Forty Stories (45 page)

“What are you crying for, Mama?” she asked.

“I started a novel last night—it was about an old man and his daughter. The old man worked in an office, and the boss fell in love with the daughter. I never finished it, but I came to a place where I couldn’t prevent myself from crying,” Nina Ivanovna said, and she took a sip from the glass. “And then this morning I remembered it again, and it made me cry.”

“I’ve been so depressed these nights,” Nadya said after a silence. “I wish I knew why I can’t sleep.”

“I don’t know, dear. When I can’t sleep I shut my eyes very, very tight—like this—and then I try to imagine how Anna Karenina walked and talked, or else I try to imagine something historical, something from ancient times.…”

Nadya felt that her mother did not understand her, and was incapable of understanding her. She had never felt this before, and it frightened her. She wanted to hide, and went back to her room.

At two o’clock they sat down to dinner. It was Wednesday, a fast day, and Granny was served meatless
borshch
and bream with porridge.

To tease the grandmother, Sasha ate the meat soup as well as the vegetable soup. He joked all through the meal, but his jokes were labored and invariably directed toward a moral, and there was nothing amusing in his habit of lifting up his long, lean, deathly fingers before making some witty remark, nor was there anything amusing in the thought that he was very ill and perhaps not long for this world. At such times you felt so sorry for him that tears sprang to the eyes.

After dinner the grandmother went to her room to rest. Nina Ivanovna played for a while on the piano, and then she too went to her room.

“Oh, dearest Nadya,” Sasha started his usual after-dinner conversation. “If only you would listen to me! If only you would!”

She was sitting back in an old-fashioned armchair, her eyes closed, while he paced up and down the room.

“If only you would go away and study!” he said. “Only the enlightened and holy people are interesting—they are the only ones needed. The more such people there are, the quicker will the Kingdom of Heaven descend on earth. Then it will happen little by little that not one stone will be left standing, in this town of yours everything will be shaken to its foundations, and everything will be changed, as though by magic. There will be immense and utterly magnificent houses, marvelous gardens, glorious fountains, extraordinary people.… But this is not the important thing! The most important thing is that the masses, as we understand the word, giving it its present-day meaning—they will disappear, this evil will vanish, and every
man will know what he is living for, and no one any longer will look for support among the masses. My dearest darling, go away! Show them that you are sick to the stomach of this stagnant, dull, sinful life of yours! At least prove it for yourself!”

“No, Sasha, I can’t! I’m going to be married.”

“Never mind! Who cares about that?”

They went into the garden and strolled for a while.

“Anyhow, my dearest, you simply must think, you must realize how immoral and unclean your idle life is,” Sasha went on. “Can’t you realize that to enable you and your mother and your grandmother to live a life of leisure, others have to work for you, and you are devouring their lives? Is that right? Isn’t it a filthy thing to do?”

Nadya wanted to say: “Yes, you are right.” She wanted to say she understood perfectly, but tears came to her eyes, and suddenly she fell silent, and she shrank into herself, and went to her room.

Toward evening Andrey Andreyich arrived, and as usual he played the violin for a long time. He was by nature taciturn, and perhaps he enjoyed playing the violin because there was no need to speak while playing it. At eleven o’clock he had put on his overcoat and was about to go home when he took Nadya in his arms and passionately kissed her face, her shoulders, her hands.

“My dear, beautiful darling,” he murmured. “Oh, how happy I am! I am out of my mind with happiness!”

And it seemed to her that she had heard these same words long ago, or perhaps she had read them somewhere … in an old dog-eared novel thrown away a long time ago.

In the drawing room Sasha was sitting at table drinking tea, the saucer poised on his five long fingers, while Granny was spreading out the cards for a game of patience, and Nina Ivanovna was reading. The flame spluttered in the icon lamp, and it seemed that everyone was quietly happy. Nadya said good night and went upstairs to her room, and lying down on
the bed, she immediately fell asleep. But just as on the night before, she awoke with the first light of dawn. She could not sleep: a restless and oppressive spirit moved in her. She sat up in bed, resting her head on her knees, and thinking about her fiancé and her wedding.… For some reason she remembered that her mother had never loved her father, and now the mother possessed nothing of her own, and was completely dependent on Granny, her mother-in-law. And try as she would, Nadya could not understand why she had always regarded her mother as an exceptional and remarkable person, and why it had never occurred to her that her mother was only a simple, quite ordinary, and unhappy woman.

And Sasha, too, was awake—she heard him coughing downstairs. “What a strange naïve person he is,” Nadya thought, “and those dreams of his—those marvelous gardens and glorious fountains—how absurd they are!” But for some reason she found so much that was beautiful in his naïveté and his absurdity, and the moment she permitted herself to dream of going away and studying, cold shivers bathed her whole heart and breast, and she was overwhelmed with sensations of joy and ecstasy.

“Better not to think about it,” she whispered. “No, one shouldn’t think about such things.”

“Tick-tock …” the night watchman was rapping with his stick far away. “Tick-tock … tick-tock …”

Toward the middle of June, Sasha was suddenly overcome with boredom and made up his mind to return to Moscow.

“I can’t go on living in this town,” he said moodily. “No running water, no drains! I can hardly force myself to eat dinner—the kitchen is so indescribably filthy!”

“Wait a little while, Prodigal Son,” Grandmother said, and for some reason she lowered her voice to a whisper. “The wedding is on the seventh.”

“I don’t want to wait!”

“Didn’t you say you intended to stay until September?”

“I don’t want to any more. I want to go and work!”

The summer had turned cold and wet, the trees were damp, the garden looked somber and uninviting, and none of this caused anyone to desire to work. Unfamiliar female voices were heard in all the rooms upstairs and downstairs, and they could hear the clatter of the sewing machince in Grandmother’s room: they were rushing to get the trousseau ready. Of fur coats alone, Nadya was to have six, and the cheapest of them, according to Grandmother, cost three hundred rubles! The fuss irritated Sasha, who remained in his room, fuming with anger; but they talked him into staying, and he promised not to leave before the first of July.

Time passed quickly. On St. Peter’s day Andrey Andreyich took Nadya to Moscow Street after dinner, to have yet another look at the house which had long since been rented and made ready for the young couple. It was a two-story house, but so far only the upper floor had been furnished. On the gleaming floor of the hall, painted to resemble parquet, stood bentwood chairs, a grand piano, a music stand for the violin. There was the smell of paint. On the wall hung a large oil painting in a gold frame—a picture of a naked woman beside a lilac-colored vase with a broken handle.

“Wonderful painting,” said Andrey Andreyich with an awed sigh. “It’s by Shishmachevsky.”

Then there was the drawing room with a round table, a sofa, and armchairs upholstered in some bright blue material. Above the sofa hung a large photograph of Father Andrey in priestly skullcap and wearing his decorations. They passed into the dining room, where there was a sideboard, then into the bedroom, where two beds could be seen side by side in the half dusk: it seemed as though the bedroom had been furnished in such a way that life there would always be happy and could never be anything else. Andrey Andreyich led Nadya through the rooms,
never taking his arm from her waist; but all the time she felt weak and conscience-stricken, hating these rooms and beds and armchairs, nauseated by the painting of the naked woman. Already it had become transparently clear to her that she no longer loved Andrey Andreyich, and perhaps had never loved him; but she did not—and could not—understand how to say this and to whom to say it and why she should say it, even though she thought about it all day and all night.… He had put his arm round her waist, and was talking so courteously and modestly, and was so happy as he walked around his house, but in all this she saw only vulgarity, stupid, naïve, intolerable vulgarity, and his arm round her waist felt rough and cold like an iron hoop. Every moment she was on the point of running away, bursting into sobs, throwing herself out of the window. Andrey Andreyich led her into the bathroom, and there he touched a tap set in the wall, and at once water flowed out.

“Just look at that!” he said, and burst out laughing. “I had them put up a cistern in the loft with a hundred gallons of water. So you see, we now have running water!”

They walked across a yard and out into the street, and hailed a cab. The dust rose in thick clouds, and it looked as though it would rain.

“You’re not cold?” Andrey Andreyich asked, screwing up his eyes against the dust.

She did not answer.

“Remember how yesterday Sasha reproached me for not doing anything?” he said after a brief silence. “Well, he’s right! He’s absolutely right! I do nothing, and don’t know how to do anything! And why is that, my dear? Why is it that I hate the thought of one day putting a cockade in my cap and going into government service? Why is it that I can’t stand the sight of a lawyer, or a teacher of Latin, or a town councilor? O Mother Russia! O Mother Russia! What a burden of idle and useless people you carry along with you! O long-suffering Mother Russia, how many there are like me!”

And he continued to make generalizations about his own idleness, seeing it as a sign of the times.

“When we are married, my darling,” he went on, “we’ll go and live in the country, and we’ll get down to work! We’ll buy a small plot of land with a garden and a stream, and we’ll work and observe life.… How splendid it will be!”

He removed his hat, and his hair waved in the wind, while she listened and thought: “Oh God, I want to go home! Oh God!” They were near the house when they caught up with Father Andrey.

“Look, there’s Father!” Andrey said joyfully, and he waved his hat. “I love my old man, I really do,” he said, paying off the cab driver. “He is a splendid old fellow. Really splendid.”

Nadya went into the house, feeling ill and out of humor, remembering that visitors would be arriving in the evening and she would have to entertain them, smile, listen to the violin, listen to all kinds of idiocies, and talk only about the wedding. There would be her grandmother sitting by the samovar, stiff and magnificent in silk, looking very proud, as she always seemed to be in the presence of guests. Father Andrey came into the room with a sly smile.

“I have the pleasure and blessed consolation of seeing you in excellent health,” he said to Grandmother, and it was hard to say whether he spoke in earnest or in jest.

The wind was knocking on the windowpanes and on the roof; whistling sounds were heard; and you could hear the hobgoblin in the chimney singing his melancholy, plaintive song. It was after midnight, everyone was in bed, but no one could sleep. Nadya thought someone was still playing on the violin downstairs. A minute later Nina Ivanovna entered the room in her nightgown, holding a candle.

“What was that knocking sound, Nadya?” she asked.

Her mother, her hair in a single plait, a timid smile on her face, looked older, uglier, and shorter than ever on this stormy night. Nadya remembered how, quite recently, she had regarded her mother as a remarkable woman and listened with pride to the things she said, but now she could no longer remember those words she had spoken—the only ones that came back to her seemed feeble and affected.

She thought she could hear deep-throated voices singing in the chimney, even thought she could distinguish the words “Oh, my Go-o-o-d!” She sat up in bed, suddenly clutched fiercely at her hair, and burst into sobs.

“Mama, Mama!” she exclaimed. “My own dear mother, if only you knew what was happening to me! I beg you, I implore you—let me go away from here!”

“Where to?” Nina Ivanovna asked in surprise, and she sat down on the bed. “Where to?”

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

“Let me leave town,” she said at last. “The wedding mustn’t—won’t happen! Please understand that! I don’t love him!… I can’t bear to talk about him!”

“No, my darling, no!” Nina Ivanovna said quickly, frightened out of her wits. “Calm yourself. You’re in low spirits, but it will pass. It often happens. Probably you’ve been quarreling with Andrey, but then lovers’ quarrels always end in smiles!”

“Go away, Mama, go away!” Nadya sobbed.

“Yes,” said Nina Ivanovna after a pause. “Only a little while ago you were a baby, a little girl, and now you are almost a bride. In nature there are always these transformations. Before you know where you are, you will be a mother and then an old woman, with a stubborn daughter like mine on your hands!”

“My dear sweet mother, you are clever and unhappy,” said Nadya. “You are so very unhappy—why do you say such vulgar, commonplace things? For God’s sake why?”

Nina Ivanovna tried to say something but could not utter a word, and went sobbing back to her own room. Once again
deep-throated voices droned in the chimney, and Nadya suddenly felt frightened. She jumped out of bed and ran to her mother. Nina Ivanovna’s eyes were red with weeping. She lay on the bed wrapped in a blue blanket, a book in her hands.

“Mama, listen to me!” Nadya cried. “I implore you—try to understand! If you only understood how petty and degrading our life is! My eyes have been opened and I see it all now. And what about your Andrey Andreyich? He’s not a bit clever, Mama! Oh God, he’s nothing more than a fool!”