‘And does this pretty Olenka have peace of mind?’
‘The secrets of another’s soul are known to God alone, but it strikes me that she has no reason to fret – no sorrow, and her sins are simply those of a child. She’s a very good girl! Well, at last the heavens are talking of rain!’
We could hear a rumble, rather like a distant carriage or the clatter of skittles. From somewhere, far beyond the forest, came a great thunderclap. Mitka, who had been following us the whole time, shuddered and quickly crossed himself.
‘A thunderstorm!’ exclaimed the Count in alarm. ‘I didn’t expect that! Now we’ll be caught in the rain on our way back. And it’s got so dark! I said we should go back. But no, we carried on.’
‘We can wait in the cottage until it’s passed over,’ I suggested.
‘Why the cottage?’ asked Urbenin, blinking peculiarly. ‘It’s going to rain all night, so do you really want to stay so long in the cottage? Now, please don’t worry. Mitka will run on ahead and send the carriage to collect you.’
‘It’s all right – perhaps it won’t rain all night,’ I said. ‘Storm clouds usually pass over very quickly. Besides, I don’t know the new forester yet and I’d like to have a little chat with this Olenka, to find out what kind of dicky-bird she is.’
‘No objections!’ agreed the Count.
‘But how can you go there if the place is all in a mess?’ Urbenin anxiously babbled. ‘Why sit in that stuffy place, Your Excellency, when you could be at home? I can’t imagine what pleasure it can give you. And how can you get to know the forester if he’s ill?’
It was patently obvious that the manager was violently opposed to our entering the forester’s cottage. He even spread out his arms as if wanting to bar our way. I could see from his face that he had reasons for stopping us. I respect other people’s reasons and secrets, but on this occasion my curiosity was greatly excited. I insisted – and into the cottage we went.
‘Into the parlour, please!’ barefooted Mitka said with a peculiar hiccup, almost choking with delight.
Imagine the tiniest parlour in the world, with unpainted wooden walls hung with oleographs from The Cornfield,14 photographs in mother-of-pearl (as we call them here ‘cockleshell’) frames, and testimonials: one expressed a certain baron’s gratitude for many years of service; the remainder were for horses. Here and there ivy made its way up the walls. In one of the corners, in front of a small icon, a tiny blue flame, faintly reflected in its silver mounting, was softly burning. Along the wall, chairs, evidently recently purchased, were ranged closely together. In fact, more had been bought than were needed, but they had still been placed there as there was nowhere else to put them. Crowded together were armchairs, a couch with snow-white, lace-frilled covers, and a round, polished table. A tame hare was dozing on the couch. It was cosy, clean and warm. A woman’s presence was evident everywhere. Even the bookcase had an innocent, feminine look, as if it too wanted to declare that nothing but undemanding novels and light poetry were on its shelves. The charm of such warm, cosy little rooms is felt not so much in spring as in autumn, when you seek refuge from the cold and damp.
With much puffing and panting, and noisy striking of matches, Mitka lit two candles and placed them on the table as carefully as if they were milk. We sat down in the armchairs, exchanged glances and burst out laughing.
‘Nikolay Yefimych is ill in bed,’ Urbenin said, explaining the master’s absence. ‘And Olga Nikolayevna must have gone off to accompany my children.’
‘Mitka! Are the doors locked!’ came a weak tenor voice from the next room.
‘Yes, they are, Nikolay Yefimych!’ Mitka shouted hoarsely and rushed headlong into the next room.
‘Good! See that every door is properly shut,’ said that same feeble voice. ‘And securely locked as well. If thieves should try to get in you must tell me… I’ll shoot those devils with my rifle… the bastards!’
‘Without fail, Nikolay Yefimych!’
We burst out laughing and looked quizzically at Urbenin. He turned red and started tidying the window curtains to hide his embarrassment. What was the meaning of this ‘dream’? Once more we looked at each other.
But there was no time for wondering. Outside hurried footsteps could be heard again, followed by a noise in the porch and a door slamming. The girl in red flew into the room.
‘ “I lo-ove the storms of early Ma-ay”,’15 she sang in a shrill, strident soprano, punctuating her high-pitched singing with laughter. But the moment she saw us she suddenly stopped and fell silent. Deeply embarrassed, she went as meek as a lamb into the room from which we had just heard the voice of her father, Nikolay Yefimych.
‘She wasn’t expecting you!’ laughed Urbenin.
Shortly afterwards she quietly returned, sat on the chair nearest the door and started inspecting us. She looked at us boldly, intensely, as if we were zoo animals and not new faces to her. For a minute we too looked at her, silently, without moving. I would willingly have sat there for a year, quite still, just to gaze at her, so beautiful did she look that evening. Her flushed cheeks as fresh as the air, that rapidly breathing, heaving bosom, those curls scattered over her forehead and shoulders and over that right hand with which she was adjusting her collar, her big, sparkling eyes – all this in one small body that you could take in at a single glance. Just one look at this tiny creature and you would see more than if you stared at the boundless horizon for centuries. She looked at me seriously, questioningly, with an upward glance. But when her eyes turned from me to the Count or the Pole, I began to read in them the complete reverse: a downward glance… and laughter.
I was the first to speak.
‘Allow me to introduce myself,’ I said, getting up and going over to her. ‘Zinovyev… And this is my good friend Count Karneyev. Please do forgive us for barging into your pretty little cottage uninvited. Of course, we would never have done this if we hadn’t been forced to take shelter from the storm.’
‘But you won’t make the cottage fall down!’ she said, laughing and offering her hand.
She revealed her beautiful teeth. I sat down on a chair next to her and told her how we had been caught by a storm on our walk, quite unexpectedly. We started discussing the weather – the beginning of all beginnings. While we were chatting, Mitka had already managed to bring the Count two glasses of vodka and the water that invariably accompanied it. Taking advantage of the fact that I wasn’t looking at him, the Count sweetly wrinkled his face after both glasses and shook his head.
‘Perhaps you’d like some refreshments?’ Olenka asked – and she left the room without waiting for a reply.
The first drops of rain beat against the panes. I went over to the window. By now it was completely dark and through the glass I could see nothing but raindrops trickling down and the reflection of my own nose. Lightning flashed and illuminated several of the nearest pines.
‘Are the doors locked?’ came that weak tenor voice again. ‘Mitka! Come here you little devil and lock the doors! Oh God, this is sheer torment!’
A peasant woman with a bulging, tightly belted stomach and a stupid, worried face entered the parlour, bowed low to the Count and spread a white cloth over the table. Mitka gingerly followed her with the hors d’oeuvres. A minute later vodka, rum, cheese and a dish with some kind of roast fowl made their appearance on the table. The Count drank a glass of vodka but he did not start eating. The Pole sniffed the bird suspiciously and started carving.
‘It’s simply pelting now. Just look at that!’ I told Olenka, who had come into the room again.
The girl in red came over to my window and just then, for one fleeting moment, we were lit up by a white radiance. There was a fearful crackling sound from above and something large and heavy seemed to have been ripped from its place in the sky, plummeting to earth with a great crash. The window panes and the wine glasses that were standing in front of the Count tinkled. It was an extremely violent thunderclap.