Mary (12 page)

“Just think, I’ve been looking at snow for a week, white cold snow. It’s cold, nasty and depressing. And suddenly like a bird the thought darts through one’s mind that somewhere far far away there are people living another completely different life. They’re not stagnating as I am in the sticks, on a small farm.

“No, it’s really too awfully dull here. Write me something, Lyova. Even the most absolute trifles.”

Ganin remembered getting this letter, remembered walking up a steep stony path on that distant January evening, past Tartar picket fences hung here and there with horses’ skulls, remembered how he sat beside a rivulet pouring in thin streams over smooth white stones, and stared through the countless, delicate and amazingly distinct bare branches of an apple tree at the mellow pink of the sky, where the new moon glistened like a translucent nail clipping, and beside it, by the lower horn, trembled a drop of brightness—the first star.

He wrote to her the same night—about that star, about the cypresses in the garden, about the donkey whose roaring bray came every morning from the Tartar yard behind the house. He wrote affectionately, dreamily, recalling the wet catkins on the slippery footbridge of the pavilion where they first met.

In those days letters took a long time on the way—the answer did not come until July.

“Thank you very much for your good, sweet, ‘southern’ letter. Why do you write that you still remember me? And you’ll not forget me? No? How lovely!

“Today it’s so nice and fresh, after a thunderstorm. As at Voskresensk—remember? Wouldn’t you like to wander round those familiar places again? I would—terribly. How lovely it was to walk in the rain through the park in autumn. Why wasn’t it sad then in bad weather?

“I’m going to stop writing for a while and go for a walk.

“I never did manage to finish the letter yesterday. Isn’t that awful of me? Forgive me, Lyova dear, I promise I won’t do it again.”

Ganin dropped his hand with the letter and for a moment sat lost in thought. How well he remembered those merry mannerisms of hers, that husky little laugh when she apologized, that transition from a melancholy sigh to a look of ardent vitality!

“For a long time I was worried not knowing where you were and how you were,” she wrote in the same letter. “Now we mustn’t break off the little thread which links us. There’s so much I want to write and ask you, but my thoughts wander. I’ve seen and lived through a lot of unhappiness since those days. Write, write for God’s sake, write often and more. All the very best for now. I’d like to say goodbye more affectionately, but perhaps I’ve forgotten how to after all this time. Or perhaps there’s something else holding me back?”

For days after getting that letter he was full of a trembling happiness. He could not understand how he could have parted from Mary. He only remembered their first autumn together—all the rest, those torments and tiffs, seemed so pale and insignificant. The languorous darkness, the conventional sheen of the sea at night, the velvety hush of the narrow cypress avenues, the gleam of the moonlight on the broad leaves of magnolias—all this only oppressed him.

Duty kept him in Yalta—the civil war was under way—but there were moments when he decided to give up everything to go and look for Mary among the farms of the Ukraine.

There was something touching and wonderful about the way their letters managed to pass across the terrible Russia of that time—like a cabbage white butterfly flying over the trenches. His answer to her second letter was very delayed, and Mary simply could not understand what had happened, as she was convinced that where their letters were concerned the usual obstacles of those days somewhow did not exist.

“It must seem strange to you that I’m writing to you despite your silence—but I don’t believe, I refuse to believe, that you still don’t want to reply to me. You haven’t replied, not because you didn’t want to but simply because—well, because you couldn’t, or because you hadn’t time or something. Tell me, Lyova, doesn’t it seem funny to remember what you once said to me—that loving me was your life, and if you couldn’t love me you wouldn’t be alive? Yes, how everything passes, how things change. Would you like to have what happened all over again? I think I’m feeling rather too depressed today …

“But today it is spring and mimosa for sale
At all corners is offered today.
I am bringing you some; like a dream, it is frail—

“Nice little poem, but I can’t remember the beginning or the end and I forget who wrote it. Now I shall wait for your letter. I don’t know how to say goodbye to you. Perhaps I’ve kissed you. Yes, I suppose, I have.”

Two or three weeks later came her fourth letter:

“I was glad to get your letter, Lyova. It is such a nice, nice letter. Yes, one can never forget how much and how radiantly one loved. You write that you would give your whole future life for a moment from the past—but it would be better to meet and verify one’s feelings.

“Lyova, if you
do
come, ring up the local telephone exchange and ask for number 34. They may answer you in
German: there is a German military hospital here. Ask them to call for me.

“I was in town yesterday and had some ‘fun.’ It was very gay, with lots of music and lights. A very amusing man with a little yellow beard made a play for me and called me ‘the queen of the ball.’ Today it’s so boring, boring. It’s such a pity that the days go by so pointlessly and stupidly—and these are supposed to be the best, the happiest years of our life. It looks as if I shall soon turn into a hypocrite—I mean, hypochondriac. No, that mustn’t happen.

“Let me get rid of the shackles of love
And let me try to stop thinking!
Replenish, replenish the glasses with wine—
Let me keep drinking and drinking!

“Quite something, isn’t it?

“Write to me as soon as you get my letter. Will you come here and see me? Impossible? Well, too bad. Perhaps you can, though? What nonsense I’m writing: to come all the way here just to see me. What conceit!—don’t you think?

“Just now I read a poem in an old magazine: ‘My Little Pale Pearl’ by Krapovitsky. I like it very much. Write and tell me absolutely everything. I kiss you. Here’s something else I’ve read—by Podtyagin:

“The full moon shines over forest and stream,
Look at the ripples—how richly they gleam!”

“Dear Podtyagin,” mused Ganin. “How strange. Goodness, how strange. If someone had told me then I should meet him, of all people.”

Smiling and shaking his head, he unfolded one last letter. He had received it the day before leaving for the front line. It had been a cold January dawn on board ship, and he had felt queasy from drinking coffee made from acorns.

“Lyova, my darling, my joy, how I waited and longed for
your letter. It was so hard and painful to write you such restrained letters. How can I have lived these three years without you, how have I managed to survive and what was there to live for?

“I love you. If you come back I’ll plague you with kisses. Do you remember:

“Write to them that my little boy Lyov
I kiss as much as I can,
That an Austrian helmet from Lvov
To bring for his birthday I plan
But a separate note to my father—

“Goodness, where has it gone, all that distant, bright, endearing—Like you, I feel that we shall meet again—but when, when?

“I love you. Come to me. Your letter was such a joy that I still can’t regain my senses for happiness—”

“Happiness,” Ganin repeated softly, folding all five letters into an even batch. “That’s it—happiness. We’re going to meet again in twelve hours’ time.”

He stood motionless, preoccupied with secret, delicious thoughts. He had no doubt that Mary still loved him. Her five letters lay in his hand. Outside it was quite dark. The knobs on his suitcases gleamed. The desolate room smelled faintly of dust.

He was still sitting in the same position when voices were heard outside the door and suddenly, without knocking, Alfyorov strode into the room.

“Oh, sorry,” he said without showing any particular embarrassment. “I somehow thought you’d already gone.”

His fingers playing with the folded letters, Ganin stared vacantly at Alfyorov’s little yellow beard. The landlady appeared in the doorway.

“Lydia Nikolaevna,” Alfyorov went on, twitching his neck and crossing the room with a proprietorial air. “We must get
this damn thing out of the way, so that we can open the door into my room.”

He tried to move the wardrobe, grunted and staggered back helplessly.

“Let me do it,” Ganin suggested cheerfully. Thrusting the black wallet into his pocket he stood up, walked over to the wardrobe and spat on his hands.

fourteen

The black trains roared past, shaking the windows of the house; with a movement like ghostly shoulders shaking off a load, heaving mountains of smoke swept upward, blotting out the night sky. The roofs burned with a smooth metallic blaze in the moonlight; and a sonorous black shadow under the iron bridge awoke as a black train rumbled across it, sending a chain of light flickering down its length. The clattering roar and mass of smoke seemed to pass right through the house as it quivered between the chasm where the rail tracks lay like lines drawn by a moonlit fingernail and the street where it was crossed by the flat bridge waiting for the next regular thunder of railway carriages. The house was like a spectre you could put your hand through and wriggle your fingers.

Standing at the window of the dancers’ room, Ganin looked out onto the street: the asphalt gleamed dully, black foreshortened people walked hither and thither, disappearing into shadows and re-emerging in the slanting light reflected from shop windows. In an uncurtained window of the house opposite, sparkling glass and gilded frames could be seen in the bright amber gap. Then an elegant black shadow pulled down the blinds.

Ganin turned around. Kolin handed him a quivering glassful of vodka.

The room was lit by a somewhat pale unearthly light, because the ingenious dancers had shrouded the lamp in a scrap of mauve silk. On the table, in the middle of the room, bottles gave off a violet-colored gleam, oil glistened in open sardine tins, there were chocolates in silver wrappings, a mosaic of sausage slices, glazed meat patties.

Sitting at the table were Podtyagin, pale and morose, with beads of sweat on his large forehead; Alfyorov, sporting a brand new shot-silk tie; Klara in her eternal black dress, languid and flushed from drinking cheap orange liqueur.

Gornotsvetov, without a jacket and wearing a soiled silk shirt with an open collar, was sitting on the edge of the bed tuning a guitar which he had somehow obtained. Kolin kept constantly on the move pouring out vodka, liqueurs, pale Rhine wine, his fat hips wriggling comically while his trim torso, gripped by a tight blue jacket, remained almost motionless as he moved.

“What—not drinking?” he pouted, asking the conventional reproachful question as he raised his melting glance to Ganin.

“Yes—why not?” said Ganin, sitting down on the window ledge and taking the light, cold wineglass from the dancer’s trembling hand. Tossing it down, he glanced round the people sitting at the table. All were silent—even Alfyorov who was much too excited by the fact that in eight or nine hours’ time his wife would arrive.

“The guitar’s in tune,” said Gornotsvetov as he adjusted a key and plucked the string. He struck a chord, then damped the twanging sound with his palm.

“Why aren’t you singing, gentlemen? In Klara’s honor. Come along now. ‘Like a fragrant flower—’ ”

Grinning at Klara and raising his glass with mock gallantry, Alfyorov leaned backward in his chair—at which he nearly fell over, as it was a revolving stool without a back—and
made an effort to sing in a false, affected little tenor, but no one else joined in.

Gornotsvetov gave a final pluck to the strings and stopped playing. Everyone felt awkward.

“Some singers!” Podtyagin grunted despondently, and shook his head, propped on his hand. He felt bad: the thought of his lost passport was combined with a stifling shortness of breath.

“I shouldn’t drink, that’s the trouble,” he added glumly.

“I told you so,” murmured Klara. “You’re like a baby, Anton Sergeyevich.”

“Why isn’t anybody eating or drinking?” said Kolin, waggling his hips as he minced around the table. He began filling up empty glasses. Nobody said anything. The party, obviously, was a failure.

Ganin, who until then had been sitting on the window ledge and staring, with a faint smile of pensive irony, at the mauve glimmer of the table and the strangely lit faces, suddenly jumped down to the floor and gave a peal of clear laughter.

“Fill’em up, Kolin,” he said as he walked over to the table. “Some more for Alfyorov. Tomorrow our life changes. Tomorrow I shan’t be here any longer. Come on, down the hatch. Stop looking at me like a wounded deer, Klara. Give her some more of that liqueur. You too, Anton Sergeyevich—cheer up. No good moping about your passport. You’ll get another one, even better than the old one. Recite us some of your poetry. Oh yes, by the way—”

“Can I have that empty bottle?” Alfyorov said suddenly, and a lascivious gleam sparkled in his joyful, excited eyes.

“By the way,” Ganin repeated, coming up behind the old man and putting his hand on his fleshy shoulder, “I remember some of your verses, Anton Sergeyevich. ‘Full moon—forest and stream’—that’s right, isn’t it?”

Podtyagin turned and looked at him, then gave an unhurried
smile. “Did you find it in an old calendar? They were very fond of printing my poetry on calendar leaves. On the underside, above the recipe for the day.”

“Gentlemen, gentlemen, what is he trying to do?” shouted Kolin, pointing at Alfyorov, who, having flung open the window, had suddenly raised the bottle and was aiming it into the dark blue night.

“Let him,” Ganin laughed. “Let him act up if he wants to.”

Alfyorov’s beard gleamed, his Adam’s apple swelled and the sparse hair at his temples stirred in the night breeze. Bringing back his arm in a wide sweep, he stood still for a while and then solemnly placed the bottle on the floor.