Petersburg (29 page)

‘Now, now, Sonya … Now that’s enough … Enough, my little child!
Baby, baby!’

‘Stop it, stop it!
…’

‘What is it?
What’s wrong?
Tell me!
… Let us discuss it coolly and rationally.’

‘No: stop it, stop it!
… Coolly and rationally … stop it!
One can see … aaah … you have … cold fish-blood.’

Sergei Sergeyevich stepped back from his wife in offence, stood undecidedly, and then sank into a nearby armchair.

‘Aaah … To leave your life like that!
… So you can be in
charge of provisions somewhere out there!
… To go away!
… To know nothing!
…’

‘You’re wrong, Sonyushka, if you think I don’t know anything at all … Look …’

‘Oh, please stop it!
…’

‘Look, my dear: ever since … I moved into this room … In a word, I have my self-respect: and you must understand that I don’t want to hamper your freedom … What is more, I cannot hamper you: I understand you; and I know very well that it’s not easy for you, my dear … I have hopes, Sonyushka: perhaps some day once again … Well, but I won’t, I won’t insist!
But you must understand me, too: my distance, my cool rationality, are not the result of coldness at all … Well, but I don’t insist, I won’t insist …’

‘Perhaps you’d like to see Nikolai Apollonovich Ableukhov?
Perhaps something has happened between you?
Then tell me everything: tell it without hiding anything; we shall discuss your position together.’

‘Don’t dare speak of him to me!
… He is a scoundrel, a scoundrel!
… Another husband would have shot him long ago … But you?
… No, stop it!’

And incoherently, in agitation, having dropped her little head to her breast, Sofya Petrovna told everything as it was.

Sergei Sergeyevich Likhutin was a simple man.
And simple men are struck by the inexplicable absurdity of an action even more than by low-down behaviour, by murder or a bloody manifestation of brutality.
A man is capable of understanding human treachery, crime, even human disgrace; after all, to understand something means almost to find a justification for it; but how is one to explain to oneself, for example, the action of a socially accepted and, it would appear, thoroughly honourable man, if to this socially accepted and thoroughly honourable man there suddenly comes a completely absurd fantasy: to get down on all fours on the threshold of a certain fashionable drawing-room flapping the skirts of his tailcoat?
That would be, if I may say so, a complete abomination!
The incomprehensibility, the futility of that abomination cannot be justified, in the same way that blasphemy, sacrilege and any sort of futile mockery cannot be justified!
No, rather let a thoroughly honourable man squander the state’s money with impunity, as long as he never gets down on all fours, because after an action like that everything is defiled.

Angrily, vividly, distinctly, Sergei Sergeyevich Likhutin pictured to himself the buffoon-like aspect of the satin domino in the unlit entrance porch, and … Sergei Sergeyevich began to blush, blushed a bright carrot colour: the blood rushed to his head.
He and Nikolai Apollonovich had, after all, played together as children; Sergei Sergeyevich had subsequently been surprised at Nikolai Apollonovich’s philosophical abilities; Sergei Sergeyevich had nobly permitted Nikolai Apollonovich, as an honourable man of good society, to come between himself and his wife and … Sergei Sergeyevich Likhutin angrily, vividly, distinctly pictured to himself the buffoon-like grimaces of the red domino in the unlit entrance porch.
He got up and began to pace agitatedly about the tiny little room, compressing his fingers to a fist and furiously raising his compressed fingers each time he made a sharp turn; when Sergei Sergeyevich lost his temper (he had only ever lost his temper two or three times – no more), this gesture always appeared; Sofya Petrovna sensed very well what the gesture meant; she was a little frightened of it; she was always a little frightened, not of the gesture, but of the silence that made the gesture manifest.

‘What are you … doing?’

‘Nothing … It’s all right …’

And Sergei Sergeyevich Likhutin continued to pace about the tiny little room, his fingers compressed to a fist.

The red domino!
… A vileness, a vileness and a vileness!
And it had been standing there, outside the entrance door – what?!
…

Nikolai Apollonovich’s behaviour had shocked the second lieutenant in the extreme.
He now experienced a mixture of revulsion and horror; in a word, he experienced that sense of aversion that commonly seizes us when we observe complete idiots performing their bodily functions directly beneath them, or when we observe
a black, furry-legged insect – a spider, say … Bewilderment, outrage and fear turned simply into fury.
To have disregarded his urgent letter, to have insulted his officer’s honour with a clownish escapade, to have insulted his dear wife with some spider-like grimace!
… And Sergei Sergeyevich Likhutin gave himself his honourable officer’s word – at all costs he would crush the spider, crush it; and, having taken this decision, he continued to pace and pace, red as a crayfish, compressing his fingers to a fist and jerking his muscular arm up each time he made a turn; he now struck fear into Sofya Petrovna, too: also red, with her half-open, pouting lips and her cheeks from which the glistening tears had not been wiped, she was closely observing her husband from there, from that armchair.

‘What are you doing?’

But Sergei Sergeyevich now replied in a hard voice; in that voice there sounded at one and the same time menace, sternness and suppressed fury.

‘Nothing … It’s all right.’

To tell the truth, at this moment Sergei Sergeyevich was experiencing something approaching revulsion at his beloved wife, too; as though she too had shared in the clownish shame of the red mask which had wriggled about – there, at the entrance door.

‘Go to your room: sleep … leave all this to me.’

And Sofya Petrovna Likhutina, who had long ago stopped crying, rose without demur and quietly went to her room.

Remaining alone, Sergei Sergeyevich Likhutin continued to pace, with a cough now and then; drily this came from him, most unpleasantly, distinctly, now ‘cahuh-cahuh’, and ‘cahuh-cahuh’.
Sometimes a wooden fist, as if carved from hard, fragrant wood, was raised above the little table; and it seemed that at any moment the table would fly into pieces with a deafening crack.

But the fist would unclench itself.

At last, Sergei Sergeyevich Likhutin began quickly to undress; he undressed, covered himself with a flannelette blanket, and – the blanket slipped off; Sergei Sergeyevich Likhutin lowered his legs to the floor, stared fixedly at some point with an unseeing gaze and, unexpectedly to himself, began to whisper in the very loudest of whispers:

‘Aah!
How do you like this?
I shall shoot you like a dog …’

Then from the other side of the wall a little voice was heard, loud and tearful.

‘What is it, what are you doing?’

‘Nothing … it’s all right …’

Sergei Sergeyevich dived back under his blanket again and covered his head with it, in order to sigh, to whisper, to offer entreaties, to issue threats to someone, for something …

Sofya Petrovna did not summon Mavrushka.
She quickly threw off her fur coat, hat and dress; and all in white, stepping forth from a fountain of objects which she contrived to scatter around her during those three or four minutes, she threw herself on the bed; and sat now with her feet tucked up and her black-haired, angry little face with its protruding lips, above which a small moustache was clearly visible, dropped into her hands, and around her was a fountain of objects; thus was it always.
All Mavrushka ever did was to clear up after her mistress; Sofya Petrovna had only to remember some item of her toilet, and the item was not to hand; and then into the air flew blouses, handkerchiefs, dresses, hairpins and hatpins, anyhow and anywhere; from Sofya Petrovna’s little hand began to shoot a coloured waterfall of various objects.
This evening Sofya Petrovna did not call Mavrushka; that meant that a fountain of objects was in progress.

Sofya Petrovna found herself involuntarily listening to Sergei Sergeyevich’s restless pacing behind the partition; and she also listened to the nightly strains of the grand piano above her head: there someone played over and over again the same antique tune of a polka-mazurka, to the strains of which her mother, laughing, had danced with her when she had been but a mite of two years old.
And to the strains of this polka-mazurka, strains that were so antique and so innocent of everything, Sofya Petrovna’s anger began to subside, being replaced by weariness, complete apathy and the merest hint of irritation with regard to her husband, in whom she, Sofya Petrovna, had in her own opinion aroused jealousy towards
the other man
.
But as soon as jealousy was, in her opinion,
aroused in her husband, Sergei Sergeyevich, then her husband, Sergei Sergeyevich, became distinctly disagreeable to her; she experienced a feeling of awkwardness, as though some alien hand had stretched out to the cherished little box in which she kept her letters and which was locked up in the drawer over there.
On the contrary: just as Nikolai Apollonovich’s smile had at first struck her with aversion, and then from the sense of aversion she had derived a sweet mixture of rapture and horror at that same smile, so in the shamefulness of Nikolai Apollonovich’s behaviour there, on the small bridge, she suddenly discovered a sweet source of revenge: she regretted that when he had fallen before her in that pathetic guise of a buffoon, she had not stamped on him and kicked him with her little feet; she suddenly felt she wanted to torment and torture him, while she did not feel she wanted to torment her husband, Sergei Sergeyevich; neither torment him nor kiss him.
And Sofya Petrovna suddenly discovered that her husband had nothing whatever to do with this fateful occurrence that had taken place between them; this occurrence was supposed to remain a secret between her and
him
; but now she herself had told her husband everything.
Her husband’s connection not only with her but also with
the other man
, with Nikolai Apollonovich, had become above all offensive to her: after all, from this incident Sergei Sergeyevich would, of course, draw completely false conclusions; above all, he would of course be unable to comprehend anything of it at all: neither the fateful, sweet-and-sinister sensation, nor the change of costume; and Sofya Petrovna found herself involuntarily listening to the antique strains of the polka-mazurka and the restless, disagreeable pacing on the other side of the partition; from the excessiveness of her black, unfastened tresses she frightenedly stretched her pearly little face with its dark blue, somehow dulled eyes, clumsily bending that little face down against her barely trembling knees.

At that moment her gaze fell on the dressing-table mirror; below the dressing-table mirror Sofya Petrovna saw the letter she was supposed to give to
him
at the ball (she had forgotten about the letter altogether).
At that first moment she decided to send the letter back with the messenger, send it back to Varvara Yevgrafovna.
How dare they force letters to him on her!
And she would
have sent it back if her husband had not interfered in it all first (if only he would go to bed!).
But now, under the influence of her protest against any kind of interference in
their
personal affairs, she took a simple view of the matter, too simple a view: of course, she had a perfect right to tear open the envelope and read any secrets there might be in it (how dare he have secrets!) In a flash, Sofya Petrovna was over by the table; but just as she touched the alien letter, behind the partition a furious whispering arose; the bed creaked.

‘What are you doing?’

From behind the partition she received the reply:

‘Nothing … it’s all right.’

The bed began to squeal plaintively; all grew quiet.
With trembling hand, Sofya Petrovna tore open the envelope … and as she read, her swollen little eyes grew large; their dullness brightened, and was replaced by a dazzling glitter, the paleness of her little face first took on the tints of pinkish apple-blossom petals, then became as rosy as a rose; and when she had finished reading the letter, her face was simply crimson.

Nikolai Apollonovich was now entirely in her clutches; her whole being trembled with horror at him and at the impossibility of inflicting upon him a terrible, irreparable blow during the two months of suffering she had endured; and that blow he would now receive from these little hands.
He had wanted to frighten her with his buffoonish masquerade; but he had not even been able to execute the buffoonish masquerade in proper fashion and, taken by surprise, he had committed many outrages; well, now let him be blotted from her memory, and let him be Hermann!
Yes, yes, yes: she herself would inflict the cruel blow simply by giving him the letter with its dreadful contents.
For an instant she was seized by a sense of giddiness as she contemplated the path she had condemned herself to; but it was too late to hold her ground, to leave the path: had she not herself summoned the red domino?
Well, and if he had summoned before her the image of a fearsome domino, let all the rest of it be accomplished: let the bloody domino’s path be a bloody one!

The door squeaked: Sofya Petrovna barely had time to crumple the opened letter in her hand, when in the doorway of the bedroom
stood her husband, Sergei Sergeyevich Likhutin; he was all in white: in a white nightshirt and white drawers.
The appearance of a complete outsider, and in such an indecent aspect, drove her to fury:

‘You might at least get dressed …’

Sergei Sergeich Likhutin was thoroughly covered in confusion, and quickly left the room, only to reappear a moment later; this time he was, at least, wearing a dressing-gown; Sofya Petrovna had already managed to hide the letter.
With an unpleasant, dry firmness that was unusual for him, Sergei Sergeich addressed her simply:

‘
Sophie
… I want you to promise me something: I earnestly request you not to go to the soirée at the Tsukatovs’ tomorrow.’