Forty Stories (33 page)

She thrust the plate back into his hands, and was snatched away by someone who carried her far into the distance. Over her
partner’s shoulders she caught a glimpse of her father gliding over the parquet floor, putting his arm around a lady, and whirling her across the ballroom.

“How sweet he is when he is sober,” she thought.

She danced the mazurka with the same huge officer, who moved gravely and heavily, a carcass in uniform, twitching his shoulders and chest, languidly stamping his feet—he felt fearfully disinclined to dance—but she fluttered round him, provoking him with her beauty, with her bare neck; her eyes were on fire, and her movements were passionate. The officer, however, grew increasingly indifferent, holding out his hands to her graciously, like a king.

“Bravo, bravo!” people were shouting at them.

Little by little the huge officer caught the excitement. He stirred into life, became intoxicated by the dance, and yielded to her fascination. Carried away, he danced lightly, youthfully, while she merely moved her shoulders and gazed at him slyly, as though she were a queen and he were her slave. At that moment it seemed to her that the whole ballroom was watching them, and that all those people were thrilled and envious of them. The huge officer had scarcely thanked her for the dance when the crowd suddenly parted and the men drew themselves up in an odd way, with their hands at their sides. His Excellency, with two stars on his dress coat, came walking up to her. Yes, His Excellency was making his way straight up to her and gazing straight into her eyes and smiling in the sweetest way, licking his lips as he always did when he saw a pretty woman.

“Delighted, delighted,” he began. “I shall have to put your husband in the guardhouse for keeping such a treasure hidden from me. I have come to you on an errand from my wife,” he went on, offering his arm. “Really you must help me! M-m-yes. We should give you a prize for beauty, as they do in America. M-m-m-yes.… The Americans.… My wife is most anxious to meet you.…”

He led her to a booth and presented her to an elderly lady, the
lower part of whose face was disproportionately large, so that she looked as though she were holding an enormous stone in her mouth.

“Oh, you must help me!” the elderly lady said through her nose in a singsong voice. “All our pretty women are working for the charity bazaar, and you are having a fine time all by yourself. Now why won’t you help us?”

She went away, and Anna took her place beside the cups and the silver samovar. She was soon doing a tremendous trade in tea. She charged no less than a ruble for a cup of tea, and she made the huge officer drink three cups in a row. Artynov, the very rich and short-winded man with the bulging eyes, came up too. He was no longer dressed in the costume he wore when Anna saw him at the station during the summer: now he wore a dress coat like everyone else. Without looking away from Anna, he drank a glass of champagne and paid a hundred rubles for it, and then he drank a cup of tea and gave her another hundred—all this in silence, because of his asthma. Anna solicited customers and got money from them. She was now firmly convinced that her smiles and glances gave these people only the greatest pleasure. She saw now that she had been created exclusively for this noisy, glittering existence, filled with music, laughter, dancing, admirers, and her former fear of a power swooping down on her and threatening to crush her now seemed ridiculous: she was afraid of no one, and only sorry her mother was not there to enjoy her success.

Pyotr Leontyich, who had grown pale but still held himself well, came to her booth and demanded a glass of brandy. Anna turned crimson, expecting him to say something silly—she was already ashamed of having such a poor and undistinguished father—but he drank down the brandy, removed ten rubles from his roll of banknotes, and walked away with great dignity, in perfect silence. A little while later she saw him dancing in
le grand rond
, but by this time he was staggering and shouting, to the embarrassment of his partner, and Anna remembered the ball
which took place three years ago and how he had staggered and shouted in exactly the same way—it all ended when a police officer took him home to bed, and on the following day the principal of the school threatened to dismiss him from his post. But how silly these memories were!

When the samovars in the booths had grown cold and the weary charity workers had handed their takings to the lady with the stone in her mouth, Artynov took Anna by the arm and led her away to the hall where supper was served to all who had been working for the charity bazaar. There were twenty people at the supper, no more, and they were very noisy. His Excellency proposed a toast, saying: “There is no finer place than this magnificent dining room for drinking a toast to the success of our charity kitchens, which are of course the object of today’s bazaar.” And a brigadier general proposed a toast to “the force which overcomes even the artillery,” and thereupon all the men clinked glasses with the ladies. It was very, very gay!

When Anna was escorted home, it was already daylight and the cooks were on their way to market. Elated, intoxicated, full of new sensations and completely exhausted, she undressed, fell on the bed, and immediately fell asleep.

Sometime after one o’clock in the afternoon the maid woke her and announced that Mr. Artynov had come to call on her. She dressed hurriedly and went into the drawing room. Soon after Artynov had made his departure His Excellency came to thank her for all the help she had given at the charity bazaar. With his sugary smile, running his tongue over his lips, he kissed her hand and begged permission to return. When he took leave of her, she was standing in the middle of the drawing room, amazed, enchanted, incapable of believing that this change, this marvelous change, had taken place in her life so quickly. And at that precise moment Modest Alexeich walked in.… He stood there in front of her with a sweet, ingratiating, servile expression—the same expression which she was accustomed to see on his face whenever he was in the presence of the illustrious
and powerful; and with rapture, with indignation and contempt, in the full confidence that no harm could befall her, she said, articulating each word distinctly: “Get out, you blockhead!”

After that Anna never spent a single day alone. She was continually going to picnics, excursions, and theatricals. Every day she came home in the early hours of the morning and lay down on the floor of the drawing room, and afterwards she told everyone touchingly how she had slept under the flowers. She needed a lot of money. No longer afraid of Modest Alexeich, she spent his money as though it were her own, and she did not ask or demand it, she simply sent him the bills or scribbled notes saying: “Give bearer 200 rubles,” or else “Pay 100 rubles without delay.”

At Easter, Modest Alexeich received the Order of St. Anna, second class. When he went to offer thanks, His Excellency laid aside his newspaper and settled deep in the armchair.

“So now you have three Annas,” His Excellency said, examining his white hands with their pink fingernails. “One in your buttonhole and two round your neck.”

Modest Alexeich put two fingers to his lips to prevent himself from laughing out loud.

“It only remains for me to await the arrival of a little Vladimir,” he said. “I make bold to suggest that Your Excellency might be disposed to act as godfather.”

He was alluding to the Order of St. Vladimir, fourth class, and he was already imagining how he would soon be telling everyone about his little witticism, so felicitously apt and audacious, and now again he wanted to say something equally felicitous, but His Excellency was buried in his newspaper and merely gave him a nod.

Meanwhile Anna continued to drive around in troikas; she went hunting with Artynov, performed in one-act plays, attended supper parties, and spent less and less time with her own family. They now dined alone. As for Pyotr Leontyich, he was drinking more heavily than ever; he had no money, and had long ago
sold the harmonium to pay his debts. The boys did not let him go out alone in the streets, and they always followed him for fear he would fall; and when they met Anna driving down Old Kiev Street in a carriage drawn by two horses with Artynov sitting in the coachman’s box, Pyotr Leontyich would sweep off his top hat and try to shout something, but Petya and Andryusha would hold him by the arms and say imploringly:

“No, Papa! No, you really mustn’t!”

1895

SOME six or seven years ago, when I was living in T— — province, I stayed on the estate of a young landowner called Belokurov, a man who always rose very early, dressed himself in one of those sleeveless jackets worn by peasants, drank beer in the evenings, and perpetually complained to me that he could never find anyone who sympathized with him. He lived in a little house in the garden, while I lived in the old mansion in the huge columned ballroom with no furniture except the wide sofa on which I slept and the table on which I played patience. Even on calm days there was always the sound of moaning in the ancient stoves, and during a thunderstorm the whole house shook as though on the point of collapse; and it was rather terrifying, especially at night, when the ten great windows blazed in the flashes of lightning.

I was doomed by fate to a life of permanent idleness, and did nothing whatever. For whole hours I gazed out of the windows at the sky, the birds, the avenues of trees, and read whatever the mails brought me, and slept. Sometimes I slipped away from the house and wandered about aimlessly until late at night.

Once on my way home I happened upon an estate I had never seen before. The sun was already setting, and the evening shadows lay over the ripening rye. There were two rows of ancient,
towering fir trees, planted so close together that they formed two parallel walls enclosing an avenue of somber beauty. I climbed easily over a fence and walked down the avenue, my feet slipping on a two-inch-thick carpet of fir needles. It was quiet and dark but for the occasional gleams of golden light shimmering high in the treetops, painting the spiders’ webs in rainbow colors. Suffocating and overpowering was the fragrance of the pines. I soon turned into a long avenue of lime trees. Here, too, everything spoke of neglect and age. Last year’s leaves rustled mournfully beneath my feet, and shadows lurked in the twilight between the trees. From an ancient orchard on my right a gold-hammer sang feebly and listlessly; it gave the impression of being very old. And then the lime trees came to an end, and I went past a white house with a terrace and a mezzanine, and quite suddenly there unfolded before my eyes a view of the manorial courtyard with a large pond, a bathhouse, a huddle of green willows, and a village beyond the pond dominated by a high and slender belfry crowned with a cross blazing in the light of the setting sun. For a moment I was under the spell of something very dear and familiar to me: it was as though I had seen this same scene in the days of my childhood.

An old and sturdy gate, the white stone gateposts adorned with lions, led from the courtyard into open fields; here two young women were standing. The older of the two was thin and pale and very pretty, with great masses of chestnut hair piled high on her head, and she had a small straight mouth and a severe expression. She scarcely glanced at me. The other was still quite young, hardly more than seventeen or eighteen, and she too was thin and pale, but her lips were full and her enormous eyes followed me with a look of surprise as I walked past. She said some words in English and looked embarrassed. I felt I had known these charming faces all my life. I went home with the feeling that I had experienced a pleasant dream.

Soon afterwards, around noon, I was walking with Belokurov near the house when the grass rustled beneath a spring carriage
as it came into our courtyard; the older of the two girls was sitting in it. She had come to collect subscriptions in aid of the victims of a fire. Without looking at us, she spoke gravely and in great detail about the number of houses which had burned down in the village of Siyanovo, the number of men, women, and children rendered homeless, and the measures proposed by the committee for the relief of the victims, for she was herself a member of the committee. She gave us the subscription list so that we could write down our names, then she put the list away, and prepared to take her leave.

“You have completely forgotten us, Pyotr Petrovich.” She addressed Belokurov, offering him her hand. “Do come and visit with us, and if Monsieur N. [she mentioned my name] would like to see how his admirers live, and if he would care to come, then Mama and I would be only too pleased.”

I bowed.

When she had gone, Pyotr Petrovich began to tell me about her. According to him, she was a young woman of good family, her name was Lydia Volchaninova, and the estate on which she lived with her mother and sister was called Shelkovka, like the village on the other side of the pond. Her father had occupied an important post in Moscow, and held the rank of privy councilor when he died. Although they possessed considerable wealth, the Volchaninovs lived in the country all the year round, never leaving the estate. Lydia was a teacher in the zemstvo
¹
school in her home village of Shelkovka, and earned twenty-five rubles a month. This was all the money she spent on herself, and she was proud of earning her own living.

“They’re an interesting family,” said Belokurov. “We might go over and see them. They will be delighted to see you.”

One afternoon on a holiday we remembered the Volchaninovs and drove over to see them. The mother and the two daughters
were at home. It was obvious that Yekaterina Pavlovna, the mother, had once been pretty, but she had become more bloated than her years warranted, and she was short-winded, melancholy, and absent-minded. She tried to entertain me with talk about painting. Learning from her daughter that I might visit Shelkovka, she hurriedly called to mind two or three landscapes of mine she had seen on exhibition in Moscow, and now asked me what I was attempting to express in them. Lydia, or, as she was called at home, Leda, talked more to Belokurov than to me. Grave and unsmiling, she asked him why he did not work in the zemstvo, and why he had never attended a single one of its meetings.