Near the forester’s cottage that nestled in a small clearing among the pines, we were greeted by the loud melodious barking of two flame-coloured dogs, glossy and as supple as eels, and of a breed that was unfamiliar to me. When they recognized Urbenin they joyfully wagged their tails and ran towards him, from which I gathered that the manager was a frequent visitor to the forester’s cottage. Next to the cottage we were met by a bootless and capless lad with large freckles on his astonished face. For a minute he surveyed us in silence, with wide-open eyes and then, when he recognized the Count, he produced a loud ‘Ah!’ and dashed headlong into the cottage.
‘I know why he ran off,’ laughed the Count. ‘I remember him… it’s Mitka.’
The Count was not mistaken. Less than a minute later Mitka emerged from the cottage with a glass of vodka and half a tumbler of water on a tray.
‘Your good health, Your Excellency,’ he said, smiling all over his stupid, surprised face as he served the Count.
The Count downed the vodka and then took a drink of water – but for once he didn’t frown. About a hundred paces from the cottage stood an iron bench, as old as the pines. We sat down on it and contemplated the May evening in all its tranquil beauty. Frightened crows flew cawing above our heads, the song of nightingales drifted towards us from all sides – nothing else broke the all-pervading silence.
The Count was incapable of remaining silent, even on calm evenings in May, when the voice of humans is least agreeable.
‘I don’t know whether you’ll be satisfied,’ he said, turning to me. ‘I’ve ordered fish soup and game for supper. We’ll have some cold sturgeon and sucking-pig with horseradish to go with the vodka.’
As if they were angered by these prosaic words, the poetic pines suddenly shook their crowns and a gentle rustle ran through the forest. A fresh breeze wafted over the clearing and played with the grass.
‘Down boys!’ Urbenin shouted to the flame-coloured dogs that were preventing him from lighting his cigarette with their endearments. ‘I think it’s going to rain tonight, I can feel it in the air. It’s been so terribly hot today that you don’t have to be a learned professor to forecast rain. It will be good for the corn.’
‘And what’s the good of corn to you,’ I wondered, ‘if the Count’s going to squander the money on drink? No point in the rain troubling itself either.’
Again a breeze ran through the forest, but this time it was stronger. The pines and grass made a louder murmur.
‘Let’s go home.’
We stood up and lazily ambled back to the cottage.
‘It’s better to be a fair-haired Olenka,’ I said, turning to Urbenin, ‘and live here among the wild animals than an investigating magistrate and live among people. It’s more peaceful… isn’t that so, Pyotr Yegorych?’
‘It doesn’t matter what you are, as long as you have peace of mind, Sergey Petrovich.’
‘And does this pretty Olenka have peace of mind?’
‘The secrets of another’s soul are known to God alone, but it strikes me that she has no reason to fret – no sorrow, and her sins are simply those of a child. She’s a very good girl! Well, at last the heavens are talking of rain!’
We could hear a rumble, rather like a distant carriage or the clatter of skittles. From somewhere, far beyond the forest, came a great thunderclap. Mitka, who had been following us the whole time, shuddered and quickly crossed himself.
‘A thunderstorm!’ exclaimed the Count in alarm. ‘I didn’t expect that! Now we’ll be caught in the rain on our way back. And it’s got so dark! I said we should go back. But no, we carried on.’
‘We can wait in the cottage until it’s passed over,’ I suggested.
‘Why the cottage?’ asked Urbenin, blinking peculiarly. ‘It’s going to rain all night, so do you really want to stay so long in the cottage? Now, please don’t worry. Mitka will run on ahead and send the carriage to collect you.’
‘It’s all right – perhaps it won’t rain all night,’ I said. ‘Storm clouds usually pass over very quickly. Besides, I don’t know the new forester yet and I’d like to have a little chat with this Olenka, to find out what kind of dicky-bird she is.’
‘No objections!’ agreed the Count.
‘But how can you go there if the place is all in a mess?’ Urbenin anxiously babbled. ‘Why sit in that stuffy place, Your Excellency, when you could be at home? I can’t imagine what pleasure it can give you. And how can you get to know the forester if he’s ill?’
It was patently obvious that the manager was violently opposed to our entering the forester’s cottage. He even spread out his arms as if wanting to bar our way. I could see from his face that he had reasons for stopping us. I respect other people’s reasons and secrets, but on this occasion my curiosity was greatly excited. I insisted – and into the cottage we went.
‘Into the parlour, please!’ barefooted Mitka said with a peculiar hiccup, almost choking with delight.
Imagine the tiniest parlour in the world, with unpainted wooden walls hung with oleographs from The Cornfield,14 photographs in mother-of-pearl (as we call them here ‘cockleshell’) frames, and testimonials: one expressed a certain baron’s gratitude for many years of service; the remainder were for horses. Here and there ivy made its way up the walls. In one of the corners, in front of a small icon, a tiny blue flame, faintly reflected in its silver mounting, was softly burning. Along the wall, chairs, evidently recently purchased, were ranged closely together. In fact, more had been bought than were needed, but they had still been placed there as there was nowhere else to put them. Crowded together were armchairs, a couch with snow-white, lace-frilled covers, and a round, polished table. A tame hare was dozing on the couch. It was cosy, clean and warm. A woman’s presence was evident everywhere. Even the bookcase had an innocent, feminine look, as if it too wanted to declare that nothing but undemanding novels and light poetry were on its shelves. The charm of such warm, cosy little rooms is felt not so much in spring as in autumn, when you seek refuge from the cold and damp.
With much puffing and panting, and noisy striking of matches, Mitka lit two candles and placed them on the table as carefully as if they were milk. We sat down in the armchairs, exchanged glances and burst out laughing.
‘Nikolay Yefimych is ill in bed,’ Urbenin said, explaining the master’s absence. ‘And Olga Nikolayevna must have gone off to accompany my children.’
‘Mitka! Are the doors locked!’ came a weak tenor voice from the next room.
‘Yes, they are, Nikolay Yefimych!’ Mitka shouted hoarsely and rushed headlong into the next room.
‘Good! See that every door is properly shut,’ said that same feeble voice. ‘And securely locked as well. If thieves should try to get in you must tell me… I’ll shoot those devils with my rifle… the bastards!’
‘Without fail, Nikolay Yefimych!’
We burst out laughing and looked quizzically at Urbenin. He turned red and started tidying the window curtains to hide his embarrassment. What was the meaning of this ‘dream’? Once more we looked at each other.
But there was no time for wondering. Outside hurried footsteps could be heard again, followed by a noise in the porch and a door slamming. The girl in red flew into the room.
‘ “I lo-ove the storms of early Ma-ay”,’15 she sang in a shrill, strident soprano, punctuating her high-pitched singing with laughter. But the moment she saw us she suddenly stopped and fell silent. Deeply embarrassed, she went as meek as a lamb into the room from which we had just heard the voice of her father, Nikolay Yefimych.
‘She wasn’t expecting you!’ laughed Urbenin.
Shortly afterwards she quietly returned, sat on the chair nearest the door and started inspecting us. She looked at us boldly, intensely, as if we were zoo animals and not new faces to her. For a minute we too looked at her, silently, without moving. I would willingly have sat there for a year, quite still, just to gaze at her, so beautiful did she look that evening. Her flushed ch
eeks as fresh as the air, that rapidly breathing, heaving bosom, those curls scattered over her forehead and shoulders and over that right hand with which she was adjusting her collar, her big, sparkling eyes – all this in one small body that you could take in at a single glance. Just one look at this tiny creature and you would see more than if you stared at the boundless horizon for centuries. She looked at me seriously, questioningly, with an upward glance. But when her eyes turned from me to the Count or the Pole, I began to read in them the complete reverse: a downward glance… and laughter.
I was the first to speak.
‘Allow me to introduce myself,’ I said, getting up and going over to her. ‘Zinovyev… And this is my good friend Count Karneyev. Please do forgive us for barging into your pretty little cottage uninvited. Of course, we would never have done this if we hadn’t been forced to take shelter from the storm.’
‘But you won’t make the cottage fall down!’ she said, laughing and offering her hand.
She revealed her beautiful teeth. I sat down on a chair next to her and told her how we had been caught by a storm on our walk, quite unexpectedly. We started discussing the weather – the beginning of all beginnings. While we were chatting, Mitka had already managed to bring the Count two glasses of vodka and the water that invariably accompanied it. Taking advantage of the fact that I wasn’t looking at him, the Count sweetly wrinkled his face after both glasses and shook his head.
‘Perhaps you’d like some refreshments?’ Olenka asked – and she left the room without waiting for a reply.
The first drops of rain beat against the panes. I went over to the window. By now it was completely dark and through the glass I could see nothing but raindrops trickling down and the reflection of my own nose. Lightning flashed and illuminated several of the nearest pines.
‘Are the doors locked?’ came that weak tenor voice again. ‘Mitka! Come here you little devil and lock the doors! Oh God, this is sheer torment!’
A peasant woman with a bulging, tightly belted stomach and a stupid, worried face entered the parlour, bowed low to the Count and spread a white cloth over the table. Mitka gingerly followed her with the hors d’oeuvres. A minute later vodka, rum, cheese and a dish with some kind of roast fowl made their appearance on the table. The Count drank a glass of vodka but he did not start eating. The Pole sniffed the bird suspiciously and started carving.
‘It’s simply pelting now. Just look at that!’ I told Olenka, who had come into the room again.
The girl in red came over to my window and just then, for one fleeting moment, we were lit up by a white radiance. There was a fearful crackling sound from above and something large and heavy seemed to have been ripped from its place in the sky, plummeting to earth with a great crash. The window panes and the wine glasses that were standing in front of the Count tinkled. It was an extremely violent thunderclap.
‘Are you scared of storms?’ I asked Olenka.
She pressed her cheek to her round shoulder and looked at me with the trustfulness of a child.
‘Yes I am,’ she whispered after a moment’s thought. ‘My mother was killed by a storm. It was even in the papers… Mother was crossing an open field and she was crying. She led a really wretched life in this world. God took pity on her and killed her with his heavenly electricity.’
‘How do you know there’s electricity in heaven?’
‘I’ve learned about it. Did you know that people killed in storms or in war, and women who have died after a difficult labour, go to paradise! You won’t find that in any books, but it’s true. My mother’s in paradise now. I think that one day I’ll be killed in a storm and I too will go to paradise. Are you an educated man?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you won’t laugh at me. Now, this is how I’d like to die. To put on the most fashionable, expensive dress – like the one I saw that rich, local landowner Sheffer wearing the other day – and deck my arms with bracelets… Then to stand on the very top of Stone Grave and let myself be struck by lightning, in full view of everyone. A terrifying thunderclap, you know, and then – the end!’
‘What a wild fantasy!’ I laughed, peering into those eyes that were filled with holy terror at the thought of a terrible but dramatic death. ‘So, you don’t want to die in an ordinary dress?’
‘No,’ replied Olenka, with a shake of the head. ‘To die, so that everyone can see me!’
‘The frock you’re wearing now is nicer than any fashionable and expensive dress. It suits you. It makes you look like a red flower from the green woods.’
‘No, that’s not true,’ Olenka innocently sighed. ‘It’s a cheap dress, it can’t possibly be nice.’
The Count came over to the window with the obvious intention of having a little chat with pretty Olenka. My friend can speak three European languages, but he can’t speak to women. He looked somewhat out of his element as he came and stood near us, smiled inanely, mumbled an inarticulate ‘Hmmm… y-y-yes…’ and then retraced his steps to the carafe of vodka.
‘When you came into the room,’ I told Olenka, ‘you were singing “I love the storms of early May”. Haven’t those lines been set to music?’
‘No, I just sing all the poetry I know, after my own fashion.’
Just then I happened to look round. Urbenin was watching us. In his eyes I could read hatred and malice, which didn’t in the least suit his kind, gentle face. ‘He can’t be jealous, can he?’ I wondered.
The poor devil noted my quizzical look, rose from his chair and went out into the hall to fetch something. Even from his walk it was obvious that he was highly agitated. The thunderclaps, each louder and more resounding than the last, became more and more frequent. The lightning continually tinted the sky, the pines and the wet earth with its pleasant but dazzling light. It would be ages before the rain stopped. I walked away from the window to the book stand and started inspecting Olenka’s library. ‘Tell me what you read and I’ll tell you what you are’ – but for all that wealth of books, arranged in perfect symmetry on those shelves, it was difficult to assess in any way Olenka’s intellectual level and ‘educational attainments’. It was all a rather peculiar hotchpotch: three readers; one of Born’s books;16 Yevtushevsky’s Mathematics Problem Book;17 Lermontov (vol. 2); Shklyarevsky; the journal The Task;18 a cookery book; Miscellany.19 I could enumerate even more books, but just as I was taking Miscellany from the shelf and began turning the pages, the door to the other room opened and in came a person who immediately distracted my attention from Olenka’s ‘educational attainments’. This was a tall, muscular man in cotton-print dressing-gown, tattered slippers and with a rather original face: a mass of dark blue veins, it was embellished with a pair of sergeant’s whiskers and sideburns, and on the whole it put me in mind of a bird’s. The entire face seemed to have thrust itself forward in an apparent attempt to converge at the tip of the nose. Such faces, I think, are called ‘pitcher-snouts’.20 This character’s small head reposed on a long, thin neck with a large Adam’s apple and rocked like a starling-box in the wind. With his dull green eyes this strange man surveyed us, and then he stared at the Count.
‘Are all the doors locked?’ he asked in a pleading voice.
The Count glanced at me and shrugged his shoulders.
‘Don’t worry, Papa!’ Olenka said. ‘They’re all locked. Go back to your room.’
‘Is the barn locked?’
‘He’s a bit funny in the head… he gets like that sometimes,’ Urbenin whispered, appearing from the hall. ‘He’s afraid of burglars and as you can see he’s always fussing about the doors. Nikolay Yefimych!’ he said, turning to this strange individual. ‘Go back to your room and sleep. Don’t worry, everything’s locked.’
‘Are the windows locked?’
Nikolay Yefimych quickly went to every window, checked the locks and then, without so much as a glance at us, shuffled back to his room in his slippers.
‘Now and then he comes over all peculiar, poor devil,’ Urbenin sta
rted explaining the moment he’d left the room. ‘He’s a fine, decent chap really, a family man… it’s really very sad. Almost every summer he goes a bit dotty.’
I glanced at Olenka. Sheepishly, hiding her face from us, she began tidying the books I had disturbed. She was obviously ashamed of her crazy father.
‘The carriage is here, Your Excellency!’ Urbenin announced. ‘You can drive back now if you wish.’
‘But how on earth did that carriage get here?’ I asked.
‘I sent for it.’
A minute later I was sitting in the carriage with the Count, fuming as I listened to the peals of thunder.
‘So, that Pyotr just bundled us out of the cottage, blast him!’ I growled, getting really angry. ‘He didn’t let us have a proper look at Olenka! I wouldn’t have eaten her! Silly old fool! He was simply bursting with jealousy the whole time. He’s in love with that girl.’
‘Oh yes! Fancy that – I noticed it too! And he was so jealous he didn’t want to let us into the cottage – he only sent for the carriage out of sheer jealousy! Ha ha!’
‘ “The later love comes the more it burns”… Really, it’s very hard not to fall for that girl in red, my friend, if you see her every day as we saw her today! She’s devilishly pretty! Only, she’s not his sort. He ought to understand that and not be so egotistically jealous. All right, love if you like, but don’t stop others – all the more so if you realize the girl’s not meant for you! Really, what a blockhead!’
‘Do you remember how he flared up when Kuzma mentioned her name over tea?’ sniggered the Count. ‘I thought he was going to thrash the lot of us then – you don’t go defending a woman’s good name so fiercely if you’ve no feelings for her.’
‘But some men will do that… however, that’s not the point. The crux of the matter is this: if he could order us around like that today, how does he treat small fry who are at his beck and call? He probably won’t let stewards, managers, huntsmen and other nobodies of this world go anywhere near her. Love and jealousy can make a man unjust, callous, misanthropic. I’ll wager that because of Olenka he’s tormented the life out of more than one servant under his command. Therefore you’d do well to take his complaints about your poor employees, about the need to dismiss this one or the other, with a pinch of salt. In general, his authority must be curbed for the time being. Love will pass – and then there’ll be nothing to fear. He’s really quite a decent fellow.’