He could not control himself and kissed her lips and chin passionately, holding her in an even tighter embrace.
‘That will do!’ she said curtly.
A moment later she was gone from the carriage and the policeman standing at the lighted entrance to the club shouted at Panteleymon in a very ugly voice:
‘What yer stopped there for, you oaf! Move on!’
Startsev went home but he soon returned. Wearing borrowed coat and tails and a stiff white cravat which somehow kept sticking up as if wanting to slide off his collar, he sat at midnight in the club lounge and told Yekaterina Ivanovna in passionate terms:
‘Oh, those who have never loved – how little do they know! I think that no one has ever truly described love – and how could anyone describe that tender, joyful, agonizing feeling! Anyone who has but once experienced it would never even think of putting it into words! But what’s the point of preambles and descriptions? Why this superfluous eloquence? My love has no bounds. I’m asking you, begging you,’ Startsev at last managed to say, ‘to be my wife!’
‘Dmitry Ionych,’ Yekaterina Ivanovna said with a very serious expression after pausing for thought, ‘Dmitry Ionych, I’m most grateful for the honour and I respect you, but…’ She stood up and continued standing. ‘I’m sorry, I cannot be your wife. Let’s talk seriously. As you know, Dmitry Ionych, I love art more than anything in the world. I’m mad about music, I simply adore it. I’ve dedicated my whole life to it. I want to be a concert pianist. I want fame, success, freedom. But you want me to go on living in this town, to carry on with this empty, useless life that’s become quite unbearable for me. To be your wife… oh no, I’m sorry! One must always aspire towards some lofty, brilliant goal, but family life would tie me down for ever. Dmitry Ionych’ (at this she produced a barely perceptible smile since, when saying Dmitry Ionych the name Aleksey Feofilaktych came to mind), ‘Dmitry Ionych, you’re a kind, honourable, clever man, you’re the best of all…’ (here her eyes filled with tears), ‘I feel for you with all my heart, but… but you must understand…’
And to avoid bursting into tears she turned away and walked out of the lounge.
Startsev’s heart stopped pounding. As he went out of the club into the street the first thing he did was tear off that stiff cravat and heave a deep sigh of relief. He felt rather ashamed and his pride was hurt – he had not expected a refusal. And he just could not believe that all his dreams, yearnings and hopes had led to such a stupid conclusion, as if it were all a trivial little play performed by amateurs. And he regretted having felt as he did, he regretted having loved – so much so that he came close to sobbing out loud or walloping Panteleymon’s back as hard as he could with his umbrella.
For three days he could not put his mind to anything, he could neither sleep nor eat. But when the rumour reached him that Yekaterina Ivanovna had gone to Moscow to enrol at the Conservatoire he calmed down and carried on with his life as before.
Later, when he occasionally recalled how he had wandered around the cemetery or had driven all over town in search of coat and tails, he would stretch lazily and say: ‘Really! All that fuss!’
IV
Four years passed. Startsev now had a large practice in town. Every morning he hastily saw patients at his surgery in Dyalizh, then he drove to see his patients in town – no longer conveyed by carriage and pair, but by three horses abreast – and with bells! He would come home late at night. He had filled out, put on weight and he was reluctant to walk anywhere, as he had become short-winded. And Panteleymon had filled out too, and the more his girth expanded the more mournfully he sighed and complained of his bitter lot: all that driving was too much for him!
Startsev visited many different houses and met many people, but he did not strike up a close friendship with anyone. The townspeople’s conversations, attitude to life, even their appearance, irritated him. Gradually, experience had taught him that as long as one only played cards or enjoyed a meal with any resident of that town, then that person would be inoffensive, good-natured and even quite intelligent. But the moment one started a conversation about something that was inedible, such as politics or science, then the other person would either be stumped or give vent to such absurd and vicious ideas that one could only give it up as a bad job and make one’s exit. Whenever Startsev tried to start a conversation, even with a citizen of liberal views – for example, concerning the immense progress that humanity was making, thank God, and that, given time, it would be able to dispense with passports or the death penalty – he would be greeted with distrustful, sidelong glances and asked: ‘In that case, anyone could cut the throat of anyone he wanted to in the street, couldn’t he?’ And whenever he had supper or tea in company and ventured to say that one had to work hard, that life was impossible without hard work, everyone took it as a personal insult, got angry and launched into the most tiresome disputations. Yet these townspeople did nothing, absolutely nothing, and they were interested in nothing. So Startsev avoided conversations (it was impossible to think of anything to discuss with them), confining himself to eating and playing whist with them. Whenever he happened to be in a house where there was some family celebration and he was invited to stay for supper, he would sit down and eat in silence, staring blankly at his plate. And everything they happened to be discussing struck him as uninteresting, unfair, stupid; but despite his irritation and exasperation he remained silent. These stony silences and his habit of staring at his plate earned him the name ‘Snooty Pole’ in that town, although he had never been Polish.
He shunned diversions such as the theatre and concerts, but took great pleasure in playing whist every evening, until two o’clock in the morning. But there was one other diversion to which he became gradually, imperceptibly drawn. This was in the evenings, when he took from his pockets the banknotes he had earned from his practice – and his pockets often happened to be stuffed with seventy roubles’ worth of yellow or green notes that reeked of perfume, vinegar, incense and train oil. When he had amassed a few hundred he would take them to the Mutual Credit Bank and pay them into his current account.
During the entire four years after Yekaterina Ivanovna’s departure for Moscow he visited the Turkins only twice, at the invitation of Vera Iosifovna, whom he was still treating for migraine. Every summer Yekaterina Ivanovna would come to stay with her parents but as things turned out he did not see her even once.
But four years had now passed. One calm, warm morning he was brought a letter at the hospital, in which Vera Iosifovna wrote that she missed him very much and begged him to come and see her without fail and relieve her sufferings – that day happened to be her birthday. There was a PS: ‘I join in Mama’s request. K.’
Startsev thought for a while and that evening he drove over to the Turkins’.
‘Ah, good evening – if you please!’ Ivan Petrovich greeted him. Only his eyes were smiling. ‘Bonjourez-vous!’
Vera Iosifovna had aged considerably and her hair was white now. She shook Startsev’s hand, and sighed affectedly.
‘Doctor!’ she exclaimed. ‘You don’t want to flirt with me, you never call on us, so I must be too old for you. But my young daughter’s arrived, perhaps she’ll have more luck!’
And Pussycat? She had grown thinner, paler, prettier and shapelier. But now she was a fully-fledged Yekaterina Ivanovna and not a Pussycat. Gone were that freshness and expression of childlike innocence. And in her look and manners there was something new, a hesitancy and air of guilt, as if here, in the Turkins’ house, she no longer felt at home.
‘It’s been simply ages!’ she said, offering Startsev her hand – and her heart was visibly pounding. Peering into his face intently, quizzically, she continued: ‘How you’ve put on weight! You’ve acquired a tan, you’ve matured, but on the whole you haven’t changed very much.’
And even now he liked her – very much so. But something was lacking, or there was something superfluous – he himself couldn’t put his finger on it, b
ut it prevented him from feeling as he did before. He did not like her pallor, her new expression, that weak smile, her voice. And a little later he didn’t like her dress, or the armchair she was sitting in; something about the past, when he had nearly married her, displeased him. He recalled his love, those dreams and hopes that had disturbed him four years before, and he felt uncomfortable.
They had tea and cakes. Then Vera Iosifovna read her novel out loud – about things that never happen in real life – and Startsev listened, looked at her grey handsome head and waited for her to finish.
‘A mediocrity is not someone who’s no good at writing stories,’ he thought. ‘It’s someone who writes them but can’t keep quiet about it.’
‘Not awfully baddish!’ Ivan Petrovich commented.
Then Yekaterina Ivanovna played the piano long and noisily, and when she had finished there followed lengthy expressions of gratitude and admiration.
‘Lucky I didn’t marry her,’ thought Startsev.
She glanced at him and was evidently waiting for him to suggest going out into the garden, but he said nothing.
‘Let’s have a little talk,’ she said, going over to him. ‘How are you getting on? What’s your news? How are things? All this time I’ve been thinking of you,’ she continued nervously. ‘I wanted to write to you, to come and see you in Dyalizh myself. In fact I actually decided to come but I changed my mind. Heaven knows what you think of me now. I’ve been so excited waiting for you today. For heaven’s sake, let’s go into the garden.’
They went into the garden and sat down on the bench under the old maple, as they had done four years before. It was dark.
‘Well, how are things?’ Yekaterina Ivanovna asked.
‘All right, I get by,’ Startsev replied.
And he could think of nothing more to say. They both fell silent.
‘I’m so excited,’ Yekaterina Ivanovna said, covering her face with her hands, ‘but don’t take any notice. I so enjoy being at home. I’m so glad to see everyone and it takes getting used to. So many memories! I thought we’d be talking non-stop, until the early hours.’
And now he saw her face close up, her sparkling eyes; and here, in the darkness, she looked younger than in the room and even her former childlike expression seemed to have returned. And in fact she gazed at him with naïve curiosity, as if she wanted to have a closer look, to understand the man who had once loved her so passionately, so tenderly, so unhappily. Her eyes thanked him for that love. And he recalled everything that had happened, down to the very last detail – how he had wandered around the cemetery, how he had gone home exhausted towards morning; and suddenly he felt sad and he regretted the past. A tiny flame flickered in his heart.
‘Do you remember when I gave you a lift that evening to the club?’ he asked. ‘It was raining then, and dark…’
The flame was still flickering in his heart and he felt the urge to speak, to complain about life…
‘Oh!’ he sighed. ‘You ask me how things are, what kind of lives we lead here? Well, we don’t lead any kind of life. We grow old, get fat, go to seed. Day after day life drags on in its lacklustre way, no impressions, no thoughts… During the day I make money, in the evening there’s the club and the company of cardsharpers, alcoholics and loudmouths whom I cannot stand. So what’s good about it?’
‘But there’s your work, a noble purpose in life. You used to love talking about your hospital. I was rather strange then, I imagined myself as a great pianist. Now all young women play the piano and I played like everyone else and there was nothing special about me. I’m as much a concert pianist as Mama’s a writer. Of course, I didn’t understand you then, but afterwards, in Moscow, I often thought of you. In fact, I thought of nothing else. What bliss to be a country doctor, to help the suffering, to serve the common people! What utter bliss!’ Yekaterina repeated rapturously. ‘Whenever I thought of you in Moscow you struck me as idealistic, lofty…’
He stood up to go back to his house. She took hold of his arm.
‘You are the best person I’ve ever known in my life,’ she went on. ‘We’ll see each other, we’ll talk, won’t we? Promise me. I’m no concert pianist, I’ve no illusions about myself and when you’re with me I shall neither play nor talk about music.’
Three days later Peacock brought him a letter from Yekaterina Ivanovna.
‘You never come and see us. Why?’ she wrote. ‘I’m afraid that you don’t feel the same towards us any more. I’m afraid – and this thought alone terrifies me. Please set my mind at rest, please come and tell me that everything’s all right. I must talk to you. Your Y.T.’
After reading this letter he pondered for a moment and then he told Peacock:
‘Tell them, dear chap, that I can’t come today, I’m too busy. Tell them I’ll come and see them in about three days.’
But three days passed, a week passed and still he, didn’t go. Once, when he was driving past the Turkins’ house, he remembered that he really should call on them, if only for a few minutes, but on reflection he decided against it.
And he never visited the Turkins again.
V
Several years have passed. Startsev has put on even more weight, grown flabby, has difficulty breathing and walks with his head thrown back. When he drives along in his carriage with three-horse team and bells, puffy and red-faced, and Panteleymon, likewise puffy and red-faced, with fleshy neck, sits on the box with his straight, seemingly wooden arms thrust forward, shouting at passers-by ‘Keep to the right!’, the effect is truly awe-inspiring and it seems that here comes a pagan god and no ordinary mortal. He has an enormous practice in town, he has no time for relaxation, and now he owns an estate, and two houses in town: he’s looking for a third house that would bring in more income and whenever they talk of some house up for auction at the Mutual Credit Bank, then, without standing on ceremony, he marches right into the house, goes through all the rooms, ignoring half-naked women and children, who look at him in fear and trembling, pokes every door with his stick and says:
‘Is this the study? Is this the bedroom? And what’s this?’
And he breathes heavily and wipes the sweat from his brow.
He has much to preoccupy him, but he still doesn’t give up his place on the local council. Greed has triumphed and he always wants to be everywhere at the right time. He’s called simply Ionych in Dyalizh and in town. ‘Where’s old Ionych going?’ or ‘Shall we invite Ionych to a committee meeting?’ they say.
Probably because his throat is bloated his voice has changed and become reedy and harsh. His personality has changed too: he’s heavy-going now, irritable. When he sees patients he normally gets angry and impatiently bangs his stick on the floor.
‘Please reply to the question! Don’t argue!’ he shouts in his jarring voice. In fact, he’s a real lone wolf. Life is a bore, nothing interests him.
The whole time he lived in Dyalizh his love for Pussycat was his only joy and probably his last. He plays whist every evening at the club and then he sits on his own at the big table and has supper. He’s waited upon by Ivan, the oldest and most venerable club servant. He’s served the Lafite No. 17 and every single person there – the senior members and the footmen – knows his likes and dislikes and does his utmost to please him, otherwise he might suddenly lose his temper and start banging his stick on the floor.
When he has supper he turns round from time to time and joins in some conversation: ‘Who are you talking about? Eh? Who?’
And when someone at a neighbouring table happens to start discussing the Turkins he asks: ‘Which Turkins do you mean? The ones whose daughter plays the piano?’
And that’s all one can say about him.
And the Turkins? Ivan Petrovich hasn’t aged, hasn’t changed one bit and he’s joking and telling his funny stories as always. And Vera Iosifovna reads her novels to her guests as eagerly as ever, with warmth and unpretentiousness. Pussycat plays the piano every day, for hours at a time. She has
aged noticeably, suffers from ill health and every autumn she goes to the Crimea with her mother. When he sees them off at the station, Ivan Petrovich wipes the tears from his eyes as the train pulls out.
‘Goodbye – if you please!’ he shouts.
And he waves his handkerchief.
My Life
(A PROVINCIAL’S STORY)
I
‘I’m only keeping you on out of respect for your esteemed father,’ the manager told me. ‘Otherwise I’d have sent you flying long ago.’
I replied, ‘You flatter me too much, sir, in supposing I’m capable of flight.’
Then I heard him say ‘Take this gentleman away from here, he’s getting on my nerves.’
Two days later I was dismissed, which meant I’d had nine different jobs since the time I’d reached adulthood – to the great chagrin of my father, the town architect. I had worked in various government departments, but all nine jobs had been exactly the same and involved sitting on my backside, copying, listening to idiotic, cheap remarks and waiting for the sack.
When I arrived at Father’s, he was deep in his armchair and his eyes were closed. His gaunt, wasted face, with that bluish-grey shadow where he shaved (he looked like an elderly Catholic organist), expressed humility and resignation. Without acknowledging my greeting, or opening his eyes, he told me, ‘If my beloved wife, your mother, were alive today, the kind of life you lead would be a constant torment for her. I see the workings of Divine Providence in her untimely death. I’m asking you, you miserable wretch,’ he went on, opening his eyes, ‘to tell me what I should do with you.’
When I was younger, my relatives and friends had known what to do with me: some advised me to volunteer for military service, some told me to get a job in a chemist’s shop, while others said I should work in a telegraph office. But now that I had turned twenty-five (I was even going a little grey at the temples) and had been in the army, had worked in a chemist’s shop and in a telegraph office, it seemed that I had exhausted all earthly possibilities, and so they stopped advising me and merely sighed or shook their heads.