When Romashov reached his room he threw himself, just as he was, with
cap and sabre, on his bed, and for a long time he lay there motionless,
staring up at the ceiling. His head burned, his back ached; and he
suffered from a vacuum within him as profound as if his mind was
incapable of harbouring a feeling, a memory, or a thought. He felt
neither irritation nor sadness, but he was sensible of a suffocating
weight on his heart, of darkness and indifference.
The shades of a balmy April night fell. He heard his servant quietly
occupied with some metal object in the hall.
"Curiously enough," said he to himself, "I have read somewhere or other
that one cannot live a single second without thinking. But here I lie
and think about absolutely nothing. Isn't that so? Perhaps it is just
this: I am thinking that _I am thinking about nothing_. It even seems as
if a tiny wheel in my brain is in motion. And see here a new reflection,
an objective introspection--I am also thinking of----"
He lay so long and tortured himself with such forced mental images that
returned in an eternal circle that it finally became physically
repulsive to him. It was just as if a great loathsome spider, from which
he could not extricate himself, was softly groping about _under his
brain_. At last he raised his head from the pillows and called out--
"Hainán."
At that very moment was heard a tremendous crash of something falling
and rolling on the floor. It was probably the funnel belonging to the
samovar which had dropped. The door was opened hastily and shut again
with a loud bang. The servant burst into the room, making as much noise
in opening and shutting the door as if we were running away from some
one.
"It is I, your Honour," shrieked Hainán in a fear-stricken voice.
"Has there been any message from Lieutenant Nikoläiev?"
"No, your Excellency," replied Hainán in the same shrieking tone.
Between the officer and his servant there existed a certain simple,
sincere, affectionately familiar relationship. When the question only
required the usual stereotyped, official answer, e.g. "Yes, your
Excellency," "No, your Excellency," etc., then Hainán shrieked the words
in the same wooden, soulless, and unnatural way as soldiers always do in
the case of their officers, and which, from their first days in the
recruit school, becomes ineradicably ingrained in them as long as they
live.
Hainán was by birth a Circassian, and by religion an idolater. This
latter circumstance gave great satisfaction to Romashov, because among
the young officers of the regiment the silly and boyish custom prevailed
of training their respective servants to be something unique, or of
teaching them certain semi-idiotic answers and phrases.
For instance, when his friends paid him a visit, Viätkin used to say to
his orderly, a Moldavian, "Busioskul, have we any champagne in the
cellar?" And Busioskul would answer with imperturbable gravity, "No,
your Excellency. Last night you were pleased to drink up the last
dozen." Another officer, Sub-lieutenant Epifanov, amused himself by
putting to his servant learned and difficult questions which he himself
could hardly answer. "Listen, my friend, what are your views on the
restoration of the monarchy in France at the present day?" The servant
answers, "Your Honour, it will, I think, succeed." Lieutenant Bobetinski
had written down a whole catechism for his flunkey, and the latter
trained genius replied frankly and unhesitatingly to the most absurd
questions, e.g. "Why is this important for the third?" Answer--"For the
third this is not important." "What is Holy Church's opinion about it?"
Answer--"Holy Church has no opinion about it." The same servant would
declaim, with the quaintest, semi-tragical gestures, Pinen's rôle in
"Boris-Gudunov." It was also usual and much appreciated to make him
express himself in French: "Bong shure, musseur. Bon nuite, moussier.
Vulley vous du tay, musseur?" etc. etc., in that style. All these
follies naturally arose from the dullness of that little garrison town,
and the narrowness of a life from which all interests were excluded
except those belonging to the service.
Romashov often talked to Hainán about his gods--about whom the
Circassian had only dim and meagre ideas; but it amused him greatly to
make Hainán tell the story of how he took the oath of allegiance to the
Tsar and Russia--a story well worth hearing now and then. At that time
the oath of allegiance was, for the Orthodox, administered by a priest
of the Greek Church; for Catholics, by the _ksends_[3]; for
Protestants, when a Lutheran pastor was not available, by Staff-Captain
Ditz; and for Mohammedans, by Lieutenant Biek-Agamalov. For Hainán and
two of his fellow-countrymen a particular and highly original form had
been authorized. The three soldiers were ordered to march in turn up to
the Adjutant of the regiment, and from the point of the sabre held
towards them they were required to bite off, with deep reverence, a
piece of bread that had been dipped in salt. Under no circumstances was
the bread to be touched by their hands. The symbolism of this curious
ceremony was as follows: When the Circassian had eaten his lord's--the
Tsar's--bread and salt in this peculiar way he was ruthlessly condemned
to die by the sword if he ever failed in loyalty and obedience. Hainán
was evidently very proud of having thus taken his oath of allegiance to
the Tsar, and he never got tired of relating the circumstance; but as
every time he told his story he adorned it with fresh inventions and
absurdities, it became at last a veritable Münchausen affair, which was
always received with Homeric laughter by Romashov and his guests.
Hainán now thought that his master would start his usual questions about
gods and Adjutants, and stood ready to begin with a cunning smile on his
face, when Romashov said--
"That will do; you can go."
"Shall I not lay out your Honour's new uniform?" asked the
ever-attentive Hainán.
Romashov was silent and pondered. First he would say "Yes," then "No,"
and again "Yes." At last, after a long, deep sigh, uttered in the
descending scale, he replied in a tone of resignation--
"No, Hainán, never mind about that--get the samovar ready and then run
off to the mess for my supper."
"I will stay away to-day," whispered he to himself. "It doesn't do to
bore people to death by calling on them like that every day. And,
besides, it is plain I am not a man people long for."
His resolution to stay at home that evening seemed fixed enough, and yet
an inner voice told him that even to-day, as on most other days during
the past three months, he would go to the Nikoläievs'. Every time he
bade these friends of his good-bye at midnight, he had, with shame and
indignation at his own weakness and lack of character, sworn to himself
on his honour that he would not pay another call there for two or three
weeks. Nay, he had even made up his mind to give up altogether these
uncalled-for visits. And all the while he was on his way home, whilst he
was undressing, ah! even up to the moment he fell asleep, he believed it
would be an easy matter for him to keep his resolution. The night went
by, the morning dawned, and the day dragged on slowly and unwillingly,
evening came, and once more an irresistible force drew him to this
handsome and elegant abode, with its warm, well-lighted, comfortable
rooms, where peace, harmony, cheerful and confidential conversation,
and, above all, the delightful enchantment of feminine beauty awaited
him.
Romashov sat on the edge of his bed. It was already dark, but he could,
nevertheless, easily discern the various objects in his room. Oh, how he
loathed day by day his mean, gloomy dwelling, with its trumpery,
tasteless furniture! His lamp, with its ugly shade that resembled a
night-cap, on the inconvenient, rickety writing-table, looked haughtily
down on the nerve-torturing alarm-clock and the dirty, vulgar inkstand
that had the shape of a badly modelled pug-dog. Over his head something
intended to represent a wall decoration--a piece of felt on which had
been embroidered a terrible tiger and a still more terrible Arab riding
on horseback, armed with a spear. In one corner a tumbledown bookstand,
in the other the fantastic silhouette of a hideous violoncello case.
Over the only window the room could boast a curtain of plaited straw
rolled up into a tube. Behind the door a clothes-stand concealed by a
sheet that had been white in prehistoric times. Every unmarried
subaltern officer had the same articles about him, with the exception of
the violoncello which Romashov had borrowed from the band attached to
the regiment--in which it was completely unnecessary--with the intention
of developing on it his musical talent. But as soon as he had tried in
vain to teach himself the C major scale, he tired of the thing
altogether, and the 'cello had now stood for more than a year, dusty and
forgotten, in its dark corner.
More than a year ago Romashov, who had just left the military college,
had taken both pride and joy in furnishing his modest lodgings. To have
a room of his own, his own things, to choose and buy household furniture
according to his own liking, to arrange everything according to his own
consummate taste--all that highly flattered the _amour propre_ of that
young man of two-and-twenty. It seemed only yesterday that he sat on the
school form, or marched in rank and file with his comrades off to the
general mess-room to eat, at the word of command, his frugal breakfast.
To-day he was his own master. And how many hopes and plans sprang into
his brain in the course of those never-to-be-forgotten days when he
furnished and "adorned" his new home! What a severe programme he
composed for his future! The first two years were to be devoted chiefly
to a thorough study of classical literature, French and German, and also
music. After that, a serious preparation for entering the Staff College
was to follow. It was necessary to study sociology and society life, and
to be abreast of modern science and literature. Romashov therefore felt
himself bound at least to subscribe to a newspaper and to take in a
popular monthly magazine. The bookstand was adorned with Wundt's
_Psychology_, Lewes's _Physiology_, and Smiles's _Self-Help_, etc., etc.
But for nine long months have the books lain undisturbed on their
shelves, forgotten by Hainán, whose business it is to dust them. Heaps
of newspapers, not even stripped of their wrappers, lie cast in a pile
beneath the writing-table, and the æsthetic magazine to which we just
referred has ceased to reach Romashov on account of repeated
"irregularities" with regard to the half-yearly payment. Sub-Lieutenant
Romashov drinks a good deal of vodka at mess; he has a tedious and
loathsome liaison with a married woman belonging to the regiment, whose
consumptive and jealous husband he deceives in strict accordance with
all the rules of art; he plays _schtoss_,[4] and more and more
frequently comes into unpleasant collisions both in the service and also
in the circles of his friends and acquaintances.
"Pardon me, your Honour," shouted his servant, entering the room
noisily. Then he added in a friendly, simple, good-natured tone: "I
forgot to mention that a letter has come from Mrs. Peterson. The
orderly who brought it is waiting for an answer."
Romashov frowned, took the letter, tore open a long, slender,
rose-coloured envelope, in a corner of which fluttered a dove with a
letter in its beak.
"Light the lamp, Hainán," said he to his servant.
MY DEAR DARLING IRRESISTIBLE LITTLE GEORGI (read Romashov in the
sloping, crooked lines he knew so well),--For a whole week you have
not been to see me, and yesterday I was so miserable without you
that I lay and wept the whole night. Remember that if you fool me
or deceive me I shall not survive it. One single drop of poison and
I shall be freed from my tortures for ever; but, as for you,
conscience shall gnaw you for ever and ever. You must--must come to
me to-night at half-past seven. _He_ is not at home, he is
somewhere--on tactical duty or whatever it is called. Do come! I
kiss you a thousand thousand times.
Yours always,
RAISA.