At home in Moscow, it was already like winter; the stoves were heated,
and in the mornings, when the children were getting ready to go to
school, and had their tea, it was dark and their nurse lighted the lamp
for a short while. The frost had already begun. When the first snow
falls, the first day of driving in sledges, it is good to see the white
earth, the white roofs; one breathes easily, eagerly, and then one
remembers the days of youth. The old lime-trees and birches, white with
hoarfrost, have a kindly expression; they are nearer to the heart than
cypresses and palm-trees, and with the dear familiar trees there is no
need to think of mountains and the sea.
Gomov was a native of Moscow. He returned to Moscow on a fine frosty
day, and when he donned his fur coat and warm gloves, and took a stroll
through Petrovka, and when on Saturday evening he heard the church-bells
ringing, then his recent travels and the places he had visited lost all
their charm. Little by little he sank back into Moscow life, read
eagerly three newspapers a day, and said that he did not read Moscow
papers as a matter of principle. He was drawn into a round of
restaurants, clubs, dinner-parties, parties, and he was flattered to
have his house frequented by famous lawyers and actors, and to play
cards with a professor at the University club. He could eat a whole
plateful of hot _sielianka_.
So a month would pass, and Anna Sergueyevna, he thought, would be lost
in the mists of memory and only rarely would she visit his dreams with
her touching smile, just as other women had done. But more than a month
passed, full winter came, and in his memory everything was clear, as
though he had parted from Anna Sergueyevna only yesterday. And his
memory was lit by a light that grew ever stronger. No matter how,
through the voices of his children saying their lessons, penetrating to
the evening stillness of his study, through hearing a song, or the music
in a restaurant, or the snow-storm howling in the chimney, suddenly the
whole thing would come to life again in his memory: the meeting on the
jetty, the early morning with the mists on the mountains, the steamer
from Feodossia and their kisses. He would pace up and down his room and
remember it all and smile, and then his memories would drift into
dreams, and the past was confused in his imagination with the future. He
did not dream at night of Anna Sergueyevna, but she followed him
everywhere, like a shadow, watching him. As he shut his eyes, he could
see her, vividly, and she seemed handsomer, tenderer, younger than in
reality; and he seemed to himself better than he had been at Talta. In
the evenings she would look at him from the bookcase, from the
fireplace, from the corner; he could hear her breathing and the soft
rustle of her dress. In the street he would gaze at women's faces to see
if there were not one like her....
He was filled with a great longing to share his memories with some one.
But at home it was impossible to speak of his love, and away from
home--there was no one. Impossible to talk of her to the other people in
the house and the men at the bank. And talk of what? Had he loved then?
Was there anything fine, romantic, or elevating or even interesting in
his relations with Anna Sergueyevna? And he would speak vaguely of love,
of women, and nobody guessed what was the matter, and only his wife
would raise her dark eyebrows and say:
"Demitri, the rôle of coxcomb does not suit you at all."
One night, as he was coming out of the club with his partner, an
official, he could not help saying:
"If only I could tell what a fascinating woman I met at Talta."
The official seated himself in his sledge and drove off, but suddenly
called:
"Dimitri Dimitrich!"
"Yes."
"You were right. The sturgeon was tainted."
These banal words suddenly roused Gomov's indignation. They seemed to
him degrading and impure. What barbarous customs and people!
What preposterous nights, what dull, empty days! Furious card-playing,
gourmandising, drinking, endless conversations about the same things,
futile activities and conversations taking up the best part of the day
and all the best of a man's forces, leaving only a stunted, wingless
life, just rubbish; and to go away and escape was impossible--one might
as well be in a lunatic asylum or in prison with hard labour.
Gomov did not sleep that night, but lay burning with indignation, and
then all next day he had a headache. And the following night he slept
badly, sitting up in bed and thinking, or pacing from corner to corner
of his room. His children bored him, the bank bored him, and he had no
desire to go out or to speak to any one.
In December when the holidays came he prepared to go on a journey and
told his wife he was going to Petersburg to present a petition for a
young friend of his--and went to S. Why? He did not know. He wanted to
see Anna Sergueyevna, to talk to her, and if possible to arrange an
assignation.
He arrived at S. in the morning and occupied the best room in the hotel,
where the whole floor was covered with a grey canvas, and on the table
there stood an inkstand grey with dust, adorned with a horseman on a
headless horse holding a net in his raised hand. The porter gave him the
necessary information: von Didenitz; Old Goucharno Street, his own
house--not far from the hotel; lives well, has his own horses, every one
knows him.
Gomov walked slowly to Old Goucharno Street and found the house. In
front of it was a long, grey fence spiked with nails.
"No getting over a fence like that," thought Gomov, glancing from the
windows to the fence.
He thought: "To-day is a holiday and her husband is probably at home.
Besides it would be tactless to call and upset her. If he sent a note
then it might fall into her husband's hands and spoil everything. It
would be better to wait for an opportunity." And he kept on walking up
and down the street, and round the fence, waiting for his opportunity.
He saw a beggar go in at the gate and the dogs attack him. He heard a
piano and the sounds came faintly to his ears. It must be Anna
Sergueyevna playing. The door suddenly opened and out of it came an old
woman, and after her ran the familiar white Pomeranian. Gomov wanted to
call the dog, but his heart suddenly began to thump and in his agitation
he could not remember the dog's name.
He walked on, and more and more he hated the grey fence and thought with
a gust of irritation that Anna Sergueyevna had already forgotten him,
and was perhaps already amusing herself with some one else, as would be
only natural in a young woman forced from morning to night to behold the
accursed fence. He returned to his room and sat for a long time on the
sofa, not knowing what to do. Then he dined and afterward slept for a
long while.
"How idiotic and tiresome it all is," he thought as he awoke and saw the
dark windows; for it was evening. "I've had sleep enough, and what shall
I do to-night?"
He sat on his bed which was covered with a cheap, grey blanket, exactly
like those used in a hospital, and tormented himself.
"So much for the lady with the toy dog.... So much for the great
adventure.... Here you sit."
However, in the morning, at the station, his eye had been caught by a
poster with large letters: "First Performance of 'The Geisha.'" He
remembered that and went to the theatre.
"It is quite possible she will go to the first performance," he thought.
The theatre was full and, as usual in all provincial theatres, there was
a thick mist above the lights, the gallery was noisily restless; in the
first row before the opening of the performance stood the local dandies
with their hands behind their backs, and there in the governor's box, in
front, sat the governor's daughter, and the governor himself sat
modestly behind the curtain and only his hands were visible. The curtain
quivered; the orchestra tuned up for a long time, and while the audience
were coming in and taking their seats, Gomov gazed eagerly round.
At last Anna Sergueyevna came in. She took her seat in the third row,
and when Gomov glanced at her his heart ached and he knew that for him
there was no one in the whole world nearer, dearer, and more important
than she; she was lost in this provincial rabble, the little
undistinguished woman, with a common lorgnette in her hands, yet she
filled his whole life; she was his grief, his joy, his only happiness,
and he longed for her; and through the noise of the bad orchestra with
its tenth-rate fiddles, he thought how dear she was to him. He thought
and dreamed.
With Anna Sergueyevna there came in a young man with short
side-whiskers, very tall, stooping; with every movement he shook and
bowed continually. Probably he was the husband whom in a bitter mood at
Talta she had called a lackey. And, indeed, in his long figure, his
side-whiskers, the little bald patch on the top of his head, there was
something of the lackey; he had a modest sugary smile and in his
buttonhole he wore a University badge exactly like a lackey's number.
In the first entr'acte the husband went out to smoke, and she was left
alone. Gomov, who was also in the pit, came up to her and said in a
trembling voice with a forced smile:
"How do you do?"
She looked up at him and went pale. Then she glanced at him again in
terror, not believing her eyes, clasped her fan and lorgnette tightly
together, apparently struggling to keep herself from fainting. Both were
silent. She sat, he stood; frightened by her emotion, not daring to sit
down beside her. The fiddles and flutes began to play and suddenly it
seemed to them as though all the people in the boxes were looking at
them. She got up and walked quickly to the exit; he followed, and both
walked absently along the corridors, down the stairs, up the stairs,
with the crowd shifting and shimmering before their eyes; all kinds of
uniforms, judges, teachers, crown-estates, and all with badges; ladies
shone and shimmered before them, like fur coats on moving rows of
clothes-pegs, and there was a draught howling through the place laden
with the smell of tobacco and cigar-ends. And Gomov, whose heart was
thudding wildly, thought:
"Oh, Lord! Why all these men and that beastly orchestra?"
At that very moment he remembered how when he had seen Anna Sergueyevna
off that evening at the station he had said to himself that everything
was over between them, and they would never meet again. And now how far
off they were from the end!
On a narrow, dark staircase over which was written: "This Way to the
Amphitheatre," she stopped:
"How you frightened me!" she said, breathing heavily, still pale and
apparently stupefied. "Oh! how you frightened me! I am nearly dead. Why
did you come? Why?"
"Understand me, Anna," he whispered quickly. "I implore you to
understand...."
She looked at him fearfully, in entreaty, with love in her eyes, gazing
fixedly to gather up in her memory every one of his features.
"I suffer so!" she went on, not listening to him. "All the time, I
thought only of you. I lived with thoughts of you.... And I wanted to
forget, to forget, but why, why did you come?"
A little above them, on the landing, two schoolboys stood and smoked and
looked down at them, but Gomov did not care. He drew her to him and
began to kiss her cheeks, her hands.
"What are you doing? What are you doing?" she said in terror, thrusting
him away.... "We were both mad. Go away to-night. You must go away at
once.... I implore you, by everything you hold sacred, I implore you....
The people are coming-----"
Some one passed them on the stairs.
"You must go away," Anna Sergueyevna went on in a whisper. "Do you hear,
Dimitri Dimitrich? I'll come to you in Moscow. I never was happy. Now I
am unhappy and I shall never, never be happy, never! Don't make me
suffer even more! I swear, I'll come to Moscow. And now let us part. My
dear, dearest darling, let us part!"
She pressed his hand and began to go quickly down-stairs, all the while
looking back at him, and in her eyes plainly showed that she was most
unhappy. Gomov stood for a while, listened, then, when all was quiet he
found his coat and left the theatre.