For how many months was I ill? I do not know. Vassili, restless and
idle, "carted" me and my medicines and my sufferings from Pegli to
Genoa, from Genoa to Florence. He seemed to have forgotten that we had a
home; he seemed to have forgotten that we had a child.
Our rooms at the hotel in Florence were bright with sunshine and with
the frivolous gaiety of a graceful trio of Russian ladies--the Princess
Dubinskaja, her sister Vera Vojatschek, and the fair-haired Olga
Kralberg, who came to see us every day. But I felt lost and lonely, as
if astray in the world. My mother had returned to Russia, and my vacant
and aching heart invoked Vassili, who, alas! was never by my side.
"You must win him back," said Olga Kralberg to me one day--she, whose
fate it was on a not distant day to commit suicide for his sake. "Every
man, especially if he is a husband, has--after some time--to be won back
again."
"That is sooner said than done," I replied despondently. "To win a man
is easy enough. But to win him back--"
"There are various ways of doing it," she said. "Have you tried being
very affectionate?"
"Yes, indeed," said I.
"How did it answer?"
"He was bored to death."
"Have you tried being cool and distant? Being, so to speak, a stranger
to him?"
"Yes, I have."
"And he?"
"He never even noticed that I was being a stranger to him. He was as
happy and good-tempered as ever."
Olga shook her head dejectedly. "Have you tried being hysterical?" she
asked after a while.
I hesitated. "I think so," I said at last. "But I do not quite know what
you mean."
"Well," explained Olga sententiously, "with some men, who cannot bear
healthy normal women, hysteria is a great success. Of course, it must be
esthetic hysteria--you must try to preserve the plastic line through it
all," and Olga sketched with her thumb a vague painter's gesture in the
air. "For example, you deluge yourself in strange perfumes. You trail
about the house in weird clinging gowns. You faint away at the sight of
certain shades of color--"
"What an absurd idea!" I exclaimed.
"Not at all. Not in the least," said Olga. "On the contrary, it is very
modern, very piquant to swoon away every time you see a certain shade
of--of mauve, for instance."
"But what if I don't see it?"
"Silly! You _must_ see it. Give orders to a shop to send you ten yards
of mauve silk. Open the parcel in your husband's presence. Then--then you
totter; you fall down--but mind," added Olga, "that you fall in a
graceful, impressionist attitude. Like this." And Olga illustrated her
meaning in what appeared to me a very foolish posture.
"I think it ridiculous," I said to her. And she was deeply offended.
"Good-by," she said, pinning her hat on briskly and spitefully.
"No, no! Don't go away. Do not desert me," I implored. "Try to suggest
something else."
Olga was mollified. After reflecting a few moments she remarked.
"Have you tried being a ray of sunshine to him?"
I lost patience with her. "What do you mean by a 'ray of sunshine'? You
seem to be swayed by stock phrases, such as one reads in novels."
This time Olga was not offended. She explained that in order to be a ray
of sunshine in a man's life, one must appear before him gay, sparkling
and radiant at all hours of the day.
"Always dress in the lightest of colors. Put a ribbon in your hair. When
you hear his footsteps, run to meet him and throw your arms round his
neck. When he goes out, toss a flower to him from the window. When he
seems dull or silent, take your guitar and sing to him."
"You know I don't play the guitar," I said pettishly.
"That does not matter. What really counts is the singing. The atmosphere
that surrounds him should be bright with unstudied gaiety. He ought to
live, so to speak, in a whirlwind of sunshine!"
"Well, I will try," I sighed, without much conviction.