'There is no greater blessing than freedom,' she announced, forcing herself to say something earnest and significant. 'Why, it's all so silly, isn't it? We attach no value to our o^n views, however wise, and yet we are terrified of what various half-wits think. Up to the last minute I was afraid ofwhat people might say, but as soon as I followed my own inclinations and decided to live my own way, my eyes were opened, I got over my stupid fears, and now I'm happy, and I wish everyone else could be as happy.'
But then her chain of thought broke and she spoke of taking a new flat, of wallpaper, of horses, of a trip to Switzerland and Italy. But Orlov was tired by his voyage round restaurants and shops, and still felt the self-conscious discornfiture which I had noticed in him that morning. He smiled, but more from politeness than pleasure, and when she said anything serious he agreed ironically.
'Yes, yes, of course.'
'You must hurry up and find us a good cook, Stephen,' she told me.
'There's no need for any hurry on the kitchen front,' said Orlov with a cold look at me. 'We must move into our new flat first.'
He had never had his cooking done at home or kept horses, 'not liking dirty fhings about the place', as he said, and he only put up with me and Polya in his flat from sheer necessity. So-called domesticity with its mundanejoys and squabbles . . . it jarred on him as .1 form of vulgarity. To be pregnant, or have children and speak of them, that was bad form and suburban. I was now extremely curious to sec how these two creatures would manage together in the same dwelling: she- domesticated, very much the housewife with her copper saucepans and her dreams of a good cook and horses, and he who so often told his friends that a decent, clean-living man's apartment should be like a warship. There should be nothing superfluous in it: no women, no children, no bits and pieces, no kitchen utensils.
v
Now I shall tell you what happened on the following Thursday. Orlov and Zinaida ate at Contant's or Donon's that day. Orlov came home alone and Zinaida drove off-—as I later learnt, to the Old Town to see her former governess and wait till our guests had gone. Orlov was not keen on showing her to his friends: I realized that at breakfast when he began assuring her that he must cancel his Thursdays for the sake of her peace of mind.
As usual the guests arrived almost simultaneously.
'Is the mistress at home?' Kukushkin asked me in a whisper.
'No, sir,' I answered.
He came in with sly, glinting eyes, smiling enigmatically, rubbing his cold hands.
'Congratulations, my good sir,' he told Orlov, vibrating all over with an obsequious, ingratiating laugh. 'Be ye fruitful, and multiply ye, like unto the cedars of Lebanon.'
Making for the bedroom, the guests uttered some witticisms about a pair of lady's slippers, a rug which had been placed between the two beds and a grey blouse hanging on the back of a bed. They were amused by the idea of one so obstinate, one who despised all the mundane details of love, suddenly being caught in female toils in so simple and commonplace a manner.
'That which we mocked, to that have we bowed the knee,' Kukushkin repeated several times. He had, I may say, the disagreeable affectation of parading what sounded like biblical texts.
'Hush!' he whispered, raising a finger to his lips when they came out ofthe bedroom into the room next to the study. 'Quiet! Here it is that Gretchen dreams of her Faust!'
He roared with laughter as ifhe had said something terribly funny. I observed Gruzin, expecting this laugh to jar on his musical ear, but I was wrong. His lean, good-natured face beamed with pleasure. When they sat do^n to cards he said—pronouncing the letter г in his throat, and choking with laughter—that dear Georgie only needed a cherry- wood pipe and guitar for his cup of domestic felicity to run over. Pekarsky laughed sedately, but his tense expression showed that he found Orlov's new love affair distasteful. He could not understand exactly what had happened.
'But what about the husband?' he asked in perplexity after they had played three rubbers.
'I don't know,' answered Orlov.
Pekarsky combed his great beard with his fingers, pltmged deep in thought, and did not speak again until supper-time.
'I'm sorry, but I don't understand you two, I must say,' said he, slowly drawling out each word, when they had sat down to supper. 'You could love each other and break the seventh commandment to your hearts' content—that I could understand, I could see the point of that. But why make the husband a party to your secrets? Was there really any need ?'
'Oh, does it really matter?'
'H'm,' Pekarsky brooded.
'Well, I'll tell you one thing, old chap,' he went on, obviously racking his brains. 'Should I ever marry again, and should you conceive the notion ofpresenting me with a pair of horns, please do it so that I don't notice. It is far more honest to deceive a man than to wreck his daily routine and reputation. Oh, I can see what you're after. You both think that by living together openly you are behaving in an exceptionally decent and liberal manner, but I don't hold with this, er—what's it called ?—this romanticism.'
Orlov did not answer. He was in a bad mood and disinclined to speak. Still baffled, Pekarsky drummed his fingers on the table and thought for a moment.
'I still don't understand you two,' he said. 'You're not a student, she's not a little seamstress. You both have means. You could set her up in a separate establishment, I take it.'
'No, I couldn't. Read your Turgenev.'
'Oh? Why? I already have read him.'
'In his works Turgenev preaches that every superior, right-minded young woman should follow her beloved to the ends of the earth and serve his ideals,' said Orlov, screwing up his eyes ironically. 'Theends of the earth . . . that's poetic licence, since the whole globe with all its regions is subsumed in the dwelling of the man she loves. Not sharing your dwelling with the woman who loves you, that means denying her high destiny and failing to share her ideals. Yes, old boy, the prescription is Turgenev's, but it's me who has to take the laming medicine!'
'I can't see where Turgenev comes in,' said Gruzinn softly, s^^gging his shoulders. 'Do you remember Three Meetings, George, and how he's walking somewhere in Italy late one evening, and suddenly hears "Vieni, pensando a me segretamente" ?'
G^in started humming it. 'Good stuff, that.'
'But she didn't force herself on you, did she?' Pekarsky asked. 'It's what you yourself wanted.'
'Oh, do have a heart! Far from wanting it, I couldn't even conceive of such a possibility. When she mentioned corning to live with me I thought she was just having her little joke.'
Everyone laughed.
'How could I want such a thing ?' continued Orlov in the tone ofone put on the defensive. 'I am not a Turgenev hero, and should I ever require to liberate Bulgaria I could dispense with any female escort. I regard love principally as an element essential to my physical nature: one primitive and inimical to my whole ethos. I must satisfy it with discretion or give it up altogether, otherwise it will introduce elements as impure as itself into my life. To make it a pleasure instead of a torment I try to beautify it and surround it with a multitude ofillusions. I won't go to a woman unless I am assured beforehand that she will be beautiful and attractive. Nor will I visit her unless I'm on the top ofmy form. Only under such conditions do we manage to deceive each other, and feel that we love and are happy. But what do I want with copper saucepans and untidy hair ? Or with being seen when I haven't washed ? And am in a bad mood ? In her naive way Zinaida wants to make me like something I've been dodging all my life. She wants my flat to smell of cooking and washing up. She wants to move into a new establishment with tremendous йclat and drive about with her own horses, she needs must count my underwear, she must worry about my health, she must be constantly meddling in my private life, and she must dog my every step, while all the time sincerely assuring me that I can retain my old habits and my freedom. She is convinced that we're soon going off on our honeymoon, as if we had just got married —she wishes to be constantly at my side in trains and hotels, in other words, whereas I like reading when I travel and can't stand conversation.'