Stories (56 page)

“Impossible, Sasha. I’m getting married.”

“Ah, enough! Who needs that?”

They went out to the garden and strolled a bit.

“And however it may be, my dear, you must perceive, you must understand, how impure, how immoral this idle life of yours is,” Sasha went on. “You must understand, for instance, that if you, and your mother, and your dear granny do nothing, it means that someone else is working for you, that you are feeding on someone else’s life, and is that pure, is it not dirty?”

Nadya wanted to say: “Yes, that’s true,” she wanted to say that she understood, but tears came to her eyes, she suddenly grew quiet, shrank into herself, and went to her room.

Towards evening Andrei Andreich came and, as usual, played his violin for a long time. Generally he was untalkative, and liked the violin, perhaps, because he could be silent while he played. After ten, going home, with his coat already on, he embraced Nadya and greedily began kissing her face, shoulders, hands.

“My dear, my sweet, my lovely! …” he murmured. “Oh, how happy I am! I’m mad with ecstasy!”

And it seemed to her that she had already heard it long ago, very long ago, or read it somewhere … in a novel, old, tattered, long since abandoned.

In the reception room Sasha sat at the table and drank tea, the saucer perched on his five long fingers; granny was playing patience,
Nina Ivanovna was reading. The flame sputtered in the icon lamp, and everything seemed quiet and happy. Nadya said good night, went upstairs to her room, lay down, and fell asleep at once. But, as on the previous night, she awoke with the first light of dawn. She did not want to sleep, her soul was uneasy, heavy. She sat, her head resting on her knees, and thought about her fiancé, about the wedding … She remembered for some r
eason that her mother had not loved her deceased husband and now owned nothing and was totally dependent on her mother-in-law, granny. And, think as she might, Nadya could not figure out why up to now she had seen something special, extraordinary, in her mother, why she had failed to notice the simple, ordinary, unhappy woman.

And Sasha was not asleep downstairs—she could hear him coughing. He is a strange, naïve man, thought Nadya, and there is something absurd in his dreams, in all his wonderful gardens and extraordinary fountains. But for some reason there was so much that was beautiful in his naïveté, even in that absurdity, that the moment she merely thought whether she should go and study, her whole heart, her whole breast felt a cold shiver and was flooded with a feeling of joy, ecstasy.

“But better not think, better not think …” she whispered. “I mustn’t think of it.”

“Tick-tock…” the watchman rapped somewhere far away. “Tick-tock … tick-tock …”

In the middle of June Sasha suddenly became bored and began preparing to go to Moscow.

“I can’t live in this town,” he said glumly. “No running water, no drains! I feel queasy eating dinner—there’s the most impossible filth in the kitchen …”

“Wait a bit, prodigal son!” the grandmother persuaded him, for some reason in a whisper. “The wedding’s on the seventh!”

“I don’t want to.”

“You were going to stay with us till September.”

“But now I don’t want to. I must work!”

The summer had turned damp and cold, the trees were wet, everything in the garden looked dismal, uninviting, one did indeed
feel like working. In the rooms downstairs and upstairs, unfamiliar women’s voices were heard, the grandmother’s sewing machine clattered: they were hurrying with the trousseau. Of fur coats alone Nadya was to come with six, and the cheapest of them, in the grandmother’s words, cost three hundred roubles! The fuss annoyed Sasha; he sat in his room and felt angry; but they still persuaded him to stay, and he promised not to leave before the first of July.

The time passed quickly. On St. Peter’s day,
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after dinner, Andrei Andreich and Nadya went to Moscovskaya Street for one more look at the house that had been rented and long since prepared for the young couple. It was a two-story house, but so far only the upper story was furnished. In the reception room a shiny floor, painted to look like parquet, bentwood chairs, a grand piano, a music stand for the violin. It smelled of paint. On the wall hung a big oil painting in a gilt frame: a naked lady, and beside her a purple jug with the handle broken off.

“A wonderful painting,” said Andrei Andreich, sighing with respect. “By the artist Shishmachevsky.”

Further on was the drawing room, with a round table, a sofa, and armchairs upholstered in bright blue material. Over the sofa, a big photographic portrait of Father Andrei wearing a kamilavka
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and medals. Then they went into the dining room with its cupboard, then into the bedroom; there in the half-darkness two beds stood next to each other, and it looked as if, when the bedroom was being decorated, it was with the idea that it should always be good there and could not be otherwise. Andrei Andreich led Nadya through the rooms, his arm all the while around her waist; and she felt herse
lf weak, guilty, she hated all these rooms, beds, armchairs, was nauseated by the naked lady. It was clea
r to her now that she had stopped loving Andrei Andreich, or perhaps had never loved him; but how to say it, whom to say it to, and why, she did not and could not figure out, though she thought about it every day and every night … He held her by the waist, spoke so tenderly, so modestly, was so happy going around this apartment of his; while in all of it she saw only banality, stupid, naïve, unbearable banality, and his arm that encircled her waist seemed to her as hard and cold as an iron hoop. And she was ready to run away, to burst into tears, to throw herself out the window at any moment. And
rei Andreich brought her to the bathroom and touched the faucet built into the wall, and water suddenly flowed.

“How about that?” he said and laughed. “I ordered a hundred-bucket cistern installed in the attic, and now you and I will have water.”

They strolled through the courtyard, then went out to the street and got into a cab. Dust flew up in thick clouds, and it looked as if it was about to rain.

“You’re not cold?” asked Andrei Andreich, squinting from the dust.

She did not answer.

“Yesterday, you remember, Sasha reproached me for not doing anything,” he said after a short pause. “Well, he’s right! Infinitely right! I don’t do anything and can’t do anything. Why is that, my dear? Why am I repulsed even by the thought that one day I might stick a cockade to my forehead and go into government service?
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Why am I so ill at ease when I see a lawyer or a Latin teacher, or a member of the town council? O Mother Russia! O Mother Russia, how many idle and useless people you still carry on your back! How many you have who are like me, O long-suffering one!”

And he generalized from the fact that he did nothing, and saw it as a sign of the times.

“When we’re married,” he went on, “we’ll go to the country together, my dear, we’ll work there! We’ll buy a small piece of land with a garden, a river, we’ll work, observe life … Oh, how good it will be!”

He took his hat off and his hair flew in the wind, and she listened to him, thinking: “God, I want to be home! God!” Almost in front of the house they overtook Father Andrei.

“There goes my father!” Andrei Andreich joyfully waved his hat. “I love my papa, I really do,” he said as he paid the cabby. “A nice old man. A kind old man.”

Nadya went into the house angry, unwell, thinking that there would be guests all night, that she would have to entertain them, smile, listen to the violin, listen to all sorts of nonsense, and talk only of the wedding. Her grandmother, imposing, magnificent in her silk dress, haughty, as she always seemed when there were guests, sat by the samovar. Father Andrei came in with his sly smile.

“I have the pleasure and blessed consolation of finding you in good health,” he said to the grandmother, and it was hard to tell whether he was joking or serious.

The wind rapped on the windows, on the roof; a whistling was heard, and the household goblin in the stove sang his little song, plaintively and gloomily. It was past midnight. Everyone in the house was already in bed, but no one slept, and Nadya kept having the feeling that someone was playing the violin downstairs. There was a sharp knock, probably a blind being torn off its hinge. A moment later Nina Ivanovna came in in just her nightgown, holding a candle.

“What was that knocking, Nadya?”

Her mother, her hair plaited in a single braid, smiling timidly, seemed older, smaller, plainer on this stormy night. Nadya recalled how still recently she had considered her mother an extraordinary woman and had proudly listened to the words she spoke; and now she could not recall those words; everything that came to her mind was so weak, so useless.

From the stove came the singing of several basses, and one could even hear: “O-o-oh, my Go-o-od!” Nadya sat up in bed and suddenly seized herself strongly by the hair and broke into sobs.

“Mama, mama,” she said, “my dear mama, if only you knew what’s happening to me! I beg you, I implore you, let me go away! I implore you!”

“Where?” asked Nina Ivanovna, not understanding, and she sat on the bed. “Go away where?”

Nadya wept for a long time and could not utter a word.

“Let me go away from this town!” she said at last. “There should not be and will not be any wedding, understand that! I don’t love this man … I can’t even speak of him.”

“No, my dear, no,” Nina Ivanovna began speaking quickly, terribly frightened. “Calm yourself—it’s because you’re in a bad mood. It will pass. It happens. You’ve probably had a falling out with Andrei, but lovers’ trials end in smiles.”

“Oh, leave me, mama, leave me!” Nadya sobbed.

“Yes,” said Nina Ivanovna after a silence. “Not long ago you were a child, a little girl, and now you’re already a fiancée. There’s a constant turnover of matter in nature. And you won’t notice how you yourself become a mother and an old woman and have a daughter as rebellious as mine is.”

“My dear, kind one, you’re intelligent, you’re unhappy,” said Nadya, “you’re very unhappy—why do you talk in banalities? For God’s sake, why?”

Nina Ivanovna wanted to say something but was unable to utter a word, sobbed, and went to her room. The basses droned in the stove again, and it suddenly became frightening. Nadya jumped out of bed and went quickly to her mother. Nina Ivanovna, her face tear-stained, lay in bed with a blue blanket over her, holding a book.

“Mama, listen to me!” said Nadya. “I implore you to perceive and understand! Simply understand how shallow and humiliating our life is. My eyes have been opened and I see it all now. And what is your Andrei Andreich? He’s not intelligent, mama! Lord God! Understand, mama, he’s stupid!”

Nina Ivanovna sat up abruptly.

“You and your grandmother torment me!” she said with a sob. “I want to live! To live!” she repeated and beat her breast twice with her little fist. “Give me freedom! I’m still young, I want to live, and you’ve made an old woman out of me! …”

She wept bitterly, lay down, and curled up under her blanket, and looked so small, pitiful, silly. Nadya went to her room, got dressed, and, sitting by the window, waited for morning. She sat all night thinking, and someone outside kept rapping on the blinds and whistling away.

In the morning the grandmother complained that during the night the wind had blown down all the apples in the orchard and broken an old plum tree. It was a gray, dull, joyless day, fit for lighting the lamps; everyone complained about the cold, and rain rapped on the windows. After tea Nadya went to Sasha’s room and, without saying a word, knelt by the armchair in the corner and covered her face with her hands.

“What is it?” asked Sasha.

“I can’t …” she said. “How could I have lived here before, I can’t understand, I can’t perceive! I despise my fiancé, I despise myself, I despise all this idle, meaningless life …”

“Well, well …” said Sasha, not yet understanding what was the matter. “It’s nothing … It’s all right.”

“This life is hateful to me,” Nadya went on, “I can’t stand it here one more day. Tomorrow I’ll go away. Take me with you, for God’s sake!”

For a moment Sasha looked at her in amazement; finally he understood and was happy as a child. He waved his arms and began shuffling in his slippers, as if dancing for joy

“Splendid!” he said, rubbing his hands. “God, how good!”

And she looked at him without blinking, with big, enamoured eyes, as if spellbound, expecting him to say something significant at once, something of boundless importance; he had not said anything yet, but it seemed to her that something vast and new was opening out before her, something she had not known before, and she now looked at him, filled with expectations, ready for anything, even death.

“I’m leaving tomorrow,” he said, after some thought, “and you will come to the station to see me off… I’ll bring your luggage in my trunk and buy you a ticket; at the third bell you’ll get on the train, and—off we’ll go. You’ll keep me company as far as Moscow and then go on by yourself to Petersburg. You have a passport?”
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“Yes.”

“I swear you won’t regret it and won’t repent of it,” Sasha said with enthusiasm. “You’ll go, you’ll study, and then let your destiny carry you on. Once you’ve turned your life around
, the rest will change. The main thing is to turn your life around, and the rest doesn’t matter. So, then, tomorrow we go?”

“Oh, yes! For God’s sake!”

It seemed to Nadya that she was very agitated, that her soul was heavy as never before, that now, right up to their departure, she would have to suffer and have tormenting thoughts; but as soon as she went to her room upstairs and lay down on the bed, she fell asleep and slept soundly, her face tear-stained and smiling, till evening.

They sent for a cab. Nadya, already in her hat and coat, went upstairs to look once more at her mother and at all that had been hers; she stood in her room by the still-warm bed, looked around, then went quietly to her mother. Nina Ivanovna was asleep, it was quiet in the room. Nadya kissed her mother and straightened her hair, stood there for a minute or two … Then she unhurriedly went downstairs.