- we were both immoral, and would certainly both end badly. These were the ‘spiritual interests’ that united us. This was all that the people who knew us could say about our relations.
They would, of course, have spoken differently had they known how weak, soft and yielding was the nature of my friend, the Count, and how strong and hard was mine. They would have had much to say had they known how fond this infirm man was of me, and how I disliked him! He was the first to offer his friendship and I was the first to say ‘thou’ to him, but with what a difference in the tone! In a fit of kindly feeling he embraced me, and asked me timidly to be his friend. I, on the other hand, once seized by a feeling of a contempt and aversion, said to him:
‘Canst thou not cease jabbering nonsense?’
And he accepted this ‘thou’ as an expression of friendship and submitted to it from that time, repaying me with an honest, brotherly ‘thou’.
Yes, it would have been better and more honest had I turned my Zorka’s head homewards and ridden back to Polycarp and my Ivan Dem’yanych.
Afterwards I often thought: ‘How much misfortune I would have avoided bearing on my shoulders, how much good I would have brought to my neighbours, if on that night I had had the resolution to turn back, if only my Zorka had gone mad and carried me far away from the immensities of the lake! What numbers of tormenting recollections which now cause my hand to quit the pen and seize my head would not have pressed so heavily on my mind!’ But I must not anticipate, all the more as farther on I shall often have to dwell on misfortunes. Now for gaiety…
My Zorka bore me into the gates of the Count’s yard. At the very gates she stumbled, and I, losing the stirrup, almost fell to the ground.
‘An ill omen, sir!’ a muzhik, who was standing at one of the doors of the Count’s long line of stables, called to me.
I believe that a man falling from a horse may break his neck, but I do not believe in prognostications. Having given the bridle to the muzhik, I beat the dust off my top-boots with my riding-whip and ran into the house. Nobody met me. All the doors and windows of the rooms were wide open, nevertheless within the house the air was heavy, and had a strange smell. It was a mixture of the odour of ancient, deserted apartments with the tart narcotic scent of hothouse plants that have but recently been brought from the conservatories into the rooms… In the drawing-room, two tumbled cushions were lying on one of the sofas that was covered with a light blue silk material, and on a round table before the sofa I saw a glass containing a few drops of a liquid that exhaled an odour of strong Riga balsam. All this denoted that the house was inhabited, but I did not meet a living soul in any of the eleven rooms that I traversed. The same desertion that was round the lake reigned in the house…
A glass door led into the garden from the so-called ‘mosaic’ drawing-room. I opened it noisily and went down the marble stairs into the garden. I had gone only a few steps along the avenue when I met Nastasia, an old woman of ninety, who had formerly been the Count’s nurse. This little wrinkled old creature, forgotten by death, had a bald head and piercing eyes. When you looked at her face you involuntarily remembered the nickname ‘Scops-Owl’ that had been given her in the village… When she saw me she trembled and almost dropped a glass of milk she was carrying in both hands.
‘How do you do, Scops?’ I said to her.
She gave me a sidelong glance and silently went on her way… I seized her by the shoulder.
‘Don’t be afraid, fool… Where’s the Count?’
The old woman pointed to her ear.
‘Are you deaf? How long have you been deaf?’
Despite her great age, the old woman heard and saw very well, but she found it useful to pretend otherwise. I shook my finger at her and let her go.
Having gone on a few steps farther, I heard voices, and soon after saw people. At the spot where the avenue widened out and formed an open space surrounded by iron benches and shaded by tall white acacias, stood a table on which a samovar shone brightly. People were seated at the table, talking. I went quietly across the grass towards the gathering and, hiding behind a lilac bush, began to peer about for the Count.
My friend, Count Karnéev, was seated at the table on a cane-bottomed folding chair, drinking tea. He was dressed in the same many-coloured dressing-gown in which I had seen him two years before, and he wore a straw hat. His face had a troubled, concentrated expression, and it was very wrinkled, so that a man not acquainted with him might have imagined he was troubled at that moment by some serious thought or anxiety… The Count had not changed at all in appearance during the two years since last we met. He had the same small thin body, as frail and wizened as the body of a corncrake. He had the same narrow, consumptive shoulders, surmounted by a small redhaired head. His small nose was as red as formerly, and his cheeks were flabby and hanging like rags, as they had been two years before. On his face there was nothing of boldness, strength or manliness… All was weak, apathetic and languid. The only imposing thing about him was his long, drooping moustache. Somebody had told my friend that a long moustache was very becoming to him. He believed it, and every morning since then he had measured how much longer the growth on his pale lips had become. With this moustache he reminded you of a moustached but very young and puny kitten.
Sitting next to the Count at the table was a stout man with a large closely-cropped head and very dark eyebrows, who was unknown to me. His face was fat and shone like a ripe melon. His moustache was longer than the Count’s, his forehead was low, his lips were compressed, and his eyes gazed lazily into the sky… The features of his face were bloated, but nevertheless they were as hard as dried-up skin. He did not look like a Russian… The stout man was without his coat or waistcoat, and on his shirt there were dark spots caused by perspiration. He was not drinking tea but Seltzer water.
At a respectful distance from the table a short, thick-set man with a stout red neck and protruding ears was standing. This man was Urbenin, the Count’s bailiff. In honour of the Count’s arrival he was dressed in a new black suit and was now suffering torments. The perspiration was pouring in streams from his red, sunburnt face. Next to the bailiff stood the muzhik, who had come to me with the letter. It was only here I noticed that this muzhik had only one eye. Standing at attention, not allowing himself the slightest movement, he was like a statue, and waited to be questioned.
‘Kuz’ma, you deserve to be thrashed black and blue with your own whip,’ the bailiff said to him in his reproachful soft bass voice, pausing between each word, is it possible to execute the master’s orders in such a careless way. You ought to have requested him to come here at once and to have found out when he could be expected.’
‘Yes, yes, yes…’ the Count exclaimed nervously. ‘You ought to have found out everything! He said: “I’ll come!” But that’s not enough! I want him at once! Pos-i-tively at once! You asked him to come, but he did not understand!’
‘What do you want with him?’ the fat man asked the Count.
‘I want to see him!’
‘Only that? To my mind, Alexey, that magistrate would do far better if he remained at home today. I have no wish for guests.’
I opened my eyes. What was the meaning of that masterful, authoritative T?
‘But he’s not a guest!’ my friend said in an imploring tone. ‘He won’t prevent you from resting after the journey. I beg you not to stand on ceremonies with him… You’ll like him at once, my dear boy, and you’ll soon be friends with him!’
I
