“Where are you going?” Startsev said, horrified, when she suddenly got up and walked towards the house. “I’ve got to talk to you, I must tell you…Stay with me for at least five minutes! I beseech you!”
She stopped as if she wished to say something, then awkwardly thrust a note into his hand and ran into the house, and there sat down at the piano again.
“Tonight, at eleven o’clock,” Startsev read, “be in the cemetery by Demetti’s memorial.”
“Well, that’s not smart at all,” he thought, having come to his senses. “Why the cemetery? What for?”
It was clear: Kotik was fooling. Indeed, who would seriously conceive of scheduling a meeting at night, far from town, in a cemetery, when it could easily be arranged on the street, in the town park? And was it fitting for him, a zemstvo doctor, an intelligent, serious man, to sigh, to receive little notes, to drag himself to cemeteries, to do stupid things that even schoolboys would laugh at nowadays? What would this love affair come to? What would his colleagues say when they learned of it? So Startsev was thinking as he wandered among the tables in his club, and at half past ten he suddenly up and drove to the cemetery.
He already had his own pair of horses and the coachman Panteleimon in a velvet waistcoat. The moon was shining. It was quiet, warm, but warm in an autumnal way. In the outskirts, by the slaughterhouse, dogs were howling. Startsev left the horses at the edge of town, in one of the lanes, and went to the cemetery on foot. “People have their oddities,” he thought. “Kotik is also an odd one and—who knows?—maybe she’s not joking and will come,” and he surrendered to this weak, futile hope, and it intoxicated him.
He walked half a mile across a field. The cemetery appeared in the distance as a dark strip, like a grove or a big garden. He saw the white stone fence, the gate…In the moonlight one could read on the gate: “The hour is nigh…” Startsev went through the gate, and first of all he saw white crosses and tombstones on both sides of a wide alley, and the dark shadows cast by them and the poplars; and the white and black stretched far around, and sleepy trees bowed their branches over the white. It seemed brighter here than in the field; the maple leaves, looking like paws, were sharply outlined on the yellow sand of the alleys and on the slabs, and the inscriptions on the tombstones were clearly visible. In the first moments, Startsev was struck by what he was now seeing for the first time in his life and would probably not chance to see again: a world unlike anything else—a world where moonlight was so lovely and gentle, as if this were its cradle, where there was no life, no, no, but in each dark poplar, in each grave, one felt the presence of a mystery, promising a quiet, beautiful, eternal life. Along with the scent of autumn leaves, the tombstones and the withered flowers breathed of forgiveness, sorrow, and peace.
All around there was silence; stars looked down from the sky in profound humility, and the sound of Startsev’s footsteps was loud and out of place. And only when the clock began to strike in the church and he imagined himself dead, buried there for all eternity, did it seem to him that someone was looking at him, and for a moment he thought that this was not peace and quiet, but the blank anguish of non-being, suppressed despair…
The Demetti memorial was in the form of a chapel with an angel on top. Once the Italian opera was passing through S. One of the singers died, was buried, and this memorial was set up. No one in town remembered her, but the lamp over the entrance reflected the moonlight and looked like it was burning.
No one was there. Who would come there at midnight? But Startsev waited, and, as if the moonlight were warming the passion in him, he waited passionately, his imagination picturing kisses, embraces. He sat by the memorial for about half an hour, then strolled in the side alleys, hat in hand, waiting and thinking about the many women and girls buried here in these graves, who had been beautiful, charming, who had loved, had burned with passion at night, yielding to caresses. What wicked tricks, indeed, Mother Nature plays on human beings, how vexing the awareness of it! So Startsev thought, and at the same time he felt like crying out that he wanted, that he was waiting for love at all costs; it was no longer pieces of marble that showed white before him, but beautiful bodies, he saw shapes that modestly hid in the shade of the trees, he felt warmth, and this languor was becoming oppressive…
And like the lowering of a curtain, the moon went behind a cloud, and suddenly everything around became dark. Startsev barely managed to find the gate—it was already as dark as on an autumn night. Then he wandered for an hour and a half, looking for the lane where he had left his horses.
“I’m tired, I can barely keep my feet,” he said to Panteleimon.
And, delightedly seating himself in the carriage, he thought:
“Oof, I’d better not gain weight!”
III
The next day, in the evening, he went to the Turkins’ to propose. But this turned out to be awkward, because Ekaterina Ivanovna was in her room having her hair done by a hairdresser. She was getting ready for an evening dance at the club.
Again he had to sit for a long time in the dining room having tea. Ivan Petrovich, seeing that the guest was pensive and bored, took some notes from his waistcoat pocket and read an amusing letter from a German manager about how all the lockitudes on the estate were broken, and there was a crashing of the wallery.
“And they’ll probably provide no small dowry,” thought Startsev, listening distractedly.
After a sleepless night, he was in a stunned state, as if he had been given something sweet and somniferous; his heart was foggy, but joyful, warm, and at the same time some cold, heavy little snippet in his head was reasoning:
“Stop before it’s too late! Is she any match for you? She’s spoiled, capricious, she sleeps till two, and you’re a churchwarden’s son, a country doctor…”
“Well, what then?” he thought. “So be it!”
“Besides, if you marry her,” the little snippet went on, “her family will make you drop your zemstvo work and live in town.”
“Well, what of it?” he thought. “If it’s town, it’s town. They’ll give a dowry, we’ll buy furniture…”
Finally Ekaterina Ivanovna came in wearing a ball gown, décolleté, pretty, clean, and Startsev admired her so much and went into such rapture that he could not utter a single word, but only looked at her and laughed.
She started saying goodbye, and he—there was no longer any reason for him to stay—stood up, said it was time he went home: his patients were waiting.
“Nothing to be done,” said Ivan Petrovich. “Go, then, and on your way take Kotik to the club.”
Outside it was drizzling rain, very dark, and only by Panteleimon’s rough coughing could they tell where the horses were. They put up the hood.
“I lie on the rug,” said Ivan Petrovich, seating his daughter in the carriage, “he lies like a rug…Touch ’em up! Goodbye if you please!”
They drove off.
“I went to the cemetery last night,” Startsev began. “That was so ungenerous and unmerciful on your part…”
“You went to the cemetery?”
“Yes, I was there and waited for you till nearly two o’clock. I suffered…”
“Suffer, then, if you don’t understand jokes.”
Ekaterina Ivanovna, pleased that she had so cleverly played a joke on the amorous man and that he was so much in love, laughed loudly and suddenly cried out in fright, because just then the horses turned sharply through the gates of the club, and the carriage tilted. Startsev put his arm around Ekaterina Ivanovna’s waist, and she, frightened, pressed herself to him. He could not help himself and kissed her passionately on the lips, on the chin, and tightened his embrace.
“Enough,” she said drily.