Trirodov loved to be alone. Solitude and silence were a holiday to
him. How significant seemed his lonely experiences to him, how
delicious his devotion to his visions. Some one came to him, something
appeared before him, wonderful apparitions visited him, now in dream,
now in his waking hours, and they consumed his sadness.
Sadness was Trirodov’s habitual state. Only while writing his poems
and his prose did he find self-oblivion--an astonishing state, in
which time is shrivelled up and consumed, in which great inspiration
consoles her chosen ones with divine exultation for all burdens, for
all annoyances in life.
He wrote much, published little. His fame was very limited--there were
few who read his verses and prose, and even among these but a few who
acknowledged his talent. His stories and lyrical poems were not
distinguished by any especial obscurity or any especial decadent
mannerisms. They bore the imprint of something strange and exquisite.
It needed an especial kind of soul to appreciate this poetry which
seemed so simple at the first glance, yet actually so out of the
ordinary.
To others, from among those who knew him, the public’s ignorance of
him appeared inexplicable. His capabilities seemed sufficiently great
to awaken the attention and admiration of the crowd. But he, to some
extent, detested people--perhaps because he was too confident of his
own genius--and he never made a definite effort to gratify them. And
that was why his works were only rarely published.
In general, Trirodov did not encourage intimacies with people. He
found it painful to look with involuntary penetration into the
confusion of their dark, foggy souls.
He found himself at ease only in the company of his wife. Love makes
kin of souls. But his wife had died a few years ago, when Kirsha was
six years old. Kirsha remembered her; he could not forget her, and
kept on recalling her. Trirodov for some reason associated his wife’s
death with the birth of his son, though there was no obvious
connexion: his wife died from a casual, sharp illness. Trirodov
thought:
“She bore, and therefore had to die. Life is only for the innocent.”
After her death he always awaited her; there was for him the consoling
thought:
“She will come. She will not deceive me. She will give a sign. She
will take me with her.”
And life became as easy to bear as a vacillant vision seen in dream.
He loved to look at his wife’s portrait. It was painted by a
celebrated English artist and hung in his study. There were also many
photographic reproductions of her. It was his joy to muse of her and,
musing, to delight in images of her handsome face and her lovely body.
Sometimes his solitude was broken by the intrusion of external life
and external, unemotional love. A woman used to come in to him
sometimes--a strange, undemanding woman who seemed to come from
nowhere and to lead to nowhere. Trirodov had had relations with her
for several months. She was an instructress in the local girls’
school, Ekaterina Nikolayevna Alkina--a quiet, tranquil, cold creature
with dark red hair and a thin face, the dull pallor of which
emphasized the impressively vivid lips of her large mouth; it seemed
as if all the sensuality and colour of the face had poured themselves
into the lips and made them startlingly and painfully vivid and
suggestive of sin. She had married and had parted from her husband.
She had a son, who lived with her. She was an S.D.[14] and worked in
the organization, but all this was merely incidental in her life. She
met Trirodov in party work. Her comrades understood as by some
intuition that in order to carry on negotiations with Trirodov, who
did not permit himself any intimacy with them, it was necessary to
choose this woman.
And now Alkina had come again, and began as always:
“I’ve come on business.”
Trirodov regarded her with a deep, tranquil glance and answered her
with the usual commonplaces of welcome.
Slightly agitated by hidden desires, Alkina spoke of the “business” in
hand.
It had already been decided that the party orator who was to come to
speak at the projected mass meeting would be quartered at Trirodov’s:
this was thought to be the least dangerous place. Alkina came to say
that the orator was expected that evening. It was necessary to bring
him to Trirodov’s house in such a way that the town should not know
anything about it. As soon as they had decided at what entrance he
should be received Trirodov went out of the room to make the necessary
arrangements. The agreeable consciousness of creative mystery filled
him with joy.
When Trirodov returned Alkina was standing at the table and turning
over the pages of a new book. Her hands trembled slightly. She glanced
expectantly at Trirodov. She appeared to wish to say something
meaningful and tender--but instead she resumed her remarks on
business. She told him what was new in town, in her school, in the
organization--about the confiscation of the local newspaper, about
personalities ordered to leave town by the police, about the factory
ferment.
“Who will be our own speakers at the mass meeting?” asked Trirodov.
“Bodeyev, from the school, for one.”
“I do not like his manner of speaking,”, said Trirodov.
“He’s a good party workman,” observed Alkina with a timid smile. “He’s
to be valued for that.”
“You know, of course, that I am not much of a party man,” said
Trirodov.
Alkina was silent. She trembled lightly as she rose from her seat,
then suddenly ceased to be agitated. Only her vivid lips, speaking
slowly, seemed to be alive in her pale face.
“Giorgiy Sergeyevitch, will you love me a little?”
Trirodov smiled. He sat quietly in his chair and looked at her simply
and dispassionately. He did not answer at once. Alkina asked again
with her sad and gentle humility:
“Perhaps you haven’t the time, nor the desire?”
“No, Katya, I shall be glad,” answered Trirodov calmly. “You’ll find
it convenient in there,” and he signified with his eyes the little
neighbouring room which had no other exit.
Alkina flushed lightly and said:
“If you will permit me, I’d rather undress here. It would give me joy
to have you look at me a long time.”
Trirodov helped her to undo the clasps of her skirt. Alkina sat down
on a chair, bent over, and began to undo the buttons of her boots.
Then, with evident enjoyment at having freed her feet, she walked
slowly across the floor towards the door and turned the key in the
lock.
“As you know, I have but one joy,” she said.
She gracefully threw off her clothes and stood before Trirodov with
uplifted arms. She was sinuously slender, like a white serpent.
Crossing the fingers of her upraised hands, she bent her whole body
forward, so that she appeared more sinuously slender than ever, and
the curve of her body almost resembled a white ring. Then she relaxed
her arms, stood up erect, all tranquil and self-possessed, and said:
“I want you to take a good look at me. I haven’t grown old yet, have
I? And not altogether faded?”
Trirodov surveyed her with admiration and said quietly:
“Katya, you are as handsome as always.”
Alkina was mistrustful.
“It’s true, isn’t it, that clothes have too long cramped my body and
injured the skin. How can my body be handsome?”
“You are graceful and flexible,” answered Trirodov. “The lines of your
body are somewhat elongated but wholly elastic. If any one were to
measure your body he would find no error in its proportions.”
Alkina scrutinized herself attentively and went on incredulously:
“The lines are good--but the colour? I believe you once said that
Russians often have unpleasant complexions. When I look on the
whiteness of my body I am reminded of plaster of paris, and I begin to
weep because I am so ugly.”
“No, Katya,” asserted Trirodov. “The whiteness of your body is not
like plaster of paris. It is marble, slightly rose-tinged. It is milk
poured into a pink crystal vase. It is mountain snow lit up with the
last glow of sunset. It is a white reverie suffused with rose desire.”
Alkina smiled joyously and flushed lightly as she asked him:
“Will you take a few snapshots of me to-day? Otherwise I shall weep,
because I am so ugly and so meagre that you do not wish to recall
sometimes my face and my body.”
“Yes,” answered Trirodov, “I have a few films ready.”
Alkina laughed gleefully and said:
“Now kiss me.”
She bent over Trirodov and almost fell into his arms. The kisses
seemed tranquil and innocent; it might have been a sister kissing a
brother. How gentle and elastic her skin was under his hands! Alkina
pressed against him with a submissive, yielding movement. Trirodov
carried her to the wide, soft couch. She lay in his arms timidly and
quietly and looked straight into his eyes with a simple, innocent
look.
When the sweet and deep minutes passed, followed by fatigue and shame,
Alkina lay there motionlessly with half-closed eyes--and then said
suddenly:
“I’ve been wanting to ask you, and somehow couldn’t decide to. Do you
detest me? Perhaps you think me very shameless?”
She turned her face towards him and looked at him with frightened,
ashamed eyes. And he answered her with his usual resolution:
“No, Katya. Shame is often needed, in order that we may gain control
over it.”
Alkina once more lay back calmly, basking naked under his glances, as
under the rays of the high Dragon. Trirodov was silent. Alkina laughed
quietly and said:
“My husband used to be so respectable, mean and polite. He never beat
me--he was not a cultured man for nothing--and he never even used
coarse words. If he had but called me a fool! I sometimes think that I
wouldn’t have left him if our quarrels hadn’t passed so quietly, if he
had but beat me, pulled me by my hair, lashed me with something.”
“Sweet?” asked Trirodov.
“Life is so dull,” continued Alkina. “One struggles in the nets of
petty annoyances. If one could but cry out, but give wail to one’s
yearning, one’s woe, one’s unendurable pain!”
She said this with a passion unusual to her and grew silent.