“Allow me to introduce myself,” I said, rising and going up to her.
“Zinov'ev. . . . And let me introduce my friend, Count Karnéev. . . .
We beg you to pardon us for breaking into your nice little house
without an invitation. . . . We would, of course, never have done so
if the storm had not driven us in. . . .”
“But that won't cause our little house to tumble down!” she said,
laughing and giving me her hand.
She displayed her splendid white teeth. I sat down on a chair next to
her, and told her how quite unexpectedly the storm had overtaken us on
our walk. Our conversation began with the weather—the beginning of all
beginnings. While we were talking, Mit'ka had had time to offer the
Count two glasses of vodka with the inseparable tumbler of water.
Thinking that I was not looking at him, the Count made a sweet grimace
and shook his head after each glass.
“Perhaps you would like some refreshments?” Olenka asked me, and, not
waiting for an answer, she left the room.
The first drops of rain rattled against the panes. . . . I went up to
the windows. . . . It was now quite dark, and through the glass I
could see nothing but the raindrops creeping down and the reflection
of my own nose. There was a flash of lightning, which illuminated some
of the nearest pines.
“Are the doors shut?” I heard the same tenor voice ask again. “Mit'ka,
come here, you vile-spirited scoundrel! Shut the doors! Oh, Lord, what
torments!”
A peasant woman with an enormous, tightly tied-in stomach and a
stupid, troubled face came into the room, and, having bowed low to the
Count, she spread a white table-cloth on the table. Mit'ka followed
her carefully carrying a tray with various _hors d'œuvres_. A minute
later, we had vodka, rum, cheese, and a dish of some sort of roasted
bird on the table before us. The Count drank a glass of vodka, but he
would not eat anything. The Pole smelt the bird mistrustfully, and
then began to carve it.
“The rain has begun! Look!” I said to Olenka, who had re-entered the
room.
“The girl in red” came up to the window where I was standing, and at
that very moment we were illuminated by a white flash of light. . . .
There was a fearful crash above us, and it appeared to me that
something large and heavy had been torn from the sky and had fallen to
earth with a terrible racket. . . . The window panes and the
wineglasses that were standing before the Count jingled and emitted
their tinkling sound. . . . The thunderclap was a loud one.
“Are you afraid of thunder-storms?” I asked Olenka.
She only pressed her cheek to her round shoulders and looked at me
with childish confidence.
“I'm afraid,” she whispered after a moment's reflection. “My mother
was killed by a storm. . . . The newspapers even wrote about it. . . .
My mother was going through the fields, crying. . . . She had a very
bitter life in this world. God had compassion on her and killed her
with His heavenly electricity.”
“How do you know that there is electricity there?”
“I have learned. . . . Do you know? People who have been killed by a
storm or in war, or who have died after a difficult confinement go to
paradise. . . . This is not written anywhere in books, but it is true.
My mother is now in paradise! I think the thunder will also kill me
some day, and I shall go to paradise too. . . . Are you a cultivated
man?”
“Yes.”
“Then you will not laugh. . . . This is how I should like to die: to
dress in the most costly fashionable frock, like the one I saw the
other day on our rich lady, the landowner Sheffer; to put bracelets on
my arms. . . . Then to go to the very summit of the ‘Stone Grave’ and
allow myself to be killed by the lightning, so that all the people
could see it. . . . A terrible peal of thunder, and then, you know,
the end!”
“What an odd fancy!” I said, laughing and looking into her eyes that
were full of holy horror at this terrible but effective death. “Then
you don't want to die in an ordinary dress?”
“No! . . .” Olenka shook her head. “And so that everybody should see
me.”
“The frock you are in is far better than any fashionable and expensive
dress. . . . It suits you. In it you look like the red flower of the
green woods.”
“No, that is not true!” And Olenka sighed ingenuously. “This frock is
a cheap one; it can't be pretty.”
The Count came up to our window with the evident intention of talking
to pretty Olenka. My friend could speak three European languages, but
he did not know how to talk to women. He stood near us awkwardly,
smiling in an inane manner; then he lowed,—inarticulately,
“Er—yes,”—and retraced his steps to the decanter of vodka.
“You were singing ‘I love the thunder in early May,’” I said to
Olenka. “Have those verses been set to music?”
“No, I sing all the verses I know to my own melodies.”
I happened by chance to glance back. Urbenin was looking at us. In his
eyes I read hatred and animosity: passions that were not at all in
keeping with his kind, meek face.
“Can he be jealous?” I thought.
The poor fellow caught my inquiring glance, rose from his chair and
went into the lobby to look for something. . . . Even by his gait one
could see that he was agitated. The peals of thunder became louder and
louder, more prolonged, and oftener repeated. . . . The lightning
unceasingly illuminated the sky, the pines and the wet earth with its
pleasant but blinding light. . . . The rain was not likely to end
soon. I left the window and went up to the bookshelves and began to
examine Olenka's library. “Tell me what you read, and I will tell you
what you are,” I said. But out of the goods that were so symmetrically
ranged on the shelves it was difficult to arrive at any estimate of
Olenka's mental capacities or “educational standard.” There was a
strange medley on those shelves. Three anthologies, one book of
Börne's, Evtushevsky's arithmetic, the second volume of Lermontov's
works, Shklyarevsky, a number of the magazine _Work_, a cookery book,
_Skladchina_ . . . I might enumerate other books for you, but at the
moment I took _Skladchina_ from the shelf and began to turn over the
pages. The door leading into the next room opened, and a person
entered the drawing-room, who at once diverted my attention from
Olenka's standard of culture. This person was a tall, muscular man in
a print dressing-gown and torn slippers, with an original countenance.
His face, covered all over with blue veins, was ornamented with a pair
of sergeant's moustaches and whiskers, and had in general a strong
resemblance to a bird. His whole face seemed to be drawn forwards, as
if trying to concentrate itself in the tip of the nose. Such faces are
like the spout of a pitcher. This person's small head was set on a
long thin throat, with a large Adam's-apple, and shook about like the
nesting-box of a starling in the wind. . . . This strange man looked
round on us all with his dim green eyes, and then let them rest on the
Count.
“Are the doors shut?” he asked in an imploring voice.
The Count looked at me and shrugged his shoulders.
“Don't trouble, papasha!” Olenka answered. “They are all shut. . . .
Go back to your room!”
“Is the barn door shut?”
“He's a little queer. . . . It takes him sometimes,” Urbenin whispered
to me as he came in from the lobby. “He's afraid of thieves, and
always troubling about the doors, as you see.”
“Nikolai Efimych,” he continued, addressing this strange apparition,
“go back to your room and go to bed! Don't trouble, everything is shut
up!”
“And are the windows shut?”
Nikolai Efimych hastily looked to see if the windows were properly
bolted, and then without taking any notice of us he shuffled off into
his own room.
“The poor fellow has these attacks sometimes,” Urbenin began to
explain as soon as he had left the room. “He's a good, capable man; he
has a family, too—such a misfortune! Almost every summer he is a
little out of his mind. . . .”
I looked at Olenka. She became confused, and hiding her face from us
began to put in order again her books that I had disarranged. She was
evidently ashamed of her mad father.
“The carriage is there, your Excellency! Now you can drive home, if
you wish!”
“Where has that carriage come from?” I asked.
“I sent for it. . . .”
A minute later I was sitting with the Count in the carriage, listening
to the peals of thunder and feeling very angry.
“We've been nicely turned out of the little house by that Pëtr
Egorych, the devil take him!” I grumbled, getting really angry. “So
he's prevented us from examining Olenka properly! I would not have
eaten her! . . . The old fool! The whole time he was bursting with
jealousy. . . . He's in love with that girl. . . .”
“Yes, yes, yes. . . . Would you believe it, I noticed that, too! He
would not let us go into the house from jealousy. And he sent for the
carriage only from jealousy. . . . Ha, ha, ha!”
“The later love comes the more it burns. . . . Besides, brother, it's
difficult not to fall in love with this girl in red, if one sees her
every day as we saw her to-day! She's devilish pretty! But she's not
for his net. . . . He ought to understand it and not be jealous of
others so egoistically. . . . Why can't he love and not stand in the
way of others, all the more as he must know she's not destined for
him? . . . What an old blockhead!”
“Do you remember how enraged he was when Kuz'ma mentioned her name at
tea-time?” the Count sniggered. “I thought he was going to thrash us
all. . . . A man does not defend the good fame of a woman so hotly if
he's indifferent to her. . . .”
“Some men will, brother. . . . But this is not the question. . . .
What's important is this. . . . If he can command us in the way he has
done to-day, what does he do with the small people, with those who are
at his disposal? Doubtless, the stewards, the butlers, the huntsmen
and the rest of the small fry are prevented by him from even
approaching her! Love and jealousy make a man unjust, heartless,
misanthropical. . . . I don't mind betting that for the sake of this
Olenka he has worried more than one of the people under his control.
It will, therefore, be wise on your part if you put less trust in his
complaints of the people in your service and his demands for the
dismissal of this or that one. In general, to limit his power for a
time. . . . Love will pass—well, and then there will be nothing to
fear. He's a kind and honest fellow. . . .”
“And what do you think of her papa?” the Count asked, laughing.
“A madman. . . . He ought to be in a madhouse and not looking after
forests. In general you won't be far from the truth if you put up a
signboard: ‘Madhouse’ over the gate of your estate. . . . You have a
real Bedlam here! This forester, the Scops-Owl, Franz, who is mad on
cards, this old man in love, an excitable girl, a drunken Count. . . .
What do you want more?”
“Why, this forester receives a salary! How can he do his work if he is
mad?”
“Urbenin evidently only keeps him for his daughter's sake. . . .
Urbenin says that Nikolai Efimych has these attacks every
summer. . . . That's not likely. . . . This forester is ill, not every
summer, but always. . . . By good luck, your Pëtr Egorych seldom lies,
and he gives himself away when he does lie about anything. . . .”
“Last year Urbenin informed me that our old forester Akhmet'ev was
going to become a monk on Mount Athos, and he recommended me to take
the ‘experienced, honest and worthy Skvortsov’ . . . I, of course,
agreed as I always do. Letters are not faces: they do not give
themselves away when they lie.”
The carriage drove into the courtyard and stopped at the front door.
We alighted. The rain had stopped. The thunder cloud, scintillating
with lightning and emitting angry grumbles, was hurrying towards the
north-east and uncovering more and more the dark blue star-spangled
sky. It was like a heavily armed power which having ravaged the
country and imposed a terrible tribute, was rushing on to new
conquests. . . . The small clouds that remained behind were chasing
after it as if fearing to be unable to catch it up. . . . Nature had
its peace restored to it.
And that peace seemed astonished at the calm, aromatic air, so full of
softness, of the melodies of nightingales, at the silence of the
sleeping gardens and the caressing light of the rising moon. The lake
awoke after the day's sleep, and by gentle murmurs brought memories of
itself to man's hearing. . . .
At such a time it is good to drive through the fields in a comfortable
calash or to be rowing on the lake. . . . But we went into the
house. . . . There another sort of poetry was awaiting us.
V
A man who under the influence of mental pain or unbearably oppressive
suffering sends a bullet through his own head is called a suicide; but
for those who give freedom to their pitiful, soul-debasing passions in
the holy days of spring and youth, there is no name in man's
vocabulary. After the bullet follows the peace of the grave: ruined
youth is followed by years of grief and painful recollections. He who
has profaned his spring will understand the present condition of my
soul. I am not yet old, or grey, but I no longer live. Psychiaters
tell us that a soldier, who was wounded at Waterloo, went mad, and
afterwards assured everybody—and believed it himself—that he had died
at Waterloo, and that what was now considered to be him was only his
shadow, a reflection of the past. I am now experiencing something
resembling this semi-death. . . .
“I am very glad that you ate nothing at the forester's and haven't
spoilt your appetite,” the Count said to me as we entered the house.
“We shall have an excellent supper. . . . Like old times. . . . Serve
supper!” He gave the order to Il'ya who was helping him to take off
his coat and put on a dressing-gown.
We went into the dining-room. Here on the side-table life was already
bubbling over. Bottles of every colour and of every imaginable size
were standing in rows as on the shelves of a theatre refreshment-room,
reflecting on their sides the light of the lamps while awaiting our
attention. All sorts of salted and pickled viands and various _hors
d'œuvres_ stood on another table with a decanter of vodka and another
of English bitters. Near the wine bottles there were two dishes, one
of sucking pig and the other of cold sturgeon.
“Well, gentlemen,” the Count began as he poured out three glasses of
vodka and shivered as if from cold. “To our good health! Kaetan
Kazimirovich, take your glass!”
I drank mine off, the Pole only shook his head negatively. He moved
the dish of sturgeon towards himself, smelt it, and began to eat.
I must apologize to the reader. I have now to describe something not
at all “romantic.”
“Well, come on . . . they drank another,” the Count said, and filled
the glasses again. “Fire away, Lecoq!”