‘Where’s your new mama?’ I asked her.
‘She’s gone riding with the Count. She goes riding with him every day.’
‘Every day,’ muttered Urbenin with a sigh.
Much could be heard in that sigh. In it I could hear exactly what was troubling my heart too, what I was endeavouring to explain to myself but was unable to – and I became lost in speculation.
So, Olga went riding with the Count every day. But that didn’t mean a thing. Olga could never have fallen in love with the Count, and Urbenin’s jealousy was totally unfounded. It wasn’t the Count of whom we should have been jealous, but something else, which had taken me so long to understand. This ‘something else’ stood like a solid wall between myself and Olga. She still loved me, but after the visit described in the previous chapter, she hadn’t come to see me more than twice and when she met me somewhere outside my flat she would flush mysteriously and stubbornly evade my questions. She reciprocated my caresses passionately, but her responses were so abrupt, so nervous, that all I could remember of our brief trysts was an agonizing perplexity. Her conscience wasn’t clear – that was obvious – but it was impossible to read the precise reason for this on Olga’s guilty face.
‘I hope your new mama is well?’ I asked Sasha.
‘Yes, she is. But last night she had toosache. She was kwying.’
‘Crying?’ Urbenin asked, turning his face to Sasha. ‘Did you see her? You must have dreamt it, darling.’
Olga did not have toothache. If she had been crying, it was from something other than physical pain. I wanted to continue my conversation with Sasha, but this I didn’t manage, since at that moment I heard the sound of horses’ hoofs and soon we saw the riders – a gentleman awkwardly bouncing about in the saddle and a graceful horsewoman. To conceal my joy from Olga I lifted Sasha in my arms and kissed her forehead as I ran my fingers through her fair hair.
‘What a pretty girl you are, Sasha!’ I said. ‘Such beautiful curls!’
Olga gave me a fleeting glance, replied to my bow in complete silence and went into the outbuilding, leaning on the Count’s arm. Urbenin got up and followed her.
Five minutes later the Count emerged from the outbuilding. He was cheerful as never before, his face even seemed to have a fresher look.
‘Congratulate me!’ he said, taking my hand and giggling.
‘On what?’
‘On my conquest… Just one more of these rides and I swear by the ashes of my noble ancestors I’ll pluck the petals from this flower.’
‘So you haven’t plucked them yet?’
‘Yet?… Well, almost! During ten minutes of “your hand in mine”45 not once did she take it away. I smothered it with kisses! But let’s wait until tomorrow, we must be on our way now. They’re expecting me. Oh yes! I need to talk to you about something, dear chap. Tell me, is it true what people are saying… that you have evil designs on Nadezhda Nikolayevna?’
‘What of it?’
‘If it’s true, I won’t stand in your way. It’s not my policy to trip people up. But if you have no designs on her, then of course…’
‘I have no designs.’
‘Merci, my dear chap!’
The Count had visions of killing two hares at once and he was fully convinced that he would succeed. And on that evening I observed his pursuit of these hares. It was all as stupid and comical as a fine caricature. As I watched I could only laugh or be repelled by the Count’s vulgarity; but no one could have thought that this puerile pursuit would end with the moral fall of a few, the ruin of some – and the crimes of others!
The Count did not kill two hares, but more! Yes, he killed them, but the skins and flesh went to someone else.
I saw him furtively squeeze the hand of Olga, who invariably greeted him with a friendly smile, but who watched him leave with a disdainful grin. Once, eager to show that there were no secrets between us, he even kissed her hand in my presence.
‘What an idiot!’ she whispered in my ear as she wiped her hand.
‘Listen, Olga,’ I said when the Count had left. ‘I feel there’s something you want to tell me. Yes?’
I looked searchingly into her face. She blushed crimson and blinked timorously, like a cat caught stealing.
‘Olga,’ I said sternly. ‘You’ve got to tell me! I insist!’
‘Yes, there is something I want to tell you,’ she whispered, pressing my hands. ‘I love you, I can’t live without you, but don’t come here to see me, my darling! Don’t love me any more, don’t call me Olya. I can’t go on like this, it’s impossible. And don’t even let anyone see that you love me.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because that’s what I want. You don’t need to know the reason and I’m not going to tell you. Now leave me, they’re coming.’
I didn’t leave her and she herself had to bring our conversation to an end. Taking the arm of her husband, who just happened to be passing, she nodded at me with a hypocritical smile and left.
The Count’s other ‘hare’ – Nadezhda Nikolayevna – enjoyed his undivided attention that evening. The whole time he buzzed around her, telling her anecdotes, joking and flirting, while she, pale and exhausted, twisted her mouth into an artificial smile. Kalinin the JP constantly watched them, stroked his beard and coughed meaningfully. The Count’s flirtation with his daughter was very much to his liking: a Count as son-in-law! What dream could be sweeter for a provincial bon vivant? From the moment the Count started courting his daughter, he had grown two feet in his own estimation. And with what imperious glances he sized me up, how spitefully he coughed when he talked to me! ‘You stood on ceremony and you deserted us,’ he said, ‘but we don’t give a damn! Now we have a Count!’
The following evening I was once again at the Count’s estate. On this occasion I didn’t chat with Sasha, but with her schoolboy brother, who led me into the garden and poured out his soul to me. These outpourings were provoked by my questions about life with his ‘new mama’.
‘She’s a very good friend of yours,’ he said, nervously unbuttoning his uniform. ‘I know you’ll go and tell her, but I’m not afraid. Go ahead, tell her whatever you like. She’s wicked, vile!’
And he told me that Olga had taken his room from him, had dismissed the old nanny who had been with the Urbenins for ten years and that she was constantly in a bad temper, always shouting.
‘Yesterday you praised my sister Sasha’s hair. Yes, it’s really beautiful! Just like flax! But this morning Olga went and cut it all off!’
It’s sheer jealousy! I explained to myself Olga’s excursion into the unfamiliar realm of hairdressing.
‘It seems she was jealous because you praised Sasha’s hair and not hers,’ the boy said, confirming my thoughts. ‘And she’s tormented the life out of Papa. He keeps spending an awful lot on her, he’s neglecting his work and he’s started drinking again. Again! She’s a stupid woman… all day long she cries because she has to live in poor surroundings, in such a small house. Is it Papa’s fault that he doesn’t have much money?’
The boy related many sad things. He could see what his blinded father could not or did not want to see. That poor boy’s father had been wronged – and his sister and his old nanny too. He had been robbed of his little sanctuary, where he was accustomed to busy himself keeping his books in order and feeding the goldfinches he’d caught. Everyone had been wronged and that stupid and omnipotent stepmother was making a mockery of everything! But the poor boy could never have dreamt of the terrible insult that was inflicted on his family by that young stepmother and which I witnessed that very same evening after my conversation with him. Everything paled into insignificance before that outrage and Sasha’s cropped hair seemed a mere trifle by comparison.