When Sasha spoke he would point two long, emaciated fingers towards the person he was talking to.
‘When you’re not used to it here it all seems a bit primitive,’ he went on. ‘No one does a damned thing! Your mother spends the whole day running around enjoying herself like some duchess. Your grandmother doesn’t do anything either, nor do you. The same goes for your fiancé Andrey.’
Nadya had heard all this last year and the year before that, she thought. She knew that Sasha just could not think in any other way. This was amusing once; now it rather irritated her.
‘That’s all old hat, so boring,’ she said, getting up. ‘You might try and think of something new.’
He laughed as he too got up and both of them walked towards the house. Tall, pretty, with a good figure, she looked so healthy, so attractive next to him. She sensed this and felt sorry for him and somewhat embarrassed. ‘You’re always going too far!’ she said. ‘Just now you said something about my Andrey, for example. But you don’t know him, do you?’
‘“My” Andrey! Blow your Andrey! It’s your youth I feel sorry for.’
As they entered the large dining-room, everyone was already sitting down to supper. Grandmother, known as ‘Grannie’ by everyone in that house, was a very stout, ugly woman with bushy eyebrows and whiskers. She spoke loudly and it was plain from her voice and manner who was head of the house. She owned rows of stalls in the market, and this old house with its columns and garden, but every morning she asked God to spare her from bankruptcy, crying as she prayed. And then there was her daughter-in-law Nina Ivanovna (Nadya’s mother), a fair-haired, tightly corseted woman with pincenez, and diamonds on every finger. There was Father Andrey, a skinny toothless old man, who always seemed about to tell some very funny story. And there was his son Andrey Andreich, Nadya’s fiancé: he was stout, handsome, with curly hair, and he looked like an actor or an artist. All three of them were discussing hypnotism.
‘One week here with me and you’ll be better,’ Grannie told Sasha. ‘But you must eat more – what do you look like!’ she sighed. ‘Really awful, a true Prodigal Son.’
‘He wasted his substance with riotous living,’1 Father Andrey observed slowly, with laughter in his eyes. ‘He filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat.’
‘I do love that dear old father of mine,’ Andrey said, touching his father’s shoulder. ‘He’s wonderful – so kind.’
No one said a word. Sasha suddenly burst out laughing and pressed a serviette to his mouth.
‘So you believe in hypnotism?’ Father Andrey asked Nina Ivanovna.
‘I wouldn’t venture to assert, of course, that I believe in it,’ Nina Ivanovna replied, assuming a deadly serious, almost grim expression. ‘But I must admit that nature is full of mysterious, incomprehensible things.’
‘I agree entirely, only I would add that religion significantly reduces the domain of the Mysterious.’
A large, extremely plump turkey was served. Father Andrey and Nina Ivanovna carried on talking. The diamonds sparkled on Iavnovna’s fingers, then tears sparkled in her eyes. She was excited.
‘I daren’t even argue with you,’ she said. ‘Still, you must agree that life has so many insoluble puzzles.’
‘Not one, may I assure you.’
After supper Andrey Andreich played the violin and Nina Ivanovna accompanied him on the piano. Ten years ago he had taken a degree in modern languages, but he had never worked anywhere and had no fixed occupation apart from occasionally participating in charity concerts. In town he was called ‘The Musician’.
They all listened in silence as Andrey Andreich played. The samovar quietly bubbled on the table – only Sasha drank tea. Then, when twelve o’clock struck, a violin string suddenly snapped. Everyone burst out laughing, rushed around and began to say farewell.
After she had seen her fiancé out, Nadya went upstairs, where she and her mother lived (Grandmother occupied the lower floor). Downstairs, in the dining-room, they had started putting the lights out, but Sasha still sat there drinking his tea. He always took a long time over it, Moscow style, and would drink seven glasses at one sitting. For a long while after she had undressed and gone to bed, Nadya could hear the servants clearing away downstairs and Grannie getting cross. Finally, everything was quiet, except for the occasional sound of Sasha’s deep cough from his room downstairs.
II
It must have been about two in the morning when Nadya woke up. Dawn was breaking. Somewhere in the distance a nightwatchman was banging away. She did not feel sleepy. The bed was uncomfortable – much too soft. As she used to do on May nights in the past she sat up in bed to take stock. Her thoughts were just the same as last night’s – monotonous, barren, obsessive thoughts about Andrey Andreich courting her and proposing, about her accepting him and then gradually coming to appreciate the true worth of that kind, clever man. But now, with the wedding less than a month away, she began to feel scared for some reason, uneasy, as if something vaguely unpleasant lay in store for her.
Once again she heard the watchman lazily beating his stick.
Through the large old window she could see the garden and then, a little further away, the richly blossoming lilac bushes, sleepy and lifeless in the cold. A dense white mist was drifting towards the lilac, wanting to envelop it. Drowsy crows cawed in far-off trees.
‘God, why am I so miserable?’
Perhaps every bride felt like this before her wedding – who knows? Or was it Sasha’s influence? But hadn’t he been saying the same old thing for years now, as if reciting from a book? He sounded so naïve, so peculiar. Then why couldn’t she get Sasha out of her head? Why?
The watchman had long stopped banging. Birds began to chirp beneath the window, and in the garden the mist disappeared and everything around was illumined in the smiling spring sunlight. Soon the whole garden, warmed and caressed by the sun, came to life, and dewdrops glittered on leaves like diamonds. That morning the old, long-neglected garden seemed so young, so decked out.
Grannie was already awake. Sasha was producing his deep rough cough. She could hear them downstairs putting on the samovar and moving the chairs.
The hours passed slowly. Nadya had been up and taken her garden stroll long ago, but still the morning dragged on.
Then Nina Ivanovna came out with a glass of mineral water, her eyes full of tears. She practised spiritualism and homoeopathy, read a great deal and liked talking about the doubts that were plaguing her – all this (so she thought) had some profound, mysterious meaning. Nadya kissed her mother and walked along with her.
‘What were you crying about, Mother?’ she asked.
‘Last night I started reading a story about an old man and his daughter. The old man was working somewhere and his boss fell in love with his daughter. I didn’t finish it, but there was one part you couldn’t help crying over.’ Nina Ivanovna took a sip from her glass. ‘I remembered it this morning and started crying again.’
‘I’ve been feeling so miserable recently,’ Nadya said. ‘Why can’t I sleep at night?’
‘I don’t know, my dearest. Whenever I can’t sleep I close my eyes ever so tight – like this – and imagine Anna Karenina walking and talking. Or I think of something from history, from the ancient world.’ Nadya felt that her mother did not and could not understand her – this she felt for the first time in her life, and it really frightened her. She wanted to hide, so she went up to her room.
They had lunch at two. As it was a Wednesday – a fast day – Grandmother was served borsch and then bream with buckwheat.
To tease Grandmother, Sasha ate both the borsch and some meat broth of his own concoction. All through lunch he joked, but his clumsy, moralizing witticisms misfired. When he lifted those long, emaciated, corpse-like fingers before launching some joke and you could see how very ill he was – not long for this world perhaps – the effect was far from funny, and you felt so sorry you could have cried.
After lunch Grandmoth
er went to her room to lie down. Nina Ivanovna played the piano for a short while and then she too left.
‘Oh, my dear Nadya,’ Sasha said, embarking on his customary after-lunch speech. ‘If you would only, if you would only… listen to me…’
She was deep in an antique armchair, eyes closed, while he slowly paced the room.
‘If you would only go away and study!’ he said. ‘The only interesting people are the educated and idealistic, they’re the ones we need. The more there are of these people, the quicker God’s kingdom will come on earth – agreed? Very gradually, not one stone of your town will be left on another, everything will be turned upside down, everything will change as if by magic. And then there will be magnificent, huge houses, wonderful gardens, splendid fountains, remarkable people. But that’s not the most important part of it. The main thing is, the mob, as we know it, as it exists now – that evil will be no more, since every man will have something to believe in, everyone will know what the purpose of his life is and no one will seek support from the masses. My dear, darling girl, get away from here! Show everyone that you’re sick of this vegetating, dull, shameful existence! At least show yourself!’
‘I can’t, Sasha. I’m getting married.’
‘That’s a fat lot of good! You can’t mean it!’
They went out into the garden and walked a little.
‘You can say what you like, my dear,’ Sasha continued, ‘but you must try and realize how squalid and immoral this idle existence of yours is. You must see that! If you, your mother and that Grannie of yours, for example, never do a stroke of work, it means others are doing the work for you, you’re ruining the lives of people you’ve never even met. Isn’t that squalid, dishonourable?’
Nadya felt like saying, ‘Yes, that’s the truth.’ She wanted to tell him that she understood, but her eyes filled with tears, and she suddenly grew quiet, hunched her shoulders and went to her room.
Andrey Andreich arrived in the late afternoon and gave his usual lengthy performance on the violin. On the whole he was rather taciturn and perhaps he liked playing the violin because then he didn’t have to talk. After ten o’clock, when he was preparing to leave and had already put on his coat, he embraced Nadya, hungrily kissing her face, shoulders and hands. ‘My dear beautiful darling!’ he muttered. ‘Oh, how happy I am! I’m going mad with ecstasy!’
Nadya thought that she had heard all this long, long ago – or that she had read it somewhere, in an old, dog-eared, long-abandoned novel.
Sasha was sitting at the dining-room table drinking tea with the saucer balanced on his five long fingers. Grannie was playing patience, Nina Ivanovna was reading. The icon-lamp sputtered and everything seemed serene and happy. Nadya said goodnight and went up to her room, got into bed and fell asleep immediately. However, as on the previous night, she awoke at the first glimmer of dawn. She wasn’t sleepy and felt uneasy and depressed. Her head on her knees, she sat thinking about her fiancé, about the wedding. For some reason she recalled that her mother hadn’t loved her husband (he had died), that now she had nothing, being completely dependent on Grannie, Nina’s mother-in-law. However hard she thought about it Nadya just could not understand why, up to now, she had looked on her mother as someone special, unusual. Why hadn’t she realized that she was just a very simple, ordinary, unhappy sort of woman?
Downstairs, Sasha couldn’t sleep either. She could hear him coughing. He was a strange, naïve person, thought Nadya, and there was something absurd in those dreams of his, in all those marvellous gardens and extraordinary fountains. But somehow, in that very naïvety – even in his absurdity – there was so much that was fine that the mere thought of going away to study was enough to send a cold shiver through her heart and breast, and flood her whole being with joy and rapture.
‘But it’s best not to think about it,’ she whispered. ‘I mustn’t think about it.’
Far off she could hear the night watchman’s knocking.
III
In the middle of June, Sasha suddenly felt bored and prepared to leave for Moscow.
‘I just can’t live in this town,’ he said gloomily. ‘There’s no running water, no drains. And I’m a bit squeamish about eating meals here – that kitchen’s positively filthy!’
‘Now, wait a minute, Prodigal Son,’ Grandmother urged, whispering for some reason. ‘The wedding’s on the seventh!’
‘I don’t want to stay any longer.’
‘But I thought you’d be here until September!’
‘Well, I don’t want to stay now. I have work to do.’
Summer had turned out cold and damp, the trees were soaking wet and the whole garden looked miserable and uninviting: it really did make you feel like working. In the upstairs and downstairs rooms unfamiliar women’s voices rang out. The sewing-machine in Grandmother’s room rattled away – they were hurrying to get the trousseau finished. There were no fewer than six fur coats and the cheapest was costing three hundred roubles, according to Grandmother. All this fuss irritated Sasha, who stayed in his room getting very cross. All the same they persuaded him to stay on and he gave his word not to leave before 1 July.
Time flew. On St Peter’s Day,2 after lunch, Andrey Andreich went to Moscow Street with Nadya to have another look at the house that had been rented and prepared for the young couple a long time before. There were two floors, but so far only the upper one had been decorated. There was a glittering floor painted to look like parquet in the lounge, bentwood chairs, a grand piano and a violin-stand. The room smelt of paint. A large oil painting of a naked lady with a broken-handled, violet-coloured vase by her side hung in its gilt frame on the wall.
‘Marvellous!’ Andrey Andreich said with a respectful sigh. ‘It’s a Shishmachevsky.’3
After that came a sitting-room, with a round table, sofa and armchairs upholstered in a bright blue material. A large photograph of Father Andrey, in priest’s hat and wearing decorations, hung over the sofa. Then they entered the dining-room, with its sideboard, and then the bedroom. Here in the half-light, two beds stood side by side, giving the impression that the room had been furnished with the intention that everything there would always be perfect and could never be otherwise. Andrey Andreich led Nadya through the whole house, keeping his arm around her waist all the time. But she felt weak and guilty, hating all those rooms, beds and armchairs, and nauseated by that naked lady. Now she clearly understood that she no longer loved Andrey Andreich and that perhaps she never had. But how could she put it into words, whom could she tell and what good would it do? This was something she did not and could not understand, although she had thought about it for days and nights on end. He was holding her round the waist, talking to her so affectionately, so modestly – he was happy walking around his new house. But all she saw was vulgarity, stupid, fatuous, intolerable vulgarity, and that arm round her waist seemed as hard and cold as an iron hoop. Every minute she was on the verge of running away, sobbing, throwing herself out of the window. Andrey Andreich led her to the bathroom, where he placed his hand on a tap set in the wall – and suddenly water flowed.
‘What do you think of that?’ he said, laughing. ‘I had a two-hundred-gallon tank put in the loft. Now you and I shall have water.’
They strolled around the yard and then went out into the street, where they took a cab. Thick clouds of dust blew about, and it looked like rain.
‘Don’t you feel cold?’ Andrey Andreich asked, screwing up his eyes from the dust.
She did not reply.
‘Do you remember how Sasha told me off yesterday for doing nothing?’ he asked after a short silence. ‘Well, he’s absolutely right! I never do a thing, I just can’t. Why is it, my dear? Why does the mere thought of pinning a cockade on my hat and entering government service repel me so much? Why do I feel so edgy when I see a lawyer, a Latin teacher or a local councillor? Oh, Russia, Russia! What a lot of useless idlers you carry on your shoulders! My dear, long-suffering native land, there’s so many like
me you have to tolerate!’
He was trying to turn the fact that he did nothing into a general truth, seeing it as a sign of the times.
‘When we’re married,’ he continued, ‘we’ll both go into the country and we’ll work! We’ll buy a small plot of land with a garden, near a river, we’ll slave away and observe the life all around us. Oh, that will be so wonderful!’
He took off his hat and his hair streamed in the wind. As she listened she thought, ‘Good God, I want to go back home!’
They were almost back at the house when they overtook Father Andrey.
‘There’s Father!’ Andrey Andreich said, joyfully waving his hat. ‘I’m so fond of my old man, I really am,’ he said as he paid the cab-driver. ‘He’s such a kind old boy.’
Nadya entered the house feeling angry and unwell. She thought about the guests she would have to entertain all evening – she would have to smile, listen to that violin and all sorts of rubbish, and talk of nothing except that wedding.
Impressive and splendid in her silk dress, Grandmother was sitting by the samovar. She looked haughty, as she invariably did to her guests. Father Andrey came in, smiling his crafty smile.
‘I have the pleasure and inestimable satisfaction of seeing you in good health,’ he told Grandmother, and it was hard to tell if this was meant seriously or as a joke.
IV
The wind beat against the windows and roof. There was a whistling noise and the hobgoblin in the stove sang its song, plaintively, mournfully. It was past midnight. Everyone in the house had gone to bed, but no one slept and Nadya fancied she could hear someone playing the violin downstairs. Then there was a sharp bang – a shutter must have been torn off its hinges. A minute later Nina Ivanovna entered in her nightdress, with a candle.
‘Nadya, what was that bang?’ she asked.