That night Ilya Borisovich did some hard thinking, conferred with his inner self, and next morning phoned his friend to submit to him certain questions of a financial nature. Euphratski"s replies were listless in tone but most accurate in sense. Ilya Borisovich pondered some more and on the following day made Euphratski an offer to be submitted to Arion. The offer was accepted, and Ilya Borisovich transferred to Paris a certain amount of money. In reply he got a letter with expressions of deep grat.i.tude and a communication to the effect that the next issue of Arion would come out in a month"s time. A postscript contained a courteous request: Allow us to put, "a novel by Ilya Annenski," and not, as you suggest, "I. Annenski," otherwise there might be some confusion with the "last swan of Tsarskoe Selo," as Gumilyov calls him.
Ilya Borisovich answered: Yes, of course, I just did not know that there already existed an author writing under that name. I am delighted my work will be printed. Please have the kindness to send me five specimens of your journal as soon as it is out.
(He had in view an old female cousin and two or three business acquaintances. His son did not read Russian.) Here began the era in his life which the wits denoted by the term "apropos." Either in a Russian bookshop, or at a meeting of the Friends of Expatriate Arts, or else simply on the sidewalk of a West Berlin street, you were amiably accosted ("Ah! How goes it?") by a person you knew slightly, a pleasant and dignified gentleman wearing horn-rimmed gla.s.ses and carrying a cane, who would engage you in casual conversation about this and that, would imperceptibly pa.s.s from this and that to the subject of literature, and would suddenly say: "Apropos, here"s what Galatov writes me. Yes-Galatov. Galatov the Russian Djoys."
You take the letter and scan it: ... editors are more than entranced ... our cla.s.sical writers ... adornment of our review.
"He got my patronymic wrong," adds Ilya Borisovich with a kindly chuckle. "You know how writers are: absentminded! The journal will come out in September, you will read my little work." And replacing the letter in his wallet, he takes leave of you and with a worried air hurries away.
Literary failures, hack journalists, special correspondents of forgotten newspapers derided him with savage volupty. Such hoots are emitted by delinquents torturing a cat; such a spark glows in the eyes of a no longer young, s.e.xually unlucky fellow telling a particularly dirty story. Naturally, it was behind his back that they jeered, but they did so with the utmost sans-gene, disregarding the superb acoustics of every locus of tattle. Being, however, as deaf to the world as a grouse in courtship, he probably did not catch one sound of all this. He blossomed, he walked his cane with a new, novelistic stance, he started writing to his son in Russian with an interlinear German translation of most of the words. At the office one knew already that I.B. Tal was not only an excellent person but also a Schriftsteller, and some of his business friends confided their love secrets to him as themes he might use. To him, sensing a certain warm zephyr, there began to flock in, through front hall or back door, the motley mendicancy of emigration. Public figures addressed him with respect. The fact could not be denied: Ilya Borisovich was indeed surrounded by esteem and fame. Not a single party in a cultured Russian milieu pa.s.sed without his name being mentioned. How it was mentioned, with what kind of snicker, hardly matters: the thing, not the way, is important, says true wisdom.
At the end of the month Ilya Borisovich had to leave town on a tedious business trip and so he missed the advertis.e.m.e.nts in Russian-language newspapers regarding the coming publication of Arion 2. When he returned to Berlin, a large cubical package awaited him on the hallway table. Without taking his topcoat off, he instantaneously undid the parcel. Pink, plump, cool tomes. And, on the covers, ARION in purple-red letters. Six copies.
Ilya Borisovich attempted to open one; the book crackled deliciously but refused to unclose. Blind, newborn! He tried again, and caught a glimpse of alien, alien versicles. He swung the ma.s.s of uncut pages from right to left-and happened to spot the table of contents. His eye raced through names and t.i.tles, but he was not there, he was not there! The volume endeavored to shut, he applied force, and reached the end of the list. Nothing! How could that be, good G.o.d? Impossible! Must have been omitted by chance from the table, such things happen, they happen! He was now in his study, and seizing his white knife, he stuck it into the thick, foliated flesh of the book. First Galatov, of course, then poetry, then two stories, then again poetry, again prose, and farther on nothing but trivia-surveys, critiques, and so forth. Ilya Borisovich was overwhelmed all at once by a sense of fatigue and futility. Well, nothing to be done. Maybe they had too much material. They"ll print it on the next number. Oh, that"s for certain! But a new period of waiting-Well, I"ll wait. Mechanically he kept sifting the soft pages between finger and thumb. Fancy paper. Well, I"ve been at least of some help. One can"t insist on being printed instead of Galatov or-And here, abruptly, there jumped out and whirled and went tripping, tripping along, hand on hip, in a Russian dance, the dear, heart-warm words: "... her youthful, hardly formed bosom ... violins were still weeping ... both little tickets ... the spring night welcomed them with a car-" and on the reverse page, as inevitably as the continuation of rails after a tunnel: "essing and pa.s.sionate breath of wind-"
"How the deuce didn"t I guess immediately!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Ilya Borisovich.
It was ent.i.tled "Prologue to a novel." It was signed "A. Ilyin," with, in parentheses, "To be continued." A small bit, three pages and a half, but what a nice bit! Overture. Elegant. "Ilyin" is better than "Annenski." Might have been a mix-up even if they had put "Ilya Annenski." But why "Prologue" and not simply: Lips to Lips, Chapter One? Oh, that"s quite unimportant.
He reread the piece thrice. Then he laid the magazine aside, paced his study, whistling negligently the while, as if nothing whatever had happened: well, yes, there"s that book lying there-some book or other-who cares? Whereupon he rushed toward it and reread himself eight times in a row. Then he looked up "A. Ilyin, p. 205" in the table of contents, found p. 205, and, relishing every word, reread his "Prologue." He kept playing that way for quite a time.
The magazine replaced the letter. Ilya Borisovich constantly carried a copy of Arion under his arm, and upon running into any sort of acquaintance, opened the volume at a page that had grown accustomed to presenting itself. Arion was reviewed in the papers. The first of those reviews did not mention Ilyin at all. The second had: "Mr. Ilyin"s "Prologue to a novel" must surely be a joke of some kind." The third noted merely that Ilyin and another were newcomers to the magazine. Finally, a fourth reviewer (in a charming, modest little periodical appearing somewhere in Poland) wrote as follows: "Ilyin"s piece attracts one by its sincerity. The author pictures the birth of love against a background of music. Among the indubitable qualities of the piece one should mention the good style of the narration." A new era started (after the "apropos" period and the book-carrying one): Ilya Borisovich would extract that review from his wallet.
He was happy. He purchased six more copies. He was happy. Silence was readily explained by inertia, detraction by enmity. He was happy. "To be continued." And then, one Sunday, came a telephone call from Euphratski: "Guess," he said, "who wants to speak to you? Galatov! Yes, he"s in Berlin for a couple of days. I pa.s.s the receiver."
A voice never yet heard took over. A shimmering, urgeful, mellow, narcotic voice. A meeting was settled.
"Tomorrow at five at my place," said Ilya Borisovich, "what a pity you can"t come tonight!"
"Very regrettable," rejoined the shimmering voice; "you see, I"m being dragged by friends to attend The Black Panther-terrible play-but it"s such a long time since I"ve seen dear Elena Dmitrievna."
Elena Dmitrievna Garina, a handsome elderly actress, who had arrived from Riga to star in the repertoire of a Russian-language theater in Berlin. Beginning at half-past eight. After a solitary supper Ilya Borisovich suddenly glanced at his watch, smiled a sly smile, and took a taxi to the theater.
The "theater" was really a large hall meant for lectures, rather than plays. The performance had not yet started. An amateur poster featured Garina reclining on the skin of a panther shot by her lover, who was to shoot her later on. Russian speech crepitated in the cold vestibule. Ilya Borisovich relinquished into the hands of an old woman in black his cane, his bowler, and his topcoat, paid for a numbered jetton, which he slipped into his waistcoat pocket, and leisurely rubbing his hands looked around the vestibule. Close to him stood a group of three people: a young reporter whom Ilya Borisovich knew slightly, the young man"s wife (an angular lady with a lorgnette), and a stranger in a flashy suit, with a pale complexion, a little black beard, beautiful ovine eyes, and a gold chainlet around his hairy wrist.
"But why, oh why," the lady was saying to him vivaciously, "why did you print it? "Cause you know-"
"Now stop attacking that unfortunate fellow," replied her interlocutor in an iridescent baritone voice. "All right, he"s a hopeless mediocrity, I grant you that, but evidently we had reasons-"
He added something in an undertone and the lady, with a click of her lorgnette, retorted in anger, "Excuse me, but in my opinion, if you print him only because he supports you financially-"
"Doucement, doucement. Don"t proclaim our editorial secrets."
Here Ilya Borisovich caught the eye of the young reporter, the angular lady"s husband, and the latter froze for an instant and then moaned with a start, and proceeded to push his wife away with his whole body, but she continued to speak at the top of her voice: "I"m not concerned with the wretched Ilyin, I"m concerned with matters of principle-"
"Sometimes, principles have to be sacrificed," coolly said the opal-voiced fop.
But Ilya Borisovich was no longer listening. He saw things through a haze, and being in a state of utter distress, not yet realizing fully the horror of the event, but instinctively striving to retreat as fast as possible from something shameful, odious, intolerable, he moved at first toward the vague spot where vague seats were being sold, but then abruptly turned back, almost collided with Euphratski who was hurrying toward him, and made for the cloakroom.
Old woman in black. Number 79. Down there. He was in a desperate hurry, had already swept his arm back to get into a last coat sleeve, but here Euphratski caught up with him, accompanied by the other, the other- "Meet our editor," said Euphratski, while Galatov, rolling his eyes and trying not to let Ilya Borisovich regain his wits, kept catching the sleeve in a semblance of a.s.sistance and talking fast: "Innokentiy Borisovich, how are you? Very glad to make your acquaintance. Pleasant occasion. Allow me to help you."
"For G.o.d"s sake, leave me alone," muttered Ilya Borisovich, struggling with the coat and with Galatov. "Go away. Disgusting. I can"t. It"s disgusting."
"Obvious misunderstanding," put in Galatov at top speed.
"Leave me alone," cried Ilya Borisovich, wrenched himself free, scooped up his bowler from the counter, and went out, still putting on his coat.
He kept whispering incoherently as he marched along the sidewalk; then he spread his hands: he had forgotten his cane!
Automatically he continued to walk, but presently with a quiet little stumble came to a stop as if the clockwork had run out.
He would go back for the thing once the performance had started. Must wait a few minutes.
Cars sped by, tramcars rang their bells, the night was clear, dry, spruced up with lights. He began to walk slowly toward the theater. He reflected that he was old, lonely, that his joys were few, and that old people must pay for their joys. He reflected that perhaps even tonight, and in any case, tomorrow, Galatov would come with explanations, exhortations, justifications. He knew that he must forgive everything, otherwise the "To be continued" would never materialize. And he also told himself that he would be fully recognized after his death, and he recollected, he gathered up in a tiny heap, all the crumbs of praise he had received lately, and slowly walked to and fro, and after a while went back for his cane.
ORACHE.
THE vastest room in their St. Petersburg mansion was the library. There, before the drive to school, Peter would look in to say good morning to his father. Crepitations of steel and the sc.r.a.ping of soles: every morning his father fenced with Monsieur Mascara, a diminutive elderly Frenchman made of gutta-percha and black bristle. On Sundays Mascara came to teach Peter gymnastics and pugilism-and usually interrupted the lesson because of dyspepsia: through secret pa.s.sages, through canyons of bookcases, through deep dim corridors, he retreated for half an hour to one of the water closets on the first floor. Peter, his thin hot wrists thrust into huge boxing gloves, waited, sprawling in a leather armchair, listening to the light buzz of silence, and blinking to ward off somnolence. The lamplight, which on winter mornings seemed always of a dull tawny tint, shone on the rosined linoleum, on the shelves lining the walls, on the defenseless spines of books huddling there in tight ranks, and on the black gallows of a pear-shaped punching ball. Beyond the plate-gla.s.s windows, soft slow snow kept densely falling with a kind of monotonous and sterile grace.
At school, recently, the geography teacher, Berezovski (author of a booklet "Chao-San, the Land of the Morning: Korea and Koreans, with thirteen ill.u.s.trations and a map in the text"), fingering his dark little beard, informed the entire cla.s.s, unexpectedly and malapropos, that Mascara was giving Peter and him private lessons in boxing. Everybody stared at Peter. Embarra.s.sment caused Peter"s face to glow brightly and even to become somewhat puffy. At the next recess, Shchukin, his strongest, roughest, and most backward cla.s.smate, came up to him and said with a grin: "Come on, show how you box." "Leave me alone," replied Peter gently. Shchukin emitted a nasal grunt and hit Peter in the underbelly. Peter resented this. With a straight left, as taught by Monsieur Mascara, he bloodied Shchukin"s nose. A stunned pause, red spots on a handkerchief. Having recovered from his astonishment, Shchukin fell upon Peter and started to maul him. Though his whole body hurt, Peter felt satisfied. Blood from Shchukin"s nose continued to flow throughout the lesson of Natural History, stopped during Sums, and retrickled at Sacred Studies. Peter watched with quiet interest.
That winter Peter"s mother took Mara to Mentone. Mara was sure she was dying of consumption. The absence of his sister, a rather badgering young lady with a caustic tongue, did not displease Peter, but he could not get over his mother"s departure; he missed her terribly, especially in the evenings. He never saw much of his father. His father was busy in a place known as the Parliament (where a couple of years earlier the ceiling had collapsed). There was also something called the Kadet Party, which had nothing to do with parties or cadets. Very often Peter would have to dine separately upstairs, with Miss Sheldon-who had black hair and blue eyes and wore a knit tie with transverse stripes over her voluminous blouse-while downstairs near the monstrously swollen hallstands fully fifty pairs of rubbers would acc.u.mulate; and if he pa.s.sed from the vestibule to the side room with its silk-covered Turkish divan he could suddenly hear-when somewhere in the distance a footman opened a door-a cacophonic din, a zoolike hubbub, and the remote but clear voice of his father.
One gloomy November morning Dmitri Korff, who shared a school desk with Peter, took out of his piebald satchel and handed to him a cheap satirical magazine. On one of the first pages there was a cartoon-with green color predominating-depicting Peter"s father and accompanied by a jingle. Glancing at the lines, Peter caught a fragment from the middle: V syom stolknovenii neschastnom
Kak dzentelmen on predlagal
Revolver, sablyu il" kinzhal.
(In this unfortunate affray
He offered like a gentleman
Revolver, dagger, or epee.)
"Is it true?" asked Dmitri in a whisper (the lesson had just begun). "What do you mean-true?" whispered Peter back. "Pipe down, you two," broke in Aleksey Matveich, the teacher of Russian, a muzhiklooking man, with an impediment in his speech, a nondescript and untidy growth above a crooked lip, and celebrated legs in screwy trousers: when he walked his feet tangled-he set the right one where the left should have landed and vice versa-but nevertheless his progress was extremely rapid. He now sat at his table and leafed through his little notebook; presently his eyes focused on a distant desk, from behind which, like a tree grown by the glance of a fakir, Shchukin was rising.
"What do you mean-true?" softly repeated Peter, holding the magazine in his lap and looking askance at Dmitri. Dmitri moved a little closer to him. Meanwhile, Shchukin, crop-headed, wearing a Russian blouse of black serge, was beginning for the third time, with a sort of hopeless zest: "Mumu ... Turgenev"s story Mumu ..." "That bit about your father," answered Dmitri in a low voice. Aleksey Matveich banged the Zhivoe Slovo (a school anthology) against the table with such violence that a pen jumped and stuck its nib in the floor. "What"s going on there? ... What"s this ... you whisperers?" spoke the teacher, spitting out sibilant words incoherently: "Stand up, stand up.... Korff, Shishkov.... What is it you"re doing there?" He advanced and nimbly s.n.a.t.c.hed away the magazine. "So you"re reading s.m.u.t ... sit down, sit down ... s.m.u.t." His booty he put into his briefcase.
Next, Peter was called to the blackboard. He was told to write out the first line of a poem which he was supposed to have learned by heart. He wrote: ... uzkoyu mezhoy
Porosshey kashkoyu ... ili bedoy ...
(... along a narrow margin overgrown
with clover ... or ache ...)
Here came a shout so jarring that Peter dropped his bit of chalk: "What are you scrawling? Why bedoy, when it"s lebedoy, orache-a clingy weed? Where are your thoughts roaming? Go back to your seat!"
"Well, is it true?" asked Dmitri in a well-timed whisper. Peter pretended he did not hear. He could not stop the shiver running through him; in his ears there kept echoing the verse about the "revolver, dagger, or epee"; he kept seeing before him the sharp-angled pale-green caricature of his father, with the green crossing the outline in one place and not reaching it in another-a negligence of the color print. Quite recently, before his ride to school, that crepitation of steel, that sc.r.a.pe of soles ... his father and the fencing master, both wearing padded chest protectors and wire-mesh masks.... It had all been so habitual-the Frenchman"s uvular cries, rompez, battez!, the robust movements of his father, the flicker and clink of the foils.... A pause: panting and smiling, he removed the convex mask from his damp pink face.
The lesson ended. Aleksey Matveich carried away the magazine. Chalk-pale, Peter kept sitting where he was, lifting and lowering the lid of his desk. His cla.s.smates, with deferential curiosity, cl.u.s.tered around him, pressing him for details. He knew nothing and tried himself to discover something from the shower of questions. What he could make out was that Tumanski, a fellow member of the Parliament, had aspersed his father"s honor and his father had challenged him to a duel.
Two more lessons dragged by, then came the main recess, with s...o...b..ll fights in the yard. For no reason at all Peter began stuffing his s...o...b..a.l.l.s with frozen earth, something he had never done before. In the course of the next lesson Nussbaum, the German teacher, lost his temper and roared at Shchukin (who was having bad luck that day), and Peter felt a spasm in his throat and asked leave to go to the toilet-so as not to burst into tears in public. There, in solitary suspension near the washbowl, was the unbelievably soiled, unbelievably slimy towel-more exactly the corpse of a towel that had pa.s.sed through many wet, hastily kneading hands. For a minute or so Peter looked at himself in the gla.s.s-the best method of keeping the face from dissolving in a grimace of crying.
He wondered if he should not leave for home before three o"clock, the regular time, but chased that thought away. Self-control, the motto is self-control! The storm in cla.s.s had subsided. Shchukin, scarlet-eared but absolutely calm, was back in his place, sitting there with his arms folded crosswise.
One more lesson-and then the final bell, which differed in sustained hoa.r.s.e emphasis from those that marked the earlier periods. Arctics, short fur coat, shapska with earflaps, were quickly slipped on, and Peter ran across the yard, penetrated into its tunnel-like exit, and jumped over the dogboard of the gate. No automobile had been sent to fetch him, so he had to take a hackney sleigh. The driver, lean-bottomed, flat-backed, perching slightly askew on his low seat, had an eccentric way of urging his horse on: he would pretend to draw the knout out of the leg of his long boot, or else his hand adumbrated a kind of beckoning gesture directed to no one in particular, and then the sleigh jerked, causing the pencil case to rattle in Peter"s satchel, and it was all dully oppressive and increased his anxiety, and oversize, irregularly shaped, hastily modeled snowflakes fell upon the sleazy sleighrobe.
At home, since the departure of his mother and sister, afternoons were quiet. Peter went up the wide, gentle-graded staircase where on the second landing stood a table of green malachite with a vase for visiting cards, presided over by a replica of the Venus of Milo that his cousins had once rigged up in a plush-velveteen coat and a hat with sham cherries, whereupon she began to resemble Praskovia Stepanovna, an impoverished widow who would call every first of the month. Peter reached the upper floor and hallooed his governess"s name. But Miss Sheldon had a guest for tea, the English governess of the Veretennikovs. Miss Sheldon sent Peter to prepare his school tasks for the next morning. Not forgetting first to wash his hands and drink his gla.s.s of milk. Her door closed. Peter, feeling smothered in cottonwoollish, ghastly anguish, dawdled in the nursery, then descended to the second floor and peeped into his father"s study. The silence there was unendurable. Then a crisp sound broke it-the fall of an incurved chrysanthemum petal. On the monumental writing desk the familiar, discreetly gleaming objects were fixed in an orderly cosmic array, like planets: cabinet photographs, a marble egg, a majestic inkstand.
Peter pa.s.sed into his mother"s boudoir, and thence into its oriel and stood there for quite a while looking through an elongated cas.e.m.e.nt. It was almost night by that time, at that lat.i.tude. Around the globes of lilac-tinted lights the snowflakes fluttered. Below, the black outlines of sleighs with the silhouettes of hunched-up pa.s.sengers flowed hazily. Maybe next morning? It always takes place in the morning, very early.
He walked down to the first floor. A silent wilderness. In the library, with nervous haste, he switched on the light and the black shadows swept away. Having settled down in a nook near one of the bookcases, he tried to occupy his mind with the examination of the huge bound volumes of the Zhivopisnoe obozrenie (a Russian counterpart of The Graphic): Masculine beauty depends on a splendid beard and a sumptuous mustache. Since girlhood I suffered from blackheads. Concert accordion "Pleasure," with twenty voices and ten valves. A group of priests and a wooden church. A painting with the legend "Strangers": gentleman moping at his writing desk, lady with curly boa standing some distance away in the act of gloving her wide-fingered hand. I"ve already looked at this volume. He pulled out another and instantly was confronted by the picture of a duel between two Italian swordsmen: one lunges madly, the other sidesteps the thrust and pierces his opponent"s throat. Peter slammed the heavy tome shut, and froze, holding his temples like a grown-up. Everything was frightening-the stillness, the motionless bookcases, the glossy dumbbells on an oaken table, the black boxes of the card index. With bent head he sped like the wind through murky rooms. Back again in the nursery, he lay down on a couch and remained lying there until Miss Sheldon remembered his existence. From the stairs came the sound of the dinner gong.
As Peter was on his way down, his father came out of his study, accompanied by Colonel Rozen, who had once been engaged to the long-dead young sister of Peter"s father. Peter dared not glance at his father and when the latter"s large palm, emitting familiar warmth, touched the side of his son"s head, Peter blushed to the point of tears. It was impossible, unbearable, to think that this man, the best person on earth, was going to duel with some dim Enigmanski. Using what weapons? Pistols? Swords? Why does n.o.body talk about it? Do the servants know? The governess? Mother in Mentone? At table the colonel joked as he always did, abruptly, briefly, as if cracking nuts, but tonight Peter instead of laughing was suffused with blushes, which he tried to conceal by deliberately dropping his napkin so as to rally quietly under the table and regain there his normal complexion, but he would crawl out even redder than before and his father would raise his eyebrows-and merrily, unhurriedly, with characteristic evenness perform the rites of eating dinner, of carefully quaffing wine from a low golden cup with a handle. Colonel Rozen went on cracking jokes. Miss Sheldon, who had no Russian, kept silent, sternly protruding her chest; and whenever Peter hunched his back she would give him a nasty poke under the shoulder blades. For dessert there was pistachio parfait, which he loathed.
After dinner, his father and the colonel went up to the study. Peter looked so queer that his father asked: "What"s the matter? Why are you sulking?" And miraculously Peter managed to answer distinctly: "No, I"m not sulking." Miss Sheldon led him bedward. As soon as the light was extinguished, he buried his face in the pillow. Onegin shed his cloak, Lenski plopped down on the boards like a black sack. One could see the point of the epee coming out at the back of the Italian"s neck. Mascara liked to tell about the rencontre which he had had in his youth: half a centimeter lower-and the liver would have been pierced. And the homework for tomorrow has not been done, and the darkness in the bedroom is total, and he must get up early, very early, better not shut my eyes or I"ll oversleep-the thing is sure to be scheduled for tomorrow. Oh, I"ll skip school, I"ll skip it, I"ll say-sore throat. Mother will be back only at Christmas. Mentone, blue picture postcards. Must insert the latest one in my alb.u.m. One corner has now gone in, the next- Peter woke up as usual, around eight, as usual he heard a ringing sound: that was the servant responsible for the stoves-he had opened a damper. With his hair still wet after a hasty bath, Peter went downstairs and found his father boxing with Mascara as if it were an ordinary day. "Sore throat?" he said, repeating it after Peter. "Yes, a sc.r.a.py feeling," said Peter, speaking low. "Look here, are you telling the truth?" Peter felt that all further explanations were perilous: the floodgate was about to burst, liberating a disgraceful torrent. He silently turned away and presently was seated in the limousine with his satchel in his lap. He felt queasy. Everything was horrible and irremediable.
Somehow or other he managed to be late for the first lesson, and stood for a long time with his hand raised behind the glazed door of his cla.s.s but was not permitted to enter and went roaming about in the hall, and then hoisted himself onto a window ledge with the vague idea of doing his tasks but did not get farther than: ... with clover and with clinging orache and for the thousandth time began imagining the way it would all happen-in the mist of a frosty dawn. How should he go about discovering the date agreed upon? How could he find out the details? Had he been in the last form-no, even in the last but one-he might have suggested: "Let me take your place."
Finally the bell rang. A noisy crowd filled the recreation hall. He heard Dmitri Korff"s voice in sudden proximity: "Well, are you glad? Are you glad?" Peter looked at him with dull perplexity. "Andrey downstairs has a newspaper," said Dmitri excitedly. "Come, we have just got time, you"ll see-But what"s the matter? If I were you-"
In the vestibule, on his stool, sat Andrey the old porter, reading. He raised his eyes and smiled. "It is all here, all written down here," said Dmitri. Peter took the paper and made out through a trembling blur: "Yesterday in the early afternoon, on Krestovski Island, G. D. Shishkov and Count A. S. Tumanski fought a duel, the outcome of which was fortunately bloodless. Count Tumanski, who fired first, missed, whereupon his opponent discharged his pistol into the air. The seconds were-"
And then the floodgate broke. The porter and Dmitri Korff attempted to calm him, but he kept pushing them away, shaken by spasms, his face concealed, he could not breathe, never before had he known such tears, do not tell anyone, please, I am simply not very well, I have this pain-and again a tumult of sobs.
MUSIC.
THE entrance hall overflowed with coats of both s.e.xes; from the drawing room came a rapid succession of piano notes. Victor"s reflection in the hall mirror straightened the knot of a reflected tie. Straining to reach up, the maid hung his overcoat, but it broke loose, taking down two others with it, and she had to begin all over again.
Already walking on tiptoe, Victor reached the drawing room, whereupon the music at once became louder and manlier. At the piano sat Wolf, a rare guest in that house. The rest-some thirty people in all-were listening in a variety of att.i.tudes, some with chin propped on fist, others sending cigarette smoke up toward the ceiling, and the uncertain lighting lent a vaguely picturesque quality to their immobility. From afar, the lady of the house, with an eloquent smile, indicated to Victor an unoccupied seat, a pretzel-backed little armchair almost in the shadow of the grand piano. He responded with self-effacing gestures-it"s all right, it"s all right, I can stand; presently, however, he began moving in the suggested direction, cautiously sat down, and cautiously folded his arms. The performer"s wife, her mouth half-open, her eyes blinking fast, was about to turn the page; now she has turned it. A black forest of ascending notes, a slope, a gap, then a separate group of little trapezists in flight. Wolf had long, fair eyelashes; his translucent ears were of a delicate crimson hue; he struck the keys with extraordinary velocity and vigor and, in the lacquered depths of the open keyboard lid, the doubles of his hands were engaged in a ghostly, intricate, even somewhat clownish mimicry.
To Victor any music he did not know-and all he knew was a dozen conventional tunes-could be likened to the patter of a conversation in a strange tongue: in vain you strive to define at least the limits of the words, but everything slips and merges, so that the laggard ear begins to feel boredom. Victor tried to concentrate on listening, but soon caught himself watching Wolf"s hands and their spectral reflections. When the sounds grew into insistent thunder, the performer"s neck would swell, his widespread fingers tensed, and he emitted a faint grunt. At one point his wife got ahead of him; he arrested the page with an instant slap of his open left palm, then with incredible speed himself flipped it over, and already both hands were fiercely kneading the compliant keyboard again. Victor made a detailed study of the man: sharp-tipped nose, jutting eyelids, scar left by a boil on his neck, hair resembling blond fluff, broad-shouldered cut of black jacket. For a moment Victor tried to attend to the music again, but scarcely had he focused on it when his attention dissolved. He slowly turned away, fishing out his cigarette case, and began to examine the other guests. Among the strange faces he discovered some familiar ones-nice, chubby Kocharovsky over there-should I nod to him? He did, but overshot his mark: it was another acquaintance, Shmakov, who acknowledged the nod: I heard he was leaving Berlin for Paris-must ask him about it. On a divan, flanked by two elderly ladies, corpulent, red-haired Anna Samoylovna, half-reclined with closed eyes, while her husband, a throat specialist, sat with his elbow propped on the arm of his chair. What is that glittering object he twirls in the fingers of his free hand? Ah yes, a pince-nez on a Chekhovian ribbon. Further, one shoulder in shadow, a hunchbacked, bearded man known to be a lover of music listened intently, an index finger stretched up against his temple. Victor could never remember his name and patronymic. Boris? No, that wasn"t it. Borisovich? Not that either. More faces. Wonder if the Haruzins are here. Yes, there they are. Not looking my way. And in the next instant, immediately behind them, Victor saw his former wife.
At once he lowered his gaze, automatically tapping his cigarette to dislodge the ash that had not yet had time to form. From somewhere low down his heart rose like a fist to deliver an uppercut, drew back, struck again, then went into a fast, disorderly throb, contradicting the music and drowning it. Not knowing which way to look, he glanced askance at the pianist, but did not hear a sound: Wolf seemed to be pounding a silent keyboard. Victor"s chest got so constricted that he had to straighten up and draw a deep breath; then, hastening back from a great distance, gasping for air, the music returned to life, and his heart resumed beating with a more regular rhythm.
They had separated two years before, in another town, where the sea boomed at night, and where they had lived since their marriage. With his eyes still cast down, he tried to ward off the thunder and rush of the past with trivial thoughts: for instance, that she must have observed him a few moments ago as, with long, noiseless, bobbing strides, he had tiptoed the whole length of the room to reach this chair. It was as if someone had caught him undressed or engaged in some idiotic occupation; and, while recalling how in his innocence he had glided and plunged under her gaze (hostile? derisive? curious?), he interrupted himself to consider if his hostess or anyone else in the room might be aware of the situation, and how had she got here, and whether she had come alone or with her new husband, and what he, Victor, ought to do: stay as he was or look her way? No, looking was still impossible; first he had to get used to her presence in this large but confining room-for the music had fenced them in and had become for them a kind of prison, where they were both fated to remain captive until the pianist ceased constructing and keeping up his vaults of sound.
What had he had time to observe in that brief glance of recognition a moment ago? So little: her averted eyes, her pale cheek, a lock of black hair, and, as a vague secondary character, beads or something around her neck. So little! Yet that careless sketch, that half-finished image already was his wife, and its momentary blend of gleam and shade already formed the unique ent.i.ty which bore her name.
How long ago it all seemed! He had fallen madly in love with her one sultry evening, under a swooning sky, on the terrace of the tennis-club pavilion, and, a month later, on their wedding night, it rained so hard you could not hear the sea. What bliss it had been. Bliss-what a moist, lapping, and plashing word, so alive, so tame, smiling and crying all by itself. And the morning after: those glistening leaves in the garden, that almost noiseless sea, that languid, milky, silvery sea.