The Shooting Party

  After an unbroken spell at home I grew bored and wrote to Dr Pavel Ivanovich, asking him to come over for a chat. For some reason I received no reply, so I wrote again. But this second letter met with the same response as the first. Clearly, dear old Screwy was pretending to be angry. After being turned down by Nadezhda Nikolayevna the poor devil considered me the cause of his misfortune. He had every right to be furious and, if he’d never been angry before, it was because he didn’t know how to be.

  So, when did he manage to find out? I wondered, bewildered at the absence of any reply to my letters.

  In the third week of my obstinate, continuous self-incarceration, the Count paid me a visit. After telling me off for not riding over or answering his letters, he stretched himself out on the couch and, before starting to snore, embarked on his favourite theme – women.

  ‘I can understand,’ he began, languidly screwing up his eyes and putting his hands under his head, ‘your being touchy and difficult. You don’t come and see me any more because you’re afraid of spoiling our little duet, of being in the way. An unwanted guest is worse than a Tatar, as the saying goes. But a visitor during a honeymoon is worse than a horned devil! I do understand you. But you’re forgetting, dear chap, that you’re my friend and not simply a guest, that I like and respect you. Yes, your presence would only complete the harmony. And what harmony, old chap! Harmony that I can’t find words to describe!’

  The Count drew one hand from underneath his head and waved it.

  ‘I just can’t make out if living with her is good or lousy – the devil himself couldn’t make head or tail of it! There really are moments when I would sacrifice half my life for an “encore”. But then there are days when I pace the rooms like a madman and I’m ready to bawl my head off.’

  ‘Because of what?’

  ‘I can’t make Olga out, old man. She’s a type of fever, not a woman… with a fever you first get a temperature, then the shivers – that’s exactly what it’s like with her – she changes five times a day. Sometimes she feels cheerful, then she’s so miserable she swallows her tears and prays. First she loves me, then she doesn’t. There are times when she’s very nice to me – nicer than any woman has ever been to me all my life. But sometimes it’s like this: I wake up unexpectedly, open my eyes and I see a face staring at me… such a horrible, wild face, a face twisted with malice and revulsion! When you see things like that all the enchantment vanishes. And she often looks at me that way.’

  ‘With revulsion?’

  ‘Oh, yes, I just can’t understand it. She swears she came to live with me only out of love, but not one night passes without my seeing a face like hers. What’s the explanation for it? I’m beginning to think – of course, I don’t want to believe it – that she can’t stand me and that she’s only given herself to me for the clothes I’m buying her now. She’s mad about clothes! If she has a new frock, she’s capable of standing in front of the mirror from morning to night. Because of a spoilt flounce she’ll weep day and night. She’s terribly vain! And what she likes most about me is the fact I’m a count. If I weren’t a count she’d never have loved me. Not one dinner or supper goes by without her tearfully reproaching me for not surrounding myself with aristocratic society. She’d love to be queen of that society. Such a strange girl!’

  The Count fixed his dull eyes on the ceiling and became lost in thought. To my amazement, I saw that on this occasion he was sober – unusually for him! This astonished and even touched me.

  ‘You’re perfectly normal today,’ I said. ‘You’re not drunk and you haven’t asked for vodka. What does this dream of mine signify?’

  ‘Well now! I didn’t have time to have a drink – I was always thinking… I have to tell you, Seryozha, that I’m head over heels in love, in real earnest. I like her enormously – and that’s understandable too. She’s a rare woman, quite exceptional – not to mention her appearance. She’s not particularly bright, but what sensitivity, elegance, freshness! There’s no comparison with all those earlier loves of mine – those Amalias, Angelicas and Grushas. She’s a person from another world, a world that is unfamiliar to me.’

  ‘You’re getting philosophical!’ I laughed.

  ‘I was carried away, as if I’d fallen in love! But now I can see that I’m wasting my time trying to raise zero to the power of four. It was only a mask that aroused this false excitement in me. That bright flush of innocence turned out to be rouge, that loving kiss a request for a new dress. I took her into my house as a wife, but she behaved like a paid mistress. But enough of that! I’m trying to calm myself and beginning to see Olga as a mistress… And that’s the long and short of it!’

  ‘Well, what next? How’s the husband?’

  ‘The husband? Hm… how do you think he is?’

  ‘I think that it would be hard to imagine an unhappier man at this moment.’

  ‘Do you think so? That’s where you’re wrong… he’s such a rogue, such a scoundrel that I don’t feel sorry for him at all. Scoundrels can never be unhappy, they always find a way out.’

  ‘But why are you running him down like this?’

  ‘Because he’s a swindler. You know that I respected him, trusted him as a friend. I myself – and even you – everyone considered him an honest, respectable man, incapable of deceit. But for all that he’s been robbing me, fleecing me! Taking full advantage of his position as manager, he’s been doing what he likes with my property. The only things he didn’t steal were those that couldn’t be moved.’

  Since I’d always known Urbenin to be an extremely honest and unselfish person, I jumped up as if I’d been stung when I heard the Count’s words and I went over to him.

  ‘So, you’ve actually caught him stealing?’

  ‘No, but I know about his thieving tricks from reliable sources.’

  ‘What sources, may I ask?’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to accuse someone without good reason. Olga has told me everything about him. Even before she became his wife she saw with her own eyes the cart-loads of slaughtered chickens and geese that he was dispatching to town. More than once she saw my geese and chickens being sent as a present to certain benefactors with whom his schoolboy son was lodging. What’s more, she saw him send flour, millet and lard there. I grant you, these are mere trifles, but surely these trifles don’t belong to him? It’s not a question of value, but of principles. Principles have been flouted. And there’s more, my dear sir! She happened to see a bundle of banknotes in his cupboard. When she asked whose it was and where he’d got it he begged her not to let slip that he had money. You know that he’s as poor as a church mouse, dear chap! His salary is barely large enough to pay for his board. So please explain to me where he got that money from?’

  ‘And you’re fool enough to believe that little reptile’s words?’ I shouted, disturbed to the very depths of my being. ‘She’s not satisfied with running away from him, blackening his name throughout the whole district – she had to go and deceive him! Such a small, puny body, but with so much vileness of every variety lurking in it! Fowls, geese, millet… oh, you’re a fine landowner, you are! Your instinct for political economy, your agricultural obtuseness have been insulted by the fact that for church festivals he kept sending presents of slaughtered poultry that would have been eaten by foxes and polecats had the birds not been killed and given as presents. But have you checked even once those enormous accounts that Urbenin submits to you? Have you ever counted the thousands and tens of thousands? No! So what’s the use of talking? You’re stupid, just like an animal. You’d be pleased enough to have your mistress’s husband locked up, but you’ve no idea how!’

  ‘My affair with Olga has nothing to do with it. Whether he’s her husband or not, once he’s stolen I must openly declare him a thief. But let’s leave this swindling to one side. Tell me: is it or isn’t it dishonest to be paid a salary and lie around for days on end, constantly drunk? Every day he’s drunk! Not one day passes without my seeing him
reeling around. Respectable people don’t behave like that!’

  ‘He gets drunk because he’s respectable.’ I commented.

  ‘You appear to have some sort of passion for standing up for gentlemen like him. But I’ve decided to show no mercy. Today I paid him off and asked him to clear out and make room for someone else. My patience is exhausted.’

  I felt it was superfluous to try and convince the Count that he was being unfair, impractical and stupid: I had no intention of defending Urbenin against the Count.

  Five days later I heard that Urbenin had gone to live in town with his schoolboy son and little daughter. They told me that he was dead drunk when they drove there and that he fell off the cart twice. The schoolboy and Sasha cried the whole way.

  XVII

  Soon after Urbenin’s departure I was obliged to stay for a while – much against my wishes – on the Count’s estate. One of the Count’s stables had been broken into and thieves had made off with several valuable saddles. The investigating magistrate (that is, me) was informed and, nolens volens,46 I had to go there.

  I found the Count drunk and angry. He was marching through all the rooms, seeking refuge from his anguish, but to no avail.

  ‘That Olga’s more than I can take,’ he said, waving his arm. ‘She lost her temper with me this morning, threatened to drown herself, stormed out of the house – and as you can see, there’s still no sign of her. I know she wouldn’t drown herself, but it’s a rotten business all the same. All yesterday she sulked and kept smashing crockery… The day before she gorged herself on chocolate. God only knows what kind of person she really is!’

  I consoled the Count as best I could and sat down to dinner with him.

  ‘No, it’s time she stopped behaving like a child,’ he muttered during dinner. ‘It’s high time – otherwise all this might turn into a stupid farce. Besides, I have to admit that she’s already beginning to bore me with her sharp changes of mood. I need someone quiet and steady, modest – like Nadezhda Nikolayevna, you know. A splendid girl!’

  When I was strolling in the garden after dinner I met the ‘drowned girl’. When she saw me she turned crimson and – strange woman! – she laughed for happiness. The shame on her face mingled with joy, the grief with happiness. Giving me a sheepish look, she ran towards me and hung on my neck without a word.

  ‘I love you,’ she whispered, squeezing my neck. ‘I’ve been pining for you so much that I would have died if you hadn’t come.’

  I embraced her and silently led her to one of the summer-houses. Ten minutes later, when I was saying goodbye, I took a twenty-five rouble note from my pocket and gave it to her.

  ‘What’s that for?’

  ‘I’m paying you for today’s love.’

  Olga didn’t understand and kept looking at me in amazement.

  ‘You see, there are women,’ I explained, ‘who love for money. They’re prostitutes. They have to be paid for with money. So take it! If you accept money from others, why don’t you want to take it from me? I don’t need any favours!’

  However cynical this insult, Olga still didn’t understand. As yet she had no knowledge of life and didn’t understand the meaning of ‘venal’ women.

  XVIII

  It was a fine day in August. The sun shone with all the warmth of summer, the blue sky fondly beckoned one into the distance, but there was already a feeling of autumn in the air. Leaves that had come to the end of their lives were turning gold in the green foliage of the pensive forest, while the darkening fields had a wistful, melancholy look.

  Presentiments of inescapable, oppressive autumn took hold of us too and it was not difficult to foresee that things would very soon come to a head. At some time the thunder had to rumble and the rain start pouring to freshen the humid air! It is usually close and sultry before a thunderstorm, when dark, leaden clouds approach, but we were already being stifled morally: this was evident in everything – in our movements, our smiles, in whatever we said.

  I was riding in a light wagonette. Beside me sat Nadenka, the JP’s daughter. She was as white as a sheet, her chin and lips trembling as if she were about to cry, her deep eyes were full of sorrow. But still she laughed the whole way, pretending that she was feeling extremely cheerful.

  In front of us and behind us carriages of all kinds, ages and sizes were on the move. Gentlemen and ladies on horseback rode on either side. Count Karneyev, clad in a green shooting outfit that was more like a clown’s than a huntsman’s, leant forward and to one side as he mercilessly bounced up and down on his black horse. Looking at his bent body and the pained expression that constantly flitted across his haggard face you would think that he was riding a horse for the very first time. A new double-barrelled gun was slung across his back, while at his side hung a game bag, in which a wounded woodcock was writhing.

  Olenka Urbenin was the shining jewel of the cavalcade. Seated on her black horse – a gift from the Count – and dressed in a black riding habit, with a white feather in her hat, she no longer resembled the ‘girl in red’, whom we had met in the forest only a few months before. Now there was something majestic about her, something of the grande dame. Every flourish of her whip, every smile – everything was calculated to appear aristocratic, magnificent. In her movements and smiles there was something provocative and inflammatory. She held her head high with snobbish affectation, and from the height of her horse she poured scorn on the whole company, as if she couldn’t care less about the loud remarks directed at her by our local ladies of virtue. She was defiant, playing the coquette with her arrogance, with her position at the Count’s – just as if she were unaware that the Count was sick and tired of her and that he was just waiting for the chance to get rid of her.

  ‘The Count wants to throw me out,’ she told me with a loud laugh after the cavalcade had ridden out of the courtyard. So, she must have known the position she was in – and she understood it.

  But why that loud laughter? As I looked at her I was quite bewildered: where did that common forest dweller get so much energy from? When had she found time to learn to sit so gracefully in the saddle, to twitch her nostrils so proudly and to show off with such imperious gestures?

  ‘A dissolute woman is the same as a pig,’ Dr Pavel Ivanych told me. ‘Seat her at the table and she’ll plonk her legs on it.’

  But this explanation was too simple. No one could have been more taken with Olga than I was, yet I would have been the first to throw stones at her. However, the vague voice of truth whispered to me that this was not the energy, nor the boastfulness, of a happy, contented woman, but despair, a presentiment of the imminent, inevitable denouement.

  We were returning from the shoot, for which we had set off early that morning. It had been a failure. Just by the marshes, on which we had been pinning great hopes, we met a party of huntsmen who told us that all the game had been frightened off. We managed to dispatch three woodcock and one duck to the next world – that was all that fell to the lot of ten huntsmen. Finally, one of the ladies developed toothache, so we had to hurry back. We took the beautiful path across the fields, where sheaves of newly harvested rye showed yellow against the dark background of the gloomy forest. On the horizon appeared the white church and the house on the Count’s estate. To the right stretched the mirror-like surface of the lake, to the left loomed the dark mass of Stone Grave.

  ‘What a terrible woman!’ Nadezhda whispered to me every time Olga drew abreast of our wagonette. ‘What a terrible woman! She’s as evil as she’s pretty. It’s not long since you were best man at her wedding, is it? She’d barely time to wear out her wedding shoes47 than she was already wearing someone else’s silk and flaunting another’s diamonds. This strange and swift metamorphosis is hardly credible. If these were her natural instincts it would have been at least tactful to have waited a year or two…’

  ‘She’s in a hurry to live!48 She’s no time to wait!’ I sighed.

  ‘Do you know what’s happening with her husband?’
>
  ‘They say he’s hit the bottle.’

  ‘Yes, Papa was in town the day before yesterday and he saw him driving away from somewhere in a cab. His head was slumped to one side, he had no hat and there was mud all over his face. That man’s finished! They say the family’s terribly poor – they’ve nothing to eat, the rent’s not paid. Poor little Sasha goes for days without food. Papa’s described all this to the Count. But you know what the Count’s like! He’s honest and kind, but he doesn’t like stopping to think and weigh things up. “I’ll send him a hundred roubles,” he says. So off he sends it. Without further ado. I don’t think Urbenin could be more deeply insulted than to be sent that money… He’ll take great offence at the Count’s little sop and he’ll only start drinking all the more.’

  ‘Yes, the Count’s stupid,’ I said. ‘He might at least have sent that money through me, and in my name.’

  ‘He had no right to send him money! Do I have the right to feed you if I’m throttling the life out of you and if you hate me?’

  ‘That’s true.’

  We became silent and pensive. The thought of Urbenin’s fate had always been painful for me. But now, when the woman who had ruined him was caracoling before my very eyes, it gave rise to a whole series of mournful reflections. What would become of him and his children? What would become of her? In what moral cesspool would that feeble, pathetic Count end his days?

  Next to me sat the only being who was decent and worthy of respect. I knew only two people in our district whom I was capable of liking and respecting, who alone had the right to snub me, because they stood higher than me – Nadezhda Nikolayevna and Dr Pavel Ivanych. What was in store for them?

  ‘Nadezhda Nikolayevna,’ I said. ‘Without wishing to, I’ve caused you considerable grief and I’m less entitled than anyone to expect you to be frank with me. But I swear that no one will understand you as well as I do. Your sorrow is my sorrow, your happiness my happiness. If I’m asking you questions now, please don’t suspect that it’s merely out of idle curiosity. Tell me, my dear, why do you let this pygmy of a count go anywhere near you? What’s stopping you from driving him away and ignoring his loathsome endearments? Surely his attentions do a respectable woman no honour! Why do you give these scandalmongers a reason for coupling your name with his?’