after all. But visible through the windows were various rain clouds and an unpleasant metallic azure amidst the purplish storm clouds above the swaying treetops. He went into the divan room, cosy and smelling of cigar smoke – where, beneath shelves of books, leather couches occupied three whole walls – looked at the spines of some wonderfully bound books, and sat down helplessly, sank into a couch. Yes, hellish boredom. If only he could simply see her, chat with her… find out what sort of voice she had, what sort of character, whether she was stupid or, on the contrary, very canny, performing her role modestly until some propitious time. Probably a self-assured bitch who looks after herself very well… And most likely stupid… But how good-looking she is! And to spend the night alongside her again! He got up, opened the glass door onto the stone steps into the park, and heard the trilling of the nightingales through its rustling, but at that point there was such a rush of chill wind through some young trees on the left that he leapt back into the room. The room had gone dark, the wind was flying through those trees, bending their fresh foliage, and the panes of glass in the door and windows began sparkling with the sharp splashes of light rain.
“And it all means nothing to them!” he said loudly, listening to the trilling of the nightingales, now distant, now nearby, which reached him from all directions because of the wind. And at the same moment he heard an even voice:
“Good day.”
He threw a glance and was dumbstruck: she was standing in the room.
“I’ve come to change a book,” she said, cordially impassive. “It’s the only pleasure I have, books,” she added with an easy smile, and went up to the shelves.
He mumbled:
“Good day. I didn’t even hear you come in…”
“Very soft carpets,” she replied and, turning round, now gave him a lengthy look with her unblinking grey eyes.
“And what do you like reading?” he asked, meeting her gaze a little more boldly.
“I’m reading Maupassant now, Octave Mirbeau[99]…”
“Well yes, that’s understandable. All women like Maupassant. Everything in him is about love.”
“But then what can be better than love?”
Her voice was modest, her eyes smiled quietly.
“Love, love!” he said, sighing. “There can be some amazing encounters, but… Your name, nurse?”
“Katerina Nikolayevna. And yours?”
“Call me simply Pavlik,” he replied, becoming ever bolder.
“Do you think I’ll do as an aunt for you as well?”
“I’d give a lot to have such an aunt! For the time being I’m only your unfortunate neighbour.”
“Is it really a misfortune?”
“I could hear you last night. Your room turns out to be next to mine.”
She laughed indifferently:
“And I could hear you. It’s wrong to eavesdrop and spy.”
“How impermissibly beautiful you are!” he said, fixedly examining the variegated grey of her eyes, the matt whiteness of her face and the sheen of the dark hair beneath her white headscarf.
“Do you think so? And do you want not to permit me to be so?”
“Yes. Your hands alone could drive anyone mad…”
And with cheerful audacity he seized her right hand with his left. She, standing with her back to the shelves, glanced over his shoulder into the drawing room and did not remove the hand, gazing at him with a strange grin, as though waiting: well, and what next? He, not releasing her hand, squeezed it tightly, pulling it away downwards, and he gripped her waist with his right arm. She again glanced over his shoulder and threw her head back slightly, as though protecting her face from a kiss, but she pressed her curving torso against him. He, catching his breath with difficulty, stretched towards her half-open lips and moved her towards the couch. She, frowning, began shaking her head, whispering: “No, no, we mustn’t, lying down we’ll see and hear nothing…” and with eyes grown dim she slowly parted her legs… A minute later his face fell onto her shoulder. She stood for a little longer with clenched teeth, then quietly freed herself from him and set off elegantly through the drawing room, saying loudly and indifferently to the noise of the rain:
“Oh, what rain! And all the windows are open upstairs…”
The next morning he woke up in her bed – she had turned onto her back in bed linen rucked up and warmed in the course of the night, with her bare arm thrown up behind her head. He opened his eyes and joyfully met her unblinking gaze, and with the giddiness of a fainting fit sensed the pungent smell of her armpit…
Someone knocked hastily at the door.
“Who’s there?” she asked calmly, without pushing him aside. “Is it you, Maria Ilyinishna?”
“Me, Katerina Nikolayevna.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Let me come in, I’m afraid someone will hear me and they’ll run and frighten the General’s wife…”
When he had slipped out into his room, she unhurriedly turned the key in the lock.
“There’s something wrong with His Excellency, I think an injection needs to be given,” Maria Ilyinishna started whispering as she came in. “The General’s wife is still asleep, thank God, go quickly…”
Maria Ilyinishna’s eyes were already becoming rounded like a snake’s: while speaking, she had suddenly seen a man’s shoes beside the bed – the student had fled barefooted. And she also saw the shoes and Maria Ilyinishna’s eyes.
Before breakfast she went to the General’s wife and said she must leave all of a sudden: started calmly lying that she had received a letter from her father – the news that her brother was seriously wounded in Manchuria – that her father, by reason of his widowerhood, was completely alone in such misfortune…
“Ah, how I understand you!” said the General’s wife, who already knew everything from Maria Ilyinishna. “Well, what’s to be done, go. Only send a telegram to Dr Krivtsov from the station for him to come at once and stay with us until we find another nurse…”
Then she knocked at the student’s door and thrust a note upon him: “All’s lost, I’m leaving. The old woman saw your shoes beside the bed. Remember me kindly.”
At breakfast his aunt was just a little sad, but spoke with him as though nothing were wrong.
“Have you heard? The nurse is going away to her father’s. He’s alone and her brother is terribly wounded…”
“I’ve heard, Aunt. What a misfortune this war is, so much grief everywhere. And what was the matter with Uncle after all?”
“Ah, nothing serious, thank God. He’s a dreadful hypochondriac. It seems to be the heart, but it’s all because of the stomach…”
At three o’clock Antigone was driven away to the station by troika. Without
Maupassant… Octave Mirbeau: Guy de Maupassant (1850–93), French novelist and short story writer; Octave Mirbeau (1850–1917), radical French journalist, novelist and dramatist.
