Won’t you have some, Serezha?’
Urbenin remained a little longer, then he took leave and went away. When he left we began to drink claret. This wine quite finished me. I became intoxicated in the way I had wished while riding to the Count’s. I became very bold, active and unusually gay. I wanted to do some extraordinary deed, something ludicrous, something that would astonish people… In such moments I thought I could swim across the lake, unravel the most entangled case, conquer any woman… The world and its life made me enthusiastic; I loved it, but at the same time I wanted to pick a quarrel with somebody, to consume him with venomous jests and ridicule… It was necessary to scoff at the comical black-browed Pole and the Count, to attack them with biting sarcasm, to turn them to dust.
‘Why are you silent?’ I began again. ‘Speak! I am listening to you! Ha-ha! I am awfully fond of hearing people with serious, sedate faces talk childish drivel! It is such mockery, such mockery of the brains of man! The face does not correspond to the brains! In order not to lie, you ought to have the faces of idiots, and you have the countenances of Greek sages!’
I had not finished… My tongue was entangled by the thought that I was talking to people who were nullities, who were unworthy of even half a word! I required a hall filled with people, brilliant women, thousands of lights… I rose, took my glass and began walking about the rooms. When we indulge in debauchery, we do not limit ourselves to space. We do not restrict ourselves only to the dining-room, but take the whole house and sometimes even the whole estate.
I chose a Turkish divan in the ‘mosaic hall’, lay down on it and gave myself up to the power of my fantasy and to castles in the air. Drunken thoughts, one more grandiose, more limitless than the other, took possession of my young brain. A new world arose before me, full of stupefying delights and indescribable beauty.
It only remained for me to talk in rhyme and to see visions.
The Count came to me and sat down on a corner of the divan… He wanted to say something to me. I had begun to read in his eyes the desire to communicate something special to me shortly after the five glasses of vodka described above. I knew of what he wanted to speak.
‘What a lot I have drunk today!’ he said to me. ‘This is more harmful to me than any sort of poison… But today it is for the last time… Upon my honour, the very last time… I have strength of will…’
‘All right, all right…’
‘For the last… Serezha, my dear friend, for the last time… Shouldn’t we send a telegram to town for the last time?’
‘Why not? Send it…’
‘Let’s have one last spree in the proper way… Well, get up and write it.’
The Count himself did not know how to write telegrams. They always came out too long and insufficient with him. I rose and wrote:
S — Restaurant London. Karpov, manager of the chorus.
Leave everything and come instantly by the two o’clock train - The Count.
‘It is now a quarter to eleven,’ the Count said. ‘The man will take three-quarters of an hour to ride to the station, maximum an hour… Karpov will receive the telegram before one… They should have time to catch the train… If they don’t catch it, they can come by the goods train. Yes!’
CHAPTER VI
The telegram was dispatched with one-eyed Kuz’ma. Il’ya was ordered to send carriages to the station in about an hour. In order to kill time, I began leisurely to light the lamps and candles in all the rooms, then I opened the piano and passed my fingers over the keys.
After that, I remember, I lay down on the same divan and thought of nothing, only waving away with my hand the Count, who came and pestered me with his chatter. I was in a state of drowsiness, half-asleep, conscious only of the brilliant light of the lamps and feeling in a gay and quiet mood… The image of the girl in red, with her head bent towards her shoulder, and her eyes filled with horror at the thought of that dramatic death, stood before me and quietly shook its little finger at me… The image of another girl, with a pale, proud face, in a black dress, flitted past. She looked at me half-entreatingly, half-reproachfully.
Later on I heard noise, laughter, running about… Deep, dark eyes obscured the light. I saw their brilliancy, their laughter… A joyful smile played about the luscious lips… That was how my gipsy Tina smiled.
‘Is it you?’ her voice asked. ‘You’re asleep? Get up, darling… How long it is since I saw you last!’
I silently pressed her hand and drew her towards me…
‘Let us go inside… Everybody has come…’
‘Stay! I’m all right here, Tina…’
‘But… there’s too much light… You’re mad! Someone might come in…’
‘I’ll wring the neck of anyone who does! I’m so happy, Tina… Two years have passed since last we met…
Somebody began to play the piano in the ballroom.
‘Akh! Moskva, Moskva, Moskva, white-stoned Moskva!’… several voices sang in chorus.
‘You see, they are all singing there… Nobody will come in…’
‘Yes, yes…’
The meeting with Tina took away my drowsiness… Ten minutes later she led me into the ballroom, where the chorus was standing in a semicircle… The Count, sitting astride a chair, was beating time with his hands… Pshekhotsky stood behind his chair, looking with astonished eyes at these singing birds. I tore the balalaika out of Karpov’s hands, struck the chords, and -
‘Down the Volga… down the mother Volga.’
‘Down the Vo-o-olga!’ the chorus chimed in.
‘Ay, burn, speak… speak…’
I waved my hand, and in an instant with the rapidity of lightning there was another transition…
‘Nights of madness, nights of gladness…’
Nothing acts more irritatingly, more titillatingly on my nerves than such rapid transitions. I trembled with rapture, and embracing Tina with one arm and waving the balalaika in the air with the other hand, I sang ‘Nights of madness’ to the end… The balalaika fell noisily on the floor and was shivered into tiny fragments…
‘Wine!’
After that my recollections are confused and chaotic… Everything is mixed, confused, entangled; everything is dim, obscure… I remember the grey sky of early morning… We are in a boat… The lake is slightly agitated, and seems to grumble at our debauchery… I am standing up in the middle of the boat, shaking it… Tina tries to convince me I may fall into the water, and implores me to sit down… I deplore loudly that there are no waves on the lake as high as the Stone Grave, and frighten the martins that flit like white spots over the blue surface of the lake with my shouts… Then follows a long,
