At home in Moscow everything was in its winter routine; the stoves were
heated, and in the morning it was still dark when the children were
having breakfast and getting ready for school, and the nurse would light
the lamp for a short time. The frosts had begun already. When the first
snow has fallen, on the first day of sledge-driving it is pleasant to
see the white earth, the white roofs, to draw soft, delicious breath,
and the season brings back the days of one's youth. The old limes and
birches, white with hoar-frost, have a good-natured expression; they are
nearer to one's heart than cypresses and palms, and near them one
doesn't want to be thinking of the sea and the mountains.
Gurov was Moscow born; he arrived in Moscow on a fine frosty day, and
when he put on his fur coat and warm gloves, and walked along Petrovka,
and when on Saturday evening he heard the ringing of the bells, his
recent trip and the places he had seen lost all charm for him. Little by
little he became absorbed in Moscow life, greedily read three newspapers
a day, and declared he did not read the Moscow papers on principle! He
already felt a longing to go to restaurants, clubs, dinner-parties,
anniversary celebrations, and he felt flattered at entertaining
distinguished lawyers and artists, and at playing cards with a professor
at the doctors' club. He could already eat a whole plateful of salt fish
and cabbage.
In another month, he fancied, the image of Anna Sergeyevna would be
shrouded in a mist in his memory, and only from time to time would visit
him in his dreams with a touching smile as others did. But more than a
month passed, real winter had come, and everything was still clear in
his memory as though he had parted with Anna Sergeyevna only the day
before. And his memories glowed more and more vividly. When in the
evening stillness he heard from his study the voices of his children,
preparing their lessons, or when he listened to a song or the organ at
the restaurant, or the storm howled in the chimney, suddenly everything
would rise up in his memory: what had happened on the groyne, and the
early morning with the mist on the mountains, and the steamer coming
from Theodosia, and the kisses. He would pace a long time about his
room, remembering it all and smiling; then his memories passed into
dreams, and in his fancy the past was mingled with what was to come.
Anna Sergeyevna did not visit him in dreams, but followed him about
everywhere like a shadow and haunted him. When he shut his eyes he saw
her as though she were living before him, and she seemed to him
lovelier, younger, tenderer than she was; and he imagined himself finer
than he had been in Yalta. In the evenings she peeped out at him from
the bookcase, from the fireplace, from the corner--he heard her
breathing, the caressing rustle of her dress. In the street he watched
the women, looking for some one like her.
He was tormented by an intense desire to confide his memories to some
one. But in his home it was impossible to talk of his love, and he had
no one outside; he could not talk to his tenants nor to any one at the
bank. And what had he to talk of? Had he been in love, then? Had there
been anything beautiful, poetical, or edifying or simply interesting in
his relations with Anna Sergeyevna? And there was nothing for him but to
talk vaguely of love, of woman, and no one guessed what it meant; only
his wife twitched her black eyebrows, and said:
"The part of a lady-killer does not suit you at all, Dimitri."
One evening, coming out of the doctors' club with an official with whom
he had been playing cards, he could not resist saying:
"If only you knew what a fascinating woman I made the acquaintance of in
Yalta!"
The official got into his sledge and was driving away, but turned
suddenly and shouted:
"Dmitri Dmitritch!"
"What?"
"You were right this evening: the sturgeon was a bit too strong!"
These words, so ordinary, for some reason moved Gurov to indignation,
and struck him as degrading and unclean. What savage manners, what
people! What senseless nights, what uninteresting, uneventful days! The
rage for card-playing, the gluttony, the drunkenness, the continual talk
always about the same thing. Useless pursuits and conversations always
about the same things absorb the better part of one's time, the better
part of one's strength, and in the end there is left a life grovelling
and curtailed, worthless and trivial, and there is no escaping or
getting away from it--just as though one were in a madhouse or a prison.
Gurov did not sleep all night, and was filled with indignation. And he
had a headache all next day. And the next night he slept badly; he sat
up in bed, thinking, or paced up and down his room. He was sick of his
children, sick of the bank; he had no desire to go anywhere or to talk
of anything.
In the holidays in December he prepared for a journey, and told his wife
he was going to Petersburg to do something in the interests of a young
friend--and he set off for S----. What for? He did not very well know
himself. He wanted to see Anna Sergeyevna and to talk with her--to
arrange a meeting, if possible.
He reached S---- in the morning, and took the best room at the hotel, in
which the floor was covered with grey army cloth, and on the table was
an inkstand, grey with dust and adorned with a figure on horseback, with
its hat in its hand and its head broken off. The hotel porter gave him
the necessary information; Von Diderits lived in a house of his own in
Old Gontcharny Street--it was not far from the hotel: he was rich and
lived in good style, and had his own horses; every one in the town knew
him. The porter pronounced the name "Dridirits."
Gurov went without haste to Old Gontcharny Street and found the house.
Just opposite the house stretched a long grey fence adorned with nails.
"One would run away from a fence like that," thought Gurov, looking from
the fence to the windows of the house and back again.
He considered: to-day was a holiday, and the husband would probably be
at home. And in any case it would be tactless to go into the house and
upset her. If he were to send her a note it might fall into her
husband's hands, and then it might ruin everything. The best thing was
to trust to chance. And he kept walking up and down the street by the
fence, waiting for the chance. He saw a beggar go in at the gate and
dogs fly at him; then an hour later he heard a piano, and the sounds
were faint and indistinct. Probably it was Anna Sergeyevna playing. The
front door suddenly opened, and an old woman came out, followed by the
familiar white Pomeranian. Gurov was on the point of calling to the dog,
but his heart began beating violently, and in his excitement he could
not remember the dog's name.
He walked up and down, and loathed the grey fence more and more, and by
now he thought irritably that Anna Sergeyevna had forgotten him, and was
perhaps already amusing herself with some one else, and that that was
very natural in a young woman who had nothing to look at from morning
till night but that confounded fence. He went back to his hotel room and
sat for a long while on the sofa, not knowing what to do, then he had
dinner and a long nap.
"How stupid and worrying it is!" he thought when he woke and looked at
the dark windows: it was already evening. "Here I've had a good sleep
for some reason. What shall I do in the night?"
He sat on the bed, which was covered by a cheap grey blanket, such as
one sees in hospitals, and he taunted himself in his vexation:
"So much for the lady with the dog ... so much for the adventure....
You're in a nice fix...."
That morning at the station a poster in large letters had caught his
eye. "The Geisha" was to be performed for the first time. He thought of
this and went to the theatre.
"It's quite possible she may go to the first performance," he thought.
The theatre was full. As in all provincial theatres, there was a fog
above the chandelier, the gallery was noisy and restless; in the front
row the local dandies were standing up before the beginning of the
performance, with their hands behind them; in the Governor's box the
Governor's daughter, wearing a boa, was sitting in the front seat, while
the Governor himself lurked modestly behind the curtain with only his
hands visible; the orchestra was a long time tuning up; the stage
curtain swayed. All the time the audience were coming in and taking
their seats Gurov looked at them eagerly.
Anna Sergeyevna, too, came in. She sat down in the third row, and when
Gurov looked at her his heart contracted, and he understood clearly that
for him there was in the whole world no creature so near, so precious,
and so important to him; she, this little woman, in no way remarkable,
lost in a provincial crowd, with a vulgar lorgnette in her hand, filled
his whole life now, was his sorrow and his joy, the one happiness that
he now desired for himself, and to the sounds of the inferior orchestra,
of the wretched provincial violins, he thought how lovely she was. He
thought and dreamed.
A young man with small side-whiskers, tall and stooping, came in with
Anna Sergeyevna and sat down beside her; he bent his head at every step
and seemed to be continually bowing. Most likely this was the husband
whom at Yalta, in a rush of bitter feeling, she had called a flunkey.
And there really was in his long figure, his side-whiskers, and the
small bald patch on his head, something of the flunkey's obsequiousness;
his smile was sugary, and in his buttonhole there was some badge of
distinction like the number on a waiter.
During the first interval the husband went away to smoke; she remained
alone in her stall. Gurov, who was sitting in the stalls, too, went up
to her and said in a trembling voice, with a forced smile:
"Good-evening."
She glanced at him and turned pale, then glanced again with horror,
unable to believe her eyes, and tightly gripped the fan and the
lorgnette in her hands, evidently struggling with herself not to faint.
Both were silent. She was sitting, he was standing, frightened by her
confusion and not venturing to sit down beside her. The violins and the
flute began tuning up. He felt suddenly frightened; it seemed as though
all the people in the boxes were looking at them. She got up and went
quickly to the door; he followed her, and both walked senselessly along
passages, and up and down stairs, and figures in legal, scholastic, and
civil service uniforms, all wearing badges, flitted before their eyes.
They caught glimpses of ladies, of fur coats hanging on pegs; the
draughts blew on them, bringing a smell of stale tobacco. And Gurov,
whose heart was beating violently, thought:
"Oh, heavens! Why are these people here and this orchestra!..."
And at that instant he recalled how when he had seen Anna Sergeyevna off
at the station he had thought that everything was over and they would
never meet again. But how far they were still from the end!
On the narrow, gloomy staircase over which was written "To the
Amphitheatre," she stopped.
"How you have frightened me!" she said, breathing hard, still pale and
overwhelmed. "Oh, how you have frightened me! I am half dead. Why have
you come? Why?"
"But do understand, Anna, do understand ..." he said hastily in a low
voice. "I entreat you to understand...."
She looked at him with dread, with entreaty, with love; she looked at
him intently, to keep his features more distinctly in her memory.
"I am so unhappy," she went on, not heeding him. "I have thought of
nothing but you all the time; I live only in the thought of you. And I
wanted to forget, to forget you; but why, oh, why, have you come?"
On the landing above them two schoolboys were smoking and looking down,
but that was nothing to Gurov; he drew Anna Sergeyevna to him, and began
kissing her face, her cheeks, and her hands.
"What are you doing, what are you doing!" she cried in horror, pushing
him away. "We are mad. Go away to-day; go away at once.... I beseech you
by all that is sacred, I implore you.... There are people coming this
way!"
Some one was coming up the stairs.
"You must go away," Anna Sergeyevna went on in a whisper. "Do you hear,
Dmitri Dmitritch? I will come and see you in Moscow. I have never been
happy; I am miserable now, and I never, never shall be happy, never!
Don't make me suffer still more! I swear I'll come to Moscow. But now
let us part. My precious, good, dear one, we must part!"
She pressed his hand and began rapidly going downstairs, looking round
at him, and from her eyes he could see that she really was unhappy.
Gurov stood for a little while, listened, then, when all sound had died
away, he found his coat and left the theatre.