“With pleasure!” his wife said. She presented her brow for a kiss.
“Sweetheart, let’s go on an outing, a boat ride. Delightful as you are, will you grant me your lovely company?”
“Won’t it be too hot? But all right, whatever you like, sweetie, with pleasure. You row and I’ll steer. Let’s take some refreshments along. I’m very hungry.”
The major fingered the whip in his pocket. “I’ve taken care of the refreshments,” he said.
Half an hour later, the major and his wife were in a boat, rowing to the middle of the lake. The major sweated over the oars; his wife steered. “Just look at her! Just look at her!” the major muttered. Burning with impatience, he glared at his wife. She was lost in a daydream.
“Stop,” he bawled when the rowboat reached the middle. The rowboat stopped. The major’s face turned bright red. He grew weak in the knees.
His wife looked at him with surprise. “What’s the matter, Apollon, dear?”
He began to mutter, “I’m a m-m-muttonhead, am I? I’m a dunce, am I? You’ve never loved me and you never will, is it? Who do you think I am!”
Raising his arms heavenward and brandishing his whip, the major roared. The rowboat became a scene—o tempora, o mores!—of a terrible commotion. Indescribable. Unimaginable. Even an artist with the most vivid imagination, an artist who’s been to Italy, couldn’t depict the scene in question. The major’s wife snatched the whip out of his hand and was just beginning to apply it. The major was just reminded of the fact that he had no hair to cushion his scalp. And then the boat overturned.
At that moment, Ivan Pavlovich, the major’s former housekeeper and now the district clerk, was strolling along the shore. He was waiting for that moment of rapture when the young peasant women came down to the lake to bathe. He was smoking, whistling a tune, and thinking about the vision to come, when he heard bloodcurdling screams. The screaming sounded familiar—like his former masters.
“Help!” shouted the major and his wife.
Without thinking twice, the clerk threw off his jacket, pants, and boots, crossed himself three times, and dived into the lake. He swam better than he wrote or read, and he reached the drowning couple in about three minutes. He swam right up to them and found himself in a pickle. “Which one should I save?” he thought. “Damn it!” He wasn’t strong enough to save them both. He could barely manage one. His face screwed up into a grimace of bewilderment, he grabbed at the major first and then at his wife.
“Only one of you!” he gasped. “How can I handle two? What am I, a whale?”
“Save me, dear Vanya,” squeaked the major’s trembling wife as she held on to her husband’s coattails for dear life. “Do it and I’ll marry you! I swear by everything that I hold sacred I will! Help! I’m drowning!”
“Ivan! Ivan Pavlovich! Remember chivalry and all that!” the major bellowed. “Save me, be an angel! I’ll give you a ruble to buy vodka! Don’t let me perish in my prime. I’ll shower you with money. Go on, save me! What’s wrong with you! I’ll marry your sister Marya. Honest to God, I will! She’s a beauty. Don’t save her, the hell with her! Save me, or I’ll kill you!”
Ivan Pavlovich’s head started to spin. He almost went under himself. Two equally promising offers! Which to choose? Time was running out! “I’ll save them both!” he decided. “Two rewards are better than one. Yes, that’s it! God willing, I’ll make it. Here we go!” Crossing himself, Ivan Pavlovich grabbed the major’s wife by her arm, hooked the major’s tie with the index finger of the same hand, and, grunting, swam to the shore. “Keep kicking,” he ordered them, as he paddled with his free arm. He dreamed about his shiny future. “I’ll be married to the major’s wife and the major will be my brother-in-law . . . How’s that for the good life! Live it up, Vanya! You’ll eat sweet pastries and smoke expensive cigars! Glory be to God!” Ivan Pavlovich struggled to pull two people to shore with just one arm and the tide against him, but the thought of the bright future ahead bore him up. He grinned and chortled as he brought the major and his wife to the shore. His happiness was great. But then the major and his wife went back to beating each other. Ivan blanched and slapped himself on the forehead. He began to weep. He paid no attention to the peasant girls who emerged from the water, crowding around the major and his wife. He didn’t see the glances they threw at the brave clerk.
The major pulled some strings and the very next day Ivan Pavlovich was fired from the district administrative office. Meanwhile, the major’s wife banished Marya from her apartments, ordering her to “go back to your beloved master.”
“Oh, humankind,” Ivan Pavlovich kept repeating, as he strolled along the shore of the fateful lake, “is this what you call gratitude?”
*The battle for Kars was fought in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878. Russian troops besieged Kars, but Ottoman reinforcements lifted the siege and drove the Russians back. Several months later, the Russians attacked Kars again and finally captured it.
A CONFESSION, OR, OLYA, ZHENYA, ZOYA
(A Letter)
MA CHÈRE, my dearest friend, in your kind letter you ask, among other things, why it is that at the age of thirty-nine I remain unmarried.
My dear! I desire a family with all my heart. If I am single, it is because of the dastardly hand of Fate. Some fifteen times I have been on the verge of marriage and if I have not married—well, it’s because everything in the world, and my life in particular, is governed by chance. Only chance! And chance is a despot. I will relate several of these incidents, these misfortunes, that have condemned me to eke out an existence of contemptible solitude.
FIRST INCIDENT
It was a glorious morning in June. The sky was as clear as the clearest Berlin blue. Sunlight shimmered on the river and glowed in the dewy grass. Great diamonds sparkled on the river and the foliage. The birds sang as if trained to. We breathed in the heady aromas of a June morning as we strolled happily along a shady path strewn with yellow sand. The trees looked down kindly and whispered sweet and low. The hand of Olya Gruzdovskaia (now married to the son of your district chief of police) rested upon mine, and her tiny pinkie trembled upon my thumb. Her cheeks were flushed, and as for her eyes . . . Oh, ma chère, such wondrous eyes! Her blue eyes radiated charm, honesty, innocence, gaiety, and childlike naïveté. I feasted my eyes on her blond braids, on the tiny footprints of her little feet in the sand . . .
“I have devoted my life to science, Olya Maximovna,” I whispered to her, terrified lest that sweet pinkie slip from my thumb. “A professor’s chair awaits me in the future. I’ll be responsible for solving problems, scientific ones. It will be a working life, full of responsibilities, full of lofty—whatever their name is . . . In short, I’ll be a professor. I’m an honest man, Olya Maximovna. I’m not rich, but—I need a woman beside me who, by her presence”—embarrassed Olya lowered her sweet eyes; her sweet pinkie began to tremble—“who, by her presence . . . Olya! Look at the sky! See how clear and pure it is! My life is just as pure and boundless!”
No sooner had my tongue extricated itself from this nonsense than Olya looked up, yanked her hand away, and clapped. Several geese and goslings were walking toward us. Olya ran to the geese and stretched out her arms to them, laughing loudly. Oh, what adorable little arms they were, ma chère!
“Honk, honk, honk,” the geese called out, stretching their necks and looking askance at Olya.
“Goosie, goosie, goosie!” called Olya, reaching toward a gosling.