Sunset clings to the samovar, abandoning the veranda,
but the tea has gone cold, or is finished; a fly scales a saucer’s dolce.
And her heavy chignon makes Varvara Andreevna look grander
than ever. Her starched cotton blouse is staunchly
buttoned up to her chin. Vialtsev, deep in his chair, is nodding
over the rustling weekly with Dubrovo’s latest swing
at the Cabinet. Varvara Andreevna under her skirts wears not a
thing.
The drawing room’s dark piano responds to a dry ovation
of hawthorns. The student Maximov’s few random chords
stir the garden’s cicadas. In the platinum sky, athwart,
squadrons of ducks, foreshadowing aviation,
drift toward Germany. Hiding in the unlit
library, Dunia devours Nikki’s letter, so full of cavils.
No looker; but, boy, what anatomy! And so unlike
hardcovers.
That is why Erlich winces, called in by Kartashov
to join Prigozhin, the doctor, and him at cards. “With pleasure.”
Ah, but swatting a fly is simpler than staving off
a reverie of your niece, naked upon the leather
couch and fighting mosquitoes, fighting heat—but to no avail.
Prigozhin deals as he eats: with his belly virtually
crushing the flimsy table. Can the doctor be asked about this little boil?
Perhaps eventually.
Oppressive midsummer twilight; a truly myopic part
of day, when each shape and form loses resolve, gets eerily
vague. “In your linen suit, Piotr Lvovich, it’s not so hard
to take you for one of the statues down in the alley.” “Really?”
Erlich feigns embarrassment, rubbing his pince-nez’s rim.
It’s true, though: the far-off in twilight looks near, the near, alien;
and Erlich tries to recall how often he had Natalia
Fiodorovna in his dream.
But does Varvara Andreevna love the doctor? Gnarled poplars crowd
the dacha’s wide-open windows with peasant-like abandon.
They are the ones to be asked: their branches, their crow-filled crowns.
Particularly, the elm climbing into Varvara’s bedroom:
it alone sees the hostess with just her stockings on.
Outside, Dunia calls for a swim in the night lake: “Come, lazies!”
To leap! overturning the tables! Hard, though, if you are the one
with aces.
And the cicada chorus, with the strength of the stars’ display,
burgeons over the garden, sounding like their utterance.
Which is, perhaps, the case. Where am I, anyway?
wonders Erlich, undoing his braces at the outhouse entrance.
It’s twenty versts to the railroad. A rooster attempts its lied.
The student Maximov’s pet word, interestingly, is “fallacy.”
In the provinces, too, nobody’s getting laid,
as throughout the galaxy.
1993 • Translated by Jonathan Aaron with the Author