by Maxim Gorky
In the dining-room, fat Thékla was bustling about. Her big eyes kept peering into the drawing-room at Ippolít Sergyéevitch, who was silently smoking a cigarette.
“My lady! Supper is ready.…” she announced, with a sigh, slowly presenting her figure in the drawing-room door.
“Let us go and eat…Ippolít Sergyéevitch, if you please. Aunty, it is not necessary to disturb papa, let him stay here and doze…for if he goes there, he will begin to drink again.”
“That is sensible.…” remarked Elizavéta Sergyéevna.
But Aunt Lutchítzky said, in a low voice, with a shrug of the shoulders:
“It’s late in the day now, to think of that…if he drinks, he’ll die all the sooner, but, on the other hand, he’ll have some pleasure; if he doesn’t drink, he will live a year longer, but not so pleasantly.”
“And that is sensible, also…” remarked Elizavéta Sergyéevna.
At table, Ippolít Sergyéevitch sat beside Várenka, and noticed that the girl’s proximity was again arousing an agitation within him. He very much desired to move so dose to her that he could touch her gown. And, as he watched himself, according to his wont, he thought, that in his infatuation for her there was much obstinacy of the flesh, but strength of spirit.…
“A withered heart!”—he cried bitterly to himself. And then he noticed, almost with pride, that he was not afraid to speak the truth about himself, and understood how to interpret every fluctuation of his “ego.”
Engrossed with himself, he maintained silence.
At first Várenka addressed him frequently, but on receiving, in reply, curt, monosyllabic words, she evidently lost all desire to converse with him. Only after supper, when they were left entirely alone, did she ask him simply:
“Why are you so depressed? Do you feel bored, or are you displeased with me?”
He replied, that he did not feel depressed, much less was he displeased with her.
“Then what is the matter with you?” she persisted.
“Nothing in particular, apparently…but…sometimes…an excess of attentions to a man tires him.”
“An excess of attentions?” Várenka anxiously put a counter-question.—“Whose? Papa’s? For aunty has not been talking with you.”
He felt that he was blushing under this invulnerable artlessness, or hopeless stupidity. But she, not waiting for his reply, suggested to him, with a smile:
“Don’t be like that, will you? Please! I have a dreadful dislike for gloomy people.… Come, what do you think of this—let us play cards.. do you know how?”
“I play badly.. and, I must confess, that I am not fond of that form of uselessly wasting time said Ippolít Sergyéevitch, feeling that he was effecting a reconciliation with her.
“I don’t like it either…but what is one to do? You see how tiresome it is here!” said the young girl bitterly.—“I know that you have become as you are precisely because it is so tedious.”
He began to assure her of the contrary, and the more he talked, the more ardent did his words become, until, at last, before he knew what he was doing, he wound up:
“If you like, I should not find it tiresome in a desert with you.…”
“What am I to do for that?” she caught him up, and he perceived that her wish to cheer him up was thoroughly sincere.
“You need do nothing,—” he replied, concealing deep within him the reply which he would have liked to make.
“No, really, you came hither to rest, you have so much difficult work, you require strength, and before your arrival, Liza said to me: ‘You and I will help the learned man to rest and divert himself.…’ But we…what can I do? Really!… if I could get away from this tediousness…I’d kiss you heartily!”
Things grew dark before his eyes, and all the blood flew to his heart so stormily that he fairly reeled.
“Try it…kiss me…kiss me.…” he said, in a low voice, as he stood before her, without seeing her.
“Oho! So that’s what you are like!” laughed Várenka, and vanished.
He hastened after her, and stopped short, clutching at the jamb of the door, and his whole being yearned toward her.
A few seconds later he saw the colonel:—the old man was sleeping, with his head resting on his shoulder, and snoring sweetly. It was this sound which attracted Ippolít Sergyéevitch’s attention. Then he was compelled to convince himself that the monotonous and lugubrious moaning was not resounding in his own breast, but outside the windows, and that it was the rain weeping, and not his suffering heart. Then anger flashed up within him.
“You are playing with me…you are playing with me thus?”…he reiterated to himself, gritting his teeth, and he threatened her with some humiliating chastisement. His breast was in a glow, but his feet and his head stung him like sharp icicles.
Laughing merrily over something, the ladies entered, and, at the sight of them, Ippolít Sergyéevitch inwardly pulled himself together. Aunt Lutchítzky was laughing in a dull way, as though bubbles were bursting somewhere in her chest. Várenka’s face was animated by a roguish smile, and Elizavéta Sergyéevna’s laughter was condescendingly restrained.
“Perhaps they are laughing at me!” thought Ippolít Sergyéevitch.
The game of cards which Várenka had suggested did not take place, and this afforded Ippolít Sergyéevitch the possibility of withdrawing to his room, under the pretext of indisposition. As he left the drawing-room, he felt three pairs of eyes fixed on his back, and knew that they all expressed astonishment. He was not disconcerted by this, being full of the desire to revenge himself on the naughty little girl, to humiliate her, for having dared to indulge in such pranks, to make her weep, and to gaze at her and laugh aloud at her tears. But his feelings could not remain long at such a pitch of intensity, he was accustomed to subject their fermentation to the power of reason, and he never expressed them until they had cooled down. His vanity was irritated to the point of suffering by the conviction that she was playing with him: but, along with this, there again sprang up the resolve, which had been suppressed by the recent scene, to pay off the girl by utter neglect of her beauty. She must be made to feel of how little consequence she was in his eyes,—it would be good for her, but it must be a lesson, not vengeance, of course.
Such arguments always soothed him, but now there was in his breast something which could not be put aside, which was oppressive, and he simultaneously wished and did not wish to define this singular, almost painful sensation.
“Damn all nameless sensations!” he exclaimed to himself.
But some drops of water, which fell from somewhere to the floor, monotonously beat out:
“Tak…tak.…”
After sitting there an hour, in this state of conflict with himself in the unsuccessful endeavor to comprehend what remained incomprehensible, and was more powerful than all he did comprehend, he decided to go to bed, and sleep, in order that he might depart on the morrow, free from everything which so had worried and humiliated him. But, as he lay in his bed, he involuntarily pictured to himself Várenka as he had beheld her on the porch, with her arms uplifted, as though for an embrace, with her bosom quivering with satisfaction at the flashing of the lightning. And again he reflected, that if he had been bolder with her…and then he stopped himself, and finished the thought thus:—then he would have fastened about his neck a mistress who was indisputably very beautiful, but frightfully inconvenient, burdensome, and stupid, with the character of a wildcat, and with the coarsest sensuality, that was certain!…
But all at once, in the midst of these thoughts, illuminated by a surmise or a foreboding, he trembled all over, leaped swiftly to his feet, and running to the door of his room, he unlocked it. Then, smiling, he again lay down in his bed, and began to stare at the door, thinking to himself, with hope and rapture:
“That does happen…that does happen.…”
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br /> He had read, somewhere, of its having happened once: she had entered during the night, and had surrendered herself, asking nothing, demanding nothing, simply for the sake of the sensation. Várenka.. assuredly, she had something in common with the heroine of that story,—she was capable of acting thus. In her charming exclamation: “So that’s what you are like!”—there had, perhaps, rung for him, a promise, which he had not understood And now, suddenly, she would come, clad in white, all trembling with shame and desire!
He rose from his bed several times, lent an ear to the stillness of the house, to the noise of the rain against the windows, and cooled his fevered body. But everything was quiet, and the longed-for sound of footsteps did not ring through the stillness.
“How will she enter?”—he said to himself, and he pictured her to himself, on the threshold of the door, with a proud resolute face.—Of course, she would give her beauty to him proudly! It was the gift of an empress. But perhaps she would stand before him with drooping head, abashed, modest, with tears in her eyes. Or, she would make her appearance with a laugh, with a quiet laugh, at his torments, which she knew, which she always noted, though she never showed him that she noticed them, in order to trouble him, and to amuse herself.
In this condition, verging on the delirium of madness, depicting sensuous scenes in his imagination, irritating his nerves, Ippolít Sergyéevitch did not notice that the rain had ceased, and that the stars were peering in through his window, from a clear sky. He was awaiting the sound of footsteps, a woman’s footsteps, which should bring him pleasure. But they did not ring out through the slumberous stillness. At times, and only for a brief moment, the hope of embracing the young girl died out in him; then he heard, in the hurried beating of his heart, a reproach to himself, and he recognized the fact that his recent condition was one that was foreign to him, was disgraceful to him, both painful and repulsive. But the inner world of a man is too complicated and varied to permit of any one thing persistently holding all aspirations in equilibrium, and therefore, in the life of every man, there is an abyss, into which he will fall without warning, when the time for it arrives. And the cautious, by the bitter irony of the powers which govern life, fall the most deeply, and injure themselves the most painfully.
He raved until morning dawned, tortured by passion, and when the sun had already risen, footsteps did make themselves heard. He sat up in bed, trembling, with swollen eyes, and waited, and felt that when she did make her appearance, he would not be able to utter a single word of gratitude to her. But the steps which were approaching his door were slow, heavy.…
And now the door opened softly…Ippolít Sergyéevitch threw himself back feebly on his pillow, and, closing his eyes, remained motionless.
“Have I waked you up? I want your boots…and your trousers …” said fat Thékla, in a sleepy voice, as she approached the bed, with the slowness of an ox. Sighing, yawning, and knocking against the furniture, she gathered up his clothing, and went out, leaving behind her an odor of the kitchen.
He lay there for a long time, broken and annihilated, indifferently watching in himself the slow disappearance of the fragments of those images which had racked his nerves all night.
Again the peasant woman entered, with his clothing, well-brushed, laid it down, and went out, panting heavily. He began to dress himself, without stopping to consider why it was necessary to do it so early. Then, without reflecting, he decided to go and take a bath in the river, and this animated him, to a certain degree. Treading softly over the floors, he passed the room in which the colonel’s snore was booming, then the door of another chamber. He paused, for an instant, before it, but after bestowing an attentive glance upon it, he felt sure that it was not the one. And, at last, half asleep, he emerged into the garden, and walked down the narrow path, knowing that it would lead him to the river.
The weather was clear and fresh, the rays of the sun had not yet lost the rosy hues of dawn. The starlings were chattering vivaciously with one another as they pecked at the cherries. On the leaves, drops of dew quivered like diamonds; falling to the earth, in joyous, sparkling tears, they vanished. The earth was damp, but it had swallowed up all the moisture which had fallen during the night, and nowhere was there mud or a puddle visible:—Everything round about was pure, and fresh and new—as though everything had been born that night, and everything was quiet and motionless, as though it had not yet become used to life on the earth, and, beholding the sun for the first time, in silent astonishment it was admiring its marvellous beauty.
Ippolít Sergyéevitch gazed about him, and the shroud of mire which had clothed his mind and soul during the night that was past began to release him from its folds, making way for the pure breath of the new-born day, filled with sweet and refreshing perfumes.
Here was the river, still rose-colored and gold in the rays of the sun. The water, slightly turbid from the rain, faintly reflected the verdure of the banks in its waves. Somewhere, close at hand, a fish was splashing, and this splashing, and the songs of the birds were the only sounds which broke the stillness of the morning. Had it not been damp, he might have lain down on the ground, beside the river, under the canopy of verdure, and remained there until his soul had regained its composure from the emotions which he had experienced.
Ippolít Sergyéevitch walked along the shore, fantastically carved into sandy promontories, and tiny bays surrounded with verdure, and a new picture opened out before him almost every half-dozen paces. As he strolled thus noiselessly, on the very edge of the water, he knew that new and ever new scenes awaited him. And he scrutinized in detail the outlines of every bay, and the forms of the trees, which bent over them, as though desirous of ascertaining with certainty, precisely how the details of this picture differed from those of the one he had just left behind.
And, all at once, he came to a halt, dazzled.
Before him, up to her waist in the water, stood Várenka, with her head bent over, squeezing her wet hair with her hands. Her body was rosy with the cold and the rays of the sun, drops of water glistened on it like silver scales. They trickled slowly from her shoulders and breast, and fell into the water, and before falling, each drop glittered for a long time in the sunlight, as though it did not wish to leave the body which it had washed. And the water was streaming from her hair, passing through the rosy fingers of the young girl with a tender dripping sound which smote sweetly on the ear.
He gazed at her in ecstasy, with reverence, as at something holy—so pure and harmonious was the beauty of this young girl, in the blooming freshness of her youth, and he felt no other desire, save that of gazing upon her. Above her head, on the branch of a hazel-bush, a nightingale was sobbing and singing, but for him, the whole light of the sun, and all sounds were concentrated in that young girl, amid the waves. And the waves softly stroked her body, noiselessly and caressingly passing around it, in their peaceful flow.
But the good is as brief as the beautiful is rare, and what he beheld, he beheld for a few seconds only, for the girl suddenly raised her head, and with an angry cry, she swiftly dropped into the water up to her neck.
This movement of hers was reflected in his heart—it seemed to fall, shuddering, into a cold which cramped him. The girl gazed at him with flashing eyes, and a frown of anger intersected her brow, distorting her face with fear, scorn and wrath. He heard her indignant voice:
“Begone…go away! What are you doing? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself!…”
But her words floated to him from somewhere in the distance, dimly, forbidding him nothing. And he bent over the water, stretching out his arms, hardly able to stand on his feet, which were trembling with his efforts to support his unnaturally-curved body, flaming with the torture of passion. The whole of him, every fibre of his being, yearned toward her, and now, at last, he fell upon his knees, which almost touched the water.
She cried out in anger, made a movement to swim away, but halted, say
ing in a low, agitated voice:
“Go away…I will not tell anyone.…”
“I cannot.…” he tried to answer her, but his trembling lips refused to utter the words, for they had no power to say anything.
“Have a care…you! Go away!”—screamed the girl.—“You scoundrel! You base man.…”
What were these cries to him? He gazed into her eyes with his own drily burning eyes, and kneeling there, he waited for her, and he would have waited, had he known, that someone was brandishing an axe over his head, to smash his skull.
“Oh! you…disgusting dog…come, I’ll give it to you.…” whispered the young girl, with loathing, and suddenly dashed out of the water toward him.
She grew before his eyes, grew, as she dazzled him with her beauty,—and now she stood complete, to her very toes, before him, very beautiful and wrathful; he saw this, and awaited her with eager perturbation. Now she bent toward him…he flourished his arms, but embraced the air.
And at that moment, a blow in the face from something damp and heavy blinded him, and he fell backward.
He began swiftly to rub his eyes—damp sand was under his fingers, and upon his head, shoulders, and cheeks blows rained down. But the blows did not evoke pain in him, but some other sentiment, and as he shielded his head with his hands, he did so mechanically rather than consciously. He heard angry sobs.… At last, overturned by a powerful blow in the breast, he fell on his back. He was not beaten again. The bushes rustled and grew still.… Incredibly long were the seconds of sullen silence which ensued after that rustling died out. The man still lay there motionless, crushed by his disgrace, and filled with an instinctive longing to hide himself from his shame, he pressed closely to the earth. When he opened his eyes, he perceived the infinitely-deep, blue sky, and it seemed to him that it was swiftly retreating further away from him, higher, higher…and this made him breathe so heavily that he groaned, and slowly sank away somewhere, where there were no sensations.
… Thus he lay, until he felt cold; when he opened his eyes he saw Várenka bending over him. Through her fingers tears were dripping upon his face. He heard her voice:
