III
Vous m’écrivez, mon ange, des lettres de quatre pages plus vite que je ne puis les lire.*4
CORRESPONDENCE
Lizaveta Ivanovna had only just taken off her cape and bonnet when the countess sent for her and again ordered the carriage brought. They went out to take their seats. At the same moment as two lackeys picked up the old woman and put her through the door, Lizaveta Ivanovna saw her engineer just by the wheel; he seized her hand; before she could get over her fear, the young man disappeared: a letter remained in her hand. She hid it in her glove and during the whole ride neither heard nor saw anything. The countess had a habit of constantly asking questions as she drove: “Who was that we just passed?” “What’s the name of this bridge?” “What’s written on that signboard?” This time Lizaveta Ivanovna answered randomly and inaptly and made the countess angry.
“What’s the matter with you, old girl! Are you in a stupor or something? Either you don’t hear me or you don’t understand?…Thank God, I don’t mumble and haven’t lost my mind yet!”
Lizaveta Ivanovna was not listening to her. On returning home, she ran to her room, took the letter from her glove: it was not sealed. Lizaveta Ivanovna read it. The letter contained a declaration of love: it was tender, respectful, and taken word for word from a German novel. But Lizaveta Ivanovna did not know German and was very pleased with it.
However, the letter she had accepted troubled her greatly. It was the first time she had entered into secret, close relations with a young man. His boldness horrified her. She reproached herself for her imprudent behavior and did not know what to do: to stop sitting by the window and by her inattention cool the young officer’s desire for further pursuit? To send his letter back? To reply coldly and resolutely? There was no one to advise her, she had neither friend nor preceptress. Lizaveta Ivanovna decided to reply.
She sat down at her little writing table, took a pen, paper—and fell to thinking. Several times she began her letter—and tore it up: the expression seemed to her now too indulgent, now too severe. At last she managed to write a few lines that left her satisfied. “I am sure,” she wrote, “that you have honorable intentions and that you did not wish to insult me by a thoughtless act; but our acquaintance should not begin in such a way. I return your letter to you and hope that in future I will have no reason to complain of undeserved disrespect.”
The next day, seeing Hermann coming, Lizaveta Ivanovna got up from her embroidery, went to the reception room, opened a window, and threw the letter out, trusting in the young officer’s agility. Hermann ran, picked up the letter, and went into a pastry shop. Tearing off the seal, he found his own letter and Lizaveta Ivanovna’s reply. He had expected just that and returned home quite caught up in his intrigue.
Three days after that a sharp-eyed young mam’selle brought Lizaveta Ivanovna a note from a dress shop. Lizaveta Ivanovna opened it with trepidation, anticipating a demand for payment, and suddenly recognized Hermann’s handwriting.
“You’re mistaken, dearest,” she said, “this note isn’t for me.”
“No, it’s precisely for you!” the bold girl answered, not concealing a sly smile. “Kindly read it!”
Lizaveta Ivanovna ran through the note. Hermann demanded a rendezvous.
“It can’t be!” said Lizaveta Ivanovna, frightened both by the hastiness of the demand and by the means employed. “This surely wasn’t written to me!” And she tore the letter into little pieces.
“If the letter wasn’t for you, why did you tear it up?” said the mam’selle. “I would have returned it to the one who sent it.”
“Please, dearest,” said Lizaveta Ivanovna, flaring up at her remark, “in the future don’t bring me any notes! And tell the person who sent you that he ought to be ashamed…”
But Hermann would not quiet down. Lizaveta Ivanovna received letters from him each day, by one means or another. They were no longer translations from the German. Hermann wrote them, inspired by passion, and spoke a language that was all his own: in them were expressed both the inflexibility of his desires and the disorder of an unbridled imagination. Lizaveta Ivanovna no longer thought of sending them back: she reveled in them; she started replying to them—and her notes grew longer and tenderer by the hour. Finally, she threw the following letter to him from the window:
Tonight there is a ball at the * * * Embassy. The countess will be there. We will stay till about two o’clock. This is your chance to see me alone. As soon as the countess goes out, her servants will probably retire; there will be a doorman in the entryway, but he, too, usually goes to his closet. Come at 11:30. Go straight up the stairs. If you meet someone in the front hall, ask if the countess is at home. The answer will be no—and there will be nothing to do. You will have to go away. But you will probably not meet anyone. The maids stay in their quarters, all in one room. From the front hall turn left and go straight on to the countess’s bedroom. In the bedroom, behind the screen, you will see two small doors: the right one to the study, where the countess never goes; the left one to a corridor, where there is a narrow winding stairway: it leads to my room.
Hermann trembled like a tiger, waiting for the appointed time. By ten o’clock in the evening he was already standing in front of the countess’s house. The weather was awfuclass="underline" wind howled, wet snow fell in big flakes; the streetlamps shone dimly; the streets were deserted. Now and then a cabby dragged by with his scrawny nag, looking for a late customer. Hermann stood in nothing but his frock coat, feeling neither wind nor snow. At last the countess’s carriage was brought. Hermann saw how the lackeys carried the bent old woman out under the arms, wrapped in a sable fur coat, and how, after her, her ward flashed by in a light cloak, her head adorned with fresh flowers. The doors slammed. The carriage rolled off heavily over the loose snow. The doorman shut the front door. The windows went dark. Hermann started pacing around by the now deserted house: he went up to a streetlamp, looked at his watch—it was twenty past eleven. He stayed under the streetlamp, his eyes on the hands of the watch, counting the remaining minutes. At exactly half past eleven, Hermann stepped onto the countess’s porch and went into the brightly lit entryway. The doorman was not there. Hermann ran up the stairs, opened the door to the front hall, and saw a servant sleeping under a lamp in an old, soiled armchair. Hermann walked past him with a light and firm step. The reception room and drawing room were dark. The lamp in the front hall shone faintly on them. Hermann went into the bedroom. Before a stand filled with old icons flickered a golden lamp. Faded damask armchairs and sofas with down cushions and worn-off gilding stood in mournful symmetry against the walls covered with Chinese silk. On the walls hung two portraits painted in Paris by Mme Lebrun.7 One of them portrayed a man of about forty, red-cheeked and portly, in a light green uniform and with a decoration; the other a young beauty with an aquiline nose, her hair brushed back at the temples, powdered and adorned with a rose. Every corner was jammed with porcelain shepherdesses, table clocks made by the famous Leroy, little boxes, bandalores, fans, and various ladies’ knickknacks, invented at the end of the last century along with Montgolfier’s balloon and Mesmer’s magnetism.8 Hermann went behind the screen. There stood a small iron bed; to the right was the door leading to the study; to the left the other, to the corridor. Hermann opened it, saw the narrow winding stairway leading to the poor ward’s room…But he came back and went into the dark study.