‘Sergey Petrovich! It seems that a certain misunderstanding, some kind of idle whim has put a distance between us. I think that if we were to have things out everything would be as it used to be. If I didn’t think this I wouldn’t have the determination to ask the question you’re about to hear. I’m unhappy, Sergey Petrovich. You must be able to see that. My life is no life at all… Everything has dried up. But the main thing is… there’s a kind of uncertainty, when one doesn’t know whether to hope or not. Your behaviour towards me is so hard to understand that it’s impossible to draw any firm conclusions from it. Tell me – and then I’ll know what to do. Then my life will at least have some direction. Then I can decide accordingly.’
‘There’s something you want to ask me, Nadezhda Nikolayevna,’ I said, mentally preparing an answer to the question I felt was coming.
‘Yes, I want to ask… it’s a humiliating question… if anyone should overhear he’d think I’m imposing myself on you, like Pushkin’s Tatyana.44 But it’s a question I’m forcing myself to ask.’
The question was in fact forced. When Nadya turned her face to me to ask it I took fright: she was trembling, convulsively pressing her fingers together as she squeezed out the fateful words depressingly slowly. She was terribly pale.
‘Dare I hope?’ she finally whispered. ‘Don’t be afraid, you can be quite frank with me. Whatever the answer, it’s better than this uncertainty. Well, dare I hope?’
She waited for an answer, but at that moment my mood was such that I felt incapable of any reasonable answer. Drunk, excited by the incident in the grotto, infuriated at Pshekhotsky’s spying and Olga’s indecision, having endured that stupid conversation with the Count, I could barely listen to Nadya.
‘Dare I hope?’ she repeated. ‘Please give me an answer!’
‘Well, I’m not up to giving any replies just now, Nadezhda Nikolayevna!’ I said dismissively as I stood up. ‘I’m incapable of giving any sort of answer at the moment… I’m sorry, but I neither heard nor understood you. I’m stupid and in a raging temper. But you’re upsetting yourself for nothing, really.’
I waved my arm again and left Nadya. It was only later, when I came to my senses, that I realized how stupid and cruel I had been for not giving that girl an answer to her simple, straightforward question. Why hadn’t I answered her?
Now, when I can view the past dispassionately, I cannot explain away my cruelty by my state of mind at the time. I feel that by not answering her I was flirting, play-acting. The hearts of other human beings are hard to comprehend, but it’s even harder to fathom one’s own. If in fact I was putting on an act, may God forgive me! However, mocking another’s suffering is unforgivable.
XIII
For three days I paced my room like a wolf in a cage, trying with all the strength of my exceptional will-power to stop myself leaving the house. I didn’t lay a finger on the piles of documents lying on the table and impatiently awaiting my attention. I received no one, argued with Polikarp, became irritable. I didn’t venture onto the Count’s estate and my obstinacy cost me enormous mental effort. A thousand times I must have picked up my hat – and thrown it down just as often. At times I decided to defy the whole world and go and see Olga, come what may, at others I would cold-bloodedly decide to stay at home.
My reason argued against riding over to the Count’s estate. Once I had vowed to the Count never to set foot in his house again how could I sacrifice my self-esteem, my pride? What would that mustachioed fop have thought if, after our inane conversation, I’d gone up to him as if nothing had happened? Wouldn’t that have been an admission of guilt?
Furthermore, as an honest man, I should have broken off all relations with Olga. Any future liaison could only bring about her ruin. She had blundered in marrying Urbenin and by having an affair with me she had blundered yet again. Wouldn’t living with that elderly husband and simultaneously having a secret lover make her resemble a depraved doll? Not to mention how loathsome such a life would be in principle – one also had to think of the consequences.
What a coward I was! I feared the consequences, I feared the present and I feared the past. Any ordinary man would have laughed at my line of reasoning – he wouldn’t have paced from corner to corner, clutched his head and drawn up all kinds of plans, but would have let life, which grinds even millstones into flour, take control. Life would have digested everything, without asking either for his help or permission. But I’m cautious to the point of cowardice. I paced from corner to corner, sick with pity for Olga and at the same time I was horrified at the thought that she might agree to the suggestion I had made in a moment of passion and come and stay with me – as I had promised her – for ever! What would have happened if she had done what I wanted and married me? How long would that ‘for ever’ have lasted and what would life with me have given poor Olga? I wouldn’t have given her a family, therefore I wouldn’t have given her happiness. No, it wasn’t right to ride over to Olga!
But meanwhile my heart yearned passionately for her. I pined like a young boy, in love for the first time and not allowed out for a rendezvous. Tempted by the incident in the garden, I thirsted for a new meeting – and the seductive image of Olga, who, as I knew very well, was also waiting and pining for me, never left my head for one moment.
The Count sent me letter after letter, each more woeful and self-degrading than the last. He implored me to forgive that ‘kind, simple, but rather limited man’ and he was amazed that I had decided to break off a long-standing friendship for some mere trifle. In one of his last letters he promised to come in person and if I so desired would bring along Pshekhot-sky to apologize – although ‘he didn’t feel that he was in the least to blame’. I read the letters and replied by asking each messenger to leave me in peace. I was very good at putting on an act!
When my nervous agitation was at its peak, when I stood by the window and decided to go anywhere except the Count’s estate, when I was tormenting myself with arguments, self-reproach and visions of the love-making that awaited me at Olga’s, my door softly opened, I heard light footsteps behind me and my neck was immediately encircled by two pretty little arms.
‘Is that you, Olga?’ I asked, turning round.
I recognized her from her hot breath, from the way she clung to my neck and even from her smell. Pressing her small head against my cheek she struck me as extraordinarily happy. She couldn’t speak for happiness – not one word. I pressed her to my breast – and then what became of all the anguish, of all those questions that had been tormenting me for three days on end? I laughed and skipped for joy, just like a schoolboy.
Olga was wearing a blue silk dress that beautifully suited her pale complexion and her magnificent flaxen hair. This dress was in the latest fashion and looked terribly expensive. Most probably it had cost Urbenin about a quarter of his salary.
‘You do look pretty today!’ I said, lifting Olga and kissing her neck. ‘Well now, how are you? Are you well?’
‘It’s not very nice here, is it?’ she replied, glancing around my study. ‘You’re a wealthy man, you get a large salary, yet how simply you live!’
‘Not everyone can live in the lap of luxury like the Count,’ I said. ‘But enough said about my “wealth”. What good genius has brought you to my lair?’
‘Stop it, Seryozha, you’re crumpling my dress… put me down! I’ve only dropped in for a moment, darling. I told everyone at home I was going to see Akatikha, the Count’s laundrywoman – she doesn’t live very far from here, about three houses away. Put me down, darling, it’s embarrassing! Why haven’t you been to see me for so long?’