“Such nice things are commonly said when one wants to justify one’s indifference,” said Lida. “To reject hospitals and schools is easier than to treat or teach people.”
“True, Lida, true,” the mother agreed.
“You threaten to stop working,” Lida went on. “Obviously you value your works highly. But let’s stop arguing, we’ll never see eye to eye, because I place the least perfect of all little libraries and first-aid kits, which you’ve just spoken of with such scorn, above all the landscape paintings in the world.” And straightaway, turning to her mother, she began in a completely different tone: “The prince has lost a lot of weight and is greatly changed since he visited us. They sent him to Vichy”8
She told her mother about the prince, so as not to speak with me. Her face was burning, and to conceal her agitation, she bent low to the table, as if she were nearsighted, pretending to read the newspaper. My presence was disagreeable. I said good-night and went home.
IV
Outside it was quiet; the village on the other side of the pond was already asleep, there was not a single light to be seen, and only the pale reflections of stars shone faintly on the pond. By the gate with the lions Zhenya stood motionless, waiting to see me off.
“Everyone’s asleep in the village,” I said to her, trying to make out her face in the darkness, and I saw her dark, sorrowful eyes directed at me. “The tavernkeeper and the horse thieves are sleeping peacefully, and we respectable people annoy each other and argue.”
It was a sad August night—sad because autumn was already in the air; covered by a purple cloud, the moon was rising, barely lighting up the road and the dark fields of winter wheat on either side. There were lots of falling stars. Zhenya walked down the road beside me, trying not to look at the sky, so as not to see the falling stars, which for some reason frightened her.
“I think you’re right,” she said, shivering from the night’s dampness. “If all people together could give themselves to spiritual activity, they would soon know everything.”
“Of course. We are higher beings, and if we were really conscious of the whole power of human genius and lived only for higher purposes, then in the end we would become like gods. But that will never be—mankind will degenerate, and there won’t be any trace of genius left.”
When the gates could no longer be seen, Zhenya stopped and hastily pressed my hand.
“Good night,” she said, shivering; her shoulders were covered only by a little blouse, and she hunched up from the cold. “Come tomorrow.”
The thought that I would be left alone, annoyed, dissatisfied with myself and with other people, gave me an eerie feeling; and now I myself tried not to look at the falling stars.
“Spend another moment with me,” I said. “I beg you.”
I loved Zhenya. It must be that I loved her for meeting me and seeing me off, for looking at me tenderly and with admiration. How touchingly beautiful her pale face was, her slender neck, her slender arms, her frailty, her idleness, her books! And her intelligence? I suspected that she was of uncommon intelligence, I admired the breadth of her views, perhaps because she thought differently from the severe and beautiful Lida, who did not like me. Zhenya liked me as an artist, I had won her heart with my talent, I passionately wanted to paint for her alone, and I dreamed of her as my little queen who, together with me, would one day possess these trees, fields, mists, the dawn, this nature, wonderful, enchanting, but in the midst of which I had till then felt myself hopelessly lonely and useless.
“Stay another moment,” I asked. “I implore you.”
I took off my coat and covered her chilled shoulders; she, afraid of looking ridiculous and unattractive in a man’s coat, laughed and threw it off, and at that moment I embraced her and began to shower kisses on her face, shoulders, hands.
“Till tomorrow!” she whispered, and cautiously, as if afraid of breaking the silence of the night, embraced me. “We have no secrets from each other, I must tell mama and my sister everything at once … It’s so scary! Mama’s nothing, mama likes you, but Lida!”
She ran towards the gates.
“Good-bye!” she called.
And then for about two minutes I listened to her running. I had no wish to go home, nor any reason to go there. I stood for a while in thought and quietly trudged back, to look again at the house where she lived, a dear, naïve old house, which seemed to look at me with the windows of its mezzanine as if with eyes, and to understand everything. I went past the terrace, sat down on a bench by the tennis court, in the darkness under an old elm, and looked at the house from there. In the windows of the mezzanine, where Missyus lived, there was a flash of bright light, then a peaceful green—the lamp had been covered with a shade. Shadows moved about … I was filled with tenderness, quietude, and satisfaction with myself—satisfaction that I could be carried away and fall in love—and at the same time I felt discomfort at the thought that just then, a few steps away from me, in one of the rooms of that house, lived Lida, who did not like, and perhaps hated, me. I sat and kept waiting, in case Zhenya came out, listening, and it seemed to me that there was talking in the mezzanine.
About an hour passed. The green light went out, and the shadows could no longer be seen. The moon had risen high over the house, lighting up the sleeping garden, the paths; the dahlias and roses in the flower garden in front of the house were clearly visible and seemed to be all of the same color. It was getting very cold. I left the garden, picked up my coat on the road, and unhurriedly plodded home.
When I came to the Volchaninovs’ the next day after dinner, the glass door to the garden was wide open. I sat on the terrace, expecting that Zhenya would appear at any moment on the tennis court beyond the flower garden, or on one of the paths, or that her voice would come from inside; then I went to the drawing room, the dining room. There was not a soul. From the dining room I walked down the long corridor to the front hall, then back. There were several doors in the corridor, and behind one of them Lida’s voice rang out.
“To a crow somewhere … God …” she said loudly and slowly, probably dictating. “God sent a piece of cheese … To a crow … somewhere … 9 Who’s there?” she suddenly called out, hearing my footsteps.
“It’s me.”
“Ah! Excuse me, I can’t come right now, I’m busy with Dasha.”
“Is Ekaterina Pavlovna in the garden?”
“No, she and my sister left this morning to visit our aunt in Penza province. And in the winter they will probably go abroad …” she added after a pause. “To a crow somewhere … God sent a pie-e-ece of che-e-ese … Have you written that?”
I went out to the front hall and, not thinking of anything, stood and looked from there at the pond and the village, and the words came to me:
“A piece of cheese … To a crow somewhere God sent a piece of cheese …”
And I left the estate by the same road I had come there on the first time, only in reverse: from the yard to the garden, past the house, then down the linden avenue … There a boy caught up with me and gave me a note. “I told my sister everything, and she demands that I part with you,” I read. “It is beyond me to upset her by my disobedience. Forgive me, and God grant you happiness. If you only knew how bitterly mama and I are weeping!”
Then the dark avenue of firs, the collapsed fence … In the field where rye was flowering then and quail were calling, cows and hobbled horses now wandered. Here and there on the hills the winter wheat showed bright green. A sober, everyday mood came over me, and I felt ashamed of everything I had said at the Volchaninovs, and bored with life, as before. I went home, packed, and left that evening for Petersburg.
I never saw the Volchaninovs again. Recently, going to the Crimea, I met Belokurov on the train. As usual, he was wearing his vest and embroidered shirt, and when I asked how he was getting along, he said: “By your prayers.” We got to talking. He had sold his estate and bought another, a smaller one, in Lyubov Ivanovna’s name. Of the Volchaninovs he said little. Lida, according to him, was still living at Shelkovka and teaching children in the school; she had gradually succeeded in gathering a circle of people sympathetic to her, who had formed themselves into a strong party and, at the last zemstvo elections, had “ousted” Balagin, who till then had had the whole district in his hands. Of Zhenya, Belokurov told me only that she was not living at home and he did not know where she was.