When the staff were ready to leave, Anna Akimovna offered Pimenov her hand and wanted to ask him to visit her some time, but her tongue would not obey her and she could not produce one word. In case his workmates thought she had taken a fancy to Pimenov, she offered them her hand as well.
Then the boys arrived from the school of which she was a governor. All of them had short hair and all were dressed in identical grey smocks. Their master, a tall young man, without a moustache and his face covered in red blotches, obviously felt nervous and made his pupils stand in rows. The boys began to sing in harmony, but their voices were harsh and unpleasant. Nazarych, the works manager, a bald, eagle-eyed believer in the Old Creed, had never got on with the schoolmasters, but he really hated and despised this teacher, who was fussily giving directions with his arm. Why this was so, he himself couldn’t say. He treated him arrogantly and rudely, withheld his wages, interfered with the teaching. In an effort to get rid of him for good, he had appointed a distant relative of his own wife as school caretaker – a drunken peasant who disobeyed the schoolmaster in front of the boys.
Anna Akimovna knew all about this, but she was unable to help, as she herself was scared of Nazarych. Now she wanted at least to be kind to the schoolmaster and tell him that she was very satisfied with him. But when the singing was over and he embarked on a highly embarrassed apology for something, and after Auntie had spoken to him like a little boy and unceremoniously bundled him over to the table, she felt bored and awkward. After leaving instructions for the children to receive their presents she went upstairs to her own part of the house.
‘There’s really a great deal of cruelty about these festivities’, she said aloud to herself a little later as she looked through the window at the crowd of boys on their way from the house to the gates, shrinking from the cold and putting their furs and coats on as they went. ‘On holidays all one wants is some rest, to be at home with the family, but those poor boys, that schoolmaster, the staff – for some reason they’re obliged to go out into the freezing cold to wish you merry Christmas and convey their respects. They feel awkward…’
Misha, who was standing just by the ballroom doors, heard this. ‘We didn’t start it’, he said, ‘and it won’t finish with us. Of course, I’m not an educated man, Anna Akimovna, but as I see it the poor always have to pay their respects to those what’s rich. They say God puts his mark on rogues. You’ll only find poor folk in prisons, doss-houses, pubs, but respectable folk are always the rich ones, you see. Money comes to money, that’s what they say about the rich.’
‘Misha, you always talk such boring stuff that it’s impossible to understand you’, Anna Akimovna said and went to the far end of the ballroom.
It was only just twelve o’clock. The silence of those huge rooms, broken only now and then by the sound of singing that drifted up from the ground floor, made one feel like yawning. The bronzes, the albums, the paintings on the walls depicting an ocean scene with small ships, a meadow with cows, views of the Rhine, were really so dull, one’s eyes swiftly glided over them without seeing a thing. The holiday mood had already begun to pall. Anna Akimovna still considered herself as beautiful, kind and exceptional as before, but she felt these virtues were useless to anyone. It seemed that there had been no point at all in wearing that expensive dress. Whom did she want to please? And as usually happened on every holiday, she began to tire of the loneliness and was unsettled by the nagging thought that her beauty, health and wealth were nothing but an illusion, since she was a superfluous sort of person, unwanted, unloved by anyone. She walked through all her rooms, humming and looking through the windows. Stopping in the hall she could not help starting a conversation with Misha.
‘I really don’t know, Misha, who you think you are’, she sighed. ‘God will surely punish you for this.’
‘What do you mean, ma’am?’
‘You know very well. Forgive me for interfering with your personal affairs, but I have the impression you’re ruining your life out of sheer obstinacy. Don’t you agree it’s the right time for you to marry now, she’s such a beautiful, deserving girl? You won’t find a better. She’s beautiful, clever, gentle, devoted… And as for her looks! If she were one of our circle, or in high society, everyone would love her for her wonderful red hair alone. Just look how her hair suits her complexion! God, you understand nothing and don’t know yourself what you want’, Anna Akimovna said bitterly, the tears welling up in her eyes. ‘That poor girl. I feel so sorry for her! I know you’re looking for someone with money, but I’ve already told you that I’ll give Masha a dowry.’
Misha imagined that his future wife could only be someone tall, buxom, well-shaped and religious, with a walk like a peacock’s and never without a long shawl on her shoulders. But Masha was thin, delicate, tightly corseted and with an unpretentious walk. Most important, she was too seductive and at times Misha did feel strongly attracted to her. However, according to him, that kind of thing was only conducive to loose behaviour, not marriage. He had hesitated a little when Anna Akimovna promised a dowry. But then some poor student with a brown coat over his tunic3 had arrived with a letter for Anna Akimovna and had been so enraptured with Masha that he couldn’t control himself and had embraced her near the coat hooks downstairs. She had given a faint cry. Misha saw what happened from the staircase above and ever since had felt aversion for her. A poor student! Who knows, things might have turned out quite differently if some rich student or officer had embraced her instead…
‘Why don’t you marry her?’ Anna Akimovna asked. ‘What more do you want?’
Misha did not answer and stood quite still staring at an armchair, eyebrows raised.
‘Do you love someone else?’
Silence. In came red-haired Masha with some letters and visiting cards on a tray. She guessed that they were talking about her and blushed until the tears came.
‘The postmen are here’, she muttered. ‘And there’s a clerk called Chalikov, he’s waiting downstairs. Says you told him to come here today for something.’
‘What impertinence!’ Anna Akimovna said furiously. ‘I told him nothing of the sort! Tell him to clear off, I’m not at home!’
The doorbell rang: the priests from her own parish had arrived. They were always received in the best part of the house – and that was upstairs. They were followed by Nazarych the works manager and the factory doctor. Then Misha announced the inspector of secondary schools. The reception had begun.
Whenever she had a free moment, Anna Akimovna would sit deep in an armchair in the drawing-room, close her eyes and conclude that her loneliness was something quite natural, since she had not married and never would. But this wasn’t her fault. Fate itself had taken her from an ordinary working-class background (where, if her memory was to be trusted, she felt so comfortable and at home) and thrown her into these vast rooms where she never knew what to do with herself. Nor could she understand why so many people were dashing in and out. The present events struck her as of no consequence, fruitless, since they had never brought her a moment’s happiness and they never could.
‘If only I could fall in love’, she thought, stretching herself, and this thought alone warmed her heart. ‘And if I could get rid of that factory’, she brooded, imagining all those ponderous blocks, those barracks, that school, being eased from her conscience. Then she remembered her father and thought that had he lived longer he would surely have married her to some ordinary man, like Pimenov, and that would have been that. It would have been a good thing, as the factory would have fallen into the right hands.
She pictured his curly hair, the bold profile, those fine, mocking lips, the strength – the terrible strength – of his shoulders, arms and chest, and how moved he had been when he inspected her watch earlier in the day. ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘I can’t see anything against it. Yes, I’d marry him.’
‘Anna Akimovna!’ Misha called as he noiselessly entered the drawing-room.
‘What a fright you gave
me!’ she said, trembling all over. ‘What do you want?’
‘Anna Akimovna’, he repeated, putting his hand to his heart and raising his eyebrows. ‘You are the lady of the house, my benefactress, and you alone can tell me whom to marry, as you’re like a mother to me. But please tell them to stop teasing me, laughing at me downstairs. They don’t give me a moment’s peace!’
‘And how do they tease you?’
‘They keep calling me Masha’s Misha!’
‘Ugh, what rubbish!’ Anna Akimovna said, getting angry. ‘What a stupid lot you all are! You included, Misha. I’m sick and tired of you and I don’t want to see you!’
III
DINNER
Like the previous year, the last guests to come were actual state councillor4 Krylin and Lysevich, the well-known lawyer. When they arrived it was quite dark already. Krylin, in his sixties, had a wide mouth, grey mutton-chop whiskers and the face of a lynx. He was in uniform and white trousers, and wore the ribbon of St Anne.5
He held Anna Akimovna’s hand for a long time in both of his, staring into her face and moving his lips. Finally he said in a slow, deliberate voice pitched on one note, ‘I respected your uncle… and your father, and they were well-disposed towards me. Now, as you can see, I consider it my pleasant duty to convey seasonal greetings to their respected heiress, despite my being ill and having to travel so far. And I’m delighted to see you looking so well.’
Lysevich the barrister, a tall, handsome fair-haired man, with slightly greying temples and beard, was celebrated for his exceptionally refined manners. He would dance into the room, execute an apparently reluctant bow, twitch his shoulders as he spoke, all this being executed with the lazy grace of a spoilt horse grown idle from standing about. He was well-fed, extremely healthy and rich. Once he won as much as forty thousand roubles, but didn’t breathe a word about it to his friends. He loved eating well, especially cheese, truffles, grated radish with hempseed oil, and he maintained he had eaten fried, uncleaned giblets in Paris. He spoke articulately, smoothly, never hesitating, and only rarely allowed himself a simpering pause or click of the fingers, as if indicating he was at a loss for the mot juste. He had long stopped believing anything he was called upon to say in court: perhaps he did believe what he said, but attached no importance to it: it was all such old hat, so trivial. He believed only in the esoteric, the unusual. Copy-book ethics, expressed in an original form, reduced him to tears. His two notebooks were crammed with unusual sayings culled from various authors, and whenever he felt in need of some expression, he would nervously rummage in both books, usually failing to find what he wanted. Once old Akim Ivanych, in a moment of euphoria and wanting to go one better than his competitors, had engaged him as lawyer at the works, at a fixed salary of twelve thousand. But the only legal matters that cropped up there were a few minor cases that Lysevich delegated to his assistants.
Anna Akimovna knew that there was no work for him at the factory, but could not bring herself to dismiss him – she did not have the courage, and, what was more, had grown used to him. He termed himself her ‘legal adviser’, calling his salary – which he sent for every first day of the month, on the dot – that ‘mundane affair’. Anna Akimovna knew that after her father died and the forest was sold for timber to make railway sleepers, Lysevich had made more than fifteen thousand from the sale and split it with Nazarych. When she found out about the swindle she wept bitterly but then accepted the fact.
After wishing her happy Christmas and kissing both her hands, Lysevich looked her up and down and frowned.
‘There’s no need for it’, he said with genuine distress. ‘I said, my dear, that there’s no need for it!’
‘What are you talking about, Viktor Nikolaich?’
‘What I said was, you shouldn’t put on weight. Your whole family has this unfortunate tendency. There’s no need for it’, he pleaded again and kissed her hand. ‘You’re such a good person! You’re so wonderful!’ He turned to Krylin and said, ‘My dear sir, I can recommend the only woman in this world I ever loved seriously.’
‘That doesn’t surprise me. At your age, to know Anna Akimovna and not to love her is impossible.’
‘I adore her!’ the lawyer continued with complete sincerity, but with his usual lazy gracefulness. ‘I love her – not because I’m a man and she’s a woman. When I’m with her I feel as if she is some third kind of sex, and myself a fourth, and we seem to be whirling away into the realm of the most delicate hues, where we blend into one spectrum. Leconte de Lisle6 is best at defining such relationships. He has a wonderful passage, somewhere, it’s really amazing.’
Lysevich rummaged first in one book, then the other. Not managing to find the passage, he grew quiet. They began discussing the weather, the opera, Duse’s7 imminent arrival. Anna Akimovna remembered that Lysevich and (so she thought) Krylin had dined with her the previous Christmas. Now, as they prepared to leave, she urged them in the most genuinely pleading voice to stay for dinner, arguing that they had no more visits to make. After a moment’s hesitation they agreed.
Besides the usual dinner, consisting of cabbage soup, roast sucking-pig, goose with apples and so on, a French or ‘chef’s special’ dinner was prepared in the kitchen on major holidays, in case any of the upstairs guests felt like indulging themselves. When the clatter of crockery came from the dining-room, Lysevich began to show visible excitement. He rubbed his hands, twitched his shoulders, screwed up his eyes and talked with great feeling about the dinners the old men used to give and the superb turbot matelote8 the present chef could produce – more a divine revelation than a matelote! He was so looking forward to the dinner, mentally relishing and savouring it in advance. When Anna Akimovna took his arm and led him into the dining-room and he had drunk his glass of vodka and popped a tiny slice of salmon into his mouth, he even purred with pleasure. He chewed noisily and disgustingly, making curious sounds through his nose, while his eyes became oily and greedy.
It was a sumptuous hors-d’œuvre. Among other things there were fresh white mushrooms in sour cream and sauce provençale made with fried oysters and crayfish tails well flavoured with sour pickles. The main meal consisted of delicately refined dishes with a festive flavour, and the wines were excellent. Misha served like someone in a trance. Whenever he placed a fresh dish on the table and removed the lid from a glittering tureen, or poured out wine, he performed it with the solemnity of a professor of black magic. From his expression and the way he walked, he seemed to be executing the first figure of a quadrille, and the lawyer thought to himself several times ‘What an idiot!’
After the third course Lysevich turned to Anna Akimovna.
‘A fin de siècle woman – I mean young and rich, of course – must be independent, clever, refined, intelligent, bold and rather corrupt. I say rather corrupt, just a little bit, since, as you’ll agree, anything in excess becomes exhausting. And you, my dear, you must not vegetate, you must not live like all the others, but must relish life, and moderate dissipation is the spice of life. Bury yourself deep in flowers of overpowering fragrance, choke on musk, eat hashish, but above all, you must love, love… The first thing I would do, if I were in your place, would be to have seven men, one for each day of the week. One would be called Monday, the next Tuesday, the third Wednesday and so on, each would know his allotted day.’
What he said disturbed Anna Akimovna. She did not eat a thing and drank only one glass of wine.
‘Let me have my say!’ she exclaimed. ‘Personally, I don’t recognize love without the family. I’m lonely, lonely as the moon in the sky above – a waning moon, what’s more, and for all you say I’m convinced, I feel intuitively, that this waning can only be reversed by love in its usual meaning. This kind of love defines my responsibilities, my work, it illumines my view of life. I require spiritual peace and calm from love. I want to escape as far as possible from musk, your occultism and fin de siècle hocus-pocus. Briefly’, she added, growing embarrassed, ‘I want a husband a
nd children.’
‘You want to get married? All right, that’s also possible’, Lysevich agreed. ‘You must try everything – marriage, jealousy, the sweetness of the first infidelity, children even… But do hurry up and live, my dear. Hurry! Time’s passing, it won’t wait.’
‘Then I shall marry!’ she said angrily, glancing at his smooth, self-satisfied face. ‘I shall marry in the most ordinary, the most vulgar way and I’ll be radiant with happiness. And I’ll marry some simple working man, a mechanic or a draughtsman, if you can imagine that.’
‘That wouldn’t be a bad idea either. A princess falls for a swineherd – being a princess she can do that. And you too will be allowed to do the same, as you’re no ordinary person. If you want to love a Negro or Arab, my dear, don’t be shy, go and order a Negro. Don’t deny yourself a thing. You should be as bold as your own desires, don’t lag behind them.’
‘Why do you find me so hard to understand?’ Anna Akimovna said in amazement, her eyes glistening with tears. ‘Please try and understand. I have an enormous business on my hands, I’m responsible for two thousand workers before God. People who work for me go blind and deaf. Life terrifies me, just terrifies me! While I’m suffering like this you can be so heartless as to talk about some Negro or other and smile!’ Anna Akimovna thumped her fist on the table. ‘To continue living as I do now, to marry someone as idle, feckless as myself would be criminal. I can’t go on living like this’, she said furiously, ‘I just can’t!’
‘How pretty she is!’ Lysevich said, enraptured. ‘Good God, how pretty! But why are you so angry, my dear? I admit I could be wrong, but do you think it will make things any better for the workers if, for the sake of ideals, which I happen to respect deeply, you’re miserable all the time and renounce all joy in life? Not one little bit. There has to be depravity, dissipation!’ he said determinedly. ‘You must be corrupt, it’s your duty! Have a good think about that, my dear.’