My “passion” began with that day. I remember that I then felt something
of that which a man must feel when he enters the service: I had already
ceased to be a young lad; I was in love. I have said that my passion
dated from that day; I might have added that my sufferings also dated
from that day. I languished when absent from Zinaída; my mind would not
work, everything fell from my hands; I thought intently of her for days
together.... I languished ... but in her presence I was no more at ease.
I was jealous, I recognised my insignificance, I stupidly sulked and
stupidly fawned; and, nevertheless, an irresistible force drew me to
her, and every time I stepped across the threshold of her room, it was
with an involuntary thrill of happiness. Zinaída immediately divined
that I had fallen in love with her, and I never thought of concealing
the fact; she mocked at my passion, played tricks on me, petted and
tormented me. It is sweet to be the sole source, the autocratic and
irresponsible cause of the greatest joys and the profoundest woe to
another person, and I was like soft wax in Zinaída’s hands. However, I
was not the only one who was in love with her; all the men who were in
the habit of visiting her house were crazy over her, and she kept them
all in a leash at her feet. It amused her to arouse in them now hopes,
now fears, to twist them about at her caprice (she called it, “knocking
people against one another”),--and they never thought of resisting, and
willingly submitted to her. In all her vivacious and beautiful being
there was a certain peculiarly bewitching mixture of guilefulness and
heedlessness, of artificiality and simplicity, of tranquillity and
playfulness; over everything she did or said, over her every movement,
hovered a light, delicate charm, and an original, sparkling force made
itself felt in everything. And her face was incessantly changing and
sparkling also; it expressed almost simultaneously derision,
pensiveness, and passion. The most varied emotions, light, fleeting as
the shadows of the clouds on a sunny, windy day, kept flitting over her
eyes and lips.
Every one of her adorers was necessary to her. Byelovzóroff, whom she
sometimes called “my wild beast,” and sometimes simply “my own,” would
gladly have flung himself into the fire for her; without trusting to his
mental capacities and other merits, he kept proposing that he should
marry her, and hinting that the others were merely talking idly.
Maidánoff responded to the poetical chords of her soul: a rather cold
man, as nearly all writers are, he assured her with intense force--and
perhaps himself also--that he adored her. He sang her praises in
interminable verses and read them to her with an unnatural and a genuine
sort of enthusiasm. And she was interested in him and jeered lightly at
him; she did not believe in him greatly, and after listening to his
effusions she made him read Púshkin, in order, as she said, to purify
the air. Lúshin, the sneering doctor, who was cynical in speech, knew
her best of all and loved her best of all, although he abused her to her
face and behind her back. She respected him, but would not let him go,
and sometimes, with a peculiar, malicious pleasure, made him feel that
he was in her hands. “I am a coquette, I am heartless, I have the nature
of an actress,” she said to him one day in my presence; “and ’tis well!
So give me your hand and I will stick a pin into it, and you will feel
ashamed before this young man, and it will hurt you; but nevertheless,
Mr. Upright Man, you will be so good as to laugh.” Lúshin flushed
crimson, turned away and bit his lips, but ended by putting out his
hand. She pricked it, and he actually did break out laughing ... and she
laughed also, thrusting the pin in pretty deeply and gazing into his
eyes while he vainly endeavoured to glance aside....
I understood least of all the relations existing between Zinaída and
Count Malévsky. That he was handsome, adroit, and clever even I felt,
but the presence in him of some false, dubious element, was palpable
even to me, a lad of sixteen, and I was amazed that Zinaída did not
notice it. But perhaps she did detect that false element and it did not
repel her. An irregular education, strange acquaintances, the constant
presence of her mother, the poverty and disorder in the house--all this,
beginning with the very freedom which the young girl enjoyed, together
with the consciousness of her own superiority to the people who
surrounded her, had developed in her a certain half-scornful
carelessness and lack of exaction. No matter what happened--whether
Vonifáty came to report that there was no sugar, or some wretched bit
of gossip came to light, or the visitors got into a quarrel among
themselves, she merely shook her curls, and said: “Nonsense!”--and
grieved very little over it.
On the contrary, all my blood would begin to seethe when Malévsky would
approach her, swaying his body cunningly like a fox, lean elegantly over
the back of her chair and begin to whisper in her ear with a conceited
and challenging smile, while she would fold her arms on her breast, gaze
attentively at him and smile also, shaking her head the while.
“What possesses you to receive Malévsky?”--I asked her one day.
“Why, he has such handsome eyes,”--she replied.--“But that is no
business of yours.”
“You are not to think that I am in love with him,”--she said to me on
another occasion.--“No; I cannot love people upon whom I am forced to
look down. I must have some one who can subdue me.... And I shall not
hit upon such an one, for God is merciful! I shall not spare any one who
falls into my paws--no, no!”
“Do you mean to say that you will never fall in love?”
“And how about you? Don’t I love you?”--she said, tapping me on the nose
with the tip of her glove.
Yes, Zinaída made great fun of me. For the space of three weeks I saw
her every day; and what was there that she did not do to me! She came to
us rarely, but I did not regret that; in our house she was converted
into a young lady, a Princess,--and I avoided her. I was afraid of
betraying myself to my mother; she was not at all well disposed toward
Zinaída, and kept a disagreeable watch on us. I was not so much afraid
of my father; he did not appear to notice me, and talked little with
her, but that little in a peculiarly clever and significant manner. I
ceased to work, to read; I even ceased to stroll about the environs and
to ride on horseback. Like a beetle tied by the leg, I hovered
incessantly around the beloved wing; I believe I would have liked to
remain there forever ... but that was impossible. My mother grumbled at
me, and sometimes Zinaída herself drove me out. On such occasions I shut
myself up in my own room, or walked off to the very end of the garden,
climbed upon the sound remnant of a tall stone hothouse, and dangling my
legs over the wall, I sat there for hours and stared,--stared without
seeing anything. White butterflies lazily flitted among the nettles
beside me; an audacious sparrow perched not far off on the
half-demolished red bricks and twittered in an irritating manner,
incessantly twisting his whole body about and spreading out his tail;
the still distrustful crows now and then emitted a caw, as they sat
high, high above me on the naked crest of a birch-tree; the sun and the
wind played softly through its sparse branches; the chiming of the
bells, calm and melancholy, at the Don Monastery was wafted to me now
and then,--and I sat on, gazing and listening, and became filled with a
certain nameless sensation which embraced everything: sadness and joy,
and a presentiment of the future, and the desire and the fear of life.
But I understood nothing at the time of all that which was fermenting
within me, or I would have called it all by one name, the name of
Zinaída.
But Zinaída continued to play with me as a cat plays with a mouse. Now
she coquetted with me, and I grew agitated and melted with emotion; now
she repulsed me, and I dared not approach her, dared not look at her.
I remember that she was very cold toward me for several days in
succession and I thoroughly quailed, and when I timidly ran to the wing
to see them, I tried to keep near the old Princess, despite the fact
that she was scolding and screaming a great deal just at that time: her
affairs connected with her notes of hand were going badly, and she had
also had two scenes with the police-captain of the precinct.
One day I was walking through the garden, past the familiar fence, when
I caught sight of Zinaída. Propped up on both arms, she was sitting
motionless on the grass. I tried to withdraw cautiously, but she
suddenly raised her head and made an imperious sign to me. I became
petrified on the spot; I did not understand her the first time. She
repeated her sign. I immediately sprang over the fence and ran joyfully
to her; but she stopped me with a look and pointed to the path a couple
of paces from her. In my confusion, not knowing what to do, I knelt down
on the edge of the path. She was so pale, such bitter grief, such
profound weariness were revealed in her every feature, that my heart
contracted within me, and I involuntarily murmured: “What is the matter
with you?”
Zinaída put out her hand, plucked a blade of grass, bit it, and tossed
it away as far as she could.
“Do you love me very much?”--she inquired suddenly.--“Yes?”