‘Why are you so quiet?’ I began. ‘Speak and I’ll listen! Ha ha! I simply adore it when people with serious, respectable physiognomies spout puerile nonsense! It’s such a mockery, such a mockery of the human brain! Your faces don’t correspond to your brains! To tell the truth, you should have the physiognomies of idiots, but you have the faces of Greek sages!’
I didn’t finish. My tongue became tied in knots at the thought that I was talking to nobodies who weren’t even worth a mention! I needed a crowded ballroom, brilliant women, thousands of lights… I got up, took my glass and started wandering through all the rooms. On a drunken spree you don’t set limits to your space, you don’t restrict yourself to a dining-room, but roam over the whole house, even the entire estate.
I selected an ottoman in the ‘mosaic’ room, lay down and surrendered myself to fantasies and building castles in the air. Drunken dreams, each more grandiose and boundless than the last, took possession of my young brain. Now I could see a new world, full of stupefying pleasures and beauty beyond description. All that was lacking was for me to talk in rhyme and start having hallucinations.
The Count came up to me and sat on the edge of the ottoman. He wanted to tell me something. I had begun to read in his eyes this desire to communicate something rather unusual very soon after the above-mentioned five glasses: I knew what he wanted to discuss.
‘I’ve had so much to drink today!’ he told me. ‘For me it’s more harmful than any poison. But today’s the last time. Word of honour, the last time! I do have will-power.’
‘Of course, of course.’
‘For the last… for the last time, Seryozha, old chap, shouldn’t we send a telegram to town?’
‘By all means… send one…’
‘Let’s have a real orgy – for the last time. Come on, get up and write it.’
The Count had no idea how to write telegrams – they always turned out too long and incomplete. So I got up and wrote:
TO LONDON RESTAURANT GIPSY CHOIR OWNER KARPOV DROP EVERYTHING COME IMMEDIATELY TWO O’CLOCK TRAIN THE COUNT
‘It’s a quarter to eleven now,’ the Count said. ‘My man can ride to the station in three quarters of an hour – one hour maximum. Karpov will get the telegram before one. So he’ll have time to catch the express. Should he miss it he can take the goods train. Yes?’
VI
One-eyed Kuzma was dispatched with the telegram, Ilya was instructed to send carriages to the station one hour later. To kill time I slowly started lighting the lamps and candles in every room. Then I opened the grand piano and tried a few notes.
And then I remember lying on the same ottoman, thinking of nothing and silently waving away the Count, who was pestering me with his incessant chatter. I was in a kind of semi-conscious state, half-asleep, aware only of the bright light from the lamps and my serene and cheerful state of mind. A vision of the girl in red, her little head inclined towards her shoulder, her eyes filled with horror at the prospect of that dramatic death, appeared before me and gently shook its tiny finger at me. A vision of another girl, in black dress and with a pale, proud face, drifted past and looked at me half-imploringly, half-reproachfully.
Then I heard noise, laughter, people running about. Deep black eyes came between me and the light. I could see their sparkle, their laughter. A joyful smile flickered on luscious lips… it was my gipsy girl Tina smiling at me.
‘Is it you?’ she asked. ‘Are you asleep? Get up, my darling… I haven’t seen you for ages.’
Without a word I pressed her hand and drew her to me.
‘Let’s go into the other room… we’ve all arrived.’
‘Let’s stay here… I like it here, Tina…’
‘But there’s too much light… you’re crazy… someone might come in.’
‘If anyone does I’ll wring their neck. I like it here, Tina. It’s two years since I last saw you.’
Someone was playing the piano in the ballroom.
‘Ah, Moscow, Moscow,
Moscow with your white stone walls…’24
several voices bawled at once.
‘Can you hear? They’re all in there singing… no one will come in.’
My encounter with Tina roused me from my half-conscious state. Ten minutes later she led me into the ballroom, where the choir was standing in a semicircle. The Count was straddling a chair and beating time with his hands. Pshekhotsky stood behind his chair, watching those songbirds with astonished eyes. I grabbed Karpov’s balalaika from his hands, performed a wild flourish and started singing:
‘Down Mo-other Vo-olga
Do-own the Riv-er Vo-olga…’25
And the choir responded:
‘Oh burn, oh speak… speak!’26
I waved my arm and in an instant, as quick as lightning, there followed another rapid transition:
‘Nights of madness, nights of gladness…’27
Nothing stimulates and titillates my nerves so much as abrupt transitions like these. I trembled with delight. With one arm around Tina and waving the balalaika in the other, I sang Nights of Madness to the end. The balalaika crashed to the floor and broke into small splinters…
‘More wine!’
After that my memories verge on the chaotic. Everything becomes muddled, confused, everything grows vague and blurred… I remember the grey sky of early morning… We are in rowing-boats. The lake is slightly ruffled and seems to be grumbling at the sight of our debauchery. I stand reeling in the middle of the boat. Tina tries to convince me that I’ll fall into the water and she begs me to sit down. But I complain out loud that there are no waves on the lake as high as Stone Grave and my shouts frighten the martins that dart like white spots over the blue surface.
Then follows a long, hot day with its interminable lunch, ten-year-old liqueurs, bowls of punch, drunken brawls. I remember but a few moments of that day, I remember rocking on the garden swing with Tina. I’m standing at one end of the seat, she at the other. I work with my whole body, in a wild frenzy, with my last ounce of strength and I cannot really say whether I want Tina to fall off the swing and be killed, or to fly right up to the clouds. Tina stands there as pale as death, but she is proud and vain, and has clenched her teeth in order not to betray her fear with the least sound. Higher and higher we fly and I cannot remember how it all ended. Then came a stroll with Tina down that distant avenue with the green vault screening it from the sun. Poetic half-light, black locks, luscious lips, whispers… And then at my side there walks a small contralto singer, a fair-haired girl with a sharp little nose, the eyes of a child and a very slender waist. I stroll with her until Tina, who has been following us, comes along and makes a scene. The gipsy girl is pale and furious. She damns me and is so offended that she prepares to return to town. Pale-faced and with trembling hands, the Count runs around us and as usual cannot find the words to persuade Tina to stay. Finally Tina slaps my face. It’s strange: the most innocuous, barely offensive words spoken by a man send me into a frenzy, but I’m quite indifferent to the slaps women give me… And then again those long hours after dinner, again that snake on the steps, again sleeping Franz with flies around his mouth, again that garden gate. The girl in red stands on the top of Stone Grave but disappears like a lizard as soon as she sees us.
By evening Tina and I are once again friends. There follows the same wild night, music, rollicking songs with titillating, nerve-tingling transitions… and not one moment’s sleep!
‘This is self-destruction!’ whispers Urbenin, who has dropped in for a moment to listen to our singing.
Of course, he was right. I later recalled the Count and myself standing in the garden, face to face, arguing. Nearby strolls that black-browed Kaetan, who had taken no part in our jollification but who nevertheless had not slept and who kept following us like a shadow. The sky is pale now and the rays of the rising sun are already beginning to shed their golden light over the highest tree top. All around I can hear the chatter of busy sparrows, the singing of starlings, rustling, the flapping of wings that had grown heavy during the night. I can hear the lowing herd and shepherds’ cries. Close by is a small, marble-topped table. A Shandor candle28 stands on it, burning with a pale light… there are cigarette ends, sweet wrappers, broken glasses, orange peel…