'You caught the train all right then?' Zinaida asked.
'Yes, ma'am. The master sends his regards.'
I went to my room and lay down too. There was nothing to do, and I did not feel like reading. I was neither surprised nor indignant, I was merely racking my brains to understand the need for such deception. Why, only a boy in his teens would trick his mistress like that! And he, so well-read, so very rational a being ... surely he could have concocted something a little cleverer! I rated his intelligence pretty high, quite frankly. Had he needed to deceive his Minister or some other powerful man, he would have applied plenty of energy and skill to that, I thought, but now that deceiving a woman was involved any old idea would do—obviously. If the trick came off, so much the better, and if it didn't come off,, no matter, for one could tell another lie equally glib and equally hasty without any mental effort whatever.
At midnight there was a shifting of chairs and a cheering on the floor above ours as people greeted the New Year. Zinaida rang for me from the room next to the study. Her energy sapped from lying downwn so long, she was sitting at her table writing on a piece of paper.
'I must send a telegram,' she said with a smile. 'Drive to the station as quick as you can and ask them to send this after him.'
Coming out into the street, I read her jotting.
'Best New Year wishes. Telegraph quickly. Miss you terribly. Seems like eternity. Sorry I cannot wire a thousand kisses and my very heart. Enjoy yourself, darling,
'zinaida'
I sent the telegram and gave her the receipt next morning.
IX
The worst thing was that Orlov had thoughtlessly let Polya into the secret of his deception by asking her to bring his shirts to Sergiyevsky Street. After that she looked at Zinaida with a gloating hatred beyond my comprehension. She kept snorting with pleasure in her room and in the hall.
'She has outstayed her welcome and it's time she took herself off,' she said triumphantly. 'You would think she could see that for herself '
She already sensed that Zinaida would not be with us much longer, so she pilfered everything she could lay her hands on while the going was good: scent bottles, tortoiseshell hairpins, handkerchiefs and shoes. On the second ofJanuary, Zinaida called me to her room and informed me in hushed tones that her black dress was missing. Then she went round the whole flat, pale-faced, looking frightened and indignant, talking to herself.
'Really! No, I must say! Did you ever hear of such impudence?'
At lunch she tried to help herself to soup, but could not do so because her hands were shaking. So were her lips. She kept glancing helplessly at the soup and pies, waiting for the trembling to pass off. Then she suddenly lost her self-control and looked at Polya.
'You may leave today, Polya,' she said. 'Stephen can manage on his own.'
'No, madam,' said Polya, 'I shall be staying, madam.'
'There is no need for that, you can clear out once and for all!' Zinaida went on, standing up in a great pother. 'You can look for another job. You leave here this instant!'
'I can't go without the master's orders. It was him took me on and what he says goes.'
'I can give you orders too!' said Zinaida, flushing crimson. 'I'm the mistress in this house.'
'Mistress you may be, madam, but only the master can dismiss me. It was him took me on.'
'How dare you stay here one minute longer!' shouted Zinaida and hit her plate with her knife. 'You are a thief, do you hear me ?'
Zinaida threw her napkin on the table and rushed out ofthe dining- room with a pathetic, martyred look. Polya went out too, sobbing aloud and reciting some incantation. The soup and grouse grew cold, and all these restaurant delicacies on the table now wore a meagre, felonious, Polya-like air. Two pies on a little plate had a most pathetic, criminal look.
'We shall be taken back to our restaurant this afternoon,' they seemed to say. 'And tomorrow we shall be served up for lunch again to some civil servant or well-known singer.'
Polya's voice carried from her room. 'Some mistress, I must say! I could have been that kind of a mistress long ago, but I wouldn't demean meself. We shall see who'll leave here first, that we shall!'
Zinaida rang. She was sitting in a corner of her room with the air of having been put there as a punishment.
'There isn't a telegram, is there?' she asked.
'No, ma'am.'
'Ask the porter, there might be one.
'And don't go out of the house,' she called after me. 'I'm afraid to be here on my o^n.'
I had to run do^n to the porter every hour after that and ask if there was a telegram. What an unnerving time, though, honestly! Zinaida ate and had tea in her room to avoid seeing Polya, she slept there on a short crescent-shaped divan and she made her owri bed. For the first few days it was I who took the telegrams, but when no answer came she ceased to trust me and went to the post office herself. Looking at her, I too anxiously awaited a wire. I hoped he might have contrived some deception: arranging for her to receive a telegram from some railway station, for instance. If he was too engrossed with his cards, or had taken up with another woman, Gruzin and Kukushkin would surely remind him of us, I thought. But we waited in vain. I went into Zinaida's room half a dozen times a day to tell her the truth, but there she would be with shoulders drooping and lips moving, looking rather like a goat. I went away again without a word. Pity and compassion had quite unmanned me. Apparently unaffected by all this, Polya was cheerful and jolly, tidying the master's study and bedroom, ferreting in cupboards, clattering dishes. When she passed Zinaida's door she would hum something and cough. She was glad that Zinaida was hiding from her. In the evening she would go off somewhere and ring the doorbell at about two or three in the morning, when I had to open up to her and listen to her remarks about my cough. At once another ring would be heard and I would run to the room next to the study. Zinaida would stick her head through the doorway.
'Who was that ringing ?' she would ask, looking at my hands to see if I was holding a telegram.
When, on Saturday, there was a ring downstairs at last, and a well- known voice was heard on the staircase, she was so happy that she burst into tears. She rushed to greet him, embraced him, kissed his chest and sleeves, and said something unintelligible. The porter carried the suitcases up, and Polya's jolly voice was heard. It was as if he was just starting his holidays.
'Why didn't you telegraph?' asked Zinaida, panting withjoy. 'Why? I've suffered such torments, I've hardly survived. Oh, my God!'
'It's all perfectly simple,' Orlov said. 'The Senator and I left for Moscow on the very first day, so I didn't get your wires. I'll give you a detailed account this afternoon, dearest, but now I must sleep, sleep, sleep. The train was so tiring.'
He had obviously been up all night: playing cards, probably, and drinking a lot. Zinaida tucked him up in bed, and after that we all went round on tiptoe until evening. Lunch passed off quite successfully, but when they went to have coffee in the study the argument began. Zinaida said something rapidly in a low voice. She was speaking French, her words gurgling like a stream, after which a loud sigh camc from Orlov, followed by his voice.
'My God!' he said in French. 'Have you really no more interesting news than this eternal lament about the wicked maidservant?'
'But, darling, she did rob me, and she was most impudent.'
'Then why doesn't she rob me? Why isn't she impudent to me? Why do I never notice maids or porters or footmen ? You are behaving like a spoilt child, my dear, you don't know your o^n mind. I suspect you may be pregnant, actually. When I offered to dismiss her it was you who insisted on her staying. And now you want me to get rid of her. Well, in a case like this I can be stubborn too, I answer fad with fad. You want her to go away. Very well then, I want her to stay. It's the only way to cure you of your nerves.'