‘You must take this!’ I say, handing the Count a bundle of banknotes. ‘I shall force you to take them!’
‘But it was I who invited the gipsies, not you!’ cries the Count, trying to grab one of my buttons. ‘I’m master here, I treated you… so why on earth should you pay? Please understand that I even take this as an insult!’
‘But I engaged them too, so I’ll pay half. You refuse to accept it? Well, I don’t understand the reason for these favours! Surely you don’t think that because you’re stinking rich you have the right to offer me such favours? Damn it – I engaged Karpov, so I’ll pay him! I don’t need your “half”. And I wrote the telegram!’
‘In a restaurant, Seryozha, you can pay as much as you like, but my house isn’t a restaurant. And then, I really don’t understand why you’re making all this fuss, I don’t understand why you’re so eager to pay. You don’t have much money, but I’m rolling in it. Justice itself is on my side!’
‘So you won’t take it? No? Well, don’t!’
I hold the banknotes up to the faint candlelight, set fire to them and throw them on the ground. A groan suddenly bursts from Kaetan’s chest. He becomes wide-eyed, turns pale and falls heavily to the floor, trying to put out the flames with the palms of his hands… in this he succeeds.
‘I don’t understand!’ he says, stuffing the singed banknotes into his pocket. ‘Burning money! Just as if it were last year’s chaff or love letters! Better give it all away to some beggar than consign it to the flames.’
I enter the house… there, in every room, sprawled over sofas and carpets, sleep the gipsies – exhausted, completely worn out. My Tina is sleeping on the ottoman in the ‘mosaic’ drawing-room.
She lies stretched out and she’s breathing heavily. Her teeth are clenched, her face pale. She’s probably dreaming of swings. Owlet wanders through all the rooms, looking malignantly with her sharp eyes at those who had so rudely disturbed the deathly silence of that forgotten estate. Not for nothing does she go around tiring her old bones.
That’s all that remains in my memory after two wild nights – the rest either hasn’t been preserved by my inebriated brain cells or cannot be described here with any decency. But enough of that!
Never before had Zorka borne me so zealously as on that morning after the burning of the banknotes. She too wanted to go home. The lake gently rolled its foamy waves: reflecting the rising sun, it was preparing for its daytime slumber. The woods and willows along the banks were motionless, as if at morning prayer. It is difficult to describe my state of mind at the time. Without going into too much detail I shall merely say that I was delighted beyond words – and at the same time I was almost consumed with shame when, as I turned out of the Count’s estate, I saw by the lakeside old Mikhey’s saintly face, emaciated by honest toil and illness. Mikhey resembles a biblical fisherman. His hair is as white as snow, he has a large beard and he gazes contemplatively at the sky. When he stands motionless on the bank, following the racing clouds with his eyes, you might fancy he sees angels in the sky… I’m very fond of such faces!
When I saw him I reined in Zorka and gave him my hand, as if wishing to cleanse myself through contact with his honest, calloused hand. He looked up at me with his small, sagacious eyes and smiled.
‘Good morning, sir!’ he said, awkwardly offering me his hand. ‘Why’ve you come galloping over here again? Is that old layabout back?’
‘He is.’
‘I thought so, I can see it from your face. ’Ere I be standing and looking. What a world! Vanity of vanities, says I! Just look! That German deserves to die – all ’e bothers ’isself with is worthless things. Can you see ’im?’
The old man pointed his stick at the Count’s bathing-place. A rowing-boat was swiftly moving away from it and a man in a jockey cap and blue jacket was sitting in it. It was Franz the gardener.
‘Every morning ’e takes something out to the island and hides it. That fool can’t get it into ’is head that sand and money are worth the same as far as ’e’s concerned – can’t take ’em with ’im when ’e dies. Please give me a cigarette, sir!’
I offered him my cigarette case. He took three out and stuffed them into his breast pocket.
‘They’re for me nephew…’e can smoke ’em.’
My impatient Zorka gave a start and flew off. I bowed to the old man, thankful that he’d let my eyes rest upon his face. For a long time he stood there watching me go.
VII
At home I was greeted by Polikarp. With a contemptuous, crushing look, he inspected my noble body, as if trying to find out whether on this occasion I’d been bathing fully dressed in my suit or not.
‘Congratulations!’ he growled. ‘I can see you had a good time!’
‘Shut up, you fool!’ I replied.
I was incensed by his stupid face. After quickly undressing I covered myself with a blanket and closed my eyes.
My head was in a spin and the world became enveloped in mist. In that mist familiar shapes flashed by… the Count, the snake, Franz, those flame-coloured dogs, the girl in red, crazy Nikolay Yefimych…
‘A husband murdered his wife! Oh, how stupid you are!’ The girl in red wagged her finger at me, Tina blotted out the light with her black eyes and I… I fell asleep.
‘How sweetly, how peacefully he sleeps! When you look at that innocent child’s smile and listen closely to that regular breathing you might think that this is no investigating magistrate lying there on the bed but the living embodiment of a pure conscience! You might even think that Count Karneyev hadn’t returned, that there had been neither drunkenness nor gipsy girls, nor scandals on the lake. Get up, you most spiteful of men! You are not worthy of enjoying such bliss as peaceful slumber. Arise!’
I opened my eyes and stretched myself voluptuously. From the window to my bed streamed a broad ray of sunlight in which minute white specks of dust were chasing each other in great agitation, so that the ray itself seemed tinted dull white. The sunbeam kept disappearing from sight, then reappearing, depending on whether our charming district doctor, Pavel Ivanovich Voznesensky – who was walking around my bedroom – entered or left the field of light. In his long, unbuttoned frock-coat that hung loosely, as if from a clothes peg, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his unusually long trousers, the doctor paced from corner to corner, from chair to chair, from portrait to portrait, screwing up his short-sighted eyes at everything they happened to fall upon. True to his habit of poking his nose and snooping into everything wherever he could, he would bend down and then stand bolt upright again, peering at the wash basin, at the folds of the lowered curtains, at chinks in the door, at the lamp, just as if he were looking for something or wanting to satisfy himself that all was in order. As he stared through his spectacles at some chink, or some stain on the wallpaper, he would frown, assume a worried expression, sniff with his long nose and studiously scratch away with his fingernail. All this he performed mechanically, involuntarily, from sheer habit. Nevertheless, he gave the impression of a surveyor carrying out some inspection as his eyes swiftly passed from one object to the other.