He was very fond of them, but more as a pleasant memory than in actuality, it seemed. He knew little about their present life, which was strange and alien to him. And this brief, playful letter too was something quite foreign to him and had most probably been written after much time and effort. When Tatyana wrote it her husband Sergey Sergeich was doubtlessly standing behind her. She had been given Kuzminki as her dowry only six years before, but this same Sergey Sergeich had already reduced the estate to bankruptcy. Each time a bank or mortgage payment became due they would now turn to Podgorin for legal advice. Moreover, they had twice asked him to lend them money. So it was obvious that they either wanted advice or a loan from him now.
He no longer felt so attracted to Kuzminki as in the past. It was such a miserable place. That laughter and rushing around, those cheerful carefree faces, those rendezvous on quiet moonlit nights – all this had gone. Most important, though, they weren’t in the flush of youth any more. Probably it enchanted him only as a memory, nothing else. Besides Ta and Va, there was someone called ‘Na’, Tatyana’s sister Nadezhda, whom half-joking, half-seriously they had called his fiancée. He had seen her grow up and everyone expected him to marry her. He had loved her once and was going to propose. But there she was, twenty-three now, and he still hadn’t married her.
‘Strange it should turn out like this,’ he mused as he reread the letter in embarrassment. ‘But I can’t not go, they’d be offended.’
His long absence from the Losevs lay like a heavy weight on his conscience. After pacing his room and reflecting at length, he made a great effort of will and decided to go and visit them for about three days and so discharge his duty. Then he could feel free and relaxed – at least until the following summer. After lunch, as he prepared to leave for the Brest Station, he told his servants that he would be back in three days.
It was two hours by train from Moscow to Kuzminki, then a twenty-minute carriage drive from the station, from which he could see Tatyana’s wood and those three tall, narrow holiday villas that Losev (he had entered upon some business enterprise in the first years of his marriage) had started building but had never finished. He had been ruined by these holiday villas, by various business projects, by frequent trips to Moscow, where he used to lunch at the Slav Fair and dine at the Hermitage, ending up in Little Bronny Street or at a gipsy haunt named Knacker’s Yard, calling this ‘having a fling’. Podgorin liked a drink himself – sometimes quite a lot – and he associated with women indiscriminately, but in a cool, lethargic way, without deriving any pleasure. It sickened him when others gave themselves up to these pleasures with such zest. He didn’t understand or like men who could feel more free and easy at the Knacker’s Yard than at home with a respectable woman, and he felt that any kind of promiscuity stuck to them like burrs. He didn’t care for Losev, considering him a boring, lazy, old bungler and more than once had found his company rather repulsive.
Just past the wood, Sergey Sergeich and Nadezhda met him.
‘My dear fellow, why have you forgotten us?’ Sergey Sergeich asked, kissing him three times and then putting both arms round his waist. ‘You don’t feel affection for us any more, old chap.’
He had coarse features, a fat nose and a thin, light-brown beard. He combed his hair to one side to make himself look like a typical simple Russian. When he spoke he breathed right into your face and when he wasn’t speaking he’d breathe heavily through the nose. He was embarrassed by his plumpness and inordinately replete appearance and would keep thrusting out his chest to breathe more easily, which made him look pompous.
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?’
‘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!’