" What notion is this? " she began. " Why go home? Why, it's not eleven o'clock."
" I wish it, and that's enough. Come along, and that's all about it."
" Don't be silly I Go home alone if you want to."
11 All right; then I shall make a scene."
The tax-collector saw the look of beatitude gradu- ally vanish from his wife's face, saw how ashamed and miserable she was — and he felt a little happier.
" Why do you want me at once? " asked his wife.
" I don't want you, but I wish you to be at home. I wish it, that's all."
At first Anna Pavlovna refused to hear of it, then she began entreating her husband to let her stay just another half-hour; then, without knowing why, she began to apologise, to protest — and all in a whisper, with a smile, that the spectators might not suspect that she was having a tiff with her husband. She began assuring him she would not stay long, only an- other ten minutes, only five minutes; but the tax-col- lector stuck obstinately to his point.
" Stay if you like," he said, " but I'll make a scene if you do."
And as she talked to her husband Anna Pavlovna looked thinner, older, plainer. Pale, biting her lips, and almost crying, she went out to the entry and be- gan putting on her things.
" You are not going? " asked the ladies in sur- prise. " Anna Pavlovna, you are not going, dear? "
" Her head aches," said the tax-collector for his wife.
Coming out of the club, the husband and wife walked all the way home in silence. The tax-col- lector walked behind his wife, and watching her downcast, sorrowful, humiliated little figure, he re- called the look of beatitude which had so irritated him at the club, and the consciousness that the beati- tude was gone filled his soul with triumph. He was pleased and satisfied, and at the same time he felt the lack of something; he would have liked to go back to the club and make every one feel dreary and miser- able, so that all might know how stale and worthless life is when you walk along the streets in the dark and hear the slush of the mud under your feet, and when you know that you will wake up next morning with nothing to look forward to but vodka and cards. Oh, how awful it is I
And Anna Pavlovna could scarcely walk. . . . She was still under the influence of the dancing, the music, the talk, the lights, and the noise; she asked herself as she walked along why God had thus afRicted her. She felt miserable, insulted, and choking with hate as she listened to her husband's heavy footsteps. She was silent, trying to think of the most offensive, biting, and venomous word she could hurl at her husband, and at the same time she was fully aware that no word could penetrate her tax- collector's hide. What did he care for words? Her bitterest enemy could not have contrived for her a more helpless position.
And meanwhile the band was playing and the darkness was full of the most rousing, intoxicating dance-tunes.
1886
ARIADNE
On the deck of a steamer sailing from Odessa to Sevastopol, a rather good-looking gentleman, with a little round beard, came up to me to smoke, and said:
" Notice those Germans sitting near the shelter? Whenever Germans or Englishmen get together, they talk about the crops, the price of wool, or their per- sonal affairs. But for some reason or other when we Russians get together we never discuss anything but women and abstract subjects — but especially women."
This gentleman's face was familiar to me already. We had returned from abroad the evening before in the same train, and at Volotchisk when the lug- gage was being examined by the Customs, I saw him standing with a lady, his travelling companion, be- fore a perfect mountain of trunks and baskets filled with ladies' clothes, and I noticed how embarrassed and downcast he was when he had to pay duty on some piece of silk frippery, and his companion pro- tested and threatened to make a complaint. After- wards, on the way to Odessa, I saw him carrying lit- tle pies and oranges to the ladies' compartment.
It was rather damp ; the vessel swayed a little, and the ladies had retired to their cabins.
The gentleman with the little round beard sat down beside me and continued:
" Yes, when Russians come together they dis- cuss nothing but abstract subjects and women. We are so intellectual, so solemn, that we utter noth- ing but truths and can discuss only questions of a lofty order. The Russian actor does not know how to be funny; he acts with profundity even in a farce. We're just the same: when we have got to talk of trifles we treat them only from an exalted point of view. It comes from a lack of boldness, sincerity, and simplicity. We talk so often about women, I fancy, because we are dissatisfied. We take too ideal a view of women, and make demands out of all proportion with what reality can give us; we get something utterly different from what we want, and the result is dissatisfaction, shattered hopes, and inward suffering, and if any one is suffering, he's bound to talk of it. It does not bore you to go on with this conversation? " " No, not in the least."
" In that case, allow me to introduce myself," said my companion, rising from his seat a little: " Ivan Ilyitch Shamohin, a Moscow landowner of a sort. . . . You I know very well."
He sat down and went on, looking at me with a genuine and friendly expression:
" A mediocre philosopher, like Max Nordau, would explain these incessant conversations about women as a form of erotic madness, or would put it down to our having been slave-owners and so on; I take quite a different view of it. I repeat, we are dissatisfied because we are idealists. We want the creatures who bear us and our children to be superior to us and to everything in the world. When we are young we adore and poeticize those with whom we are in love: love and happiness with us are synonyms. Among us in Russia marriage with- out love it despised, sensuality is ridiculed and in- spires repulsion, and the greatest success is enjoyed by those tales and novels in which women are beauti- ful, poetical, and exalted; and if the Russian has been for years in ecstasies over Raphael's Madonna, or is eager for the emancipation of women, I assure you there is no affectation about it. But the trouble is that when we have been married or been intimate with a woman for some two or three years, we be- gin to feel deceived and disillusioned: we pair off with others, and again — disappointment, again — repulsion, and in the long run we become convinced that women are lying, trivial, fussy, unfair, undevel- oped, cruel — in fact, far from being superior, are immeasurably inferior to us men. And in our dis- satisfaction and disappointment there is nothing left for us but to grumble and talk about what we've been so cruelly deceived in."
While Shamohin was talking I noticed that the Russian language and our Russian surroundings gave him great pleasure. This was probably because he had been very homesick abroad. Though he praised the Russians and ascribed to them a rare idealism, he did not disparage foreigners, and that I put down to his credit. It could be seen, too, that there was some uneasiness in his soul, that he wanted to talk more of himself than of women, and that I was in for a long story in the nature of a confession. And when we had asked for a bottle of wine and had each of us drunk a glass, this was how he did in fact be- gin: