After supper he went to his study. His heart pounded as he listened – very tensely – to what was happening in the drawing-room, and he anticipated fresh humiliations. Another argument started. Then Yartsev sat at the piano and sang a sentimental song. He was jack-of-all-trades – he could sing, play and even do conjuring tricks.
‘Please yourself what you do, gentlemen, but I don’t want to stay at home’, Julia said. ‘Let’s go for a drive.’
They decided to drive out of town and sent Kish to the Merchants’ Club34 for a troika. Laptev wasn’t invited, as he hardly ever went on such trips and because he had his brother with him. But he took it that they found him boring and that he was completely out of place among that cheerful, young crowd. He was so annoyed and bitter he almost wept. He even felt pleased that they were being so nasty to him, that he was despised, that he was looked upon as a stupid, boring husband, as an old moneybags. He would have been even more pleased, he felt, if his wife were to betray him that night with his best friend and admit it with loathing in her eyes… He was jealous of the students, actors and singers she knew, of Yartsev – even of chance acquaintances – and he dearly longed for her to be unfaithful now. He wanted to surprise her with someone, then poison himself to rid himself of the nightmare for good.
Fyodor gulped his tea noisily and then he too started leaving.
‘There’s something wrong with the old man’, he said, putting on his fur coat. ‘His eyesight’s very poor.’
Laptev put on his coat too and left. After seeing his brother as far as Strastnoy Boulevard he took a cab to Yar’s35 restaurant.
‘And they call this domestic bliss!’ he said, laughing at himself. ‘This is supposed to be love.’
His teeth were chattering – whether from jealousy or something else he didn’t know. At Yar’s he walked up and down by the tables and listened to a ballad singer in the ballroom. He didn’t have one sentence ready in case he should meet his wife or friends and was convinced in advance that if she did happen to turn up he would only smile pathetically and stupidly – then everyone would understand what kind of feeling had compelled him to come here. The electric lights, the loud music, the smell of powder, those staring women – all this made his head go round. He stopped by the doors, trying to spy and overhear what was going on in the private rooms: he felt that he was acting in concert with that singer and those women, playing some vile, despicable role. Then he went on to the Strelna,36 but met none of his friends there either. Only when he was on his way home and approaching Yar’s restaurant again did a troika noisily overtake him – the drunken coachman was shouting and he could hear Yartsev’s loud guffaws.
Laptev returned home after three in the morning. Julia Sergeyevna was in bed, but when he saw that she wasn’t sleeping he went over and snapped, ‘I can understand your revulsion, your hatred. But you might have spared me before strangers, you might have tried to hide your feelings.’
She sat up in bed, her legs dangling. In the lamplight her eyes were large and black.
‘Please forgive me’, she said.
He couldn’t say one word for agitation and trembling, and he stood silently in front of her. She too was trembling and she sat there like a criminal waiting to be charged.
‘This is sheer torture!’ he said at last, clutching his head. ‘I seem to be in hell. I feel I’ve gone mad!’
‘And do you think it’s easy for me?’ she asked, her voice shaking. ‘God only knows how I feel.’
‘You’ve been my wife for six months, but there’s no spark of love in your heart, no hope of any – not even a glimmer! Why did you marry me?’ Laptev continued despairingly. ‘Why? What demon drove you into my arms? What were you hoping for? What did you want?’
She looked at him in horror, as if frightened he might kill her.
‘Did you ever like me? Did you ever love me?’ he gasped. ‘No! Then what was it? Tell me, what?’ he shouted. ‘Yes, it was that damned money!’
‘I swear to God it wasn’t!’ she cried and crossed herself. The insult made her wince and for the first time he heard her cry. ‘I swear to God it wasn’t!’ she repeated. ‘I wasn’t thinking about money, I don’t need any. I simply thought that it would be nasty of me to refuse you. I was afraid of spoiling your life and mine. And now I’m suffering for my mistake, suffering unbearably!’
She sobbed bitterly. Not knowing what to say and realizing how painful everything was for her, he sank before her on the carpet.
‘Please don’t. Please don’t!’ he muttered. ‘I insulted you because I love you madly.’ Suddenly he kissed her foot and passionately embraced her. ‘All I want is just one spark of love!’ he said. ‘Well, tell me lies! Don’t say it was a mistake!’
But she went on crying and he felt that she was only putting up with his caresses because they were the unavoidable consequence of her mistake. Like a bird she drew in beneath her that foot he had kissed. He felt sorry for her.
She lay down and covered herself with the blanket. He undressed and lay down as well. In the morning they both felt awkward – neither knew what to talk about. He even had the impression that she was treading unsteadily with the foot he had kissed.
Before lunch Panaurov dropped in to say goodbye. Julia had an irresistible urge to go back home to her native town. It would be nice to leave, she thought, to have a rest from married life, from all this embarrassment, from the ever-present awareness of having behaved badly. Over lunch they decided that she should leave with Panaurov and stay with her father for two or three weeks, until she got bored.
XI
Panaurov and Julia travelled in a private railway compartment. He was wearing a rather odd lambskin cap.
‘Yes, St Petersburg was a letdown’, he sighed, speaking slowly and deliberately. ‘They promise you a lot, but nothing definite. Yes, my dear, I’ve been Justice of the Peace, a Permanent Secretary, President of the Court of Appeal and finally adviser to the district council. I think I’ve served my country and have a right to some attention. But would you believe it, there’s just no way I can get a transfer to another town.’
Panaurov closed his eyes and shook his head. ‘They won’t recognize me’, he continued and he seemed to be dozing off. ‘Of course, I’m no administrative genius, but on the other hand I’m a respectable, honest man and even that’s quite rare these days. I must admit I’ve deceived women just a little, but I’ve always been a perfect gentleman in my relations with the Russian government. But enough of that’, he added, opening his eyes. ‘Let’s talk about you. What made you suddenly want to go and visit your dear papa?’
‘I’m not getting on very well with my husband’, Julia said, glancing at his cap.
‘Yes, he’s a queer fish. All the Laptevs are weird. Your husband’s not so bad really, he’ll pass. But that brother of his, Fyodor, is a real idiot.’
Panaurov sighed and asked seriously, ‘And do you have a lover?’
Julia looked at him in astonishment and laughed. ‘Good God, what a thing to ask!’
After ten, at some large station, they both got out and had supper. When the train moved off Panaurov took off his coat and cap and sat next to Julia.
‘You’re very nice, I must say’, he began. ‘Pardon the pub simile, but you put me in mind of a freshly salted gherkin. It still has the smell of the hothouse, so to speak, but it’s already a bit salty and smells of dill. You’re gradually developing into a wonderful woman, so marvellous and refined. If this journey had taken place about five years ago’, he sighed, ‘then I’d have considered it my pleasant duty to join the ranks of your admirers. But now, alas, I’m just an old pensioner.’
He gave her a smile that was at once sad and kind, and he put his arm around her waist.
‘You’re out of your mind!’ she said, blushing. She was so frightened that her hands and feet went cold. ‘Stop it, Grigory Nikolaich!’
‘Why are you so scared, my dear?’ he asked softly. ‘What’s so dreadful about it? You’re jus
t not used to this sort of thing.’
If a woman happened to protest, then for him that only meant that he had made a good impression and that she liked him. Holding Julia around the waist, he kissed her firmly on the cheek, then the lips, quite certain he was giving her great pleasure. Then Julia recovered from her fright and embarrassment and started laughing. He kissed her again and as he donned his comical cap he said, ‘That’s all an old campaigner can give you. There was a Turkish Pasha, a kind old man, who was once presented with – possibly as an inheritance – a whole harem. When his beautiful young wives paraded before him, he inspected them, saying as he kissed each one, “That’s all I’m able to give you now.” That’s what I’m saying too.’
She thought all this stupid but unusual, and it cheered her up. Feeling rather playful, she stood on the seat humming, took a box of sweets from the luggage rack and shouted, ‘Catch’ as she threw him one.
He caught it. Laughing out loud, she threw him another, then a third, and he caught them all, popping them in his mouth and looking at her with imploring eyes.
She felt that there was much that was feminine and childlike about his face, features and expression. When she sat down, out of breath, and kept looking at him and laughing, he touched her cheek with two fingers and said in mock annoyance:
‘You naughty little girl!’
‘Take it’, she said, handing him the box. ‘I don’t like sweets.’
He ate the whole lot and then locked the empty box in his trunk – he loved boxes with pictures on them.
‘Enough of this larking about’, he said. ‘Time for bye-byes, for the old campaigner!’
He took his Bokhara dressing-gown and a cushion from a holdall, lay down and covered himself with the dressing-gown.
‘Goodnight, my sweet!’ he said softly, sighing as if his whole body were aching.
The sound of his snoring soon followed. Without feeling in the least inhibited she lay down too and was soon fast asleep.
Next morning, as she was driving home from the station in her native town, the streets seemed deserted and empty, the snow grey and the houses small, with a squashed look about them. She met a funeral procession – the body was in an open coffin, with banners.
‘They say a funeral brings good luck’, she thought.
The windows of the house where Nina Fyodorovna had once lived had white posters stuck all over them.
Her heart sank as she drove into the yard and rang the doorbell. A strange, sleepy-looking maid in a warm quilted jacket opened the door. As she went upstairs Julia remembered that Laptev had declared his love there. But now the stairs were unwashed, with footmarks all over them. In the cold corridor on the first floor patients in fur coats were waiting. For some reason her heart pounded and she could barely walk for agitation.
The doctor – stouter than ever, red as a brick, his hair dishevelled – was drinking tea. He was delighted to see his daughter and even shed a few tears. She was his only joy, she thought. Deeply moved, she firmly embraced him and told him she would be staying for a long time, until Easter. After she had changed in her room she went into the dining-room to have tea with him. He kept pacing up and down, hands in pockets, humming away – this meant he was annoyed about something.
‘You’re having quite a gay time in Moscow’, he remarked. ‘I’m so pleased for you, but an old man like me doesn’t need anything. I’ll soon peg out and free the lot of you. Aren’t you amazed that I’ve such a tough skin, that I’m still in the land of the living! It’s really amazing!’
He said that he was a robust old beast of burden, whom everyone liked to ride. He had been lumbered with Nina Fyodorovna’s treatment, with looking after her children and taking care of the funeral: that dandified Panaurov just didn’t want to know and had even borrowed a hundred roubles from him which, up to now, he hadn’t returned.
‘Take me to Moscow and put me in a lunatic asylum’, the doctor said. ‘You must think I’m mad, a simple child, believing as I do in truth and justice!’
Then he reproached her husband with lack of foresight – he had failed to buy houses that were being offered at very favourable prices. And now Julia realized that she was no longer the old man’s only joy. While he was receiving patients or on his rounds she roamed through the house, not knowing what to do or think. She had become a stranger in her home town, in her own house. She felt no urge to go out into the street, to call on old friends, and when she remembered her former girl friends and her life as a young girl she did not feel sad, nor did she regret the past.
In the evening she put on a smart dress and went to late service. But there was no one of importance in the church and her magnificent fur coat and hat were wasted there. She thought that both she and the church had undergone a transformation. In the past she had been fond of hearing the canon read out at vespers, when the choirboys sang hymns such as ‘I Shall Open My Lips’. Once she had loved slowly moving with the congregation towards the priest who stood in the middle of the church and then feeling the holy oil on her forehead. But now she couldn’t wait for the service to finish. As she left the church she felt frightened that beggars might approach her for money – rummaging through her pockets would have been a nuisance. In any case, she had no small change, only roubles.
She went early to bed but fell asleep very late, constantly dreaming of certain portraits and the funeral procession she had seen that morning. The open coffin with the corpse was borne into the yard, the bearers stopped at a door, rocked the coffin on some sheets for some time and then swung it against the door as hard as they could. Julia woke and jumped up in terror. Someone was in fact knocking on the downstairs door and the bell-wire was rustling along the wall, although she hadn’t heard anyone ring.
The doctor coughed. After this she heard the maid going downstairs and coming back.
‘Madam!’ she exclaimed, knocking at the door.
‘What is it?’ Julia asked.
‘It’s a telegram!’
Julia went out with a candle. Behind the maid stood the doctor, his coat over his underclothes. He was also holding a candle.
‘The bell’s broken’, he yawned, half-asleep. ‘It should have been repaired ages ago.’
Julia opened the telegram and read it.
WE DRINK YOUR HEALTH. YARTSEV, KOCHEVOY
‘Oh, the idiots!’ she said, laughing out loud.
She began to feel relaxed and cheerful.
Back in her room she quietly washed and dressed, and then spent a long time packing – right until dawn broke. At noon she set off for Moscow.
XII
During Easter week the Laptevs went to a painting exhibition at the School of Art.37 The whole household went – in Moscow style – and both little girls, the governess and Kostya were taken along.
Laptev knew the names of all the famous artists and never missed an exhibition. During the summers at his country villa he sometimes painted landscapes himself, believing that he had superb taste and that he would have made an excellent painter had he studied. When abroad he sometimes dropped into antique shops, inspected their contents and expressed his opinion with the air of an expert. He would buy some object and the dealer would charge him as much as he liked. Subsequently, the piece would be stuffed into a box and lie in the coach-house until it disappeared no one knew where. Or he would call at a print shop, spend a long time carefully inspecting the prints and bronzes, make various remarks and then suddenly buy some cheap frame or box of worthless paper. All the pictures at home were of ample dimensions, but poorly painted. Those that were any good were badly hung. More than once he had paid dearly for what afterwards turned out to be crude forgeries. Strangely enough, although a timid person on the whole, he was particularly bumptious and outspoken at exhibitions. Why?
Julia Sergeyevna looked at the paintings in the same way as her husband, through parted fingers or opera glasses, and she was amazed that the people in them seemed so alive, the trees so real. But she didn’t understand the
m and thought that many paintings at the exhibition were really identical and that the whole aim of art was making people and objects appear real when viewed through the fingers.
‘This wood is a Shishkin’,38 her husband explained. ‘He always paints the same old thing… Just look, you’ll never find snow as violet as that. And that boy’s left arm is shorter than his right.’
When everyone was exhausted and Laptev had gone to look for Kostya, so that they could all go home, Julia stopped by a small landscape and looked at it rather indifferently. In the foreground was a small stream with a wooden bridge across it and a path disappearing into dark grass on the far bank. There were fields and a strip of wood on the right with a bonfire near it – horses were probably being pastured for the night over there. In the distance the sunset glow was dying…
Julia imagined herself crossing the bridge, then walking further and further down the path. It was quiet all around, sleepy landrails cried and a distant fire flickered. Suddenly she had the feeling that many times, long ago, she had seen those clouds stretching across the red sky, that wood, those fields. She felt lonely and wanted to go on and on, down that path. And there, near the sunset glow, lay the reflection of something unearthly and eternal.
‘How well painted!’ she exclaimed, amazed that she suddenly understood the picture. ‘Look, Aleksey! See how calm it is!’
She tried to explain why she liked that landscape so much, but neither her husband nor Kostya understood. She continued looking at the painting, sadly smiling: she was upset at the others seeing nothing special in it. Then she went through the rooms again and looked at the paintings. She wanted to understand them. There no longer seemed to be so many identical pictures at the exhibition. When she was home she turned her attention (for the first time ever) to the large picture above the grand piano in the hall. It made her feel hostile.
‘How can anybody want that sort of picture!’ she said.
Ward No. 6 and Other Stories Page 35
