dark and still. . . . He could see nothing but the white stems of the
nearest birch-trees and a little bit of the avenue; all the rest melted
together into a dark blur. Ryabovitch looked and listened eagerly, but
after waiting for a quarter of an hour without hearing a sound or
catching a glimpse of a light, he trudged back. . . .
He went down to the river. The General's bath-house and the bath-sheets
on the rail of the little bridge showed white before him. . . . He went
on to the bridge, stood a little, and, quite unnecessarily, touched the
sheets. They felt rough and cold. He looked down at the water. . . . The
river ran rapidly and with a faintly audible gurgle round the piles of
the bath-house. The red moon was reflected near the left bank; little
ripples ran over the reflection, stretching it out, breaking it into
bits, and seemed trying to carry it away.
"How stupid, how stupid!" thought Ryabovitch, looking at the running
water. "How unintelligent it all is!"
Now that he expected nothing, the incident of the kiss, his impatience,
his vague hopes and disappointment, presented themselves in a clear
light. It no longer seemed to him strange that he had not seen the
General's messenger, and that he would never see the girl who had
accidentally kissed him instead of some one else; on the contrary, it
would have been strange if he had seen her. . . .
The water was running, he knew not where or why, just as it did in May.
In May it had flowed into the great river, from the great river into the
sea; then it had risen in vapour, turned into rain, and perhaps the very
same water was running now before Ryabovitch's eyes again. . . . What
for? Why?
And the whole world, the whole of life, seemed to Ryabovitch an
unintelligible, aimless jest. . . . And turning his eyes from the water
and looking at the sky, he remembered again how fate in the person of an
unknown woman had by chance caressed him, he remembered his summer
dreams and fancies, and his life struck him as extraordinarily meagre,
poverty-stricken, and colourless. . . .
When he went back to his hut he did not find one of his comrades. The
orderly informed him that they had all gone to "General von Rabbek's,
who had sent a messenger on horseback to invite them. . . ."
For an instant there was a flash of joy in Ryabovitch's heart, but he
quenched it at once, got into bed, and in his wrath with his fate, as
though to spite it, did not go to the General's.
'ANNA ON THE NECK' I
AFTER the wedding they had not even light refreshments; the happy pair
simply drank a glass of champagne, changed into their travelling things,
and drove to the station. Instead of a gay wedding ball and supper,
instead of music and dancing, they went on a journey to pray at a shrine
a hundred and fifty miles away. Many people commended this, saying that
Modest Alexeitch was a man high up in the service and no longer young,
and that a noisy wedding might not have seemed quite suitable; and music
is apt to sound dreary when a government official of fifty-two marries a
girl who is only just eighteen. People said, too, that Modest Alexeitch,
being a man of principle, had arranged this visit to the monastery
expressly in order to make his young bride realize that even in marriage
he put religion and morality above everything.
The happy pair were seen off at the station. The crowd of relations and
colleagues in the service stood, with glasses in their hands, waiting
for the train to start to shout "Hurrah!" and the bride's father, Pyotr
Leontyitch, wearing a top-hat and the uniform of a teacher, already
drunk and very pale, kept craning towards the window, glass in hand and
saying in an imploring voice:
"Anyuta! Anya, Anya! one word!"
Anna bent out of the window to him, and he whispered something to her,
enveloping her in a stale smell of alcohol, blew into her ear --she could
make out nothing--and made the sign of the cross over her face, her
bosom, and her hands; meanwhile he was breathing in gasps and tears were
shining in his eyes. And the schoolboys, Anna's brothers, Petya and
Andrusha, pulled at his coat from behind, whispering in confusion:
"Father, hush! . . . Father, that's enough. . . ."
When the train started, Anna saw her father run a little way after the
train, staggering and spilling his wine, and what a kind, guilty,
pitiful face he had:
"Hurra--ah!" he shouted.
The happy pair were left alone. Modest Alexeitch looked about the
compartment, arranged their things on the shelves, and sat down,
smiling, opposite his young wife. He was an official of medium height,
rather stout and puffy, who looked exceedingly well nourished, with long
whiskers and no moustache. His clean-shaven, round, sharply defined chin
looked like the heel of a foot. The most characteristic point in his
face was the absence of moustache, the bare, freshly shaven place, which
gradually passed into the fat cheeks, quivering like jelly. His
deportment was dignified, his movements were deliberate, his manner was
soft.
"I cannot help remembering now one circumstance," he said, smiling.
"When, five years ago, Kosorotov received the order of St. Anna of the
second grade, and went to thank His Excellency, His Excellency expressed
himself as follows: 'So now you have three Annas: one in your buttonhole
and two on your neck.' And it must be explained that at that time
Kosorotov's wife, a quarrelsome and frivolous person, had just returned
to him, and that her name was Anna. I trust that when I receive the Anna
of the second grade His Excellency will not have occasion to say the
same thing to me."
He smiled with his little eyes. And she, too, smiled, troubled at the
thought that at any moment this man might kiss her with his thick damp
lips, and that she had no right to prevent his doing so. The soft
movements of his fat person frightened her; she felt both fear and
disgust. He got up, without haste took off the order from his neck, took
off his coat and waistcoat, and put on his dressing-gown.
"That's better," he said, sitting down beside Anna.
Anna remembered what agony the wedding had been, when it had seemed to
her that the priest, and the guests, and every one in church had been
looking at her sorrowfully and asking why, why was she, such a sweet,
nice girl, marrying such an elderly, uninteresting gentleman. Only that
morning she was delighted that everything had been satisfactorily
arranged, but at the time of the wedding, and now in the railway
carriage, she felt cheated, guilty, and ridiculous. Here she had married
a rich man and yet she had no money, her wedding-dress had been bought
on credit, and when her father and brothers had been saying good-bye,
she could see from their faces that they had not a farthing. Would they
have any supper that day? And tomorrow? And for some reason it seemed to
her that her father and the boys were sitting tonight hungry without
her, and feeling the same misery as they had the day after their
mother's funeral.
"Oh, how unhappy I am!" she thought. "Why am I so unhappy?"
With the awkwardness of a man with settled habits, unaccustomed to deal
with women, Modest Alexeitch touched her on the waist and patted her on
the shoulder, while she went on thinking about money, about her mother
and her mother's death. When her mother died, her father, Pyotr
Leontyitch, a teacher of drawing and writing in the high school, had
taken to drink, impoverishment had followed, the boys had not had boots
or goloshes, their father had been hauled up before the magistrate, the
warrant officer had come and made an inventory of the furniture. . . .
What a disgrace! Anna had had to look after her drunken father, darn her
brothers' stockings, go to market, and when she was complimented on her
youth, her beauty, and her elegant manners, it seemed to her that every
one was looking at her cheap hat and the holes in her boots that were
inked over. And at night there had been tears and a haunting dread that
her father would soon, very soon, be dismissed from the school for his
weakness, and that he would not survive it, but would die, too, like
their mother. But ladies of their acquaintance had taken the matter in
hand and looked about for a good match for Anna. This Modest Alexevitch,
who was neither young nor good-looking but had money, was soon found. He
had a hundred thousand in the bank and the family estate, which he had
let on lease. He was a man of principle and stood well with His
Excellency; it would be nothing to him, so they told Anna, to get a note
from His Excellency to the directors of the high school, or even to the
Education Commissioner, to prevent Pyotr Leontyitch from being
dismissed.
While she was recalling these details, she suddenly heard strains of
music which floated in at the window, together with the sound of voices.
The train was stopping at a station. In the crowd beyond the platform an
accordion and a cheap squeaky fiddle were being briskly played, and the
sound of a military band came from beyond the villas and the tall
birches and poplars that lay bathed in the moonlight; there must have
been a dance in the place. Summer visitors and townspeople, who used to
come out here by train in fine weather for a breath of fresh air, were
parading up and down on the platform. Among them was the wealthy owner
of all the summer villas--a tall, stout, dark man called Artynov. He had
prominent eyes and looked like an Armenian. He wore a strange costume;
his shirt was unbuttoned, showing his chest; he wore high boots with
spurs, and a black cloak hung from his shoulders and dragged on the
ground like a train. Two boar-hounds followed him with their sharp noses
to the ground.
Tears were still shining in Anna's eyes, but she was not thinking now of
her mother, nor of money, nor of her marriage; but shaking hands with
schoolboys and officers she knew, she laughed gaily and said quickly:
"How do you do? How are you?"
She went out on to the platform between the carriages into the
moonlight, and stood so that they could all see her in her new splendid
dress and hat.
"Why are we stopping here?" she asked.
"This is a junction. They are waiting for the mail train to pass."
Seeing that Artynov was looking at her, she screwed up her eyes
coquettishly and began talking aloud in French; and because her voice
sounded so pleasant, and because she heard music and the moon was
reflected in the pond, and because Artynov, the notorious Don Juan and
spoiled child of fortune, was looking at her eagerly and with curiosity,
and because every one was in good spirits--she suddenly felt joyful, and
when the train started and the officers of her acquaintance saluted her,
she was humming the polka the strains of which reached her from the
military band playing beyond the trees; and she returned to her
compartment feeling as though it had been proved to her at the station
that she would certainly be happy in spite of everything.
The happy pair spent two days at the monastery, then went back to town.
They lived in a rent-free flat. When Modest Alexevitch had gone to the
office, Anna played the piano, or shed tears of depression, or lay down
on a couch and read novels or looked through fashion papers. At dinner
Modest Alexevitch ate a great deal and talked about politics, about
appointments, transfers, and promotions in the service, about the
necessity of hard work, and said that, family life not being a pleasure
but a duty, if you took care of the kopecks the roubles would take care
of themselves, and that he put religion and morality before everything
else in the world. And holding his knife in his fist as though it were a
sword, he would say:
"Every one ought to have his duties!"
And Anna listened to him, was frightened, and could not eat, and she
usually got up from the table hungry. After dinner her husband lay down
for a nap and snored loudly, while Anna went to see her own people. Her
father and the boys looked at her in a peculiar way, as though just
before she came in they had been blaming her for having married for
money a tedious, wearisome man she did not love; her rustling skirts,
her bracelets, and her general air of a married lady, offended them and
made them uncomfortable. In her presence they felt a little embarrassed
and did not know what to talk to her about; but yet they still loved her
as before, and were not used to having dinner without her. She sat down
with them to cabbage soup, porridge, and fried potatoes, smelling of
mutton dripping. Pyotr Leontyitch filled his glass from the decanter
with a trembling hand and drank it off hurriedly, greedily, with
repulsion, then poured out a second glass and then a third. Petya and
Andrusha, thin, pale boys with big eyes, would take the decanter and say
desperately:
"You mustn't, father. . . . Enough, father. . . ."
And Anna, too, was troubled and entreated him to drink no more; and he
would suddenly fly into a rage and beat the table with his fists:
"I won't allow any one to dictate to me!" he would shout. "Wretched
boys! wretched girl! I'll turn you all out!"
But there was a note of weakness, of good-nature in his voice, and no
one was afraid of him. After dinner he usually dressed in his best.
Pale, with a cut on his chin from shaving, craning his thin neck, he
would stand for half an hour before the glass, prinking, combing his
hair, twisting his black moustache, sprinkling himself with scent, tying
his cravat in a bow; then he would put on his gloves and his top-hat,
and go off to give his private lessons. Or if it was a holiday he would
stay at home and paint, or play the harmonium, which wheezed and
growled; he would try to wrest from it pure harmonious sounds and would
sing to it; or would storm at the boys:
"Wretches! Good-for-nothing boys! You have spoiled the instrument!"
In the evening Anna's husband played cards with his colleagues, who
lived under the same roof in the government quarters. The wives of these
gentlemen would come in--ugly, tastelessly dressed women, as coarse as
cooks--and gossip would begin in the flat as tasteless and unattractive
as the ladies themselves. Sometimes Modest Alexevitch would take Anna to
the theatre. In the intervals he would never let her stir a step from
his side, but walked about arm in arm with her through the corridors and
the foyer. When he bowed to some one, he immediately whispered to Anna:
"A civil councillor . . . visits at His Excellency's"; or, "A man of
means . . . has a house of his own." When they passed the buffet Anna
had a great longing for something sweet; she was fond of chocolate and
apple cakes, but she had no money, and she did not like to ask her
husband. He would take a pear, pinch it with his fingers, and ask
uncertainly:
"How much?"
"Twenty-five kopecks!"
"I say!" he would reply, and put it down; but as it was awkward to leave
the buffet without buying anything, he would order some seltzer-water
and drink the whole bottle himself, and tears would come into his eyes.
And Anna hated him at such times.
And suddenly flushing crimson, he would say to her rapidly:
"Bow to that old lady!"
"But I don't know her."
"No matter. That's the wife of the director of the local treasury! Bow,
I tell you," he would grumble insistently. "Your head won't drop off."
Anna bowed and her head certainly did not drop off, but it was
agonizing. She did everything her husband wanted her to, and was furious
with herself for having let him deceive her like the veriest idiot. She
had only married him for his money, and yet she had less money now than
before her marriage. In old days her father would sometimes give her
twenty kopecks, but now she had not a farthing.
To take money by stealth or ask for it, she could not; she was afraid of
her husband, she trembled before him. She felt as though she had been
afraid of him for years. In her childhood the director of the high
school had always seemed the most impressive and terrifying force in the
world, sweeping down like a thunderstorm or a steam-engine ready to
crush her; another similar force of which the whole family talked, and
of which they were for some reason afraid, was His Excellency; then
there were a dozen others, less formidable, and among them the teachers
at the high school, with shaven upper lips, stern, implacable; and now
finally, there was Modest Alexeitch, a man of principle, who even
resembled the director in the face. And in Anna's imagination all these
forces blended together into one, and, in the form of a terrible, huge
white bear, menaced the weak and erring such as her father. And she was
afraid to say anything in opposition to her husband, and gave a forced
smile, and tried to make a show of pleasure when she was coarsely
caressed and defiled by embraces that excited her terror. Only once
Pyotr Leontyitch had the temerity to ask for a loan of fifty roubles in
order to pay some very irksome debt, but what an agony it had been!
"Very good; I'll give it to you," said Modest Alexeitch after a moment's
thought; "but I warn you I won't help you again till you give up
drinking. Such a failing is disgraceful in a man in the government
service! I must remind you of the well-known fact that many capable
people have been ruined by that passion, though they might possibly,
with temperance, have risen in time to a very high position."
And long-winded phrases followed: "inasmuch as . . .", "following upon
which proposition . . .", "in view of the aforesaid contention . . .";
and Pyotr Leontyitch was in agonies of humiliation and felt an intense
craving for alcohol.
And when the boys came to visit Anna, generally in broken boots and
threadbare trousers, they, too, had to listen to sermons.
"Every man ought to have his duties!" Modest Alexeitch would say to
them.
And he did not give them money. But he did give Anna bracelets, rings,
and brooches, saying that these things would come in useful for a rainy
day. And he often unlocked her drawer and made an inspection to see
whether they were all safe. II
Meanwhile winter came on. Long before Christmas there was an
announcement in the local papers that the usual winter ball would take
place on the twenty-ninth of December in the Hall of Nobility. Every
evening after cards Modest Alexeitch was excitedly whispering with his
colleagues' wives and glancing at Anna, and then paced up and down the
room for a long while, thinking. At last, late one evening, he stood
still, facing Anna, and said:
"You ought to get yourself a ball dress. Do you understand? Only please
consult Marya Grigoryevna and Natalya Kuzminishna."
And he gave her a hundred roubles. She took the money, but she did not
consult any one when she ordered the ball dress; she spoke to no one but
her father, and tried to imagine how her mother would have dressed for a
ball. Her mother had always dressed in the latest fashion and had always
taken trouble over Anna, dressing her elegantly like a doll, and had
taught her to speak French and dance the mazurka superbly (she had been
a governess for five years before her marriage). Like her mother, Anna
could make a new dress out of an old one, clean gloves with benzine,
hire jewels; and, like her mother, she knew how to screw up her eyes,
lisp, assume graceful attitudes, fly into raptures when necessary, and
throw a mournful and enigmatic look into her eyes. And from her father
she had inherited the dark colour of her hair and eyes, her highly-
strung nerves, and the habit of always making herself look her best.
When, half an hour before setting off for the ball, Modest Alexeitch
went into her room without his coat on, to put his order round his neck
before her pier-glass, dazzled by her beauty and the splendour of her
fresh, ethereal dress, he combed his whiskers complacently and said:
"So that's what my wife can look like . . . so that's what you can look
like! Anyuta!" he went on, dropping into a tone of solemnity, "I have
made your fortune, and now I beg you to do something for mine. I beg you
to get introduced to the wife of His Excellency! For God's sake, do!
Through her I may get the post of senior reporting clerk!"
They went to the ball. They reached the Hall of Nobility, the entrance
with the hall porter. They came to the vestibule with the hat-stands,
the fur coats; footmen scurrying about, and ladies with low necks
putting up their fans to screen themselves from the draughts. There was
a smell of gas and of soldiers. When Anna, walking upstairs on her
husband's arm, heard the music and saw herself full length in the
looking-glass in the full glow of the lights, there was a rush of joy in
her heart, and she felt the same presentiment of happiness as in the
moonlight at the station. She walked in proudly, confidently, for the
first time feeling herself not a girl but a lady, and unconsciously
imitating her mother in her walk and in her manner. And for the first
time in her life she felt rich and free. Even her husband's presence did
not oppress her, for as she crossed the threshold of the hall she had
guessed instinctively that the proximity of an old husband did not
detract from her in the least, but, on the contrary, gave her that shade
of piquant mystery that is so attractive to men. The orchestra was
already playing and the dances had begun. After their flat Anna was
overwhelmed by the lights, the bright colours, the music, the noise, and
looking round the room, thought, "Oh, how lovely!" She at once
distinguished in the crowd all her acquaintances, every one she had met
before at parties or on picnics--all the officers, the teachers, the
lawyers, the officials, the landowners, His Excellency, Artynov, and the
ladies of the highest standing, dressed up and very décollettées,
handsome and ugly, who had already taken up their positions in the
stalls and pavilions of the charity bazaar, to begin selling things for
the benefit of the poor. A huge officer in epaulettes--she had been
introduced to him in Staro-Kievsky Street when she was a schoolgirl, but
now she could not remember his name--seemed to spring from out of the
ground, begging her for a waltz, and she flew away from her husband,
feeling as though she were floating away in a sailing-boat in a violent
storm, while her husband was left far away on the shore. She danced
passionately, with fervour, a waltz, then a polka and a quadrille, being
snatched by one partner as soon as she was left by another, dizzy with
music and the noise, mixing Russian with French, lisping, laughing, and
with no thought of her husband or anything else. She excited great
admiration among the men--that was evident, and indeed it could not have
been otherwise; she was breathless with excitement, felt thirsty, and
convulsively clutched her fan. Pyotr Leontyitch, her father, in a
crumpled dress-coat that smelt of benzine, came up to her, offering her
a plate of pink ice.
"You are enchanting this evening," he said, looking at her rapturously,
"and I have never so much regretted that you were in such a hurry to get
married. . . . What was it for? I know you did it for our sake, but . .
." With a shaking hand he drew out a roll of notes and said: "I got the
money for my lessons today, and can pay your husband what I owe him."
She put the plate back into his hand, and was pounced upon by some one
and borne off to a distance. She caught a glimpse over her partner's
shoulder of her father gliding over the floor, putting his arm round a
lady and whirling down the ball-room with her.
"How sweet he is when he is sober!" she thought.
She danced the mazurka with the same huge officer; he moved gravely, as
heavily as a dead carcase in a uniform, twitched his shoulders and his
chest, stamped his feet very languidly--he felt fearfully disinclined to
dance. She fluttered round him, provoking him by her beauty, her bare
neck; her eyes glowed defiantly, her movements were passionate, while he
became more and more indifferent, and held out his hands to her as
graciously as a king.
"Bravo, bravo!" said people watching them.
But little by little the huge officer, too, broke out; he grew lively,
excited, and, overcome by her fascination, was carried away and danced
lightly, youthfully, while she merely moved her shoulders and looked
slyly at him as though she were now the queen and he were her slave; and
at that moment it seemed to her that the whole room was looking at them,
and that everybody was thrilled and envied them. The huge officer had
hardly had time to thank her for the dance, when the crowd suddenly
parted and the men drew themselves up in a strange way, with their hands
at their sides.