‘The hardest thing,’ he muttered as he walked beside me, ‘is not having your work appreciated by anyone! You get no thanks at all!’
II
I became a regular visitor at the Volchaninovs. Usually I would sit on the bottom step of the terrace, depressed by feelings of dissatisfaction with myself, regretting that my life was passing so quickly, so uninterestingly. I kept thinking how marvellous it would be if I could somehow tear my heart, which felt so heavy, out of my chest. Just then they were talking on the terrace and I could hear the rustle of dresses, the sound of someone turning over pages in a book. I soon became used to Lida receiving the sick and handing out books during the day. Often she would go off to the village with a parasol over her bare head, while in the evenings she would hold forth in a loud voice about councils and schools. Whenever the conversation turned to serious matters, that slim, pretty, invariably severe young lady with her small, finely modelled mouth, would coldly tell me:
‘That’s of no interest to you.’
I did not appeal to her at all. She did not like me because I was a landscape painter who did not portray the hardships of the common people in my canvases and because – so she thought – I was indifferent to all her deepest beliefs. I remember, when I was once travelling along the shores of Lake Baikal I met a young Buryat girl on horseback, wearing a smock and cotton trousers. I asked her to sell me her pipe, but while we were talking she looked contemptuously at my European face and hat. All of a sudden she became tired of talking and galloped off, uttering wild yells. And in the same way Lida looked down on me, because we were from different worlds. She didn’t express her dislike openly, but I could sense it. Sitting on the bottom step of the terrace I felt irritated and told her that dishing out treatment to peasants without being a doctor was a fraud: it was easy enough to play the Good Samaritan when one had five thousand acres of one’s own.
But her sister Missy didn’t have a care in the world. Like me, she lived a life of complete idleness. The moment she got up in the morning she would take a book and sit reading in a deep armchair on the terrace with her feet barely touching the ground; or she would escape with her book to the lime-tree avenue, or go beyond the gates into the open fields. She would read all day long, eagerly poring over her book and one could only tell from her occasionally tired and glazed look, and her extreme pallor, how taxing this really was for her. When I came she would blush slightly on seeing me, put down her book, look into my face with her big eyes and tell me enthusiastically what had been happening – for example, that the chimney in the servants’ quarters had caught fire, or that a workman had hooked a large fish in the pond. On weekdays she usually went around in a brightly coloured blouse and navy blue skirt. We would go for walks together, pick cherries for jam or go boating and whenever she jumped up to reach the cherries or plied the oars her thin, delicate arms showed through her full sleeves. Occasionally, I would sketch while she stood beside me, looking on admiringly.
One Sunday at the end of July I went over to the Volchaninovs at about nine in the morning and I walked through the park, keeping as far as I could away from the house, looking for white mushrooms which were plentiful that summer and putting down markers so that I could return later with Zhenya to pick them. A warm breeze was blowing. I saw Zhenya and her mother, both in bright Sunday dresses, coming back from church. Zhenya was holding onto her hat in the wind. Then I could hear them having breakfast on the terrace.
For a carefree person like myself, forever trying to find an excuse for his perpetual idleness, these Sunday mornings on our estates in summer always had a particular charm. When the green garden, still wet with dew, gleams in the sun and seems to be rejoicing; when there is the scent of mignonette and oleander by the house; when the young people have just returned from church and are having breakfast in the garden; when everyone is dressed so charmingly and is so gay; when you know that all these healthy, well-fed, handsome people will be doing nothing all day long – then one wishes life to be always like that. And these were my thoughts as I walked through the garden, ready to wander just like this, idly and aimlessly, all day, all summer.
Zhenya came out with a basket and she looked as if she knew or sensed she would find me in the garden. We gathered mushrooms and when she asked me something she would go on ahead, so that she could see my face.
‘There was a miracle in our village yesterday,’ she said. ‘That lame Pelageya’s been ill the whole year, no doctors or medicine did her any good. But yesterday an old woman recited a spell and she got better.’
‘That’s nothing much,’ I said. ‘You shouldn’t look for miracles only among the sick and old women. Isn’t health a miracle? And life itself? Anything we can’t understand is a miracle.’
‘But aren’t you scared of things you don’t understand?’
‘No, I face up to phenomena I don’t understand boldly and I don’t allow myself to be intimidated. I’m on a higher level than them. Man should consider himself superior to lions, tigers, stars – to everything in nature – even those things he doesn’t understand and thinks of as miraculous. Otherwise he’s not a man but a mouse, afraid of everything.’
Zhenya thought that, as I was an artist, I must know a great deal and could accurately guess what I didn’t know. She wanted me to lead her into the realm of the eternal and beautiful, into that loftier world in which, she fancied, I was quite at home. And she spoke to me of God, of immortality, of the miraculous. I refused to admit that I and my imagination would perish for ever after death. ‘Yes, people are immortal. Yes, eternal life awaits us,’ I replied. And she listened and believed – and she did not ask for proof.
When we were going back to the house she suddenly stopped and said: ‘Lida’s a remarkable person, isn’t she? I love her dearly and I would readily sacrifice my life for her. But tell me,’ Zhenya continued, touching my sleeve with her finger, ‘tell me why you’re always arguing with her? Why do you get so exasperated?’
‘Because she’s in the wrong.’
Zhenya shook her head and tears came into her eyes. ‘I just don’t understand,’ she murmured.
Lida had just returned from somewhere and she stood by the front porch, crop in hand, graceful and beautiful in the sunlight; she was giving orders to one of the workmen. Talking very loudly, she hurriedly saw two or three patients and then, with a preoccupied, busy look, marched through the rooms, opening one cupboard after the other, after which she went up to the attic storey. For a long time they looked for her, to tell her dinner was ready, and by the time she came down we were already finishing our soup. I remember and cherish all these little details and I vividly remember the whole of that day, although it wasn’t particularly eventful. After dinner Zhenya lay in a deep armchair reading, while I sat on the bottom step of the terrace. We said nothing. The sky was overcast and a fine drizzle had set in. It was hot, the wind had long dropped and it seemed the day would never end. Yekaterina Pavlovna came out onto the terrace with a fan – she looked half asleep.
‘Oh, Mama!’ Zhenya said, kissing her hand. ‘It’s not healthy sleeping during the day.’
They adored each other. When one went into the garden, the other would be standing on the terrace looking towards the trees, calling out: ‘Hullo, Zhenya!’ or ‘Mama, where are you?’ They always prayed together, both shared the same faith and they understood one another perfectly, even when they said nothing. And they both had the same attitude towards people. Yekaterina Pavlovna also took to me in no time at all and when I didn’t appear for two or three days she would send someone over to inquire if I was well. She would also gaze admiringly at my sketches and would rattle away about all the latest news – just as readily as Missy; and she often confided family secrets to me.