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‘Well now,’ mumbled the Count, impatiently rubbing his hands. ‘Well now… that’s what things have come to…’

Half-past one struck. The Count swiftly glanced at the clock, frowned and started walking up and down. From the looks he gave me it was obvious he wanted to tell me something important, but rather delicate and unpleasant.

‘Listen, Seryozha,’ he finally brought himself to say, seating himself next to me and whispering in my ear. ‘My dear chap, don’t take offence. Of course, you’ll understand my position and my request won’t strike you as strange or impudent.’

‘Out with it! Don’t beat about the bush!’

‘Can’t you see what’s… going on? Please leave, my dear chap. You’re cramping our style! She’s staying here with me. Please forgive me for throwing you out but… you’ll understand my impatience.’

‘All right.’

My friend was loathsome. If I hadn’t been so squeamish I might have squashed him like a beetle when, feverishly trembling, he asked me to leave him alone with Urbenin’s wife. That sickly, effete anchorite, completely saturated with alcohol, wanted to take to himself that ‘poetic’ girl in red, who had been nurtured by forests and a turbulent lake, who had dreams of a dramatic death! No, she wasn’t safe even within half a mile of him.

I went up to her and told her I was going. She nodded.

‘Must I take my leave? Yes?’ I asked, trying to read the truth on her pretty, flushed face. ‘Yes?’

She turned away from me as one turns away from a tiresome wind. She didn’t feel like talking. And why should she? It was impossible to reply in brief to such a prolix matter – and this was neither the time nor the place for long speeches.

I took my hat and left without saying goodbye. Subsequently, Olga told me that the moment I left, the moment the sound of my footsteps had mingled with the noise of the wind in the garden, the drunken Count was pressing her in his embrace. Closing her eyes and stopping her mouth and nostrils, she could barely stay on her feet from the revulsion she felt. There was even a moment when she very nearly broke loose from his clutches and ran into the lake. There were moments when she tore her hair and sobbed. Selling oneself is not easy!

When I left the house and went towards the stables where my Zorka was waiting, I had to pass the manager’s house. I peered through the window. Pyotr Yegorych was sitting at a table in the dim light of a smoking lamp that had been turned up extremely high. I could not see his face, as it was buried in his hands, but his whole fat, clumsy figure betrayed so much grief, anguish and despair that there was no need to see his face in order to understand his state of mind. Two bottles were standing before him. One was empty, the other had only just been opened. Both were vodka bottles. The poor devil was seeking peace neither in himself nor in the company of others, but in alcohol.

Five minutes later I was riding home. It was terribly dark. The lake seethed angrily and seemed to be furious that a sinner like me, who had just witnessed a sinful deed, dared disturb its austere repose. It was too dark to see the lake and it was as if an invisible monster were roaring away and the enveloping darkness seemed to be roaring too. I reined in Zorka, closed my eyes and became lost in thought as I listened to the sound of the roaring monster.

What if I went back now and destroyed them? I thought. Terrible anger raged within me. That small measure of goodness and decency that remained within me after lifelong dissipation, all that had survived decay, all that I had cherished, nurtured, prided myself upon, had been outraged, spat upon, besmirched!

I had known earlier of venal women, I had bought them, studied them, but they did not possess that blush of innocence or those sincere blue eyes that I saw that May morning when I went through the forest to the fair at Tenevo. I, who was corrupt to the core, could forgive, preach tolerance for everything that was depraved, could be lenient towards frailty… I was convinced that one could never ask of filth that it should cease to be so, and I couldn’t blame those gold coins that fall into filth by force of circumstance. But I hadn’t known before that gold coins can dissolve in filth and merge with it into one single solid mass. That meant solid gold could dissolve too!

A strong gust of wind tore my hat off and bore it away into the surrounding gloom. As it flew through the air it brushed Zorka’s muzzle and she took fright, reared and careered off down the familiar road.

When I was home I slumped onto the bed and when Polikarp suggested I take my clothes off he was called an old devil for no reason at all.

‘Devil yourself,’ growled Polikarp, stepping away from the bed.

‘What did you say? What did you say?’ I shouted, leaping up.

‘There’s none so deaf as those who won’t hear!’

‘Aaaah! How dare you be so impertinent again!’ I cried, trembling as I vented my spleen on my poor lackey. ‘Get out! Out of my sight, you scoundrel! Get out!’

Without waiting for my man to leave the room, I collapsed onto the bed and started sobbing like a child. My overtaxed nerves could take no more. My impotent rage, wounded feelings, jealousy – all this had to find some kind of outlet, one way or the other.

‘A husband murdered his wife!’ squawked my parrot, ruffling its thin feathers.

Prompted by this cry, the thought occurred to me that Urbenin might kill his wife…

When I fell asleep, I dreamt of that murder – it was an agonizing, suffocating nightmare. It seemed that my hands were stroking some cold object and that I only had to open my eyes to see a corpse. I dreamt that Urbenin was standing at the head of my bed and looking at me with pleading eyes.

After the night I have just described, a period of calm set in.

XVI

I settled down at home, allowing myself to leave the house and drive around on business only. A mass of work had accumulated, so there was no danger of my getting bored. From morning to night I sat at my desk, diligently scribbling away or cross-examining people who had fallen into my investigatory clutches. I had no inclination at all to go to Karneyevka, the Count’s estate.

I dismissed Olga from my mind. What’s lost is lost and she was precisely what I had lost – lost for ever, so it seemed. I thought no more about her, nor did I want to.

‘Stupid, dissolute trash!’ I invariably called her whenever she loomed in my imagination during my intensive labours.

But sometimes, when I went to bed and woke up the next morning, I recalled different moments during my acquaintance and shortlived affair with Olga. I remembered Stone Grave, the cottage in the forest where the ‘girl in red’ lived, the road to Tenevo, the meeting in the grotto – and my heart began to pound. I felt a nagging pain… But none of this lasted very long. Those bright memories soon faded under the pressure of unpleasant ones. What poetry from the past could withstand the filth of the present? And now that I had finished with Olga I viewed that ‘poetry’ differently. Now I saw it as an optical illusion, as a lie, as hypocrisy – and in my eyes it lost half its charm.

The Count had now become utterly repulsive to me. I was glad that I wasn’t seeing him and I always grew angry when his mustachioed face timidly appeared in my imagination.

Every day he sent me letters in which he implored me to stop moping and to visit someone who was no longer a ‘solitary hermit’. Obeying his letters would have made things very unpleasant for myself.

‘It’s all over!’ I thought. ‘Thank God… I’m sick and tired of it.’

I decided to break off all relations with the Count and this determination didn’t cost me the slightest effort. Now I was no longer the person of three weeks earlier who could barely stay at home after the quarrel over Pshekhotsky – there was nothing to entice me to the Count’s any more.