“The younger generation … A star of science and the light of the church … Just look, a priest will burst forth from this long-hemmed hallelujah. It’s all well and good, we may have to kiss his hand … What of it … It’s God’s will …”
Soon, snoring could be heard. Von Koren and the deacon finished drinking their tea and exited out onto the street.
“Are you set on returning to your goby fishing?” the zoologist asked.
“No, it’s a little too hot.”
“Come over to my place. You can pack up some things that need to be shipped and some incidentals need to be rewritten. By the way, we can knock around ideas about how to occupy your time. You need to work, Deacon. You can’t just keep doing what you’ve been doing.”
“Your words are fair and logical,” the deacon said, “but my laziness finds excuses in the circumstance surrounding my true calling. You yourself know that an indeterminate situation certainly contributes to people’s apathetic states. Whether I’ve been sent here temporarily or permanently, God alone knows. I live here in uncertainty as my deaconess vegetates at her father’s and longs for me. And, to confess, my brain has spoiled from being left out in the heat.”
“That’s nonsense,” said the zoologist. “You can get used to the heat, and you can get used to being without your deaconess. It’s not worth it to let yourself go. You need to get a hold of yourself.”
V
Nadezhda Fyodorovna was on her way for a morning swim, and behind her with a pitcher, a copper basin, with sheets and a sponge followed her scullery maid, Olga. Off in the harbor stood two unfamiliar steamships with dirty white pipes, evidently foreign cargo ships. Random men in white with white work shoes walked along the wharf and yelled loudly in French, and responses were yelled to them from the steamships. In the town’s small church the bells rang sprightly.
“Today’s Sunday!” Nadezhda Fyodorovna remembered with satisfaction.
She felt herself to be in total good health and was in a cheerful, festive mood. In a spacious new dress, made of rough pongee intended for men’s clothing, and a big straw hat, the wide scope of which was severely bent at the ears, so that her face looked as though it were in a box, she appeared very cute to herself. Her thoughts were on how in the entire town there was but one young, attractive, intelligent woman—that’s her, and that she alone knew how to dress affordably, stylishly and with good taste. For instance, this dress cost only twenty-two rubles, and besides that, it’s adorable! In the entire town, only she was comely, and there were many men, and for this reason they all, willing or not, must envy Laevsky.
She rejoiced that Laevsky had been cold to her in the recent past, maintaining civility though occasionally becoming petulant and rude; previously, she would respond to all his high-jinks and contempt, either cold or strange incomprehensible glares, with tears, reproach and threaten to leave him or starve herself to death; now in reply she would only blush red, look guiltily at him and rejoice that he wasn’t tender to her. If he would scold or threaten her, that would be even better and more pleasant, seeing as how she felt herself to be thoroughly guilty before him. It seemed to her that she was to blame, first, in that she didn’t share his vision of a life of toil, for which he had cast off Petersburg and traveled here to the Caucasus, and she was convinced that he’d been angry with her in the immediate past namely for this reason. When she had set out for the Caucasus, it seemed to her that from day one she would find a secluded corner on the shore, a cozy garden in the shade, with birds and brooks, where she could plant flowers and vegetables, raise ducks and chickens, receive visits from neighbors, heal poor geezers and distribute books to them; it turned out that the Caucasus were nothing but bald mountains, forests and a prodigious expanse, where a long time must be spent selecting, endeavoring, constructing, and that there aren’t any neighbors here, and it’s very hot, and you could get robbed. Laevsky was in no hurry to obtain a plot of land; she was happy about this, and they definitely had both silently agreed to never bring up the subject of a life of toil. He’s gone quiet, she thought, it means that he’s angry at her for having gone quiet.
Second, in the past two years and without his consent, she’d purchased certain odds and ends at the Achmianov Shop adding up to around three hundred rubles. She’d purchased a little at a time, some fabric here, silk there, an umbrella here, and without noticing she had accumulated this debt.
“I’ll tell him about it today …” she decided, but immediately realized that with Laevsky’s current mood it wouldn’t be a bit comfortable to talk to him about debt.
In the third place, she had already twice, in Laevsky’s absence, received Kirilin, the police captain: once in the morning when Laevsky had gone for a swim, and another time at midnight, while he was playing cards. Recalling this, Nadezhda Fyodorovna blushed and looked over at the scullery maid, as though fearing that she could overhear her thoughts. The long, unbearably hot, listless days, the fine tedious evenings, the airless nights, and this whole way of life, when you don’t know from morning to evening how to spend the excess time, and the obsessive thought that she is the youngest and most beautiful woman in town but that she is wasting her youth, and that Laevsky himself is honest and filled with ideas but monotonous, perpetually dragging his shoes, gnawing his fingernails and boring her with his caprices—all this had resulted in her being overwhelmed by desire bit by bit, and she, like a madwoman, thought about one and the same thing day and night. In her own breathing, in her gaze, in the tone of her voice and her gait, she felt nothing but desire; the roar of the sea told her that she must love, as did the evening dusk, as did the mountains, as did … And when Kirilin became solicitous of her, she neither had the strength nor the inclination, and could not refuse, and gave herself to him …
Now the foreign steamships and people in white reminded her of an enormous hall, for some reason; together with the French speech, sounds of a waltz began to ring in her ears, and her chest began to quiver with pointless joy. She wanted to dance and to speak French.
She joyfully realized that there was nothing so terrible in her betrayal. That her soul had played no part in the betrayal; she continued to love Laevsky, and this was evident in that she coveted him, longed for and pined for him, when he was away from home. Kirilin had revealed himself to be so vulgar, though quite attractive; everything had already been broken off with him and there would be nothing further. What there had been had passed, it was no one else’s business, and even if Laevsky did find out, he would never believe it.
There was only one bathhouse for women on the shore, seeing as how the men swam in the open air. Entering the bathhouse, Nadezhda Fyodorovna encountered the matronly dame, Maria Konstantinovna Bityugova, the wife of a civil servant, and her fifteen-year-old daughter, Katya, a pupil at the gymnasium. Both sat undressing on a little bench. Maria Konstantinovna was a kind, enthusiastic and delicate personage, who spoke with largo and pathos. She had lived as a governess until the age of thirty-two, then married the civil servant Bityugov, a small, bald man who swept his hair up at the temples and was generally very agreeable. Even now, she was still in love with him, grew jealous easily, blushed at the mention of the word “love” and assured everyone that she was very happy.
“My dear!” she said enthusiastically, seeing Nadezhda Fyodorovna, donning a look onto her face that all of her acquaintances referred to as almond infusion. “Darling, how pleasant it is that you’ve come! We shall all swim together—how enchanting!”