hands were trembling so noticeably that he made haste to hide them
behind his back. At first he was tormented by shame and dread that the
whole drawing-room knew that he had just been kissed and embraced by a
woman. He shrank into himself and looked uneasily about him, but as he
became convinced that people were dancing and talking as calmly as ever,
he gave himself up entirely to the new sensation which he had never
experienced before in his life. Something strange was happening to him.
. . . His neck, round which soft, fragrant arms had so lately been
clasped, seemed to him to be anointed with oil; on his left cheek near
his moustache where the unknown had kissed him there was a faint chilly
tingling sensation as from peppermint drops, and the more he rubbed the
place the more distinct was the chilly sensation; all over, from head to
foot, he was full of a strange new feeling which grew stronger and
stronger . . . . He wanted to dance, to talk, to run into the garden, to
laugh aloud. . . . He quite forgot that he was round-shouldered and
uninteresting, that he had lynx-like whiskers and an "undistinguished
appearance" (that was how his appearance had been described by some
ladies whose conversation he had accidentally overheard). When Von
Rabbek's wife happened to pass by him, he gave her such a broad and
friendly smile that she stood still and looked at him inquiringly.
"I like your house immensely!" he said, setting his spectacles straight.
The General's wife smiled and said that the house had belonged to her
father; then she asked whether his parents were living, whether he had
long been in the army, why he was so thin, and so on. . . . After
receiving answers to her questions, she went on, and after his
conversation with her his smiles were more friendly than ever, and he
thought he was surrounded by splendid people. . . .
At supper Ryabovitch ate mechanically everything offered him, drank, and
without listening to anything, tried to understand what had just
happened to him. . . . The adventure was of a mysterious and romantic
character, but it was not difficult to explain it. No doubt some girl or
young married lady had arranged a tryst with some one in the dark room;
had waited a long time, and being nervous and excited had taken
Ryabovitch for her hero; this was the more probable as Ryabovitch had
stood still hesitating in the dark room, so that he, too, had seemed
like a person expecting something. . . . This was how Ryabovitch
explained to himself the kiss he had received.
"And who is she?" he wondered, looking round at the women's faces. "She
must be young, for elderly ladies don't give rendezvous. That she was a
lady, one could tell by the rustle of her dress, her perfume, her voice.
. . ."
His eyes rested on the lilac young lady, and he thought her very
attractive; she had beautiful shoulders and arms, a clever face, and a
delightful voice. Ryabovitch, looking at her, hoped that she and no one
else was his unknown. . . . But she laughed somehow artificially and
wrinkled up her long nose, which seemed to him to make her look old.
Then he turned his eyes upon the fair girl in a black dress. She was
younger, simpler, and more genuine, had a charming brow, and drank very
daintily out of her wineglass. Ryabovitch now hoped that it was she. But
soon he began to think her face flat, and fixed his eyes upon the one
next her.
"It's difficult to guess," he thought, musing. "If one takes the
shoulders and arms of the lilac one only, adds the brow of the fair one
and the eyes of the one on the left of Lobytko, then . . ."
He made a combination of these things in his mind and so formed the
image of the girl who had kissed him, the image that he wanted her to
have, but could not find at the table. . . .
After supper, replete and exhilarated, the officers began to take leave
and say thank you. Von Rabbek and his wife began again apologizing that
they could not ask them to stay the night.
"Very, very glad to have met you, gentlemen," said Von Rabbek, and this
time sincerely (probably because people are far more sincere and good-
humoured at speeding their parting guests than on meeting them).
"Delighted. I hope you will come on your way back! Don't stand on
ceremony! Where are you going? Do you want to go by the upper way? No,
go across the garden; it's nearer here by the lower way."
The officers went out into the garden. After the bright light and the
noise the garden seemed very dark and quiet. They walked in silence all
the way to the gate. They were a little drunk, pleased, and in good
spirits, but the darkness and silence made them thoughtful for a minute.
Probably the same idea occurred to each one of them as to Ryabovitch:
would there ever come a time for them when, like Von Rabbek, they would
have a large house, a family, a garden-- when they, too, would be able to
welcome people, even though insincerely, feed them, make them drunk and
contented?
Going out of the garden gate, they all began talking at once and
laughing loudly about nothing. They were walking now along the little
path that led down to the river, and then ran along the water's edge,
winding round the bushes on the bank, the pools, and the willows that
overhung the water. The bank and the path were scarcely visible, and the
other bank was entirely plunged in darkness. Stars were reflected here
and there on the dark water; they quivered and were broken up on the
surface--and from that alone it could be seen that the river was flowing
rapidly. It was still. Drowsy curlews cried plaintively on the further
bank, and in one of the bushes on the nearest side a nightingale was
trilling loudly, taking no notice of the crowd of officers. The officers
stood round the bush, touched it, but the nightingale went on singing.
"What a fellow!" they exclaimed approvingly. "We stand beside him and he
takes not a bit of notice! What a rascal!"
At the end of the way the path went uphill, and, skirting the church
enclosure, turned into the road. Here the officers, tired with walking
uphill, sat down and lighted their cigarettes. On the other side of the
river a murky red fire came into sight, and having nothing better to do,
they spent a long time in discussing whether it was a camp fire or a
light in a window, or something else. . . . Ryabovitch, too, looked at
the light, and he fancied that the light looked and winked at him, as
though it knew about the kiss.
On reaching his quarters, Ryabovitch undressed as quickly as possible
and got into bed. Lobytko and Lieutenant Merzlyakov--a peaceable, silent
fellow, who was considered in his own circle a highly educated officer,
and was always, whenever it was possible, reading the "Vyestnik Evropi,"
which he carried about with him everywhere-- were quartered in the same
hut with Ryabovitch. Lobytko undressed, walked up and down the room for
a long while with the air of a man who has not been satisfied, and sent
his orderly for beer. Merzlyakov got into bed, put a candle by his
pillow and plunged into reading the "Vyestnik Evropi."
"Who was she?" Ryabovitch wondered, looking at the smoky ceiling.
His neck still felt as though he had been anointed with oil, and there
was still the chilly sensation near his mouth as though from peppermint
drops. The shoulders and arms of the young lady in lilac, the brow and
the truthful eyes of the fair girl in black, waists, dresses, and
brooches, floated through his imagination. He tried to fix his attention
on these images, but they danced about, broke up and flickered. When
these images vanished altogether from the broad dark background which
every man sees when he closes his eyes, he began to hear hurried
footsteps, the rustle of skirts, the sound of a kiss and--an intense
groundless joy took possession of him . . . . Abandoning himself to this
joy, he heard the orderly return and announce that there was no beer.
Lobytko was terribly indignant, and began pacing up and down again.
"Well, isn't he an idiot?" he kept saying, stopping first before
Ryabovitch and then before Merzlyakov. "What a fool and a dummy a man
must be not to get hold of any beer! Eh? Isn't he a scoundrel?"
"Of course you can't get beer here," said Merzlyakov, not removing his
eyes from the "Vyestnik Evropi."
"Oh! Is that your opinion?" Lobytko persisted. "Lord have mercy upon us,
if you dropped me on the moon I'd find you beer and women directly! I'll
go and find some at once. . . . You may call me an impostor if I don't!"
He spent a long time in dressing and pulling on his high boots, then
finished smoking his cigarette in silence and went out.
"Rabbek, Grabbek, Labbek," he muttered, stopping in the outer room. "I
don't care to go alone, damn it all! Ryabovitch, wouldn't you like to go
for a walk? Eh?"
Receiving no answer, he returned, slowly undressed and got into bed.
Merzlyakov sighed, put the "Vyestnik Evropi" away, and put out the
light.
"H'm! . . ." muttered Lobytko, lighting a cigarette in the dark.
Ryabovitch pulled the bed-clothes over his head, curled himself up in
bed, and tried to gather together the floating images in his mind and to
combine them into one whole. But nothing came of it. He soon fell
asleep, and his last thought was that some one had caressed him and made
him happy--that something extraordinary, foolish, but joyful and
delightful, had come into his life. The thought did not leave him even
in his sleep.
When he woke up the sensations of oil on his neck and the chill of
peppermint about his lips had gone, but joy flooded his heart just as
the day before. He looked enthusiastically at the window-frames, gilded
by the light of the rising sun, and listened to the movement of the
passers-by in the street. People were talking loudly close to the
window. Lebedetsky, the commander of Ryabovitch's battery, who had only
just overtaken the brigade, was talking to his sergeant at the top of
his voice, being always accustomed to shout.
"What else?" shouted the commander.
"When they were shoeing yesterday, your high nobility, they drove a nail
into Pigeon's hoof. The vet. put on clay and vinegar; they are leading
him apart now. And also, your honour, Artemyev got drunk yesterday, and
the lieutenant ordered him to be put in the limber of a spare gun-
carriage."
The sergeant reported that Karpov had forgotten the new cords for the
trumpets and the rings for the tents, and that their honours, the
officers, had spent the previous evening visiting General Von Rabbek. In
the middle of this conversation the red-bearded face of Lebedetsky
appeared in the window. He screwed up his short-sighted eyes, looking at
the sleepy faces of the officers, and said good-morning to them.
"Is everything all right?" he asked.
"One of the horses has a sore neck from the new collar," answered
Lobytko, yawning.
The commander sighed, thought a moment, and said in a loud voice:
"I am thinking of going to see Alexandra Yevgrafovna. I must call on
her. Well, good-bye. I shall catch you up in the evening."
A quarter of an hour later the brigade set off on its way. When it was
moving along the road by the granaries, Ryabovitch looked at the house
on the right. The blinds were down in all the windows. Evidently the
household was still asleep. The one who had kissed Ryabovitch the day
before was asleep, too. He tried to imagine her asleep. The wide-open
windows of the bedroom, the green branches peeping in, the morning
freshness, the scent of the poplars, lilac, and roses, the bed, a chair,
and on it the skirts that had rustled the day before, the little
slippers, the little watch on the table --all this he pictured to himself
clearly and distinctly, but the features of the face, the sweet sleepy
smile, just what was characteristic and important, slipped through his
imagination like quicksilver through the fingers. When he had ridden on
half a mile, he looked back: the yellow church, the house, and the
river, were all bathed in light; the river with its bright green banks,
with the blue sky reflected in it and glints of silver in the sunshine
here and there, was very beautiful. Ryabovitch gazed for the last time
at Myestetchki, and he felt as sad as though he were parting with
something very near and dear to him.
And before him on the road lay nothing but long familiar, uninteresting
pictures. . . . To right and to left, fields of young rye and buckwheat
with rooks hopping about in them. If one looked ahead, one saw dust and
the backs of men's heads; if one looked back, one saw the same dust and
faces. . . . Foremost of all marched four men with sabres--this was the
vanguard. Next, behind, the crowd of singers, and behind them the
trumpeters on horseback. The vanguard and the chorus of singers, like
torch-bearers in a funeral procession, often forgot to keep the
regulation distance and pushed a long way ahead. . . . Ryabovitch was
with the first cannon of the fifth battery. He could see all the four
batteries moving in front of him. For any one not a military man this
long tedious procession of a moving brigade seems an intricate and
unintelligible muddle; one cannot understand why there are so many
people round one cannon, and why it is drawn by so many horses in such a
strange network of harness, as though it really were so terrible and
heavy. To Ryabovitch it was all perfectly comprehensible and therefore
uninteresting. He had known for ever so long why at the head of each
battery there rode a stalwart bombardier, and why he was called a
bombardier; immediately behind this bombardier could be seen the
horsemen of the first and then of the middle units. Ryabovitch knew that
the horses on which they rode, those on the left, were called one name,
while those on the right were called another--it was extremely
uninteresting. Behind the horsemen came two shaft-horses. On one of them
sat a rider with the dust of yesterday on his back and a clumsy and
funny-looking piece of wood on his leg. Ryabovitch knew the object of
this piece of wood, and did not think it funny. All the riders waved
their whips mechanically and shouted from time to time. The cannon
itself was ugly. On the fore part lay sacks of oats covered with canvas,
and the cannon itself was hung all over with kettles, soldiers'
knapsacks, bags, and looked like some small harmless animal surrounded
for some unknown reason by men and horses. To the leeward of it marched
six men, the gunners, swinging their arms. After the cannon there came
again more bombardiers, riders, shaft-horses, and behind them another
cannon, as ugly and unimpressive as the first. After the second followed
a third, a fourth; near the fourth an officer, and so on. There were six
batteries in all in the brigade, and four cannons in each battery. The
procession covered half a mile; it ended in a string of wagons near
which an extremely attractive creature--the ass, Magar, brought by a
battery commander from Turkey--paced pensively with his long-eared head
drooping.
Ryabovitch looked indifferently before and behind, at the backs of heads
and at faces; at any other time he would have been half asleep, but now
he was entirely absorbed in his new agreeable thoughts. At first when
the brigade was setting off on the march he tried to persuade himself
that the incident of the kiss could only be interesting as a mysterious
little adventure, that it was in reality trivial, and to think of it
seriously, to say the least of it, was stupid; but now he bade farewell
to logic and gave himself up to dreams. . . . At one moment he imagined
himself in Von Rabbek's drawing-room beside a girl who was like the
young lady in lilac and the fair girl in black; then he would close his
eyes and see himself with another, entirely unknown girl, whose features
were very vague. In his imagination he talked, caressed her, leaned on
her shoulder, pictured war, separation, then meeting again, supper with
his wife, children. . . .
"Brakes on!" the word of command rang out every time they went downhill.
He, too, shouted "Brakes on!" and was afraid this shout would disturb
his reverie and bring him back to reality. . . .
As they passed by some landowner's estate Ryabovitch looked over the
fence into the garden. A long avenue, straight as a ruler, strewn with
yellow sand and bordered with young birch-trees, met his eyes. . . .
With the eagerness of a man given up to dreaming, he pictured to himself
little feminine feet tripping along yellow sand, and quite unexpectedly
had a clear vision in his imagination of the girl who had kissed him and
whom he had succeeded in picturing to himself the evening before at
supper. This image remained in his brain and did not desert him again.
At midday there was a shout in the rear near the string of wagons:
"Easy! Eyes to the left! Officers!"
The general of the brigade drove by in a carriage with a pair of white
horses. He stopped near the second battery, and shouted something which
no one understood. Several officers, among them Ryabovitch, galloped up
to them.
"Well?" asked the general, blinking his red eyes. "Are there any sick?"
Receiving an answer, the general, a little skinny man, chewed, thought
for a moment and said, addressing one of the officers:
"One of your drivers of the third cannon has taken off his leg-guard and
hung it on the fore part of the cannon, the rascal. Reprimand him."
He raised his eyes to Ryabovitch and went on:
"It seems to me your front strap is too long."
Making a few other tedious remarks, the general looked at Lobytko and
grinned.
"You look very melancholy today, Lieutenant Lobytko," he said. "Are you
pining for Madame Lopuhov? Eh? Gentlemen, he is pining for Madame
Lopuhov."
The lady in question was a very stout and tall person who had long
passed her fortieth year. The general, who had a predilection for solid
ladies, whatever their ages, suspected a similar taste in his officers.
The officers smiled respectfully. The general, delighted at having said
something very amusing and biting, laughed loudly, touched his
coachman's back, and saluted. The carriage rolled on. . . .
"All I am dreaming about now which seems to me so impossible and
unearthly is really quite an ordinary thing," thought Ryabovitch,
looking at the clouds of dust racing after the general's carriage. "It's
all very ordinary, and every one goes through it. . . . That general,
for instance, has once been in love; now he is married and has children.
Captain Vahter, too, is married and beloved, though the nape of his neck
is very red and ugly and he has no waist. . . . Salrnanov is coarse and
very Tatar, but he has had a love affair that has ended in marriage. . .
. I am the same as every one else, and I, too, shall have the same
experience as every one else, sooner or later. . . ."
And the thought that he was an ordinary person, and that his life was
ordinary, delighted him and gave him courage. He pictured her and his
happiness as he pleased, and put no rein on his imagination.
When the brigade reached their halting-place in the evening, and the
officers were resting in their tents, Ryabovitch, Merzlyakov, and
Lobytko were sitting round a box having supper. Merzlyakov ate without
haste, and, as he munched deliberately, read the "Vyestnik Evropi,"
which he held on his knees. Lobytko talked incessantly and kept filling
up his glass with beer, and Ryabovitch, whose head was confused from
dreaming all day long, drank and said nothing. After three glasses he
got a little drunk, felt weak, and had an irresistible desire to impart
his new sensations to his comrades.
"A strange thing happened to me at those Von Rabbeks'," he began, trying
to put an indifferent and ironical tone into his voice. "You know I went
into the billiard-room. . . ."
He began describing very minutely the incident of the kiss, and a moment
later relapsed into silence. . . . In the course of that moment he had
told everything, and it surprised him dreadfully to find how short a
time it took him to tell it. He had imagined that he could have been
telling the story of the kiss till next morning. Listening to him,
Lobytko, who was a great liar and consequently believed no one, looked
at him sceptically and laughed. Merzlyakov twitched his eyebrows and,
without removing his eyes from the "Vyestnik Evropi," said:
"That's an odd thing! How strange! . . . throws herself on a man's neck,
without addressing him by name. .. . She must be some sort of hysterical
neurotic."
"Yes, she must," Ryabovitch agreed.
"A similar thing once happened to me," said Lobytko, assuming a scared
expression. "I was going last year to Kovno. . . . I took a second-class
ticket. The train was crammed, and it was impossible to sleep. I gave
the guard half a rouble; he took my luggage and led me to another
compartment. . . . I lay down and covered myself with a rug. . . . It
was dark, you understand. Suddenly I felt some one touch me on the
shoulder and breathe in my face. I made a movement with my hand and felt
somebody's elbow. . . . I opened my eyes and only imagine--a woman. Black
eyes, lips red as a prime salmon, nostrils breathing passionately--a
bosom like a buffer. . . ."
"Excuse me," Merzlyakov interrupted calmly, "I understand about the
bosom, but how could you see the lips if it was dark?"
Lobytko began trying to put himself right and laughing at Merzlyakov's
unimaginativeness. It made Ryabovitch wince. He walked away from the
box, got into bed, and vowed never to confide again.
Camp life began. . . . The days flowed by, one very much like another.
All those days Ryabovitch felt, thought, and behaved as though he were
in love. Every morning when his orderly handed him water to wash with,
and he sluiced his head with cold water, he thought there was something
warm and delightful in his life.
In the evenings when his comrades began talking of love and women, he
would listen, and draw up closer; and he wore the expression of a
soldier when he hears the description of a battle in which he has taken
part. And on the evenings when the officers, out on the spree with the
setter--Lobytko--at their head, made Don Juan excursions to the "suburb,"
and Ryabovitch took part in such excursions, he always was sad, felt
profoundly guilty, and inwardly begged her forgiveness. . . . In hours
of leisure or on sleepless nights, when he felt moved to recall his
childhood, his father and mother-- everything near and dear, in fact, he
invariably thought of Myestetchki, the strange horse, Von Rabbek, his
wife who was like the Empress Eugénie, the dark room, the crack of
light at the door. . . .
On the thirty-first of August he went back from the camp, not with the
whole brigade, but with only two batteries of it. He was dreaming and
excited all the way, as though he were going back to his native place.
He had an intense longing to see again the strange horse, the church,
the insincere family of the Von Rabbeks, the dark room. The "inner
voice," which so often deceives lovers, whispered to him for some reason
that he would be sure to see her . . . and he was tortured by the
questions, How he should meet her? What he would talk to her about?
Whether she had forgotten the kiss? If the worst came to the worst, he
thought, even if he did not meet her, it would be a pleasure to him
merely to go through the dark room and recall the past. . . .
Towards evening there appeared on the horizon the familiar church and
white granaries. Ryabovitch's heart beat. . . . He did not hear the
officer who was riding beside him and saying something to him, he forgot
everything, and looked eagerly at the river shining in the distance, at
the roof of the house, at the dovecote round which the pigeons were
circling in the light of the setting sun.
When they reached the church and were listening to the billeting orders,
he expected every second that a man on horseback would come round the
church enclosure and invite the officers to tea, but . . . the billeting
orders were read, the officers were in haste to go on to the village,
and the man on horseback did not appear.
"Von Rabbek will hear at once from the peasants that we have come and
will send for us," thought Ryabovitch, as he went into the hut, unable
to understand why a comrade was lighting a candle and why the orderlies
were hurriedly setting samovars. . . .
A painful uneasiness took possession of him. He lay down, then got up
and looked out of the window to see whether the messenger were coming.
But there was no sign of him.
He lay down again, but half an hour later he got up, and, unable to
restrain his uneasiness, went into the street and strode towards the
church. It was dark and deserted in the square near the church . . . .
Three soldiers were standing silent in a row where the road began to go
downhill. Seeing Ryabovitch, they roused themselves and saluted. He
returned the salute and began to go down the familiar path.
On the further side of the river the whole sky was flooded with crimson:
the moon was rising; two peasant women, talking loudly, were picking
cabbage in the kitchen garden; behind the kitchen garden there were some
dark huts. . . . And everything on the near side of the river was just
as it had been in May: the path, the bushes, the willows overhanging the
water . . . but there was no sound of the brave nightingale, and no
scent of poplar and fresh grass.