In comparison, his sister-in-law Nadezhda seemed ethereal. She was very fair, pale-faced and slim, with kind, loving eyes. Podgorin couldn’t judge as to her beauty, since he’d known her since she was a child and grown used to the way she looked. Now she was wearing a white, open-necked dress and the sight of that long, white bare neck was new to him and not altogether pleasant.
‘My sister and I have been waiting for you since morning,’ she said. ‘Varvara’s here and she’s been expecting you, too.’
She took his arm and suddenly laughed for no reason, uttering a faint cry of joy as if some thought had unexpectedly cast a spell over her. The fields of flowering rye, motionless in the quiet air, the sunlit wood – they were so beautiful. Nadezhda seemed to notice these things only now, as she walked at Podgorin’s side.
‘I’ll be staying about three days,’ he told her. ‘I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t get away from Moscow any earlier.’
‘That’s not very nice at all, you’ve forgotten we exist!’ Sergey Sergeich said, reproaching him good-humouredly. ‘Jamais de ma vie!’ he suddenly added, snapping his fingers. He had this habit of suddenly blurting out some irrelevance, snapping his fingers in the process. He was always mimicking someone: if he rolled his eyes, or nonchalantly tossed his hair back, or adopted a dramatic pose, that meant he had been to the theatre the night before, or to some dinner with speeches. Now he took short steps as he walked, like an old gout-ridden man, and without bending his knees – he was most likely imitating someone.
‘Do you know, Tanya wouldn’t believe you’d come,’ Nadezhda said. ‘But Varvara and I had a funny feeling about it. I somehow knew you’d be on that train.’
‘Jamais de ma vie!’ Sergey Sergeich repeated.
The ladies were waiting for them on the garden terrace. Ten years ago Podgorin – then a poor student – had given Nadezhda coaching in maths and history in exchange for board and lodging. Varvara, who was studying medicine at the time, happened to be taking Latin lessons from him. As for Tatyana, already a beautiful mature girl then, she could think of nothing but love. All she had desired was love and happiness and she would yearn for them, forever waiting for the husband she dreamed of night and day. Past thirty now, she was just as beautiful and attractive as ever, in her loose-fitting peignoir and with those plump, white arms. Her only thought was for her husband and two little girls. Although she was talking and smiling now, her expression revealed that she was preoccupied with other matters. She was still guarding her love and her rights to that love and was always on the alert, ready to attack any enemy who might want to take her husband and children away from her. Her love was very strong and she felt that it was reciprocated, but jealousy and fear for her children were a constant torment and prevented her from being happy.
After the noisy reunion on the terrace, everyone except Sergey Sergeich went to Tatyana’s room. The sun’s rays did not penetrate the lowered blinds and it was so gloomy there that all the roses in a large bunch looked the same colour. They made Podgorin sit down in an old armchair by the window; Nadezhda sat on a low stool at his feet. Besides the kindly reproaches, the jokes and laughter that reminded him so clearly of the past, he knew he could expect an unpleasant conversation about promissory notes and mortgages. It couldn’t be avoided, so he thought that it might be best to get down to business there and then without delaying matters, to get it over and done with and then go out into the garden, into fresh air.
‘Shall we discuss business first?’ he said. ‘What’s new here in Kuzminki? Is something rotten in the state of Denmark?’5
‘Kuzminki is in a bad way,’ Tatyana replied, sadly sighing. ‘Things are so bad it’s hard to imagine they could be any worse.’ She paced the room, highly agitated. ‘Our estate’s for sale, the auction’s on 7 August. Everywhere there’s advertisements, and buyers come here – they walk through the house, looking… Now anyone has the right to go into my room and look round. That may be legal, but it’s humiliating for me and deeply insulting. We’ve no funds – and there’s nowhere left to borrow any from. Briefly, it’s shocking!’
She stopped in the middle of the room, the tears trickling from her eyes, and her voice trembled as she went on, ‘I swear, I swear by all that’s holy, by my children’s happiness, I can’t live without Kuzminki! I was born here, it’s my home. If they take it away from me I shall never get over it, I’ll die of despair.’
‘I think you’re rather looking on the black side,’ Podgorin said. ‘Everything will turn out all right. Your husband will get a job, you’ll settle down again, lead a new life…’
‘How can you say that!’ Tatyana shouted. Now she looked very beautiful and aggressive. She was ready to fall on the enemy who wanted to take her husband, children and home away from her, and this was expressed with particular intensity in her face and whole figure. ‘A new life! I ask you! Sergey Sergeich’s been busy applying for jobs and they’ve promised him a position as tax inspector somewhere near Ufa6 or Perm7 – or thereabouts. I’m ready to go anywhere. Siberia even. I’m prepared to live there ten, twenty years, but I must be certain that sooner or later I’ll return to Kuzminki. I can’t live without Kuzminki. I can’t, and I won’t!’ She shouted and stamped her foot.
‘Misha, you’re a lawyer,’ Varvara said, ‘you know all the tricks and it’s your job to advise us what to do.’
There was only one fair and reasonable answer to this, that there was nothing anyone could do, but Podgorin could not bring himself to say it outright.
‘I’ll… have a think about it,’ he mumbled indecisively. ‘I’ll have a think about it…’
He was really two different persons. As a lawyer he had to deal with some very ugly cases. In court and with clients he behaved arrogantly and always expressed his opinion bluntly and curtly. He was used to crudely living it up with his friends. But in his private, intimate life he displayed uncommon tact with people close to him or with very old friends. He was shy and sensitive and tended to beat about the bush. One tear, one sidelong glance, a lie or even a rude gesture was enough to make him wince and lose his nerve. Now that Nadezhda was sitting at his feet he disliked her bare neck. It palled on him and even made him feel like going home. A year ago he had happened to bump into Sergey Sergeich at a certain Madame’s place in Little Bronny Street and he now felt awkward in Tatyana’s company, as if he had been the unfaithful one. And this conversation about Kuzminki put him in the most dreadful difficulties. He was used to having ticklish, unpleasant questions decided by judge or jury, or by some legal clause, but faced with a problem that he personally had to solve he was all at sea.
‘You’re our friend, Misha. We all love you as if you were one of the family,’ Tatyana continued. ‘And I’ll tell you quite candidly: all our hopes rest in you. For heaven’s sake, tell us what to do. Perhaps we could write somewhere for help? Perhaps it’s not too late to put the estate in Nadezhda’s or Varvara’s name? What shall we do?’
‘Please save us, Misha, please,’ Varvara said, lighting a cigarette. ‘You were always so clever. You haven’t seen much of life, you’re not very experienced, but you have a fine brain. You’ll help Tatyana. I know you will.’
‘I must think about it… perhaps I can come up with something.’
They went for a walk in the garden, then in the fields. Sergey Sergeich went too. He took Podgorin’s arm and led him on ahead of the others, evidently intending to discuss something with him – probably the trouble he was in. Walking with Sergey Sergeich and talking to him were an ordeal too. He kept kissing him – always three kisses at a time – took Podgorin’s arm, put his own arm round his waist and breathed into his face. He seemed covered with sweet glue that would stick to you if he came close. And that look in his eyes which showed that he wanted something from Podgorin, that he was about to ask him for it, was really quite distressing – it was like having a revolver aimed at you.
The sun had set and it was growing dark. Green and red lights appeared here an
d there along the railway line. Varvara stopped and as she looked at the lights she started reciting:
The line runs straight, unswerving,
Through narrow cuttings,
Passing posts, crossing bridges,
While all along the verges,
Lie buried so many Russian workers!8
‘How does it go on? Heavens, I’ve forgotten!’
In scorching heat, in winter’s icy blasts,
We laboured with backs bent low.
She recited in a magnificent deep voice, with great feeling. Her face flushed brightly, her eyes filled with tears. This was the Varvara that used to be, Varvara the university student, and as he listened Podgorin thought of the past and recalled his student days, when he too knew much fine poetry by heart and loved to recite it.
He still has not bowed his hunched back
He’s gloomily silent as before…
But Varvara could remember no more. She fell silent and smiled weakly, limply. After the recitation those green and red lights seemed sad.
‘Oh, I’ve forgotten it!’
But Podgorin suddenly remembered the lines – somehow they had stuck in his memory from student days and he recited in a soft undertone,
The Russian worker has suffered enough,
In building this railway line.
He will survive to build himself
A broad bright highway
By the sweat of his brow…
Only the pity is…
‘“The pity is,”’ Varvara interrupted as she remembered the lines,
that neither you nor I
Will ever live to see that wonderful day.
She laughed and slapped him on the shoulder.
They went back to the house and sat down to supper. Sergey Sergeich nonchalantly stuck a corner of his serviette into his collar, imitating someone or other. ‘Let’s have a drink,’ he said, pouring some vodka for himself and Podgorin. ‘In our time, we students could hold our drink, we were fine speakers and men of action. I drink your health, old man. So why don’t you drink to a stupid old idealist and wish that he will die an idealist? Can the leopard change his spots?’
Throughout supper Tatyana kept looking tenderly and jealously at her husband, anxious lest he ate or drank something that wasn’t good for him. She felt that he had been spoilt by women and exhausted by them, and although this was something that appealed to her, it still distressed her. Varvara and Nadezhda also had a soft spot for him and it was obvious from the worried glances they gave him that they were scared he might suddenly get up and leave them. When he wanted to pour himself a second glass Varvara looked angry and said, ‘You’re poisoning yourself, Sergey Sergeich. You’re a highly strung, impressionable man – you could easily become an alcoholic. Tatyana, tell him to remove that vodka.’
On the whole Sergey Sergeich had great success with women. They loved his height, his powerful build, his strong features, his idleness and his tribulations. They said that his extravagance stemmed only from extreme kindness, that he was impractical because he was an idealist. He was honest and high-principled. His inability to adapt to people or circumstances explained why he owned nothing and didn’t have a steady job. They trusted him implicitly, idolized him and spoilt him with their adulation, so that he himself came to believe that he really was idealistic, impractical, honest and upright, and that he was head and shoulders above these women.
‘Well, don’t you have something good to say about my little girls?’ Tatyana asked as she looked lovingly at her two daughters – healthy, well-fed and like two fat buns – as she heaped rice on their plates. ‘Just take a good look at them. They say all mothers can never speak ill of their children. But I do assure you I’m not at all biased. My little girls are quite remarkable. Especially the elder.’
Podgorin smiled at her and the girls and thought it strange that this healthy, young, intelligent woman, essentially such a strong and complex organism, could waste all her energy, all her strength, on such uncomplicated trivial work as running a home which was well managed anyway.
‘Perhaps she knows best,’ he thought. ‘But it’s so boring, so stupid!’
Before he had time to groan
A bear came and knocked him prone,9
Sergey Sergeich said, snapping his fingers.
They finished their supper. Tatyana and Varvara made Podgorin sit down on a sofa in the drawing-room and, in hushed voices, talked about business again.
‘We must save Sergey Sergeich,’ Varvara said, ‘it’s our moral duty. He has his weaknesses, he’s not thrifty, he doesn’t put anything away for a rainy day, but that’s only because he’s so kind and generous. He’s just a child, really. Give him a million and within a month there’d be nothing left, he’d have given it all away.’
‘Yes, that’s so true,’ Tatyana said and tears rolled down her cheeks. ‘I’ve had a hard time with him, but I must admit he’s a wonderful person.’
Both Tatyana and Varvara couldn’t help indulging in a little cruelty, telling Podgorin reproachfully, ‘Your generation, though, Misha, isn’t up to much!’
‘What’s all this talk about generations?’ Podgorin wondered. ‘Surely Sergey Sergeich’s no more than six years older than me?’
‘Life’s not easy,’ Varvara sighed. ‘You’re always threatened with losses of some kind. First they want to take your estate away from you, or someone near and dear falls ill and you’re afraid he might die. And so it goes on, day after day. But what can one do, my friends? We must submit to a Higher Power without complaining, we must remember that nothing in this world is accidental, everything has its final purpose. Now you, Misha, know little of life, you haven’t suffered much and you’ll laugh at me. Go ahead and laugh, but I’m going to tell you what I think. When I was passing through a stage of deepest anxiety I experienced second sight on several occasions and this completely transformed my outlook. Now I know that nothing is contingent, everything that happens in life is necessary.’
How different this Varvara was, grey-haired now, and corseted, with her fashionable long-sleeved dress – this Varvara twisting a cigarette between long, thin, trembling fingers – this Varvara so prone to mysticism – this Varvara with such a lifeless, monotonous voice. How different she was from Varvara the medical student, that cheerful, boisterous, adventurous girl with the red hair!
‘Where has it all vanished to?’ Podgorin wondered, bored with listening to her. ‘Sing us a song, Va,’ he asked to put a stop to that conversation about second sight. ‘You used to have a lovely voice.’
‘That’s all long ago, Misha.’
‘Well, recite some more Nekrasov.’
‘I’ve forgotten it all. Those lines I recited just now I happened to remember.’
Despite the corset and long sleeves she was obviously short of money and had difficulty making ends meet at that factory beyond Tula. It was obvious she’d been overworking. That heavy, monotonous work, that perpetual interfering with other people’s business and worrying about them – all this had taken its toll and had aged her. As he looked at that sad face whose freshness had faded, Podgorin concluded that in reality it was she who needed help, not Kuzminki or that Sergey Sergeich she was fussing about so much.
Higher education, being a doctor, didn’t seem to have had any effect on the woman in her. Just like Tatyana, she loved weddings, births, christenings, interminable conversations about children. She loved spine-chilling stories with happy endings. In newspapers she only read articles about fires, floods and important ceremonies. She longed for Podgorin to propose to Nadezhda – she would have shed tears of emotion if that were to happen.
He didn’t know whether it was by chance or Varvara’s doing, but Podgorin found himself alone with Nadezhda. However, the mere suspicion that he was being watched, that they wanted something from him, disturbed and inhibited him. In Nadezhda’s company he felt as if they had both been put in a cage together.
‘Let’s go into the garden,’ she sai
d.
They went out – he feeling discontented and annoyed that he didn’t know what to say, she overjoyed, proud to be near him, and obviously delighted that he was going to spend another three days with them. And perhaps she was filled with sweet fancies and hopes. He didn’t know if she loved him, but he did know that she had grown used to him, that she had long been attached to him, that she considered him her teacher, that she was now experiencing the same kind of feelings as her sister Tatyana once had: all she could think of was love, of marrying as soon as possible and having a husband, children, her own place. She had still preserved that readiness for friendship which is usually so strong in children and it was highly probable that she felt for Podgorin and respected him as a friend and that she wasn’t in love with him, but with her dreams of a husband and children.
‘It’s getting dark,’ he said.
‘Yes, the moon rises late now.’
They kept to the same path, near the house. Podgorin didn’t want to go deep into the garden – it was dark there and he would have to take Nadezhda by the arm and stay very close to her. Shadows were moving on the terrace and he felt that Tatyana and Varvara were watching him.
‘I must ask your advice,’ Nadezhda said, stopping. ‘If Kuzminki is sold, Sergey Sergeich will leave and get a job and there’s no doubt that our lives will be completely changed. I shan’t go with my sister, we’ll part, because I don’t want to be a burden on her family. I’ll take a job somewhere in Moscow. I’ll earn some money and help Tatyana and her husband. You will give me some advice, won’t you?’
Quite unaccustomed to any kind of hard work, now she was inspired at the thought of an independent, working life and making plans for the future – this was written all over her face. A life where she would be working and helping others struck her as so beautifully poetic. When he saw that pale face and dark eyebrows so close he remembered what an intelligent, keen pupil she had been, with such fine qualities, a joy to teach. Now she probably wasn’t simply a young lady in search of a husband, but an intelligent, decent girl, gentle and soft-hearted, who could be moulded like wax into anything one wished. In the right surroundings she might become a truly wonderful woman!