“What if it is?”
“Well, if this is true, then I won’t get in your way. To be a rival in such affairs—this is not my game. But if you have no special interest in her, then it’s different!”
“I have no plans for her.”
“Merci, my dear friend!”
The count wanted to kill two sparrows with one stone, thinking that he would do this with ease. In the end, he did kill two sparrows, but he didn’t get the feathers, nor the skin.
(…)
I saw how the Count secretly tried to take Olga’s hand when she entered, and greeted him with a friendly smile. Then, to show that he had no secrets from me, he kissed her hand wetly in front of me.
“What a fool!” she whispered in my ear, wiping her wet hand with disgust.
“Listen Olga,” I said as soon we were alone. “It seems to me that you’d like to tell me something. Am I right?”
I looked questioningly into her face. She blushed and started blinking her eyes, as frightened as a cat caught lapping the cream.
“Yes, I would like to tell you something,” she whispered, pressing my hand. “I love you, I cannot live without you … but you mustn’t try to visit me anymore, my darling. You must not love me anymore, and you cannot address me as a familiar. I can’t go on like this anymore. We cannot do this. You must not even show that you love me.”
“But why?”
“I want it to be this way. You don’t need to know the reasons, and I’m not going to tell you. Well, for what it’s worth, if I hadn’t married Mr. Urbenin, I could’ve married the Count by now. And then the Count and I would live together in the capital, and you could pay us visits. Hush! They’re coming. Step back from me.”
I did not step back, I was furious; so she had to do it to stop our conversation. Then she took her husband by the hand as he passed, and with a hypocritical smile, she nodded her head to me and left.
CHAPTER FOUR AT THE COUNT’S HOUSE
Late at night I was sitting at the Count’s house, drinking. I was a bit drunk myself, but the Count was deeply intoxicated.
“Today, I was allowed to touch her waist in passing.” The Count was mumbling. “Today, we will keep on moving even further.”
“How about the other girl, Nadine? What about her?” I asked.
“We are moving along nicely with her as well. We are at the stage of conversation of our eyes at the moment. And my dear, I would like to read more in her dark, sad eyes. There is something there that you cannot express with words. You have to understand this with your soul. Will you have a drink?”
“So she must like you, if you can talk to her for hours. And how about her father, old judge Kalinin? Does he also like you?”
“Her father? You are talking about that stupid old man? Ha-ha-ha. This idiot presumes that my intentions are honest.”
The Count coughed and had another drink.
“Do you think that I’m going to marry her? First, I cannot marry anyone at this point. And what’s more, I honestly think that it’s much more honest to just seduce the young lady than to marry her. Imagine her terrible eternal life with an old drunk like me, constantly coughing. She would either die or run away the next day. And—what is this noise—listen!”
We jumped to our feet. Several doors slammed loudly, and then Olga ran into our room. She was pale and out of breath, trembling like the string of a guitar that has been struck rather than plucked. Her hair was loose and uncombed, and her eyes were wide open. Her fingers fiddled nervously with her nightgown on her breast.
“What’s happened to you?” I asked, totally bewildered, and took her by the hand. Perhaps the Count was surprised by this level of intimacy between us but he showed no signs of it. He sighed, and turned a questioning look at Olga, as though he were seeing a ghost.
“What’s happened?” I repeated.
“He’s beating me!” she said with a sob, as she fell into an armchair.
“Who is?”
“My husband! I can’t live with him anymore! I’ve decided to run away.”
“This is terrible!” the Count said, hitting the table with his fist. “He has no legal right to do this. This is tyranny. This is God knows what! To beat your wife—for what?”
“For nothing,” Olga said, wiping her tears. “I took a handkerchief out of my pocket, and that little envelope with the letter that you wrote to me yesterday also fell out. He jumped toward me, snatched it up from the floor, read it, and started beating me up. He held me by the wrist—look—he held me so hard that I still have a bruise here—look, and then he asked for an explanation. And instead of giving an explanation, I ran here. I need your support and defense. He cannot treat me like this. I’m not his servant, I’m his wife.”
The Count started pacing the room, mumbling some words that if you could translate them into the speech of a sober person would be “About the situation of women in Russia.”
“This is wild—he is behaving like a barbarian! This is not New Zealand or those islands where they eat people alive. He thinks that his wife should be butchered during his funeral. You know, people in some countries, those savages—when they die they also take their wives with them.”
As for me, I asked her no questions but tried to calm her down, and offered her a glass of wine.
“I was mistaken; I was mistaken,” she continued, talking to me, as she took a sip of wine. “And you—you are such a quiet man; I thought that you were an angel, not a man.”
“And did you think that he would like that letter?” I asked her, but the Count interrupted me.
“This is mean, this is really nasty. You do not treat women like this! I will beat him up, I will challenge him to a duel, I will have a talk with him. Look, dear Olga, he won’t go unpunished.”
The Count spoke like a bantam cock. I thought to myself that no one had asked him to interfere in the relationship of Olga and her husband, and I knew that nothing would happen except for a lot of talk.
“I will smash him into the dirt. I’ll do it tomorrow, first thing tomorrow!” So spoke the perfect gentle knight. As he was talking, he invited her to dinner, and in a mechanical way, without thinking, she picked up a fork and knife and started eating. In another few minutes her fear had entirely dissipated, and there were no signs of what had happened beyond her red eyes and loose hair. In a while she was laughing like a little child who’d forgotten all about a recent tumble. The Count was laughing, too.
“You know what I’ve decided? he said, sitting closer to her. “We’ll stage a nice little play with some good roles for women. What do you think?”
The time was passing. She was sitting and talking to the Count.
“It’s getting late. It’s time for me to go, dear Olga,” I said.
“Where should I go?” she asked. “I cannot go to him.”
“Yes, yes, you cannot go to him; he would beat you up again,” I said as I paced the room.
There was silence. Olga and the Count exchanged glances, and I understood everything. I took my hat and put in on the table.
“Well, well,” the Count mumbled, rubbing his hands impatiently. Then he stood up, drew me close to him, and whispered in my ear.
“Listen, Sergey, you have to understand the situation, and these things.”
“Cut to the chase. You can skip the introductory matter.”
“You know what, my dear friend, you should go home. She will stay with me at my place.”
“Excuse me, but you’re the one who doesn’t understand,” I said as I came to her.
“Should I leave now?” I asked, waiting for her answer. “Yes? Should I go?”
With a tiny movement of her eyes she answered “yes.”
I said nothing more to her. What was left to say? I took my hat, and without saying good-bye I left the room.
CHAPTER FIVE THE MURDER
When I arrived at the scene of the crime, my friend Count Korneyev related the following:
“We were in the middle of our picnic, and we heard a terrifying, heart-piercing cry; it just froze the blood. It came from the forest, and the echo repeated it four times. It was so unearthly that everyone got up from the grass, the dogs started barking, and the horses pricked their ears. It was the cry of a woman in terrible, mortal danger. A group of servants ran off into the forest to see what happened.