‘That’s terrible, really terrible!’ he whispered jealously. ‘That’s terrible!’
At the corner of a small side-street she stopped to say goodbye to the ladies, and then she glanced at Laptev.
‘I’m going to your place’, he said. ‘To talk to your father. Is he at home?’
‘Probably’, she replied. ‘It’s too early for the club.’
The side-street had an abundance of gardens. Lime trees grew by the fences, casting broad shadows in the moonlight, so that the fences and gates on one side were completely enveloped in darkness, from which came the sound of women, restrained laughter and someone quietly playing the balalaika. It smelt of lime trees and hay. The whispers of those invisible women and the smell excited Laptev. Suddenly he felt a strong urge to embrace his companion, to shower her face, arms and shoulders with kisses, to fall at her feet and tell her how long he had been waiting for her. There was a faint, barely perceptible smell of incense about her, which reminded him of the time when he too had believed in God, had gone to evening service, had dreamed a great deal about pure, poetic love. Because this girl did not love him he felt that any possibility of the kind of love he had dreamt of then had faded for ever.
She sounded very concerned about his sister Nina Fyodorovna’s health – two months ago she had had an operation for cancer and everyone was expecting a relapse now.
‘I was with her this morning’, Julia Sergeyevna said, ‘and it struck me that she hasn’t only grown thinner this past week, she’s simply lost all her colour.’
‘Yes, yes’, Laptev agreed. ‘There hasn’t actually been a relapse, but I can see that she’s growing weaker every day – she seems to be wasting away before my eyes. I can’t understand what the trouble is.’
‘Heavens, how healthy, buxom and rosy-cheeked she used to be!’ Julia Sergeyevna said after a brief silence. ‘Everyone here used to call her “The Moscow Girl”. The way she used to laugh! On holidays she’d wear simple peasant costume and it really suited her.’
Dr Sergey Borisych was at home. A stout, red-faced man, with a long frock-coat that stretched below his knees and made him appear short-legged, he was pacing the study, hands in pockets, humming softly and pensively. His grey side-whiskers were dishevelled and his hair wasn’t combed, as if he’d just got out of bed. And his study, with those cushions on the couches, piles of old papers in the corners and an unhealthy looking, dirty poodle under the table, produced the same scruffy, slovenly impression as the master.
‘Monsieur Laptev would like to see you’, his daughter said, entering the study.
He hummed louder, offered Laptev his hand as he came into the drawing-room and asked, ‘Well, what’s new?’
It was dark in the drawing-room. Laptev did not sit down. Still holding his hat he started apologizing for disturbing him. He asked what could be done to help his sister to sleep at night and why she was growing so terribly thin. He felt embarrassed, as he thought that he had already asked the identical questions when he had called that morning.
‘Tell me’, he asked, ‘shouldn’t we call in some specialist in internal diseases from Moscow? What do you think?’
The doctor sighed, shrugged his shoulders and made some vague gesture with both hands.
He was clearly offended. This doctor was an exceptionally touchy, suspicious person, permanently convinced that no one trusted him, recognized him or respected him enough, that he was being generally exploited and that his colleagues were all hostile towards him. He was always ridiculing himself, maintaining that idiots like himself had been created only for everyone else to trample on.
Julia Sergeyevna lit a lamp. Her pale, languid face and sluggish walk showed how tired she was after the church service. She felt like resting and sat on the couch, put her hands on her lap and became lost in thought. Laptev knew that he wasn’t handsome and now he was physically conscious of his own ugliness. He was short and thin, with flushed cheeks, and his hair had thinned out so much his head felt cold. His expression had none of that natural grace which makes even coarse, ugly faces likeable. In women’s company he was awkward, over-talkative and affected – now he was almost despising himself for this. To stop Julia Sergeyevna from being bored he had to talk about something. But about what? About his sister’s illness again?
He produced some platitudes about medicine, praising hygiene. He said that it had long been his wish to establish a hostel for the poor in Moscow and that he already had estimates for the work. According to this scheme of his, workmen coming to the hostel in the evenings would get (for five or six copecks) a portion of hot cabbage soup, bread, a warm dry bed with blankets and a place to dry their clothes and footwear.
Julia Sergeyevna usually kept silent in his presence and, in some strange way – perhaps it was a man in love’s intuition – he was able to guess her thoughts and intentions. Now he concluded that as she hadn’t gone to her room to change and have tea after the service she must be going out to visit someone that evening.
‘But I’m in no rush with the hostel’, he continued and he felt annoyed and irritated as he turned towards the doctor, who was giving him vague, bewildered looks, evidently unable to see why he needed to talk about hygiene and medicine. ‘It will probably be some time before I put it all into motion. I’m frightened the hostel might fall into the hands of those prigs and lady do-gooders in Moscow who wreck any new undertaking.’
Julia Sergeyevna stood up and offered Laptev her hand. ‘Do excuse me’, she said, ‘but I must be going. Remember me to your sister.’
The doctor started humming pensively again.
Julia Sergeyevna left and not long afterwards Laptev said goodbye to the doctor and went home. When one feels unhappy and disgruntled, how vulgar lime trees, shadows and clouds seem – all these smug, indifferent beauties of nature! The moon was high, clouds scurried beneath it. ‘What a stupid provincial moon!’ Laptev thought. ‘What pathetic, scraggy clouds!’
He was ashamed of having mentioned medicine and working men’s hostels and was horrified at the thought that he wouldn’t be able to resist trying to see her and talk to her tomorrow: once again he would learn that he was like a complete stranger to her. It would be exactly the same the day after tomorrow. What was the point of it all? When and how would it all finish?
When he was home he went to see his sister. Nina Fyodorovna still looked strong and appeared to be a well-built, powerful woman. But that pronounced pallor made her look like a corpse, especially now as she lay on her back with her eyes closed. Her ten-year-old elder daughter Sasha was sitting reading to her from a school book.
‘Aleksey is here’, the sick woman said softly to herself.
A tacit agreement had long been in effect between Sasha and her uncle and they had organized a rota. Sasha now closed her reader and left the room quietly, without a word. Laptev took a historical novel from the chest of drawers, found the page and started reading to her.
Nina Fyodorovna was from Moscow. She and her two brothers had spent their childhood and youth in the family house (they were merchants) on Pyatnitsky Street,2 and what a long, boring childhood it had been. Their father was a strict man and had birched her on three occasions. Her mother had died after a long illness. The servants had been dirty, coarse and hypocritical. Priests and monks often called at the house and they too were coarse and hypocritical. They drank, ate their fill and crudely flattered her father, whom they did not like. The boys were lucky enough to go to high school, but Nina had no formal education, had written in a scrawly hand all her life and had read nothing but historical novels. Seventeen years ago, when she was twenty-two, she had met her present husband Panaurov – he came from a landowning family – at a villa in Khimki,3 had fallen in love and was married in secret, against her father’s wishes. Panaurov, a handsome and rather arrogant person, who liked lighting cigarettes from icon-lamps and who was a habitual whistler, struck her father as a complete and utter nobody. Later on, when the son-in-law started demanding a
dowry in his letters, the old man had written to tell his daughter that he was sending some fur coats to her place in the country, some silver and odds and ends left by her mother, together with thirty thousand roubles in cash, but without his paternal blessing. Afterwards he had sent a further twenty thousand. The money and dowry were all squandered and Panaurov and family moved to town, where he had taken a job in local government. In town he started another family, which caused many tongues to wag since this illegitimate family didn’t bother to conceal itself at all.
Nina Fyodorovna adored her husband. As she listened to the historical novel she thought about how much she had gone through and suffered all this time and what a pathetic narrative her life would make. Since the tumour was in the breast, she was convinced that the cause of her illness was love and family life, and that jealousy and tears had made her bedridden.
Shutting the book, Aleksey Fyodorych said, ‘That’s the end, thank God. We’ll start another tomorrow.’
Nina Fyodorovna laughed. She had always been easily amused, but Laptev had begun to notice that sometimes her judgement was affected by her illness and she would laugh at the slightest nonsense, for no reason.
‘Julia called just before dinner, while you were out’, she said. ‘I can see that she doesn’t trust her father very much. “All right, let my father treat you,” she says, “yet you still write, without anyone knowing, to an elderly monk and ask him to pray for you.” It’s some wise old man they know who lives locally.’ After a brief pause she continued, ‘Julia left her umbrella behind. Send it over tomorrow… No, if this is the end neither doctors nor holy sages will be any use.’
‘Nina, why don’t you sleep at night?’ Laptev asked, to change the subject.
‘Oh, I just can’t, that’s all. I lie thinking.’
‘What about, my dear?’
‘The children… you… my own life. After all, I’ve been through a lot, haven’t I? When you start remembering… when you… Good heavens!’ She burst out laughing. ‘It’s no joke having five children and burying three. I’d be about to have a baby and my Grigory Nikolaich would be with another woman and there’d be nobody I could send to fetch the midwife, or someone. If you went into the hall or kitchen for the servants you’d find only Jews, tradesmen and money-lenders waiting for him to come home. It quite made my head go round. He didn’t love me, although he never said so. Now I’m reconciled to it, though, and I feel as if a weight has been lifted from me. But it did hurt me when I was younger, it hurt me terribly! Once – we were still living in the country – I caught him in the garden with some woman and I walked away, not caring where I was going, until I found myself in the church porch. There I fell on my knees and repeated “Holy Mother”. It was night, the moon was shining…’
Exhausted, she started gasping for breath. After a little rest she caught hold of her brother’s arm and continued in a faint, almost inaudible voice, ‘How kind you are, Aleksey! You’re so clever… What a fine man you’ve become!’
At midnight Laptev wished her goodnight and on his way out took the umbrella that Julia Sergeyevna had forgotten. Despite the late hour, the servants, male and female, were drinking tea in the dining-room. What chaos! The children hadn’t gone to bed – they were in the dining-room too. Everyone there was softly talking, whispering, and no one noticed that the lamp was growing dim and would soon go out. All these people, large and small, were worried by a whole series of unfavourable omens and they felt very miserable. The mirror in the hall had been broken, the samovar hummed every day and was humming away now as if to annoy them. A mouse had jumped out of Mrs Panaurov’s shoe while she was dressing, so they said. The dreadful significance of these portents was already known to the children. The elder daughter, Sasha, a thin little girl with dark hair, was sitting still at the table with a frightened, mournful look, while seven-year-old Lida, the younger girl, plump and fair-haired, stood by her sister, scowling at the light.
Laptev went down to his low-ceilinged, stuffy rooms on the ground floor – they always smelt of geraniums. Panaurov, Nina Fyodorovna’s husband, was sitting reading the newspaper in his dining-room. Laptev nodded and sat opposite. Neither said a word. They often spent entire evenings like this, unembarrassed by the mutual silence.
The girls came down to say goodnight. Silently, without hurrying, Panaurov made the sign of the cross over both of them several times and let them kiss his hand. This kissing and curtseying ceremony took place every evening.
When the girls had left, Panaurov laid his paper to one side and said, ‘This blessed town is so boring!’ Sighing, he went on, ‘I must confess, my dear man, I’m delighted you’ve at last found some entertainment.’
‘What do you mean?’ Laptev said.
‘Just now I saw you leaving Dr Belavin’s house. I hope you didn’t go there on Papa’s account.’
‘Of course I did’, Laptev replied, blushing.
‘Well, of course. By the way, you’d have a job finding another old mule like that Papa in a month of Sundays. What a filthy, inept, clumsy oaf he is. Words fail me! You Muscovites have only a kind of poetic interest in provincial landscapes, in the wretched existence of yokels whom our writers wax lyrical about.4 But you can take it from me, old man, there’s nothing lyrical about this place. There’s only savagery, meanness and vileness – that’s all. Just look at our local high priests of learning, the intelligentsia, so to speak. Can you imagine, we have twenty-eight doctors here, they’ve all become very rich, they’ve bought themselves houses, while the rest of the inhabitants are in the same hopeless situation as they’ve always been. For example, Nina needed an operation, really a very minor one, but we had to send to Moscow for a surgeon because no one here would do it. You can’t imagine what it’s like. They know nothing, understand nothing and are interested in nothing. Just ask them what cancer is, for example, what causes it.’
Panaurov started explaining cancer. He was a specialist in every branch of learning and had a scientific explanation for anything you could think of. His way of solving problems was something quite unique to himself. He had his own special theory of the circulation of the blood, his own chemistry and astronomy. He spoke slowly, softly, convincingly, pronouncing the words ‘you just have no idea about it’ as if he were pleading with you. He screwed his eyes up, sighed languidly and smiled graciously like an emperor: he was evidently highly satisfied with himself and quite untroubled at being fifty years old.
‘I could do with a bite to eat’, Laptev said. ‘Something nice and spicy.’
‘That’s no problem. I can fix you up right away.’
Shortly afterwards, Laptev was upstairs in the dining-room, having supper with his brother-in-law. Laptev drank a glass of vodka and then changed to wine. Panaurov drank nothing. He never drank, never played cards, but in spite of this had managed to run through his own and his wife’s property and accumulate a whole pile of debts. To fritter so much money away in so short a time, something besides sexual craving was needed – some special talent. Panaurov loved tasty food, fine table appointments, music with dinner, bowing waiters to whom he could casually toss ten- or even twenty-rouble tips. He took part in all subscription schemes and lotteries, sent bouquets to ladies he knew on their name-days, bought cups, glass-holders, cufflinks, ties, canes, perfume, cigarette-holders, pipes, dogs, parrots, Japanese goods and antiques. He wore silk nightshirts, his bed was of ebony, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, he had a genuine Bokhara dressing-gown, and so on. Every day he spent ‘heaps of money’, as he put it, on these things.
During supper he kept sighing and shaking his head. ‘Yes, everything in this world comes to an end’, he said softly, screwing up his dark eyes. ‘You’ll fall in love, fall out of love. You’ll be deceived, because faithful women don’t exist. You’ll become desperate and do some deceiving yourself. But the time will come when all this will be only a memory and you’ll coolly reflect that it was all absolutely trivial.’
Laptev was tired and slightly dru
nk. As he looked at the other man’s fine head, his trimmed beard, he felt that he could understand why women loved that spoilt, self-assured, physically attractive man.
After supper Panaurov didn’t stay at home but went off to his other flat. Laptev accompanied him. Panaurov was the only man in the entire town who wore a top hat, and against a background of grey fences, pathetic three-windowed little houses and nettle clumps his elegant, smart figure, top hat and orange gloves never failed to produce a strange, sad impression.
After saying goodnight, Laptev started off home, without hurrying. The moon shone brightly, making every scrap of straw on the ground visible, and Laptev felt that the moonlight was caressing his uncovered head – it was just as though someone were running feathers over his hair.
‘I’m in love!’ he said out loud and he had a sudden urge to run after Panaurov and embrace him, forgive him and present him with a lot of money – and then dash off into the fields or a copse, forever running, without looking back.
Back home, on a chair, he saw the umbrella that Julia Sergeyevna had forgotten. He seized it and hungrily kissed it. It was made of silk, was not new and had a piece of old elastic tied round it. The handle was of cheap bone. Laptev opened it over his head and it seemed that the sweet scent of happiness was all around.
He settled himself more comfortably in his chair and started writing a letter to one of his Moscow friends, still holding the umbrella.
My dearest Kostya,
Here’s some news for you: I’m in love again. I say ‘again’, because six years ago I was in love with a Moscow actress whom I never even met and over the past eighteen months I’ve been living with a ‘personage’ who is familiar to you, a woman who is neither young nor beautiful. My dear friend, how unlucky I’ve been in love! I’ve never had any success with women and if I say ‘again’, it’s only because it’s so sad, it hurts me so much to have to acknowledge that my youth has passed by without any love at all, and that I’m only really in love now for the first time, at the age of thirty-four. So, may I write that I’m in love ‘again’?