Great Russian Short Stories Read online

  A man came up—a coast-guard—gave a look at them, then went away. He, too, seemed mysterious and enchanted. A steamer came over from Feodossia, by the light of the morning star, its own lights already put out.

  “There is dew on the grass,” said Anna Sergueyevna after a silence.

  “Yes. It is time to go home.”

  They returned to the town.

  Then every afternoon they met on the quay, and lunched together, dined, walked, enjoyed the sea. She complained that she slept badly, that her heart beat alarmingly. She would ask the same question over and over again, and was troubled now by jealousy, now by fear that he did not sufficiently respect her. And often in the square or the gardens, when there was no one near, he would draw her close and kiss her passionately. Their complete idleness, these kisses in the full daylight, given timidly and fearfully lest any one should see, the heat, the smell of the sea and the continual brilliant parade of leisured, well-dressed, well-fed people almost regenerated him. He would tell Anna Sergueyevna how delightful she was, how tempting. He was impatiently passionate, never left her side, and she would often brood, and even asked him to confess that he did not respect her, did not love her at all, and only saw in her a loose woman. Almost every evening, rather late, they would drive out of the town, to Oreanda, or to the waterfall; and these drives were always delightful, and the impressions won during them were always beautiful and sublime.

  They expected her husband to come. But he sent a letter in which he said that his eyes were bad and implored his wife to come home. Anna Sergueyevna began to worry.

  “It is a good thing I am going away,” she would say to Gomov. “It is fate.”

  She went in a carriage and he accompanied her. They drove for a whole day. When she took her seat in the car of an express-train and when the second bell sounded, she said:

  “Let me have another look at you. . . . Just one more look. Just as you are.”

  She did not cry, but was sad and low-spirited, and her lips trembled.

  “I will think of you—often,” she said. “Good-bye. Good-bye. Don’t think ill of me. We part for ever. We must, because we ought not to have met at all. Now, good-bye.”

  The train moved off rapidly. Its lights disappeared, and in a minute or two the sound of it was lost, as though everything were agreed to put an end to this sweet, oblivious madness. Left alone on the platform, looking into the darkness, Gomov heard the trilling of the grasshoppers and the humming of the telegraph-wires, and felt as though he had just woke up. And he thought that it had been one more adventure, one more affair, and it also was finished and had left only a memory. He was moved, sad, and filled with a faint remorse; surely the young woman, whom he would never see again, had not been happy with him; he had been kind to her, friendly, and sincere, but still in his attitude toward her, in his tone and caresses, there had always been a thin shadow of raillery, the rather rough arrogance of the successful male aggravated by the fact that he was twice as old as she. And all the time she had called him kind, remarkable, noble, so that he was never really himself to her, and had involuntarily deceived her....

  Here at the station, the smell of autumn was in the air, and the evening was cool.

  “It is time for me to go North,” thought Gomov, as he left the platform. “It is time.”

  III

  At home in Moscow, it was already like winter; the stoves were heated, and in the mornings, when the children were getting ready to go to school, and had their tea, it was dark and their nurse lighted the lamp for a short while. The frost had already begun. When the first snow falls, the first day of driving in sledges, it is good to see the white earth, the white roofs; one breathes easily, eagerly, and then one remembers the days of youth. The old lime-trees and birches, white with hoarfrost, have a kindly expression; they are nearer to the heart than cypresses and palm-trees, and with the dear familiar trees there is no need to think of mountains and the sea.

  Gomov was a native of Moscow. He returned to Moscow on a fine frosty day, and when he donned his fur coat and warm gloves, and took a stroll through Petrovka, and when on Saturday evening he heard the church-bells ringing, then his recent travels and the places he had visited lost all their charms. Little by little he sank back into Moscow life, read eagerly three newspapers a day, and said that he did not read Moscow papers as a matter of principle. He was drawn into a round of restaurants, clubs, dinner-parties, parties, and he was flattered to have his house frequented by famous lawyers and actors, and to play cards with a professor at the University club. He could eat a whole plateful of hot sielianka.1

  So a month would pass, and Anna Sergueyevna, he thought, would be lost in the mists of memory and only rarely would she visit his dreams with her touching smile, just as other women had done. But more than a month passed, full winter came, and in his memory everything was clear, as though he had parted from Anna Sergueyevna only yesterday. And his memory was lit by a light that grew ever stronger. No matter how, through the voices of his children saying their lessons, penetrating to the evening stillness of his study, through hearing a song, or the music in a restaurant, or the snow-storm howling in the chimney, suddenly the whole thing would come to life again in his memory: the meeting on the jetty, the early morning with the mists on the mountains, the steamer from Feodossia and their kisses. He would pace up and down his room and remember it all and smile, and then his memories would drift into dreams, and the past was confused in his imagination with the future. He did not dream at night of Anna Sergueyevna, but she followed him everywhere, like a shadow, watching him. As he shut his eyes, he could see her, vividly, and she seemed handsomer, tenderer, younger than in reality; and he seemed to himself better than he had been at Yalta. In the evenings she would look at him from the bookcase, from the fireplace, from the corner; he could hear her breathing and the soft rustle of her dress. In the street he would gaze at women’s faces to see if there were not one like her....

  He was filled with a great longing to share his memories with some one. But at home it was impossible to speak of his love, and away from home—there was no one. Impossible to talk of her to the other people in the house and the men at the bank. And talk of what? Had he loved then? Was there anything fine, romantic, or elevating or even interesting in his relations with Anna Sergueyevna? And he would speak vaguely of love, of women, and nobody guessed what was the matter, and only his wife would raise her dark eyebrows and say:

  “Demitri, the rôle of coxcomb does not suit you at all.”

  One night, as he was coming out of the club with his partner, an official, he could not help saying:

  “If only I could tell what a fascinating woman I met at Yalta.”

  The official seated himself in his sledge and drove off, but suddenly called:

  “Dimitri Dimitrich!”

  “Yes.”

  “You were right. The sturgeon was tainted.”

  These banal words suddenly roused Gomov’s indignation. They seemed to him degrading and impure. What barbarous customs and people!

  What preposterous nights, what dull, empty days! Furious card-playing, gourmandizing, drinking, endless conversations about the same things, futile activities and conversations taking up the best part of the day and all the best of man’s forces, leaving only a stunted, wingless life, just rubbish; and to go away and escape was impossible—one might as well be in a lunatic asylum or in prison with hard labor.

  Gomov did not sleep that night, but lay burning with indignation, and then all next day he had a headache. And the following night he slept badly, sitting up in bed and thinking, or pacing from corner to corner of his room. His children bored him, the bank bored him, and he had no desire to go out or speak to any one.

  In December when the holidays came he prepared to go on a journey and told his wife he was going to Petersburg to present a petition for a young friend of his—and went to S. Why? He did not know. He wanted to see Anna Sergueyevna, to talk to her, and if possible to arrange
an assignation.

  He arrived at S. in the morning and occupied the best room in the hotel, where the whole floor was covered with a grey canvas, and on the table there stood an inkstand grey with dust, adorned with a horseman on a headless horse holding a net in his raised hand. The porter gave him the necessary information: von Didenitz; Old Goncharna Street, his own house—not far from the hotel; lives well, has his own horses, every one knows him.

  Gomov walked slowly to Old Goncharna Street and found the house. In front of it was a long, grey fence spiked with nails.

  “No getting over a fence like that,” thought Gomov, glancing from the windows to the fence.

  He thought: “To-day is a holiday and her husband is probably at home. Besides it would be tactless to call and upset her.” If he sent a note then it might fall into her husband’s hands and spoil everything. It would be better to wait for an opportunity. And he kept on walking up and down the street, and round the fence, waiting for his opportunity. He saw a beggar go in at the gate and the dogs attack him. He heard a piano and the sounds came faintly to his ears. It must be Anna Sergueyevna playing. The door suddenly opened and out of it came an old woman, and after her ran the familiar white Pomeranian. Gomov wanted to call the dog, but his heart suddenly began to thump and in his agitation he could not remember the dog’s name.

  He walked on, and more and more he hated the grey fence and thought with a gust of irritation that Anna Sergueyevna had already forgotten him, and was perhaps already amusing herself with some one else, as would be only natural in a young woman forced from morning to night to behold the accursed fence. He returned to his room and sat for a long time on the sofa, not knowing what to do. Then he dined and afterward slept for a long while.

  “How idiotic and tiresome it all is,” he thought as he awoke and saw the dark windows; for it was evening. “I’ve had sleep enough, and what shall I do to-night?”

  He sat on his bed, which was covered with a cheap, grey blanket, exactly like those used in a hospital, and tormented himself.

  “So much for the lady with the toy dog. . . . So much for the great adventure.... Here you sit.”

  However, in the morning, at the station, his eye had been caught by a poster with large letters: “First Performance of ‘The Geisha.’” He remembered that and went to the theater.

  “It is quite possible she will go to the first performance,” he thought.

  The theater was full and, as usual in all provincial theaters, there was a thick mist above the lights, the gallery was noisily restless; in the first row before the opening of the performance stood the local dandies with their hands behind their backs, and there in the governor’s box, in front, sat the governor’s daughter, and the governor himself sat modestly behind the curtain and only his hands were visible. The curtain quivered; the orchestra tuned up for a long time, and while the audience were coming in and taking their seats, Gomov gazed eagerly round.

  At last Anna Sergueyevna came in. She took her seat in the third row, and when Gomov glanced at her his heart ached and he knew that for him there was no one in the whole world nearer, dearer, and more important than she; she was lost in this provincial rabble, the little undistinguished woman, with a common lorgnette in her hands, yet she filled his whole life; she was his grief, his joy, his only happiness, and he longed for her; and through the noise of the bad orchestra with its tenth-rate fiddles, he thought how dear she was to him. He thought and dreamed.

  With Anna Sergueyevna there came in a young man with short side-whiskers, very tall, stooping; with every movement he shook and bowed continually. Probably he was the husband whom in a bitter mood at Yalta she had called a lackey. And, indeed, in his long figure, his side-whiskers, the little bald patch on the top of his head, there was something of the lackey; he had a modest sugary smile and in his buttonhole he wore a University badge exactly like a lackey’s number.

  In the first entr’acte the husband went out to smoke, and she was left alone. Gomov, who was also in the pit, came up to her and said in a trembling voice with a forced smile:

  “How do you do?”

  She looked up at him and went pale. Then she glanced at him again in terror, not believing her eyes, clasped her fan and lorgnette tightly together, apparently struggling to keep herself from fainting. Both were silent. She sat, he stood; frightened by her emotion, not daring to sit down beside her. The fiddles and flutes began to play and suddenly it seemed to them as though all the people in the boxes were looking at them. She got up and walked quickly to the exit; he followed, and both walked absently along the corridors, down the stairs, up the stairs, with the crowd shifting and shimmering before their eyes; all kinds of uniforms, judges, teachers, crown-estates, and all with badges; ladies shone and shimmered before them, like fur coats on moving rows of clothes-pegs, and there was a draft howling through the place laden with the smell of tobacco and cigar-ends. And Gomov, whose heart was thudding wildly, thought:

  “Oh, Lord! Why all these men and that beastly orchestra?”

  At that very moment he remembered how when he had seen Anna Sergueyevna off that evening at the station he had said to himself that everything was over between them, and they would never meet again. And now how far off they were from the end!

  On a narrow, dark staircase over which was written: “This Way to the Amphitheater,” she stopped:

  “How you frightened me!” she said, breathing heavily, still pale and apparently stupefied. “Oh! how you frightened me! I am nearly dead. Why did you come? Why?”

  “Understand me, Anna,” he whispered quickly. “I implore you to understand. . . .”

  She looked at him fearfully, in entreaty, with love in her eyes, gazing fixedly to gather up in her memory every one of his features.

  “I suffer so!” she went on, not listening to him. “All the time, I thought only of you. I lived with thoughts of you. . . . And I wanted to forget, to forget, but why, why did you come?”

  A little above them, on the landing, two schoolboys stood and smoked and looked down at them, but Gomov did not care. He drew her to him and began to kiss her cheeks, her hands.

  “What are you doing? What are you doing?” she said in terror, thrusting him away.... “We were both mad. Go away to-night. You must go away at once.... I implore you, by everything you hold sacred, I implore you. . . . The people are coming——”

  Some one passed them on the stairs.

  “You must go away,” Anna Sergueyevna went on in a whisper. “Do you hear, Dimitri Dimitrich? I’ll come to you in Moscow. I never was happy. Now I am unhappy and I shall never, never be happy, never! Don’t make me suffer even more! I swear, I’ll come to Moscow. And now let us part. My dear, dearest darling, let us part!”

  She pressed his hand and began to go quickly downstairs, all the while looking back at him, and in her eyes plainly showed that she was most unhappy. Gomov stood for a while, listened, then, when all was quiet he found his coat and left the theater.

  IV

  And Anna Sergueyevna began to come to him in Moscow. Once every two or three months she would leave S., telling her husband that she was going to consult a specialist in women’s diseases. Her husband half believed and half disbelieved her. At Moscow she would stay at the “Slaviansky Bazaar” and send a message at once to Gomov. He would come to her, and nobody in Moscow knew.

  Once as he was going to her as usual one winter morning—he had not received her message the night before—he had his daughter with him, for he was taking her to school which was on the way. Great wet flakes of snow were falling.

  “Three degrees above freezing,” he said, “and still the snow is falling. but the warmth is only on the surface of the earth. In the upper strata of the atmosphere there is quite a different temperature.”

  “Yes, papa. Why is there no thunder in winter?”

  He explained this too, and as he spoke he thought of his assignation, and that not a living soul knew of it, or ever would know. He had two lives; one
obvious, which every one could see and know, if they were sufficiently interested, a life full of conventional truth and conventional fraud, exactly like the lives of his friends and acquaintances; and another, which moved underground. And by a strange conspiracy of circumstances, everything that was to him important, interesting, vital, everything that enabled him to be sincere and denied self-deception and was the very core of his being, must dwell hidden away from the others, and everything that made him false, a mere shape in which he hid himself in order to conceal the truth, as for instance his work in the bank, arguments at the club, his favorite gibe about women, going to parties with his wife—all this was open. And, judging others by himself, he did not believe the things he saw, and assumed that everybody else also had his real vital life passing under a veil of mystery as under the cover of the night. Every man’s intimate existence is kept mysterious, and perhaps, in part, because of that civilized people are so nervously anxious that a personal secret should be respected.

  When he had left his daughter at school, Gomov went to the “Slaviansky Bazaar.” He took off his fur coat downstairs, went up and knocked quietly at the door. Anna Sergueyevna, wearing his favorite grey dress, tired by the journey, had been expecting him to come all night. She was pale, and looked at him without a smile, and flung herself on his breast as soon as he entered. Their kiss was long and lingering as though they had not seen each other for a couple of years.

  “Well, how are you getting on down there?” he asked. “What is your news?”

  “Wait. I’ll tell you presently.... I cannot.”

  She could not speak, for she was weeping. She turned her face from him and dried her eyes.

  “Well, let her cry a bit.... I’ll wait,” he thought, and sat down.

  Then he rang and ordered tea, and then, as he drank it, she stood and gazed out of the window.... She was weeping in distress, in the bitter knowledge that their life had fallen out so sadly; only seeing each other in secret, hiding themselves away like thieves! Was not their life crushed?