He shunned diversions such as the theatre and concerts, but took great pleasure in playing whist every evening, until two o’clock in the morning. But there was one other diversion to which he became gradually, imperceptibly drawn. This was in the evenings, when he took from his pockets the banknotes he had earned from his practice – and his pockets often happened to be stuffed with seventy roubles’ worth of yellow or green notes that reeked of perfume, vinegar, incense and train oil. When he had amassed a few hundred he would take them to the Mutual Credit Bank and pay them into his current account.
During the entire four years after Yekaterina Ivanovna’s departure for Moscow he visited the Turkins only twice, at the invitation of Vera Iosifovna, whom he was still treating for migraine. Every summer Yekaterina Ivanovna would come to stay with her parents but as things turned out he did not see her even once.
But four years had now passed. One calm, warm morning he was brought a letter at the hospital, in which Vera Iosifovna wrote that she missed him very much and begged him to come and see her without fail and relieve her sufferings – that day happened to be her birthday. There was a PS: ‘I join in Mama’s request. K.’
Startsev thought for a while and that evening he drove over to the Turkins’.
‘Ah, good evening – if you please!’ Ivan Petrovich greeted him. Only his eyes were smiling. ‘Bonjourezvous!’
Vera Iosifovna had aged considerably and her hair was white now. She shook Startsev’s hand, and sighed affectedly.
‘Doctor!’ she exclaimed. ‘You don’t want to flirt with me, you never call on us, so I must be too old for you. But my young daughter’s arrived, perhaps she’ll have more luck!’
And Pussycat? She had grown thinner, paler, prettier and shapelier. But now she was a fully-fledged Yekaterina Ivanovna and not a Pussycat. Gone were that freshness and expression of childlike innocence. And in her look and manners there was something new, a hesitancy and air of guilt, as if here, in the Turkins’ house, she no longer felt at home.
‘It’s been simply ages!’ she said, offering Startsev her hand – and her heart was visibly pounding. Peering into his face intently, quizzically, she continued: ‘How you’ve put on weight! You’ve acquired a tan, you’ve matured, but on the whole you haven’t changed very much.’
And even now he liked her – very much so. But something was lacking, or there was something superfluous – he himself couldn’t put his finger on it, but it prevented him from feeling as he did before. He did not like her pallor, her new expression, that weak smile, her voice. And a little later he didn’t like her dress, or the armchair she was sitting in; something about the past, when he had nearly married her, displeased him. He recalled his love, those dreams and hopes that had disturbed him four years before, and he felt uncomfortable.
They had tea and cakes. Then Vera Iosifovna read her novel out loud – about things that never happen in real life – and Startsev listened, looked at her grey handsome head and waited for her to finish.
‘A mediocrity is not someone who’s no good at writing stories,’ he thought. ‘It’s someone who writes them but can’t keep quiet about it.’
‘Not awfully baddish!’ Ivan Petrovich commented.
Then Yekaterina Ivanovna played the piano long and noisily, and when she had finished there followed lengthy expressions of gratitude and admiration.
‘Lucky I didn’t marry her,’ thought Startsev.
She glanced at him and was evidently waiting for him to suggest going out into the garden, but he said nothing.
‘Let’s have a little talk,’ she said, going over to him. ‘How are you getting on? What’s your news? How are things? All this time I’ve been thinking of you,’ she continued nervously. ‘I wanted to write to you, to come and see you in Dyalizh myself. In fact I actually decided to come but I changed my mind. Heaven knows what you think of me now. I’ve been so excited waiting for you today. For heaven’s sake, let’s go into the garden.’
They went into the garden and sat down on the bench under the old maple, as they had done four years before. It was dark.
‘Well, how are things?’ Yekaterina Ivanovna asked.
‘All right, I get by,’ Startsev replied.
And he could think of nothing more to say. They both fell silent.
‘I’m so excited,’ Yekaterina Ivanovna said, covering her face with her hands, ‘but don’t take any notice. I so enjoy being at home. I’m so glad to see everyone and it takes getting used to. So many memories! I thought we’d be talking non-stop, until the early hours.’
And now he saw her face close up, her sparkling eyes; and here, in the darkness, she looked younger than in the room and even her former childlike expression seemed to have returned. And in fact she gazed at him with naïve curiosity, as if she wanted to have a closer look, to understand the man who had once loved her so passionately, so tenderly, so unhappily. Her eyes thanked him for that love. And he recalled everything that had happened, down to the very last detail – how he had wandered around the cemetery, how he had gone home exhausted towards morning; and suddenly he felt sad and he regretted the past. A tiny flame flickered in his heart.
‘Do you remember when I gave you a lift that evening to the club?’ he asked. ‘It was raining then, and dark …’
The flame was still flickering in his heart and he felt the urge to speak, to complain about life …
‘Oh!’ he sighed. ‘You ask me how things are, what kind of lives we lead here? Well, we don’t lead any kind of life. We grow old, get fat, go to seed. Day after day life drags on in its lacklustre way, no impressions, no thoughts … During the day I make money, in the evening there’s the club and the company of cardsharpers, alcoholics and loudmouths whom I cannot stand. So what’s good about it?’
‘But there’s your work, a noble purpose in life. You used to love talking about your hospital. I was rather strange then, I imagined myself as a great pianist. Now all young women play the piano and I played like everyone else and there was nothing special about me. I’m as much a concert pianist as Mama’s a writer. Of course, I didn’t understand you then, but afterwards, in Moscow, I often thought of you. In fact, I thought of nothing else. What bliss to be a country doctor, to help the suffering, to serve the common people! What utter bliss!’ Yekaterina repeated rapturously. ‘Whenever I thought of you in Moscow you struck me as idealistic, lofty …’