Among other thoughts that popped into his head, one also wounded him painfully: he suddenly became as if convinced that this gentleman with the crape had once been acquainted with him in a friendly way and now, meeting him, was making fun of him, because he knew some big former secret of his, and saw him now in such humiliating circumstances. Mechanically, he went up to the window to open it and breathe the night air, and—all at once gave a great start: it seemed to him that something unheard-of and extraordinary suddenly occurred before him.
He had not yet had time to open the window, but hastened to slip behind the corner of the window niche and hide himself: on the deserted sidewalk opposite he had suddenly seen, right in front of the house, the gentleman with crape on his hat. The gentleman was standing on the sidewalk facing his windows, but evidently without noticing him, and was examining the house with curiosity, as if trying to figure something out. It seemed he was pondering something and as if making up his mind to do it; he raised his hand and as if put a finger to his forehead. Finally, he made up his mind: he looked furtively around and, on tiptoe, stealthily, began hurriedly to cross the street. That was it: he went to their gate, through the door (which in summer sometimes stayed unbolted till three in the morning). “He’s coming to me,” quickly flashed in Velchaninov, and suddenly, headlong and also on tiptoe, he rushed to the door and—stopped in front of it, stock-still in expectation, lightly resting his twitching right hand on the door hook he had fastened earlier and listening as hard as he could for the rustle of the expected footsteps on the stairs.
His heart was pounding so that he was afraid he might not hear the stranger tiptoeing up the stairs. He did not understand the fact, but he felt everything with some tenfold fullness. As if his earlier dream had merged with reality. Velchaninov was brave by nature. He liked sometimes to carry his fearlessness in the face of danger to the point of a certain swagger—even if no one was watching him, just so as to admire himself. But now there was something else there as well. The recent hypochondriac and insecure whiner was completely transformed; this was now a totally different man. Nervous, inaudible laughter was bursting from his breast. From behind the closed door he could guess the stranger’s every move.
“Ah! there he is coming up, he’s here, he’s looking around; listening down the stairs; barely breathing, sneaking… ah! he’s taken hold of the handle, he’s pulling, trying! he was counting on finding my place unlocked! That means he knows I sometimes forget to lock it! He’s pulling the handle again; what, does he think the hook will pop out? He’s sorry to go away! Sorry to leave with nothing?”
And, indeed, everything must certainly have been happening as he pictured it: someone was indeed standing outside the door and kept gently, inaudibly trying the lock and pulling at the handle and—“so, naturally, had some purpose.” But Velchaninov already had the solution of the problem ready, and, with a sort of ecstasy, was waiting for the right moment, calculating and taking aim; he had an invincible desire to suddenly lift the hook, suddenly fling the door open and find himself face-to-face with the “bogey.” To say, “And what are you doing here, my dear sir?”
And so it happened; seizing the moment, he suddenly lifted the hook, pushed the door, and—nearly bumped into the gentleman with crape on his hat.
III
PAVEL PAVLOVICH TRUSOTSKY
The man as if froze on the spot. The two stood opposite each other on the threshold, and looked fixedly into each other’s eyes. Several moments passed in this way, and suddenly—Velchaninov recognized his visitor!
At the same time, the visitor evidently also guessed that Velchaninov recognized him perfectly: it flashed in his eyes. In one instant his whole face as if melted into the sweetest smile.
“I surely have the pleasure of speaking with Alexei Ivanovich?” he nearly sang out in the tenderest voice, comically unsuited to the circumstances.
“But can it be that you are Pavel Pavlovich Trusotsky?” Velchaninov, too, finally managed to say with a puzzled look.
“You and I were acquainted some nine years ago in T———, and—if you will permit me to recall—were friendly acquaintances.”
“Yes, sir… maybe so, sir… but it’s now three o’clock, and you spent a whole ten minutes trying to see if my door was locked or not…”
“Three o’clock!” the visitor cried, taking out his watch and even being ruefully surprised. “Exactly right: three! Excuse me, Alexei Ivanovich, I ought to have realized it when I came in; I’m even ashamed. I’ll stop by and have a talk with you one of these days, but now…”
“Ah, no! if we’re to have a talk, let’s have it right now, please!” Velchaninov recollected himself. “Kindly come this way, across the threshold; to my rooms, sir. You yourself, of course, were intending to come in, and not just to pass by at night to check the locks…”
He was agitated and at the same time as if taken aback, and felt unable to collect himself. He was even ashamed: no mystery, no danger—nothing remained of the whole phantasmagoria; there turned up only the stupid figure of some Pavel Pavlovich. But, nevertheless, he by no means believed it was as simple as that; he had a vague and fearful presentiment of something. Seating the visitor in an armchair, he impatiently sat down on his bed, a step away from the armchair, leaned forward, his palms resting on his knees, and waited irritably for the man to speak. He greedily examined and recalled him. But, strangely, the man was silent and seemed not to understand at all that he was “obliged” to speak immediately; on the contrary, he himself looked at his host with eyes that were as if expecting something. It might have been that he was simply timid, feeling some initial awkwardness, like a mouse in a mousetrap; but Velchaninov got angry.
“What’s with you!” he cried. “I don’t suppose you’re a fantasy or a dream! Have you shown up here to play the dead man? Explain yourself, my dear!”
The visitor stirred, smiled, and began warily: “As far as I can see, you find it, first of all, even striking that I came at such an hour and—under such particular circumstances, sir… So that, remembering all past things and how we parted, sir—I find it strange even now, sir… However, I did not even have any intention of calling on you, and if it has turned out this way, it was—accidentally, sir…”
“How, accidentally! I saw you from the window, running across the street on tiptoe!”
“Ah, you saw!—well, then perhaps you now know more about it all than I do, sir! But I’m only vexing you… Here’s the thing, sir: I came here three weeks ago, on my own business… I am Pavel Pavlovich Trusotsky, you recognized me yourself, sir. My business is that I’m soliciting to be transferred to another province and to another job, sir, to a post with a considerable promotion… But, anyhow, all that is also not it, sir!… The main thing, if you wish, is that it’s the third week I’ve been hanging around here, and it seems I’ve been putting my business off on purpose—that is, about the transfer, sir—and, really, even if it does come off, for all I know I may forget that it came off, sir, and not move out of your Petersburg in the mood I’m in. I’m hanging around as if I’d lost my purpose, and as if I were even glad I’d lost it—in the mood I’m in, sir…”
“What mood is that?” Velchaninov was frowning.
The visitor raised his eyes to him, raised his hat, and now with firm dignity pointed to the crape.
“Yes—here’s what mood, sir!”
Velchaninov gazed dumbly now at the crape, now into his visitor’s face. Suddenly a blush poured instantly over his cheeks, and he became terribly agitated.
“Not Natalia Vassilievna!”
“Herself, sir. Natalia Vassilievna! This past March… Consumption, and almost suddenly, sir, in some two or three months! And I’ve been left—as you see!”
Having said this, the visitor, with strong emotion, spread his arms to both sides, holding his hat with the crape in his left hand and bowing his bald head very deeply for at least ten seconds.
This look and this gesture suddenly as if refresh
ed Velchaninov; a mocking and even provocative smile flitted over his lips—but as yet only for a moment: the news of the death of this lady (with whom he had been acquainted so long ago and whom he had so long ago managed to forget)—now made an unexpectedly staggering impression on him.
“How can it be!” he muttered the first words that came to his lips. “And why didn’t you come straight to tell me?”
“I thank you for your sympathy, I see and appreciate it, despite…”
“Despite?”
“Despite so many years of separation, you have now treated my grief and even myself with such perfect sympathy that I naturally feel grateful. That is the only thing I wished to say, sir. And it is not that I doubted my friends, even now I can find the most sincere friends here, sir (take just Stepan Mikhailovich Bagautov alone), but my acquaintance with you, Alexei Ivanovich (friendship, perhaps—for I recall it with gratitude)—was nine years ago, sir, you never came back to us; there were no letters on either side…”
The visitor was reciting as if by rote, but all the while he spoke, he looked at the ground, though, of course, he could see everything above as well. But the host, too, had managed to collect himself a little.
With a certain quite strange impression, which was growing more and more, he listened to and observed Pavel Pavlovich, and suddenly, when the man paused—the most motley and unexpected thoughts unexpectedly flooded his head.
“But why did I keep not recognizing you till now?” he cried out, becoming animated. “We ran into each other some five times in the street!”
“Yes, I also remember that; you kept coming toward me, sir—twice, maybe even three times…”
“That is—it was you who kept coming toward me, not I toward you!”
Velchaninov got up and suddenly laughed loudly and quite unexpectedly. Pavel Pavlovich paused, looked attentively, but at once began to go on:
“And you didn’t recognize me because, first of all, you might have forgotten, sir, and, finally, I even had smallpox during this time, which left some traces on my face.”
“Smallpox? Why, he did in fact have smallpox! but how on earth did you…”
“Manage that? All sorts of things happen, Alexei Ivanovich; every now and then one manages!”
“Only it’s terribly funny all the same. Well, go on, go on—my dear friend!”
“And I, though I also kept meeting you, sir…”
“Wait! Why did you just say ‘manage that’? I was going to put it much more politely. Well, go on, go on!”
For some reason he was feeling merrier and merrier. The staggering impression was replaced by something quite different.
He paced up and down the room with quick steps.
“And I, though I also kept meeting you, sir, and as I was coming here to Petersburg I was even intending to look you up without fail, but, I repeat, I’m now in such a state of mind… and so mentally broken since that same month of March…”
“Ah, yes! broken since the month of March… Wait, you don’t smoke?”
“You know, I, while Natalia Vassilievna…”
“Ah, yes, yes; but since the month of March?”
“Maybe a little cigarette.”
“Here’s a cigarette; light up and—go on! go on, I’m terribly…”
And, lighting a cigar, Velchaninov quickly sat down on his bed again. Pavel Pavlovich paused.
“But you yourself, however, are somehow quite agitated—are you well, sir?”
“Ah, to the devil with my health!” Velchaninov suddenly got angry. “Go on!”
The visitor, for his part, seeing the host’s agitation, was growing more pleased and self-confident.
“What’s the point of going on, sir?” he began again. “Imagine to yourself, Alexei Ivanovich, first of all, a man who is crushed—that is, not simply but, so to speak, radically crushed; a man who, after twenty years of marriage, changes his life and hangs about in dusty streets without any suitable purpose, as if in the steppes, all but forgetting himself, and even reveling somewhat in this self-forgetting. After that it’s natural if sometimes, meeting an acquaintance or even a true friend, I may avoid him on purpose, so as not to approach him at such a moment—of self-forgetting, that is. And at another moment, one remembers everything so well and thirsts so much to see at least some witness and partaker of that recent but irretrievable past, and one’s heart starts pounding so, that not only in the daytime but even at night one risks throwing oneself into a friend’s arms, even if one has to wake him up especially for that purpose past three in the morning, sir. I only got the hour wrong, but not the friendship; for at the present moment I’m only too well rewarded, sir. And concerning the hour, really, I thought it wasn’t twelve yet, being in that mood. One drinks one’s own sorrow and is as if intoxicated by it. And not even sorrow, but precisely this novi-condition is what keeps hitting me…”
“What a way to put it, though!” Velchaninov, having suddenly become terribly serious again, observed somehow gloomily.
“Yes, sir, I put it strangely…”
“And you’re… not joking?”
“Joking!” exclaimed Pavel Pavlovich in mournful perplexity, “at the very moment when I announce…”
“Ah, keep quiet about that, I beg you!”
Velchaninov got up and again began pacing the room.
And in this way about five minutes went by. The visitor, too, made as if to get up, but Velchaninov cried out: “Sit, sit!”—and the man at once obediently lowered himself into the armchair.
“How changed you are, though!” Velchaninov began talking again, suddenly stopping in front of him—just as if suddenly struck by the thought. “Terribly changed! Extremely! Quite a different man!”
“No wonder, sir: it’s nine years.”
“No, no, no, it’s not a matter of years! You haven’t changed in appearance, God knows: you’ve changed in something else!”
“Also, maybe, these nine years, sir.”
“Or since the month of March!”
“Heh, heh,” Pavel Pavlovich chuckled slyly, “you’ve got some playful thought… But, if I dare ask—what essentially is this change?”
“What indeed! Before there was such a solid and decent Pavel Pavlovich, such a smarty of a Pavel Pavlovich, and now—a perfect vaurien2 of a Pavel Pavlovich.”
He was in that degree of vexation in which the most restrained people sometimes start saying unnecessary things.
“Vaurien! You think so? And no longer a ‘smarty’? Not a smarty?” Pavel Pavlovich tittered delightedly.
“The devil you’re a ‘smarty’! Now, maybe, you’re thoroughly smart.
“I’m impudent,” Velchaninov went on thinking, “but this rascal is more impudent still. And… and what’s his purpose?”
“Ah, my dearest, ah, my most priceless Alexei Ivanovich!” The visitor suddenly became extremely agitated and started fidgeting in his armchair. “But what’s that to us? We’re not in society now, not in brilliant, high-society company! We’re—two most sincere and ancient former friends, and, so to speak, have come together in the fullest sincerity to mutually recall that precious connection, in which the deceased woman constituted so precious a link in our friendship!”
And he was as if so carried away by the rapture of his feelings that he again bowed his head, as earlier, but now he covered his face with his hat. Velchaninov studied him with loathing and uneasiness.
“And what if he’s simply a buffoon?” flashed in his head. “But n-no, n-no! it seems he’s not drunk—however, maybe he is; his face is red. Though even if he is drunk—it comes out the same. What has he got up his sleeve? What does the rascal want?”
“Remember, remember,” Pavel Pavlovich cried out, uncovering his face little by little and as if getting more and more carried away by his memories, “remember our excursions outside of town, our evenings and evening parties with dances and innocent games at His Excellency the most hospitable Semyon Semyonovich’s? And our evening readings, ju
st the three of us? And our first acquaintance with you, when you came to me one morning to get information about your lawsuit, and even started shouting, sir, and suddenly Natalia Vassilievna came out and ten minutes later you were already a true friend of our house, for precisely one whole year, sir—just as in The Provincial Lady, Mr. Turgenev’s play…”3
Velchaninov was pacing slowly, looking at the ground, listening with impatience and loathing, but—listening hard.
“The Provincial Lady never entered my head,” he interrupted, somewhat at a loss, “and you never spoke in such a squeaky voice before, or in this… not your own style. Why are you doing it?”
“Indeed, I was mostly silent before, sir—that is, I was more silent,” Pavel Pavlovich picked up hastily. “You know, before I preferred to listen when my late wife spoke. You remember how she spoke, with what wit, sir… And concerning The Provincial Lady and in particular concerning Stupendiev—you’re right there, too, because it was later that we ourselves, I and my priceless late wife, remembering you, sir, in some quiet moments, after you’d already left, compared our first meeting to this theater piece… because there was in fact a resemblance, sir. And particularly concerning Stupendiev…”
“What’s this Stupendiev, devil take it!” Velchaninov shouted and even stamped his foot, being completely put out at the word Stupendiev, owing to a certain uneasy remembrance that flashed in him at this word.
“Stupendiev is a role, sir, a theatrical role, the role of ‘the husband’ in the play The Provincial Lady,” Pavel Pavlovich squeaked in the sweetest little voice, “but that belongs to another category of our dear and beautiful memories, already after your departure, when Stepan Mikhailovich Bagautov graced us with his friendship, just as you did, sir, and for a whole five years.”
“Bagautov? What’s that? Which Bagautov?” Velchaninov suddenly stopped dead in his tracks.
“Bagautov, Stepan Mikhailovich, who graced us with his friendship precisely a year after you and… like you, sir.”
The Eternal Husband and Other Stories Page 11
