Kovrin could not read any more, tore the letter up and threw it away. He was seized by a feeling of anxiety that was very close to terror. Barbara was sleeping behind a screen and he could hear her breathing. From the ground floor came women’s voices and laughter, but he felt that besides himself there wasn’t a living soul in the whole hotel. He was terrified because the unhappy, broken-hearted Tanya had cursed him in her letter and had wished for his death. He glanced at the door, as if fearing that the unknown force which had wrought such havoc in his life and in the lives of those near and dear over the last two years might come into the room and take possession of him again.
He knew from experience that the best cure for shattered nerves is work. One should sit down at a table and force oneself at all costs to concentrate on one idea, no matter what. From his red briefcase he took out a notebook in which he had sketched out a plan for a short work he had considered compiling in case he was bored doing nothing in the Crimea. He sat at the table and busied himself with the plan, and it seemed his calm, resigned, detached state of mind was returning. The notebook and plan even stimulated him to meditate on the world’s vanity. He thought how much life demands in return for those insignificant or very ordinary blessings that it can bestow. For example, to receive a university chair in one’s late thirties, to be a run-of-the-mill professor, expounding in turgid, boring, ponderous language commonplace ideas that were not even original, in brief, to achieve the status of a third-rate scholar he, Kovrin, had had to study fifteen years – working day and night – suffer severe mental illness, experience a broken marriage and do any number of stupid, unjust things that were best forgotten. Kovrin realized quite clearly now that he was a nobody and eagerly accepted the fact since, in his opinion, every man should be content with what he is.
The plan would have calmed his nerves, but the sight of the shiny white pieces of letter on the floor stopped him concentrating. He got up from the table, picked up the pieces and threw them out of the window, but a light breeze blew in from the sea and scattered them over the windowsill. Once again he was gripped by that restless feeling, akin to panic, and he began to think that there was no one else besides him in the whole hotel … He went out onto the balcony. The bay, which seemed to be alive, looked at him with its many sky-blue, dark-blue, turquoise and flame-coloured eyes and beckoned him. It was truly hot and humid, and a bathe would not have come amiss. A violin began to play on the ground floor, under his balcony, and two female voices softly sang a song he knew. It was about some young girl, sick in her mind, who heard mysterious sounds one night in her garden and thought it must be a truly divine harmony, incomprehensible to us mortals … Kovrin caught his breath, he felt twinges of sadness in his heart and a wonderful, sweet, long-forgotten gladness quivered in his heart.
A tall black column like a whirlwind or tornado appeared on the far side of the bay. With terrifying speed it moved over the water towards the hotel, growing smaller and darker as it approached, and Kovrin barely had time to move out of its path … Barefoot, arms folded over chest, with a bare grey head and black eyebrows, the monk floated past and stopped in the middle of the room.
‘Why didn’t you trust me?’ he asked reproachfully, looking affectionately at Kovrin. ‘If you had trusted me then, when I told you that you were a genius, you wouldn’t have spent these two years so miserably, so unprofitably.’
Kovrin believed now that he was one of God’s Chosen, and a genius, and he vividly recollected all his previous conversations with the black monk; he wanted to speak, but the blood welled out of his throat onto his chest. Not knowing what to do, he drew his hands over his chest and his shirt cuffs became soaked with blood. He wanted to call Barbara, who was sleeping behind the screen, and with a great effort murmured, ‘Tanya!’
He fell on the floor, lifted himself on his arms and called again, ‘Tanya!’
He called on Tanya, on the great garden with its gorgeous flowers sprinkled with dew, he called on the park, the pines with their shaggy roots, the rye field, his wonderful learning, his youth, his daring, his joy; he called on life, which had been so beautiful. On the floor near his face, he saw a large pool of blood and was too weak now to say one word, but an ineffable, boundless happiness flooded his whole being. Beneath the balcony they were playing a serenade, and at the same time the black monk whispered to him that he was a genius and that he was dying only because his weak human body had lost its balance and could no longer serve to house a genius. When Barbara woke and came out from behind the screen Kovrin was dead and a blissful smile was frozen on his face.
Anna Round the Neck
I
Nothing was served after the wedding, not even light snacks. The bride and groom drank a glass of champagne, changed and drove off to the station. Instead of celebrating with a gay ball and supper, instead of music and dancing, they were going to a monastery a hundred and sixty miles away. Many of the guests approved, as Modeste Alekseyevich was a high-ranking official, wasn’t so young any more, and a noisy reception might appear out of place. And in any case it’s boring having music when a fifty-two-year-old civil servant marries a girl barely turned eighteen. Moreover, the guests said that a highly principled man like Modeste Alekseyevich must have organized the monastery trip to make it quite clear to his young wife that even in marriage he gave pride of place to religion and morality.
A crowd of office colleagues and relatives went to see them off and stood at the station, glasses in hand, waiting to cheer when the train left. Peter Leontyevich, the bride’s father, in top-hat and schoolmaster’s tail-coat, already drunk and looking very pale, kept going up to the window of the carriage with a champagne glass and pleading with his daughter, ‘Annie dear! Anne! I’d like to say just one word!’
Anne leant out of the window and he whispered some incomprehensible words, smothering her with alcohol fumes as he blew into her ear and made the sign of the cross over her face, bosom and hands. His breath came in short gasps and tears glistened in his eyes. Anne’s schoolboy brothers, Peter and Andrew, tugged at his tail-coat from behind and whispered in embarrassment, ‘That’s enough, Papa, please stop!’
When the train started Anne saw her father running after them, staggering and spilling his wine. His face looked so pathetic, kind, guilty. ‘Hoo-ooray!’ he shouted.
The couple were alone now. Modeste looked round the compartment, put the luggage on the rack and sat smiling opposite his wife. He was a civil servant of medium height, rather round and plump, and very well fed. He had long side-whiskers (but no moustache) and his round clean-shaven pointed chin looked like a heel. The most striking feature in that face was the absence of a moustache, with a freshly-shaven bare patch instead, which gradually merged into two fat cheeks that wobbled like jellies. He had a dignified bearing, rather sluggish movements and gentle manners.
‘At this moment in time I cannot but recall a certain event,’ he said, smiling. ‘When Kosorotov received the Order of St Anne, second class, five years ago, he called on His Excellency to thank him. His Excellency used the following expression: “So now you’ve got three Annes, one in your buttonhole and two round your neck.” I should explain that Kosorotov’s wife had just come back to him – she was an irritable, empty-headed woman called Anne. I hope when I receive the Order of St Anne, second class, His Excellency will have no cause to make the same comment.’
His tiny eyes filled with a smile and Anne smiled too, disturbed at the thought that any moment this man might kiss her with his fat moist lips – and she wouldn’t be able to say no. The smooth movements of his plump body frightened her and she felt terrified, disgusted.
He stood up and without hurrying took off the ribbon from round his neck, his tail-coat and waist-coat and put his dressing-gown on.
‘That’s better,’ he said as he sat beside her.
She recalled the excruciating wedding service when she had thought that the priest, the guests and everyone in the church were looking at her sadly, asking themselves why an attract
ive girl like her was marrying an elderly, boring man. Earlier that morning she had felt delighted that everything had turned out so well, but during the service – and as she sat in the train now – she felt guilty, cheated and foolish. It was all very well having a rich husband, but she still didn’t have any money. The wedding dress hadn’t been paid for and that morning she could tell by the look on her father’s and brothers’ faces – when they had seen her off – that they didn’t have a kopek between them. Would they have anything to eat that evening? Or the next? For some reason she began to think that her father and brothers would go hungry now she had gone, and would be sitting at home grieving as they had done the first evening after they had buried Mother.
‘Oh, I’m so unhappy!’ she thought. ‘Why am I so unhappy?’
With the clumsiness one might expect from a respectable man who had no experience of women, Modeste kept touching her waist and patting her shoulder, but she could only think about money, about her mother and her death, after which her father, an art master at the high school, had taken to drink, so that they really began to feel the pinch. The boys had no boots or galoshes, the father was always in court, and the bailiffs came and put a distraint on the furniture. What a disgrace that had been! Anne had to look after her drunken father, darn her brothers’ socks and go shopping. Whenever she was complimented on her looks, her youth and refined manners, she felt the whole world could see her cheap hat and the patches in her shoes which she had stained with ink. And there were tears at night and the nagging, unsettling thought that any day Father might be dismissed for drinking, that the blow would be too much for him and that he would die too. But some ladies – friends of the family – got busy and tried to find a husband for her. And in no time this Modeste Alekseyevich turned up, a man who was neither young nor good-looking, but he did have money – about a hundred thousand in the bank and a family estate which he let to a tenant. He was a gentleman of high principles, on good terms with His Excellency, and he only had to lift a finger to get a note from him for the headmaster or even the education committee and Peter Leontyevich would not lose his job.
While she was brooding over these details, a sudden burst of music and sound of voices came through the window. The train had reached a halt along the line. Two people in the crowd on the other side of the platform had struck up a lively tune on an accordion and a cheap squeaky violin, while from beyond the tall birches, poplars and moonlit country villas came the sound of a military band: most probably there was a dance at one of the villas. The resident holiday-makers and the day-trippers from town, who had come to enjoy the fine weather and fresh air, were strolling along the platform. Artynov was there – he owned all the holiday area and he was a rich, tall, stout man, with dark brown hair, bulging eyes and a face like an Armenian’s. He was wearing a very strange outfit – an open-necked shirt, high boots with spurs and a black cloak that hung down from his shoulders and touched the ground like the train of a dress. Following him were two wolf-hounds with sharp, lowered muzzles.
Although the tears still glistened in Anne’s eyes, now she forgot all about her mother, money and her wedding, and she smiled cheerfully as she shook familiar schoolboys’ and officers’ hands with a quick: ‘Hello! How are you?’
She went out on to the small platform at the end of the carriage and stood in the moonlight, so that they could all have a full view of her in her magnificent new dress and hat.
‘Why are we stopping here?’ she asked.
‘It’s a loop-line,’ came the answer. ‘They’re waiting for the mail train to pass through.’
Noticing that Artynov was looking at her, she blinked coquettishly and started speaking out loud in French – the beautiful sound of her own voice, the music from the band, the moon’s reflection in the pond, the fact that she had claimed Artynov’s close attention (he was a notorious ladies’ man and society darling, and was giving her hungry, inquisitive looks) – all of this, combined with the general mood of festivity, brought a surge of joy to her heart. When the train moved off and her officer friends had given her a farewell salute, she was already humming a polka, which the military band, roaring away somewhere behind the trees, sent flying after her. She returned to her compartment feeling that the stop at that country station had proved beyond doubt that now she could not fail to be happy, in spite of everything.
The couple spent two days at the monastery, then returned to town to live in the flat provided by the authorities. When Modeste had gone off to work, Anne would play the piano or cry with boredom, or lie down on the couch and read novels or look at fashion magazines. Modeste would eat a large dinner and talk about politics, appointments, transfers and decorations, about hard work not hurting anyone, about family life being a duty and not a pleasure; and he maintained that if one took care of the kopeks, the roubles would look after themselves and that religion and morality were the most important things in life.
‘Every man should have responsibilities,’ he would say, clenching his knife in his fist like a sword.
Anne would become so frightened, listening to all this, that she couldn’t eat and she would usually leave the table hungry. Her husband would normally have a rest after dinner and snore loudly, while she went off to see her family. Her father and brothers would give her strange looks as though – just before she arrived – they had been condemning her for marrying that terrible bore, a man she didn’t love, for his money. For them the rustle of her dress, the bracelets she wore, the way she looked like a fine lady now, were inhibiting and insulting. They were embarrassed by her visits and they just did not know what to talk about. She would sit down and join them in cabbage soup, porridge, or potatoes fried in mutton fat reeking of candle-grease. Peter Leontyevich’s hand would shake as he filled his glass from the decanter and drink rapidly and greedily, and with obvious disgust; then he would take a second, then a third. Peter and Andrew, skinny, pale-faced boys with large eyes, would take the decanter away and exclaim in despair, ‘You mustn’t, Papa … you’ve had enough.’
And Anne would grow anxious as well and she would plead with him to stop. This made him flare up, bang his fist on the table and shout, ‘I won’t be told what to do! Street urchins! And you little slut! I’ll kick you out, the lot of you!’
But his weak, kind voice gave no one cause for alarm. After dinner he would usually smarten himself up: pale-faced, with his chin cut from shaving, craning his thin neck, he would stand a whole half-hour in front of the mirror trying to make himself look smart, combing his hair, twirling his black moustache, sprinkling himself with perfume or tying a bow-tie. Then he would put on his gloves and top-hat and go out to do some private coaching. If it was a holiday, he would stay at home and paint or play the harmonium, making it grunt and groan. He tried to squeeze beautiful melodies out of it, humming a bass accompaniment or losing his temper with the boys: ‘Savages! Wretches! You’ve ruined it!’
In the evenings Anne’s husband would play cards with colleagues who lived in the same government block. Their wives used to come along with them. They were ugly, tastelessly dressed, terribly coarse, and they filled the flat with malicious scandal-mongering that was as ugly and vulgar as themselves. Sometimes Modeste would take Anne to the theatre. In the intervals he made sure she kept close by him and would walk along the corridors and around the foyer holding her arm. After exchanging bows with someone he would whisper quickly, ‘A senior government official,’ or ‘He’s got money … has his own house …’
Anne would long for something sweet as they passed the bar. She loved chocolate and apple pie, but she didn’t have any money and was too shy to ask her husband. He would take a pear, press it and ask hesitantly, ‘How much?’
‘Twenty-five kopeks.’
‘Well, really!’ he would say, replacing it.
As it was awkward leaving the bar without buying anything, he would ask for some soda-water and finish a whole bottle off himself, which made his eyes water. At these moments Anne hated him.
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Another time he would suddenly turn bright red and hurriedly say, ‘Bow to that old lady.’
‘But I don’t know her.’
‘It doesn’t matter, she’s the wife of the manager of the local revenue office. Bow, I’m telling you,’ he would growl insistently. ‘Your head won’t fall off!’
So Anne would bow and her head didn’t fall off. But it was an ordeal, just the same. She did everything her husband wanted and was furious with herself for letting him make such an absolute fool of her. She had married him for his money and now she was worse off than before. Her father, at least, used to give her twenty-kopek pieces, but now she didn’t get anything. She could not bring herself to take any money when he wasn’t there or ask for some as she was frightened of her husband, frightened to death, in fact.
She felt that she had always had this fear of him. When she was a child, she invariably thought of the headmaster of the local high school as a most awe-inspiring, terrifying force, advancing on her like a storm-cloud or a railway engine that was about to run her over. Another such power – always a subject for discussion in the family and whom they feared as well – was His Excellency. And there were about a dozen lesser fry, including stern, smooth-shaven, unmerciful schoolmasters; and finally, along had come that Modeste Alekseyevich, a man of high principles, who even looked like the headmaster. In her imagination all these forces merged together and took the form of an enormous, terrifying polar bear, advancing on the weak and on those who had gone astray – like her father – and she was too scared to protest, would force herself to smile and pretend to be pleased when they roughly caressed her or dirtied her with their embraces.
Once – and only once – Peter Leontyevich dared to ask if he could borrow fifty-five roubles to settle a particularly nasty debt, but what an ordeal it was! ‘All right, I’ll let you have it,’ Modeste said, after a moment’s deliberation, ‘but I’m warning you. That’s all the help you’ll get from me until you stop drinking. This weakness is quite disgraceful for a man in government service. I must remind you of the universally recognized fact that this vice has been the ruin of many able men who, had they only been able to control themselves, might eventually have come to occupy high positions.’
A Nervous Breakdown Page 7
