As she talked to him she kept looking at the audience and greeting friends – fellow-students from Guerrier’s courses16 and the Conservatoire, and her male and female pupils too. She shook their hands firmly, impulsively, with a jerky movement. But then she started twitching her shoulders and trembling as if she were feverish. Finally she looked at Laptev in horror and said softly, ‘Who’s this you’ve married? Where were your eyes, you madman? What did you see in that stupid, insignificant little cow? Didn’t I love you for your mind, for what’s deep down inside you? All that china doll wants is your money!’
‘That’s enough, Polina’, he pleaded. ‘Everything you might say about my marriage I’ve already told myself dozens of times. Don’t cause me any unnecessary pain.’
Julia Sergeyevna appeared in a black dress with a large diamond brooch that her father-in-law had sent her after the prayer service. She was followed by her retinue: Kochevoy, two doctor friends, an officer and a stout young man in student uniform by the name of Kish.
‘You go with Kostya’, Laptev told his wife. ‘I’ll join you later.’
Julia nodded and moved on. Trembling all over and twitching nervously, Polina Nikolayevna followed her with a look of revulsion, hatred and anguish.
Laptev was scared of going to her room as he anticipated some nasty showdown, harsh words and tears, so he suggested having tea in a restaurant. But she said, ‘No, no, come to my place. Don’t you dare mention restaurants to me!’
She didn’t like restaurants, because the air in them seemed poisoned by tobacco and men’s breath. She was peculiarly prejudiced towards strange men, considering them all libertines, capable of pouncing on her at any moment. Besides, the music in restaurants irritated her and gave her headaches.
After leaving the Gentry Club they took a cab to Savelovsky Street, off Ostozhenka Street,17 where Rassudina lived. Laptev thought about her the whole way. In actual fact, he did owe her a great deal. He had met her at his friend Yartsev’s, whom she was teaching theory. She had fallen deeply in love with him, without ulterior motives, and after becoming his mistress she continued giving lessons and working until she dropped. Thanks to her he began to understand and love music, to which he had been almost completely indifferent.
‘Half my kingdom for a glass of tea!’ she said in a hollowish voice, covering her mouth with her muff to avoid catching cold. ‘I’ve given five lessons today, damn it. My pupils are such clots and blockheads I nearly died of anger. I just don’t know when this hard labour will end. I’m absolutely flaked. The moment I’ve saved three hundred roubles I shall give everything up and go to the Crimea. I shall lie on the beach and gulp oxygen. How I love the sea, how I love it!’
‘You won’t go anywhere’, Laptev said. ‘Firstly, you won’t save a thing and secondly, you’re mean. Forgive me, but I must say it again: your amassing three hundred roubles, a few copecks at a time, from those idlers who only take lessons from you because they have nothing to do – is that any less degrading than borrowing it from your friends?’
‘I have no friends’, she said, irritably. ‘And I would ask you not to talk such rubbish. The working class, to which I belong, has one privilege – consciousness of its own incorruptibility, plus the right to despise shopkeepers and not be beholden to them. No, you can’t buy me, I’m not a Julia!’
Laptev didn’t pay the cab-driver, knowing that this would provoke that all too familiar torrent of words. She paid herself.
She was renting a small furnished room with board, in a flat that belonged to a single lady. Her Becker grand piano was kept at Yartsev’s place in Great Nikitsky Street18 for the time being and she went there every day to play. In her room were armchairs with covers, a bed with a white summer quilt, and flowers put there by the landlady. On the walls were oleographs, and there was nothing to suggest that a university woman was living in that room. There was no dressing-table, no books, not even a desk. It was obvious that she went to bed immediately she came home and left the house the moment she got up in the morning.
The cook brought in the samovar and Polina Nikolayevna made tea. Still trembling – it was cold in her room – she started criticizing the choir which had sung in the Ninth Symphony. Her eyes closed from weariness and she drank one glass of tea, then another, then a third.
‘So, you’re married’, she said. ‘Don’t worry, though, I shan’t start moping. I’ll manage to tear you out of my heart. But I’m annoyed. It hurts me to discover you’re a lousy rotter like everyone else, that it’s not a woman’s mind and intellect you need, but her body, her beauty, her youth… Youth, youth!’ she said through her nose as if mimicking someone, and she laughed. ‘You need purity, Reinheit!’19 she added amid loud peals of laughter, leaning back in her chair. ‘Reinheit!’
When she had finished laughing her eyes were full of tears. ‘Are you happy at least?’ she asked.
‘No.’
‘Does she love you?’
‘No.’
Upset and miserable, Laptev got up and paced the room. ‘No’, he repeated. ‘If you really want to know, Polina, I’m very unhappy. But what can I do? That was a silly thing I did and I can’t repair the damage now. I must be philosophical about it. She didn’t marry for love. It was stupid of her, perhaps. She married me for my money, but without thinking. Now she clearly realizes how wrong she was and she’s suffering for it. That’s painfully obvious. At night we sleep together, but during the day she’s scared of staying alone with me for five minutes. She’s looking for entertainment, some social life. She’s ashamed and scared when she’s with me.’
‘But she takes your money all the same, doesn’t she?’
‘Don’t be silly, Polina’, Laptev shouted. ‘She takes money because she couldn’t care less whether she has any or not. She’s an honest, high-principled person. She married me simply to get away from her father, that’s all.’
‘But are you sure that she would have married you if you hadn’t been rich?’ Rassudina asked.
‘I’m not sure about anything’, Laptev replied wearily. ‘I don’t understand a thing. For God’s sake, Polina, let’s not talk about it.’
‘Do you love her?’
‘Madly.’
Silence followed. She drank a fourth glass, while he kept pacing the room, thinking that his wife was probably, at that moment, having supper at the Doctors’ Club.
‘But is it possible to love not knowing why?’ Polina asked, shrugging her shoulders. ‘No, it’s the animal passion in you. You’re intoxicated, you’re poisoned by that beautiful body, by that Reinheit! Leave me, you’re filthy! Go to her!’
She waved him away, picked up his hat and threw it at him. Silently, he put on his fur coat and left, but she ran into the hall, feverishly grabbed hold of the upper part of his arm and burst into sobs.
‘Stop it, Polina, that’s enough!’ he said, unable to unclench her fingers. ‘Please calm down!’
She closed her eyes and turned pale; her long nose took on the nasty waxen colour of a corpse. And still Laptev couldn’t unclench her fingers. She had fainted. Carefully, he lifted her, laid her on the bed and sat by her side for about ten minutes until she came round. Her hands were cold, her pulse weak and irregular.
‘Go home’, she said, opening her eyes. ‘Go home, or I’ll start howling again. I must take a grip on myself.’
After leaving her he did not go to the Doctors’ Club, where they were expecting him, but straight home. All the way he kept reproaching himself with the question: why had he settled down with another woman instead of this one, who loved him so much, who was his real wife and true friend? She was the only person at all attached to him. And besides, wouldn’t it have been a rewarding, worthy undertaking to bring happiness and quiet sanctuary to this clever, proud, overworked woman? That longing for beauty, youth and impossible happiness which seemed to be punishing or mocking him by keeping him in a dreadful state of depression for three months – was that in character? The honeymoon was long over and h
e still didn’t know what kind of person his wife really was, which was quite ludicrous. She penned long letters, on five sheets of paper, to her old boarding-school friends and her father, so there was plenty to write about, in fact. But all she could find to talk to him about was the weather, that it was time for lunch or supper. When she took a long time over her prayers before going to bed and then kissed her nasty little crosses and icons, he would look at her with loathing and think: ‘There she is praying, but what, what is she praying about?’ He was insulting the two of them by telling himself – when he went to bed with her and took her in his arms – that he was only getting what he was paying for. That was a shocking thought. If she’d been a healthy, uninhibited, loose woman it wouldn’t have mattered. But here was youth, religious devotion, gentleness, those pure, innocent eyes. When they had become engaged he had been touched by her religious faith, but now the conventional, definitive nature of her views and convictions was a barrier between him and the truth. His whole domestic life was sheer hell now. When his wife sighed or laughed heartily as she sat by him in the theatre, he was embittered by her enjoying herself on her own, by her reluctance to share her pleasure with him. Remarkably, she had got on well with all his friends. All of them knew the kind of person she was, whereas he did not. All he could do was mope and feel jealous without saying anything about it.
When he arrived home Laptev put on his dressing-gown and slippers and sat down in his study to read a novel. His wife was out, but barely half an hour passed before he heard the bell ring in the hall, and then the hollow patter of Pyotr’s footsteps as he ran to open the door. It was Julia. She entered the study in her fur coat and her cheeks were red from the frost.
‘There’s a big fire at Presnya’,20 she said, gasping for breath. ‘The glow is really enormous. I’m going there with Kostya Kochevoy.’
‘Good luck, then.’
Her fresh, healthy look and the childlike fear in her eyes calmed Laptev. He read for another half hour and then went to bed.
Next day Polina Nikolayevna sent two books she had once borrowed from him to the warehouse, and all his letters and photographs, together with a note consisting of one word: basta.21
VIII
At the end of October, Nina Fyodorovna had a pronounced relapse. She was rapidly losing weight and her face was changing. Despite the severe pain she imagined that she was recovering and every morning she dressed herself as if she was well and then lay in bed the whole day in her clothes. Towards the end she had become very talkative. She would lie on her back and after a great effort managed to talk quietly, gasping the whole time.
She died suddenly, in the following circumstances.
It was a bright, moonlit night. Out in the street people were riding in sleighs over the fresh snow, and the noises from outside drifted into the room. Nina Fyodorovna was lying in bed, on her back, while Sasha, who had no one to take her place, was sitting nearby dozing.
‘I can’t remember his second name’, Nina Fyodorovna said softly, ‘but his Christian name was Ivan and his surname Kochevoy. He was a poor clerk, a terrible drunkard, God rest his soul. He used to call on us and every month we’d give him a pound of sugar and a few ounces of tea. Of course, we gave him money too. Yes… Well now, this is what happened after that. Kochevoy hit the bottle really hard and he popped off – it was vodka that finished him. He left a son, a little seven-year-old. That poor little orphan! We took him in and hid him in the clerks’ place and he managed to get by a whole year without Father finding out. But the moment Father saw him he dismissed him with a wave of the arm and said nothing. When Kostya, this poor little orphan, was eight – I was engaged then – I tried to get him into high school. I took him here, there and everywhere, but they just wouldn’t accept him. He wouldn’t stop crying. “You silly little boy, why are you crying?” I asked. I took him to the Second High School on Razgulyay Square22 and there, God bless them, they accepted him. Every day the little lad would walk from Pyatnitsky Street to Razgulyay Square and back. Aleksey paid his fees. Thank God, the boy was good at his work, very quick to learn, so everything turned out all right in the end. Now he’s a lawyer in Moscow and a friend of Aleksey’s. They’re both of them very bright. We didn’t turn our noses up at him, we took him in, and now he’s surely mentioning us in his prayers. Oh, yes…’
Nina Fyodorovna began to speak more and more softly, with long pauses. Then, after one brief silence, she suddenly lifted herself up in bed. ‘Mm… I don’t feel so good’, she said. ‘Oh God, I just can’t breathe!’
Sasha knew that her mother was soon going to die. When she saw how her face had sunk she guessed that this was the end and she panicked.
‘Mama, please don’t!’ she sobbed. ‘Please don’t!’
‘Run into the kitchen and tell them to send for your father. I feel really shocking.’
Sasha tore through every room in the house calling out, but not one of the servants was in. Only Lida was there, and she was sleeping in her clothes, without any pillow, on a chest in the dining-room. Just as she was, without galoshes, Sasha ran into the yard, then out into the street. Her nanny was sitting on a bench outside the gate watching the sleighs drive past. From the river, where there was a skating-rink, came the sound of a military band.
‘Nanny, Mama’s dying!’ sobbed Sasha. ‘We must fetch Papa.’ Nanny went upstairs to the bedroom, took one look at the sick woman and thrust a lighted wax candle into her hand. Sasha was horrified and rushed around begging someone – anyone – to go and fetch Father. Then she put on her coat and scarf and ran into the street. The servants had told her that her father had another wife and two little children with whom he was living in Market Street. At the gate she ran to the left, weeping and terrified of the strange people. Soon she was sinking into the snow and shivering with cold.
An empty cab came along but she didn’t take it. Perhaps the driver would take her right out of town, rob her and throw her into the cemetery – the servants had spoken of such things over tea. She walked on and on, exhausted, gasping for breath and sobbing. When she came out on to Market Street she asked where Mr Panaurov lived. Some woman she didn’t know gave her lengthy directions, but seeing that she didn’t understand a thing took her by the hand and led her to a one-storey house with a porch. The door wasn’t locked. Sasha ran through the hall, across a corridor, until finally she found herself in a bright warm room where her father was sitting by a samovar with a lady and two little girls. But by now she was unable to produce one word and all she did was sob. Panaurov understood.
‘Mother’s ill, isn’t she?’ he asked. ‘Tell me, Mother’s not well then?’
He grew alarmed and sent for a cab.
When they reached the house Nina Fyodorovna was sitting surrounded by pillows, candle in hand. Her face had grown dark, her eyes were closed. Nanny, cook, the chambermaid, the peasant Prokofy and some other ordinary working folk she didn’t know crowded at the door. Nanny was whispering some orders which no one understood. Looking pale and sleepy, Lida was standing at the other end of the room by the window, grimly eyeing her mother.
Panaurov took the candle from Nina’s hands, frowned disgustedly and flung it behind the chest of drawers.
‘This is dreadful!’ he said, his shoulders trembling. ‘Nina, you must lie down’, he said tenderly. ‘Please lie down, dear.’
She looked at him without recognizing him. They laid her back on the bed. When the priest and Dr Sergey Borisych arrived, the servants were devoutly crossing themselves and saying prayers for the dead.
‘A fine thing!’ the doctor remarked thoughtfully as he came out into the drawing-room. ‘She was so young, not yet forty.’
The loud sobbing of the little girls was heard. Pale-faced, with moist eyes, Panaurov went up to the doctor and said in a weak, lifeless voice, ‘My dear man, please do me a favour and send a telegram to Moscow. I’m just not up to it at the moment.’
The doctor obtained some ink and wrote the following telegram to
his daughter: NINA PANAUROV DIED 8 PM TELL HUSBAND HOUSE ON DVORYANSKY STREET FOR SALE WITH TRANSFERABLE MORTGAGE STOP BALANCE NINE THOUSAND TO PAY AUCTION ON TWELFTH ADVISE NOT TO MISS OPPORTUNITY.
IX
Laptev lived on one of the side-streets off Little Dmitrovka Street,23 not far from Old St Pimen’s Church.24 Besides that large house facing the street, he rented a two-storey lodge in the courtyard for his friend Kochevoy, a junior barrister called simply Kostya by the Laptevs, as they had all seen him grow up. Opposite the lodge was another, also with two storeys, where a French family lived – husband, wife and five daughters.
It was twenty degrees below freezing and the windows were frosted over. When he woke up in the mornings, Kostya would drink fifteen drops of medicine with an anxious look, then he would take two dumb-bells from a book-case and do his exercises. He was tall and very thin, with a large reddish moustache, but the most striking thing about him was the exceptional length of his legs.
Pyotr, a middle-aged handyman, in a jacket and with cotton trousers tucked into his high boots, brought in the samovar and made the tea.
‘Very fine weather it is we’re ’aving, Konstantin Ivanych’, he said.
‘Yes, very fine it is, only it’s a pity you and I aren’t coping too well, old chap.’
Pyotr sighed out of politeness.
‘What are the girls doing?’ Kochevoy asked.
‘The priest ’asn’t come. Aleksey Fyodorych’s teaching them ’imself.’
Kostya found a part of the window free of ice and looked through his binoculars, directing them at the French family’s windows.
‘Can’t see them’, he said.
Just then Aleksey Fyodorych was giving Sasha and Lida a scripture lesson downstairs. They had been living in Moscow for about six weeks with their governess, on the ground floor of the lodge, and three times a week a priest and a teacher from a municipal school came to give them lessons. Sasha was studying the New Testament, while Lida had recently started the Old. At the last lesson Lida had been asked to revise everything up to Abraham.