VOLODIA

One Sunday evening in spring Volodia, a plain, shy, sickly lad of

seventeen, was sitting, a prey to melancholy, in a summer-house on the

country place of the Shumikins. His gloomy reflections flowed in three

different channels. In the first place, to-morrow, Monday, he would have

to take an examination in mathematics. He knew that if he did not pass

he would be expelled from school, as he had already been two years in

the sixth grade. In the second place, his pride suffered constant agony

during his visits to the Shumikins, who were rich people with

aristocratic pretensions. He imagined that Madame Shumikin and her

nieces looked down upon his mother and himself as poor relations and

dependents, and that they made fun of his mother and did not respect

her. He had once overheard Madame Shumikin saying on the terrace to her

cousin Anna Feodorovna that she was still pretending to be young, and

that she never paid her debts and had a great hankering after other

people’s shoes and cigarettes. Every day Volodia would implore his

mother not to go to the Shumikins’ again. He painted for her the

humiliating rôle which she played among these people, he entreated her

and spoke rudely to her, but the spoiled, frivolous woman, who had

wasted two fortunes in her day, her own and her husband’s, yearned for

high life and refused to understand him, so that twice every week

Volodia was obliged to accompany her to the hated house.

In the third place, the lad could not free himself for a moment from a

certain strange, unpleasant feeling that was entirely new to him. He

imagined himself to be in love with Anna Feodorovna, the cousin and

guest of Madame Shumikin. Anna Feodorovna was a talkative, lively,

laughing little lady of thirty; healthy, rosy, and strong, with plump

shoulders, a plump chin, and an eternal smile on her thin lips. She was

neither pretty nor young. Volodia knew this perfectly well, and for that

very reason he was unable to refrain from thinking of her, from watching

her as she bent her plump shoulders over her croquet mallet, or, as she,

after much laughter and running up and down-stairs, sank all out of

breath into a chair, and with half-closed eyes pretended that she felt a

tightness and strangling across the chest. She was married, and her

husband was a staid architect who came down into the country once a

week, had a long sleep, and then returned to the city. This feeling on

Volodia’s part began with an unreasoning hatred of the architect, and a

sensation of joy whenever he returned to the city.

And now, as he sat in the summer-house thinking about to-morrow’s

examination and his mother, whom every one laughed at, he felt a great

longing to see Nyuta, as the Shumikins called Anna Feodorovna, and to

hear her laughter and the rustling of her dress. This longing did not

resemble the pure, poetic love of which he had read in novels, and of

which he dreamed every night as he went to bed. It was a strange and

incomprehensible thing, and he was ashamed and afraid of it as of

something wicked and wrong which he hardly dared to acknowledge even to

himself.

“This is not love,” he thought. “One does not fall in love with a woman

of thirty. It is simply a little intrigue; yes, it is a little

intrigue.”

Thinking about intrigues, he remembered his invincible shyness, his lack

of a moustache, his freckles, his little eyes, and pictured himself

standing beside Nyuta. The contrast was impossible. So he hastened to

imagine himself handsome and bold and witty, dressed in the latest

fashion....

In the very heat of his imaginings, as he sat huddled in a dark corner

of the summer-house with his eyes fixed on the ground, he heard light

footsteps approaching. Some one was hurrying down the garden path. The

footsteps ceased and a figure clad in white gleamed in the doorway.

“Is any one there?” asked a woman’s voice.

Volodia recognised the voice and raised his head in alarm.

“Who is there?” asked Nyuta, stepping into the summer-house. “Ah, is it

you, Volodia? What are you doing in there? Brooding? How can you always

be brooding and brooding? It’s enough to drive you crazy!”

Volodia rose and looked at Nyuta in confusion. She was on her way back

from the bath-house; a Turkish towel hung across her shoulders, and a

few damp locks of hair had escaped from under her white silk kerchief

and were clinging to her forehead. She exhaled the cool, damp odour of

the river, and the scent of almond soap. The upper button of her blouse

was undone, so that her neck and throat were visible to the lad.

“Why don’t you say something?” asked Nyuta, looking Volodia up and down.

“It is rude not to answer when a lady speaks to you. What a

stick-in-the-mud you are, Volodia, always sitting and thinking like some

stodgy old philosopher, and never opening your mouth! You have no vim in

you, no fire! You are horrid, really! A boy of your age ought to live,

and frisk, and chatter, and fall in love, and make love to the ladies.”

Volodia stared at the towel which she was holding in her plump, white

hand and pondered.

“He won’t answer!” cried Nyuta in surprise. “This is too strange,

really! Listen to me, be a man! At least smile! Bah! What a horrid

dry-as-dust you are!” she laughed. “Volodia, do you know what makes you

such a boor? It’s because you never make love. Why don’t you do it?

There are no girls here, I know, but what is to prevent you from making

love to a woman? Why don’t you make love to me, for instance?”

Volodia listened to her and rubbed his forehead in intense, painful

irresolution.

“It is only proud people who never speak and like to be alone,” Nyuta

continued, pulling his hand down from his forehead. “You are proud,

Volodia. Why do you squint at me like that? Look me in the eye, if you

please. Now then, stick-in-the-mud!”

Volodia made up his mind to speak. In an effort to smile he stuck out

his lower lip, blinked his eyes, and his hand again went to his head.

“I—I love you!” he exclaimed.

Nyuta raised her eyebrows in astonishment and burst out laughing.

“What is this I hear?” she chanted as singers do in an opera when they

hear a terrible piece of news. “What? What did you say? Say it again!

Say it again!”

“I—I love you!” Volodia repeated.

And involuntarily, without premeditation and not realising what he was

doing, he took a step toward Nyuta and seized her arm above the wrist.

Tears started into his eyes, and the whole world seemed to turn into a

huge Turkish towel smelling of the river.

“Bravo, bravo!” he heard a laughing voice cry approvingly. “Why don’t

you say something? I want to hear you speak! Now, then!”

Seeing that he was permitted to hold her arm, Volodia looked into

Nyuta’s laughing face and awkwardly, uneasily, put both arms around her

waist, bringing his wrists together behind her back. As he held her

thus, she put her hands behind her head showing the dimples in her

elbows, and, arranging her hair under her kerchief, she said in a quiet

voice:

“I want you to become bright and agreeable and charming, Volodia, and

this you can only accomplish through the influence of women. Why, what a

horrid cross face you have! You ought to laugh and talk. Honestly,

Volodia, don’t be a stick! You are young yet; you will have plenty of

time for philosophising later on. And now, let me go. I’m in a hurry to

get back. Let me go, I tell you!”

She freed herself without effort, and went out of the summer-house

singing a snatch of song. Volodia was left alone. He smoothed his hair,

smiled, and walked three times round the summer-house. Then he sat down

and smiled again. He felt an unbearable sense of mortification, and even

marvelled that human shame could reach such a point of keenness and

intensity. The feeling made him smile again and wring his hands and

whisper a few incoherent phrases.

He felt humiliated because he had just been treated like a little boy,

and because he was so shy, but chiefly because he had dared to put his

arms around the waist of a respectable married woman, when neither his

age nor, as he thought, his social position, nor his appearance

warranted such an act.

He jumped up and, without so much as a glance behind him, hurried away

into the depths of the garden, as far away from the house as he could

go.

“Oh, if we could only get away from here at once!” he thought, seizing

his head in his hands. “Oh, quickly, quickly!”

The train on which Volodia and his mother were to go back to town left

at eight-forty. There still remained three hours before train time, and

he would have liked to have gone to the station at once without waiting

for his mother.

At eight o’clock he turned toward the house. His whole figure expressed

determination and seemed to be proclaiming: “Come what may, I am

prepared for anything!” He had made up his mind to go in boldly, to look

every one straight in the face, and to speak loudly no matter what

happened.

He crossed the terrace, passed through the drawing-room and the

living-room, and stopped in the hall to catch his breath. He could hear

the family at tea in the adjoining dining-room; Madame Shumikin, his

mother, and Nyuta were discussing something with laughter.

Volodia listened.

“I assure you I could scarcely believe my eyes!” Nyuta cried. “I hardly

recognised him when he began to make love to me, and actually—will you

believe it?—put his arms around my waist! He has quite a way with him!

When he told me that he loved me, he had the look of a wild animal, like

a Circassian.”

“You don’t say so!” cried his mother, rocking with long shrieks of

laughter. “You don’t say so! How like his father he is!”

Volodia jumped back, and rushed out into the fresh air.

“How can they all talk about it?” he groaned, throwing up his arms and

staring with horror at the sky. “Aloud, and in cold blood, too! And

mother laughed! Mother! Oh, God, why did you give me such a mother? Oh,

why?”

But enter the house he must, happen what might. He walked three times

round the garden, and then, feeling more composed, he went in.

“Why didn’t you come in to tea on time?” asked Madame Shumikin sternly.

“Excuse me, it—it is time for me to go—” Volodia stammered, without

raising his eyes. “Mother, it is eight o’clock!”

“Go along by yourself, dear,” answered his mother languidly. “I am

spending the night here with Lily. Good-by, my boy, come, let me kiss

you.”

She kissed her son and said in French:

“He reminds one a little of Lermontov, doesn’t he?”

Volodia managed to take leave of the company somehow without looking any

one in the face, and ten minutes later he was striding along the road to

the station, glad to be off at last. He now no longer felt frightened or

ashamed, and could breathe deeply and freely once more.

Half a mile from the station he sat down on a stone by the wayside and

began looking at the sun, which was now half hidden behind the horizon.

A few small lights were already gleaming here and there near the

station, and a dim green ray shone out, but the train had not yet

appeared. It was pleasant to sit there quietly, watching the night

slowly creeping across the fields. The dim summer-house, Nyuta’s light

footsteps, the smell of the bath-house, her laughter, and her waist—all

these things rose up before Volodia’s fancy with startling vividness,

and now no longer seemed terrible and significant to him as they had a

few hours before.

“What nonsense! She did not pull her hand away; she laughed when I put

my arm around her waist,” he thought. “Therefore she must have enjoyed

it. If she had not liked it she would have been angry——”

Volodia was vexed now at not having been bolder. He regretted that he

was stupidly running away, and was convinced that, were the same

circumstances to occur again, he would be more manly and look at the

thing more simply——

But it would not be hard to bring those circumstances about. The

Shumikins always strolled about the garden for a long time after supper.

If Volodia were to go walking with Nyuta in the dark—there would be the

chance to re-enact the same scene!

“I’ll go back and leave on an early train to-morrow morning,” he

decided. “I’ll tell them I missed this train.”

So he went back. Madame Shumikin, his mother, Nyuta, and one of the

nieces were sitting on the terrace playing cards. When Volodia told them

his story about having missed the train they were uneasy lest he should

be late for his examination, and advised him to get up early next

morning. Volodia sat down at a little distance from the card-players,

and during the whole game kept his eyes fixed on Nyuta. He had already

determined on a plan. He would go up to Nyuta in the dark, take her

hand, and kiss her. It would not be necessary for either to speak; they

would understand one another without words.

But the ladies did not go walking after supper; they continued their

game instead. They played until one o’clock, and then all separated for

the night.

“How stupid this is!” thought Volodia, with annoyance. “But never mind,

I’ll wait until to-morrow. To-morrow in the summer-house—never mind!”

He made no effort to go to sleep, but sat on the edge of his bed with

his arms around his knees and thought. The idea of the examination was

odious to him. He had already made up his mind that he was going to be

expelled, and that there was nothing terrible about that. On the

contrary, it was a good thing, a very good thing. To-morrow he would be

as free as a bird. He would leave off his schoolboy’s uniform for

civilian clothes, smoke in public, and come over here to make love to

Nyuta whenever he liked. He would be a young man. As for what people

called his career and his future, that was perfectly clear. Volodia

would not enter the government service, but would become a telegraph

operator or have a drug store, and become a pharmaceutist. Were there

not plenty of careers open to a young man? An hour passed, two hours

passed, and he was still sitting on the edge of his bed and thinking——

At three o’clock, when it was already light, his door was cautiously

pushed open and his mother came into the room.

“Aren’t you asleep yet?” she asked with a yawn. “Go to sleep, go to

sleep. I’ve just come in for a moment to get a bottle of medicine.”

“For whom?”

“Poor Lily is ill again. Go to sleep, child, you have an examination

to-morrow.”

She took a little bottle out of the closet, held it to the window, read

the label, and went out.

“Oh, Maria, that isn’t it!” he heard a woman’s voice exclaim. “That is

Eau de Cologne, and Lily wants morphine. Is your son awake? Do ask him

to find it!”

The voice was Nyuta’s. Volodia’s heart stopped beating. He hastily put

on his trousers and coat and went to the door.

“Do you understand? I want morphine!” explained Nyuta in a whisper. “It

is probably written in Latin. Wake Volodia, he will be able to find it!”

Volodia’s mother opened the door, and he caught sight of Nyuta. She was

wearing the same blouse she had worn when she came from the bath-house.

Her hair was hanging loose, and her face looked sleepy and dusky in the

dim light.

“There, Volodia is awake!” she exclaimed. “Volodia, do get me the

morphine out of the closet, there’s a good boy. What a nuisance Lily is!

She always has something the matter with her.”

The mother murmured something, yawned, and went away.

“Come, find it!” cried Nyuta. “What are you standing there for?”

Volodia went to the closet, knelt down, and began searching among the

bottles of medicine and pill-boxes there. His hands were trembling and

cold chills were running down his chest and back. He aimlessly seized

bottles of ether, carbolic acid, and various boxes of herbs in his

shaking hands, spilling and scattering the contents. The smell

overpowered him and made his head swim.

“Mother has gone—” he thought. “That’s good—good.”

“Hurry!” cried Nyuta.

“Just a moment—there, this must be it!” said Volodia having deciphered

the letters “morph—” on one of the labels. “Here it is!”

Nyuta was standing in the doorway with one foot in the hall and one in

Volodia’s room. She was twisting up her hair—which was no easy matter,

for it was long and thick—and was looking vacantly at Volodia. In the

dim radiance shed by the white, early morning sky, with her full blouse

and her flowing hair, she looked to him superb and entrancing.

Fascinated, trembling from head to foot, and remembering with delight

how he had embraced her in the summer-house, he handed her the bottle

and said:

“You are——”

“What?” she asked smiling.

He said nothing; he looked at her, and then, as he had done in the

summer-house, he seized her hand.

“I love you—” he whispered.

Volodia felt as if the room and Nyuta, and the dawn, and he himself had

suddenly rushed together into a keen, unknown feeling of happiness for

which he was ready to give his whole life and lose his soul for ever,

but half a minute later it all suddenly vanished.

“Well, I must go—” said Nyuta, looking contemptuously at Volodia. “What

a pitiful, plain boy you are—Bah, you ugly duckling!”

How hideous her long hair, her full blouse, her footsteps and her voice

now seemed to him!

“Ugly duckling!” he thought. “Yes, I am indeed ugly—everything is ugly.”

The sun rose; the birds broke into song; the sound of the gardener’s

footsteps and the creaking of his wheelbarrow rose from the garden. The

cows lowed and the notes of a shepherd’s pipe trembled in the air. The

sunlight and all these manifold sounds proclaimed that somewhere in the

world there could be found a life that was pure, and gracious, and

poetic. Where was it? Neither Volodia’s mother, nor any one of the

people who surrounded the boy had ever spoken of it to him.

When the man servant came to call him for the morning train, he

pretended to be asleep.

“Oh, to thunder with it all!” he thought.

He got up at eleven. As he brushed his hair before the mirror he looked

at his plain face, so pale after his sleepless night, and thought:

“She is quite right. I really am an ugly duckling.”

When his mother saw him and seemed horrified at his not having gone to

take his examination, Volodia said:

“I overslept, mamma, but don’t worry; I can give them a certificate from

the doctor.”

Madame Shumikin and Nyuta woke at one o’clock. Volodia heard the former

throw open her window with a bang, and heard Nyuta’s ringing laugh

answer her rough voice. He saw the dining-room door flung open and the

nieces and dependents, among whom was his mother, troop in to lunch. He

saw Nyuta’s freshly washed face, and beside it the black eyebrows and

beard of the architect, who had just come.

Nyuta was in Little Russian costume, and this was not becoming to her

and made her look clumsy. The architect made some vulgar, insipid jests,

and Volodia thought that there were a terrible lot of onions in the stew

that day. He also thought that Nyuta was laughing loudly and looking in

his direction on purpose to let him understand that the memory of last

night did not worry her in the least, and that she scarcely noticed the

presence at table of the ugly duckling.

At four o’clock Volodia and his mother drove to the station. The lad’s

sordid memories, his sleepless night, and the pangs of his conscience

aroused in him a feeling of painful and gloomy anger. He looked at his

mother’s thin profile, at her little nose, and at the rain-coat that had

been a gift to her from Nyuta, and muttered:

“Why do you powder your face? It does not become you at all! You try to

look pretty, but you don’t pay your debts, and you smoke cigarettes that

aren’t yours! It’s disgusting! I don’t like you, no, I don’t, I don’t!”

So he insulted her, but she only rolled her eyes in terror and, throwing

up her hands, said in a horrified whisper:

“What are you saying? Heavens, the coachman will hear you! Do hush, he

can hear everything!”

“I don’t like you! I don’t like you!” he went on, struggling for breath.

“You are without morals or heart. Don’t dare to wear that rain-coat

again, do you hear me? If you do, I’ll tear it to shreds!”

“Control yourself, child!” wept his mother. “The coachman will hear

you!”

“Where is my father’s fortune? Where is your own? You have squandered

them both. I am not ashamed of my poverty, but I am ashamed of my

mother. I blush whenever the boys at school ask me about you.”

The village was two stations from town. During the whole journey Volodia

stood on the platform of the car, trembling from head to foot, not

wanting to go inside because his mother, whom he hated, was sitting

there. He hated himself, and the conductor, and the smoke of the engine,

and the cold to which he ascribed the shivering fit that had seized him.

The heavier his heart grew, the more convinced he became that somewhere

in the world there must be people who lived a pure, noble, warm-hearted,

gracious life, full of love, and tenderness, and merriment, and freedom.

He felt this and suffered so keenly from the thought that one of the

passengers looked intently at him, and said:

“You must have a toothache!”

Volodia and his mother lived with a widow who rented a large apartment

and let rooms to lodgers. His mother had two rooms, one with windows

where her own bed stood, and another adjoining it, which was small and

dark, where Volodia lived. A sofa, on which he slept, was the only

furniture of this little room; all the available space was taken up by

trunks full of dresses, and by hat-boxes and piles of rubbish which his

mother had seen fit to collect. Volodia studied his lessons in his

mother’s room, or in the “parlour,” as the large room was called, where

the lodgers assembled before dinner and in the evening.

On reaching home, Volodia threw himself down on his sofa and covered

himself with a blanket, hoping to cure his shivering fit. The hat-boxes,

the trunks, and the rubbish, all proclaimed to him that he had no room

of his own, no corner in which he could take refuge from his mother, her

guests, and the voices that now assailed his ears from the parlour. His

school satchel and the books that lay scattered about the floor reminded

him of the examination he had missed. Quite unexpectedly there rose

before his eyes a vision of Mentone, where he had lived with his father

when he was seven years old. He recalled Biarritz, and two little

English girls with whom he had played on the beach. He vainly tried to

remember the colour of the sky, and the ocean, and the height of the

waves, and how he had then felt; the little English girls flashed across

his vision with all the vividness of life, but the rest of the picture

was confused and gradually faded away.

“It is too cold here,” Volodia thought. He got up, put on his overcoat,

and went into the parlour.

The inmates of the house were assembled there at tea. His mother, an old

maid music teacher with horn spectacles, and Monsieur Augustin, a fat

Frenchman, who worked in a perfume factory, were sitting near the

samovar.

“I haven’t had dinner to-day,” his mother was saying. “I must send the

maid for some bread.”

“Duniash!” shouted the Frenchman.

It appeared that the maid had been sent on an errand by her mistress.

“Oh, no matter!” said the Frenchman, smiling broadly. “I go for the

bread myself! Oh, no matter!”

He laid down his strong, reeking cigar in a conspicuous place, put on

his hat, and went out.

When he had gone, Volodia’s mother began telling the music teacher of

her visit to Madame Shumikin’s, and of the enthusiastic reception she

had had there.

“Lily Shumikin is a relative of mine, you know,” she said. “Her husband,

General Shumikin, was a cousin of my husband’s. She was the Baroness

Kolb before her marriage.”

“Mother, that isn’t true!” cried Volodia exasperated. “Why do you lie

so?”

Now he knew that his mother was not lying, and that in her account of

General Shumikin and Baroness Kolb there was not a word of untruth, but

he felt none the less as if she were lying. The tone of her voice, the

expression of her face, her glance—all were false.

“It’s a lie!” Volodia repeated, bringing his fist down on the table with

such a bang that the cups and saucers rattled and mamma spilled her tea.

“What makes you talk about generals and baronesses? It’s all a lie!”

The music teacher was embarrassed and coughed behind her handkerchief,

as if she had swallowed a crumb. Mamma burst into tears.

“How can I get away from here?” thought Volodia.

He was ashamed to go to the house of any of his school friends. Once

more he unexpectedly remembered the two little English girls. He walked

across the parlour and into Monsieur Augustin’s room. There the air

smelled strongly of volatile oils and glycerine soap. Quantities of

little bottles full of liquids of various colours cluttered the table,

the window-sills, and even the chairs. Volodia took up a paper and read

the heading: “Le Figaro.” The paper exhaled a strong and pleasant

fragrance. He picked up a revolver that lay on the table.

“There, there, don’t mind what he says!” the music teacher was consoling

his mother in the next room. “He is still young, and young men always do

foolish things. We must make up our minds to that.”

“No, Miss Eugenia, he has been spoiled,” moaned his mother. “There is no

one who has any authority over him, and I am too weak to do anything.

Oh, I am very unhappy.”

Volodia put the barrel of the revolver into his mouth, felt something

which he thought was the trigger, and pulled—Then he found another

little hook and pulled again. He took the revolver out of his mouth and

examined the lock. He had never held a firearm in his hands in his life.

“I suppose this thing ought to be raised,” he thought. “Yes, I think

that is right.”

Monsieur Augustin entered the parlour laughing and began to recount some

adventure he had had on the way. Volodia once more put the barrel into

his mouth, seized it between his teeth, and pulled a little hook he felt

with his fingers. A shot rang out—something hit him with tremendous

force in the back of the neck, and he fell forward upon the table with

his face among the bottles and glasses. He saw his father wearing a high

hat with a wide silk band, because he was wearing mourning for some lady

in Mentone, and felt himself suddenly seized in his arms and fall with

him into a very deep, black abyss.

Then everything grew confused and faded away.