The Admiral and Sir Hugo then vanished with Nikolai Vasilievich, and Fanny Ivanovna went after them into the little hall to see them out, while I remained behind.
“Sonia! Vera! Nina!” came from Fanny Ivanovna. “How dark! Light the elektrichno!”
“Why don’t you tell her,” I said to the three sisters, “that it is not ‘elektrichno,’ but ‘elektrichestvo’?”
“We’ve told her hundreds of times,” they replied in unison, “but she will have it her own way ‘elektrichno’ and ‘elektrichno’.”
The Admiral’s departure had set the ball spinning. Very soon the bulk of them was gone. And then the incredible happened. The three American boys arrived and took the three sisters to a dance. And on the eve of my departure! I heard their laughing voices in the street, as the door closed upon them. That settled it. How they enjoyed themselves! How they enjoyed life! As for me, I would have to go home and pack.… That settled it.
I sat alone with Nikolai Vasilievich and Fanny Ivanovna.
“Wasn’t Kniaz great?” said Nikolai Vasilievich.
“Who could have expected such eloquence from Kniaz?” said Fanny Ivanovna.
“Last night,” said Nikolai Vasilievich, “Fanny Ivanovna and Kniaz sat alone and drank. They were quite drunk when I got home.” And he laughed in a sad, kindly manner.
“We only had a little port,” said Fanny Ivanovna. “Kniaz drank but said nothing. He is a funny man. He bought some live chickens, and he keeps telling me every day at supper that he will bring me fresh eggs as soon as the chicks grow up and begin to lay. His contribution, you see, to the supper he consumes here! The chickens have had time to grow into old hens — but the eggs are not forthcoming. And when I say to him, ‘Kniaz, what about these eggs?’ he answers in a tone as though I had wronged him, ‘But, Fanny Ivanovna, they are only chickens yet.’ ”
“He is always borrowing money from me,” said Nikolai Vasilievich, “and he owes me many hundred thousand roubles — we have lost count, what with the exchange! — and two days ago he borrowed forty roubles just to pay his cab. He plays cards all day, and yesterday he won twenty thousand roubles; and, when Fanny Ivanovna suggested that he should pay me back, at any rate some of his debt, he gave me back the forty roubles!” Nikolai Vasilievich smiled again in a sad and kindly manner. What beautiful and kindly eyes he had.…
And then we talked of Petersburg and the old days, of pre-war Easter, and their charming house in the Mohovaya.
“And do you remember the Three Sisters, Nikolai Vasilievich?”
“Don’t I! I was so wild that night because I had to miss an appointment I had made with Zina. Oh, I was so wild that night.…” He looked at his watch.
“Well!” he said, and rose, yawning. “I’ve got to go.”
He put on his coat, for the night was fresh and damp, and his goloshes, as the roads were muddy. We heard the door close on him as he went out.
“Always going to Zina’s?”
“Yes,” said Fanny Ivanovna. “But it’s quite all right. They play cards there every night.” And then added for further reassurance: “He is passionately fond of cards … and it keeps him occupied.
“And do you remember that other play … at the Saburov?”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes.… Oh, what was the ending of that play? We had to leave before the end. I was curious how it would end. But I think you stayed to the last?”
“Yes.… She is waiting for him to come back to her. She is waiting confidently because he has left his silk hat on the table. So she is waiting. But his valet comes and takes the hat; and she breaks down — and curtain!”
“Oh,” she said.
“Nikolai Vasilievich liked it,” I observed.
“Did he like it?”
She did not like it. By her face I could see that she did not like his liking it. It was as if the thing was peculiarly discordant with her own mood and trend of thought, as if she feared, against her hope, that Nikolai Vasilievich, in spite of all, might one day follow the example of the gentleman with the silk hat … and send Stanitski to her for his suits and underclothes.
She brooded.
“How long ago it seems,” she said at last. “To think how long ago!.. and we are still the same. Nothing has changed … nothing. Then it was the climax, and we held our breath expecting that now … now something must happen. Nothing happened. Then our whole life stood on edge, and the edge was sharp. We felt that the crisis could not last. We waited for an explosion. But it never came. The crisis still dragged on: it lapsed into a perpetual crisis; but the edges blunted. And nothing happened. Life drags on: a series of compromises. And we drag along, and try to patch it up … but it won’t. And it won’t break. And nothing happens. Nothing ever happens. Nothing happens.…”
“When I was very young,” I said, “I thought that life must have a plot, like a novel. But life is most unlike a novel; more ludicrous than a novel. Perhaps it is a good thing that it is. I don’t want to be a novel. I don’t want to be a story or a plot. I want to live my life as a life, not as a story.”
“Yes,” she said, pursuing her own thought. “Nothing happens. Nothing.…”
The black night gazed through the window. The samovar produced melancholy notes. Tea was getting cold on the table.
XII
“WOULD SHE COME?” I THOUGHT, AS NEXT morning we drove off to the wharf. We passed a lonely square with a solitary Chink with a tin sword. That was the last we saw of Vladivostok.
The family came to see us off in practically its full strength. But she did not come. That settled it.
Nikolai Vasilievich was unshaven — a perfectly correct omission in a Russian gentleman. He wore blue spectacles, a bowler hat, a summer coat and goloshes. On the pier we talked of the political situation. The Admiral repeated but one phrase: “We are not to blame.” The Russian General shook his head and blamed some vague, unknown power in rather vague, indefinite terms with a rather vague, indefinite blame, and then summed up the situation with “I told you so!” though the substance of his telling was all very mysterious. But both fools and wise men alike had long given up the attempt to discover any meaning whatsoever in this resplendent General’s utterances; and if they listened to him at all, their attention was usually concentrated on his face or uniform or any other object near at hand.
She had not come. That settled it.
It rained, as on the day we arrived.
Then the Admiral came up to Nikolai Vasilievich to say good-bye. “Well, Nikolai Vasilievich,” he said, “what will you do?”
“Well … I’ll wait,” said Nikolai Vasilievich. “I don’t think it can be long now.…”
PART IV. NINA
I
AND THIS NOW IS THE ENDING, THE LIEBESTOD OF my theme. We had left so suddenly. Her last words, look, gesture had “settled it.” But now, in retrospect, the things that “settled it” were, in their very vagueness, just the things striving to unsettle me, as I resumed my interrupted course at Oxford, having “relinquished my commission,” thanks to the conclusion of the war. Was she à moi, or wasn’t she? Well, was she? She was. She wasn’t. Oh — how the hell could I know!