'Is your mother still alive?' he asked, probably because Layevsky reminded him of a helpless child. .
'Yes, but we don't see each other. She couldn't forgive me this entanglement.'
Samoylenko was fond of his friend, seeing in Layevsky a good sort, a typical student, a hail-fellow-well-met kind of chap with whom y.ou could have a drink, a laugh and a good talk. What he understood about Layevsky he intensely disliked. Layevsky drank to excess and at the wrong times. He played cards, despised his work, lived beyond his means, was always using bad language, wore his slippers in the street, quarrelled with Nadezhda in public. These were the things that Samoylenko disliked. As for Layevsky's having once belonged to a university arts faculty, subscribing now to two literary reviews, often talking so cleverly that most people couldn't understand him, and living with an educated woman—none of these things did Samoylenko understand, and them he liked. He thought Layevsky his superior, and looked up to him.
'One other point,' Layevsky said, shaking his head. 'But keep this to yourself—I'm not letting on to Nadezhda just yet, so don't blurt it out in front of her. The day before yesterday I had a letter to say that her husband's died of softening of the brain.'
'May he rest in peace,' Samoylenko sighed. 'But why keep it from her?'
'Showing her that letter would be like offering to take her straight to the altar. We must clarify our relations first. Once she's convinced we can't go on living together, I'll show her the letter. It will be safe then.'
'Know what, Ivan?' said Samoylenko, and his face suddenly assumed a sad, pleading look as if he was about to ask a great favour but feared to be turned down. 'You get married, old man.'
'What for?'
'Do the right thing by this wonderful woman. fn her husband's death I see the hand of Providence showing you your way ahead.'
'But, my dear man, that's out of the question, can't you see? Marry- ing without love—it's like an atheist celebrating mass, it's base, it's beneath a man's dignity.'
'But it's your duty.'
'Oh! And why is it my duty?' Layevsky asked irritably.
'You took her from her husband and assumed responsibility.'
'But I tell you in plain language—1 don't love her!'
'Well, in that case show her respect. Pretend a bit '
'Respect? Pretend?' mocked Layevsky. 'Do you take her for a mother superior or something? You're a poor psychologist and physio- logist if you think honour and respect will get you very far where living with a woman's concerned. A woman's chief need is bed!'
'But, my dear Ivan,' said Samoylenko in embarrassment.
'You're an old baby—it's all words with you. Whereas I'm prema- turely senile and actually involved, so we'll never understand each other. Let's change the subject. Mustafa,' Layevsky shouted to the waiter. 'What do we owe you?' 'No, no, no!' panicked the doctor, clutching Layevsky's arm. 'I'll pay, it was my order. Chalk it up to me,' he shouted to Mustafa.
The friends stood up and set off in silence along the front. At the boulevard they stopped to say good-bye and shook hands.
'You're a spoilt lot, gentlemen,' sighed Samoylenko. 'Fate sends you a young, beautiful, educated woman—and you don't want her. But if God sent me even a crippled old crone, I'd be so happy, if she was only affectionate and kind. I'd live with her in my vineyard and '
Samoylenko pulled himself up.
'And the old bitch could damn well keep my samovar going!' said he.
He took farewell of Layevsky, and set off downwn the boulevard. Ponderous, imposing, stern of countenance, in his snow-white tunic and highly-polished boots, he paraded the boulevard, thrusting out a chest which sported the Order of St. Vladimir and ribbon. At such times he was very pleased with himself, feeling as if the whole world enjoyed watching him. He looked from side to side without turning his head, and found the boulevard's amenities excellent. The young cypresses, eucalvptus trees and ugly, spindly palms were fine indeed, and would spread a broad shade in time. The Circassians were a decent, hospitable peoplc.
'Odd how Layevsky dislikes the Caucasus,' he thought. 'Very odd, that.'
He met five soldiers with rifles who saluted him. On the right of the boulevard a civil servant's wife was walking on the pavement with her schoolboy son.
'Morning, Mrs. Bityugov,' Samoylenko shouted with a pleasant smile. 'Been for a dip? Ha, ha, ha! My regards to your husband.'
He walked on, still smiling pleasantly. But seeing an army medical orderly approach, he suddenly frowned and stopped the man.
'Is there anyone in the hospital?' he asked.
'No one, General.' 'Eh?'
'No one, Gcneral.'
'Fine. You run along then.'
Swaying majestically, he made. for a lemonade stand kept by a full- bosomed old Jewcss who tried to pass as a Georgian.
'Kindly give me some soda water!' he yelled in his best parade- ground bark.
II
Layevsky's dislike of Nadezhda was based principally on the falsity— or veneer of falsity, as it seemed to him—of everything she said and did. If he read anything attacking women and love, it always seemed to fit himself, Nadezhda and her husband to perfection.
When he arrived home, she had already dressed and done her hair, and was sitting at the window drinking coffee with an anxious air as she leafed through a literary review. It struck him that the consumption of coffee was not an occasion so earth-shaking as to justify her air of concern, and that it was a waste of her time to cultivate a fashionable hair-style when there was no one around worth pleasing and no point in pleasing anyone anyway. He also thought that intellectual review an affectation. It struck him that just as she dressed and did her hair to make herself look beautiful, so also her reading was designed to make her look intelligent.
'Is it all right ifl bathe today?' she asked.
'Suit yourself. Bathe or don't bathe—1 doubt if the skies will fall either way.'
'I asked in case the doctor might be cross.'
'Then ask the doctor—1 don't happen to be medically qualified.'
What riled Layevsky most about Nadezhda on this occasion was her bare, white neck with the curls at the back. When Anna Karenin ceased to love her husband, he remembered, it was the man's ears that had especially displeased her.
'How true, how very true,' he thought.
Feeling faint and hopeless, he went into his study, lay on the sofa and covered his face with a handkerchief to stop the fies bothering him. Listless, dismal, repetitious thoughts plodded through his brain like a long line of wagons on a foul autunm evening, as he sank into drowsy despondency. Where Nadezhda and her husband were con- cemed, he felt guilty—felt himself to blame for the husband's death. He felt guilty, too, of riiining his own life, and of letting down his high ideals of scholarship and hard work. Not here on this seashore trodden by starving Turks and lazy Abkhazians did that marvellous sphere of activity seem a real possibility, but in the north with its opera, theatre, newspapers and manifold intellectual work. There, and only there, could one be decent, intelligent, high-minded and pure. Not here. He blamed himself for having no ideals, no guiding principle in life, though he did now dimly discern what that meant. Falling in love with Nadezhda two years earlier, he had felt that he only needed to become her lover and take her to the Caucasus to be saved from the shoddy hopelessness of e.xistence. Similarly, he was now convinced that to abandon Nadezhda and leave for St. Petersburg was to satisfy his every need.
'Escape,' he muttered, sitting up and biting his nails. 'Must get away.'
He imagined himself boarding the steamer, lunching, dri^^g cold beer, and talking to the ladies on deck. Then he catches a train in Sevastopol and rides off. Freedom, here we come! Stations flash past in quick succession, the air'grows colder and sharper. Now birches and firs appear. Here is Kursk, here Moscow.