“Let us go there. . . . We have all come. . . .”
“Stay! . . . I'm all right here, Tina. . . .”
“But . . . there's too much light. . . . You're mad! . . . They can
come. . . .”
“I'll wring the neck of whoever comes! . . . I'm so happy, Tina. . . .
Two years have passed since last we met. . . .”
Somebody began to play the piano in the ballroom.
“Akh! Moskva, Moskva, Moskva, white-stoned Moskva!” . . . several
voices sang in chorus.
“You see, they are all singing there. . . . Nobody will come
in. . . .”
“Yes, yes. . . .”
The meeting with Tina took away my drowsiness. . . . Ten minutes later
she led me into the ballroom, where the chorus was standing in a
semi-circle. . . . The Count, sitting astride on a chair, was beating
time with his hands. . . . Pshekhotsky stood behind his chair, looking
with astonished eyes at these singing birds. I tore his balalaika out
of Karpov's hands, struck the chords, and—
“Down the Volga. . . . Down the mother Volga.”
“Down the Vo‑o‑o‑lga!” the chorus chimed in.
“Ay, burn, speak . . . speak . . .”
I waved my hand, and in an instant with the rapidity of lightning
there was another transition. . . .
“Nights of madness, nights of gladness. . . .”
Nothing acts more irritatingly, more titillatingly on my nerves than
such rapid transitions. I trembled with rapture, and embracing Tina
with one arm and waving the balalaika in the air with the other hand,
I sang “Nights of madness” to the end. . . . The balalaika fell
noisily on the floor and was shivered into tiny fragments. . . .
“Wine!”
After that my recollections are confused and chaotic. . . . Everything
is mixed, confused, entangled; everything is dim, obscure. . . . I
remember the grey sky of early morning. . . . We are in a boat. . . .
The lake is slightly agitated, and seems to grumble at our debauchery.
I am standing up in the middle of the boat, shaking it. . . . Tina
tries to convince me I may fall into the water, and implores me to sit
down. . . . I deplore loudly that there are no waves on the lake as
high as the “Stone Grave,” and frighten the martins that flit like
white spots over the blue surface of the lake with my shouts. . . .
Then follows a long, sultry day, with its endless lunches, its
ten-year-old liqueurs, its punches, . . . its debauches. There are
only a few moments I can remember of that day. . . . I remember
swinging with Tina in the garden. I stand on one end of the board, she
on the other. I work energetically, with my whole body as much as my
strength permits, and I don't exactly know what I want: that Tina
should fall from the swing and be killed, or that she should fly to
the very clouds! Tina stands there, pale as death, but proud and
self-loving; she has pressed her lips tightly together so as not to
betray by a single sound the fear she feels. We fly ever higher and
higher, and . . . I can't remember how it ended. Then there follows a
walk with Tina in a distant avenue of the park, with green vaults
above that protect it from the sun. A poetical twilight, black
tresses, luscious lips, whispers. . . . Then the little contralto is
walking beside me, a fair-haired girl with a sharp little nose,
childlike eyes and a small waist. I walk about with her until Tina,
having followed us, makes me a scene. . . . The gipsy is pale and
maddened. . . . She calls me “accursed,” and, being offended, prepares
to return to town. The Count, also pale and with trembling hands, runs
along beside us, and, as usual, can't find the proper words to
persuade Tina to remain. . . . In the end she boxes my ears. . . .
Strange! I, who fly into a rage at the slightest offensive word said
by a man, am quite indifferent to a box on the ear given me by a
woman. . . . There is again a long “after dinner,” again a snake on
the steps, again sleeping Franz with flies round his mouth, again the
gate. . . . “The girl in red” is standing on the “Stone Grave,” but
perceiving us from afar, she disappears like a lizard.
By evening we had made it up with Tina and were again friends. The
evening was succeeded by the same sort of stormy night, with music,
daring singing, with nerve exciting transitions . . . and not a
moment's sleep!
“This is self-destruction!” Urbenin whispered to me. He had come in
for a moment to listen to our singing.
He was certainly right. Further, I remember: the Count and I are
standing in the garden face to face, and quarrelling. Black-browed
Kaetan is walking about near us all the time, taking no part in our
jollifications, nevertheless he had also not slept but had followed us
about like a shadow. . . . The sky is already brightening, and on the
very summits of the highest trees the golden rays of the rising sun
are beginning to shine. Around us is the chatter of sparrows, the
songs of the starlings, and the rustle and flapping of wings that had
become heavy during the night. . . . The lowing of the herds and the
cries of the shepherds can be heard. A table with a marble slab stands
before us. On the table are candles that give out a faint light. Ends
of cigarettes, papers from sweets, broken wineglasses, orange
peel. . . .
“You must take it!” I say, pressing on the Count a parcel of rouble
notes. “I will force you to take it!”
“But it was I who sent for them and not you!” The Count insisted,
trying to catch hold of one of my buttons. “I am the master
here. . . . I treated you. Why should you pay? Can't you understand
you even insult me by offering to do so?”
“I also engaged them, so I pay half. You won't take it? I don't
understand such favours! Surely you don't think because you are as
rich as the devil that you have the right to confer such favours on
me? The devil take it! I engaged Karpov, and I will pay him! I want
none of your halves! I wrote the telegram!”
“In a restaurant, Serezha, you may pay as much as you like, but my
house is not a restaurant. . . . Besides, I really don't understand
why you are making all this fuss. I can't understand your insistent
prodigality. You have but little money, while I am rolling in
wealth. . . . Justice itself is on my side!”
“Then you will not take it? No? Well, then, you needn't! . . .”
I go up to the faintly burning candles and applying the banknotes to
the flame set them on fire and fling them on the ground. Suddenly a
groan is torn from Kaetan's breast. He opens his eyes wide, he grows
pale, and falling with the whole weight of his heavy body on the
ground tries to extinguish the money with the palms of his
hands. . . . In this he succeeds.
“I don't understand!” he says, placing the slightly burnt notes in his
pocket. “To burn money? As if it were last year's chaff or love
letters! . . . It's better that I should give it to the poor than let
it be consumed by the flames.”
I go into the house. . . . There in every room on the sofas and the
carpets the weary gipsies are lying, overcome by fatigue. My Tina is
sleeping on the divan in the “mosaic drawing-room.”
She lies stretched out and breathing heavily. Her teeth clenched, her
face pale. . . . She is evidently dreaming of the swing. . . . The
Scops-owl is going through all the rooms, looking with her sharp eyes
sardonically at the people who had so suddenly broken into the deadly
quiet of this forgotten estate. . . . She is not going about and
giving her old limbs so much trouble without an object.
That is all that my memory retained after two wild nights; all the
rest had escaped my drunken brain, or is not appropriate for
description. . . . But this is enough!
At no other time had Zorka borne me with so much zest as on the
morning after the burning of the banknotes. She also wanted to go
home. . . . The lake quietly rippled its sparkling waves in which the
rising sun was reflected and prepared for its daily sleep. The woods
and the willows that border the lake stood motionless as if in morning
prayer. It is difficult to describe the feelings that filled my soul
at the time. . . . Without entering into details, I will only say that
I was unspeakably glad and at the same time almost consumed by shame
when, turning out of the Count's homestead, I saw on the bank of the
lake the holy old face, all wrinkled by honest work and illness, of
venerable Mikhey. In appearance Mikhey resembles the fishermen of the
Bible. His hair and beard are white as snow, and he gazes
contemplatively at the sky. . . . When he stands motionless on the
bank and his eyes follow the chasing clouds, you can imagine that he
sees angels in the sky. . . . I like such faces! . . .
When I saw him I reined in Zorka and gave him my hand as if I wanted
to cleanse myself by the touch of his honest, horny palm. . . . He
raised his small sagacious eyes on me and smiled.
“How do you do, good master!” he said, giving me his hand awkwardly.
“So you've ridden over again? Or has that old rake come back?”
“Yes, he's back.”
“I thought so. . . . I can see it by your face. . . . Here I stand and
look. . . . The world's the world. Vanity of vanities. . . . Look
there! That German ought to die, and he only thinks of vanities. . . .
Do you see?”
The old man pointed with a stick at the Count's bathing-house. A boat
was being rowed away quickly from the bathing-house. A man in a jockey
cap and a blue jacket was sitting in the boat. It was Franz, the
gardener.
“Every morning he takes money to the island and hides it there. The
stupid fellow can't understand that for him sand and money have much
the same value. When he dies he can't take it with him. Barin,* give
me a cigar!”
* Master, sir.
I offered him my cigar case. He took three cigarettes and put them
into his breast pocket. . . .
“That's for my nephew. . . . He can smoke them.”
Zorka moved impatiently, and galloped off. I bowed to the old man in
gratitude for having been allowed to rest my eyes on his face. For a
long time he stood looking after me.
At home I was met by Polycarp. With a contemptuous, a crushing glance,
he measured my noble body as if he wanted to know whether this time I
had bathed again in all my clothes, or not.
“Congratulations!” he grumbled. “You've enjoyed yourself.”
“Hold your tongue, fool!” I said.
His stupid face angered me. I undressed quickly, covered myself up
with the bedclothes and closed my eyes.
My head became giddy and the world was enveloped in mist. Familiar
figures flitted through the mist. . . . The Count, snakes, Franz,
flame-coloured dogs, “the girl in red,” mad Nikolai Efimych.
“The husband killed his wife! Oh, how stupid you are!”
“The girl in red” shook her finger at me, Tina obscured the light with
her black eyes, and . . . I fell asleep.