Kovrin received an independent chair. His inaugural address was fixed
for the 2nd of December, and a notice to that effect was posted in
the corridors of the University. But when the day came a telegram was
received by the University authorities that he could not fulfil the
engagement, owing to illness.
Blood came from his throat. He spat it up, and twice in one month it
flowed in streams. He felt terribly weak, and fell into a somnolent
condition. But this illness did not frighten him, for he knew that his
dead mother had lived with the same complaint more than ten years. His
doctors, too, declared that there was no danger, and advised him merely
not to worry, to lead a regular life, and to talk less.
In January the lecture was postponed for the same reason, and in
February it was too late to begin the course. It was postponed till the
following year.
He no longer lived with Tánya, but with another woman, older than
himself, who looked after him as if he were a child. His temper
was calm and obedient; he submitted willingly, and when Varvara
Nikolaievna--that was her name--made arrangements for taking him to the
Crimea, he consented to go, although he felt that from the change no
good would come.
They reached Sevastopol late one evening, and stopped there to rest,
intending to drive to Yalta on the following day. Both were tired by
the journey. Varvara Nikolaievna drank tea, and went to bed. But Kovrin
remained up. An hour before leaving home for the railway station he had
received a letter from Tánya, which he had not read; and the thought
of this letter caused him unpleasant agitation. In the depths of his
heart he knew that his marriage with Tánya had been a mistake. He was
glad that he was finally parted from her; but the remembrance of this
woman, who towards the last had seemed to turn into a walking, living
mummy, in which all had died except the great, clever eyes, awakened in
him only pity and vexation against himself. The writing on the envelope
reminded him that two years before he had been guilty of cruelty and
injustice, and that he had avenged on people in no way guilty his
spiritual vacuity, his solitude, his disenchantment with life.... He
remembered how he had once torn into fragments his dissertation and
all the articles written by him since the time of his illness, and
thrown them out of the window, how the fragments flew in the wind and
rested on the trees and flowers; in every page he had seen strange and
baseless pretensions, frivolous irritation, and a mania for greatness.
And all this had produced upon him an impression that he had written a
description of his own faults. Yet when the last copybook had been tom
up and thrown out of the window, he felt bitterness and vexation, and
went to his wife and spoke to her cruelly. Heavens, how he had ruined
her life! He remembered how once, wishing to cause her pain, he had
told her that her father had played in their romance an unusual role,
and had even asked him to marry her; and Yegor Semiónovitch, happening
to overhear him, had rushed into the room, so dumb with consternation
that he could not utter a word, but only stamped his feet on one spot
and bellowed strangely as if his tongue had been cut out. And Tánya,
looking at her father, cried out in a heartrending voice, and fell
insensible on the floor. It was hideous.
The memory of all this returned to him at the sight of the well-known
handwriting. He went out on to the balcony. It was warm and calm, and
a salt smell came to him from the sea. The moonlight, and the lights
around, were imaged on the surface of the wonderful bay--a surface
of a hue impossible to name. It was a tender and soft combination of
dark blue and green; in parts the water resembled copperas, and in
parts, instead of water, liquid moonlight filled the bay. And all these
combined in a harmony of hues which exhaled tranquillity and exaltation.
In the lower story of the inn, underneath the balcony, the windows were
evidently open, for women's voices and laughter could plainly be heard.
There must be an entertainment.
Kovrin made an effort over himself, unsealed the letter, and, returning
to his room, began to read:
"My father has just died. For this I am indebted to you, for it was you
who killed him. Our garden is being ruined; it is managed by strangers;
what my poor father so dreaded is taking place. For this also I am
indebted to you. I hate you with all my soul, and wish that you may
perish soon! Oh, how I suffer I My heart bums with an intolerable
pain!... May you be accursed! I took you for an exceptional man, for a
genius; I loved you, and you proved a madman...."
Kovrin could read no more; he tore up the letter and threw the pieces
away.... He was overtaken by restlessness--almost by terror.... On the
other side of the screen, slept Varvara Nikolaievna; he could hear her
breathing. From the story beneath came the women's voices and laughter,
but he felt that in the whole hotel there was not one living soul
except himself. The fact that wretched, overwhelmed Tánya had cursed
him in her letter, and wished him ill, caused him pain; and he looked
fearfully at the door as if fearing to see again that unknown power
which in two years had brought about so much ruin in his own life and
in the lives of all who were dearest to him.
By experience he knew that when the nerves give way the best refuge
lies in work. He used to sit at the table and concentrate his mind
upon some definite thought. He took from his red portfolio a copybook
containing the conspect of a small work of compilation which he
intended to carry out during his stay in the Crimea, if he became tired
of inactivity.... He sat at the table, and worked on this conspect, and
it seemed to him that he was regaining his former peaceful, resigned,
impersonal mood. His conspect led him to speculation on the vanity of
the world. He thought of the great price which life demands for the
most trivial and ordinary benefits which it gives to men. To reach
a chair of philosophy under forty years of age; to be an ordinary
professor; to expound commonplace thoughts--and those thoughts the
thoughts of others--in feeble, tiresome, heavy language; in one
word, to attain the position of a learned mediocrity, he had studied
fifteen years, worked day and night, passed through a severe psychical
disease, survived an unsuccessful marriage--been guilty of many follies
and injustices which it was torture to remember. Kovrin now clearly
realised that he was a mediocrity, and he was willingly reconciled to
it, for he knew that every man must be satisfied with what he is.
The conspect calmed him, but the tom letter lay upon the floor and
hindered the concentration of his thoughts. He rose, picked up the
fragments, and threw them out of the window. But a light wind blew from
the sea, and the papers fluttered back on to the window sill. Again he
was overtaken by restlessness akin to terror, and it seemed to him that
in the whole hotel except himself there was not one living soul.... He
went on to the balcony. The bay, as if alive, stared up at him from its
multitude of light-and dark-blue eyes, its eyes of turquoise and fire,
and beckoned him. It was warm and stifling; how delightful, he thought,
to bathe!
Suddenly beneath the balcony a violin was played, and two women's
voices sang. All this was known to him. The song which they sang told
of a young girl, diseased in imagination, who heard by night in a
garden mysterious sounds, and found in them a harmony and a holiness
incomprehensible to us mortals. ... Kovrin held his breath, his heart
ceased to beat, and the magical, ecstatic rapture which he had long
forgotten trembled in his heart again.
A high, black pillar, like a cyclone or waterspout, appeared on the
opposite coast. It swept with incredible swiftness across the bay
towards the hotel; it became smaller and smaller, and Kovrin stepped
aside to make room for it.... The monk, with uncovered grey head, with
black eyebrows, barefooted, folding his arms upon his chest, swept past
him, and stopped in the middle of the room.
"Why did you not believe me?" he asked in a tone of reproach, looking
caressingly at Kovrin. "If you had believed me when I said you were a
genius, these last two years would not have been passed so sadly and so
barrenly."
Kovrin again believed that he was the elected of God and a genius; he
vividly remembered all his former conversation with the Black Monk,
and wished to reply. But the blood flowed from his throat on to his
chest, and he, not knowing what to do, moved his hands about his chest
till his cuffs were red with the blood. He wished to call Varvara
Nikolaievna, who slept behind the screen, and making an effort to do
so, cried: "Tánya!"
He fell on the floor, and raising his hands, again cried:
"Tánya!"
He cried to Tánya, cried to the great garden with the miraculous
flowers, cried to the park, to the pines with their shaggy roots, to
the rye-field, cried to his marvellous science, to his youth, his
daring, his joy, cried to the life which had been so beautiful. He saw
on the floor before him a great pool of blood, and from weakness could
not utter a single word. But an inexpressible, infinite joy filled his
whole being. Beneath the balcony the serenade was being played, and the
Black Monk whispered to him that he was a genius, and died only because
his feeble, mortal body had lost its balance, and could no longer serve
as the covering of genius.
When Varvara Nikolaievna awoke, and came from behind her screen, Kovrin
was dead. But on his face was frozen an immovable smile of happiness.