thing--that Elizavieta would acknowledge that it was she. He was afraid
that she might go away and not come back, might vanish for evermore, and
that this meeting might prove to be a dream.
The lady moved quietly to one side, and said in French:
“_Monsieur, laissez-moi passer, s’il vous plaît! Je ne vous connais
pas._”
She showed no agitation whatever, and at Basmanof’s words the expression
of her face did not change in the least. But all the same he could not
let her go, but followed her.
“Elizavieta!” cried he. “Curse me if you will, call me the most
worthless of men, tell me that you no longer wish to know me--I will
take it all humbly, as I ought. But do not pretend that you do not
recognise me; that I cannot endure. You dare not, ought not, to insult
me so.”
“I assure you,” the lady interrupted in a more severe tone, “that you
mistake me for someone else. You call me Elizavieta Vasilievna, but that
is not my name. I am Ekaterina Vladimirovna Sadikova, and my maiden name
was Armand. Surely that is sufficient evidence for you to allow me to
continue my walk, as I wish to do?”
“But why, then,” cried Basmanof, making a last attempt, “why have you
borne with me so long? If I am an utter stranger to you why didn’t you
at once order me to be silent, or call a policeman? No one behaves as
gently as you have done towards a scoundrel of the street!”
“I see quite clearly,” answered the lady, “that you are not a street
scoundrel, and that you would not allow yourself to take any liberties.
You’ve simply made a mistake: my likeness to some lady of your
acquaintance has led you into an error. That is no crime, and I’ve no
occasion whatever to call the police. But now everything has been
explained--good-bye!”
Basmanof could insist no longer. He stood aside, and the lady walked
slowly past him. But the whole of the conversation, the tone of the
lady’s voice, her movements, everything about her--only accentuated his
belief that this was--Elizavieta.
Disturbed and agitated, he went back to his room at the hotel. Beyond
the green meadow, like some gigantic phantom, shone the eternal snow of
the Yungfrau. It seemed near, but was immeasurably far. Was it not like
to Elizavieta, who had seemed risen from the dead, but who had again
retreated into the far unknown?
It was not difficult for Basmanof to discover the address of the lady
whom he had met. After some hesitation he wrote her a letter, in which
he said that he had no wish to argue about what was evident. He had
clearly made a mistake in taking an unknown lady for an old acquaintance
of his, but their short encounter had made a deep impression on him, and
he begged permission to bow to her when they met, in memory of an
accidental acquaintance. The letter was couched in extremely cautious
and respectful terms. When on the following day Basmanof met the lady
who called herself Mme. Sadikova she bowed to him first and herself
began to speak to him. And so their acquaintance began.
III
Mme. Sadikova gave no signs of ever having previously known Basmanof.
Quite the contrary; she treated him as someone whom she had never met
before. They talked about unimportant matters, connected chiefly with
life at the watering-place. Mme. Sadikova’s conversation was interesting
and clever, and she appeared to be very well read. But when Basmanof
tried to pass to more intimate, more painful questions his companion
lightly and deftly evaded them.
Everything convinced Basmanof that she was Elizavieta. He recognised her
voice, her favourite turns of speech; recognised that intangible
something which expresses the individuality of a person but which it is
difficult to define in words. He could have sworn that he was not
mistaken.
Certainly there were slight marks of difference, but could not these be
explained by the interval of twelve years? It was natural that from
Elizavieta’s flaming passions the experiences of life should have forged
a steely coldness. It was natural that living abroad for many years
Elizavieta should have somewhat forgotten her native tongue and speak
it with an accent. Finally it was natural that in her behaviour, in her
gestures, in her laughter, there should appear new features which had
not been there before....
All the same, Basmanof was sometimes seized by doubt, and then he began
mentally to notice hundreds of tiny peculiarities which distinguished
Ekaterina from Elizavieta. But he only needed to look once more into
Mme. Sadikova’s face, to hear her speak, and all his doubts would
disperse like a mist. He felt in himself and his soul was aware that
this was she whom he had once loved.
Of course he did all he could to unravel the mystery. He tried to
confuse her by asking unexpected questions; she was always on her guard,
and she easily escaped out of all his snares. He tried to question her
acquaintances; no one knew anything about her. He even went so far as to
intercept a letter addressed to her; it proved to be from Paris, and
consisted only of impersonal French phrases.
One evening, when the two were together in a restaurant, Basmanof could
endure the continuous strain no longer, and he suddenly exclaimed--
“Why do we keep up this tormenting game? You are Elizavieta--I am sure
of it. You can’t forget how you once loved me. And of course you can’t
forget how basely I cast you off. But now I bring you all my soul’s
repentance. I despise myself for my former conduct. This is what I
propose: take me for the whole of my life if you can forgive me. But I
say this to Elizavieta, I give myself to her, not to any other woman.”
Mme. Sadikova listened in silence to this little speech, transgressing
as it did the limits of Society small-talk, and answered calmly--
“Dear Peter Andreyevitch. If you are speaking to me I might answer you,
perhaps, but as you warn me that you are speaking to Elizavieta there’s
nothing for me to say.”
In the greatest excitement Basmanof got up from his seat and asked her:
“Do you wish to insist that you are not Elizavieta? Well, say so once
more to my face without blenching and I will go away, I will at once
hide myself from your eyes, I will vanish out of your life. Then there
will be no more reason for my living.”
Mme. Sadikova smiled sweetly.
“Do you wish so much that I were Elizavieta?” asked she. “Very well, I
will be Elizavieta.”
IV
Then the second game began, a more cruel one perhaps than the first.
Mme. Sadikova called herself Elizavieta and treated Basmanof as an old
acquaintance. When he spoke of the past she pretended to remember the
persons and events of which he spoke. When he, all trembling, reminded
her of her love for him, she, laughing, agreed that she had loved him;
but she hinted that in the course of time this love had died down, as
every flame dies down.
In order to play her part conscientiously, Mme. Sadikova herself would
sometimes speak of the happenings of the past, but she mixed up the
dates, remembered the wrong names, imagined things which had never
occurred. It was especially tormenting that when she spoke of her love
for Basmanof she referred to it as to a light flirtation, the accidental
amusement of a lady in society. This seemed to Basmanof an insult to
sacred things, and almost with a wail he besought her to be silent.
But this was little. Imperceptibly, step by step, Mme. Sadikova poisoned
all Basmanof’s most holy recollections. By her hints she discrowned all
the most beautiful facts of the past. She gave him to understand that
much of what had appeared to him as evidence of her self-forgetful love
had been only hypocrisy and make-believe.
“Elizavieta!” implored Basmanof once of her. “Is it possible for me to
believe that your passionate vows, your sobs, your despair, when you
threw yourself unconscious on the floor--that all this was feigned? The
most talented dramatic actress could not act so well. You are defaming
yourself.”
Mme. Sadikova, answering to the name of Elizavieta, as she had been
doing for some time, said with a smile--
“How can one distinguish where acting ends and sincerity begins? I
wanted at that time to feel strongly and so I allowed myself to pretend
to be despairing and out of my senses. If in your place had been not you
but some other, I should have acted just the same. And yet at that very
moment it would have cost me nothing to overcome myself and not sob at
all. Aren’t we all like that in life--actors--we don’t so much live as
act the part of living?”
“That’s not true,” exclaimed Basmanof. “You say this because you do not
know how Elizavieta loved. She would never have spoken so. You are only
playing her part. It’s evident you are not she--you are Ekaterina.”
Mme. Sadikova laughed, and then said in a different tone--
“Just as you like, Peter Andreyevitch. I only played the part to please
you. If you wish it I will become myself again, Ekaterina Vladimirovna
Sadikova.”
“How can I know where you are real?” hissed Basmanof through his teeth.
He began to feel that he was going out of his mind. Fiction and reality
for him had become confused. For some minutes he doubted who he was
himself.
In the meantime Mme. Sadikova got up and proposed a walk and she again
began to speak to him as Elizavieta.
V
The days went by. The season at Interlaken came to an end.
Basmanof, obsessed by his connection with this mysterious acquaintance
of his, began to forget everything else; forgot why he had come to
Interlaken, forget all his business, answered no letters from home,
lived a sort of senseless life. Like a maniac, he thought only of one
thing: how to guess the secret of Elizavieta-Ekaterina.
Was he in love with this woman?--he could not have said. She drew him to
herself as to an abyss, as to a horror, to a place of destruction.
Months and years might go by and he would be glad to go on with this
duel of mind and ready wit, this struggle of two minds, one of which
sought to preserve her secret and the other strove to tear it from her.
But suddenly, early in October, Mme. Sadikova left Interlaken. She went
away, neither saying good-bye to Basmanof nor warning him of her
departure. On the following day, however, he received a letter from her,
posted from Berne.
“I will not deprive you of the satisfaction of guessing who I am,” wrote
Mme. Sadikova. “I leave the solution of this problem to your sharp wit.
But if you are tired of guessing, and would like to have the simplest
solution, I will tell it you. Suppose that I was really a complete
stranger to you. Learning from your own agitated accounts, how cruelly
you had once treated a certain Elizavieta, I determined to avenge her. I
think I have attained my object; my revenge has been accomplished: you
will never forget these weeks of torture at Interlaken. And for whom I
took this vengeance, for myself or for another, is it not all the same
in the long run? Good-bye, you will never see me again.
Elizavieta-Ekaterina.”
IN THE MIRROR
I have loved mirrors from my very earliest years. As an infant I wept
and trembled as I looked into their transparently truthful depths. My
favourite game as a child was to walk up and down the room or the
garden, holding a mirror in front of me, gazing into its abyss, walking
over the edge at every step, and breathless with giddiness and terror.
Even as a girl I began to put mirrors all over my room, large and small
ones, true and slightly distorted ones, some precise and others a little
dull. I got into the habit of spending whole hours, whole days, in the
midst of inter-crossing worlds which ran one into the other, trembled,
vanished, and then reappeared again. It became a singular passion of
mine to give my body to these soundless distances, these echoless
perspectives, these separate universes cutting across our own and
existing, despite our consciousness, in the same place and at the same
time with it. This protracted actuality, separated from us by the smooth
surface of glass, drew me towards itself by a kind of intangible touch,
dragged me forward, as to an abyss, a mystery.
I was drawn towards the apparition which always rose up before me when I
came near a mirror and which strangely doubled my being. I strove to
guess how this other woman was differentiated from myself, how it was
possible that my right hand should be her left, and that all the fingers
of this hand should change places, though certainly on one of them
was--my wedding-ring. My thoughts were confused when I attempted to
probe this enigma, to solve it. In _this_ world, where everybody could
be touched, where voices were heard--I lived, actually; in _that_
reflected world, which it was only possible to contemplate, was she,
phantasmally. She was almost as myself and yet not at all myself; she
repeated all my movements, but not one of these movements exactly
coincided with those I made. She, that other, knew something I could not
divine, she held a secret eternally hidden from my understanding.
But I noticed that each mirror had its own separate and special world.
Put two mirrors in the very same place, one after the other, and there
will arise two different universes. And in different mirrors there rose
up before me different apparitions, all of them like me but never
exactly like one another. In my small hand-mirror lived a naïve little
girl with clear eyes, reminding me of my early youth. In my circular
boudoir mirror was hidden a woman who knew all the diverse sweetness of
caresses, shameless, free, beautiful, daring. In the oblong mirrors of
the wardrobe door there always appeared a stern figure, imperious, cold,
inexorable. I knew still other doubles of myself--in my dressing-glass,
in my folding gold-framed triptych, in the hanging mirror in the oaken
frame, in the little neck mirror, and in many other mirrors which I
treasured. To all the beings hiding themselves in these mirrors I gave
the possibility and pretext to develop. According to the strange
conditions of their world they must take the form of the person who
stands before the glass but under this borrowed exterior they preserve
their own personal characteristics.
There were some worlds of mirrors which I loved; others which I hated.
In some of them I loved to walk up and down for whole hours, losing
myself in their attractive expanse. Others I fled from. In my secret
heart I did not love all my doubles. I knew that they were all hostile
toward me, if only for the fact that they were forced to clothe
themselves in my hated likeness. But some of these mirror women I
pitied. I forgave their hate and felt almost friendly to them. There
were some whom I despised, and I loved to laugh at their powerless fury;
there were some whom I mocked by my own independence and tortured by my
power over them. There were others, on the other hand, of whom I was
afraid, who were too strong for me and who dared in their turn to mock
at me, to command me. I hastened to get rid of the mirrors where these
women lived, I would not look in them, I hid them, gave them away, even
broke some in pieces. But every time I destroyed a mirror I wept for
whole days after, conscious of the fact that I had broken to pieces a
distinct universe. And reproachful faces stared at me from the broken
fragments of the world I had destroyed.
The mirror with which my fate was to become linked I bought one autumn
at a sale of some sort. It was a large pier-glass, swinging on screws. I
was struck by the unusual clarity of its reflection. The phantasmal
actuality in it was changed by the slightest inclination of the glass,
but it was independent and vital to the edges. When I examined this
pier-glass at the sale the woman who reflected me in it looked me in the
eyes with a kind of haughty challenge. I did not wish to give in to her,
to show that she had frightened me, so I bought the glass and ordered it
to be placed in my boudoir. As soon as I was alone in the room, I
immediately went up to the new mirror and fixed my eyes upon my rival.
But she did the same to me, and standing opposite one another we began
to transfix each other with our glance as if we had been snakes. In the
pupils of her eyes was my reflection, in mine, hers. My heart sank and
my head swam from her intent gaze. But at length by an effort of will I
tore my eyes away from those other eyes, tipped the mirror with my foot
so that it began to swing, rocking the image of my rival pitifully to
and fro, and went out of the room.
From that hour our strife began. In the evening of the first day of our
meeting I did not dare to go near the new pier-glass; I went to the
theatre with my husband, laughed exaggeratedly, and was apparently
light-hearted. On the morrow, in the clear light of a September day I
went boldly into my boudoir alone and designedly sat down directly in
front of the mirror. At the same moment, she, the other woman, also came
in at the door to meet me, crossed the room, and then she too sat down
opposite me. Our eyes met. In hers I read hatred towards myself; in mine
she read hatred towards her. Our second duel began, a duel of eyes--two
unyielding glances, commanding, threatening, hypnotising. Each of us
strove to conquer the other’s will, to break down her resistance, to
force her to submit to another’s desire. It would have been a painful
scene for an onlooker to witness; two women sitting opposite each other
without moving, joined together by the magnetic attraction of each
other’s gaze, and almost losing consciousness under the psychical
strain.... Suddenly someone called me. The infatuation vanished. I got
up and left the room.
After this our duels were renewed every day. I realised that this
adventuress had purposely forced herself into my home to destroy me and
take my place in this world. But I had not sufficient strength to deny
myself this struggle. In this rivalry there was a kind of secret
intoxication. The very possibility of defeat had hidden in it a sort of
sweet seduction. Sometimes I forced myself for whole days to keep away
from the pier-glass; I occupied myself with business, with amusements,
but in the depths of my soul was always hidden the memory of the rival
who in patience and self-reliance awaited my return. I would go back to
her and she would step forth in front of me, more triumphantly than
ever, piercing me with her victorious gaze and fixing me in my place
before her. My heart would stop beating, and I with a powerless fury
would feel myself under the authority of this gaze.
So the days and weeks went by; our struggle continued, but the
preponderance showed itself more and more definitely to be on the side
of my rival. And suddenly one day I realised that my will was in
subjection to her will, that she was already stronger than I. I was
overcome with terror. My first impulse was to flee from my home and go
to another town, but I saw at once that this would be useless. I should,
all the same, be overcome by the attractive force of this hostile will
and be obliged to return to this room, to this mirror. Then there came a
second thought--to shatter the mirror, reduce my enemy to nothingness;
but to conquer her by brutal strength would mean that I acknowledged
her superiority over myself: this would be humiliating. I preferred to
remain and continue this struggle to the end, even though I were
threatened with defeat.
Soon there could be no doubt that my rival would triumph. At every
meeting there was concentrated in her gaze still greater and greater
power over me. Little by little I lost the possibility of letting a day
pass without once going to my mirror. _She_ ordered me to spend several
hours daily in front of her. _She_ directed my will as a hypnotist
directs the will of a sleepwalker. _She_ arranged my life, as a mistress
arranges the life of a slave. I began to fulfil her demands, I became an
automaton to her wordless orders. I knew that deliberately, cautiously,
she would lead me by an unavoidable path to destruction, and I already
made no resistance. I divined her secret plan--to cast me into the
mirror world and to come forth herself into our world--but I had no
strength to hinder her. My husband and my relatives seeing me spend
whole hours, whole days and nights in front of my mirror, thought me
demented and wanted to cure me. But I dared not reveal the truth to
them, I was forbidden to tell them all the dreadful truth, all the
horror, towards which I was moving.
One of the December days before the holidays turned out to be the day
of my destruction. I remember everything clearly, precisely,
circumstantially. Nothing in my remembrance is confused. As usual, I
went into my boudoir early, at the first beginnings of the winter dawn
twilight. I placed a comfortable armchair without a back in front of the
mirror, sat down and gave myself up to _her_. Without any delay she
appeared in answer to my summons, she too placed an armchair for
herself, she too sat down and began to gaze at me. A dark foreboding
oppressed my soul, but I was powerless to turn my face away, and I was
forced to take to myself the insolent gaze of my rival. The hours went
by, the shadows began to fall. Neither of us lighted a lamp. The glass
of the mirror glimmered faintly in the darkness. The reflections had
become scarcely visible, but the self-reliant eyes gazed with their
former strength. I felt neither terror nor ill-will, as on other days,
but simply an intolerable anguish and a bitter consciousness that I was
in the power of another. Time swam away and on its tide I also swam into
infinity, into a black expanse of powerlessness and lack of will.
Suddenly she, that other, the reflected woman, got up from her chair. I
trembled all over at this insult. But something invincible, something
forcing me from within compelled me also to stand up. The woman in the
mirror took a step forward. I did the same. The woman in the mirror
stretched forth her arms. I did so too. Looking straight at me with
hypnotising and commanding eyes, she moved forward and I advanced to
meet her. And it was strange--with all the horror of my position, with
all my hate towards my rival, there fluttered somewhere in the depths of
my soul a painful consolation, a secret joy--to enter at last into that
mysterious world into which I had gazed from my childhood and which up
till now had remained inaccessible to me. At moments I hardly knew which
of us was drawing the other towards herself, she me or I her, whether
she was eager to occupy my place or whether I had devised all this
struggle in order to displace her.
But when, moving forward, my hands touched hers on the glass I turned
quite pale with repugnance. And _she_ took my hand by force and drew me
still nearer to herself. My hands were plunged into the mirror as into
burning-icy water. The cold of the glass penetrated into my body with a
horrible pain, as if all the atoms of my being had changed their mutual
relationship. In another moment my face had touched the face of my
rival, I saw her eyes right in front of my own, I was transfused into
her with a monstrous kiss. Everything vanished from me in a torment of
suffering unlike any other--and when I came to my senses after this
swoon I still saw in front of me my own boudoir on which I gazed _from
out of_ the mirror. My rival stood before me and burst into laughter.
And I--oh the cruelty of it! I who was dying with humiliation and
torture was obliged to laugh too, to repeat all her grimaces in a
triumphant joyful laugh. I had not yet succeeded in considering my
position when my rival suddenly turned round, walked towards the door,
vanished from my sight, and I at once fell into torpor, into
non-existence.