Nina Fyodorovna adored her husband. And now, listening to the historical novel, she was thinking how much she had gone through in her life, how much she had suffered, and that if anyone were to describe her life it would make a very pathetic story. As the tumor was in her breast, she was persuaded that love and her domestic grief were the causes of her illness, and that jealousy and tears had brought her to her hopeless state.
At last Alexei Fyodorovich closed the book and said:
“That’s the end, and thank God for it. Tomorrow we’ll begin a new one.”
Nina Fyodorovna laughed. She had always been given to laughter, but of late Laptev had begun to notice that at moments her mind seemed weakened by illness, and she would laugh at the smallest trifle, and even without any cause at all.
“Yulia came before dinner while you were out,” she said. “So far as I can see, she hasn’t much faith in her papa. ‘Let Papa go on treating you,’ she said, ‘but write in secret to the holy elder to pray for you, too.’ There is a holy man somewhere here. Yulia forgot her parasol here; you must take it to her tomorrow,” she went on after a brief pause. “No, when the end comes, neither doctors nor holy men are any help.”
“Nina, why can’t you sleep at night?” Laptev asked, to change the subject.
“Oh well, I don’t go to sleep—that’s all. I lie and think.”
“What do you think about, dear?”
“About the children, about you . . . about my life. I’ve gone through a great deal, Alyosha, you know. When one begins to remember and remember. . . . My God!” She laughed. “It’s no joke to have borne five children as I have, to have buried three. . . . Sometimes I was expecting to be confined while my Grigory Nikolaich would be sitting at that very time with another woman. There would be no one to send for the doctor or the midwife. I would go into the passage or the kitchen for the servant, and there Jews, tradesmen, money-lenders would be waiting for him to come home. My head used to go round. . . . He did not love me, though he never said so openly. Now I’ve grown calmer—it doesn’t weigh on my heart; but in old days, when I was younger, it hurt me—ach! how it hurt me, darling! Once—while we were still in the country—I found him in the garden with a lady, and I walked away. . . . I walked on aimlessly, and I don’t know how, but I found myself in the church porch. I fell on my knees: ‘Queen of Heaven!’ I said. And it was night, the moon was shining. . . .”
She was exhausted, she began gasping for breath. Then, after resting a little, she took her brother’s hand and went on in a weak, toneless voice:
“How kind you are, Alyosha! . . . And how clever! . . . What a good man you’ve grown up into!”
At midnight Laptev said good night to her, and as he went away he took with him the parasol that Yulia Sergeyevna had forgotten. In spite of the late hour, the servants, male and female, were drinking tea in the dining-room. How disorderly! The children were not in bed, but were there in the diningroom, too. They were all talking softly in undertones and had not noticed that the lamp was smoking and would soon go out. All these people, big and little, were disturbed by a whole succession of bad omens and were in an oppressed mood. The glass in the hall had been broken, the samovar had been buzzing every day, and, as though on purpose, was even buzzing now. They were describing how a mouse had jumped out of Nina Fyodorovna’s boot when she was dressing. And the children were quite aware of the terrible significance of these omens. The elder girl, Sasha, a thin little brunette, was sitting motionless at the table, and her face looked scared and woebegone, while the younger, Lida, a chubby fair child of seven, stood beside her sister looking from under her brows at the light.
Laptev went downstairs to his own rooms in the lower story, where under the low ceilings it was always close and smelled of geraniums. In his sitting-room, Panaurov, Nina Fyodorovna’s husband, was sitting reading the newspaper. Laptev nodded to him and sat down opposite. Both sat still and said nothing. They used to spend whole evenings like this without speaking, and neither of them was in the least put out by this silence.
The little girls came down from upstairs to say good night. Deliberately and in silence, Panaurov made the sign of the cross over them several times and gave them his hand to kiss. They dropped curtseys and then went up to Laptev, who had to make the sign of the cross and give them his hand to kiss also. This ceremony with the hand-kissing and curtseying was repeated every evening.
When the children had gone out Panaurov laid aside the newspaper and said:
“It’s not very lively in our God-fearing town! I must confess, my dear fellow,” he added with a sigh, “I’m very glad that at last you’ve found some distraction.”
“What do you mean?” asked Laptev.
“I saw you coming out of Dr. Byelavin’s just now. I expect you don’t go there for the sake of the papa.”
“Of course not,” said Laptev, and he blushed.
“Well, of course not. And by the way, you wouldn’t find such another old brute as that papa if you hunted by daylight with a candle. You can’t imagine what a foul, stupid, clumsy beast he is! You cultured people in the capitals are still interested in the provinces only on the lyrical side, only from the paysage and Poor Anton point of view, but I can assure you, my boy, there’s nothing logical about it; there’s nothing but barbarism, meanness, and nastiness—that’s all. Take the local devotees of science—the local intellectuals, so to speak. Can you imagine there are here in this town twenty-eight doctors? They’ve all made their fortunes, and they are living in houses of their own, and meanwhile the population is in just as helpless a condition as ever. Here Nina had to have an operation, quite an ordinary one really, yet we were obliged to get a surgeon from Moscow; not one doctor here would undertake it. It’s beyond all conception. They know nothing, they understand nothing. They take no interest in anything. Ask them, for instance, what cancer is—what it is, what it comes from.”
And Panaurov began to explain what cancer was. He was a specialist on all scientific subjects and explained from a scientific point of view everything that was discussed. But he explained it all in his own way. He had a theory of his own about the circulation of the blood, about chemistry, about astronomy. He talked slowly, softly, convincingly.
“It’s beyond all conception,” he pronounced in an imploring voice, screwing up his eyes, sighing languidly, and smiling as graciously as a king, and it was evident that he was very well satisfied with himself and never gave a thought to the fact that he was fifty.
“I am rather hungry,” said Laptev. “I should like something savory.”
“Well, that can easily be managed.”
Not long afterwards Laptev and his brother-in-law were sitting upstairs in the dining-room having supper. Laptev had a glass of vodka and then began drinking wine. Panaurov drank nothing. He never drank and never gambled, yet in spite of that he had squandered all his own and his wife’s property and had accumulated debts. To squander so much in such a short time, one must have, not passions, but a special talent. Panaurov liked dainty fare, liked a handsome dinner service, liked music after dinner, speeches, bowing footmen, to whom he would carelessly fling tips of ten, even twenty-five rubles. He always took part in all lotteries and subscriptions, sent bouquets to ladies of his acquaintance on their birthdays, bought cups, stands for glasses, studs, ties, walking sticks, scents, cigarette holders, pipes, lap dogs, parrots, Japanese bric-a-brac, antiques; he had silk nightshirts, and a bedstead made of ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl. His dressing gown was a genuine Bokhara, and everything was to correspond; and on all this there went every day, as he himself expressed, “a deluge” of money.