‘Oh, nothing,’ her husband answered.
‘You’ve started keeping secrets from me lately. That’s not right.’
‘Why isn’t it?’ Pyotr replied dryly, pausing briefly. ‘We all have our own private lives, therefore we must have our secrets.’
‘Private lives, secrets… that’s only words! Do you realize that you’re insulting me?’ Olga said, sitting up. ‘If you feel depressed, why do you hide it from me? And why do you find it more convenient to confide in strange women rather than talk to your wife? In fact I heard you pouring out your heart this afternoon to Lyubochka, near the beehives.’
‘Well, congratulations. I’m delighted you heard.’
This remark meant ‘Leave me in peace, don’t disturb me when I’m trying to think.’ Olga flared up. All the annoyance, hatred and anger which had been accumulating in her during the day suddenly seemed to boil over. She wanted to say exactly what she thought about it all to her husband there and then, without waiting until the morning; she wanted to insult him, have her revenge. Trying hard not to shout she said, ‘Just try and see how terribly, terribly vile all this is! I’ve felt nothing but hatred for you all day long – it’s all your fault!’
Pyotr sat up too.
‘Terribly, terribly vile!’ Olga went on, beginning to shake all over. ‘You’ve no need to congratulate me! You’d better congratulate yourself! It’s a downright disgrace! You’ve taken your lying so far, you’re ashamed to be in the same room as your wife. You’re such a phoney! I can see right through you and I understand every step you take!’
‘Olga, when you’re not feeling too well again, please warn me. I can go and sleep in the study then.’
With these words Pyotr took a pillow and walked out of the bedroom. Olga had not anticipated this. For several minutes – speechless, her mouth wide open, and trembling all over – she looked at the door through which her husband had disappeared, trying to understand the meaning of it all. Was it one of those tricks resorted to by dishonest people during an argument, when they are in the wrong, or was it a deliberate insult to her pride? How was she to take it? Olga remembered her officer-cousin, a nice cheerful young man who often laughingly told her that when ‘my good lady wife starts nagging me at night’, he usually took a pillow and went away whistling to his study, leaving his wife looking stupid and ridiculous. This officer was married to a rich, frivolous, silly woman whom he did not respect and could barely tolerate.
Olga leapt up from the bed. She thought that now there was only one course of action – to dress herself as quickly as she could and leave that house for ever. The house was her property, but that was hard luck for Pyotr. Without first asking herself whether it was necessary, she dashed into the study to tell her husband about her decision (the thought ‘Woman’s logic!’ flashed through her mind) and say something offensive and sarcastic by way of farewell.
Pyotr lay on the couch and pretended he was reading the paper. A lighted candle stood on a chair nearby and his face lay hidden behind the paper.
‘Please explain the meaning of this, I’m asking you!’
‘ “Please explain…” ’ mimicked Pyotr, not showing his face. ‘I’m fed up, Olga! Word of honour, I’m worn out, and I don’t feel up to it right now… We can quarrel tomorrow.’
‘No, I know you only too well!’ Olga continued. ‘You hate me! Yes, yes! You hate me for being richer than you! You’ll never forgive me for that and you’ll always tell me lies.’ (The thought ‘Woman’s logic’ flashed through her mind again.) ‘I know you’re having a good laugh at me now… I’m even convinced that you only married me for social status and those vile horses… Oh, I’m so unhappy!’
Pyotr dropped his paper and sat up. He was stunned by this unexpected insult. He smiled as helplessly as a child, looked at his wife in bewilderment and, as if warding off blows, held out his hands to her and said pleadingly, ‘Olga!’
Expecting her to say more horrible things, he leant hard on the back of the couch, and his whole body looked just as helpless and childish as his smile.
‘Olga, how could you say a thing like that?’ he whispered.
Olga came to her senses. Suddenly she was aware of her mad love for that man, remembering that he was Pyotr, her husband, without whom she could not live one day, and who loved her madly too. She burst into loud sobs, in a voice that did not sound like hers at all, clasped her head and ran back into the bedroom.
She slumped on to the bed and the room echoed to the sound of broken, hysterical sobbing, which suffocated her and cramped her arms and legs. Remembering that a guest was staying about three or four rooms away, she buried her head under the pillow to smother the sobs, but the pillow slipped on to the floor and she almost fell herself as she bent down to pick it up. She tried to pull the blanket up to her face, but her hands would not obey her and convulsively tore at everything she tried to grasp.
She felt that all was lost now, that the lie she had told to insult her husband had smashed her life to smithereens. Her husband would never forgive her – the insult she had inflicted on him was not the kind to be smoothed away by caresses or vows. How could she convince her husband that she herself did not mean what she said?
‘It’s all over, it’s finished!’ she cried, not noticing that the pillow had once again slipped on to the floor. ‘For God’s sake!’
By this time her cries must have wakened the guest and the servants. Next day the whole district would know about her hysterics and everyone would blame Pyotr. She made an effort to control herself, but her sobs grew louder by the minute. ‘For God’s sake!’ she shouted in a voice hard to recognize as hers and not understanding just why she was shouting. ‘For God’s sake!’
She felt that the bed had collapsed under her and that her legs had become tangled up in the blanket. Pyotr came into the bedroom in his dressing-gown, carrying a candle.
‘Olga, that’s enough!’ he said.
She raised herself to her knees, screwed up her eyes in the candlelight and said between her sobs, ‘Please understand, please understand!’
She wanted to tell him that the visitors, the lies that he and she had told, had exhausted her, that now she was inwardly boiling. But all she could say was ‘Understand, please understand!’
‘Come on, drink this,’ he said, giving her some water.
Obediently, she took the glass and began to drink, but the water spilled over and trickled down her hands, breast and knees. Pyotr silently put her back in bed, covered her with the blanket, took the candle and left.
‘For God’s sake!’ Olga shouted again. ‘Pyotr, you must understand!’
Suddenly something gripped her so violently beneath the stomach and back that her tears were cut short and she bit the pillow in pain. But the pain immediately subsided and she burst out sobbing again.
The maid entered, inquiring anxiously as she straightened the blanket, ‘Madam, my dear madam, what’s wrong?’
‘Clear out of here,’ Pyotr snapped as he went over to the bed.
‘Please understand, please understand,’ Olga began.
‘Olga, I beg you, calm yourself!’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to offend you. I wouldn’t have left the bedroom if I’d known you would take it like this. I just felt depressed. I’m telling you this as an honest man.’
‘Please try and understand… you lied, I lied…’
‘I do understand… Well, that’s all right now. I do understand,’ Pyotr said tenderly, sitting on the bed. ‘You spoke in the heat of the moment, it’s understandable… I swear I love you more than anything in the world and when I married you the thought that you were rich never entered my mind. My love had no bounds… that’s all, I assure you. I’ve never needed money and I’ve never known its value, so I can’t appreciate the difference between your position and mine. I’ve always thought that we were both equally rich. And that remark about my acting deceitfully in small matters. Up to now my life has been run on such frivolous lines that somehow it’s b
een impossible to manage without petty lies. Now I feel low too. Let’s stop this conversation, for God’s sake!’
Olga felt a sharp pain again and grasped her husband’s sleeve.
‘Oh, such a dreadful pain!’ she said hurriedly. ‘It’s terrible!’
‘To hell with all these visitors!’ Pyotr muttered as he stood up. ‘You shouldn’t have gone to the island today!’ he shouted. ‘And I’m a fool for letting you! God in heaven!’
He scratched his head irritably, waved his arm as if to wash his hands of the whole matter and left the room.
Afterwards he came back several times, sitting on the bed and talking a great deal, gently and angrily in turn. But Olga hardly heard a thing. The sobs alternated with terrible pains, each new one sharper and more prolonged than the last. At first she held her breath and bit the pillow during the spasms, but then she began to produce ear-splitting, obscene shouts. Once, when she saw that her husband was near, she remembered that she had insulted him and without asking herself if she was being delirious or if it really was Pyotr, she seized his hand in both of hers and started kissing it.
‘Both you and I lied…’ she began, trying to excuse herself. ‘Please understand, please. They’ve tormented the life out of me, I’ve no more patience…’
‘Olga, we’re not alone!’ Pyotr said.
She raised her head and saw Barbara kneeling by the chest of drawers, taking the lower drawer out – the top ones had already been removed. When she had done this, Barbara stood up, flushed from her efforts, and started opening a small chest with a cold, solemn look on her face.
‘Marya, I can’t open it,’ she whispered. ‘Perhaps you can do it for me.’
The maid Marya, who was digging out some wax from a candlestick with some scissors to make room for a new candle, went over to Barbara and helped her open the chest.
‘I don’t want anything left shut,’ Barbara whispered. ‘Open that little box as well.’ She turned to Pyotr and said, ‘You should send for Father Mikhail, sir, to open the altar doors. You must!’
‘Do what you like,’ Pyotr said between short gasps, ‘only get a doctor or midwife as soon as you can, for God’s sake. Has Vasily gone? Send someone else as well. Send your husband!’
‘I’m in labour,’ Olga realized. ‘Barbara,’ she groaned, ‘it will be stillborn.’
‘It’ll be all right, ma’am, it’ll be all right,’ Barbara whispered. ‘With God’s help it’ll live.’ (It seemed she was incapable of saying ‘it will’.)
When Olga came to, after another stab of pain, she was no longer sobbing or tossing about, but moaning instead. She could not help moaning, even in the intervals between the pains. The candles were still burning, but daylight was already breaking through the shutters. Most likely it was about five o’clock. A strange, very meek-looking woman in a white apron was sitting at a round, bedroom table. From her posture it was obvious that she had been there a long time. Olga guessed that she was the midwife.
‘Will it soon be over?’ she asked and detected a special, unfamiliar note in her own voice which she had never heard before. ‘I must be dying in labour,’ she thought.
Pyotr came gingerly into the bedroom in his day-time clothes and stood at the window with his back to his wife. He raised the shutters and looked out.
‘How it’s raining!’ he said.
‘What’s the time?’ Olga asked, just to hear that unfamiliar tone in her voice again.
‘A quarter to six,’ the midwife answered.
‘But what if I really am dying?’ Olga wondered as she looked at her husband’s head and at the windows with the rain beating against them. ‘How will he live without me? Who will he drink tea with, dine with, talk to in the evenings, sleep with?’
And he struck her as a little orphan. She felt sorry for him and wanted to tell him something pleasant, affectionate, comforting. She remembered that he was intending buying some hounds in the spring but she had stopped him as she thought hunting was a cruel and dangerous sport.
‘Pyotr, go and buy those hounds,’ she groaned.
He lowered the blind and went over to the bed, meaning to say something, but at that moment Olga had a spasm and she produced an obscene, piercing shriek.
She was numb from all the pain and the repeated shouting and groaning. She could hear, see, speak at times, but she understood little and was aware only of feeling pain or that she was about to feel it. She had the impression that the party was long ago, not yesterday, but a whole year, that this new life of pain had lasted longer than her childhood, high school days, courses of lectures and marriage put together, and that it would carry on like that for ages and ages, without end. She saw them bring the midwife her tea, call her to lunch at noon and then to dinner. She saw how used Pyotr had become to entering, standing for a long time by the window and leaving, how some strange men, her maid and Barbara had taken to coming in and out. All Barbara could say was ‘it’ll be, it’ll be’, and she became very angry whenever anyone closed the drawers in the chest. Olga saw the light change in the room and at the windows – at times there was twilight, then it was dim, as in a mist; at others, there was bright daylight, as at dinner the day before, then twilight once again. And each of these changes appeared to last as long as her childhood, her high school days, the university courses…
In the evening two doctors – one bony, bald, with a wide reddish beard, the other swarthy and Jewish-looking, with cheap spectacles – performed an operation on Olga. She was completely indifferent to those strange men touching her body: no longer did she feel any shame, she had lost her willpower, and anyone could do what he liked with her. If at that moment someone had attacked her with a knife or insulted Pyotr, or deprived her of her right to that little creature, she would not have said one word.
She was given chloroform for the operation. Afterwards, when she woke up, she still had the pains and they were unbearable. It was night. Olga remembered a similar night, with its peace, icon-lamp, midwife sitting motionless by the bed, the chest with its drawers pulled out, Pyotr standing at the window, but that was long, long ago…
V
‘I haven’t died,’ Olga thought when she became aware of her surroundings again and the pains had gone.
A bright summer’s day looked in through the two wide-open bedroom windows. Sparrows and magpies chattered incessantly in the garden outside.
The drawers in the chest were shut now; her husband’s bed had been made. There was no midwife, no Barbara, no maid in the bedroom, only Pyotr standing motionless as before at the window, looking into the garden. There was no crying child, no congratulations or rejoicing, and clearly the small creature had been stillborn.
‘Pyotr!’ Olga called out to her husband.
Pyotr looked round. A long time must have passed since the last guest had left and Olga had insulted her husband, since Pyotr had become noticeably thinner and pinched-looking.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, going over to the bed.
He looked away, twitched his lips and smiled like a helpless child.
‘Is it all over?’ Olga asked.
Pyotr wanted to reply, but his lips trembled and his mouth twisted like an old man’s – like toothless Uncle Nikolay’s.
‘Olga,’ he said, wringing his hands, and suddenly large tears gushed from his eyes. ‘Olga! I don’t need your money, courts…’ (here he sobbed) ‘differing opinions, those guests, your dowry… I don’t need anything! Why did we lose our child? Oh, what’s the use of talking!’
He waved his arm in defeat and left the bedroom.
But Olga did not care about anything now. Her head was muzzy from the chloroform, she felt spiritually drained. The dull indifference to life that had come over her when the two doctors were performing the operation still had not deserted her.
A Dreary Story
(FROM AN OLD MAN’S MEMOIRS)
I
There lives in Russia an eminent Professor Nikolay Stepanovich Such-and-Such, a Pr
ivy Councillor and a man of great distinction. He has so many decorations, both Russian and foreign, that whenever he wears them his students call him the ‘icon-stand’. He moves in the very best circles: at least, over the past twenty-five–thirty years he has been on the most intimate terms with every single famous Russian scholar. Nowadays he has no one to make friends with. But if we turn to the past we’ll find that the long list of his celebrated friends ends with such names as Pirogov,1 Kavelin2 and the poet Nekrasov3 who bestowed on him their most sincere and warmest friendship. He’s a member of all Russian and three foreign universities. And so on… All this – and a lot more might be added – makes up my so-called ‘name’.
This name of mine is very popular. It’s familiar to every literate Russian and is mentioned in foreign lecture-rooms with an additional ‘honoured’ or ‘distinguished’. It’s one of those few fortunate names it would be a sign of bad taste to abuse or take in vain in public or in print. And that is only right. You see, my name is closely associated with the concept of a celebrated, richly gifted and unquestionably useful man. I am hard-working, with the stamina of an ox, which is important, and I have talent, which is even more important. What’s more, while I’m on the subject, I’m a well-bred, modest and decent fellow. Never have I poked my nose into literature or politics, never have I sought popularity by arguing with ignoramuses, never have I delivered speeches at dinners or at my colleagues’ funerals… Generally speaking, there’s not a single blemish on my scholarly name – and it has no reason to complain. It is fortunate.
The bearer of this name – myself – I would describe as a man of sixty-two, bald, with false teeth and an incurable nervous tic. I’m as dull and ugly as my name is brilliant and impressive. My head and hands tremble with weakness. Like one of those heroines in Turgenev,4 my neck resembles the skinny handle of a doublebass, my chest is hollow, my shoulders narrow. When I talk or lecture my mouth twists to one side. When I smile my face is a mass of ghastly, senile wrinkles. There is nothing inspiring about my pathetic figure. Perhaps only when I’m suffering from the tic do I have that special look which is bound to arouse in any observer the grimly inspiring thought: ‘That man’s obviously not long for this world.’