I was hanging wallpaper in the club, in one of the rooms adjacent to the reading room; in the evening, as I was about to leave, the daughter of the engineer Dolzhikov came into the room with a stack of books in her hands.
I bowed to her.
‘‘Ah, hello!’’ she said, recognizing me at once and offering her hand. ‘‘I’m very glad to see you.’’
She was smiling and, with curiosity and perplexity, examined my smock, the bucket of paste, the wallpaper spread out on the floor. I was embarrassed, and she also felt awkward.
‘‘Excuse me for looking at you like this,’’ she said. ‘‘They’ve told me a lot about you. Especially Dr. Blagovo— he’s simply in love with you. And I’ve become acquainted with your sister; a dear, sympathetic girl, but I haven’t been able to convince her that there’s nothing terrible in your simplification. On the contrary, you’re now the most interesting person in town.’’
She glanced again at the bucket of paste, at the wallpaper, and went on:
‘‘I asked Dr. Blagovo to make me better acquainted with you, but he obviously forgot or had no time. Be that as it may, we’re acquainted anyway, and if you were so good as simply to call on me one day, I’d be very much obliged to you. I do so want to talk! I’m a simple person,’’ she said, giving me her hand, ‘‘and I hope you won’t feel any constraint with me. Father’s not there, he’s in Petersburg.’’
She went to the reading room, rustling her skirts, and I, when I got home, was unable to fall asleep for a long time.
During this cheerless autumn, some kindly soul, evidently wishing to alleviate my existence a little, occasionally sent me now some tea and lemons, now some pastry, now a roast hazel grouse. Karpovna said it was brought each time by a soldier, but from whom she didn’t know; and the soldier asked whether I was in good health, whether I had dinner every day, and whether I had warm clothes. When the frosts struck, I received in the same way—in my absence, through a soldier—a soft knitted scarf that gave off a delicate, barely perceptible odor of perfume, and I guessed who my good fairy was. The scarf smelled of lily of the valley, Anyuta Blagovo’s favorite scent.
Towards winter we got more work, and things became more cheerful. Radish revived again, and we worked together in the cemetery church, where we primed the iconostasis10 for gilding. This was clean, peaceful work and, as our boys used to say, gainful. We could do a lot in one day, and the time passed quickly, imperceptibly. There was no cursing, or laughter, or loud talk. The place itself imposed silence and good order and was conducive to quiet, serious thoughts. Immersed in our work, we stood or sat motionless, like statues; there was a dead silence, as befitted a cemetery, so that if a tool was dropped or the flame sizzled in an icon lamp, these noises resounded sharply and hollowly—and we turned to look. After long silence, a humming would be heard, like the buzz of bees: this was a funeral service for an infant, being sung unhurriedly, softly, in a side chapel; or the artist painting a dove on the cupola with stars around it would start whistling quietly, then catch himself and fall silent at once; or Radish, answering his own thoughts, would say with a sigh: ‘‘Everything’s possible! Everything’s possible!’’; or a slow, mournful ringing would resound over our heads, and the painters would remark that it must be some rich man’s burial...
I spent my days in this silence, in this churchly dimness, and during the long evenings played billiards or went to the gallery of the theater in my new tricot suit, which I had bought with the money I earned. At the Azhogins’, theatricals and concerts had already begun; the sets were now painted by Radish alone. He told me the contents of the plays and tableaux vivants he saw at the Azhogins’, and I listened to him with envy. I had a strong yearning to attend the rehearsals, but I couldn’t bring myself to go to the Azhogins’.
A week before Christmas, Dr. Blagovo arrived. Again we argued and in the evenings played billiards. When he played, he took off his frock coat and unbuttoned his shirt on his chest, and generally tried to make himself look like a desperate carouser. He drank little but noisily and, in such a poor, cheap tavern as the Volga, managed to leave twenty roubles an evening.
Again my sister began to frequent me; the two of them, seeing each other, were surprised each time, but from her joyful, guilty face it was evident that these meetings were not accidental. One evening while we were playing billiards, the doctor said to me:
‘‘Listen, why don’t you ever call on Miss Dolzhikov? You don’t know Marya Viktorovna, she’s intelligent, lovely, a simple, kind soul.’’
I told him how the engineer had received me in the spring.
‘‘Trifles!’’ the doctor laughed. ‘‘The engineer’s one thing, and she’s another. Really, dear heart, don’t offend her, go and see her one day. For instance, we could go and see her tomorrow evening. Do you want to?’’
He persuaded me. The next evening, donning my new tricot suit and feeling worried, I went to see Miss Dolzhikov. The footman no longer seemed so arrogant and fearsome, nor the furniture so luxurious, as on that morning when I went there as a petitioner. Marya Viktorovna was expecting me and greeted me like an old acquaintance, and gave my hand a firm, friendly shake. She was wearing a gray flannel dress with full sleeves, and a hairstyle which, when it became fashionable in our town a year later, was known as ‘‘dog’s ears.’’ The hair was combed down from the temples and over the ears, and it made Marya Viktorovna’s face seem broader, and this time she looked to me very much like her father, whose face was broad, ruddy, and had something of the coachman in its expression. She was beautiful and graceful but not young, around thirty by the look of it, though in reality she was no more than twenty-five.
‘‘The dear doctor, how grateful I am to him!’’ she said as she was seating me. ‘‘If it weren’t for him, you wouldn’t have come to see me. I’m bored to death! Father went away and left me alone, and I don’t know what to do in this town.’’
Then she began asking me where I was working now, how much I earned, where I lived.
‘‘You spend on yourself only what you earn?’’ she asked.
‘‘Yes.’’
‘‘Lucky man!’’ she sighed. ‘‘All the evil in life, it seems to me, comes from idleness, from boredom, from inner emptiness, and that is all inevitable when one is used to living at the expense of others. Don’t think I’m showing off, I tell you sincerely: it’s uninteresting and unpleasant to be rich. Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness 11—so it says, because generally there is not and cannot be a mammon of righteousness.’’
She looked the furniture over with a serious, cold expression, as if she was taking an inventory, and went on:
‘‘Comfort and conveniences possess a magic power; they gradually suck in even strong-willed people. My father and I once lived moderately and simply, but now you see how. Who ever heard of it,’’ she said, shrugging her shoulders, ‘‘we go through twenty thousand a year! In the provinces!’’