to conceal his excitement. His hands started shaking, his necl swelled up and turned crimson. He ordered his racing dro- zhky to be harnessed and drove off somewhere. When Tanys saw him whipping the horses and pulling his cap almost onti his ears, she realized the kind of mood he was in, lockei herself in her room and cried all day long.
The peaches and plums in the hothouses were alread; ripe. The packing and despatch of this delicate, tempera- mental cargo required a great deal of care, labour and trouble Because of the very hot, dry summer, each tree needet watering, which involved a great deal of the gardeners' time Swarms of caterpillars appeared, which the gardeners - evei Pesotsky and Tanya- squashed with their bare fingers, mud to Kovrin's disgust. Besides this, they had to take orders foi fruit and trees for the autumn and conduct an extensiv< correspondence. And at the most critical time, when no on< seemed to have a moment to spare, the harvesting started am this took half the work-force away from the garden. Extremel; sunburnt, worn-out and in a dreadful mood, Pesotsky woul( tear off into the garden, then out into the fields, shoutinj that they were tearing him to pieces and that he was going ti put a bullet in his head.
And now there were rows about the trousseau, to whicl the Pesotskys attached no little importance. The snipping o scissors, the rattle of sewing-machines, the fumes from th< hot-irons, the tantrums of the dressmaker - a nervous, touch; woman - had everyone's head in a whirl in that household And as ill luck would have it, guests turned up every day am 26 had to be amused, fed, even put up for the night. But all thii
toil passed by unnoticed, as though in a mist. Tanya felt as if she had been caught quite unawares by love and happiness, although, from the age of fourteen, she had been somehow sure that Kovrin would marry her, and no one else. She was amazed, bewildered and could not believe what had hap- pened. One moment she would feel such joy that she wanted to fly up into the clouds and offer prayers to God; another time she would suddenly remember that she would have to leave her little nest and part from her father in August; on another occasion the thought would come to her, God knows from where, that she was an insignificant, trivial sort of woman, unworthy of a great man like Kovrin, and she would go to her room, lock the door and cry bitterly for several hours. When they had visitors she would suddenly find Kovrin extremely handsome and think that all the women were in love with him and jealous of her. And her heart would fill with rapturous pride, as if she had conquered the whole world. But he only had to give some young woman a welcoming smile and she would tremble with jealousy, go to her room - and there would be tears again. These new feelings took complete hold of her, she helped her father as though she were a machine and was blind to peaches, caterpil- lars, workers, oblivious of how swiftly the time was passing.
Almost exactly the same thing was happening to Pesotsky. He worked from morning till night, was always hurrying off somewhere, would boil over and lose his temper, but all this in some kind of magical half-sleep. He seemed to be two different persons at once: one was the real Pesotsky, listening to the head gardener Ivan Karlych's reports of things going 27
wrong, flaring up and clutching his head in despair; the other was not the real Pesotsky, a half-intoxicated person who would suddenly break off a conversation about business in the middle of a sentence, tap the head gardener on the shoulder and mutter, 'Whatever you say, good stock matters. His mother was an amazing, noble, brilliant woman. It was a pleasure looking at her kind, bright, pure face, the face of an angel. She was excellent at drawing, wrote poetry, spoke five languages, sang . . . The poor woman, God rest her soul, died of consumption.'
The unreal Pesotsky would continue after a brief silence, 'When he was a boy, growing up in my house, he had the same angelic, bright, kind face. And his look, his movements and his conversation were like his mother's - gentle and refined. And as for his intellect, he always staggered us with his intellect. By the way, he didn't become an ma for nothing, oh no! But you wait and se, Ivan Karlych, what he'll be like in ten years' time! There'll be no touching him!'
But at this point the real Pesotsky would suddenly take charge, pull a terrifying face, clutch his head and shout, 'The swines! They've polluted, fouled, frozen everything solid! The garden's ruined! It's finished!'
But Kovrin kept on working with his former enthusiasm and did not notice all the commotion around him. Love only added fuel to the flames. After every meeting with Tanya he would return to his room feeling happy, exultant and would pick up a book or manuscript with the same passion with which he had just kissed Tanya and declared his love. What the black monk had told him about God's Chosen, Eternal 28 Truth, humanity's glittering future and so on lent his work a
special, remarkable significance and filled his heart with pride and awareness of his own outstanding qualities. Once or twice a week he met the black monk in the park or in the house, had a talk with him, but it did not frighten him. On the contrary, it delighted him, as he was now firmly convinced that these kinds of visions visited only the select few, only outstanding men who had dedicated themselves to an idea.
One day the monk appeared at dinner time and sat by the window in the dining-room. Kovrin was overjoyed and deftly started a conversation with Pesotsky on a topic that the monk would very likely find interesting. The black visitor listened and nodded his head amiably. Pesotsky and Tanya listened too, cheerfully smiling and without suspecting that Kovrin was speaking not to them, but to his hallucination.
The Feast of the Assumption came unnoticed and soon afterwards the wedding-day, which, as Pesotsky insisted, was celebrated with 'a great splash', that is to say, with senseless festivities that went on for two whole days. They got through three thousand roubles' worth of food and drink, but with that miserable hired band, the riotous toasts and scurrying servants, the noise and the crush, they did not appreciate the expensive wines, nor the startling delicacies that had been ordered from Moscow.
6
One long winter's night Kovrin was reading a French novel in bed. Poor Tanya, who suffered from headaches in the 29
evening as she wasn't used to town life, had long been asleep and was muttering something incoherent.
Three o'clock struck. Kovrin snuffed the candle and lay down. He remained with eyes closed for a long time, but he could not sleep, possibly because the bedroom was very hot and Tanya was talking in her sleep. At half past four he lit the candle again and this time he saw the black monk sitting in the armchair near the bed.
'Good evening,' the monk said. After a brief pause he asked, 'What are you thinking about now?'
'Fame,' Kovrin answered. 'I've just been reading a French novel about a young scholar who does stupid things and who's wasting away because of his longing for fame. This longing is something I can't understand.'
'That's because you're intelligent. You're indifferent to fame, it's a toy that doesn't interest you.'
'Yes, that's true.'
'Fame doesn't tempt you. What is flattering, or amusing, or edifying in having your name carved on a tombstone only for it to be rubbed off by time, gilding as well? Fortunately there are too many of you for humanity's weak memory to retain your names.'
'I understand that,' Kovrin agreed. 'And why should they be remembered? But let's talk about something else. Happi- ness, for example. What is happiness?'
When the clock struck five he was sitting on the bed, his feet dangling over the carpet. He turned to the monk and said, 'In antiquity, a certain happy man grew scared of his 30 own good fortune in the end, it was so immense. So, to
propitiate the Gods, he sacrificed his favourite ring. Do you know that I myself, like Polycrates, am getting rather uneasy about my own good fortune? It seems strange that from morning to night I feel only joy, it fills my whole being and stifles all other feelings. As for sorrow, sadness or boredom, I just don't know what they are. Here J am, unable to sleep, suffering from insomnia, but I'm not bored. Seriously, I'm beginning to wonder what it all means.'