Immediately at the entrance to a suburban cabaret an artificial flower
bed shone with vari-colored lights, with electric bulbs instead of
flowers; and just such another fiery alley of wide, half-round arches,
narrowing toward the end, led away from it into the depths of the
garden. Further on was a broad, small square, strewn with yellow sand;
to the left an open stage, a theatre, and a shooting gallery; straight
ahead a stand for the military band (in the form of a seashell) and
little booths with flowers and beer; to the right the long terrace of
the restaurant. Electric globes from their high masts illuminated the
small square with a pale, dead-white brightness. Against their frosted
glass, with wire nets stretched over them, beat clouds of night moths,
whose shadows—confused and large—hovered below, on the ground. Hungry
women, too lightly, dressily, and fancifully attired, preserving on
their faces an expression of care-free merriment or haughty, offended
unapproachability, strolled back and forth in pairs, with a walk
already tired and dragging.
All the tables in the restaurant were taken—and over them floated the
continuous noise of knives upon plates and a motley babel, galloping in
waves. It smelt of rich and pungent kitchen fumes. In the middle of the
restaurant, upon a stand, Roumanians in red frocks were playing; all
swarthy, white-toothed, with the faces of whiskered, pomaded apes, with
their hair licked down. The director of the orchestra, bending forward
and affectedly swaying, was playing upon a violin and making unseemly
sweet eyes at the public—the eyes of a man-prostitute. And everything
together—this abundance of tiresome electric lights, the exaggeratedly
bright toilettes of the ladies, the odours of modish, spicy perfumes,
this ringing music, with willful slowings up of the tempo, with
voluptuous swoonings in the transitions, with the tempestuous passages
screwed up—everything fitted the one to the other, forming a general
picture of insane and stupid luxury, a setting for an imitation of a
gay, unseemly carouse.
Above, around the entire hall, ran open galleries, upon which, as upon
little balconies, opened the doors of the private cabinets. In one of
these cabinets four were sitting—two ladies and two men; an artiste
known to all Russia, the cantatrice Rovinskaya, a large, handsome
woman, with long, green, Egyptian eyes, and a long, red, sensuous
mouth, the lips of which were rapaciously drooping at the corners; the
baroness Tefting, little, exquisite, pale—she was everywhere seen with
the artiste; the famous lawyer Ryazanov; and Volodya Chaplinsky, a rich
young man of the world, a composer-dilettante, the author of several
darling little ballads and many witticisms upon the topics of the day,
which circulated all over town.
The walls of the cabinet were red, with a gold design. On the table,
among the lighted candelabra, two white, tarred necks of bottles stuck
up out of an electroplated vase, which had sweated from the cold, and
the light in a tenuous gold played in the shallow goblets of wine.
Outside, near the doors, a waiter was on duty, leaning against the
wall; while the stout, tall, important maitre d’hotel, on whose right
little finger, always sticking out, sparkled a huge diamond, would
frequently stop at these doors, and attentively listen with one ear to
what was going on in the cabinet.
The baroness, with a bored, pale face, was listlessly gazing through a
lorgnette down at the droning, chewing, swarming crowd. Among the red,
white, blue and straw-coloured feminine dresses the uniform figures of
the men resembled large, squat, black beetles. Rovinskaya negligently,
yet at the same time intently as well, was looking down upon the stand
and the spectators, and her face expressed fatigue, ennui, and perhaps
also that satiation with all spectacles, which are such matters of
course to celebrities. The splendid, long, slender fingers of her left
hand were lying upon the crimson velvet of the box-seat. Emeralds of a
rare beauty hung upon them so negligently that it seemed as though they
would fall off at any second, and suddenly she began laughing.
“Look” she said; “what a funny figure, or, to put it more correctly,
what a funny profession! There, there, that one who’s playing on a
‘syrinx of seven reeds.’”
Everyone looked in the direction of her hand. And really, the picture
was funny enough. Behind the Roumanian orchestra was sitting a stout,
whiskered man, probably the father, and perhaps even the grandfather,
of a numerous family, and with all his might was whistling into seven
little pipes glued together. As it was difficult for him, probably, to
move this instrument between his lips, he therefore, with an unusual
rapidity, turned his head now to the left, now to the right.
“An amazing occupation,” said Rovinskaya. “Well now, Chaplinsky, you
try to toss your head about like that.”
Volodya Chaplinsky, secretly and hopelessly in love with the artiste,
immediately began obediently and zealously to do this, but after half a
minute desisted.
“It’s impossible,” he said, “either long training, or, perhaps,
hereditary abilities, are necessary for this.”
The baroness during this time was tearing away the petals of her rose
and throwing them into a goblet; then, with difficulty suppressing a
yawn, she said, making just the least bit of a wry face:
“But, my God, how drearily they divert themselves in our K—! Look: no
laughter, no singing, no dances. Just like some herd that’s been driven
here, in order to be gay on purpose!”
Ryazanov listlessly took his goblet, sipped it a little, and answered
apathetically in his enchanting voice:
“Well, and is it any gayer in your Paris, or Nice? Why, it must be
confessed—mirth, youth and laughter have vanished forever out of human
life, and it is scarcely possible that they will ever return. One must
regard people with more patience, it seems to me. Who knows, perhaps
for all those sitting here, below, the present evening is a rest, a
holiday?”
“The speech for the defense,” put in Chaplinsky in his calm manner.
But Rovinskaya quickly turned around to the men, and her long emerald
eyes narrowed. And this with her served as a sign of wrath, from which
even crowned personages committed follies at times. However, she
immediately restrained herself and continued languidly:
“I don’t understand what you are talking about. I don’t understand even
what we came here for. For there are no longer any spectacles in the
world. Now I, for instance, have seen bull-fights in Seville, Madrid
and Marseilles—an exhibition which does not evoke anything save
loathing. I have also seen boxing and wrestling nastiness and
brutality. I also happened to participate in a tiger hunt, at which I
sat under a baldachin on the back of a big, wise white elephant ... in
a word, you all know this well yourselves. And out of all my great,
chequered, noisy life, from which I have grown old ...”
“Oh, what are you saying, Ellena Victorovna!” said Chaplinsky with a
tender reproach.
“Abandon compliments, Volodya! I know myself that I’m still young and
beautiful of body, but, really, it seems to me at times that I am
ninety. So worn out has my soul become. I continue. I say, that during
all my life only three strong impressions have sunk into my soul. The
first, while still a girl, when I saw a cat stealing upon a
cock-sparrow, and I with horror and with interest watched its movements
and the vigilant gaze of the bird. Up to this time I don’t know myself
which I sympathized with more: the skill of the cat or the slipperiness
of the sparrow. The cock-sparrow proved the quicker. In a moment he
flew up on a tree and began from there to pour down upon the cat such
sparrow swearing that I would have turned red for shame if I had
understood even one word. While the cat, as though it had been wronged,
stuck up its tail like a chimney and tried to pretend to itself that
nothing out of the way had taken place. Another time I had to sing in
an opera a duet with a certain great artist ...”
“With whom?” asked the baroness quickly.
“Isn’t it all the same? Of what need names? And so, when he and I were
singing, I felt all of me in the sway of genius. How wonderfully, into
what a marvelous harmony, did our voices blend! Ah! It is impossible to
describe this impression. Probably, it happens but once in a lifetime.
According to the role, I had to weep, and I wept with sincere, genuine
tears. And when, after the curtain, he walked up to me and patted my
hair with his big warm hand and with his enchanting, radiant smile
said, ‘Splendid! for the first time in my life have I sung so’ ... and
so I—and I am a very proud being—I kissed his hand. And the tears were
still standing in my eyes ...”
“And the third?” asked the baroness, and her eyes lit up with the evil
sparks of jealousy.
“Ah, the third,” answered the artiste sadly, “the third is as simple as
simple can be. During the last season I lived at Nice, and so I saw
Carmen on the open stage at Frejus with the anticipation of Cecile
Ketten, who is now,” the artiste earnestly made the sign of the cross,
“dead—I don’t really know, fortunately or unfortunately for herself?”
Suddenly, in a moment, her magnificent eyes filled with tears and began
to shine with a magic green light, such as the evening star gives
forth, on warm summer twilights. She turned her face around to the
stage, and for some time her long, nervous fingers convulsively
squeezed the upholstery of the barrier of the box. But when she again
turned around to her friends, her eyes were already dry, and the
enigmatic, vicious and wilful lips were resplendent with an
unconstrained smile.
Then Ryazanov asked her politely, in a tender but purposely calm tone:
“But then, Ellena Victorovna, your tremendous fame, admirers, the roar
of the mob ... finally, that delight which you afford to your
spectators. Is it possible that even this does not titillate your
nerves?”
“No, Ryazanov,” she answered in a tired voice. “You know no less than
myself what this is worth. A brazen interviewer, who needs passes for
his friends, and, by the way, twenty-five roubles in an envelope. High
school boys and girls, students and young ladies attending courses, who
beg you for autographed photographs. Some old blockhead with a
general’s rank, who hums loudly with me during my aria. The eternal
whisper behind you, when you pass by: ‘there she is, that same famous
one!’ Anonymous letters, the brazenness of back-stage habitues ... why,
you can’t enumerate everything! But surely, you yourself are often
beset by female psychopathics of the court-room?”
“Yes,” said Ryazanov decisively.
“That’s all there is to it. But add to that the most terrible thing,
that every time I have come to feel a genuine inspiration, I
tormentingly feel on the spot the consciousness that I’m pretending and
grimacing before people ... And the fear of the success of your rival?
And the eternal dread of losing your voice, of straining it or catching
a cold? The eternal tormenting bother of throat bandages? No, really,
it is heavy to bear renown on one’s shoulders.”
“But the artistic fame?” retorted the lawyer. “The might of genius!
This, verily, is a true moral might, which is above the might of any
king on earth!”
“Yes, yes, of course you’re right, my dear. But fame, celebrity, are
sweet only at a distance, when you only dream about them. But when you
have attained them you feel only their thorns. But then, with what
anguish you feel every dram of their decrease. And I have forgotten to
say something else. Why, we artists undergo a sentence at hard labour.
In the morning, exercises; in the daytime, rehearsals; and then there’s
scarcely time for dinner and you’re due for the performance. An hour or
so for reading or such diversion as you and I are having now, may be
snatched only by a miracle. And even so... the diversion is altogether
of the mediocre...”
She negligently and wearily made a slight gesture with the fingers of
the hand lying on the barrier.
Volodya Chaplinsky, agitated by this conversation, suddenly asked:
“Yes, but tell me, Ellena Victorovna, what would you want to distract
your imagination and ennui?”
She looked at him with her enigmatic eyes and answered quietly, even a
trifle shyly, it seemed:
“Formerly, people lived more gaily and did not know prejudices of any
sort. Well, it seems to me that then I would have been in my place and
would have lived with a full life. O, ancient Rome!”
No one understood her, save Ryazanov, who, without looking at her,
slowly pronounced in his velvety voice, like that of an actor, the
classical, universally familiar, Latin phrase:
“Ave, Caesar, morituri te salutant!”
“Precisely! I love you very much, Ryazanov, because you are a clever
child. You will always catch a thought in its flight; although, I must
say, that this isn’t an especially high property of the mind. And
really, two beings come together, the friends of yesterday, who had
conversed with each other and eaten at the same table, and this day one
of them must perish. You understand depart from life forever. But they
have neither malice nor fear. There is the most real, magnificent
spectacle, which I can only picture to myself!”
“How much cruelty there is in you,” said the baroness meditatively.
“Well, nothing can be done about it now! My ancestors were cavaliers
and robbers. However, shan’t we go away now?”
They all went out of the garden. Volodya Chaplinsky ordered his
automobile called. Ellena Victorovna was leaning upon his arm. And
suddenly she asked:
“Tell me, Volodya, where do you usually go when you take leave of
so-called decent women?”
Volodya hemmed and hawed. However, he knew positively that he could not
lie to Rovinskaya.
“M-m-m ... I’m afraid of offending your hearing. To the Tzigani, for
instance ... to night cabarets ...”
“And somewhere else? Worse?”
“Really, you put me in an awkward position. From the time that I’ve
become so madly in love with you ...”
“Leave out the romancing!”
“Well, how shall I say it?” murmured Volodya, feeling that he was
turning red, not only in the face, but with his body, his back. “Well,
of course, to the women. Now, of course, this does not occur with me
personally ...”
Rovinskaya maliciously pressed Chaplinsky’s elbow to her side.
“To a brothel?”
Volodya did not answer anything. Then she said:
“And so, you’ll carry us at once over there in the automobile and
acquaint us with this existence, which is foreign to me. But remember,
that I rely upon your protection.”
The remaining two agreed to this, unwillingly, in all probability; but
there was no possibility of opposing Ellena Victorovna. She always did
everything that she wanted to. And then they had all heard and knew
that in Petersburg carousing worldly ladies, and even girls, permit
themselves, out of a modish snobbism, pranks far worse than the one
which Rovinskaya had proposed.