On the evening of that same day the customary visitors assembled at the
Zasyékins’; I was among the number.
The conversation turned on Maidánoff’s poem; Zinaída candidly praised
it.--“But do you know what?”--she said:--“If I were a poet, I would
select other subjects. Perhaps this is all nonsense, but strange
thoughts sometimes come into my head, especially when I am wakeful
toward morning, when the sky is beginning to turn pink and grey.--I
would, for example.... You will not laugh at me?”
“No! No!”--we all exclaimed with one voice.
“I would depict,”--she went on, crossing her arms on her breast, and
turning her eyes aside,--“a whole company of young girls, by night, in a
big boat, on a tranquil river. The moon is shining, and they are all in
white and wear garlands of white flowers, and they are singing, you
know, something in the nature of a hymn.”
“I understand, I understand, go on,”--said Maidánoff significantly and
dreamily.
“Suddenly there is a noise--laughter, torches, tambourines on the
shore.... It is a throng of bacchantes running with songs and outcries.
It is your business to draw the picture, Mr. Poet ... only I would like
to have the torches red and very smoky, and that the eyes of the
bacchantes should gleam beneath their wreaths, and that the wreaths
should be dark. Don’t forget also tiger-skins and cups--and gold, a
great deal of gold.”
“But where is the gold to be?” inquired Maidánoff, tossing back his lank
hair and inflating his nostrils.
“Where? On the shoulders, the hands, the feet, everywhere. They say that
in ancient times women wore golden rings on their ankles.--The
bacchantes call the young girls in the boat to come to them. The girls
have ceased to chant their hymn,--they cannot go on with it,--but they
do not stir; the river drifts them to the shore. And now suddenly one of
them rises quietly.... This must be well described: how she rises
quietly in the moonlight, and how startled her companions are.... She
has stepped over the edge of the boat, the bacchantes have surrounded
her, they have dashed off into the night, into the gloom.... Present at
this point smoke in clouds; and everything has become thoroughly
confused. Nothing is to be heard but their whimpering, and her wreath
has been left lying on the shore.”
Zinaída ceased speaking. “Oh, she is in love!”--I thought again.
“Is that all?”--asked Maidánoff.
“That is all,”--she replied.
“That cannot be made the subject of an entire poem,”--he remarked
pompously,--“but I will utilise your idea for some lyrical verses.”
“In the romantic vein?”--asked Malévsky.
“Of course, in the romantic vein--in Byron’s style.”
“But in my opinion, Hugo is better than Byron,”--remarked the young
Count, carelessly:--“he is more interesting.”
“Hugo is a writer of the first class,”--rejoined Maidánoff, “and my
friend Tonkoshéeff, in his Spanish romance, ‘El Trovador’....”
“Ah, that’s the book with the question-marks turned upside
down?”--interrupted Zinaída.
“Yes. That is the accepted custom among the Spaniards. I was about to
say that Tonkoshéeff....”
“Come now! You will begin to wrangle again about classicism and
romanticism,”--Zinaída interrupted him again.--“Let us rather play....”
“At forfeits?”--put in Lúshin.
“No, forfeits is tiresome; but at comparisons.” (This game had been
invented by Zinaída herself; some object was named, and each person
tried to compare it with something or other, and the one who matched the
thing with the best comparison received a prize.) She went to the
window. The sun had just set; long, crimson clouds hung high aloft in
the sky.
“What are those clouds like?”--inquired Zinaída and, without waiting for
our answers, she said:--“I think that they resemble those crimson sails
which were on Cleopatra’s golden ship, when she went to meet Antony. You
were telling me about that not long ago, do you remember, Maidánoff?”
All of us, like Polonius in “Hamlet,” decided that the clouds reminded
us precisely of those sails, and that none of us could find a better
comparison.
“And how old was Antony at that time?”--asked Zinaída.
“He was assuredly still a young man,”--remarked Malévsky.
“Yes, he was young,”--assented Maidánoff confidently.
“Excuse me,”--exclaimed Lúshin,--“he was over forty years of age.”
“Over forty years of age,”--repeated Zinaída, darting a swift glance at
him....
I soon went home.--“She is in love,” my lips whispered involuntarily....
“But with whom?”