Katya held quite different views, however, assuring me that the theatre—even in its present form—was superior to lecture-rooms, books, and anything else on earth. The stage was a power uniting all the arts,-the actors were missionaries. No art, no science on its o^ could make an impact on the human psyche as powerful and sincere as the stage—no wonder, then, if a second-rate actor enjoyed- more popularity in the state than the greatest scholar or artist. Nor could any form of public service give such enjoyment and satisfaction as the stage.
So one fine day Katya joined a theatrical troupe and went away— to Ufa, I think—taking with her a lot ,of cash, a host of rainbow- coloured hopes and the most lotdly views of the matter.
Her first letters written on the road were wonderful. I read them, simply astounded that these small sheets of paper could contain so much youth, spiritual integrity and heavenly innocence—yet also subtle, practical judgements such as would have done credit to a good male ^rnd. The Volga, the scenery, the townwns which she visited, her colleagues, hersuccesses and failures—she did not describe them so much as rhapsodize them. Every line breathed that trusting quality which I was used to seeing in her face—and with all this went masses of grammatical mistakes and an almost total lack of punctuation marks.
Within six months I received an extremely romantic, ecstatic letter. 'I'm in love,' it began, and with it was enclosed the photograph of a clean-shaven young man in a broad-brimmed hat with a rug thrownwn over his shoulder. The ensuing letters were still as magnificent as ever, but punctuation marks had now appeared, grammatical mistakes had vanished, and there was a strong masculine flavour about them. It would be a good idea to build a large theatre somewhere on the Volga, Katya wrote. It must be a joint-stock company, and rich businessmen and steamship ownwners must be brought into the project. There would be lots of money in it, terrific takings, and the actors would play on a partnership basis.
Perhaps it really was a good idea, but such schemes can originate only in a man's brain, I feel.
Be this as it may, all seemed to go well for eighteen months or two years. Katya was in love, she had faith in her work, she was happy. But later I began to notice in her letters the obVious signs of a decline. It started with complaints about her associates—the first symptom, and a most sinister one. If a young scholar or literary man begins his career by complaining bitterly about other scholars and literary men, it's a sure sign of premature fatigue and unfimess for his work. Katya wrote that her colleagues missed rehearsals, and never knew their lines. By the fatuous plays which they put Ollf by their bearing on stage, they each revealed utter disrespect for the public. For the sake of box-office receipts, their sole topic of conversation, serious actresses sank to singing popular songs, while tragic actors performed musical skits on deceived husbands, the pregnancy of unfaithful wives and so forth. The wonder was, what with one thing and another, that the provincial stage hadn't yet collapsed entirely— that it could still hang on by a thread so flimsy and rotten.
I wrote Katya a long answer—a very boring one, admittedly.
'I've had many occasions,' I wrote, amongst other things, 'to talk to elderly actbrs, extremely decent folk sympathetically disposed towards myself. From our conversations I could see that their activities were governed less by their ownwn intelligence and free choice than by fashion and society's moods. The best of them had had to play tragedy, operetta, Parisian farce and pantomime in their time, and whichever it was, they always felt they were on the right lines, and were doing good. So, you see, one musm't seek the root of this evil in actors, but more deeply—in the art itself, in society's attitude to it as a whole.'
This letter only irritated Katya.
'We're completely at cross purposes,' she replied. 'I was not referring to these extremely decent folk sympathetically disposed towards yourself, but to a gang of crooks without the faintest shred of decency—a pack of yahoos who only went on the stage because no one would take them anywhere else, and who only call themselves artists out of sheer impudence. There's not one talent among them, but there are plenty of mediocrities, drunkards, schemers and scandal-mongers. My adored art has falen into the clutches of people odious to me, and I can't tell you how bitterly I feel about it. And I'm bitter because even the best of men will only look on evil from a distance, won't go any nearer, and won't stick up for me—but only write me pompous, platitudinous, futile sermons instead.'
And so on. It was all in that vein.
A little later I received the following letter.
'I've been cruelly deceived, I can't go on living. Do what you think fit with my money. I've loved you as my father, my only friend. Farewell.'
Her young man, it turned out, also belonged to that pack of yahoos. I later gathered from certain hints that there had been an attempt at suicide. I think she tried to poison herself. That she fell seriously ill afterwards seems likely because her next letter reached me from Yalta, where her doctors had presumably sent her. Her last letter contained a request to send her a thousand roubles in Yalta quickly.
'I'm sorry my letter's so gloomy,' she ended. 'Yesterday I buried my baby.'
She spent about a year in the Crimea, and then came home.
She had been on the road about four years, during the whole ofwhich time I had played a pretty invidious and curious role in our relations, I can't deny it. When she originally told me that she was going on the stage, and then wrote about her love, when she was periodically seized by fits ofextravagance and I had to keep sending her a thousand or two roubles at her demand, when she wrote ofher intention to die and then of her baby's death—I always felt disconcerted, and could express my sympathy for her lot only by much meditation, and by composing long, boring letters which might just as well never have been written. And all this rime I was supposed to be a father to her, don't you see? I loved her as a daughter!
Katya lives a few hundred yards from me now, having taken a five- room flat and fixed herself up rather comfortably, and in her own peculiar taste. Were one to portray her surroundings, the picture's dominant mood would be laziness—with soft couches and soft stools for lazy bodies, rugs for lazy feet and faded, dim or pastel colours for lazy eyes. A profusion of cheap fans on the walls caters for the lazy psyche, as also do the wretched little pictures wherein eccentricity of technique predominates over content, the welter of little tables and shelves stocked with utterly superfluous and worthless objects, and the shapeless rags in place of curtains.
Add to all this a dread of bright colours, symmetry and space, and you have evidence of perverted natural taste in addition to temperamental indolence. Katya lies on the couch reading books day in day out^<hiefly novels and stories. She only goes out of doors once a day, to visit me in the afternoon.
While I work, Katya sits near me on the sofa in silence, wrapped in a shawl as if she felt cold. Either because she's so congenial, or because
I was so used to her visits as a little girl, her presence doesn't affect my concentration. I automatically ask her a question from time to time, and she replies very briefly. Or, for the sake of a minute's relaxation, I turn towards her and watch as she pensively scans some medical journal or newspaper. At such times her face no longer carries its former trustful look, I observe, her present expression being cold, listless and abstracted—as with passengers who have a long wait for a train. She still dresses beautifully and simply, but carelessly. Her dress and coiffure have clearly taken no little punishment from the sofas and rocking-chairs on which she sprawls for days on end. Nor is she inquisitive as of old, having given up asking me questions, as if she'd already seen what there is to see in life and didn't expect to learn anything new.