.”
“How about the other girl, Nadine? What about her?” I asked.
“We are moving along nicely with her as well. We are at the stage of conversation of our eyes at the moment. And my dear, I would like to read more in her dark, sad eyes. There is something there that you cannot express with words. You have to understand this with your soul. Will you have a drink?”
“So she must like you, if you can talk to her for hours. And how about her father, old judge Kalinin? Does he also like you?”
“Her father? You are talking about that stupid old man? Ha-ha-ha. This idiot presumes that my intentions are honest.”
The Count coughed and had another drink.
“Do you think that I’m going to marry her? First, I cannot marry anyone at this point. And what’s more, I honestly think that it’s much more honest to just seduce the young lady than to marry her. Imagine her terrible eternal life with an old drunk like me, constantly coughing. She would either die or run away the next day. And—what is this noise—listen!”
We jumped to our feet. Several doors slammed loudly, and then Olga ran into our room. She was pale and out of breath, trembling like the string of a guitar that has been struck rather than plucked. Her hair was loose and uncombed, and her eyes were wide open. Her fingers fiddled nervously with her nightgown on her breast.
“What’s happened to you?” I asked, totally bewildered, and took her by the hand. Perhaps the Count was surprised by this level of intimacy between us but he showed no signs of it. He sighed, and turned a questioning look at Olga, as though he were seeing a ghost.
“What’s happened?” I repeated.
“He’s beating me!” she said with a sob, as she fell into an armchair.
“Who is?”
“My husband! I can’t live with him anymore! I’ve decided to run away.”
“This is terrible!” the Count said, hitting the table with his fist. “He has no legal right to do this. This is tyranny. This is God knows what! To beat your wife—for what?”
“For nothing,” Olga said, wiping her tears. “I took a handkerchief out of my pocket, and that little envelope with the letter that you wrote t
o me yesterday also fell out. He jumped toward me, snatched it up from the floor, read it, and started beating me up. He held me by the wrist—look—he held me so hard that I still have a bruise here—look, and then he asked for an explanation. And instead of giving an explanation, I ran here. I need your support and defense. He cannot treat me like this. I’m not his servant, I’m his wife.”
The Count started pacing the room, mumbling some words that if you could translate them into the speech of a sober person would be “About the situation of women in Russia.”
“This is wild—he is behaving like a barbarian! This is not New Zealand or those islands where they eat people alive. He thinks that his wife should be butchered during his funeral. You know, people in some countries, those savages—when they die they also take their wives with them.”
As for me, I asked her no questions but tried to calm her down, and offered her a glass of wine.
“I was mistaken; I was mistaken,” she continued, talking to me, as she took a sip of wine. “And you—you are such a quiet man; I thought that you were an angel, not a man.”
“And did you think that he would like that letter?” I asked her, but the Count interrupted me.
“This is mean, this is really nasty. You do not treat women like this! I will beat him up, I will challenge him to a duel, I will have a talk with him. Look, dear Olga, he won’t go unpunished.”
The Count spoke like a bantam cock. I thought to myself that no one had asked him to interfere in the relationship of Olga and her husband, and I knew that nothing would happen except for a lot of talk.
“I will smash him into the dirt. I’ll do it tomorrow, first thing tomorrow!” So spoke the perfect gentle knight. As he was talking, he invited her to dinner, and in a mechanical way, without thinking, she picked up a fork and knife and started eating. In another few minutes her fear had entirely dissipated, and there were no signs of what had happened beyond her red eyes and loose hair. In a while she was laughing like a little child who’d forgotten all about a recent tumble. The Count was laughing, too.
“You know what I’ve decided? he said, sitting closer to her. “We’ll stage a nice little play with some good roles for women. What do you think?”