Collected Novels and Plays (68 page)

FANYA:

She will tell Mamma we ran away together.

KONSTANTIN:

That will be my first reform—the abolition of the chaperon. They’ll be herded out in their black dresses and shot like turkeys, if they don’t recant.

FANYA:

You’re terrible!

KONSTANTIN:

So come with me! We’ll leave the basket in this clearing, where she will be sure to stumble on it. She’ll decide we’ve gone only a bit farther, to look at the view.

FANYA:

You know we can’t!

KONSTANTIN:

Fanya, she refuses to acknowledge her illness, and you’ve seen how it vexes her whenever
we
do. Come! She will want to doze off after her climb, like any self-respecting person. While

“Deep in the greenwood who shall spy

Where I and my beloved lie,

Unless the nightingale—”

FANYA:

The wood isn’t green. Why aren’t you silly more often?

KONSTANTIN:

I? Silly?

FANYA:

The nightingales have gone.

KONSTANTIN:

They have flown into your throat and make their music there.

FANYA (
seeing TITHONUS
):

Oh! We didn’t know—

Forgive us, please, for interrupting your work.

TITHONUS:

Not at all, Mademoiselle, I stopped listening almost at once.

FANYA:

You are an artist!

KONSTANTIN:

Fanya Alexandrovna, let us move on. We are intruding upon a rich mind at work.

FANYA:

I am passionately fond of nature. What a satisfaction for you! And what application! Did you climb from the village? Think, Kostya, isn’t it inspiring? I must find out from Nurse what became of my sketch-book. I remember doing some rather pretty things, even last year. But now ….

KONSTANTIN:

Now you are busy with clothes and carriage rides.

FANYA:

And with you, Kostya, with you! But when we are married I shall do a watercolor every day!

Imagine, we are to be married next year! Mamma thinks I am too young. I can’t agree with her, and yet I don’t mind waiting. I am so happy! If you knew him as I do—!

KONSTANTIN:

There are few who would have her patience in that respect. Come, Fanya.

Do
try to avoid subjects you know nothing about.

Good day, Sir.

TITHONUS:

Good day.

FANYA:

But we haven’t seen his painting!

KONSTANTIN:

Whoever told you that he wanted us to see it?

FANYA:

Ah, you don’t understand artists! It used to give me extreme pleasure to have somebody look over my shoulder.

Mayn’t we see it?

What exquisite colors! Oh, it’s much better than
mine!

KONSTANTIN:

Have you given it a title?

TITHONUS:

Not really. As you see, it’s no more than a view of the village.

KONSTANTIN:

Ah! That’s the
village
down in there ….?

FANYA:

Of course that’s the village! Kostya, I’m ashamed of you.

KONSTANTIN:

You must understand I know nothing about painting. I should never have thought that was the village, though.

TITHONUS:

The village seen through leaves.

KONSTANTIN: Interesting ….

FANYA:

Well,
I
think it’s truly lovely.

TITHONUS:

I don’t ask for flattery.

FANYA:

No, it is!

KONSTANTIN:

Can you tell me your purpose in painting such a picture?

TITHONUS:

My purpose? All the young men are talking about purpose nowadays. It may be I did so myself as a young man, but I have forgotten. Yes. And having forgotten, I cannot regret. I am what I am, and it is
soothing to know that. The pain that comes from wishing to be what we are not! As for this picture, I’m afraid I had no purpose. Is that old-fashioned of me?

KONSTANTIN:

Far from it, unfortunately. Yet it’s curious. Here you have given yourself the bother of a long climb, with your easel on your back—in order to paint the village. And look! The village has vanished! There are only the dimmest traces left on your canvas—a few odd shapes, a few drab colors, like a village destroyed by fire, seen a week later, through a mass of red-gold foliage ….

TITHONUS:

Perhaps my purpose was precisely that.

KONSTANTIN:

But why, then?

TITHONUS:

I don’t understand you.

FANYA:

Neither do I!

KONSTANTIN:

The village is real! There is an inn and a blacksmith, there are dogs, men, living, dying! All this is hidden away—behind leaves!

TITHONUS:

The leaves are real as well.

KONSTANTIN (
shouting
):

Very good! Paint leaves then!

FANYA:

Kostya!

KONSTANTIN:

Excuse me. I don’t like to see a village hidden by leaves, that’s all. I didn’t mean to offend you.

FANYA:

You see, he does have very good manners. Most of the time you’d never dream he was a Nihilist.

Oh dear, it slipped out! We haven’t yet told my parents.

TITHONUS:

Told them?

FANYA (
proudly
):

That Konstantin Stepanovitch is a Nihilist. They would surely be opposed to the match. And yet he’s so brilliant! His professors at the Medical School cannot find words to praise him. He has such ideas, so new, so fascinating!

TITHONUS:

Is it possible we have advanced to an age in which men are praised for new ideas? In my day we had our Nihilism. We called it that.

KONSTANTIN:

I believe in mankind. Nihilism is only a name, a negative belief.

Have you ever seen a man’s hand cut off at the wrist? The blood leaps out, the man’s eyes roll backwards, his cries are—

FANYA (
grasping her wrist
):

Oh stop!

KONSTANTIN:

Even to hear it described is painful. We cannot help thinking of our own mutilation. Isn’t this proof of a deep human sympathy that binds all men together? Kuvshenko would agree with me.

TITHONUS (
bored
):

Ah.

KONSTANTIN:

You are objecting, “But does he overlook a man’s environment?” I do not. It is the source of every individual mannerism. Take yourself. Already I can tell—what?—that you are a foreigner. How do I know? By observing that you repress your curiosity. Perhaps curiosity isn’t the word. One sees that you have traveled much, and reflected ….

TITHONUS:

You are right. I have no curiosity.

KONSTANTIN (
taken aback
):

We all have curiosity. No, I mean rather a kind of outward-goingness, a very Russian trait. We are constantly wanting to know about others—their forebears, their professions, their lives. The Germans and the English intellectualize their curiosity. The French restrict it to their private sensations. Our Russian curiosity is human. We are forever inquiring into our own destinies.

TITHONUS:

That is strange. Our destiny is one of the few matters revealed to us.

KONSTANTIN:

But revelation comes to those who seek it!

TITHONUS:

Perhaps.

FANYA:

I know what he means, Kostya. There have been hours when I’ve seen my whole life ahead of me, like a sunlit valley. I used not to be able to imagine myself living past the age of nineteen. But now that I
am
nineteen—

OLGA (
who has entered unnoticed
):

You can see all the way to thirty-nine?

And when, dear, you have passed
that
milestone, you will be able to see yourself at a hundred and three, as I do now after this brutal climb!

KONSTANTIN:

Welcome, Olga Vassilyevna!

FANYA:

We’ve been wondering what became of you.

OLGA:

Have you? I doubt it. Spread out the rug for me, Konstantin. I can’t walk another step.

It’s nothing.

We’ll have our tea here, shall we? If this gentleman will pardon us.

TITHONUS:

Please! Don’t think of me!

OLGA:

We come opportunely, perhaps?

TITHONUS:

You do, after a lonely day.

FANYA:

He is an artist!

OLGA:

So I see. Well, I shall not embarrass him by looking at his picture. Artists hate that. Besides, I should have nothing good to say of it, I warn you, Monsieur.

FANYA:

You should, though! It’s very well done.

OLGA:

No doubt it is. But today I am out for air and exercise. I can look at pictures all winter if I choose. And in a few weeks these colors will be gone, these wonderful dying leaves ….

TITHONUS (
to KONSTANTIN
):

The real leaves.

KONSTANTIN (
with a shrug and a smile
):

The real leaves.

OLGA (
to TITHONUS, while unpacking the basket
):

You’ll join our little feast, I hope?

TITHONUS:

Thank you. I should enjoy a glass of tea.

OLGA:

Ah, you’re not the glutton I am! I can do without tea, but not without my smoked meats and preserves.

But my dear friends! Where is the water?

FANYA:

Oh, the water!

OLGA:

Haven’t you found the spring yet? What have you been
doing?
Our guest is thirsting for his tea.

We call this
our
mountainside. We come here every year.

Don’t you remember where it was?

KONSTANTIN (
patiently
):

Yes, of course.

OLGA:

Then find it!

Stay with us,
chérie
, it will bring him back sooner.

Where is your embroidery? A young girl should always be doing something with her hands.

You’re a stranger here. Do you plan to stay long?

TITHONUS:

It’s not likely. For years we have had, my wife and I, no fixed home. A
pied-à-terre
in Paris, nothing more. But now we are at the age—or rather I am at the age, for my wife is still young—when a home becomes a necessity. I am no longer thrilled by restaurants.

FANYA:

You’ve never had a home?

TITHONUS:

As a child only. In latter years I have traveled.

FANYA:

And I have lived all my life here—isn’t it strange?—a few miles from the village, in my father’s big dark house.

OLGA:

Don’t boast, dear.

FANYA:

Was I? I’m sorry. Miss Mannering—she teaches me—wrote in my album for my name-day: “Though we travel the world over in search of the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.”

TITHONUS:

I don’t think that saying has any truth in it at all. “Carry it with us”—as if we were turtles! We carry ourselves, that’s more than enough.

FANYA:

But I should like to travel, just the same.

OLGA:

I too have never had a home, since early childhood. Schools and convents, positions in genteel families, not altogether a servant, never quite a friend. I married a schoolmaster, an older man, honest, proud
of his uniform. He is dead, there were no children. I began to pay long visits, then very long visits—isn’t it so, Fanya? As a widow, I had rank of a sort. I knew how to make myself useful. People seemed to appreciate
me.

FANYA:

Appreciate! They adore you!

OLGA:

It is a life, in short.

TITHONUS:

Better than some.

OLGA:

Poorer than others.

FANYA:

Have you been to Italy, then?

TITHONUS:

Italy, Africa, Sweden, Constantinople ….

FANYA:

How I envy you! Tell us about Constantinople!

TITHONUS:

A fascinating city, but fearful, too. Swarming with life! This ring I wear comes from the Bazaar in Constantinople. A serpent, you see, with its tail in its mouth.