“Nikolai Artemyevich, for Heaven’s sake,” groaned Anna Vasilyevna.
“And when, and how, did this occur? Who married you? Where? How? Good Lord! What will all our friends say? What will the whole world say? And, you shameless dissembler, you thought you could live under your parents’ roof after such an act! Did you not fear the wrath of God?”
“Papa,” said Yelena, who was trembling from head to foot, although her voice was firm, “you are free to do with me whatever you like, but you are wrong to accuse me of shamelessness and dissembling. I didn’t want to… distress you prematurely, but I would inevitably have had to tell you in a day or two, because next week I’m going away from here with my husband.”
“Going away? Where to?”
“To his homeland. To Bulgaria.”
“To the Turks!” exclaimed Anna Vasilyevna, and fainted.
Yelena rushed to her mother.
“Get away!” yelled Nikolai Artemyevich, seizing his daughter by the arm. “Get away, you unworthy child!”
But at that moment the bedroom door opened and a pale face with flashing eyes appeared: it was the face of Shubin.
“Nikolai Artemyevich!” he cried at the top of his voice. “Avgustina Khristianovna has arrived and is asking for you!”
Nikolai Artemyevich turned round in fury, threatened Shubin with his fist, paused for a moment, then quickly left the room.
Yelena fell at her mother’s feet and embraced her knees.
* * *
Uvar Ivanovich lay on his bed. A collarless shirt, with a large stud, enveloped his fat neck and fell away in broad, sweeping folds over his almost feminine breast, exposing a large cypress-wood cross and an amulet. A light blanket covered the vast expanse of his limbs. On his bedside table a candle burned dimly beside a mug of kvass, while on the bed at Uvar Ivanovich’s feet sat the dejected figure of Shubin.
“Yes,” he was saying thoughtfully, “she’s married and is preparing to leave. Your nephew’s been bawling and shouting the house down. He locked himself in his bedroom to maintain secrecy, but not only the footmen and the maids but the coachmen too could hear everything! Even now he’s ranting and raving like anything; he almost picked a fight with me and he’s careering about with paternal curses like a frustrated bear. But it’s all to no avail. Anna Vasilyevna is devastated, but it’s not so much her daughter’s marriage that’s shattering her as her departure.”
Uvar Ivanovich wagged his fingers.
“A mother,” he said. “Well, indeed.”
“Your nephew,” Shubin went on, “threatens to complain to the Metropolitan, the Governor General and the Minister, but it’ll all end with her leaving. Who takes any pleasure in destroying his own daughter! He’ll make a big fuss and then back down.”
“They don’t… have the right,” observed Uvar Ivanovich, taking a sip from his mug.
“Quite so. But what a storm of condemnation, gossip and comment will blow up in Moscow! She wasn’t afraid of that… Anyway, she’s above all that. She’s leaving – where to? One shudders to think. To go so far, to the middle of nowhere! What awaits her there? I imagine her leaving a post station at night, in a blizzard and thirty degrees of frost. She’s parting with homeland and family; but I understand her. Who’s she leaving behind here? Who has she seen here? Kurnatovskys, Bersenevs and the likes of us – and they’re the best of them. What is there to be sorry about in that? There’s one bad thing: they say her husband – Lord knows, I can’t get my tongue round that word – they say Insarov is coughing blood. That’s bad. I saw him the other day, with a face you could have modelled Brutus on there and then… Do you know who Brutus was, Uvar Ivanovich?”
“How should I know? A man.”
“Exactly. ‘This was a man.’* Yes, a wonderful face, but the face of a sick man, a very sick man.”
“But all right… for fighting,” said Uvar Ivanovich.
“All right for fighting. Precisely. Today you’ve expressed yourself with complete accuracy. But not all right for living. And, you know, she wants to live with him a little.”
“A youthful deed,” Uvar Ivanovich opined.
“Yes, youthful, glorious, bold. Death, life, struggle, fall, triumph, love, liberty, homeland… All well and good! God grant them to everyone! It’s not the same as sitting up to your neck in a bog and trying to feign indifference when in fact you’re really not indifferent. But there the strings are taut; play to the whole world, or snap!”
Shubin dropped his head onto his chest.
“Yes,” he went on after a long pause, “Insarov is worthy of her. Yet what nonsense that is! No one is worthy of her. Insarov… Insarov… Why the false modesty. Well, let’s admit he’s a fine fellow, that he’ll stand up for himself, although up to now he’s done the same as us sinners, and are we complete rubbish? Well, take me – am I rubbish, Uvar Ivanovich? Did God stint me in everything? Did he give me no capabilities, no talents? Who knows, perhaps the name of Pavel Shubin will be a famous name in time. Look at that copper coin of yours lying on the table. Who knows, perhaps sometime, a hundred years from now, the copper will go towards a statue of Pavel Shubin, erected in his honour by a grateful posterity.”
Uvar Ivanovich leant on his elbow and stared at the impassioned artist.
“That’s one for the distant future,” he said at length, with his usual finger-wagging. “We were talking about others, but you… as it were… talk about yourself.”
“O great philosopher of the Russian land!” Shubin exclaimed. “Your every word is pure gold, and a statue ought to be erected – not to me but to you, and I’ll take the job on. Just as you are lying now, in that pose, about which it is hard to say what there is most of – idleness or strength. That’s how I’ll cast you. You reproached me – justifiably so – for my egoism and vanity! Yes! Yes! There’s no point in talking about oneself or boasting. No, we still haven’t got anyone or anybody, wherever you look. It’s all small fry, rodents, little Hamlets or Samoyeds, darkness and subterranean wildernesses, speculators, time-wasters and tub-thumpers. Then there’s another type: they’ve studied themselves in minute and shameful detail, they constantly take the pulse of their every sensation and report it to themselves: ‘that’s what I feel; that’s what I think’, they say. What a useful, practical occupation! No, if there were worthwhile people among us, this girl, this sensitive soul, would not have left us, would not have slipped away like a fish into water! What is happening, Uvar Ivanovich? When will our time come? When will real people be produced here?”
“Give it time,” replied Uvar Ivanovich. “There will be.”
“Will be? The soil, the force of the black earth, has spoken: ‘There will be.’ Look, I’ll take note of your words. But why are you putting out the candle?”
“I want to sleep. Goodnight.”
31
Shubin had told the truth. The unexpected news of Yelena’s marriage almost killed Anna Vasilyevna. She took to her bed. Nikolai Artemyevich insisted that she should not let her daughter into her presence; he seemed to enjoy the opportunity of showing himself master of the house, in the full sense of the word, with all the power of the paterfamilias. He ranted and raged incessantly at the servants, occasionally adding: “I’ll show you who I am. You’ll know all about it – just wait and see if you don’t!” While he was at home, Anna Vasilyevna did not see Yelena and contented herself with the presence of Zoya, who ministered assiduously to her needs while thinking: “Diesen Insaroff vorziehen – und wem?”* But as soon as Nikolai Artemyevich left (which happened fairly frequently, Avgustina Khristianovna having definitively returned), Yelena would go to her mother, who would gaze at her for a long time with tears in her eyes. This unspoken reproach pierced Yelena’s heart more than any other; it was not remorse that she felt at such moments, but a profound, infinite, remorse-like pity.
“Mama, dear Mama!” she repeated, kis
sing her hands. “What could I do? I’m not to blame. I fell in love with him. I could not have acted in any other way. Blame Fate. It linked me with a man whom Papa dislikes and who is taking me away from you.”
“Oh!” Anna Vasilyevna interrupted. “Don’t remind me of that. When I call to mind where it is you want to go, my heart misses a beat!”
“Dear Mama,” replied Yelena, “console yourself with the fact that it could have been even worse: I might have died.”
“But even so I have no hope of seeing you again. Either you will end your days there in some hovel” – Anna Vasilyevna imagined Bulgaria as being something like the Siberian tundra – “or I won’t be able to get over the separation…”
“Don’t say that, Mama dear. We’ll meet again, God willing. And in Bulgaria there are towns like we have here.”
“What sort of towns are those! There’s a war going on there now; I imagine that now, wherever you go, there’ll be gunfire… Do you intend to go soon?”
“Soon… if only Papa… He wants to lodge a complaint and is threatening to divorce us.”
Anna Vasilyevna raised her eyes heavenwards.
“No, Lenochka, he won’t lodge a complaint. I myself would not have consented to this marriage for anything; I’d rather have died. But what’s done cannot be undone and I won’t let my daughter be shamed.”
So several days passed. Finally Anna Vasilyevna plucked up courage, and one evening shut herself in her bedroom with her husband. The whole house was silent and agog. At first nothing could be heard; then came the booming voice of Nikolai Artemyevich; then an argument began; there was shouting and people thought they heard groaning… At this point Shubin, together with the maids and Zoya, was getting ready to come to the rescue again, but the noise in the bedroom gradually began to subside, turning first to conversation – and then to silence. Only occasionally could faint sobbing be heard – and then that ceased. Keys jangled and the squeak of a bureau being opened was heard… The door opened and Nikolai Artemyevich appeared. With a severe look at everyone he met, he set off for his club, while Anna Vasilyevna called Yelena in, embraced her warmly and, in a flood of bitter tears, said:
“Everything’s settled: he won’t make trouble, and nothing now will stop you leaving… and abandoning us.”
“Will you let Dmitry come and thank you?” Yelena asked, as soon as her mother had calmed down a little.
“Wait, my darling, I can’t bring myself to see the cause of our separation now… We’ll do it before you leave.”
“Before we leave,” Yelena echoed sorrowfully.
Nikolai Artemyevich had agreed “not to make trouble”, but Anna Vasilyevna had not told her daughter what price he had placed on his agreement. She did not tell her that she had promised to pay all his debts and had handed a thousand silver roubles to him personally. Furthermore, he had made it abundantly clear to Anna Vasilyevna that he did not want to meet Insarov, whom he continued to refer to as a Montenegrin. Yet, when he arrived at his club, without any prompting, he began to discuss Yelena’s marriage with his partner at cards, a retired general of engineers. “Have you heard,” he said with feigned nonchalance, “that, because of her extremely great erudition, my daughter has married some student or other?” The general looked at him through his spectacles, mumbled: “H’m” and asked him what card he was playing.
32
Meanwhile the day of departure was drawing near. November was already on the way out; the possible dates for their departure were almost over. Insarov had long since finished all his preparations and was burning with desire to get out of Moscow as soon as possible. The doctor too was pressing him: “You need a warm climate,” he said to him. “You won’t get better here.” Impatience was also taking its toll on Yelena; Insarov’s pallor and thinness worried her. She frequently looked at his altered features with involuntary fear. The situation in her parents’ home was becoming unbearable. Her mother wailed with grief over her, as if she were dead, but her father’s attitude to her was one of cold contempt; the imminent separation was a source of secret torment to him too, but he considered it his duty, the duty of an aggrieved father, to hide his feelings and his weakness. At last Anna Vasilyevna expressed her desire to meet Insarov. He was brought in to her surreptitiously, by the back door. When he entered her room she was unable to speak to him for a long time and could not even bring herself to look at him; he sat down beside her armchair and, with calm deference, waited for her to speak. Yelena sat with them, holding her mother’s hand in hers. At last Anna Vasilyevna looked up and said: “God is your judge, Dmitry Nikanorovich…” Then she paused, the reproaches frozen on her lips.
“But you’re ill!” she cried. “Yelena, your husband is ill!”
“I was unwell, Anna Vasilyevna,” replied Insarov, “and even now I’m not fully recovered. But I hope that my native air will restore me fully to health.”
“Yes… Bulgaria!” murmured Anna Vasilyevna, while her thoughts were: “Good God, A Bulgarian, a dying man, hollow-voiced, ox-eyed, skeletal, wearing a second-hand coat, as yellow as a quince – and she’s his wife, she loves him… But this is some kind of dream…” But she checked herself at once. “Dmitry Nikanorovich,” she said, “is it absolutely essential for you to go?”
“Absolutely essential, Anna Vasilyevna.”
Anna Vasilyevna looked at him.
“Oh, Dmitry Nikanorovich, I hope you don’t have to go through what I’m going through now… But you promise to take care of her and love her… You won’t want for anything while I’m alive!”
Tears stifled her voice. She opened her arms and Yelena and Insarov fell into them.
* * *
Finally the fateful day arrived. It had been decided that Yelena would take her leave of her parents at home, but would set off from Insarov’s lodgings. Departure was set for twelve o’clock. A quarter of an hour before the appointed time, Bersenev arrived. He had assumed that he would find Insarov’s compatriots there, wanting to see him off, but they had left in advance. The two mysterious personages with whom the reader is also familiar had also left (they had been witnesses at Insarov’s wedding). The tailor greeted the “kind master” with a bow. He had been drinking, probably from grief, but possibly also from joy at getting the furniture. His wife soon summoned him away. In the room everything had been tidied up; a trunk bound with rope stood on the floor. Bersenev became pensive; many heartfelt memories came back to him.
The clock had struck twelve long ago and the coachman had already brought the horses up. However, the “young people” had still not appeared. At last, hasty footsteps were heard on the stairs, and Yelena, accompanied by Insarov and Shubin, came in. Yelena’s eyes were red; she had left her mother lying in a faint; the leave-taking had been very hard. Yelena had already not seen Bersenev for more than a week; in recent times he had rarely visited the Stakhovs. She had not expected to meet him and, with a cry of “It’s you! Thank you!” threw her arms round his neck. Insarov also embraced him. A painful silence ensued. What could these three people say to one another, what did these three hearts feel? Shubin understood the necessity of relieving the tension with some living sound, some word.
“Our trio has gathered again,” he said, “for the last time! Let us submit to the dictates of Fate. Let us remember the past with affection, and here’s to God’s blessing on our new life!” He began to sing: “With God upon the distant road”,* then stopped. He suddenly felt ashamed and awkward. It’s sinful to sing in the presence of a corpse, and at that moment, in that room, the past was dying, the past of which he had spoken, the past of the people gathered in it. The assumption was that it was dying, to be reborn to new life… but nevertheless it was dying.
“Well, Yelena,” Insarov began, turning to his wife, “That seems to be everything. Everything’s paid for and packed. It just remains to cart this trunk away. Landlord!”
The landlord ca
me into the room with his wife and daughter. Swaying slightly, he listened to Insarov’s instructions, hoisted the trunk onto his shoulders and, with a clumping of boots, ran quickly down the stairs.
“Now, according to Russian custom, we must sit down,”* said Insarov.
They all sat down: Bersenev installed himself on the old sofa; Yelena sat down beside him; the landlord’s wife and daughter crouched in the doorway. They all fell silent, with forced smiles on their faces. No one knew why they were smiling. Everyone wanted to say a valedictory word and everyone (with the exception, of course, of the landlord and his daughter, who merely looked on goggle-eyed) felt that at such moments only banalities were permissible, that any meaningful, or intelligent or simply heartfelt word would be somehow inappropriate and almost false. Insarov was the first to stand up; he began to cross himself… “Goodbye, little room of ours!” he cried.
There were kisses all round, the resonant but cold kisses of separation, half-spoken good wishes for the journey, promises to write, the final, half-suppressed words of farewell…
Yelena, in floods of tears, was already seated in the sledge; Insarov carefully covered her legs with a rug. Shubin, Bersenev, the landlord, his wife, his daughter with her inevitable headscarf, the yardman, a random workman in striped overalls – they were all standing at the front entrance when suddenly an opulent sledge, drawn by a spirited trotter, swept into the yard; from it, shaking the snow off the collar of his greatcoat, leapt Nikolai Artemyevich.
“You’re still here, thank God,” he cried, running up to Yelena’s sledge. “Here is a last parental blessing for you, Yelena,” he said, leaning over the back and producing from the pocket of his frock coat a little icon sewn into a velvet bag, which he placed round her neck. She began to sob and kiss his hands; the coachman meanwhile pulled out from somewhere in the front of the sledge a half-bottle of champagne and three glasses.
On the Eve (Alma Classics) Page 16
