“Ah, my God, but that I know!” Velchaninov cried, finally figuring it out. “Bagautov! but he served with you…”
“He did, he did! at the governor’s! From Petersburg, a most elegant young man of the highest society!” Pavel Pavlovich cried out, decidedly enraptured.
“Yes, yes, yes! How could I! And so he, too…”
“And he, too! And he, too!” Pavel Pavlovich, having picked up his host’s imprudent phrase, echoed with the same rapture. “And he, too! It was then that we produced The Provincial Lady in His Excellency the most hospitable Semyon Semyonovich’s home theater—Stepan Mikhailovich was ‘the count,’ I was ‘the husband,’ and my late wife was ‘the provincial lady’—only the role of ‘the husband,’ was taken from me at the insistence of my late wife, so I didn’t play ‘the husband,’ being supposedly unable to, sir…”
“No, the devil you’re Stupendiev! You’re Pavel Pavlovich Trusotsky first of all, and not Stupendiev!” Velchaninov said rudely, unceremoniously, and all but trembling with vexation. “Only, excuse me, this Bagautov is here in Petersburg; I saw him myself, in the spring! Why don’t you go to him, too?”
“I’ve called on him every blessed day for three weeks now, sir. He won’t receive me! He’s ill, he can’t receive me! And, imagine, I found out from the foremost sources that he really is extremely dangerously ill! Such a friend for six years! Ah, Alexei Ivanovich, I’m telling you and I repeat that in this mood one sometimes wishes simply to fall through the earth, even in reality, sir; and at other moments it seems I could just up and embrace precisely some one of these former, so to speak, witnesses and partakers, and with the sole purpose of weeping—that is, absolutely for no other purpose than weeping!…”
“Well, anyhow, you’ve had enough for today, right?” Velchaninov said sharply.
“More, more than enough!” Pavel Pavlovich rose at once from his place. “It’s four o’clock and, above all, I’ve disturbed you so egoistically…”
“Listen, now: I’ll call on you myself, without fail, and then I do hope… Tell me directly, frankly tell me: you’re not drunk today?”
“Drunk? Not a whit…”
“You didn’t drink before coming, or earlier?”
“You know, Alexei Ivanovich, you’re completely feverish, sir.”
“I’ll call on you by tomorrow, in the morning, before one…”
“And I’ve long been noticing that you’re as if delirious, sir.” Pavel Pavlovich interfered delightedly, pressing the point. “I really am so ashamed that I, in my awkwardness… but I’m leaving, I’m leaving! And you go to bed and sleep!”
“And why didn’t you tell me where you live?” Velchaninov, recollecting himself, shouted after him.
“Didn’t I, sir? In the Pokrovsky Hotel…”
“What Pokrovsky Hotel?”
“Why, right next to the Pokrov church, there in the lane, sir—only I forget which lane, and the number as well, but it’s right next to the Pokrov church…”
“I’ll find it!”
“You’ll be a most welcome guest.”
He was already going out to the stairs.
“Wait!” Velchaninov cried again, “you’re not going to give me the slip?”
“How do you mean, ‘give you the slip’?” Pavel Pavlovich goggled his eyes at him, turning and smiling from the third step.
Instead of an answer, Velchaninov noisily slammed the door, locked it carefully, and put the hook into the eye. Going back to his room, he spat as if he had been befouled by something.
After standing motionlessly for five minutes in the middle of the room, he threw himself down on the bed, without undressing at all, and instantly fell asleep. The forgotten candle burned all the way down on the table.
IV
WIFE, HUSBAND, AND LOVER
He slept very soundly and woke up at exactly half past nine; rose instantly, sat on his bed, and at once began thinking about the death of “that woman.”
Yesterday’s staggering impression from the unexpected news of this death had left him in some bewilderment and even pain. This bewilderment and pain had only been stifled in him for a time yesterday, in Pavel Pavlovich’s presence, by one strange idea. But now, on awakening, all that had happened nine years earlier suddenly stood before him with extreme vividness.
He had loved and been the lover of this woman, the late Natalia Vassilievna, the wife of “this Trusotsky,” when, on his own business (and also on the occasion of a lawsuit about an inheritance), he had spent a whole year in T———, though the business itself had not called for such long-term presence; the real reason had been this liaison. This liaison and love had possessed him so strongly that he had been as if the slave of Natalia Vassilievna and, indeed, would have ventured at once upon anything even of the most monstrous and senseless sort if it had been demanded only by the merest caprice of this woman. Never, either before or afterward, had anything similar happened to him. At the end of the year, when parting was already imminent, Velchaninov had been in such despair as the fatal hour drew near—in despair, despite the fact that the parting was supposed to be for the shortest time—that he suggested to Natalia Vassilievna that he carry her off, take her away from her husband, drop everything, and go abroad with him forever. Only the mockery and firm persistence of this lady (who at first fully approved of the project, but probably only out of boredom or else to make fun of it) could have stopped him and forced him to leave alone. And what then? Two months had not passed since their parting, and he, in Petersburg, was already asking himself that question which remained forever unresolved for him: did he really love this woman, or had it all been only a certain “bedevilment”? And it was not at all out of light-mindedness or under the influence of a new passion starting in him that the question was born in him: for those first two months in Petersburg he was in some sort of frenzy and was unlikely to notice any woman, though he at once took up with his former society and had occasion to see hundreds of women. Nevertheless, he knew very well that if he found himself at once back in T———, he would immediately fall again under all the oppressive charm of this woman, despite all the questions that had been born in him. Even five years later he was still of the same conviction. But five years later he had already admitted it to himself with indignation and even remembered “that woman” herself with hatred. He was ashamed of his T———year; he could not understand how such a “stupid” passion had even been possible for him, Velchaninov! All memories of this passion turned to disgrace for him; he blushed to the point of tears and suffered remorse. True, after another few years, he managed to calm himself down somewhat; he tried to forget it all—and nearly succeeded. And now all at once, nine years later, it all suddenly and strangely rose up again before him after yesterday’s news about Natalia Vassilievna’s death.
Now, sitting on his bed, with vague thoughts crowding disorderedly in his head, he felt and realized clearly only one thing—that despite all yesterday’s “staggering impression” from this news, he was all the same very calm regarding the fact of her death. “Am I not even going to feel sorry about her?” he asked himself. True, he no longer felt hatred for her now and could judge more impartially, more justly about her. In his opinion, which, by the way, had been formed early on in this nine-year period of separation, Natalia Vassilievna belonged to the number of the most ordinary provincial ladies of “good” provincial society, and—“who knows, maybe that’s how it was, and only I alone made up such a fantasy out of her?” He had always suspected, however, that this opinion might contain an error; he felt it now, too. Besides, the facts contradicted it; this Bagautov had also had a liaison with her for several years, and, it seems, was also “under all her charms.” Bagautov was indeed a young man of the best Petersburg society and, being “a most empty man” (as Velchaninov said of him), could therefore make his career only in Petersburg. Now he had, nevertheless, neglected Petersburg—that is, his chiefest profit—and lost five years in T——solely on account of
this woman! And he had finally returned to Petersburg, perhaps, only because he, too, had been discarded like “a worn-out old shoe.” So there was something extraordinary in this woman—a gift of attraction, enslavement, domination!
And yet it would seem that she had no means of attracting and enslaving: “she wasn’t even so beautiful, and perhaps simply wasn’t beautiful at all.” Velchaninov had met her when she was already twenty-eight years old. Her not very handsome face was able sometimes to be pleasantly animated; but her eyes were not nice: there was some unnecessary hardness in her look. She was very thin. Her intellectual education was weak; her intelligence was unquestionable and penetrating, but nearly always one-sided. The manners of a provincial society lady, but, true, one with considerable tact; elegant taste, but mainly just in knowing how to dress herself. A resolute and domineering character; there could be no halfway compromise with her in anything: “either all, or nothing.” A surprising firmness and steadfastness in difficult matters. A gift of magnanimity and nearly always right beside it—a boundless unfairness. It was impossible to argue with this lady: two times two never meant anything to her. She never considered herself unfair or guilty in anything. Her constant and countless betrayals of her husband did not weigh on her conscience in the least. In Velchaninov’s own comparison, she was like “a flagellant’s Mother of God,”4 who believes in the highest degree that she is indeed the Mother of God—so did Natalia Vassilievna believe in the highest degree in each of her actions. She was faithful to her lovers—though only until she got tired of them. She liked to torment a lover, but also liked to reward him. She was of a passionate, cruel, and sensual type. She hated depravity, condemned it with unbelievable violence, and—was depraved herself. No facts could ever have brought her to an awareness of her own depravity. “Doubtless she sincerely doesn’t know it,” Velchaninov had thought to himself still in T———. (While participating in her depravity himself, be it noted in passing.) “She’s one of those women,” he thought, “who are as if born to be unfaithful wives. These women never fall before marriage: the law of their nature is that they must be married first. The husband is the first lover, but not otherwise than after the altar. No one marries with more ease and adroitness. For the first lover, the husband is always to blame. And everything happens with the highest degree of sincerity; to the end they feel themselves justified in the highest degree and, of course, perfectly innocent.”
Velchaninov was convinced that there indeed existed such a type of such women; but then, too, he was convinced that there existed a corresponding type of husband, whose sole purpose consisted of nothing but corresponding to this type of woman. In his opinion, the essence of such husbands lay in their being, so to speak, “eternal husbands,” or, better to say, in being only husbands in life and nothing else. “Such a man is born and develops solely in order to get married, and having married, to turn immediately into an appendage of his wife, even if it so happens that he happens to have his own indisputable character. The main feature of such a husband is—a well-known adornment. It is as impossible for him not to wear horns as it is for the sun not to shine; but he not only never knows it, but even can never find it out by the very laws of nature.” Velchaninov deeply believed that these two types existed and that Pavel Pavlovich Trusotsky of T———was a perfect representative of one of them. Yesterday’s Pavel Pavlovich, naturally, was not the Pavel Pavlovich he had known in T———. He found the man incredibly changed, but Velchaninov also knew that he could not but have changed and that all this was perfectly natural; Mr. Trusotsky could be all he had been before only with his wife alive, but now this was only part of the whole, suddenly set free—that is, something astonishing and unlike anything else.
As for the Pavel Pavlovich of T———, this is what Velchaninov remembered and recalled about him now:
“Of course, in T———Pavel Pavlovich was only a husband” and nothing more. If, for instance, he was, on top of that, also an official, it was solely because for him the service, too, had turned, so to speak, into one of the duties of his married life; he served for the sake of his wife and her social position in T———, though he was in himself quite a zealous official. He was thirty-five years old then and possessed a certain fortune, even a not altogether small one. He did not show any particular ability in the service, nor inability either. He kept company with all that was highest in the province and was reputed to be on an excellent footing. Natalia Vassilievna was perfectly respected in T———; she, however, did not value that very much, accepting it as her due, but at home she always knew how to receive superbly, having trained Pavel Pavlovich as well that his manners were ennobled enough even for receiving the highest provincial authorities. Maybe (so it seemed to Velchaninov) he was also intelligent: but since Natalia Vassilievna rather disliked it when her spouse did much talking, his intelligence went largely unnoticed. Maybe he had many good innate qualities, as well as bad ones. But the good qualities were as if under wraps, and the bad impulses were stifled almost definitively. Velchaninov remembered, for instance, that there occasionally arose in Mr. Trusotsky an impulse to mock his neighbor; but this was strictly forbidden him. He also liked occasionally to tell some story; but this, too, was supervised: he was allowed to tell only something of the more insignificant and short variety. He had an inclination for friendly circles away from home and even—for having a drink with a friend; but this last was even exterminated at the root. And with this feature: that, looking from outside, no one could tell that he was a husband under the heel; Natalia Vassilievna seemed to be a perfectly obedient wife and was perhaps even convinced of it herself. It might have been that Pavel Pavlovich loved Natalia Vassilievna to distraction; but no one was able to notice it, and it was even impossible—also probably following the domestic orders of Natalia Vassilievna herself. Several times during his T———life, Velchaninov asked himself: does this husband have at least some suspicion that he is having a liaison with his wife? Several times he seriously asked Natalia Vassilievna about it and always received the response, uttered with some vexation, that her husband knew nothing and could never learn anything, and that “whatever there is—is none of his business.” Another feature on her part: she never laughed at Pavel Pavlovich, and found him neither ridiculous nor very bad in anything, and would even intercede for him very much if anyone dared to show him any sort of discourtesy. Having no children, she naturally had to become predominantly a society woman; but her own home was necessary for her as well. Society pleasures never fully ruled her, and at home she liked very much to occupy herself with the household and handwork. Pavel Pavlovich had recalled yesterday their family readings in T———of an evening; this did happen: Velchaninov read, Pavel Pavlovich also read, to Velchaninov’s surprise, he was very good at reading aloud. Natalia Vassilievna meanwhile would do embroidery and always listened to the reading quietly and equably. They read novels by Dickens, something from Russian magazines, and sometimes also something “serious.” Natalia Vassilievna highly esteemed Velchaninov’s cultivation, but silently, as something finished and decided, which there was no more point in talking about; generally her attitude to everything bookish and learned was indifferent, as to something completely alien, though perhaps useful; but Pavel Pavlovich’s sometimes showed a certain ardor.
The T———liaison broke off suddenly, having reached on Velchaninov’s part the fullest brim and even almost madness. He was simply and suddenly chased away, though everything was arranged in such fashion that he left perfectly ignorant of the fact that he had already been discarded “like a useless old shoe.” About a month and a half before his departure, there appeared in T———a certain little artillery officer, a very young man, just graduated from cadet school, who took to visiting the Trusotskys; instead of three, there came to be four. Natalia Vassilievna received the boy benevolently, but treated him as a boy. Velchaninov had decidedly no inkling of anything, nor could he have thought anything then, because he had suddenly been inf
ormed of the necessity of parting. One of the hundred reasons put forth by Natalia Vassilievna for his unfailing and most speedy departure was that she thought she was pregnant; and so it was natural that he had unfailingly and at once to disappear for at least three or four months, so that nine months later it would be more difficult for the husband to suspect anything, if any calumny should come up afterward. The argument was rather farfetched. After Velchaninov’s stormy proposal of running away to Paris or America, he left alone for Petersburg, “no doubt just for a brief moment”—that is, for no more than three months, otherwise he would not have left for anything, despite any reasons or arguments. Exactly two months later, in Petersburg, he received a letter from Natalia Vassilievna with a request that he not come back, because she already loved another; about her pregnancy she informed him that she had been mistaken. The information about the mistake was superfluous, everything was clear to him: he remembered the little officer. With that the matter ended forever. He heard something afterward, already several years later, about Bagautov turning up there and staying for a whole five years. Such an endless duration of the liaison he explained to himself, among other things, by the fact that Natalia Vassilievna must have aged a lot, and therefore would herself become more attached.
He stayed sitting on his bed for almost an hour; finally, he came to his senses, rang for Mavra with coffee, drank it hastily, got dressed, and at precisely eleven o’clock went to the Pokrov church to look for the Pokrovsky Hotel. Concerning the Pokrovsky Hotel proper he had now formed a special morning impression. Incidentally, he was even somewhat ashamed of his treatment of Pavel Pavlovich yesterday, and this now had to be resolved.
The whole phantasmagoria yesterday with the door latch he explained by an accident, by the drunken state of Pavel Pavlovich, and perhaps by something else as well, but essentially he had no precise idea why he was going now to start some new relationship with the former husband, when everything between them had ended so naturally and of itself. He was drawn by something; there was some special impression here, and as a result of this impression he was drawn …
The Eternal Husband and Other Stories Page 12
