'Oh, it does, does it? If I resign, if I start dreaming aloud and letting myself fl oat off into some other world, you don't suppose I'll find that world any less hateful than my job, do you?'
'You're so keen on contradicting me you even disparage yourself.' Zinaida was hurt and stood up. 'I'm sorry I ever started this conversation.'
'But why so angry? I'm not angry because you're not in the Civil Service, am I? Everyone lives his own life.'
'But do you live your own life? Are you free?' Zinaida went on, throwing up her arms in despair. 'Spending all your time writing papers repugnant to your convictions, doing what you arc told, visiting your superiors to wish them a Happy New Year, all that incessant card-playing—and then, to cap it all, serving a system which you must find uncongenial ... no, George, no! Don't make such clumsy jokes. Oh, you are awful. As a man ofhigh ideals you should serve only )'OUr ideals.'
'You really are mistaking me for someone else,' sighed Orlov.
'Why don't you just tell me you don't want to talk to me?' Zinaida brought out through tears. 'You're fed up with me, that's all.'
'Now, look here, my dear,' Orlov admonished her, sitting up in his arm-chair. 'As you yourself so kindly remarked, I am an intelligent, educated man. Now, one can't teach an old dog new tricks. Those ideas, small and great, which you have in mind when calling me an idealist ... I know all about all of them. So if I prefer myjob and my cards to those ideals I presumably have grounds for doing so. That is the first point. And, secondly, you have never been a civil servant so far as I am aware, and you can only cull your views on government work from anecdotes and trashy novels. It might therefore be a good idea if we agreed once and for all to talk neither about things which we have knownwn all about all along nor about things outside our sphere of competence.'
'Why, why speak to me like that?' Zinaida asked, stepping back in horror. 'Think what you are saying, George, for God's sake.'
Her voice quivered and broke. Though obviously trying to hold back her tears, she suddenly burst out sobbing.
'George, darling, this is killing me,' she said in French, quickly falling to her knees before Orlov and laying her head on his lap. 'I'm so worn out and exhausted Ijust can't cope any more, I really can't. As a little girl I had that horrible depraved stepmother, then there was my husband, and now there's you . . . you. . . . I'm absolutely crazy about you, and you give me this callous irony in return!
'And then there's that awful, impudent maid,' she went on, sobbing. 'Yes, yes, I see. I'm not your wife or helpmate, I'm just a woman you don't respect.because she is your mistress. I shall commit suicide.'
I had not expected these words and tears to produce so strong an impression on Orlov. He flushed, stirring uneasily in his chair, and the irony on his face gave way to a sort of mindless dread. He looked exactly like a schoolboy.
'Darling, I swear you've misunderstood me,' he muttered frantically, touching her hair and shoulders. 'Do forgive me, I implore you. I was in the wrong and I, er, hate myself.'
'I offend you by my complaints and whining. You have such integrity, you're so generous. You are an exceptional man, I'm conscious of that every minute of the day, but I've been so utterly depressed all this time '
Zinaida embraced Orlov impulsively and kissed his cheek.
'Just stop crying, please,' he said.
'Yes, yes. I have already cried my eyes out, and I feel better.'
'As for the maid, she'll be gone tomorrow,' he said, still squirming in his chair.
'No, let her stay, George, do you hear? I'm not afraid of her any more. One must rise above such trivialities and not imagine silly things. You're so right. You're a rare, exceptional person.'
She soon stopped crying. With the tear-drops still wet on her lashes, she sat on Orlov's lap and recounted in hushed tones some pathetic tale: a reminiscence of her childhood and youth, or something like that. She stroked his face and kissed him, scrutinizing his beringed hands and the seals on his watch-chain. She was carried away by what she was saying, by having her lover near her, and her voice sounded unusually pure and candid: because her recent tears had cleansed and freshened her spirits, very likely. Orlov played with her auburn hair and kissed her hands, touching them soundlessly with his lips.
Then they had tea in the study and Zinaida read some letters aloud. They went to bed at about half past twelve.
That night my side ached mightily, and da^ broke before I was able to get warm or doze off. I heard Orlov go out of the bedroom into his study. After sitting there for about an hour he rang. My pain and fatigue made me forget all etiquette and conventions on this earth, and I went into the study barefoot, wearing only my underclothes. Orlov stood awaiting me in the doorway in dressing-go^ and cap.
'Report properly dressed when you're called,' he said sternly. 'Fetch fresh candles, will you?'
I tried to apologize, but suddenly had a terrible coughing fit and clutched the door-post with one hand to stop myself falling.
'Are you ill?' Orlov asked.
I think this was the first occasion on which he had addressed me politely during the whole time we had known each other. Why he did it God alone knows. Wearing underclothes, my face distorted by coughing, I was probably playing my part very badly and little resembled a servant.
'Why do you work then if you're so ill?' he asked.
'Because I don't want to die of starvation.'
'Oh, what a filthy business it all is, really!' he said quietly, going to his desk.
Throwing on a frock-coat, I fitted and lit fresh candles, while he sat near the desk with his legs on the arm-chair and cut the pages ofa book.
I left him engrossed in his reading, and his book no longer tended to fall from his grasp as it had in the evening.
VII
As I now write these lines my hand is restrained by a fear drilled into me since childhood, of seeming sentimental and ridiculous. I am incapable of being natural when I want to show affection and speak tenderly. And it is this very fear, combined with lack of experience, which now makes it quite impossible for me to convey with full precision my emotions of the time.
I was not in love with Zinaida, but my ordinary human liking for her contained far more youth, spontaneity and joy than was to be found in Orlov's love.
Plying my boot-brush or broom of a morning, I would wait with bated breath to hear her voice and steps. To stand and watch her drinking coffee and eating breakfast, to hold her fur coat for her in the hall, to put galoshes on her little feet while she placed a hand on my shoulders, and later to wait for the hall-porter's ring from downstairs and meet her at the door—rosy-checked, cold, powdered with snow— hearing her impulsive exclamations about the cold or the sledge- driver . . . ah, if you did but know how much it all meant to me! I wanted to fall in love and have a family, and I wanted my future wife to have a face and voice just like hers. I dreamt of it at mealtimes, on errands in the street and when I lay awake at night. The finicky Orlov spurned women's frippery, clildren, cooking and copper saucepans, but I garnered all these things together and watchfully cherished them in my dreams. I doted on them, I begged fate to grant me them, and I had visions of a wife, a nursery, garden paths and a little cottage.
Had I fallen in love with Zinaida I should never have dared to hope for the miracle of being loved in return, I knew, but that consideration did not trouble me. In my discreet, gentle feeling, akin to ordinary affection, there was neither jealousy nor even envy of Orlov, since .I realized that, for someone as incapacitated as I was, personal happiness was possible only in dreams.
When Zinaida waited up night after night for her George, looking at her book without moving or turning the pages, or when she shuddered and blenched because Polya was crossing the room, I suffered with her and I was tempted to lance this painful abscess at once by letting her know what was said in the place at supper-time on Thursdays. But how was I to do it? More and more often I saw her in tears. During the first weeks she had laughed and sung to herself even when Orlov was out, but by the second month our flat was plunged in dismal silence broken only on Thursdays.