With pain at soul, with malice and repulsion toward himself and Liubka,
and, it would seem, toward all the world, Lichonin without undressing
flung himself upon the wooden, lopsided, sagging divan and even gnashed
his teeth from the smarting shame. Sleep would not come to him, while
his thoughts revolved around this fool action—as he himself called the
carrying off of Liubka,—in which an atrocious vaudeville had been so
disgustingly intertwined with a deep drama. “It’s all one,” he
stubbornly repeated to himself. “Once I have given my promise, I’ll see
the business through to the end. And, of course, that which has
occurred just now will never, never be repeated! My God, who hasn’t
fallen, giving in to a momentary laxity of the nerves? Some philosopher
or other has expressed a deep, remarkable truth, when he affirmed that
the value of the human soul may be known by the depth of its fall and
the height of its flight. But still, the devil take the whole of this
idiotical day and that equivocal reasoner—the reporter Platonov, and
his own—Lichonin’s—absurd outburst of chivalry! Just as though, in
reality, this had not taken place in real life, but in Chernishevski’s
novel, What’s to be done? And how, devil take it, with what eyes will I
look upon her tomorrow?”
His head was on fire; his eyelids were smarting, his lips dry. He was
nervously smoking a cigarette and frequently got up from the divan to
take the decanter of water off the table, and avidly, straight from its
mouth, drink several big draughts. Then, by some accidental effort of
the will, he succeeded in tearing his thoughts away from the past
night, and at once a heavy sleep, without any visions and images,
enveloped him as though in black cotton.
He awoke long past noon, at two or three o’clock; at first could not
come to himself for a long while; smacked his lips and looked around
the room with glazed, heavy eyes. All that had happened during the
night seemed to have flown out of his memory. But when he saw Liubka,
who was quietly and motionlessly sitting on the bed, with head lowered
and hands crossed on her knees, he began to groan and grunt from
vexation and confusion. Now he recalled everything. And at that minute
he experienced in his own person how heavy it is to see in the morning,
with one’s own eyes, the results of folly committed the night before.
“Are you awake, sweetie?” asked Liubka kindly.
She got up from the bed, walked up to the divan, sat down at Lichonin’s
feet, and cautiously patted his blanket-covered leg.
“Why, I woke up long ago and was sitting all the while; I was afraid to
wake you up. You were sleeping so very soundly!”
She stretched toward him and kissed him on the cheek. Lichonin made a
wry face and gently pushed her away from him.
“Wait, Liubochka! Wait; that’s not necessary. Do you
understand—absolutely, never necessary. That which took place
yesterday—well, that’s an accident. My weakness, let’s say. Even more,
a momentary baseness, perhaps. But, by God, believe me, I didn’t at all
want to make a mistress out of you. I want to see you my friend, my
sister, my comrade ... Well, that’s nothing, then; everything will
adjust itself, grow customary. Only one mustn’t fall in spirit. And in
the meanwhile, my dear, go to the window and look out of it a bit; I
just want to put myself in order.”
Liubka slightly pouted her lips and walked off to the window, turning
her back on Lichonin. All these words about friendship, brotherhood and
comradeship she could not understand with her brain of a hen and her
simple peasant soul. That a student—after all, not just anybody, but an
educated man, who could learn to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or a
judge—had taken her for maintenance flattered her imagination far more
... And here, now, it turned out that he had just fulfilled his
caprice, had gotten what he wanted, and was now trying to back out.
They are all like that, the men!
Lichonin hastily got up, splashed a few handfuls of water in his face,
and dried himself with an old napkin. Then he raised the blinds and
threw open both window shutters. The golden sunlight, the azure sky,
the rumble of the city, the foliage of the thick linden trees and the
chestnuts, the bells of the horse trams, the dry smell of the hot,
dusty street—all this at once burst into the tiny garret room. Lichonin
walked up to Liubka and amicably patted her on the shoulder.
“Never mind, my joy ... What’s done can’t be undone, but it’s a lesson
for the future. You haven’t yet asked tea for yourself, Liubochka?”
“No, I was waiting for you all the while. Besides, I didn’t know who to
ask. And you’re all right, too. Why, I heard you, after you went off
with your friend, come back and stand a while near the door. But you
never even said good-bye to me. Is that right?”
“The first family quarrel,” thought Lichonin, but thought it without
malice, in jest.
The wash-up, the beauty of the gold and blue southern sky, and the
naive, partly submissive, partly displeased face of Liubka, as well as
the consciousness that after all he was a man, and that he and not she
had to answer for the porridge he had cooked—all this together braced
up his nerves and compelled him to take himself in hand. He opened the
door and roared into the darkness of the stinking corridor:
“Al-lexa-andra! A samova-ar! Two lo-oaves, bu-utter, and sausage! And a
small bottle of vo-odka!”
The patter of slippers was heard in the corridor, and an aged voice,
even from afar, began to speak thickly:
“What are you bawling for? What are you bawling for, eh? Ho, ho, ho!
Like a stallion in a stall. You ain’t little, to look at you; you’re
grown up already, yet you carry on like a street boy! Well, what do you
want?”
Into the room walked a little old woman, with red-lidded eyes, like
little narrow cracks, and with a face amazingly like parchment, upon
which a long, sharp nose stuck downward, morosely and ominously. This
was Alexandra, the servant of old of the student bird-houses; the
friend and creditor of all the students; a woman of sixty-five,
argumentative, and a grumbler.
Lichonin repeated his order to her and gave her a rouble note. But the
old woman would not go away; shuffled in one place, snorted, chewed
with her lips and looked inimically at the girl sitting—with her back
to the light.
“What’s the matter with you now, Alexandra, that you seem ossified?”
asked Lichonin, laughing. “Or are you lost in admiration? Well, then,
know: this is my cousin, my first cousin, that is—Liubov...”[18] he was
confused for only a second, but immediately fired away: “Liubov
Vasilievna, but for me—simply Liubochka. I’ve known her when she was
only that high,” he showed a quarter of a yard off the table. “And I
pulled her ears and slapped her for her caprices over the place where
the legs grow from. And then ... I caught all sorts of bugs for her ...
But, however ... However, you go on, go on, you Egyptian mummy, you
fragment of former ages! Let one leg be here and the other there!”
[18] Love.—Trans.
But the old woman lingered. Stamping all around herself, she barely,
barely turned to the door and kept a keen, spiteful, sidelong glance on
Liubka. And at the same time she muttered with her sunken mouth:
“First cousin! We know these first cousins! There’s lots of them
walking around Kashtanovaya Street. There, these he-dogs can never get
enough!”
“Well, you old barque! Lively and don’t growl!” Lichonin shouted after
her. “Or else, like your friend, the student Triassov, I’ll take and
lock you up in the dressing room for twenty-four hours!”
Alexandra went away, and for a long time her aged, flapping steps and
indistinct muttering could be heard in the corridor. She was inclined,
in her austere, grumbling kindliness, to forgive a great deal to the
studying youths, whom she had served for nigh unto forty years. She
forgave drunkenness, card playing, scandals, loud singing, debts; but,
alas! she was a virgin, and there was only one thing her continent soul
could not abide—libertinage.