'We'll go abroad together tomorrow,' I told her.
'We can't, my husband won't give me a passport.'
'Then I'll take you without one.'
The cab stopped near a two-storey wooden house painted a dark colour. I rang. Taking from me her light little basket—the only luggage we had brought—Zinaida smiled a wry smile.
'My jewels,' she said.
But so weak was she that she could not hold those jewels.
It was a long time before the door opened. After the third or fourth ring a light glinted in the windows. Footsteps, coughing and whispering were heard. Then the key turned in the lock at last and a stout peasant woman with a scared red face appeared at the door. Some way behind her stood a thin little old woman with bobbed grey hair, in a white blouse, carrying a candle. Zinaida ran into the lobby and flung herself on the old woman's neck.
'I've been so badly let do^n, Nina,' she sobbed loudly. 'Oh, Nina, it's such a dirty, rotten business.'
I gave the peasant woman the basket. They locked the door, but sobs and shouts of'Nina' were still audible. I got in the fly and told the man to drive slowly towards the Nevsky Prospekt. I had to think where I could find my night's lodging.
I called on Zinaida late in the following afternoon. She was greatly changed. There were no traces of tears on her pale, very thin face, and her expression was altered. Whether it was because I now saw her in different and far from luxurious surroundings, or because our relations had changed, or perhaps because great sorrow had left its mark on her, she no longer seemed as elegant and well-dressed as formerly. Her figure had shrunk, rather. In her movements, her walk and her expression I noticed a jerkiness, an excess of nervousness and a quality of urgency, while even her smile lacked its former sweetness. I was now wearing an expensive suit which I had bought during the day. She first cast an eye over this suit and the hat in my hand, then fixed an impatient, quizzical glance on my face as if studying it.
'Your transformation still seems pretty miraculous to me,' she said. 'Forgive me looking at you so inquisitively. You're a most unusual man, aren t you?
I told her again who I was and why I had lived at Orlov's, speaking at greater length and in more detail than on the previous day. She listened with great attention.
'I am finished with all that,' she interrupted me. 'Do you know, I couldn't resist writing him a note? Here is the answer.'
On the sheet which she gave me I saw Orlov's handwriting.
'I'm not looking for excuses, but you must admit it was your mistake, not mine.
'Wishing you happiness and begging you to forget with all speed 'Your faithful servant
'G. O.
'PS. Am sending on your things.'
There in the drawing-room stood the trunks and baskets sent on by Orlov, among them being my o^ pathetic suitcase.
'So he must . . .' said Zinaida, but did not finish her sentence.
We were silent for a time. She took the note and held it before her eyes for a couple of minutes while her face assumed the haughty, contemptuous, proud, harsh expression which she had worn at the beginning ofour discussion on the previous evening. Tears came to her eyes: proud, angry tears, with nothing timid or bitter about them.
'Listen,' she said, standing up abruptly and going over to the window to prevent my seeing her face. 'I have decided to go abroad with you tomorrow.'
'Very well. We can start today so far as I'm concerned.'
'Recruit me into your organization,' she said, then suddenly turned round and asked if I had read Balzac. 'Have you read him? Pire Goriot ends with the hero looking do^ at Paris from a hill-top and threatening the city. "I shall be even with you yet," says he, after which he begins a new life. And when I look at St. Petersburg from the train window for the last time, I'll say the same: "I shall be even with you
I
yet.
Having spoken, she smiled at her own joke and for some reason shuddered all over.
XV
In Venice I began to suffer attacks of pleurisy, having probably caught cold on the evening when we took the boat from the station to the Hotel Bauer. I had to go to bed on the first day and stay there for a formight. During my illness Zinaida came from her room to drink coffee with me every morning, and then read me aloud the French and Russian books of which we had bought a great ^^y in Vienna. These were books which I had known for years, or which did not interest me, but with her delightful, amiable voice sounding so near to me the contents of the whole lot of them boiled do^, so far as I was concerned, to the single fact that I was not alone. She would go out for a stroll and come back in her light grey dress and dainty straw hat, cheerful and warmed by the spring sunshine. Sitting by my bed, stooping over my face, she would tell me something about Venice or read these books, and I felt splendid.
At night I was cold, I had pains, I was bored, but during the day I exulted in life: there is no better way of putting it. The hot, brilliant sunshine beating through open windows and balcony door, the shouts below, the plash of oars, the tolling of bells, the thunder-peals of the noon-tide cannon, the sensation of complete and utter freedom . . . these things did wonders for me. I felt as if I were growing mighty, broad wings to bear me off God knows where. And how enchanting it was, what pleasure there was sometimes in the thought that another life was now marching step by step with mine, that I was the servant, protector, friend and indispensable travelling companion of a young woman who besides being beautiful and rich was also weak, insulted and lonely. Even illness <can be pleasant when you know that others are eagerly looking forward to your recovery. I once heard her whispering with my doctor behind the door, and when she came into my room afterwards her eyes were filed with tears. It was a bad sign, but I was greatly moved, and it gave me a wonderful feeling of relief
Then I was allowed out on the balcony. The sunshine and sea breeze lulled and caressed my sick body. I looked do^ at the fa^^ar gondolas gliding along with feminine grace, smoothly and majestically, like living creatures attuned to the voluptuousness of a civilization so exotic and bewitching. There was a smell of the sea. Somewhere people were playing stringed instruments and singing a two-part song. It was so marvellous, so ^^ke that night in St. Petersburg with sleet falling and lashing me roughly in the face. Looking straight across the canal now, I could see the open sea, while the sunlight on the far skyline's expanse dazzled till it hurt your eyes. It made me long to go down to the dear old sea to which I had given my youth. I wanted a bit of excitement: a bit of life, that was all.
A fortnight later I was up and about, and could go where I pleased. I liked sitting in the sun, listening to a gondolier whom I could not understand and spending hours on end gazing at the villa where Desdemona was said to have lived: an unsophisticated, sad, demure little place as light as lace, it looked as if you could pick it up in one hand. I stood for some time by the Canova monument, my eyes fixed on the sad lion. In the Palace of the Doges I was attracted by the comer where the wretched Marino Faliero had been daubed with black paint. I should like to be an artist, poet or playwright, I thought, but if that is beyond me a dose of mysticism might not come amiss. Oh, if only I had some scrap of faith to add to the unruffled calm and serenity which filled my heart!
In the evenings we ate oysters, drank wine and went boating. I remember our black gondola quietly bobbing about in one place while the water gurgled beneath it, scarcely audible. The reflections of stars and shore lights quivered and trembled in places. Not far away people were singing in a gondola festooned with coloured lamps which were reflected in the water. Guitars, violins, mandolins, men's and women's voices rang out in the darkness, while Zinaida, looking pale and serious— stem, almost—sat by my side, pursing her lips and clasping her hands. Musing on something, she did not so much as move an eyebrow, and did not hear me. Her face, her pose, her fixed, expressionless glance, those incredibly bleak, unnerving ice-cold memories . .. and around us the gondolas, the lights, the music, the song with its dynamic, ardent cry of "Jam-mol Jam-mol" . . . what a fantastic contrast! When she sat like this, her hands tightly clasped, petrified, disconsolate, I felt as if we were both characters in an old-fashioned novel with some title like A Maid Forlorn or The Forsaken Damozel. Yes, both of us fitted: she forlorn and forsaken, and I, the loyal, faithful friend, the introvert, the odd-man-out if you like, the failure no longer capable of anything but coughing and brooding, and perhaps also of sacrificing himself. But what usc were my sacrifices to anyone? And what had I to sacrificc, one might ask ?