‘Heavens, I’ve really outstayed my welcome!’ he suddenly realized, looking at the cheap watch with one lid that he’d ordered from Moscow – it had a ‘five-year guarantee’ but nonetheless had twice been back to the repairer’s. ‘Well, time I was off, old man! Goodbye – and mark my words, these sprees of the Count’s will get you into hot water! And I don’t only mean your health! Ah, yes! Are you going to Tenevo tomorrow?’
‘What’s happening there tomorrow?’
‘A church fête! Everyone will be there. You simply must come! I promised that you’d come, without fail. Now, don’t make me out to be a liar.’
To whom he had given his word there was no need to ask. We understood each other. After saying goodbye the doctor put on his shabby coat and drove off.
I was left alone. To stifle the unpleasant thoughts that were starting to swarm around my head, I went over to my writing-desk and started opening my letters, trying not to think or take stock. The first envelope that caught my eye contained the following letter:
My darling Seryozha,
I’m sorry to trouble you, but I’m so stunned I don’t know whom to turn to. It’s really shocking! Of course, I can’t get them back now and I have no regrets, but just judge for yourself: if you let thieves have their way, then a respectable woman can’t feel safe anywhere. After you left I woke up on the couch and found lots of my things were missing: they’d stolen a bracelet, a gold stud, ten pearls from my necklace and about a hundred roubles were taken from my purse. I wanted to complain to the Count, but as he was asleep I left. It’s shocking! The house of a Count, yet they steal there as if it were a pub. You must tell the Count.
Love and kisses
Your affectionate Tina
That His Excellency’s house was alive with thieves was nothing new to me and I added Tina’s letter to the information on that score I’d already preserved in my memory. Sooner or later I would be obliged to put this information into action. I knew who the thieves were…
VIII
Black-eyed Tina’s letter, her florid, flamboyant handwriting reminded me of the mosaic drawing-room and gave me the urge, so it seemed, to have a ‘morning-after drink’. But I took a grip on myself and by sheer willpower forced myself to work. At first I found it boring beyond words to decipher the bold handwriting of district police officers, but then my attention gradually became fixed on a burglary and I began to enjoy my work. All day long I sat at my desk, while Polikarp constantly walked past, incredulously watching me at work. He had no confidence in my powers of abstinence and expected me to get up from my desk any minute and order him to saddle Zorka. But towards evening, when he saw how doggedly I was working, he was reassured and that sullen look of his gave way to an expression of satisfaction. He started walking around on tiptoe and speaking in whispers. When some youths went past the windows playing their accordions, he went out into the street and shouted:
‘What you devils making such a racket for? Can’t you go down another street? Or don’t you know, you infidels, that the Master’s working?’
When he brought the samovar into the dining-room that evening, he quietly opened the door and amiably asked me to come and have some tea.
‘Please have some tea!’ he said, gently sighing and respectfully smiling.
And while I was drinking it he quietly came up behind me and kissed me on the shoulder.
‘Now, that’s better, Sergey Petrovich,’ he muttered. ‘To hell with that tow-haired devil, may he damned well… Is it right for someone of your lofty intellect, an educated man like you, to concern himself with such weak characters? Your work is noble. Everyone should respect your wishes, fear you, but if you go around with that devil, breaking people’s heads and swimming fully clothed in the lake, people will say: “He’s got no brains at all! What a trivial man!” And this reputation will follow you everywhere! One expects irresponsible behaviour from a shopkeeper, but not from a gentleman! Gentlemen need to be knowledgeable, they have a job of work to do…’
‘All right! Enough is enough!’
‘Don’t get mixed up with that Count, Sergey Petrovich. If you need a friend, then why not Dr Pavel Ivanych. I know he goes around like a tramp, but he’s really highly intelligent!’
Polikarp’s sincerity touched me deeply. I wanted to say a few kind words to him.
‘What novel are you reading now?’ I asked.
‘The Count of Monte Christo. Now, there’s a Count for you! A real Count, not like that scruffy devil of yours!’
After tea I got down to work again and carried on until my eyelids began to droop and my weary eyes began to close. When I went to bed I told Polikarp to wake me at five o’clock.
IX
After five o’clock next morning, gaily whistling and knocking the heads off the flowers in the meadows with my walking-stick, I made my way on foot to Tenevo, where the church fête was being held and to which my friend Screwy had invited me. It was a delightful morning. Happiness itself seemed to be hovering over the earth – it was reflected in every diamond-like drop of dew and was beckoning the soul of every passer-by. Bathed in morning sunlight, the woods were quiet and motionless, as if listening to my footsteps and to the chirping of the feathered fraternity who greeted me by voicing their mistrust and alarm. The air was saturated with the exhalations of vernal greenery and caressed my healthy lungs with its softness. I breathed it in, and as I surveyed the open prospect with my enraptured eyes, I sensed the presence of spring, of youth – and it seemed that those young birches, the grass by the wayside and the incessantly humming cockchafers were sharing my feelings.
‘But why is it back there, in the world,’ I reflected, ‘that men herd themselves together in wretched, cramped hovels, confine themselves to narrow, constricting ideas, while there’s such freedom and scope for life and thought here? Why don’t they come out here?’
And my imagination that had waxed so poetic had no desire to encumber itself with thoughts of winter and earning a living – those two afflictions that drive poets into cold, prosaic St Petersburg and filthy Moscow, where they pay fees for poetry, but provide no inspiration.
Peasants’ carts and landowners’ carriages, hurrying to Mass and the fête, kept passing me. Constantly I had to doff my cap and acknowledge friendly bows from peasants and some squires I knew. Everyone offered me a lift, but walking was better than riding and I refused all their offers. Amongst others, the Count’s gardener Franz, in his blue jacket and jockey cap, passed me in a racing droshky. He lazily glanced at me with his sleepy, sour-looking eyes. Tied to the droshky was a twelve-gallon, iron-hooped barrel evidently containing vodka. Franz’s repulsive mug and his vodka barrel somewhat spoiled my poetic mood, but poetry soon triumphed again when I heard the sound of carriage wheels behind me. As I looked back, I saw a lumbering wagonette drawn by a pair of little bays. On a leather, box-shaped seat in the wagonette I saw my new acquaintance, the ‘girl in red’, who two days before had spoken to me of the ‘electricity’ that had killed her mother. Olenka’s pretty, freshly washed and rather sleepy little face shone and flushed slightly when she saw me striding out along the boundary path that separated the forest from the road. She nodded cheerfully to me and smiled welcomingly, the way only old friends smile at each other.