My “passion” dated from that day. I felt at that time, I recollect,
something like what a man must feel on entering the service: I had
ceased now to be simply a young boy; I was in love. I have said that my
passion dated from that day; I might have added that my sufferings too
dated from the same day. Away from Zinaïda I pined; nothing was to my
mind; everything went wrong with me; I spent whole days thinking
intensely about her … I pined when away,… but in her presence I was no
better off. I was jealous; I was conscious of my insignificance; I was
stupidly sulky or stupidly abject, and, all the same, an invincible
force drew me to her, and I could not help a shudder of delight
whenever I stepped through the doorway of her room. Zinaïda guessed at
once that I was in love with her, and indeed I never even thought of
concealing it. She amused herself with my passion, made a fool of me,
petted and tormented me. There is a sweetness in being the sole source,
the autocratic and irresponsible cause of the greatest joy and
profoundest pain to another, and I was like wax in Zinaïda’s hands;
though, indeed, I was not the only one in love with her. All the men
who visited the house were crazy over her, and she kept them all in
leading-strings at her feet. It amused her to arouse their hopes and
then their fears, to turn them round her finger (she used to call it
knocking their heads together), while they never dreamed of offering
resistance and eagerly submitted to her. About her whole being, so full
of life and beauty, there was a peculiarly bewitching mixture of
slyness and carelessness, of artificiality and simplicity, of composure
and frolicsomeness; about everything she did or said, about every
action of hers, there clung a delicate, fine charm, in which an
individual power was manifest at work. And her face was ever changing,
working too; it expressed, almost at the same time, irony, dreaminess,
and passion. Various emotions, delicate and quick-changing as the
shadows of clouds on a sunny day of wind, chased one another
continually over her lips and eyes.
Each of her adorers was necessary to her. Byelovzorov, whom she
sometimes called “my wild beast,” and sometimes simply “mine,” would
gladly have flung himself into the fire for her sake. With little
confidence in his intellectual abilities and other qualities, he was
for ever offering her marriage, hinting that the others were merely
hanging about with no serious intention. Meidanov responded to the
poetic fibres of her nature; a man of rather cold temperament, like
almost all writers, he forced himself to convince her, and perhaps
himself, that he adored her, sang her praises in endless verses, and
read them to her with a peculiar enthusiasm, at once affected and
sincere. She sympathised with him, and at the same time jeered at him a
little; she had no great faith in him, and after listening to his
outpourings, she would make him read Pushkin, as she said, to clear the
air. Lushin, the ironical doctor, so cynical in words, knew her better
than any of them, and loved her more than all, though he abused her to
her face and behind her back. She could not help respecting him, but
made him smart for it, and at times, with a peculiar, malignant
pleasure, made him feel that he too was at her mercy. “I’m a flirt, I’m
heartless, I’m an actress in my instincts,” she said to him one day in
my presence; “well and good! Give me your hand then; I’ll stick this
pin in it, you’ll be ashamed of this young man’s seeing it, it will
hurt you, but you’ll laugh for all that, you truthful person.” Lushin
crimsoned, turned away, bit his lips, but ended by submitting his hand.
She pricked it, and he did in fact begin to laugh,… and she laughed,
thrusting the pin in pretty deeply, and peeping into his eyes, which he
vainly strove to keep in other directions….
I understood least of all the relations existing between Zinaïda and
Count Malevsky. He was handsome, clever, and adroit, but something
equivocal, something false in him was apparent even to me, a boy of
sixteen, and I marvelled that Zinaïda did not notice it. But possibly
she did notice this element of falsity really and was not repelled by
it. Her irregular education, strange acquaintances and habits, the
constant presence of her mother, the poverty and disorder in their
house, everything, from the very liberty the young girl enjoyed, with
the consciousness of her superiority to the people around her, had
developed in her a sort of half-contemptuous carelessness and lack of
fastidiousness. At any time anything might happen; Vonifaty might
announce that there was no sugar, or some revolting scandal would come
to her ears, or her guests would fall to quarrelling among
themselves—she would only shake her curls, and say, “What does it
matter?” and care little enough about it.
But my blood, anyway, was sometimes on fire with indignation when
Malevsky approached her, with a sly, fox-like action, leaned gracefully
on the back of her chair, and began whispering in her ear with a
self-satisfied and ingratiating little smile, while she folded her arms
across her bosom, looked intently at him and smiled too, and shook her
head.
“What induces you to receive Count Malevsky?” I asked her one day.
“He has such pretty moustaches,” she answered. “But that’s rather
beyond you.”
“You needn’t think I care for him,” she said to me another time. “No; I
can’t care for people I have to look down upon. I must have some one
who can master me…. But, merciful heavens, I hope I may never come
across any one like that! I don’t want to be caught in any one’s claws,
not for anything.”
“You’ll never be in love, then?”
“And you? Don’t I love you?” she said, and she flicked me on the nose
with the tip of her glove.
Yes, Zinaïda amused herself hugely at my expense. For three weeks I saw
her every day, and what didn’t she do with me! She rarely came to see
us, and I was not sorry for it; in our house she was transformed into a
young lady, a young princess, and I was a little overawed by her. I was
afraid of betraying myself before my mother; she had taken a great
dislike to Zinaïda, and kept a hostile eye upon us. My father I was not
so much afraid of; he seemed not to notice me. He talked little to her,
but always with special cleverness and significance. I gave up working
and reading; I even gave up walking about the neighbourhood and riding
my horse. Like a beetle tied by the leg, I moved continually round and
round my beloved little lodge. I would gladly have stopped there
altogether, it seemed … but that was impossible. My mother scolded me,
and sometimes Zinaïda herself drove me away. Then I used to shut myself
up in my room, or go down to the very end of the garden, and climbing
into what was left of a tall stone greenhouse, now in ruins, sit for
hours with my legs hanging over the wall that looked on to the road,
gazing and gazing and seeing nothing. White butterflies flitted lazily
by me, over the dusty nettles; a saucy sparrow settled not far off on
the half crumbling red brickwork and twittered irritably, incessantly
twisting and turning and preening his tail-feathers; the still
mistrustful rooks cawed now and then, sitting high, high up on the bare
top of a birch-tree; the sun and wind played softly on its pliant
branches; the tinkle of the bells of the Don monastery floated across
to me from time to time, peaceful and dreary; while I sat, gazed,
listened, and was filled full of a nameless sensation in which all was
contained: sadness and joy and the foretaste of the future, and the
desire and dread of life. But at that time I understood nothing of it,
and could have given a name to nothing of all that was passing at
random within me, or should have called it all by one name—the name of
Zinaïda.
Zinaïda continued to play cat and mouse with me. She flirted with me,
and I was all agitation and rapture; then she would suddenly thrust me
away, and I dared not go near her—dared not look at her.
I remember she was very cold to me for several days together; I was
completely crushed, and creeping timidly to their lodge, tried to keep
close to the old princess, regardless of the circumstance that she was
particularly scolding and grumbling just at that time; her financial
affairs had been going badly, and she had already had two
“explanations” with the police officials.
One day I was walking in the garden beside the familiar fence, and I
caught sight of Zinaïda; leaning on both arms, she was sitting on the
grass, not stirring a muscle. I was about to make off cautiously, but
she suddenly raised her head and beckoned me imperiously. My heart
failed me; I did not understand her at first. She repeated her signal.
I promptly jumped over the fence and ran joyfully up to her, but she
brought me to a halt with a look, and motioned me to the path two paces
from her. In confusion, not knowing what to do, I fell on my knees at
the edge of the path. She was so pale, such bitter suffering, such
intense weariness, was expressed in every feature of her face, that it
sent a pang to my heart, and I muttered unconsciously, “What is the
matter?”
Zinaïda stretched out her head, picked a blade of grass, bit it and
flung it away from her.
“You love me very much?” she asked at last. “Yes.”