Cold sweat broke out on his forehead. He was lost in cures, feeling that to discover them took more heart than head. And where was he to get that? Something told him that if he could fall at her feet, enclose her in embraces and with a voice of passion tell her that he lived only for her, that she was the goal of all his labors, activity, career, striving, that his methodical conduct with her had been inspired only by a burning, persistent, jealous wish to secure her heart for himself… He understood that such words would have the effect of reanimating a corpse, that she would suddenly flourish with health and happiness, and it wouldn’t be necessary to go to a spa.
But to say something and prove it are two different things. To prove it, one must indeed have passion. And deep in his soul Pyotr Ivanych found not a trace of passion. He felt only that his wife was essential to him–true, but the same as the other essentials of life, essential out of habit. Perhaps he wouldn’t be averse to pretending, playing the part of a lover, however ridiculous it might be at fifty to start suddenly speaking the language of passion. But can you deceive a woman with passion when there is none? Would he have enough heroism and ability to carry this role far enough to satisfy the demands of the heart? And wouldn’t offended pride kill her completely when she noticed that what several years ago would have been a magic potion for her, was now offered her as medicine? No, in his precise manner he weighed and judged this late step and couldn’t decide to take it. He intended to achieve perhaps the same thing, but in a different way since this was now necessary and possible. For three months now a thought had been stirring in his mind which earlier would have seemed to him nonsensical, but now–another matter! He had kept it in case of emergency. Now the emergency had come, and he decided to carry out his plan.
“If this doesn’t help,” he thought, “then there’s no salvation! Let come what may!”
With firm steps Pyotr Ivanych went up to his wife and took her by the hand. “You know, Liza,” he said, “what an important part I play at the office. I consider myself the most active official in the ministry. This year I shall be nominated for the rank of Privy Councillor, and, of course, I’ll get it. Don’t think my career will stop there. I can go still further… and would have gone…”
She looked at him with astonishment, waiting to see what this would lead to. “I have never doubted your abilities,” she said. “I’m completely convinced you won’t stop halfway but will go to the end of the road…”
“No, I shan’t; in a day or so I shall hand in my resignation.”
“Resignation?” she asked with surprise, straightening up.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Hear me out. You know that I bought out my partner, and the factory belongs to me alone. It brings me forty thousand in pure profit without any attention. It runs like a self-winding machine.”
“I know. So what about it?” asked Lizaveta Alexandrovna.
“I shall sell it.”
“What do you mean, Pyotr Ivanych! What is the matter with you?” said Lizaveta Alexandrovna, looking at him, frightened. “What is all this for? I am confused, I can’t understand…”
“You really can’t understand?”
“No!” said Lizaveta Alexandrovna, perplexed.
“You can’t understand that, seeing how bored you are, how your health suffers… from the climate, I would place less value on my career and the factory and that I would take you away from here, devote the rest of my life to you?… Liza! Did you really think me incapable of sacrifice?” he added reproachfully.
“So this is for me!” said Lizaveta Alexandrovna, hardly in control of herself. “No, Pyotr Ivanych!” she began in strong agitation, “for Heaven’s sake, no sacrifice for me! I shan’t accept it, do you hear? I decidedly won’t take it! That you should stop working, achieving distinction, growing rich–and for me! God forbid! I’m not worth this sacrifice! Forgive me: I was insignificant for you, meaningless, weak in understanding and appreciating your high goals, noble labors… Such a woman as I was not the one you needed…”
“Magnanimity too!” said Pyotr Ivanych, shrugging his shoulders. “My intentions are immutable, Liza!”
“Heavens, Heavens, what have I done! I was thrown like a stone on your path; I’m holding you back. What a strange fate is mine!” she added almost with despair. “If a person doesn’t want to, he doesn’t have to live… Will God not pity me and take me? To hold you back…”
“You think wrongly that this sacrifice is hard for me. Enough of leading this wooden life! I want to rest, have peace, but where shall I find peace except alone with you?… We’ll go to Italy.”
“Pyotr Ivanych!” she said, almost weeping, “you are kind, noble… I know you are capable of magnanimous pretense… but perhaps your sacrifice is useless, perhaps it’s already… late, and you’re throwing away your concerns…”
“Spare me, Liza, don’t think ahead that far,” objected Pyotr Ivanych. “Otherwise you’ll see that I’m not made of iron… I tell you again that I want to live not by reason alone. Not everything in me is frozen yet.”
She looked at him fixedly with distrust. “And that is… sincere?” she asked after a moment’s silence. “You truly want peace, are going away not just for me?”
“No, for myself too.”
“But if for me, I’m not worth anything, not anything…”
“No, don’t say that! I’m not well, I’m tired… want to rest…”
She gave him her hand. He kissed it with warmth.
“So we’ll go to Italy?” he asked.
“Good, we’ll go,” she answered in a monotone.
Pyotr Ivanych felt as if a mountain had been taken from his shoulders. “We’ll be doing something,” he thought.
They sat for a long time, not knowing what to say to each other. We’ll never know who would have broken the silence first if they had remained by themselves. But now in the next room hurried steps were heard. Alexander appeared.
How he had changed! He had filled out, grown bald, and how ruddy he’d become!
With what dignity he carried his little protruding belly and the order of merit round his neck! His eyes shone with joy. With special feeling he kissed his aunt’s hand and pressed his uncle’s.
“Where do you come from?” asked Pyotr Ivanych.
“Guess,” answered Alexander portentously.
“You’re moving at full gallop today,” said Pyotr Ivanych, looking at him questioningly.
“I’ll bet you can’t guess why!” said Alexander.
“Ten or twelve years ago once, I remember, you came running in to see me like this,” remarked Pyotr Ivanych. “You even broke something in my room too… Then I guessed at once that you were in love, but now… you aren’t again? No, it can’t be; you’re too sensible to…”
He glanced at his wife and suddenly fell silent.
“You haven’t guessed?” asked Alexander.
His uncle looked at him and went on thinking. “It’s not… are you getting married?” he said hesitantly.
“You guessed it!” solemnly exclaimed Alexander. “Congratulate me.”
“Indeed? To whom?” asked both Uncle and Aunt.
“To Alexander Stepanych’s daughter.”
“Really? Why she’s a wealthy bride,” said Pyotr Ivanych. “And her father… no objection?”
“I’ve just come from them. Why shouldn’t her father agree? On the contrary, he listened to my proposal with tears in his eyes. He embraced me and said that now he could die in peace, that he knew to whom to entrust the happiness of his daughter… ‘Just follow in the footsteps,’ he said, ‘of your uncle!’”
“Did he say that? You see, even now–not without your uncle!”
“And what did the daughter say?” asked Lizaveta Alexandrovna.
“Why… she… like, you know, all young girls,” answered Alexander, “didn’t say anything, only blushed. And when I took her by the hand, then her fingers played in my hand as if on the piano… as
if they were trembling.”
“She didn’t say anything!” remarked Lizaveta Alexandrovna. “Did you really not take the trouble to find out anything from her before you made the proposal? Don’t you care? Why are you getting married?”
“What do you mean why? Am I always to be on the loose like this! I’m tired of living alone. The time has come, dear Aunt, to settle down, put down roots, set up one’s own household, fulfill one’s duty… The bride is pretty, rich… Uncle here will give you reasons to get married; he goes into detail…”
Pyotr Ivanych said nothing, but without his wife’s noticing sent Alexander a sign not to refer to him; Alexander did not see his hand wave, however.
“But if she doesn’t like you?” said Lizaveta Alexandrovna. “Perhaps she can’t love you–what do you say to that?”
“Uncle, what should I say? You speak better than I… Why, look, I’ll quote your very words,” he went on, not noticing that his uncle was squirming in his seat and signalling with coughs to stop this talk. “If you marry for love,” said Alexander, “love will pass and you’ll live by habit. If you marry not for love, you’ll come to the same result; you’ll get accustomed to your wife. Love is one thing, and marriage is another. These two things don’t always go together, and it’s better when they don’t… Isn’t that so, Uncle? At least you taught me so…”
He glanced at Pyotr Ivanych and suddenly stopped, seeing that his uncle was giving him a ferocious look. With mouth wide open in amazement he looked at his aunt, then again at his uncle and fell silent. Lizaveta Alexandrovna thoughtfully shook her head.
“Well, so you’re getting married?” said Pyotr Ivanych. “Well, it’s time now, my blessing! But then you wanted to marry at twenty-three.”
“Youth, Uncle, youth!”
“Perhaps so, youth.”
Alexander considered and then smiled.
“What is it?” asked Pyotr Ivanych.
“It’s that an absurd thing has occurred to me…”
“What?”
“When I loved,” answered Alexander pensively, “then marriage wasn’t granted…”
“And now you’re getting married, but love isn’t granted,” added his uncle, and both started to laugh.
“We can deduce from that, Uncle, that you are right in assuming habit to be the main thing…”
Pyotr Ivanych again made a ferocious face at him. Alexander fell silent, not knowing what to think.
“You’re marrying at thirty-five,” said Pyotr Ivanych. “That’s the right way. But do you remember how you raged then in convulsions, you cried out that unequal marriages distressed you, that the bride is lured like a victim, decked out in flowers and diamonds, and pushed into the arms of an elderly man, mostly unattractive and bald. Show me your head.”
“Youth, youth, Uncle. I did not understand the essential thing,” said Alexander, smoothing his hair with his hand.
“‘The essential thing,’ you say,” Pyotr Ivanych continued. “But do you remember how much you were in love with that–what was her name?…”
“Come, come, Uncle, enough,” said Alexander, blushing.
“Where is the ‘colossal passion, the tears’?…”
“Uncle!”
“What? Enough of yielding to ‘sincere outpourings,’ enough of plucking yellow flowers! ‘You’re tired of living alone’?”
“Oh, if that’s it, Uncle, I shall prove that I’m not the only one who’s loved, raged, been jealous, wept… allow me, allow me: I have in my possession a written document…”
He took from his pocket a folder, and after digging quite a while in the papers, dragged out some kind of ancient, almost ruined, yellowed little sheet of paper.
“Here, dear Aunt,” he said, “is the proof that Uncle was not always such a reasonable, ironic, pragmatic person. He, too, knew sincere outpourings and transmitted them on paper that was not official with the government seal, and he wrote with special inks besides. For four years I’ve dragged this scrap around with me and always waited for an occasion to expose Uncle. I was about to forget about it, but you yourself reminded me.”
“What nonsense is this? I don’t understand anything,” said Pyotr Ivanych, looking at the scrap.
“Why here, take a look.”
Alexander carried the little paper up to his uncle’s eyes. Suddenly Pyotr Ivanych’s face darkened.
“Give it to me! Give it to me, Alexander!” he cried hastily and wanted to snatch the scrap. But Alexander swiftly withdrew his hand. Lizaveta Alexandrovna looked at them with curiosity.
“No, Uncle, I won’t give it to you,” said Alexander, “until you confess here in Aunt’s presence that you once loved like me, like everyone… Or otherwise this document will be given into her hands as an eternal reproach to you.”
“Barbarian!” cried Pyotr Ivanych, “what are you doing to me?”
“You don’t want to confess?”
“Well, well, I did love. Give it to me.”
“No, pardon me, say you raged and were jealous?”
“Well, I was jealous, I raged…” said Pyotr Ivanych, frowning.
“Wept?”
“No, I didn’t weep.”
“That’s not true! I heard it from my aunt; admit it.”
“My tongue won’t get it out, Alexander. Here, shall I cry now?”
“Dear Aunt, here’s a document.”
“Show it to me; what is it?” she asked, stretching out her hand.
“I’ve wept, wept! Give it to me!” Pyotr Ivanych howled in despair.
“On the lake?”
“On the lake.”
“And plucked yellow flowers?”
“I did. So a pox on you altogether! Give it to me!”
“No, I haven’t finished. Give me your word of honor that you’ll consign my stupidities to eternal oblivion and stop beating me with them.”
“My word of honor.”
Alexander handed over the scrap of paper. Pyotr Ivanych seized it, lighted a match and burned it then and there.
“Tell me at least what is this?” asked Lizaveta Alexandrovna.
“No, my dear, I won’t tell you that even at the Last Judgment,” answered Pyotr Ivanych. “You mean I really wrote that? It can’t be.”
“You did, Uncle!” interrupted Alexander. “I’ll tell you if you want, what he wrote; I know it by heart: ‘My adored angel…’”
“Alexander! I will never speak to you again!” screamed Pyotr Ivanych in anger.
“They’re blushing as if for a crime–and for what!” said Lizaveta Alexandrovna, “a tender first love.” She shrugged her shoulders and turned away from them.
“There’s so much… stupidity in such love,” said Pyotr Ivanych, soft and wheedling. “But with you and me we didn’t even mention sincere outpourings, or flowers, or moonlight walks… yet you do love me…”
“Yes, I very much… have grown accustomed to you,” answered Lizaveta Alexandrovna vacantly.
Pyotr Ivanych began smoothing his sideburns pensively.
“What, Uncle,” asked Alexander in a whisper, “isn’t that as it should be?”
Pyotr Ivanych signalled to him as if to say, “Be quiet.”
“Pyotr Ivanych can be forgiven for thinking and acting like that,” said Lizaveta Alexandrovna. “He’s been that way for a long time and none of us has known him otherwise. But from you, Alexander, I didn’t expect this change…” She sighed.
“What did you sigh for, dear Aunt?” he asked.
“For the old Alexander,” she answered.
“You didn’t really want me, dear Aunt, to stay the same as I was ten years ago?” Alexander objected. “Uncle is right to say that this stupid dreaminess…”
Pyotr Ivanych’s face began to turn furious, and Alexander fell silent.
“No, not like that,” answered Lizaveta Alexandrovna, “not like ten, but like four years ago. Do you remember the letter you wrote me from the country? How good you were there!”
“I think
I was still dreaming then,” said Alexander.
“No, you didn’t dream. You understood then and had your own view of life; you were admirable then, noble, reasonable… Why didn’t you stay that way? Why was this only in words, on paper, but not in deed? This admirable quality shone forth like the sun from behind clouds–for a minute…”
“You’re trying to say, dear Aunt, that now I… am not reasonable and… not noble…”
“Heaven forbid, no! But now you’re reasonable and noble… in another way, not my way…”
“What is to be done, dear Aunt?” said Alexander with a resounding sigh. “It’s the time we live in. I keep up with the time; you have to stay in step. Look, I refer you to Uncle, I quote his words…”
“Alexander!” ferociously said Pyotr Ivanych. “Let’s go for a minute to my study; I must have a word with you.”
They went into the study.
“What is this passion that’s come over you today to refer to me?” asked Pyotr Ivanych. “Don’t you see what condition my wife is in?”
“What is it?” asked Alexander, alarmed.
“Don’t you notice anything? It’s that I am quitting government service, my business–everything and going with her to Italy.”
“What are you saying, Uncle!” exclaimed Alexander in amazement. “Why this year you’re due to get Privy Councillor…”
“But you see, Madam Privy Councillor is not well…”
He walked back and forth three times in the room. “No,” he said, “my career is finished! My business is at an end; fate will not let us go on… Done is done!” He waved his hand. “Let us talk rather of you,” he said. “You, it seems, are following in my footsteps…”
“I’d like to, Uncle!” added Alexander.
“Yes!” continued Pyotr Ivanych. “At a little over thirty Collegiate Councillor, a good civil-service salary, making a lot of money on the side, and just at the right moment marrying a rich girl… Yes, the Aduyevs do well! You very much take after me; you lack only the pains in the small of your back…”
An Ordinary Story Page 38
