“You’ll see, Praskovya Danilovna,” said the old Prince, taking his chibouk out of his mouth, “our Irina will bail us out yet.”
The Princess grew angry and told her husband that he used “des expressions insupportables”,* but then she bethought herself and repeated through her teeth:
“Yes, it would be good to bail us out.”
Irina enjoyed almost unlimited freedom in her parents’ house; they did not spoil her and were even a little wary of her, but did not contradict her. That is all she required. Sometimes, if there was a particularly humiliating scene – if a shopkeeper came round and started shouting and telling the whole courtyard that he was fed up with traipsing round after his money, if the Prince’s own servants began to curse their masters to their face, saying: “What sort of princes are you when you’re always whistling to stave off hunger” – Irina would not raise an eyebrow and would sit immobile with a malicious smile on her gloomy face. To her parents this smile alone was more bitter than any reproach, and they felt guilty, unjustifiably guilty, before this being who, from the very day of her birth, seemed to have been granted the right to riches, luxury and reverence.
Litvinov fell in love with Irina as soon as he saw her (he was three years older than her), but for a long time was unable to gain any mutual feeling in her, or even attract her attention. Her attitude to him bore the stamp of a certain hostility; it was as if he had offended her and she had felt the offence deeply and could not forgive him for it. At the time he was too young and modest to understand what might be concealed beneath that hostile, almost contemptuous sternness. It often happened that, forgetting his lectures and exercise books, he would sit in the Osinins’ dismal drawing room and watch Irina surreptitiously. His heart would melt slowly and sorrowfully, weighing heavily in his breast, while she would appear to grow angry, to be bored, would stand up, pace up and down the room and look coldly at him, as at a table or a chair, would shrug her shoulders and cross her arms. Or, in the course of an entire evening, even while talking to Litvinov, she would deliberately refrain from looking at him even once, as if withholding even this charitable donation from him. Finally she would pick up a book and stare at it without reading it; failing that, she would loudly ask her father or brother: “What’s the German for ‘patience’?”
Litvinov tried to break out of the charmed circle in which he tormented himself and thrashed about unceasingly, like a bird caught in a trap. He took himself away from Moscow for a week. Emaciated and sick, almost mad with anguish and boredom, he returned to the Osinins. Strange to relate, Irina had grown noticeably thinner over these days; her face had grown yellow and her cheeks had become sunken… but she met him with greater coldness, with almost gleeful casualness, as if he had exacerbated the secret offence he had caused her. She tormented him thus for some two months. Then one day everything changed. It was as if love had flared like a fire, had welled up like a thundercloud. Once – he remembered the day for a long time – he was again sitting by the window in the Osinins’ drawing room and looking out uncomprehendingly onto the street. He felt both irritated and bored; he despised himself and could not move from the spot… It seemed that, had a river flowed there beneath the window, he would have thrown himself into it with horror, but without regret. Irina had taken her place near him, not stirring and maintaining a strange silence. She had not spoken to him at all for several days; indeed, she had spoken to no one. She kept sitting there, her head in her hands, as if she were puzzled, merely looking slowly about her from time to time. In the end this cold languor could not fail to discomfit Litvinov. He stood up and, without taking his leave, began to look for his hat. “Stay,” came a sudden, quiet whisper. Litvinov felt his heart shudder and did not immediately recognize Irina’s voice; there was something unprecedented in that single word. He raised his head and was stupefied. Irina was looking at him fondly – yes, fondly. “Stay,” she repeated. “Don’t go… I want to be with you.” She lowered her voice still more. “Don’t go away… I want you to stay.” Totally uncomprehending, with no idea of what he was doing, he went up to her and stretched out his arms. She immediately opened both her arms to him, then smiled, blushed, turned away and, still smiling, left the room. Several minutes later she returned with her younger sister, again bestowed the same long, gentle look on him and seated her sister beside her. At first she could say nothing, merely sighing and blushing. Then she began shyly to question him about his studies, something she had never done before. That same day, in the evening, she apologized to him several times that she had not been able to appreciate him before now. She assured him that she had changed utterly and surprised him with a sudden Republican outburst (at that time Litvinov revered Robespierre and did not dare to condemn Marat* aloud). A week later he already knew that she had fallen in love with him. Yes, he remembered that first day for a long time, but he did not forget the days which followed, those days when, striving to doubt and fearing to believe, he saw clearly, with a surge of delight, almost of terror, how happiness had been born unexpectedly, had grown and, irresistibly sweeping all before it, had engulfed him. He felt the luminous moments of first love, which are not fated to return, which must not return within the span of a single life. Irina suddenly became as docile as a lamb, as soft as silk and endlessly kind. She began to give lessons to her younger sisters – not on the piano, for she was no musician, but in the French and English languages. She read their textbooks with them and involved herself in the running of the household. Everything gave her satisfaction, everything absorbed her. One minute she chattered ceaselessly, the next she would plunge into silent reverie. She drew up various plans, embarked on endless speculation about what she would do when she married Litvinov (she had no doubt at all that their marriage would take place), about how they would become a couple… “Should I work?” said Litvinov. “Yes, work,” Irina repeated. “Read, but, most important of all, travel!” She especially wanted to leave Moscow soon, and whenever Litvinov pointed out to her that he had not yet finished his course at university, she would respond each time, after a little thought, that one could finish one’s studies in Berlin or somewhere. Irina was not shy of expressing her feelings, so her affection for Litvinov did not remain a secret from the Prince and Princess for long. They were not exactly pleased but, having considered all the circumstances, they did not feel it necessary to impose a veto. Litvinov was comfortably off. “But his family name, his family name!” the Princess observed. “Yes, of course, there is his family name,” replied the Prince, “but at least he’s not a plebeian. The important thing is that Irina will take no notice of us. Has there ever been a time when she didn’t do whatever she wanted? Vous connaissez sa violence.* Anyway, there’s nothing definite yet.” Thus reasoned the Prince, immediately adding, however, to himself: “Madame Litvinova – and nothing else? I expected something else.” Irina took total possession of her future bridegroom and he put himself willingly in her hands. It was as if he had fallen into a whirlpool, as if he had got lost. Life was both fearful and sweet for him; he neither regretted anything, nor did he spare anything. To muse on the significance and obligations of marriage, on whether he, so irredeemably submissive, could be a good husband, on what sort of a wife Irina would make, on whether the relations between them were correct – Litvinov was incapable of doing any of this; his blood was up and he only knew one thing: to follow her, to go with her henceforth and for ever; thereafter, what would be, would be. But despite the total absence of resistance on the part of Litvinov, despite the excess of impulsive tenderness on the part of Irina, things did not go without a measure of misunderstandings and setbacks. Once he hurried to see her straight from the university, wearing an old jacket and with ink-stained hands. She rushed to meet him with her usual affectionate greeting, but suddenly stopped.
“You’re not wearing gloves,” she said slowly, immediately adding: “Bah, what a… student you are!”
“You’re too impressionable, Irina,” s
aid Litvinov.
“You’re… a real student,” Irina repeated. “Vous n’êtes pas très distingué,”* And, turning her back on him, she flounced out. Admittedly, an hour later she was entreating him to forgive her. In general she punished herself and apologized to him; only, strange to relate, she often, and almost in tears, accused herself of bad motives which she did not have and stubbornly denied his own shortcomings. Another time he found her in tears with her head in her hands, her hair dishevelled. When, in considerable alarm, he asked the cause of her unhappiness, she said nothing, but pointed at her breast. Litvinov gave an involuntary shudder. The word “consumption” flashed through his mind, and he seized her by the hand.
“Are you ill?” he said tremulously (on important occasions they had already begun to use the familiar form of address with each other). “If so, I’ll go and get the doctor.”
But Irina did not let him finish and stamped her foot in irritation.
“I’m absolutely fine… but this dress… Surely you understand.”
“What do you mean, this dress?” he said, puzzled.
“What do I mean? That I haven’t got another one and this one is old and horrible, and I’m forced to put this dress on every day… even when you… even when you come,” she said, changing to the formal mode of address. “In the end you’ll fall out of love with me, seeing me such a mess.”
“Please, Irina, what are you saying? Even that dress is very nice, the more so because you were wearing it the first time I saw you.”
Irina blushed.
“Please don’t remind me, Grigory Mikhailovich, that even then I didn’t have another dress.”
“But I assure you, Irina Pavlovna, you look charming in it.”
“No, it’s horrible, horrible,” she repeated, nervously fiddling with her long soft tresses. “Oh, this poverty, this poverty! This darkness! How can I escape from this poverty? How can I escape, escape the darkness?”
Litvinov did not know what to say and turned away slightly.
Suddenly Irina jumped up from the table and put both hands on Litvinov’s shoulders.
“But surely you love me. Do you love me?” she said, bringing her face close to his, and her eyes, still full of tears, flashed with the joy of happiness. “Do you love me even in this horrible dress?”
Litvinov threw himself to his knees before her.
“Oh, love me, love me, my darling, my saviour,” she whispered, bending down to him.
Thus the days passed, the weeks elapsed and, although no formal explanations took place, although Litvinov still delayed proposing – not, of course, of his own volition, but in expectation of a command from Irina (she had remarked on one occasion that they were ludicrously young and they must at least add a few years to their ages). Everything, however, was moving towards a denouement and the immediate future was becoming ever more clearly mapped out, when suddenly an event took place which dissipated all these assumptions and plans like roadside dust.
8
That summer the Court visited Moscow. Festivities followed festivities. The time came for the usual ball at the Assembly of the Nobility.* News of this ball, admittedly in the form of a notice in Police Gazette,* even reached the house on Sobachka Square. The Prince was the first to became agitated; he immediately decided that he must attend without fail and take Irina with him, that it would be unforgivable to miss the chance of seeing Their Majesties and that for members of the old Russian nobility this constituted a form of obligation. He stood by his opinion with a fervour which was unusual for him; the Princess agreed with him to a certain extent and merely sighed about the expense, but Irina displayed determined opposition. “It’s unnecessary. I won’t go,” she replied to all parental arguments. Her stubbornness assumed such proportions that the old Prince eventually decided to ask Litvinov to try to persuade her by putting it to her, among other “raisons”,* that it was not seemly for a young girl to avoid society, that it behoved her to “have that experience”, that, as things were, no one saw her anywhere. Litvinov undertook to put these “raisons” to her. Irina looked at him fixedly and attentively, so fixedly and so attentively that he became embarrassed, and, playing with the ends of her belt, she said quietly:
“Is that what you want? Do you?”
“Yes… I suppose,” Litvinov replied hesitantly, “I agree with your father. And why shouldn’t you go – to see people and show yourself off?” he added, with a brief laugh.
“Show myself off,” she repeated slowly. “All right, I’ll go. Only remember, it was you who wanted it.”
“That is, I—” Litvinov started to say.
“You yourself wanted it,” she interrupted. “And here’s one more condition: you must promise me that you won’t be at the ball.”
“Why?”
“That’s what I want.”
Litvinov spread his arms.
“As you wish, but I admit I would be happy to see you in all your magnificence, to witness the impression you are bound to make. How proud I would be of you,” he added with a sigh.
Irina smiled sardonically. “All this magnificence would consist of a white dress, and as for impression, well, in a word, that’s what I want.”
“Irina, you seem to be angry.”
Irina again smiled sardonically.
“Oh, no! I’m not angry. Only you…” (Her eyes bored into him and he felt he had never seen such an expression in them.) “Perhaps it’s necessary,” she added in an undertone.
“But Irina, do you love me?”
“I love you,” she answered with almost triumphant seriousness, gripping his hand firmly like a man would.
Throughout all the days which followed, Irina carefully saw to her toilette and coiffure. On the eve of the ball she felt unwell and could not settle in one place. Once or twice, when alone, she burst into tears. In Litvinov’s presence she smiled the same fixed smile; she treated him as tenderly as before, but was distracted and kept looking at herself in the mirror. On the day of the ball itself she was very taciturn and pale, but calm. About nine o’clock, Litvinov arrived to watch her. When she came out to him in a white tarlatan dress with a spray of little blue flowers in her slightly heightened coiffure, he gasped, so beautiful did she seem. “Yes, she’s grown up since this morning,” he thought. “And what poise! How much breeding matters!” Irina stood before him, her arms lowered, unsmiling and without affectation; she was looking determinedly, almost boldly, not at him but somewhere into the distance, directly in front of her.
“You’re like a fairy-tale princess,” said Litvinov finally. “Or rather, you’re like a commander before a battle, before a victory… You didn’t allow me to go to the ball,” he continued, while she, as before, did not stir; it was not so much that she was not listening to him, but rather that she was attending to other words within her. “But you won’t refuse to accept these flowers from me and take them with you.”
He gave her a bouquet of heliotropes.
She glanced quickly at Litvinov, held out her hands and, suddenly seizing the end of the spray of flowers which adorned her head, said:
“Is this what you want? Just say the word and I’ll tear all this off and stay at home.”
Litvinov’s heart leapt. Irina’s hand was already tearing the flowers off.
“No, no, why do that?” he interjected harshly, in an access of grateful and magnanimous feelings. “I’m not an egoist. Why restrict your freedom when I know that your heart…”
“Well then, don’t come so close like that. You’ll crumple my dress,” she said hurriedly.
Litvinov became flustered.
“But you’ll take the bouquet?” he asked.
“Of course. It’s very nice and I like the scent. Merci. I’ll keep it as a souvenir.”
“Of your first appearance in society,” Litvinov remarked. “Of your first triumph.”
>
Irina looked across her shoulder at her reflection in the mirror, bending slightly at the waist.
“Am I really so good-looking? You’re not biased?”
Litvinov went off into paeans of praise, but Irina was no longer listening to him. Raising the bouquet to her face, she again looked somewhere into the distance with her strange eyes, now seemingly somehow darker and dilated, while, disturbed by some movement of the air, the ends of thin ribbons fluttered above her shoulders like wings.
The Prince appeared, his hair curled, wearing a white cravat and a faded black tailcoat with the ribbon of the Order of St Vladimir in his buttonhole. The Princess followed him in, wearing a silk chiné dress of old-fashioned cut, and, with the anxious sternness beneath which mothers try to hide their agitation, arranged her daughter’s dress from behind – that is to say she shook the folds of her dress without there being any need to do so. A four-seater hackney carriage, drawn by two shaggy horses, crawled up to the porch, its wheels scraping in drifts of unswept snow, and an emaciated footman in an unlikely livery sprang from the porch and announced, with something of a flourish, that the carriage was ready. Bestowing their blessing on their children who were staying behind and wrapping themselves in furs, the Prince and Princess made their way to the porch. Irina, in a short, thin wrap – how she hated that wrap – followed them in silence. Litvinov, who accompanied them, hoped to receive a parting glance from Irina, but she took her seat in the carriage without turning her head.
About midnight he passed beneath the windows of the Assembly. Countless lights from the huge chandeliers glimmered as bright luminous points from behind the red curtains, and the whole square, crowded with carriages, was filled with the impertinent, celebratory, challenging sounds of a Strauss waltz.
Smoke (Alma Classics) Page 6
