lovely prospect! One follows the coffin through the mud and rain. One
walks along, seeing nothing but the cloudy sky and the wretched scenery.
The muddy mutes, taverns, woodstacks. . . . One's trousers drenched to
the knees. The never-ending streets. The time dragging out like
eternity, the coarse people. And on the heart a stone, a stone!"
After a brief pause he suddenly asked: "Is it long since you saw General
Luhatchev?"
"I haven't seen him since last summer."
"He likes to be cock of the walk, but he is a nice little old chap. And
are you still writing?"
"Yes, a little."
"Ah. . . . Do you remember how I pranced about like a needle, like an
enthusiastic ass at those private theatricals when I was courting Zina?
It was stupid, but it was good, it was fun. . . . The very memory of it
brings back a whiff of spring. . . . And now! What a cruel change of
scene! There is a subject for you! Only don't you go in for writing 'the
diary of a suicide.' That's vulgar and conventional. You make something
humorous of it."
"Again you are . . . posing," I said. "There's nothing humorous in your
position."
"Nothing laughable? You say nothing laughable?" Vassilyev sat up, and
tears glistened in his eyes. An expression of bitter distress came into
his pale face. His chin quivered.
"You laugh at the deceit of cheating clerks and faithless wives," he
said, "but no clerk, no faithless wife has cheated as my fate has
cheated me! I have been deceived as no bank depositor, no duped husband
has ever been deceived! Only realise what an absurd fool I have been
made! Last year before your eyes I did not know what to do with myself
for happiness. And now before your eyes. . . ."
Vassilyev's head sank on the pillow and he laughed.
"Nothing more absurd and stupid than such a change could possibly be
imagined. Chapter one: spring, love, honeymoon . . . honey, in fact;
chapter two: looking for a job, the pawnshop, pallor, the chemist's
shop, and . . . to-morrow's splashing through the mud to the graveyard."
He laughed again. I felt acutely uncomfortable and made up my mind to
go.
"I tell you what," I said, "you lie down, and I will go to the
chemist's."
He made no answer. I put on my great-coat and went out of his room. As I
crossed the passage I glanced at the coffin and Madame Mimotih reading
over it. I strained my eyes in vain, I could not recognise in the
swarthy, yellow face Zina, the lively, pretty ingénue of Luhatchev's
company.
"Sic transit," I thought.
With that I went out, not forgetting to take the revolver, and made my
way to the chemist's. But I ought not to have gone away. When I came
back from the chemist's, Vassilyev lay on the sofa fainting. The
bandages had been roughly torn off, and blood was flowing from the
reopened wound. It was daylight before I succeeded in restoring him to
consciousness. He was raving in delirium, shivering, and looking with
unseeing eyes about the room till morning had come, and we heard the
booming voice of the priest as he read the service over the dead.
When Vassilyev's rooms were crowded with old women and mutes, when the
coffin had been moved and carried out of the yard, I advised him to
remain at home. But he would not obey me, in spite of the pain and the
grey, rainy morning. He walked bareheaded and in silence behind the
coffin all the way to the cemetery, hardly able to move one leg after
the other, and from time to time clutching convulsively at his wounded
side. His face expressed complete apathy. Only once when I roused him
from his lethargy by some insignificant question he shifted his eyes
over the pavement and the grey fence, and for a moment there was a gleam
of gloomy anger in them.
"'Weelright,'" he read on a signboard. "Ignorant, illiterate people,
devil take them!"
I led him home from the cemetery.
----
Only one year has passed since that night, and Vassilyev has hardly had
time to wear out the boots in which he tramped through the mud behind
his wife's coffin.
At the present time as I finish this story, he is sitting in my drawing-
room and, playing on the piano, is showing the ladies how provincial
misses sing sentimental songs. The ladies are laughing, and he is
laughing too. He is enjoying himself.
I call him into my study. Evidently not pleased at my taking him from
agreeable company, he comes to me and stands before me in the attitude
of a man who has no time to spare. I give him this story, and ask him to
read it. Always condescending about my authorship, he stifles a sigh,
the sigh of a lazy reader, sits down in an armchair and begins upon it.
"Hang it all, what horrors," he mutters with a smile.
But the further he gets into the reading, the graver his face becomes.
At last, under the stress of painful memories, he turns terribly pale,
he gets up and goes on reading as he stands. When he has finished he
begins pacing from corner to corner.
"How does it end?" I ask him.
"How does it end? H'm. . . ."
He looks at the room, at me, at himself. . . . He sees his new
fashionable suit, hears the ladies laughing and . . . sinking on a
chair, begins laughing as he laughed on that night.
"Wasn't I right when I told you it was all absurd? My God! I have had
burdens to bear that would have broken an elephant's back; the devil
knows what I have suffered--no one could have suffered more, I think, and
where are the traces? It's astonishing. One would have thought the
imprint made on a man by his agonies would have been everlasting, never
to be effaced or eradicated. And yet that imprint wears out as easily as
a pair of cheap boots. There is nothing left, not a scrap. It's as
though I hadn't been suffering then, but had been dancing a mazurka.
Everything in the world is transitory, and that transitoriness is
absurd! A wide field for humorists! Tack on a humorous end, my friend!"
"Pyotr Nikolaevitch, are you coming soon?" The impatient ladies call my
hero.
"This minute," answers the "vain and fatuous" man, setting his tie
straight. "It's absurd and pitiful, my friend, pitiful and absurd, but
what's to be done? Homo sum. . . . And I praise Mother Nature all the
same for her transmutation of substances. If we retained an agonising
memory of toothache and of all the terrors which every one of us has had
to experience, if all that were everlasting, we poor mortals would have
a bad time of it in this life."
I look at his smiling face and I remember the despair and the horror
with which his eyes were filled a year ago when he looked at the dark
window. I see him, entering into his habitual rôle of intellectual
chatterer, prepare to show off his idle theories, such as the
transmutation of substances before me, and at the same time I recall him
sitting on the floor in a pool of blood with his sick imploring eyes.
"How will it end?" I ask myself aloud.
Vassilyev, whistling and straightening his tie, walks off into the
drawing-room, and I look after him, and feel vexed. For some reason I
regret his past sufferings, I regret all that I felt myself on that
man's account on that terrible night. It is as though I had lost
something. . . .
MARI D'ELLE
IT was a free night. Natalya Andreyevna Bronin (her married name was
Nikitin), the opera singer, is lying in her bedroom, her whole being
abandoned to repose. She lies, deliciously drowsy, thinking of her
little daughter who lives somewhere far away with her grandmother or
aunt. . . . The child is more precious to her than the public, bouquets,
notices in the papers, adorers . . . and she would be glad to think
about her till morning. She is happy, at peace, and all she longs for is
not to be prevented from lying undisturbed, dozing and dreaming of her
little girl.
All at once the singer starts, and opens her eyes wide: there is a harsh
abrupt ring in the entry. Before ten seconds have passed the bell
tinkles a second time and a third time. The door is opened noisily and
some one walks into the entry stamping his feet like a horse, snorting
and puffing with the cold.
"Damn it all, nowhere to hang one's coat!" the singer hears a husky bass
voice. "Celebrated singer, look at that! Makes five thousand a year, and
can't get a decent hat-stand!"
"My husband!" thinks the singer, frowning. "And I believe he has brought
one of his friends to stay the night too. . . . Hateful!"
No more peace. When the loud noise of some one blowing his nose and
putting off his goloshes dies away, the singer hears cautious footsteps
in her bedroom. . . . It is her husband, mari d'elle, Denis Petrovitch
Nikitin. He brings a whiff of cold air and a smell of brandy. For a long
while he walks about the bedroom, breathing heavily, and, stumbling
against the chairs in the dark, seems to be looking for something. . . .
"What do you want?" his wife moans, when she is sick of his fussing
about. "You have woken me."
"I am looking for the matches, my love. You . . . you are not asleep
then? I have brought you a message. . . . Greetings from that . . .
what's-his-name? . . . red-headed fellow who is always sending you
bouquets. . . . Zagvozdkin. . . . I have just been to see him."
"What did you go to him for?"
"Oh, nothing particular. . . . We sat and talked and had a drink. Say
what you like, Nathalie, I dislike that individual--I dislike him
awfully! He is a rare blockhead. He is a wealthy man, a capitalist; he
has six hundred thousand, and you would never guess it. Money is no more
use to him than a radish to a dog. He does not eat it himself nor give
it to others. Money ought to circulate, but he keeps tight hold of it,
is afraid to part with it. . . . What's the good of capital lying idle?
Capital lying idle is no better than grass."
Mari d'elle gropes his way to the edge of the bed and, puffing, sits
down at his wife's feet.
"Capital lying idle is pernicious," he goes on. "Why has business gone
downhill in Russia? Because there is so much capital lying idle among
us; they are afraid to invest it. It's very different in England. . . .
There are no such queer fish as Zagvozdkin in England, my girl. . . .
There every farthing is in circulation . . . . Yes. . . . They don't
keep it locked up in chests there . . . ."
"Well, that's all right. I am sleepy."
"Directly. . . . Whatever was it I was talking about? Yes. . . . In
these hard times hanging is too good for Zagvozdkin. . . . He is a fool
and a scoundrel. . . . No better than a fool. If I asked him for a loan
without security--why, a child could see that he runs no risk whatever.
He doesn't understand, the ass! For ten thousand he would have got a
hundred. In a year he would have another hundred thousand. I asked, I
talked . . . but he wouldn't give it me, the blockhead."
"I hope you did not ask him for a loan in my name."
"H'm. . . . A queer question. . . ." Mari d'elle is offended. "Anyway he
would sooner give me ten thousand than you. You are a woman, and I am a
man anyway, a business-like person. And what a scheme I propose to him!
Not a bubble, not some chimera, but a sound thing, substantial! If one
could hit on a man who would understand, one might get twenty thousand
for the idea alone! Even you would understand if I were to tell you
about it. Only you . . . don't chatter about it . . . not a word . . .
but I fancy I have talked to you about it already. Have I talked to you
about sausage-skins?"
"M'm . . . by and by."
"I believe I have. . . . Do you see the point of it? Now the provision
shops and the sausage-makers get their sausage-skins locally, and pay a
high price for them. Well, but if one were to bring sausage-skins from
the Caucasus where they are worth nothing, and where they are thrown
away, then . . . where do you suppose the sausage-makers would buy their
skins, here in the slaughterhouses or from me? From me, of course! Why,
I shall sell them ten times as cheap! Now let us look at it like this:
every year in Petersburg and Moscow and in other centres these same
skins would be bought to the . . . to the sum of five hundred thousand,
let us suppose. That's the minimum. Well, and if. . . ."
"You can tell me to-morrow . . . later on. . . ."
"Yes, that's true. You are sleepy, pardon, I am just going . . . say
what you like, but with capital you can do good business everywhere,
wherever you go. . . . With capital even out of cigarette ends one may
make a million. . . . Take your theatrical business now. Why, for
example, did Lentovsky come to grief? It's very simple. He did not go
the right way to work from the very first. He had no capital and he went
headlong to the dogs. . . . He ought first to have secured his capital,
and then to have gone slowly and cautiously . . . . Nowadays, one can
easily make money by a theatre, whether it is a private one or a
people's one. . . . If one produces the right plays, charges a low price
for admission, and hits the public fancy, one may put a hundred thousand
in one's pocket the first year. . . . You don't understand, but I am
talking sense. . . . You see you are fond of hoarding capital; you are
no better than that fool Zagvozdkin, you heap it up and don't know what
for. . . . You won't listen, you don't want to. . . . If you were to put
it into circulation, you wouldn't have to be rushing all over the place
. . . . You see for a private theatre, five thousand would be enough for
a beginning. . . . Not like Lentovsky, of course, but on a modest scale
in a small way. I have got a manager already, I have looked at a
suitable building. . . . It's only the money I haven't got. . . . If
only you understood things you would have parted with your Five per
cents . . . your Preference shares. . . ."
"No, merci. . . . You have fleeced me enough already. . . . Let me
alone, I have been punished already. . . ."
"If you are going to argue like a woman, then of course . . ." sighs
Nikitin, getting up. "Of course. . . ."
"Let me alone. . . . Come, go away and don't keep me awake. . . . I am
sick of listening to your nonsense."
"H'm. . . . To be sure . . . of course! Fleeced. . . plundered. . . .
What we give we remember, but we don't remember what we take."
"I have never taken anything from you."
"Is that so? But when we weren't a celebrated singer, at whose expense
did we live then? And who, allow me to ask, lifted you out of beggary
and secured your happiness? Don't you remember that?"
"Come, go to bed. Go along and sleep it off."
"Do you mean to say you think I am drunk? . . . if I am so low in the
eyes of such a grand lady. . . I can go away altogether."
"Do. A good thing too."
"I will, too. I have humbled myself enough. And I will go."
"Oh, my God! Oh, do go, then! I shall be delighted!"
"Very well, we shall see."
Nikitin mutters something to himself, and, stumbling over the chairs,
goes out of the bedroom. Then sounds reach her from the entry of
whispering, the shuffling of goloshes and a door being shut. Mari d'elle
has taken offence in earnest and gone out.
"Thank God, he has gone!" thinks the singer. "Now I can sleep."
And as she falls asleep she thinks of her mari d'elle, "what sort of a
man he is, and how this affliction has come upon her. At one time he
used to live at Tchernigov, and had a situation there as a book-keeper.
As an ordinary obscure individual and not the mari d'elle, he had been
quite endurable: he used to go to his work and take his salary, and all
his whims and projects went no further than a new guitar, fashionable
trousers, and an amber cigarette-holder. Since he had become "the
husband of a celebrity" he was completely transformed. The singer
remembered that when first she told him she was going on the stage he
had made a fuss, been indignant, complained to her parents, turned her
out of the house. She had been obliged to go on the stage without his
permission. Afterwards, when he learned from the papers and from various
people that she was earning big sums, he had 'forgiven her,' abandoned
book-keeping, and become her hanger-on. The singer was overcome with
amazement when she looked at her hanger-on: when and where had he
managed to pick up new tastes, polish, and airs and graces? Where had he
learned the taste of oysters and of different Burgundies? Who had taught
him to dress and do his hair in the fashion and call her 'Nathalie'
instead of Natasha?"
"It's strange," thinks the singer. "In old days he used to get his
salary and put it away, but now a hundred roubles a day is not enough
for him. In old days he was afraid to talk before schoolboys for fear of
saying something silly, and now he is overfamiliar even with princes . .
. wretched, contemptible little creature!"
But then the singer starts again; again there is the clang of the bell
in the entry. The housemaid, scolding and angrily flopping with her
slippers, goes to open the door. Again some one comes in and stamps like
a horse.
"He has come back!" thinks the singer. "When shall I be left in peace?
It's revolting!" She is overcome by fury.
"Wait a bit. . . . I'll teach you to get up these farces! You shall go
away. I'll make you go away!"
The singer leaps up and runs barefoot into the little drawing-room where
her mari usually sleeps. She comes at the moment when he is undressing,
and carefully folding his clothes on a chair.
"You went away!" she says, looking at him with bright eyes full of
hatred. "What did you come back for?"
Nikitin remains silent, and merely sniffs.
"You went away! Kindly take yourself off this very minute! This very
minute! Do you hear?"
Mari d'elle coughs and, without looking at his wife, takes off his
braces.
"If you don't go away, you insolent creature, I shall go," the singer
goes on, stamping her bare foot, and looking at him with flashing eyes.
"I shall go! Do you hear, insolent . . . worthless wretch, flunkey, out
you go!"
"You might have some shame before outsiders," mutters her husband . . .
.
The singer looks round and only then sees an unfamiliar countenance that
looks like an actor's. . . . The countenance, seeing the singer's
uncovered shoulders and bare feet, shows signs of embarrassment, and
looks ready to sink through the floor.
"Let me introduce . . ." mutters Nikitin, "Bezbozhnikov, a provincial
manager."
The singer utters a shriek, and runs off into her bedroom.
"There, you see . . ." says mari d'elle, as he stretches himself on the
sofa, "it was all honey just now . . . my love, my dear, my darling,
kisses and embraces . . . but as soon as money is touched upon, then. .
. . As you see . . . money is the great thing. . . . Good night!"
A minute later there is a snore.
A LIVING CHATTEL
GROHOLSKY embraced Liza, kept kissing one after another all her little
fingers with their bitten pink nails, and laid her on the couch covered
with cheap velvet. Liza crossed one foot over the other, clasped her
hands behind her head, and lay down.
Groholsky sat down in a chair beside her and bent over. He was entirely
absorbed in contemplation of her.
How pretty she seemed to him, lighted up by the rays of the setting sun!
There was a complete view from the window of the setting sun, golden,
lightly flecked with purple.
The whole drawing-room, including Liza, was bathed by it with brilliant
light that did not hurt the eyes, and for a little while covered with
gold.
Groholsky was lost in admiration. Liza was so incredibly beautiful. It
is true her little kittenish face with its brown eyes, and turn up nose
was fresh, and even piquant, his scanty hair was black as soot and
curly, her little figure was graceful, well proportioned and mobile as
the body of an electric eel, but on the whole. . . . However my taste
has nothing to do with it. Groholsky who was spoilt by women, and who
had been in love and out of love hundreds of times in his life, saw her
as a beauty. He loved her, and blind love finds ideal beauty everywhere.
"I say," he said, looking straight into her eyes, "I have come to talk
to you, my precious. Love cannot bear anything vague or indefinite. . .
. Indefinite relations, you know, I told you yesterday, Liza . . . we
will try to-day to settle the question we raised yesterday. Come, let us
decide together. . . ."
"What are we to do?"
Liza gave a yawn and scowling, drew her right arm from under her head.
"What are we to do?" she repeated hardly audibly after Groholsky.
"Well, yes, what are we to do? Come, decide, wise little head . . . I
love you, and a man in love is not fond of sharing. He is more than an
egoist. It is too much for me to go shares with your husband. I mentally
tear him to pieces, when I remember that he loves you too. In the second
place you love me. . . . Perfect freedom is an essential condition for
love. . . . And are you free? Are you not tortured by the thought that
that man towers for ever over your soul? A man whom you do not love,
whom very likely and quite naturally, you hate. . . . That's the second
thing. . . . And thirdly. . . . What is the third thing? Oh yes. . . .
We are deceiving him and that . . . is dishonourable. Truth before
everything, Liza. Let us have done with lying!"
"Well, then, what are we to do?"
"You can guess. . . . I think it necessary, obligatory, to inform him of
our relations and to leave him, to begin to live in freedom. Both must
be done as quickly as possible. . . . This very evening, for instance. .
. . It's time to make an end of it. Surely you must be sick of loving
like a thief?"
"Tell! tell Vanya?"
"Why, yes!"
"That's impossible! I told you yesterday, Michel, that it is
impossible."
"Why?"
"He will be upset. He'll make a row, do all sorts of unpleasant things.
. . . Don't you know what he is like? God forbid! There's no need to
tell him. What an idea!"
Groholsky passed his hand over his brow, and heaved a sigh.
"Yes," he said, "he will be more than upset. I am robbing him of his
happiness. Does he love you?"
"He does love me. Very much."
"There's another complication! One does not know where to begin. To
conceal it from him is base, telling him would kill him. . . . Goodness
knows what's one to do. Well, how is it to be?"
Groholsky pondered. His pale face wore a frown.
"Let us go on always as we are now," said Liza. "Let him find out for
himself, if he wants to."
"But you know that . . . is sinful, and besides the fact is you are
mine, and no one has the right to think that you do not belong to me but
to someone else! You are mine! I will not give way to anyone! . . . I am
sorry for him--God knows how sorry I am for him, Liza! It hurts me to see
him! But . . . it can't be helped after all. You don't love him, do you?
What's the good of your going on being miserable with him? We must have
it out! We will have it out with him, and you will come to me. You are
my wife, and not his. Let him do what he likes. He'll get over his
troubles somehow. . . . He is not the first, and he won't be the last. .
. . Will you run away? Eh? Make haste and tell me! Will you run away?"
Liza got up and looked inquiringly at Groholsky.
"Run away?"
"Yes. . . . To my estate. . . . Then to the Crimea. . . . We will tell
him by letter. . . . We can go at night. There is a train at half past
one. Well? Is that all right?"
Liza scratched the bridge of her nose, and hesitated.
"Very well," she said, and burst into tears.
Patches of red came out of her cheeks, her eyes swelled, and tears
flowed down her kittenish face. . . .
"What is it?" cried Groholsky in a flutter. "Liza! what's the matter?
Come! what are you crying for? What a girl! Come, what is it? Darling!
Little woman!"
Liza held out her hands to Groholsky, and hung on his neck. There was a
sound of sobbing.
"I am sorry for him . . ." muttered Liza. "Oh, I am so sorry for him!"
"Sorry for whom?"
"Va--Vanya. . . ."
"And do you suppose I'm not? But what's to be done? We are causing him
suffering. . . . He will be unhappy, will curse us . . . but is it our
fault that we love one another?"
As he uttered the last word, Groholsky darted away from Liza as though
he had been stung and sat down in an easy chair. Liza sprang away from
his neck and rapidly--in one instant--dropped on the lounge.
They both turned fearfully red, dropped their eyes, and coughed.
A tall, broad-shouldered man of thirty, in the uniform of a government
clerk, had walked into the drawing-room. He had walked in unnoticed.
Only the bang of a chair which he knocked in the doorway had warned the
lovers of his presence, and made them look round. It was the husband.
They had looked round too late.
He had seen Groholsky's arm round Liza's waist, and had seen Liza
hanging on Groholsky's white and aristocratic neck.
"He saw us!" Liza and Groholsky thought at the same moment, while they
did not know what to do with their heavy hands and embarrassed eyes. . .
.
The petrified husband, rosy-faced, turned white.
An agonising, strange, soul-revolting silence lasted for three minutes.
Oh, those three minutes! Groholsky remembers them to this day.