He had prepared himself so carefully. The mood of the company was just as he had hoped as quietly he began. The first poem was an old folk tale about Baba Yaga the witch, which made them laugh. The second was a poem to autumn. But the third was a love poem.
It was not very long – just five short stanzas. But he knew it was the best thing he had ever written. It spoke of the poet meeting a loved friend after a long absence and finding his love had turned to passion.
He told how, in the years of his own unhappy life, when they were parted, it was her memory that sustained him:
And that now, meeting his angel once more, she had awakened a passion; he was born again; and in his heart:
No one was looking at Olga. They did not realize. When Tatiana, after a pause, asked him who this lady was, he answered: ‘A woman I knew in St Petersburg.’ Everyone was quiet. Then he heard Ilya murmur: ‘Beautiful, my dear Seriozha. Exquisite. What a heart you have.’
And still, dear God, no one thought to look at Olga.
She was sitting a little back from Tatiana. She had only to move her face two inches to place it in shadow, and now she had done so, and bowed her head. But he had seen – even in the moonlight – he had seen her blush, then seen the tears upon her cheeks. Dear God, she knew. At last she understood.
They sat for several moments then Sergei suggested: ‘The night is young. Why don’t we walk to the skit where the monks live!’ The little hermitage lay at the end of the path. Karpenko at once endorsed the idea; Pinegin seemed agreeable. But Ilya and the two older women were disinclined. ‘We’ll go back to the cart and go home,’ Tatiana declared. ‘Let the young people go on.’ And so the party divided.
Those who continued were led by Sergei along the path. He had young Arina and Pinegin close beside him. Olga, seemingly lost in thought, walked just behind with Karpenko. Sergei moved along briskly, telling Pinegin something of the history of the little hermitage as they went. And so intent on this was he that, it seemed, he was taken by surprise to find after a few turns of the path that the Cossack and Olga had fallen behind so far they were out of sight.
‘Walk on,’ he said to Pinegin. ‘I’ll go and hurry them up.’ And a few minutes later the little Cossack came up to Pinegin, looking back over his shoulder as if the others were just round the corner, and remarked: ‘Olga’s talking to her brother. They’ll catch us up. This way.’ And he led them forward.
It was a couple of hundred yards further that the track forked. ‘Sergei said it’s this one,’ the Cossack said firmly. And they had walked on more than half a mile before the track petered out and Karpenko said: ‘Devil take it! I must have made a mistake.’
They stood together, Sergei and his sister. They had moved just off the path to the river bank, where they could watch the reflection of the moon and stars on the water. How pale she looked, in her long white summer dress. For a time they were silent.
‘The poem was for me?’
‘Of course.’
She gazed at the water. ‘I… had no idea.’ She stopped, then seemed to smile. ‘Dear Seriozha. It was very beautiful.’ She paused. ‘But the words… were not for a sister.’
‘No.’
She sighed. She shook her head, gently. ‘Seriozha… your poem spoke of love of the kind…’
‘Of passion.’
She took his hand and looked up at him for a moment, then down again at the water.
‘I am your sister.’
For a moment he did not speak. Then he said simply, ‘I dare say we shall never in our lives speak of this again. But, so that I may know, when I die – could you love me as I love you?’
She paused so long he thought the moon had moved upon the water. Then she shrugged. ‘What if I could?’ And then: ‘I love you as a brother.’ She squeezed his hand gently and turned her face up to his. ‘What is it you want, Seriozha, my poet of a brother? What is it you want?’
He smiled a little sadly. ‘I scarcely know. Everything. The universe. You.’
‘You want me?’
‘The universe, you: for me it’s one and the same.’
‘You brought me here, my dearest Seriozha, to seduce me?’ She smiled almost playfully.
‘You know that.’
She blushed. ‘I do now. Impossible – even if I would do such a thing. Not with my brother.’
‘Did you know,’ he asked softly, ‘that I’m only your half-brother?’
‘Yes, I did.’
She gave a little laugh that floated across the river.
‘Does that make it only half a crime?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps. It’s stronger almost than I am. An impulse.’
We can resist our impulses.’
‘Can we?’ he asked, in genuine surprise.
She did not move, however, and soon he put his arm around her while they stood and gazed silently at the sparkling night. He did not know how long they stood, but eventually he felt her give a little shiver, and taking his cue said soflty: ‘Let me this only time in my life, kiss you, just once.’
She looked down at the ground and slowly shook her head, and sighed and then looked up, with a strange, sad smile; then turned and reached up her hands around his neck.
By the time they got back to the fork in the path, Pinegin was getting irritable.
‘We’d better go on towards the skit,’ Karpenko said. ‘They must have passed us.’
But something – he did not know what – made Pinegin think otherwise.
‘I’m going back,’ he said.
‘They said to go on this way,’ the Cossack said anxiously.
But Pinegin took no notice. To Karpenko’s dismay, he went smartly off down the path; and after a minute or two of hesitation, the Cossack said: ‘I suppose we’d better follow.’
He might not have noticed them through the screen of trees if they had not moved. But suddenly Pinegin caught sight of a swaying shape as the two stood locked in each other’s arms. For a moment, just then, they seemed to draw apart, so that by the moonlight he saw their faces clearly. After a second’s pause, they moved again so that he could not see them.
For almost a minute he could not move. Olga, for whose hand he was about to ask, was with another man – her cursed brother. Stricken, he waited, and wondered what to do. Then cold anger seized him. Wasn’t she, after all, almost his own? Why should he let this happen? He started to turn off the path and move towards them.
But then he corrected himself. What was the point? This woman, whom he had loved, was dead to him now. And as he was thinking this, along came Karpenko.
‘Pinegin!’ the Cossack called out, so that his voice echoed through the trees. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Let’s go to the springs and wait for them there,’ Karpenko suggested loudly, so that the lovers could hear. And they walked back to the springs. Pinegin was very calm now. Coldly he counted the minutes. So many and Sergei had had her; fewer, and perhaps he had not.
It was just as he was on the point of deciding that, yes, this horror must have happened, that the two of them came down the path. Olga looked very pale, Sergei a little cautious. ‘We looked for you everywhere,’ he briefly said. And Pinegin nodded slowly.