Orlov coloured slightly, frowned and flashed a stem glance at me. It wasn't so much the 'important matter' which had riled him as what I had said about my not being long for this world—my reference to death.
'Yes, I must think about that,' he said, shielding his eyes as if from the sun. 'Most grateful to you. A little girl, you say?'
'Yes, a girl. A splendid child.'
'Quite so. Not a pet dog, of course, a human being—I must give it serious thought, I can see that. I ar;n prepared to do my bit and, er, I'm most grateful to you.'
He stood up, paced about biting his nails, and stopped before a picture.
'This requires some thought,' he said in a hollow voice, standing with his back to me. 'I shall be at Pekarsky's today and I'll ask him to call on Krasnovsky. I doubt if Krasnovsky will make any great difficulties, he'll consent to take the girl.'
'I'm sorry, but I can't see what this has to do with Krasnovsky,' I said, also standing up and going over to a picture at the other end of the study.
'Well, she does bear his name I should hope.'
'Yes, he may be legally obliged to take the child, I don't know, but I didn't come here for a legal consultation, Orlov.'
'Yes, yes, you're right,' he agreed briskly. 'I seem to be talking nonsense. But don't excite yourself. We shall settle all this to our mutual satisfaction. If one solution doesn't fit we'll try a second. If that won't do then something else will, and this ticklish problem will be solved one way or another. Pekarsky will fix it all up. Now, will you be good enough to leave me your address, and I shall let you know at once what we decide. Where are you staying?'
Orlov noted my address and sighed.
' "My fate, ye gods, is just too bad: To be a tiny daughter's dad!" '
he said with a smile. 'But Pekarsky will fix everything, he has his head screwed on. Did you stay long in Paris?'
'Two months.'
We were silent. Orlov was obviously afraid of my mentioning the little girl again.
'You have probably forgotten your letter,' he said, trying to divert my attention elsewhere. 'But I have kept it. I understand your mood of the time and, frankly, I respect that letter.
'The damnable cold blood, the Oriental, the neighing snigger . . . that is charming and much to the point,' he went on with an ironical smile. 'And the basic idea may be close to the truth, though one might go on disputing for ever. That is,'—he fumbled for words—'not dispute the idea itself, but your attitude to the question: your temperament, so to speak. Yes, my life is abnormal, corrupt and useless, and what prevents me from starting a new one is cowardice, there you are quite right. But your taking it so much to heart, and getting so excited and frantic about it ... now, that isn't rational, there you are quite wrong.'
'A live man can't help being excited and frantic when he sees himself and other people near him heading for disaster.'
'No one disputes that. I am not in the least preaching callousness, all I'm asking for is an objective attitude. The more objective one is the less the risk of error. One must look at the roots, one must seek the ultimate cause of every phenomenon. We have weakened, we've let ourselves go, we've fallen by the wayside in fact, and our generation consists entirely of whimpering neurotics. All we do is talk about fatigue and exhaustion, but that's not our fault, yours and mine. We arc too insignificant for a whole generation's fate to hang on our idiosyncrasies. There must be substantial general causes behind all this, causes with a solid biological basis. Snivelling neurotics and backsliders we are, but perhaps that's necessaryand useful for future generations. Not one hair falls from a man's head without the will of the Heavenly Father. Nothing in nature or human society happens in isolation, in other words. Everything is based on something, it's all determined. Now, if so, why should we worry so particularly? Why write frantic letters?'
'Yes, yes, all right,' I said after a little thought. 'I believe that future generations will find things easier and see their way more clearly. They will have our experience to help them. But we do want to be independent of future generations, don't we, we don't want to live just for them? We only have one life, and we should like to live it confidently, rationally and elegantly. We should like to play a prominent, independent, honourable role, we should like to make history so that these same future generations won't have the right to call each one of us a nonentity or worse. I believe that what is going on around us is functional and inevitable. But whyshould that inevitability involve me? Why should my ego come to grief?'
'Well, it can't be helped,' sighed Orlov, standing up as if to let me see that our conversation was over.
I picked up my hat.
'We have only sat here half an hour, and just think how many problems we'vesolved,' said Orlov, seeing me into the hall. 'All right, I shall think about that matter. I'll see Pekarsky today, my word upon it.'
He stood waiting for me to put my coat on, obviously glad that I was leaving. I asked whether he would mind giving me back my letter.
'Very well.'
He went into his study and came back with the letter a minute later. I thanked him and left.
On the following day I received a note from him congratulating me on a satisfactory solution to the problem. He wrote that Pekarsky knew a lady who kept a boarding home: a kind of kindergarten where she took quite small children. The woman was completely reliable, but before settling things with her it might be as well to talk to Krasnovsky, as the formalities required. He advised me to see Pekarsky at once, taking the birth certificate if there was such a thing,
'With assurances of my sincere respect and devotion,
'Your humble servant '
Wllile I read the letter Sonya sat on the table looking at me most attentively, without blinking, as if she knew that her fate was being decided.
DOCTOR STARTSEV
I
To visitors' complaints that the county town of S was boring
and humdrum local people would answer defensively that life there was, on the contrary, very good indeed. The town had its library, its theatre, its club. There was the occasional ball. And, in conclusion, it contained intelligent, interesting and charming families with whom one might make friends. Among these families the Turkins were pointed out as the most cultivated and accomplished.
These Turkins lived in their own house on the main street near the Governor's. Mr. Turkin—a stout, handsome, dark man with dundreary whiskers—used to stage amateur dramatic performances for charity, himself playing elderly generals and coughing most amusingly 'while doing so. He knew endless funny stories, riddles, proverbs. He rather liked his fun—he was a bit of a wag—and you could never tell from his face whether he was joking or not. His wife Vera—a slim, pretty woman in a pince-иег—wrote short stories and novels which she liked reading to her guests. Their young daughter Catherine played the piano. Each Turkin had, in short, some accomplishment. They liked entertaining, and gladly displayed their talents to their guests in a jolly, hearty sort of a way. Their large, stone-built house was roomy and cool in hot weather, with half its windows opening on to a shady old garden where nightingales sang in springtime. When they were entertaining there would be a clatter of knives in the kitchen and a smell of fried onions in the yard—the sign that an ample, appetizing supper was on the way.
No sooner had Dr. Dmitry Startsev been appointed to a local medical post and moved in at Dyalizh, six miles away, than he too was told that he simply must meet the Turkins, seeing that he was an intellectual. One winter's day, then, he was introduced to Mr. Turkin in the street. They chatted about the weather, the theatre, the cholera. He was invited to call. On a public holiday in spring—Ascension Day. to be precise—Startsev set out for town after surgery in se.arch of recreation, meaning to do some shopping while he was about it. He made the journey unhurriedly on foot—he had not yet set up his carriage—humming 'Ere from the Cup of Life I yet had Drunk the Tears'.