Lieutenant Barahmeiev, late of the Hussars, was making amorous advances
to his landlord’s wife, a Jewish lady of about thirty. “Your lips are
saying No! No! No! whereas your eyes are saying Yes! Yes! Yes!”
Vera Solomonovna looked at him with her golden eyes and shook her
handsome head and said to him,
“Boris Nikolàech, you’re thirty-eight, and you have no more sense than a
boy of twelve.”
Lieutenant Barahmeiev looked more self-confident than ever. It was a
fixed idea with him that no woman could refuse his amorous advances, and
that no landlord really meant him, seriously, to pay his rent. To
whatever women said in proof of their refusal, to whatever landlords
said in confirmation of their claims, Lieutenant Barahmeiev had a
simple answer. He called it “bluff.” Some English words like “bluff”
and “gentleman” have passed into the Russian tongue in the original. He
wasn’t born yesterday, he said.
And fully confident of the result, the Russian officer continued, “Why
this pretence, this hypocritical reluctance? Why not be frank about it?
To-night,” he whispered. “In my room....”
“Go to the devil!” she said, but her eyes seemed to say, “Go on
talking.”
“You say ‘Go to the devil!’ But what do you mean? I know what you mean.
Wasn’t born yesterday. Why not be honest about it?”
Odessa had been changing hands from Bolshevik to anti-Bolshevik in turn;
but the habit of love-making persists through such irrelevancies as wars
and revolutions. Life in the flat of Finkelstein, where Lieutenant
Barahmeiev occupied a bedroom, went on essentially as it had gone on
before the war. I liked my hosts. She, a woman of considerable beauty,
greedy for admiration. He, a successful broker, tall, handsome,
prepossessing, inordinately proud of being a Jew and always selling
foreign currencies to his guests at table. I liked the free and easy
manner in the household, the total absence of suspicion on the part of
Finkelstein as regards his handsome wife. No doubt he also had no small
opinion of himself, and thought that as compared with the Lieutenant he
was the better specimen of male all round. And I think that perhaps he
was.
At lunch he was saying to Lieutenant Barahmeiev, “Yes, Boris Nikolàech,
you Christians like to run us down. You say that we are swindlers, and
‘Never trust a Jew.’ But the fact is that we Jews can trust each other,
but I am dashed if we are often given an opportunity to trust a
Christian. Take yourself. You call yourself a ‘paying guest.’ But what
right have you to the adjective? If it comes to that, what right have
you to the noun? Have I asked you to come and stay with us, and
overlooking that point, is it a usual thing for guests to stay
indefinitely? But your conscience doesn’t seem to trouble you a bit.
You eat and sleep, and there! you even seem to have designs on my wife.
Ah, you’re a funny fellow, Boris Nikolàech, but, at any rate, it’s some
good to us that you are an officer; it will keep them from commandeering
our flat while you are here. But what was I saying? Ah, yes, does any
one want to buy Romanov roubles? Or I can sell you francs.”
But the Lieutenant went on talking to the hostess. “What I can’t get
over is this utter want of frankness in you, Vera Solomonovna. Your
soul, your eyes cry out, ‘Take me! I am yours!’ whereas your lying lips
pretend to say, ‘Go to the devil.’ Bluff! All bluff, all bluff!”
She turned to her husband and looking at her guest with compassion,
said:
“What _can_ I do with him, Lyova? He doesn’t understand. He _can’t_. He
really thinks he’s irresistible to women. I’ve never seen anything so
brazen in my life. To be quite frank, Boris Nikolàech, you’re not the
least bit attractive. I wonder who put that idea into your head?”
“Vera Solomonovna,” he implored her, “be frank for once. You know you
are in love with me; why all this hypocritical nonsense about my being
‘not the least bit attractive’? Why all this bluff? I wasn’t born
yesterday!”
“In matters of love you’re a school boy.”
“Yes, when I was a school boy I had the innocence to take a woman’s No
for No. But now, I need hardly say, I believe it no longer.”
“You wise old man then,” she said ironically, rising.
We followed her into the drawing-room. The window panes were blurred
with rain. The sea, the sky, was one grey mass, doleful and monotonous.
Below, in the street, one could see the shining hoods of passing cabs;
the muffled sound of hoofs reached our windows. In the indoor twilight
of the flat one felt at rest, one’s limbs were seized with languor.
Finkelstein and his stock-exchange associates retired to his study to
play cards.
“The rain reminds me, Vera Solomonovna,” said the Lieutenant, “of an
incident in my youth. The woman--oh, she had the self-same psychology,
if I may say so, as yourself, and in the end, and in the end ...
complete capitulation.”
“I am tired of you,” said she, looking languorous rather than tired.
“Vera Solomonovna,” he said, bending over her; then in a whisper: “Don’t
forget to-night ... my room.”
She shook her head.
“How blatantly deceitful women really are,” he said. “You shake your
head. Why? Why, when I know----”
She flushed. “This is really getting idiotic!”
“Ha! ha! ha! That is exactly what Zina used to say: ‘idiotic.’ I was
going to tell you about Zina when you interrupted me. This was a long
time ago--let me see--yes, twenty-one years ago, to be exact. I was
seventeen then. I was a cadet at the X---- Military School and I was
spending the summer vacation with my aunt at S----, a sea side resort
some twenty miles from Petersburg. It was an evening in early June, and
we were sitting on the open balcony of the pavilion at the local tennis
club. We were discussing something--literature I think, and then, quite
relevantly, we switched off on to love. There was this Zina I am telling
you about, a beautifully developed girl of twenty-five, who was quite
vehement in her denunciation of everything relating to the attraction
between the sexes, and as she spoke it was urged upon her that for a
person with her views the convent was the only proper place. It was a
lovely night, but we sat there and exchanged inanities. Gradually some
of us dispersed.
“I was standing by a street stall, buying cigarettes, when I noticed
Zina coming up. She bought herself some chocolate. We sauntered away
from the stall together.”
“Where are you going?” I asked her.
“Nowhere in particular.”
We went along the big road leading to the sea. Our shoulders touched
occasionally as we stumbled over the uneven ground.
“They’re so absurd with their revolting sentimentality,” I said.
“Why talk about them? Look at the clouds,” she said. “How they chase
each other. We couldn’t keep pace with them if we ran. And the moon!
Gone--and out again!”
We made our way together along a narrow lane. The wooden _datchas_ had
been left behind.
“Is this ‘The Alley of Kisses’?”
“No, this is ‘The Alley of Sighs.’”
We went on.
“The moon again!”
“Yes.”
“This is ‘The Alley of Kisses,’” she said, as we turned to our left.
Beyond I could hear the sound of the sea.
“Let us sit down here.”
It was an old bench considerably disfigured by a penknife; it bore
initials, monograms and names of lovers probably who had sat there in
former times.
“So this is ‘The Alley of Kisses,’” I repeated. One seizes with
gratitude on such openings.
“Yes.” She looked at me strangely. “And the fools at the tennis club
talking rubbish!”
“Yes.”
“The sea and the air! and--as I was saying--this ‘Alley of Kisses.’ Can
you feel it?”