XV

At Venice I had an attack of pleurisy. Probably I had caught cold in the

evening when we were rowing from the station to the Hotel Bauer. I had

to take to my bed and stay there for a fortnight. Every morning while I

was ill Zinaida Fyodorovna came from her room to drink coffee with me,

and afterwards read aloud to me French and Russian books, of which we

had bought a number at Vienna. These books were either long, long

familiar to me or else had no interest for me, but I had the sound of a

sweet, kind voice beside me, so that the meaning of all of them was

summed up for me in the one thing--I was not alone. She would go out for

a walk, come back in her light grey dress, her light straw hat, gay,

warmed by the spring sun; and sitting by my bed, bending low down over

me, would tell me something about Venice or read me those books--and I

was happy.

At night I was cold, ill, and dreary, but by day I revelled in life--I

can find no better expression for it. The brilliant warm sunshine

beating in at the open windows and at the door upon the balcony, the

shouts below, the splash of oars, the tinkle of bells, the prolonged

boom of the cannon at midday, and the feeling of perfect, perfect

freedom, did wonders with me; I felt as though I were growing strong,

broad wings which were bearing me God knows whither. And what charm,

what joy at times at the thought that another life was so close to mine!

that I was the servant, the guardian, the friend, the indispensable

fellow-traveller of a creature, young, beautiful, wealthy, but weak,

lonely, and insulted! It is pleasant even to be ill when you know that

there are people who are looking forward to your convalescence as to a

holiday. One day I heard her whispering behind the door with my doctor,

and then she came in to me with tear-stained eyes. It was a bad sign,

but I was touched, and there was a wonderful lightness in my heart.

But at last they allowed me to go out on the balcony. The sunshine and

the breeze from the sea caressed and fondled my sick body. I looked down

at the familiar gondolas, which glide with feminine grace smoothly and

majestically as though they were alive, and felt all the luxury of this

original, fascinating civilisation. There was a smell of the sea. Some

one was playing a stringed instrument and two voices were singing. How

delightful it was! How unlike it was to that Petersburg night when the

wet snow was falling and beating so rudely on our faces. If one looks

straight across the canal, one sees the sea, and on the wide expanse

towards the horizon the sun glittered on the water so dazzlingly that it

hurt one's eyes to look at it. My soul yearned towards that lovely sea,

which was so akin to me and to which I had given up my youth. I longed

to live--to live--and nothing more.

A fortnight later I began walking freely. I loved to sit in the sun, and

to listen to the gondoliers without understanding them, and for hours

together to gaze at the little house where, they said, Desdemona

lived--a naïve, mournful little house with a demure expression, as light

as lace, so light that it looked as though one could lift it from its

place with one hand. I stood for a long time by the tomb of Canova, and

could not take my eyes off the melancholy lion. And in the Palace of the

Doges I was always drawn to the corner where the portrait of the unhappy

Marino Faliero was painted over with black. "It is fine to be an artist,

a poet, a dramatist," I thought, "but since that is not vouchsafed to

me, if only I could go in for mysticism! If only I had a grain of some

faith to add to the unruffled peace and serenity that fills the soul!"

In the evening we ate oysters, drank wine, and went out in a gondola. I

remember our black gondola swayed softly in the same place while the

water faintly gurgled under it. Here and there the reflection of the

stars and the lights on the bank quivered and trembled. Not far from us

in a gondola, hung with coloured lanterns which were reflected in the

water, there were people singing. The sounds of guitars, of violins, of

mandolins, of men's and women's voices, were audible in the dark.

Zinaida Fyodorovna, pale, with a grave, almost stern face, was sitting

beside me, compressing her lips and clenching her hands. She was

thinking about something; she did not stir an eyelash, nor hear me. Her

face, her attitude, and her fixed, expressionless gaze, and her

incredibly miserable, dreadful, and icy-cold memories, and around her

the gondolas, the lights, the music, the song with its vigorous

passionate cry of "_Jam-mo! Jam-mo!_"--what contrasts in life! When she

sat like that, with tightly clasped hands, stony, mournful, I used to

feel as though we were both characters in some novel in the

old-fashioned style called "The Ill-fated," "The Abandoned," or

something of the sort. Both of us: she--the ill-fated, the abandoned;

and I--the faithful, devoted friend, the dreamer, and, if you like it, a

superfluous man, a failure capable of nothing but coughing and dreaming,

and perhaps sacrificing myself.

But who and what needed my sacrifices now? And what had I to sacrifice,

indeed?

When we came in in the evening we always drank tea in her room and

talked. We did not shrink from touching on old, unhealed wounds--on the

contrary, for some reason I felt a positive pleasure in telling her

about my life at Orlov's, or referring openly to relations which I knew

and which could not have been concealed from me.

"At moments I hated you," I said to her. "When he was capricious,

condescending, told you lies, I marvelled how it was you did not see,

did not understand, when it was all so clear! You kissed his hands, you

knelt to him, you flattered him ..."

"When I ... kissed his hands and knelt to him, I loved him ..." she

said, blushing crimson.

"Can it have been so difficult to see through him? A fine sphinx! A

sphinx indeed--a _kammer-junker!_ I reproach you for nothing, God

forbid," I went on, feeling I was coarse, that I had not the tact, the

delicacy which are so essential when you have to do with a

fellow-creature's soul; in early days before I knew her I had not

noticed this defect in myself. "But how could you fail to see what he

was," I went on, speaking more softly and more diffidently, however.

"You mean to say you despise my past, and you are right," she said,

deeply stirred. "You belong to a special class of men who cannot be

judged by ordinary standards; your moral requirements are exceptionally

rigorous, and I understand you can't forgive things. I understand you,

and if sometimes I say the opposite, it doesn't mean that I look at

things differently from you; I speak the same old nonsense simply

because I haven't had time yet to wear out my old clothes and

prejudices. I, too, hate and despise my past, and Orlov and my love....

What was that love? It's positively absurd now," she said, going to the

window and looking down at the canal. "All this love only clouds the

conscience and confuses the mind. The meaning of life is to be found

only in one thing--fighting. To get one's heel on the vile head of the

serpent and to crush it! That's the meaning of life. In that alone or in

nothing."

I told her long stories of my past, and described my really astounding

adventures. But of the change that had taken place in me I did not say

one word. She always listened to me with great attention, and at

interesting places she rubbed her hands as though vexed that it had not

yet been her lot to experience such adventures, such joys and terrors.

Then she would suddenly fall to musing and retreat into herself, and I

could see from her face that she was not attending to me.

I closed the windows that looked out on the canal and asked whether we

should not have the fire lighted.

"No, never mind. I am not cold," she said, smiling listlessly. "I only

feel weak. Do you know, I fancy I have grown much wiser lately. I have

extraordinary, original ideas now. When I think of my past, of my life

then ... people in general, in fact, it is all summed up for me in the

image of my stepmother. Coarse, insolent, soulless, false, depraved, and

a morphia maniac too. My father, who was feeble and weak-willed, married

my mother for her money and drove her into consumption; but his second

wife, my stepmother, he loved passionately, insanely.... What I had to

put up with! But what is the use of talking! And so, as I say, it is all

summed up in her image.... And it vexes me that my stepmother is dead. I

should like to meet her now!"

"Why?"

"I don't know," she answered with a laugh and a graceful movement of her

head. "Good-night. You must get well. As soon as you are well, we'll

take up our work ... It's time to begin."

After I had said good-night and had my hand on the door-handle, she

said:

"What do you think? Is Polya still living there?"

"Probably."

And I went off to my room. So we spent a whole month. One grey morning

when we both stood at my window, looking at the clouds which were moving

up from the sea, and at the darkening canal, expecting every minute that

it would pour with rain, and when a thick, narrow streak of rain covered

the sea as though with a muslin veil, we both felt suddenly dreary. The

same day we both set off for Florence.