Alexander was unable to respond. His head and shoulders heaved convulsively: he could only sob. Pyotr Ivanych frowned, waved his hand and left the room.
“What can I do with Alexander?” he said to his wife. “His howling and wailing just drove me from the room – I’m at my wits’ end.”
“And you just left him like that?” said his wife. “The poor thing! Let me go in to him!”
“You won’t do any good: that’s just the way he is – just like his auntie, a real crybaby. I did my best to talk him round.”
“Talk him round – that’s all you did?”
“It worked: he ended up agreeing with me.”
“Oh, I’m sure you did: you’re very clever… and sharp!” she added.
“Thank God, if I am; I believe that’s what was needed in this case.”
“If you’re right, why is he crying?”
“It’s not my fault: I did everything I could to comfort him.”
“And what was it you did?”
“I did plenty! I talked to him for a good hour – my throat practically dried up. I laid out the whole theory of love as plainly as possible, even offered him money… and supper too – not to mention wine…”
“And yet he’s still in tears?”
“And what a racket he’s making – and it’s getting worse now!”
“Amazing! Let me go and try, and meanwhile try to think of a better method…”
“What, what do you mean?”
She slipped out of the room like a shadow.
Alexander was still sitting there, holding his head in his hands. Someone touched him on the shoulder. He raised his head. In front of him stood a young and beautiful woman in a peignoir and a cap à la finnoise.*
“Ma tante!”* he said.
She sat down next to him, looked at him intently – the kind of look which only a woman can sometimes give you – gently wiped his eyes with her handkerchief and kissed him on the forehead. He pressed his lips to her hand, and they talked for a long time.
An hour later, he left the room deep in thought but with a smile, and slept soundly for the first time after many sleepless nights. She returned to the bedroom, her eyes reddened from tears. Pyotr Ivanych had been snoring for a long time.
Part II
Chapter 1
A year had passed since the events and episodes described in the last chapter of Part I.
Alexander’s mood of dark despair had been replaced by one of bleak dejection. He had given up his thunderous curses accompanied by the grinding of teeth against the Count and Nadenka, and had dismissed them with profound contempt. Lizaveta Alexandrovna consoled him with all the tenderness of a friend and a sister, and he was a willing beneficiary of her kind attentions. Like all others of the same temperament, he was happy to subject his own volition to the authority of another – and like them, he was someone who needed a nanny.
His passion had finally drained out of him, and his period of genuine mourning was over, but he was sorry to part with it, and made every effort to prolong it – or rather, he had created an artificial melancholy for himself, acted it out, adorned himself with it and wallowed in it.
There was something about the role of victim that he enjoyed. He was taciturn, dignified, glum, like a man – to use his own words – stricken by “a blow of fate”. He spoke of his noble suffering, of his sacred, exalted feelings which had been manhandled and trampled in the mud – “And by whom?” he would add. “A hussy, a flirt and a despicable profligate, a mangy lion. Can it be that fate has put me in this world just to have everything that was finest in me sacrificed to this scum?”
Men would not forgive other men, nor would women forgive other women for such deceit, and would have lost no time in seeing that their deceivers came a cropper. But is there anything young people of opposite sexes wouldn’t forgive each other?
Lizaveta Alexandrovna would listen patiently to his jeremiads and comfort him as best she could, and this was not at all distasteful to her, perhaps because there was something about her nephew which plucked at strings in her own heart, and because she heard in his complaints about love an echo of sufferings to which she was no stranger. She listened greedily to the moaning and groaning of his heart, and responded to them with barely discernible sighs and hidden tears of her own. For the outpourings of her nephew’s misery, feigned and melodramatic as they were, she even found words of consolation of a similar tone and register; but Alexander didn’t want to listen.
“Please don’t talk to me about that, ma tante!” he protested. “I don’t want to defile the sacred name of love by using it to describe my relationship with that…” At this point, he would sneer contemptuously, and was ready, like his uncle, to ask, “Er… what’s-her-name?”
“Anyway,” he would add, in a tone of even greater contempt, “she can be forgiven; I was much too good for her and that count, and that whole pitiful and worthless crew; no wonder I remained a closed book to them.”
Even after he had finished, that expression of contempt remained on his face.
“Uncle claims that I should be grateful to Nadenka,” he continued, “but for what? What was noteworthy about that love? It was as banal and commonplace as they come; was there anything at all about it which rose above the pettiest and most vulgar of everyday squabbles? Was there anything in that love that could be seen as the slightest bit heroic or selfless? No, there was practically nothing she did without her mother knowing! Did she ever take a single step for me outside the social norms, outside what was socially correct? Never! A girl whose feelings could not include the merest spark of poetry.”
“But what kind of love could you ask of a woman?” asked Lizaveta Alexandrovna.
“What kind?” replied Alexander. “I would demand of her that I occupy the first place in her heart. The woman I love should not notice or see any man other than myself. All other men should be insufferable. I alone would be on a higher level, more handsome” – and here he drew himself up – “better and nobler than all others. Every second lived without me would be to her a wasted moment. In my eyes and in my words alone would she find bliss, and know of no other source…”
Lizaveta Alexandrovna tried to hide her smile, but Alexander did not notice.
“For me,” he continued with shining eyes, “she would be ready to sacrifice all, any petty advantage or profit, to cast off the despotic yoke of her mother, her husband, and flee, if necessary, to the ends of the earth, to withstand robustly any privation – and, finally, even to look death itself squarely in the face: that’s what I call love! But that—”
“And how would you reward her for such love?” his aunt asked.
“How?” Alexander began, raising his eyes to the heavens. “Why, I would lie at her feet. Gazing into her eyes would be my greatest happiness. Her every word would be law to me. I would sing of her beauty, her love, to nature itself:
“With her, my lips would possess
Petrarch’s language and that of love itself…*
“And didn’t I show Nadenka the love of which I was capable?”
“So you simply don’t believe in a feeling if it’s not expressed in the way you want? A strong feeling can remain hidden…”
“Wouldn’t you like to assure me, ma tante, that a feeling like my uncle’s, for example, remains hidden?”
Lizaveta Alexandrovna’s face suddenly reddened. Deep down, she had to agree with her nephew that a feeling that never actually manifests itself is somehow suspect, and maybe doesn’t even exist, and that if it did exist it would force its way to the surface. Also that, apart from the love itself, its very setting possesses indescribable delight.
She began to review mentally the whole course of her married life, and plunged into deep thought. Her nephew’s indiscreet remark had stirred up in her heart a secret which she had kept deeply hidden, and prompted the question
– was she happy?
She had no right to complain: all the external conditions of happiness which the mass of the people strive for had been created for her as if they had been carefully planned. Contentment, even luxury now, and security in the future – all this spared her those trivial, oppressive cares which gnaw at the heart and constrict the breasts of the legions of the poor.
Her husband had worked tirelessly, and continued to work. But what was the ultimate goal of all this work? Did he work for the general good of mankind by performing the tasks set for him by destiny or merely for narrowly selfish reasons, to acquire the money and status that would earn him prestige among his peers and ultimately to avoid being trapped in poverty by circumstances? Only God knows. He was loath to talk about loftier goals, talk that he dismissed as so much hot air, and confined himself drily and simply to saying “Work is there to get done”.
Lizaveta Alexandrovna was forced to the grim conclusion that neither she herself nor love of her was the sole purpose of all his striving and zeal. He had worked hard before their marriage, even before he had known his wife. He had never talked to her of love, and had never asked her about it. Whenever she raised such questions, he would evade the issue with a joke, a quip or by pleading sleepiness. Soon after they had met, he mentioned marriage, giving her to understand that love was to be taken for granted, and that there was no point in talking much about it…
He was against doing anything for effect – which was all very well, but he had no time for baring his own feelings, and didn’t see the need for it in others. However, at any time, with a single word he could have stirred up in her the strongest feelings for him, but he remained silent and refrained. It was something that didn’t even tickle his self-esteem.
She tried to make him jealous, thinking that that couldn’t help but provoke an expression of love – nothing of the kind! He only had to notice her picking out some young man or other at a social gathering for him to invite him on the spot to visit them, be very friendly to him and praise his accomplishments to the skies, and would not hesitate to leave him alone with his wife.
Lizaveta Alexandrovna sometimes deluded herself into believing that perhaps Pyotr Ivanych’s behaviour was all part of a strategy, and that this might be the essence of his secret method whose purpose was to keep her constantly in doubt, and in this way to maintain her love. But her husband’s very first reference to love swiftly disabused her.
If he had also been ill bred, uncouth and callous, and a dullard, one of those husbands whose name is legion, one of those who can be deceived without any sense of guilt, so necessarily, and so comfortably for their own good and for that of the wife – those husbands who seem naturally disposed to let their wives look around to find a lover who is the polar opposite of their husband – then that would be a different matter, and she might have behaved as do most women in her circumstances. But Pyotr Ivanych was an intelligent and tactful man, a rare species. He was subtle, perspicacious and quick-witted. He understood all the vagaries of the heart and the turbulence of the emotions – but that was as far as it went. He kept in his head the complete textbook of the matters of the heart – but not in his heart. From all his opinions on the subject, it was clear that everything he had to say about it was, as it were, learnt by rote, but never actually felt. When he talked about the passions, what he said was accurate, although he never acknowledged that they might apply to himself. In fact, he derided them and dismissed them as errors and aberrations from reality, as if they were some kind of disease which would eventually be cured by the right medicine.
Lizaveta Alexandrovna was aware of his intellectual superiority over his peers and was tormented by it. “If he were not so intelligent,” she thought, “I would be saved.” His goals tended to be concrete ones – that was clear – and he insisted on his wife not living in a dream world.
“My God!” thought Lizaveta Alexandrovna. “Can he have married just so as to have someone to keep house and to equip his bachelor quarters with the proper decor and standards of a proper family home in order to improve his social standing? A wife in the most prosaic sense of the term – someone to keep house for him! Can he not grasp the idea that concrete goals must always include love? Yes, family responsibilities are indeed the concern of the wife, but can they be discharged without love? Nannies, wet-nurses can make the child they care for the centre of their lives, but a wife, a mother! Oh, if only I could acquire feeling even at the cost of great pain – every kind of suffering that comes with passion – simply in order to live a full life, to feel that I am alive instead of merely vegetating!”
She looked around at all the luxurious furniture and all the precious trinkets and toys in her boudoir – and all those comforts, with which in other marriages the hand of a caring husband surrounds his beloved wife, seemed nothing more than a callous parody of true happiness. She was the witness of two terrible extremes – represented by her nephew and her husband – the one passionate to excess, the other as cold as ice.
“How little either of them understands true feeling, just like most men! And how well I understand it!” she thought. “But what’s the use? And what for? Oh, if only…”
She closed her eyes, and kept them closed for a few minutes. Then she opened them, looked around and heaved a sigh, resuming her usual calm expression. The poor woman! No one noticed, no one knew. It was almost as if these unseen, impalpable and nameless sufferings unaccompanied by wounds or blood – and she, all the while clothed, not in rags but in velvet – were a punishment for some crime or other. But with heroic self-restraint she kept her sorrow to herself, and still had enough strength to comfort others.
Soon Alexander gave up talking about his noble sufferings and his misunderstood and priceless love. He adopted a more general refrain. He complained about the tedium of life, the emptiness of his soul, the anguish that drained him. He constantly reiterated:
“I endured my sufferings,
I cast away my dreams…*
“And now I am being haunted by a black demon. Oh ma tante, it’s with me all the time – at night, in the middle of a friendly chat, in the midst of revelry, at times of profound meditation!”
Several weeks passed in this way. You might think that in another couple of weeks this eccentric would have calmed down completely, and perhaps might even have turned into a respectable, that is to say, simply a normal member of the human race, just like everyone else. Not a bit of it! The peculiarity of his strange nature always managed to find an outlet.
Once he came to his aunt in an access of malevolence towards the whole human race. A word, a taunt, an opinion, a quip, whatever form it took, it was always aimed at people he should have respected. He spared no one. He even had it in for her and Pyotr Ivanych. Lizaveta Alexandrovna tried to delve into the reasons.
“Would you like to know,” he said with quiet solemnity, “what upsets me and infuriates me now? Well, listen. I had a friend whom I hadn’t seen for several years, and for whom I always had a soft spot. My uncle, when I first came here, made me write him a strange letter containing his favourite rules and way of thinking; but I tore it up and sent a different one, so there was no reason for it to affect our relationship. After that letter, we stopped writing to each other, and I lost track of my friend. So what happened? Three days ago, I’m walking along the Nevsky Prospekt and suddenly catch sight of him. I stood rooted to the spot: tremors of excitement ran through me and tears came to my eyes. I held out my hand to him, but was so overcome by joy that I couldn’t utter a word – I couldn’t catch my breath. He took my hand and shook it. ‘Hello, Aduyev!’ he said, as casually as if we had parted only the day before. ‘Have you been here long?’ He was surprised that we hadn’t run into each other before this, and asked casually what I was doing, where I was working, and made a point of informing me that he had a great job and was happy with the work, his superiors and his colleagues as well as… everyone and everything�
� then he told me that he had no time because he was hurrying to a formal dinner party. Can you imagine, ma tante! Here we were, two friends, meeting for the first time after so long, and he was worried about being late for his dinner…”
“But perhaps they were waiting for him, and it wouldn’t have been polite to—”
“Politeness and friendship? Then you agree, ma tante? Well, let me tell you something else – it gets better! He put his address in my hand: he said I should call on him the next day in the evening – and disappeared. I watched him walking off for a long time; I just couldn’t get over it. This was a companion of my childhood, and a friend of my youth! How do you like that? But then I thought perhaps he was just postponing things until the next evening and would take the time for us to have a real heart-to-heart talk. ‘Very well then,’ I think, ‘I’ll go.’ So I turn up. There were ten friends with him. True – he shook hands with me more warmly than the day before – but, without saying a word, proposed a game of cards. I told him that I don’t play, and sat down alone on a divan, imagining that he would leave the card table and come over and talk to me. ‘You’re not playing?’ he said in surprise. ‘But what will you do?’ Now, what kind of question is that? There I am waiting – one hour goes by, then another hour, and he still doesn’t come over. I’m losing patience. First, he offered me a cigar, then a pipe, said he was sorry I wasn’t playing, that I must be bored, and made an attempt to entertain me – can you guess how? He kept on turning to me and telling me how well or badly he was doing with each hand at the card table. I finally ran out of patience and went over to him and asked whether he had any intention of paying me any attention that evening. I was so furious that my voice was trembling. He seemed surprised, and gave me a strange look and said: ‘All right, let’s just finish the game.’ As soon as he said that, I picked up my hat, intending to leave, but he noticed and said: ‘We’re almost finished – and then we’ll have supper.’ They finally finished, and he sat down next to me and yawned, and our friendly chat began. ‘Was there something you wanted to tell me?’ he asked, in such a flat monotone that I said nothing and just smiled at him dejectedly – whereupon he suddenly came to life and started plying me with questions. ‘What’s the matter? Do you need something, or can I offer you any help professionally?’ and so on. I shook my head and said that I didn’t want to speak to him about work, or how well we’re doing materially, but about matters closer to the heart, the golden years of our childhood, the games we used to play, the pranks we got up to… and imagine, he didn’t even let me finish! – and said: ‘You’re still the same old dreamer!’ – and then changed the subject as if it were a waste of time, and started asking me seriously about my affairs, my hopes for the future, my career, and about my uncle. I was surprised, and couldn’t believe that a man’s nature could have coarsened to such a degree. I wanted to give it one last try, and fastened on the question he had asked me about my affairs, and began to tell him about how I had been treated, and started to say: ‘Listen to what some people did to me…’ That alarmed him, and he interrupted me to ask: ‘What? You haven’t been robbed, have you?’ – obviously thinking that when I said ‘people’, I meant ‘servants’.* Just like my uncle; it was the only misfortune which came to his mind. How can a man become so insensitive? ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘people robbed me of my soul…’ – and I started telling him of my love, my ordeal, of my spiritual emptiness, and began to get a little carried away, thinking that the tale of my sufferings would warm his icy crust, and that his eyes hadn’t yet forgotten how to weep. Suddenly he burst out laughing, and I saw that he had been holding a handkerchief in his hands. All the time I had been talking, he had hardly been able to contain himself. Finally, he couldn’t hold it in any longer. I stopped, horrified.
The Same Old Story Page 20
