Thus the yearning for Nina, for the nervous grasp of her always warm hands, alternated in Bobrov’s heart with aversion to the monotony and affected manners of her family. There were moments when he was quite ready to propose to her, although he realized that she, with her vulgar coquetry and spiritual inanity, would turn their married life into hell, and that they thought and talked in different languages, as it were. But he could not make up his mind and kept silent.
Now, as he rode to Shepetovka, he knew in advance what they were going to say in this or that case and how, and could even picture the expression on their faces. He knew that when from their veranda they sighted him coming on horseback, the young ladies, who were always waiting for “nice young men,” would start a long dispute over who was coming. And when he drew near, the one who had guessed rightly would jump and clap her hands and click her tongue, exclaiming perkily, “Well, now? I guessed it, didn’t I?” Then she would run to Anna Afanasyevna. “Bobrov’s coming, Mamma, I guessed it first!” And her mother, who would be lazily drying the teacups, would say to Nina – none other than Nina – as if she were telling her something funny and unexpected, “You know, Nina, Bobrov’s coming.” And finally they would all be loud in their surprise at seeing Bobrov step in.
IV
Fairway trotted along, snorting sonorously and tugging at the reins. The Shepetovka estate came into view ahead. Its white walls and red roof hardly showed through the thick green of lilacs and acacias. Below, a small pond stood out from its setting of green shores.
A woman was standing on the house steps. From afar Bobrov recognized Nina by the bright yellow blouse which set off her dusky complexion so beautifully, and at once, reining in the horse, he straightened up, and pulled back his feet, thrust deeply into the stirrups.
“Riding your treasure again, eh? I simply can’t bear the sight of that monster!” cried Nina in the gay and wayward tone of a spoilt child. She had long been in the habit of teasing him about his horse to whom he was so much attached. Someone was always being teased at Zinenko’s for something or other.
Bobrov threw the reins to the mill groom who had run up, patted the horse’s strong neck, dark with sweat, and followed Nina into the drawing-room. Anna Afanasyevna, who was sitting by the samovar all alone, affected great amazement at Bobrov’s arrival.
“Well, well! Andrei Ilyich!” she cried in a singsong. “Here you come at last!”
She pushed her hand against his lips as he greeted her, and asked him with her nasal twang, “Tea? Milk? Apples? What will you have?”
“Merci, Anna Afanasyevna.”
“Merci oui, ou merci non?”
French phrases like these were common in the Zinenko family. Bobrov would not have anything.
“Then go to the veranda,” Mme Zinenko permitted him graciously. “The young people are playing forfeits or something there.”
When he appeared on the veranda all the four young ladies exclaimed in unison, in exactly the same tone, and with the same twang, as their mother, “Well, well! Andrei Ilyich! Here’s someone we haven’t seen for ages! What will you have? Tea? Apples? Milk? Nothing? You don’t mean that! Perhaps you will have something, after all? Well, then sit down here and join in.”
They played “The Lady’s Sent a Hundred Rubles,” “Opinions,” and a game which lisping Kasya called “playing bowlth.” The guests were three students, who kept on sticking out their chests and striking dramatic attitudes, with one foot forward and one hand in the back pocket of their frock-coats; Miller, a technician distinguished by his good looks, stupidity, and wonderful baritone; and lastly a taciturn gentleman in grey, of whom nobody took any notice.
The game was not going well. The men performed their forfeits with a condescending, bored air, and the young ladies refused to perform theirs at all, whispering among themselves and laughing unnaturally.
Dusk was falling. A huge red moon floated up from behind the house-tops of the nearby village.
“Come inside, children!” Anna Afanasyevna shouted from the dining-room. “Ask Miller to sing for us.”
A moment later the young ladies’ voices rang through the rooms.
“We had a very good time,” they chirped round their mother. “We laughed so much!”
Nina and Bobrov remained on the veranda. She sat on the handrail, hugging a post with her left arm and nestling against it in an unconsciously graceful posture. Bobrov placed himself at her feet, on a low garden bench; as he looked up into her face he saw the delicate outlines of her throat and chin.
“Come on, tell me something interesting, Andrei Ilyich,” she commanded impatiently.
“I really don’t know what to tell you,” he replied. “It’s awfully hard to speak to order. So I’m wondering if there’s some collection of dialogues on various topics.”
“Fie! What a bo-ore you are,” she drawled. “Tell me, are you ever in good spirits?”
“And you tell me why you’re so afraid of silence. You feel uneasy the moment talk runs low. Is it so bad to talk silently?”
“ ‘Let’s be silent tonight,’ “ Nina sang, teasingly.
“Yes, let’s. Look: the sky is clear, the moon is red and big, and it’s so quiet out here. What else do we need?”
“ ‘And this barren and silly moon in these barren and silly heavens,’ “ Nina recited. “A propos, have you heard that Zina Makova is engaged to Protopopov? Going to marry him, after all! I can’t make out that Protopopov.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Zina refused him three times, but still he wouldn’t give up, and proposed for the fourth time. Well, he’ll have only himself to blame. She may come to respect him, but she’ll certainly never love him!”
These words were enough to make Bobrov’s gorge rise. He was always exasperated by the Zinenkos’ shallow, small-town vocabulary, made up of expressions like “She loves him, but doesn’t respect him,” or “She respects him, but doesn’t love him.” To their minds, these words fully described the most intricate relationships between man and woman. Likewise, they had only two expressions – “dark-haired” and “fair-haired” – to cover the whole range of the moral, intellectual, and physical peculiarities of any person.
Prompted by a vague desire to goad his anger, Bobrov asked, “And what sort of a man is this Protopopov?”
“Protopopov?” Nina reflected for a second. “He’s – well, he’s rather tall, with brown hair.”
“Is that all?”
“What else do you want? Oh, yes, he’s an exciseman.”
“And that is all? But can’t you really describe a man any better than that he has brown hair and is an exciseman, Nina Grigoryevna? Just think how many interesting, gifted and clever people we come across in life. Are they all nothing but ‘brown-haired excisemen’? See how eagerly peasant children watch life and how apt their judgement is. But you, an alert and sensitive girl, take no interest in anything, because you have a stock of a dozen battered drawing-room phrases. I know that if somebody mentions the moon in conversation you’re sure to put in ‘Like this barren and silly moon,’ etc. And if I tell you, say, about an unusual occurrence, I know beforehand that your comment will be, ‘A legend fresh but difficult to credit.’ It’s always like that, always. Believe me, for goodness’ sake, that all that is original and distinctive – ”
“I beg you not to lecture me!” Nina retorted.
He fell silent, with a bitter taste in his mouth, and they both sat for fully five minutes or so without speaking or moving. Suddenly rich chords rang out from the drawing-room, and they heard Miller start singing in a voice which, though slightly spoiled, was very expressive:
Where dancing was loudest and maddest,
In vanity’s violent pace,
I saw thee – the saddest of secrets
Look’d out from thy lovely face.