“Why doesn’t Alexander come to see us?” Pyotr Ivanych asked his wife after returning home one day. “It’s been three months since I’ve seen him.”
“I’ve given up hope of ever seeing him,” she replied.
“What can be the matter with him? Not in love again, is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is he well?”
“Yes, he is.”
“Please write and tell him I need to speak to him. There are changes going on at his office. I can’t understand his lack of concern.”
“I’ve already written to invite him a dozen times and he just says he has no time, when all he’s doing is playing draughts with some strange types or going fishing; why don’t you go round to see him yourself and find out what’s going on?”
“No, I don’t want to. Send one of the servants instead.”
“Alexander still won’t come.”
So they sent a servant, who returned very quickly. “Well, is he at home?” asked Pyotr Ivanych.
“Yes, sir. He sends his greetings.”
“What is he doing?”
“Lying down on his divan.”
“You mean at this hour of the day?”
“He’s always lying there, you see.”
“Well, is he sleeping?”
“Oh no, sir. I thought at first that the young gentleman was sleeping, but his eyes were open, and he was staring at the ceiling.”
Pyotr Ivanych shrugged his shoulders.
“Will he be coming here?”
“Oh no, sir. ‘Give them my greetings!’ he says. ‘And give my uncle my apologies, and say that I’m not feeling too well.’ And he told me to give you his greetings, madam.”
“What’s wrong with him now? Really, it’s surprising! What’s he turning into? Tell them to keep the horses harnessed. I’ll just have to go round there myself – but this is really the last time.”
And Pyotr Ivanych did find him on the divan. When he saw his uncle come in, he sat up, but stayed sitting down.
“You’re not well?” asked Pyotr Ivanych.
“So-so…” Alexander replied, yawning.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“You have no trouble just doing nothing?”
“No trouble at all.”
“There’s talk today that Ivanov is leaving your office.”
“Yes, he is.”
“Who’s going to replace him?”
“Nichenko, they say.”
“And what about you?”
“Me, no.”
“What do mean, ‘no’? Why not you?”
“They didn’t offer me the position. What can I do? I suppose I’m not the right man for the job.”
“Come now, Alexander, you should get busy and go and see the director!”
“No,” said Alexander, shaking his head.
“It looks as if you don’t care?”
“I don’t.”
“But this is the third time you’ve been passed over.”
“Who cares? So what!”
“Well, we’ll see what you say when your former subordinate starts giving you orders, and you have to stand up and bow when he comes in.”
“I’ll just stand up and bow.”
“And what about your pride?”
“I don’t have any.”
“But you must have some interests in life?”
“None at all. I used to have, but not now.”
“Impossible: old interests are replaced by new ones. How come you give up your interests, but others don’t? Aren’t you a bit young for that? Why, you’re not even thirty…”
Alexander shrugged.
Pyotr Ivanych no longer had any wish to prolong the conversation. He would have dismissed the whole thing as sheer childishness, but he knew that when he got home there would be no way of avoiding his wife’s questions, so he continued in spite of himself.
“Why don’t you find some way of amusing yourself, seek some company?” he said. “Or find something to read?”
“I don’t feel like it, Uncle.”
“People are beginning to talk about you – things like ‘You know, you’re mooning because you’re in love, God knows what you’re up to, or you’ve started hanging around with some strange types…’ My own guess would be that last one.”
“Let them say whatever they want.”
“Listen Alexander, joking aside, none of this stuff is important; see people or avoid them, seek company or do without it – none of that matters; but remember: you, like anyone else, have to make a career of some kind. Don’t you ever think about that?”
“What do you mean, ‘think about it’? I’ve already done it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve already mapped out my sphere of activity, and I intend to stay within it. Right here, I am the master, and this is where my career is.”
“Laziness, in other words.”
“Perhaps.”
“You have no right to lounge around while you have your strength. Have you done what you set out to do?”
“I’m doing it. No one can accuse me of idleness. In the morning, I work at the office – and to do any more than that would be sheer extravagance, superfluous effort. Why should I exert myself?”
“Everyone exerts themselves in one way or another: one person because he considers it his duty to do whatever his ability allows him to do; someone else does it for money; another one does it because he wants to be somebody… Why should you be the exception?”
“Ambition, money! Especially money! What for? I’m fed and clothed. That’s all I need.”
“And badly dressed too!” his uncle remarked. “And that’s all that you consider necessities?”
“Yes, exactly.”
“But what about the intellectual and the higher pleasures – art for instance?…” Pyotr Ivanych was starting to say, mimicking Alexander’s tone. “You can move forward, your goal is loftier, your calling is a nobler one… Have you forgotten that you strive for nobler goals?”
“Forget all that!” said Alexander, clearly provoked. “That’s pretty strange talk, coming from you, Uncle! Was that for my benefit? If so, you’re wasting your time. Yes, I did aim higher – and what came of it?”
“What I do remember is that right away you wanted to become a minister, and later a writer. But when you saw that the path to that lofty calling was a long and arduous one, and that to be a writer you needed talent, you beat a retreat. A lot of young men like you come here with these fancy ideas, but cannot see that what they have to do is right under their noses. But the moment they have to write a report or something – well, what do you see? They’re just not up to it. Of course, I’m not talking about you: you’ve proved that you can knuckle down to your work and make something of yourself in time. Of course that’s tedious and means a lot of waiting. When we want everything right away and it doesn’t happen, we’re down in the dumps.”
“But I don’t want to aim any higher: I just want to stay where I am. Don’t I have the right to choose my work – whether it measures up to my abilities or not? What does it matter, as long as I do my work conscientiously and responsibly? If I’m criticized because my abilities don’t justify higher ambitions, that wouldn’t hurt me a bit, if it were the truth. You’ve said yourself that there is poetry in the humblest of occupations, and here you are reproaching me for choosing precisely that. Who is going to prevent me from climbing down several rungs of the ladder and stop at the rung which suits me best? I’m not interested in any higher-level occupation – are you listening? I’m just not interested!”
“I heard you! I’m not deaf yet. It’s just that everything you say is feeble sophistry.”
“I don’t care. I’ve found my place, and I intend to stay in it. I’ve found some simple unsophisticated people, and it doesn’t matter if they’re intellectually limited; I play draughts and go fishing with them – and it’s fine! Even if, as you see it, I’ll be punished for it and will be giving up the glittering prizes, the money, the honours, the importance – all those things which appeal so much to you, I renounce them for ever…”
“Alexander, it pleases you to pretend that you’re content and indifferent to all those things, but there’s a hint of bitterness in your words – in fact on your lips they sound more like tears than words. There’s a lot of bile inside you, but you don’t know who to vent it on, because you are the only one to blame.”
“So what?”
“What is it that you want? Everyone must want something.”
“I want people to stop trying to force me out of the dark place I have chosen, a place where I don’t have to bother about anything and where I can live in peace.”
“You really call that living?”
“In my view, the life you live is not living, therefore I’m right too.”
“What you want is to remake life to suit your own wishes – yes, I can see it. In that life of yours, lovers and friends stroll hand in hand amidst rose bushes…”
Alexander said nothing.
Pyotr Ivanych regarded him in silence. He had lost weight once again. His eyes were sunken. His cheeks and his forehead were beginning to show premature wrinkles.
His uncle was suddenly afraid. He didn’t really believe there was such a thing as psychological suffering, but feared that under this desolation there lurked some incipient physical illness. “Maybe,” he thought, “the boy is going out of his mind, and then I would have to deal with his mother – all that writing back and forth – and before you know it she would even turn up here.”
“Yes, I can see that you are disillusioned,” he said, thinking at the same time: “What if I could restore his cherished old ideas to him? Wait a minute! I’ll put on an act…”
“Listen, Alexander!” he said. “Your morale is very low. You must shake off this apathy. It’s doing you no good. And where does it come from? Perhaps you’ve taken too seriously to heart the things that I’ve thoughtlessly said to you from time to time about love and friendship. I wasn’t entirely serious when I spoke, and was really doing it to cool your ardour, which seems somehow out of place in our more practical times, especially here in St Petersburg, where everything is levelled down, fashions as well as passions, practical matters as well as pleasures – everything is carefully modulated, weighed, pondered and assessed… Everything now has had recognized recognized limits imposed on it. Why should one person be so visibly out of step with all the rest of us? Do you think that I’m really so unfeeling that I don’t recognize love? Love is a wonderful feeling: there is nothing more sacred than the union of two hearts – or friendship, for example. It is my inner conviction that a feeling must be permanent, everlasting…”
Alexander burst out laughing.
“What is it?” asked Pyotr Ivanych.
“What’s all this crazy talk, Uncle? Why don’t you send for a cigar? We could have a smoke; you’ll keep on talking, and I’ll sit and listen.”
“What is the matter with you?”
“Why, nothing. So you’ve decided to make fun of me! And to think you were once thought to be an intelligent man! Toying with me, as if I were a plaything – it’s offensive! What was the use of that school, which I’ve now left? All that pontificating you went in for! As if I didn’t have eyes in my head. It was all just a party trick, and I saw right through it.”
“I see I’ve made a hash of it,” Pyotr Ivanych thought to himself. “Better let the wife handle it.”
“Come and see us – my wife would particularly like to see you.”
“I can’t, Uncle.”
“It’s not very nice of you to forget her.”
“Maybe even downright bad, but for God’s sake forgive me, and don’t expect me any time soon. Give me some time, and I’ll come.”
“Well, have it your way,” said Pyotr Ivanych, and he waved goodbye and went home.
He told his wife that he was giving up on Alexander, and was leaving him to his own devices. He, Pyotr Ivanych, had done everything he could, and was now washing his hands of him.
After breaking free from Yulia, Alexander had launched himself into a frenzy of pleasures, frequently quoting a well-known poet:
Pour, pour a glass of sizzling wine!
And let the quiet stream of oblivion
For a time, staunch the cruel torment of my soul.
Let’s return to where joy breathes,
Where seethes the joyful maelstrom of gaiety and noise,
Where life is not lived, but life and youth is spent
Amidst frolics and games at the table of pleasure,
For an hour carried away by the illusion of happiness.
I am steeped in empty dreams,
Reconciled with fate by wine.
I will assuage my troubled heart.
I will not allow my thoughts to soar
And will not let my eyes gaze
Upon the soft radiance of the heavens.*
He fell in with a gang of friends and their constant companion – the bottle.
They saw their reflections first in the foaming liquid, and later in the glossy surface of their patent-leather boots. “Away with sorrow,” they cried as they caroused, “away with woe! Let’s spend, destroy, incinerate and carouse away our life and youth. Hurrah!” Glasses and bottles were hurled to the floor and shattered.
For a time, freedom, rowdiness and carefree living made him forget Yulia and his disenchantment, but the endless round of dinners and restaurants, the same old faces with their muddy eyes, the same old mindless, drunken gibberish of the same companions day after day – not to mention his still chronically upset stomach – no, he decided, this was not for him. Alexander’s delicate physical and psychological constitution was predisposed to a state of melancholy and depression, and these constant high jinks proved too much for him.
He fled from the “frolics and games at the table of pleasure” and ended up back in his room alone with himself and his neglected books. But his book tumbled from his hands, and his pen remained resistant to inspiration. Schiller, Goethe, Byron revealed to him only the dark side of humanity – the bright side he failed to notice: he had no time for that.
But how happy he had been in that room at one time! Then he had not been alone; there was a beautiful invisible presence which kept him company and hovered over him by day as he sat diligently at his work and kept vigil at his bedside by night. His companions there were his dreams: the future was cloaked in fog, but it was not the oppressive kind which brought foul weather in its wake, but more of a morning mist which heralded a bright dawn. Behind that mist something was hidden… happiness, most likely. But now? The room itself, and indeed his whole world, was empty – except for cold, and the bitterness of regret.
As he contemplated his life, interrogating his heart and his head, he found to his horror that not a single dream, not a ray of hope remained in either place. All that was now behind him: the fog had cleared – before him stretched raw reality, as boundless as the steppe. Oh God, the sheer immensity of that space! What a grim and joyless prospect! The past had perished, the future had been destroyed, happiness did not exist. All that was left was a nightmare – yet life had to be lived!
What it was that he wanted, he himself had no idea. It was as if his head was shrouded in fog. He didn’t sleep, but was drifting in some kind of oblivion. Oppressive thoughts crowded into his head.
What was there that could divert him? Enthralling hopes – there were none! Carefree respites – no! He could foresee everything that lay ahead. Esteem, striving for honours? What did that offer him? Was it worth spending twenty, thirty years butting his head against the ice like a fish? Did that prospect warm his heart? Does your soul rejoice when there are some who bow and scrape in your presence, all the time thinking, “To hell with him!”?
Love? Oh, not that again! He knew it inside out – and anyway he had lost the ability to love. His memory obligingly – and however ironically – brought to mind Nadenka, but not the innocent, open-hearted Nadenka – his memory was not that obliging – but unfailingly Nadenka the deceiver, together with that whole setting: the trees, the path, the flowers – and in the middle of it all that snake in the grass, with that smile which had become so familiar, with its tint of rapture and its hue of shame – but for another, not for him. He clutched at his heart with a groan.
“Friendship,” he thought, “another kind of folly! I’ve been through it all. There’s nothing new, and the past cannot be recaptured; yet life goes on.”
He no longer believed in anyone or anything, he could no longer lose himself in pleasure; he would get a taste of it, like someone who tastes a favourite dish, but without relish, knowing that it will only be followed by tedium, and that nothing can fill that inner void. Believe in feeling? It always lets you down, causes you emotional agitation and leaves you with more scars than before. Looking at people linked by love, carried away by sheer rapture, he would smile ironically and think: “Wait until you come to your senses – that first rapture will soon give way to jealousy, reconciliation and tears. Living together, you will end up bored to death with each other and part – the two of you in tears. You will come together again – worse still. You are crazy! You will fight all the time, there will be jealousy, followed by momentary reconciliation, followed in turn by even fiercer brawling; so much for their love, their devotion! Yet together, foaming at the mouth, sometimes with tears of despair in their eyes, they persist in calling it ‘happiness’! And as for that friendship of yours… throw down a bone and watch your dogs fight over it.”*
He was afraid of wanting things, knowing that at the very moment when what you wished for is in your grasp, fate will snatch it from you and present you with something quite different, which you have absolutely no desire for – something utterly worthless to you; and even if, finally, fate does give you what you want, it is only after it has tormented you, exhausted you and humiliated you in your own eyes that fate tosses it to you, like a scrap of food to a dog, after making it crawl to that tasty morsel, gaze at it, sniff at it, drag it into the dust and stand on its hind legs; only then, at its master’s command, “Take!…”
He was daunted by the fact that in life happiness and unhappiness alternated like the ebb and flow of the tide. Joy of any kind was something he did not anticipate, but he did view suffering as inevitable – no way of avoiding it. All were subject to the same law and, as he saw it, were assigned their due share of happiness and unhappiness. His own share of happiness had been exhausted – happiness which happened to be fraudulent and illusory. Only suffering was real, and lay ahead. It might mean illness, old age, loss of various kinds, maybe even poverty. All these “blows of fate”, as his aunt used to call them back in the village, lay in store for him, but what about delight? His lofty poetic aspirations had let him down – instead an onerous burden, known as duty, had been laid on him! What remained were only the most banal of benefits – money, creature comforts and promotions… Who cares about such things? But oh, how depressing it was to contemplate life, to understand what it was, but not to understand why it existed!
He continued to brood, and saw no escape from his flurry of doubts. His experiences had only crushed him, but to no good purpose, and had not made his life any healthier, had not cleared the air in it, and had not shed light on it. He didn’t know what to do. He tossed from side to side on the divan and started reviewing the people he knew – which made him feel even worse. One was making an excellent career, had earned a great reputation as an able administrator and had become something of a public figure; another had acquired a family and chosen a quiet life in preference to all the banal prizes the world had to offer: he envied no one and coveted nothing; a third one… But why go on? They had all made their mark in one way or another and had settled down, and were following a path they had clearly marked out for themselves.
“I am the only one who… but what exactly am I?”
He started to interrogate himself; could he have become an administrator, a squadron commander? Could he have settled for a family life? And he realized that he would not have been content with the life of any of the three. There was some kind of imp stirring within him, constantly whispering that all that was beneath him, and that he should be aiming higher. But where and how, he could not fathom. He turned out to have been wrong about becoming a writer. “But what to do? Where to start?” he kept on asking himself, but didn’t know what to answer. His exasperation kept on gnawing away at him. “Well, let’s say, even being an administrator, or a squadron commander… But no, it’s too late for that. Have to go back to square one.”
Despair simply squeezed tears out of his eyes – tears of exasperation, envy, hostility towards everyone – the most painful of tears. He bitterly regretted not having listened to his mother and having bolted from his remote backwater in the country.
“Mummy sensed in her heart the pain that was in store for me in the future,” he thought. If I had stayed there, these restless impulses would have slumbered, never to be awakened; there would have been none of the turmoil and ferment of that other busy and many-faceted life. At the same time, I would have been visited by all the human feelings and passions – self-esteem, pride and ambition, but on a smaller scale – and they would only have affected me within the limited confines of our remote district – and would all have been easier to consummate. Number one in the district! Yes, everything is relative. If I had stayed, that divine spark of heavenly fire which burns in varying degrees in all of us would have flashed in me unnoticed and would have been swiftly snuffed out in that uneventful style of life, or would have been ignited by my attachment to my wife and children. My existence would not have been poisoned. I would have performed proudly the role assigned to me, and my path in life would have been a quiet one, seemingly simple and easy to understand: it would have been a life well within my powers, and I would have been equal to all its struggles. And love? It would have flowered into a full-blown blossom and filled my whole life. Sofia would have loved me in a quiet way. I would have lost faith in nothing, and plucked only roses, without ever encountering thorns. I would never even have felt any jealousy – if only for lack of competition. What was it, then, which drew me so powerfully and blindly into the far distance, into a fog, and into an unknown and unequal struggle with fate? And how wonderfully I understood both life and people then! And that’s how wonderfully I would have understood them today, without really understanding anything. Then, I expected so much from life, without ever having taken a close look at it, and would still be there expecting something more to this very day. How many treasures I had discovered within me – and what has become of them? I have squandered them all over the place. I parted with my open-hearted sincerity, my first precious passion – in return for what? Bitter disillusionment; I learnt that everything is a sham, nothing endures, and that nothing and no one can be relied on – neither myself, nor others – and I grew wary of others and myself. In the grip of this negative world view, I was unable to appreciate the smaller things of life, and be content with them, like my uncle and others like him… And now!…”
Now, there was only one thing he wanted: to forget the past, to recover his peace of mind, to rest his soul. He distanced himself from life more and more, and observed it through sleepy eyes. In crowds, at noisy gatherings, he found only boredom, and fled from them, but the boredom followed him. He marvelled at the way people could enjoy themselves, constantly busy themselves with one thing or another, and every day find new interests to entertain them. It seemed strange to him that people weren’t sleepwalking or crying the way he was, and that they preferred to chatter about the weather instead of how badly they felt and their sufferings – and even if they did, it would be about how badly their legs or some other part of their body felt – rheumatism, haemorrhoids and the like. It was only their bodies which could worry them, but never a word about what was troubling them in their minds and hearts! “What insignificant, empty creatures people are, more like animals!” he thought. Yet sometimes he would fall to thinking deeply along these disturbing lines: “There are so many of them, these insignificant people, and I am just one person – can it really be that… all of them are the empty ones… that they are wrong… and I?…”
At these times, it would occur to him that he alone might be in the wrong, and this thought would make him even more miserable.
He stopped seeing his old friends, and whenever a new person came anywhere near him he felt chilled to his marrow. After his conversation with his uncle, he sank even deeper into his apathetic stupor; it was as if his very soul had gone into hibernation. He was immured in a stony-faced indifference, and lived a life of total indolence, studiously distancing himself from anything that might remind him of civilization.
“It doesn’t matter how you spend your life, so long as you live,” he would say. “Everyone is free to understand life any way he wants; and then, when you die…”
He would seek the company of the embittered, the malevolent and malcontent, to unburden himself to them, and to hear them jeer at fate; or he would frequent his intellectual and social inferiors, mostly in the person of old Kostyakov, whom Zayezzhalov had wanted to introduce to Pyotr Ivanych.
Kostyakov lived in Peski and walked about in his street in a shiny leather hat and a dressing gown, using a handkerchief as a belt. He had a woman who cooked for him living in his flat, with whom he played cards in the evenings. Whenever a fire broke out he was the first on the scene and the last to leave. Whenever he passed a church where a funeral service was being held, he would elbow his way through the crowd to look at the face of the deceased and accompany the hearse all the way to the cemetery. Indeed, he was fascinated by ceremonies of every kind, both festive and solemn. He loved being an eyewitness to untoward events of every kind, like fights, accidental deaths, collapse of ceilings, etc., and took special pleasure in reading accounts of such happenings in the newspapers. In addition, he read medical textbooks, as he put it, “in order to find out what people had inside them”. In the winter Alexander would play draughts with him, and go fishing in the country with him in the summer. The old man could converse on a range of subjects. When they were out in the country, he would talk about grain and other crops; by the river it would be about fish or shipping; in the street, he would comment on the houses, on building, materials and prices… but he never had anything to say about abstractions. He viewed life as a good thing when there was money, and vice versa. Someone of this kind posed no threat to Alexander, and was incapable of ruffling his feelings.
Alexander strove zealously to mortify everything spiritual or emotional in his make up, just as hermits make a practice of mortifying their flesh. In the office, he was taciturn, and when he ran into people he knew, he fobbed them off with just a couple of words with the excuse that he was in a hurry and took off. But his friend Kostyakov he saw every day. Either the old man would spend that day at Alexander’s place or he would invite Aduyev home for cabbage soup. He had already taught Alexander how to brew his own liqueur, how to make hotpot and cook tripe. Then they would go somewhere in the neighbouring countryside not too far from the city. Wherever they went they would meet a lot of people Kostyakov knew. With the menfolk he would chat about everyday matters, and he would joke with the women – just like the clown he had been described as being by Zayezzhalov when he had offered to introduce him. Alexander was happy to let him do most of the talking, while he himself remained mainly silent.
He had already begun to feel that the ideas of the world he had abandoned now rarely visited him and revolved more slowly in his head – and, finding nothing in the vicinity to echo or resist them, never made it as far as his tongue and simply withered away without blossoming. His heart had grown wild and empty, like an overgrown garden which has been abandoned. He was within an ace of becoming totally fossilized, and in just a few more months… it would have been “goodbye!” But this is what happened.
Once Alexander and Kostyakov were out fishing. Kostyakov was wearing a long coat and a peaked cap, and had set up a number of rods of varying lengths on the bank of the river, and also ledger lines, with floats and bells of different sizes. He was smoking a short pipe and, without daring to blink, was keeping a close eye on the small regiment of rods and lines, including Aduyev’s, because Alexander was leaning up against a tree, looking in the other direction. They had been standing there in silence for some time.
“Did you get a bite? Take a look, Alexander Fyodorych,” Kostyakov whispered to him.
Alexander looked into the water, and turned back to Kostyakov, saying, “No, it was just a ripple that you saw.”
“No, look, look!” Kostyakov shouted. “Good God! It’s a bite, yes, a bite! Come on, pull, pull! Don’t let go!”
And indeed the float had disappeared underwater, pulling the line after it and dragging the rod from where it was planted among the bushes. Alexander grabbed the rod, and then the line.
“Easy, easy! Don’t pull so hard!… What are you doing? Not like that!” Kostyakov shouted, promptly taking hold of the line.
“Goodness! What a weight! Don’t jerk it! Just ease it in or you’ll break the line. Like this; left and right, left and right, and bring it in to the bank! Step back! A little more! Now, pull, but don’t tug – like this, like this!…”
A huge pike surfaced. It quickly coiled itself into a ring, its silvery scales sparkling, and lashed its tail back and forth, splashing both of them. Kostyakov turned pale.
“What a pike!” he shouted, awestruck, and stretched his arms out into the water. Stumbling over his rod, he caught hold of the pike with both hands as it twisted and turned out of the water. “Look! It’s squirming like the devil! Wow! What a specimen!”
“Wow, indeed!” someone repeated behind him.
Alexander turned round. Standing two steps away stood an old man with a pretty young girl on his arm. She was tall, her head was uncovered and she carried a small umbrella. She was frowning slightly, and bending slightly forward, following intently Kostyakov’s every movement, without even noticing Alexander.
Aduyev was startled by this sudden arrival, and let go of the rod. The pike dropped back into the water with a thud and, swinging its tail gracefully from side to side, hurtled deeper into the water, trailing the line in its wake. All this happened in a split second.
“Alexander Fyodorych! How could you?” Kostyakov shouted in a fury, and seized the line and pulled it back in, but was left holding the severed end of it – minus the hook and the pike.
All pale, he turned to Alexander, showing him the end of the line, and looked daggers at him for a minute in silence, and then spat.
“I’m never going fishing with you again, come hell or high water!” he snapped, and went off to his rods.
Meanwhile the young girl had noticed that Alexander was looking at her, and she blushed and stepped back. The old man, apparently her father, bowed to Aduyev, who bowed sullenly in response, threw down his rod and sat down about a dozen steps farther away.
“More trouble in the offing!” he thought. “Oedipus and Antigone,* all over again! Another woman! My God! They’re everywhere – no getting away from them!”
“Some fisherman you are!” Kostyakov was saying, putting away his rods and giving Alexander a baleful look every now and then. “You, go fishing? You’d be better off sitting at home on your divan, trying to catch mice, but fishing? Forget it! How can you catch fish, when you let them slip through your hands? It was practically ready for us to eat, almost cooking on the stove! It would have been a miracle if you hadn’t let it slip off your plate!”
“Are they biting?” asked the old man.
“Well, you see,” Kostyakov replied, “here I had six rods going, and didn’t even get a pitiful tickle from a lousy little ruff, but meanwhile over there – not surprising if it had been the ground line – but the one with the float – what a piece of luck! A pike weighing about ten pounds, and then he let it get away. People say ‘the hunter makes his own luck’! Not in my book! Why, if it had tried to get away from me, I would have grappled with it in the water – as it was, the pike practically gave itself up, but we’re asleep – and people like that call themselves fishermen! Is that what fishermen are like? Not on your life! A real fisherman, even if someone fires a cannon right next to him, doesn’t even blink. That’s a real fisherman for you! And you think you’re going to catch fish!”
Meanwhile the girl could see that Alexander was in every respect a totally different kind of man from Kostyakov. He was dressed differently: his build, his age, his manner and everything else was different. She could tell that he had been well educated: there was a thoughtfulness about his face, a thoughtfulness with a trace of sadness about it.
“But why did he make off?” she wondered. “It’s strange, I don’t think there’s anything about me to make people avoid me…”
The girl stood erect proudly, lowered her eyelashes, and then raised them again, and gave Alexander an unfriendly look.
She was feeling annoyed. She took her father and walked haughtily past Alexander.
Her father bowed once again to Alexander, but the daughter did not even favour him with a glance.
“Let him know that we haven’t the slightest interest in him!” she thought, stealing a covert glance at him.
Alexander, although he didn’t actually look at her, couldn’t help trying to look a little more attractive.
“How dare he! He doesn’t even look back!” thought the girl. “The gall of him!”
But the very next day Kostyakov took Alexander fishing again, and thus found himself eating his own words.
For two days they kept their distance from each other. At first, Alexander would look around apprehensively, but when he saw no one near him, he relaxed. On the third day, he pulled out a huge perch, and Kostyakov grudgingly broke the silence.
“Yes, but it’s still not a pike!” he said with a sigh. “Good luck came your way, but you let it slip through your hands; you won’t get a second chance. And I still haven’t got a bite. Six rods, and nothing.”
“Why don’t you ring those little bells?” said a peasant who had stopped on his way past to see how the fishing was going. “Maybe the fish will be attracted – you know – by what they think are church bells ringing?”
Kostyakov gave him a baleful look. “Shut up, you ignorant peasant!” he said.
The peasant moved off.
“You blockhead!” Kostyakov shouted after him. “What else can you expect from brutes like that! Go and jeer at one of your own kind – what a nerve!”
God help anyone who bothers a hunter just when he’s not catching anything!
On the third day, while they were fishing in silence and watching the water intently, something rustled behind them. Alexander turned round and winced as if he had been bitten by a gnat. He saw the old man and the girl standing there. Alexander eyed them warily, barely responding to the old man’s bow, although he had been expecting this visit. Normally he went fishing dressed very casually, but this time he had put on a new overcoat and tied a blue scarf around his neck. He had combed his hair and even curled it a little, and was looking altogether like a fisherman out of an idyll. After waiting for just the length of time required by politeness, he went off and sat under a tree.
“Cela passe toute permission!”* thought Antigone. She was furious.
“I’m sorry!” said Oedipus to Alexander. “Perhaps we’re in your way?”
“No,” said Alexander. “It’s just that I’m tired.”
“Any bites?” the old man asked Kostyakov.
“How can you expect to get a bite, when people are standing and talking right at your elbow?!” he replied truculently. “Some blighter walked right past me, blurted out something and brought me bad luck – and of course, hardly a bite since then. So I assume you must live somewhere around here?” he asked Oedipus.
“That’s our dacha, just over there, with the balcony,” he replied.
“Is it expensive, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Five hundred roubles for the summer.”
“It looks like a good one, well appointed, and lots of buildings in the courtyard. It probably cost the owner 30,000.”
“Yes, about that.”
“Right; and this is your daughter?”
“She is.”
“Lovely young lady! You’re out for a walk?”
“Yes, we are; if you’re living in a dacha, you go walking.”
“Of course, naturally, you have to; the weather is good right now, not like it was last week – awful weather! God spare us! I expect it ruined the winter crop.”
“It will recover, God willing.”
“Let’s hope so!”
“So you’re not catching anything right now?”
“Not me; but take a look at what he’s caught!” he pointed to the perch. “I have to tell you,” he went on, “you won’t believe his luck! It’s too bad his mind isn’t on it, otherwise we would never leave empty-handed. Imagine letting a pike like that get away!”
He sighed.
Antigone began to prick up her ears, but Kostyakov fell silent.
The old man and his daughter began to appear more and more regularly, and Aduyev favoured them with his attention. From time to time he even exchanged a word or two with the old man, but never a word with his daughter. At first she found it annoying, then she resented it, and finally it began to upset her. Now, if Aduyev had paid her some normal, polite attention, she would have forgotten about him – but, as it was, it had the opposite effect. It would seem that the human heart is nothing if not perverse; if it weren’t for this, there would be no need for us to have hearts at all.
Antigone at first started contemplating some terrible plan of revenge, but as time went by she gradually abandoned it.
Once, when the old man and his daughter came by, Alexander after a while stood his rod up against a bush and went to sit in his usual place, listlessly regarding the father and daughter in turn. They were standing sideways on to him. He didn’t notice anything special about the father – a white smock, nankeen trousers and a hat with a low crown and a wide brim lined with green plush. But when it came to the daughter on the other hand – how gracefully she leant on her father’s arm! From time to time, the wind lifted her hair from her face, as if deliberately trying to display to Alexander the beauty of her profile and her white neck, slightly raised her silken mantilla to reveal her slender waist, or swirled around the hem of her dress to show off her little feet. She was simply gazing at the water.
For a long time Alexander couldn’t take his eyes off her, and felt a feverish shiver running through his body. He turned away from the source of the temptation and began to slash the heads off flowers with a switch.
“Oh, I understand what’s happening!” he thought. “If I gave way to my feelings, love would be there for the taking. That would be stupid! Uncle is right. But I won’t be driven by sheer animal feeling alone: no, I haven’t sunk that low.”
“Could I try my hand at fishing?” the girl asked Kostyakov timidly.
“Yes, young lady, why not?” Kostyakov replied, handing her Aduyev’s rod.
“Now there’s a partner for you!” said her father to Kostyakov, leaving his daughter and starting to stroll along the bank of the river. As he left, he added, “Liza, don’t forget to catch some fish for supper!”
For several minutes, there was silence.
“Why is your friend so down in the mouth?” Liza asked Kostyakov quietly.
“He’s been passed over for promotion three times.”
“What?” she asked, wrinkling her brow.
“It’s the third time, apparently, that he didn’t get his promotion.”
She shook her head.
“No, can’t be!” she thought. “That’s not it!”
“Don’t you believe me, young lady? I swear on my life! Do you remember that pike? That’s why he let it slip through his fingers.”
“Look!” she cried out in her excitement. “It’s moving, it’s moving!”
She gave a tug, but she had caught nothing.
“It broke away!” said Kostyakov, looking at the rod. “Didn’t you see it snatch the worm? Must have been a big pike. But you haven’t got the knack, young lady: you didn’t let it get a good bite.”
“You mean, you need skill even for this?”
“Just like in anything,” he said, offering his stock response.
She was excited and turned round in a hurry, dropping her rod in the water in the process. But Alexander was already looking in the other direction.
“But what do you have to do to get the skill?”
“You need to get more practice,” replied Kostyakov.
“Oh, so that’s it!” she thought, as pleased as punch. “That means, I need to come here more often – I understand! Very well, I will, but I will be tormenting you, Mister boor, in return for all your rudeness.”
Thus it was coquetry which conveyed Alexander’s answer to her, even though on that day he didn’t actually say one word more to her.
“God knows what on earth she’ll be thinking!” he said to himself. “She’ll be putting on airs, and putting on an act of some kind… so stupid!”
From that day on, the old man and his daughter started coming every day. Sometimes Liza would come without her father, but with her nanny. She would bring some work with her, and some books, and sit under a tree, ostensibly quite indifferent to Alexander’s presence.
Her idea was to hurt his pride – or, as she would put it, to “torment him”. She would chat audibly with her nanny about household matters in order to give the impression that she didn’t even see Aduyev. But he in actual fact didn’t see her – or, if he did, would bow curtly, without a word. When she saw that this tactic was getting her nowhere, she changed her plan of attack, and a couple of times actually started a conversation with him; sometimes even borrowing his rod. Little by little Alexander started to be a little more talkative, but was careful not to say anything indiscreet. Whether this was a stratagem on his part, or whether, as he would put it, “nothing had healed his old wounds”, the fact remained that he treated her and spoke to her without any warmth.
One day, the old man ordered a samovar to be brought to the riverbank. Liza was pouring tea. Alexander stubbornly refused the tea, saying that he did not drink tea in the evening.
What he was thinking to himself was, “This whole business of tea-drinking brings people closer and helps them to get to know each other – I won’t do it!”
“What are you talking about? Why, only yesterday you drank four glasses!” said Kostyakov.
“No, it’s in the open air that I don’t drink tea,” Alexander hastened to add.
“Rubbish!” said Kostyakov. “This tea is great, top quality – must have cost fifteen roubles. Pour me a little more, young lady – and a little rum wouldn’t hurt!”
So rum was brought.
The old man invited Alexander home, but he flatly refused. Hearing him refuse, Liza pouted and demanded to know his reason for being so unsociable. But no matter how skilfully she steered the conversation round to this subject, Alexander even more skilfully dodged it.
This mysteriousness only excited Liza’s curiosity, and perhaps even another feeling. Her face, which had previously been as clear as a summer sky, began to cloud over with concern and look troubled. Often she would look at Alexander with sadness in her eyes, and then lower them and look at the ground, as if she were thinking, “You must be unhappy! Perhaps you’ve been jilted… Oh, how happy I could make you! How well I would care for you… love you! I would protect you from fate itself, I would!…” and so on and so forth.
This is how most women think, just as most women deceive those who are taken in by this siren’s song. Alexander appeared to notice none of this. He would talk to her as if he were talking to one of his friends, or his uncle, without that trace of affection which inevitably creeps into any friendship between a man and a woman, which makes the relationship between them something akin to friendship. That is why people say that friendship between a man and a woman is impossible, and that which is described as “friendship” is nothing more or less than either the beginning of love or the remains of it – or, indeed, ultimately love itself. But anyone observing the way Aduyev and Liza treated each other might have believed that this kind of friendship does in fact exist.
Only once did he show any sign of even partly opening up to her. He picked up from the bench a book which she had brought him, and leafed through it. It was Childe Harold* in the French translation. Alexander shook his head, sighed and silently put the book down again.
“You don’t like Byron? You have something against him?” she asked. “Byron is such a great poet – and you don’t like him?”
“I haven’t said a thing, and here you are attacking me,” he replied.
“Why were you shaking your head like that?”
“Oh, just that it’s a pity that book fell into your hands.”
“Were you feeling sorry for the book or for me?”
Alexander remained silent.
“Why shouldn’t I read Byron?”
“For two reasons,” said Alexander after a moment’s silence. He put his hand on hers in order to make his point more forcibly – or maybe because her hand was so white and soft, and began to speak softly and unhurriedly, running his eyes over her hair, her neck and her waist in turn. The longer he went on doing this, the louder became his voice.
“Firstly,” he said, because you are reading Byron in French, and thus losing the beauty and power of the poet’s voice. Just take a look at this pale, flat, insipid language. That’s just the ashes of the great poet: it’s as if his ideas have been watered down. And the second reason is that I wouldn’t recommend that you read Byron because… well, he may set off vibrations within you which may never have been stirred otherwise.”
At this point, he squeezed her hand firmly and expressively, as if by doing so he would lend weight to his words.
“But why should you read Byron anyway?” he continued. “Perhaps your life will flow along as gently as this stream; you see how small and shallow it is – too small to reflect the whole sky or the clouds; there are no cliffs around, no crags; it burbles merrily along – and barely a ripple ruffles its surface now and then. All it reflects is the foliage lining the banks, a patch of the sky and a cloud here and there… and this, most likely, is the course your life would take – but you go out of your way to court unnecessary trouble and turbulence; you prefer to look at life through a glass darkly… Leave it alone, don’t read this kind of thing! Look at everything with a smile, don’t look too far ahead, live for the day, don’t seek to discover the dark side of life and people – otherwise!…”
“Otherwise, what?”
“Nothing!” said Alexander, appearing to recollect himself.
“No, tell me, you’ve been through some kind of experience, haven’t you?”
“Where’s my rod? I’m sorry, I have to go.”
He looked a little put out at having expressed himself incautiously.
“No; one more thing,” Liza put in. “I mean, a poet must try to elicit the reader’s sympathy. Byron is a great poet: why are you against my sympathizing with him? Am I really so stupid, so shallow that I can’t understand?…”
She was offended.
“Not exactly; sympathize with what’s natural in your woman’s heart; look for what’s in harmony with it, otherwise there will be a frightful dissonance… both in your head and in your heart.”
He shook his head, the gesture suggesting that he himself was a victim of this dissonance.
“One person will show you a flower,” he went on to say, “and make you enjoy its fragrance and beauty; another person will only point out the poisonous pith in its chalice… and that flower will lose all its fragrance and beauty for you. He will make you feel sorry that that pith is there, and you will forget about the fragrance that is also present. There is a difference between those two people and the kinds of sympathy they will arouse in you. Don’t look for the poison, don’t try to dig for the root of everything that happens to us and around us, and don’t try to acquire unnecessary experience – that is not what will make you happy.”
He said nothing more. She had listened to him attentively and trustingly.
“Please go on, please go on,” she said like a child in a classroom. “I could listen to you for days on end and comply with everything you say…”
“Me?” said Alexander without warmth. “Come now! What right do I have to influence you? I’m sorry I said what I said. Read whatever you choose… Childe Harold is a very good book, and Byron is a great poet!”
“No, stop pretending! Don’t talk like that. Tell me, what should I read?”
He started recommending to her in a sententious and didactic manner various works of history and travel, but she said that she had had enough of all that in school. So then he proposed Walter Scott, Cooper* and some French and English writers, male and female, as well as two or three Russian authors, attempting in this way to display – quite incidentally, of course – his literary taste and refinement. That was their last conversation of that kind.
Alexander was anxious to escape. “What are women to me?” he thought to himself. “I’m incapable of love, I’ve put all that behind me.”
“That’s all very well!” said Kostyakov. “But you’ll find yourself getting married anyway, you’ll see. In my time all I wanted to do was to play around with the young girls and even the older ones, but when the time came for walking up the aisle, I felt as if a stake was being driven into my head; like someone was frogmarching me to the altar!”
But Alexander didn’t make good his escape. He felt his former dreams beginning to stir within him. His heart began to beat at a faster rate. He could not shake off the visions of Liza’s waist, her small foot and her tresses, and life became a little brighter. For the last three days, it had not been Kostyakov who had invited him to go fishing, but it was he who had dragged Kostyakov there. “It’s beginning all over again,” Alexander said to himself, “but I’m resolved!” – and meanwhile hurried down to the river.
Every day, Liza waited impatiently for the arrival of the two friends, and every evening a cup of fragrant tea with rum was poured for Kostyakov. And it was to this stratagem that Liza at least partly owed the fact that the two friends never missed a single evening. When they were late, Liza and her father would walk part of the way to meet them. When bad weather kept the two friends at home, the next day they, as well as the weather, came in for endless recriminations.
Alexander thought and thought, and made up his mind to suspend these outings for a while for God knows what reason – he certainly didn’t know himself – and didn’t go fishing for a whole week; and nor did Kostyakov. Finally they started going again.
About a mile before they reached the spot, they met Liza and her nanny. The moment she spotted them, an involuntary scream escaped her, and her face turned red with embarrassment. Alexander bowed stiffly, but Kostyakov started in right away.
“Here we are, and I bet you didn’t expect us,” he said. “Yes,” he said with a laugh, “I can see you weren’t expecting us – there’s no samovar! It’s quite a while since we met last! Is anything biting? I was always wanting to come, but couldn’t persuade Alexander Fyodorych; all he wanted to do was to sit at home – or should I say ‘lie down’?”
She gave Aduyev a reproachful look.
“What does this mean?” she asked.
“What does what mean?”
“You didn’t come for a whole week?”
“Yes, I believe it was a whole week.”
“Why not?”
“No reason, I just didn’t feel like it.”
“Didn’t feel like it!” she said in surprise.
“Yes, and what about it?”
She remained silent, but it seemed that she was thinking, “Can you really not have felt like coming?”
“I wanted to send Daddy into town to see you,” she said, “but I didn’t know where you lived.”
“Into town – to see me? Why?”
“What kind of question is that?” she said indignantly. “Why? To find out what had happened to you; whether you were ill or something.”
“But what’s it to you?”
“What’s it to me, my God!”
“Why ‘my God’?”
“What do you mean, ‘why’?… Well, I mean, I have your books…” She was at a loss for words. “Not to come for a whole week!” she finally added.
“You mean, I’m supposed to come here every day, no matter what?”
“Yes, no matter what!”
“But why?”
“Why! Why!” She looked at him mournfully, repeating the words “Why! Why!”
He looked at her. What was all this? Tears, consternation, joy and reproaches? She was pale, a little thinner, her eyes reddened.
“So that’s it! And so soon!” thought Alexander. “I didn’t expect it so soon!” Then he laughed out loud.
“Why? You ask. Listen!” she said. “Tomorrow I must talk to you; I can’t today.” Her eyes flashed with a kind of determination. Apparently she was preparing to say something important, but at that moment her father came up to them.
“Until tomorrow,” she said. “Tomorrow, I must talk to you; my heart is too full right now… You will come tomorrow? Do you hear? You won’t forget us? You won’t drop us?…” And she ran off without waiting for an answer.
Her father gave Aduyev, and then his daughter, a searching look and shook his head. Alexander watched her departing figure. What he felt was a kind of mixture of regret and anger with himself for inadvertently putting her in such a position; the blood rushed not to his heart, but to his head.
“She loves me,” he said to himself on his way home. “My God! How tiresome! How absurd! Now I can’t even go there – and it’s the place with the best fishing… so annoying!”
Meanwhile, deep down, it seemed, he wasn’t really as dissatisfied as all that with the situation, and he cheered up and chatted with Kostyakov all the way home.
His imagination obligingly, and as if deliberately, painted for him a full-length portrait of Liza with her generous shoulders and her slim waist – not to mention her small foot. A strange sensation stirred within him, a shudder once again ran through his body, but fizzled out before reaching his heart. He analysed the sensation through and through.
“You have to be an animal,” he muttered to himself, “for a thought like that to enter your mind… Oh! those bare shoulders, that bust, that… small foot… to take advantage of her trust, her inexperience… to betray that trust, yes, to betray, and then what? The same boredom, not to mention pangs of conscience – and what for? No, no, I won’t let myself, I won’t do it to her… I’m strong enough! I feel I have enough strength of character, enough honour within me… I will not fall so low… I will not seduce her.”
Liza waited for him all day with a thrill of pleasurable anticipation, but after a while her heart fell, her confidence ebbed: she felt miserable, without understanding the reason, and almost stopped hoping that Alexander would come. But when Alexander had not arrived by the time they had arranged to meet, her impatience gave way to a feeling of unbearable despair, and with the last ray of sunshine, all hope disappeared. She burst into tears, sobbing bitterly.
The next day, she came to herself, and was cheerful the whole morning, but towards evening her heart began to ache even more, torn between hope and fear. Again no one came.
It was the same on the third and fourth days. But hope still drew her to the riverbank. It took only a boat to appear in the distance or for a couple of human shadows to dart briefly along the riverbank for her to be stirred into a state of joyous anticipation, only to end up depleted by the burden of tension. But when she saw that it was not them in the boat, and that the shadows were not theirs, her head would fall in bitter disappointment onto her breast, and the weight of her despair would grow even heavier. But only a minute later, a sneaking hope would whisper to her a specious but comforting excuse for their delay, and once again her heart would start beating with anticipation. But Alexander was taking his time, deliberately so, it seemed.
Finally, at a certain moment when, sitting under a tree and sick with anxiety, she had totally given up hope, she suddenly heard a rustling sound; she turned round and, shivering with fearful joy, found Alexander standing before her with his arms folded.
Her eyes brimming with tears of joy, she stretched out her hands helplessly towards him. He took her hand and, also in the grip of strong emotion, devoured her face greedily with his eyes.
“You’ve grown thinner!” he said quietly. “Are you ill?”
She shuddered.
“You’ve been away for so long,” she said.
“Have you been waiting for me?”
“Have I?” she said with renewed vigour. “If only you knew!” And tightened her grip on his hands.
“I came to say goodbye to you!” he said, and stood there, watching to see how she would react.
She looked at him in fear and disbelief.
“It can’t be true,” she said.
“It’s true!” he replied.
“Listen to me!” she began suddenly, looking nervously around her. “Don’t leave, for the love of God, don’t leave! I’m going to tell you a secret… Daddy can see us here from the windows – come with me to our summer house in the garden… it faces the fields, I’ll take you there.”
They started walking. Alexander could not take his eyes off her shoulders and her slim waist, and began to feel that feverish shiver again.
“What can be so important?” he wondered as he followed her. “After all, I was just… Anyway, I might just as well take a look and see what it’s like there – that summer house… her father did invite me, so I could have gone quite legitimately and openly… But I’m no seducer, I swear, anything but, and I’ll prove it. After all, I came here precisely to tell her that I was going… although I’m not actually going anywhere! Get thee behind me, Satan!” It was just as if the imp from Krylov’s fable had suddenly appeared from behind the stove* and whispered to him, “But why did you have to come here to tell her that? There was absolutely no need. You could just as well have stayed at home, and in a couple of weeks she would have forgotten all about you…”
But to Alexander it seemed that he was acting nobly by appearing on the actual scene of his heroic act of self-abnegation to fight with temptation face to face.
His first trophy from this victory of his better self was the kiss he stole from Liza, and then putting his arms around her waist and saying that he would never leave her, and that he had just made that up in order to test her, and to find out if she had any feeling for him. Finally, to complete his victory, he promised to return the next day to meet her at the same time in the summer house. On his way home, he started thinking about what he had done, and turned hot and cold by turns. He was horrified and could hardly believe himself, and made up his mind not to return the next day – and turned up earlier than had been agreed.
That was in August. It was already getting dark. Alexander had promised to be there at nine o’clock, but arrived at eight, alone and without his fishing rod. He made his way furtively, like a thief, glancing around nervously, and then breaking into a sprint. But someone had beaten him to it and was sitting on the divan in a dark corner, out of breath from hurrying. Alexander had been ambushed. He opened the door quietly, with his heart in his mouth, and tiptoed his way to the divan, and silently reached for the hand – of Liza’s father. Startled, he jumped up and made for the door, but the old man grabbed him by the hem of his coat, and pulled him down onto the divan beside him.
“What are you doing here, young fellow?” he asked.
“I was… er… going fishing,” Alexander mumbled, hardly able to move his lips. His teeth were chattering. There was nothing at all fearsome about the old man, but Alexander, like any thief caught red-handed, was shivering feverishly.
“Fishing!” the old man repeated derisively. “Do you know what ‘fishing in troubled waters’ means? I’ve been watching you for some time now, and have finally got to know you for what you are; Liza, of course, I’ve known since she was in her cradle, a good girl and trusting, while you are nothing but a dangerous rogue…”
Alexander attempted to stand up, but the old man held him by the arm.
“Now, young fellow, no need to get angry! You pretended you were unhappy and made a pretence of avoiding Liza, but you led her on, made her trust you just in order to take advantage of her… are you proud of that? What would you call that kind of behaviour?”
“I swear on my honour that I did not foresee the consequences,” said Alexander in a tone of deep conviction. “I had no intention of…”
The old man was silent for a few moments.
“Well, maybe that’s what it was!” he said. “Maybe it wasn’t out of love, but just for your own amusement that you befuddled the poor girl, without even knowing what would come of it yourself; if it worked, fine! If not, nothing lost! There are a lot of these young bloods in St Petersburg. Do you know how they are dealt with?”
Alexander sat with his head bowed. He didn’t have it in him to defend himself.
“At first, I thought better of you, but I was mistaken, sorely mistaken. My word! How meek and mild you pretended to be! Thank God I found you out in time!… Now listen! There is no time to lose; before you know it, the foolish girl will be here to meet you. I was watching you yesterday. I don’t want her to see us here together; you must leave and, of course, never come back. She will think that you’ve let her down, and that will be a lesson to her. You must make a point of never coming here again, so find another place to go fishing. Otherwise… Now clear out while the going’s good… Think yourself lucky that Liza can still look me in the eye; I’ve been keeping a close watch on her the whole day, otherwise you would not be leaving by the same route… Goodbye!”
Alexander tried to say something, but the old man opened the door and practically shoved him out.
Alexander left, but in what state of mind I’ll let the reader judge for himself – that is if you’re not too squeamish about putting yourself in Alexander’s place for a minute.
My hero’s eyes were brimming with tears – tears of shame, tears of rage against himself, tears of despair…
“Why am I alive?” he asked aloud. “My life is disgusting, deadly! I’ll… I’ll… But no! If I wasn’t strong enough to resist temptation… I will have the courage to put an end to this useless, shameful existence…”
He strode quickly to the river. It was black. Long, fantastic ugly shapes were skimming its waves. At the bank where Alexander was standing, the water was shallow. “This is not the place to do away with myself,” he said contemptuously, and headed for the bridge about a hundred yards away. Alexander leant over the railings in the middle of the bridge and looked at the water. He mentally bade farewell to life, sent his sighs to his mother and his blessing to his aunt, and even his forgiveness to Nadenka. Tears were streaming down his cheeks from the powerful emotions gripping him… He covered his face with his hands… There’s no telling what he might have done if the bridge hadn’t suddenly started to sway under his feet. He looked around. “My God!” He was on the brink of an abyss. His grave yawned beneath him; half of the bridge had broken off, and was drifting away… barges were passing by; one more minute – and it was goodbye! Mustering all his strength, he made a desperate leap… onto the other side. He landed, gasping for breath, and clutched at his heart.
“Got a fright, did you, sir?” the watchman asked him.
“What do you mean? Didn’t you see? I nearly fell right into the water,” Alexander replied, his voice trembling.
“God help us! You never know what may happen next,” said the watchman, yawning. “Why, only the other summer, a young gentleman did fall in.”
Alexander made his way home, still clutching his heart. From time to time, he stopped to look at the river and the now divided bridge, and then quickly turned away with a shudder and walked on all the faster.
Meanwhile Liza, dressed as attractively as possible and accompanied by neither father nor nanny, went to sit under the tree every evening until late at night.
As the days went by, night fell earlier and earlier, but she continued her waiting; there was never a sign of the two friends.
Autumn came. The riverbank was strewn with yellowing leaves shed by the trees. The green of the foliage had faded; the river had turned the colour of lead, and the sky was always grey. A cold wind blew, accompanied by constant drizzle. The river and its banks were deserted. The sound of lively singing, laughter and animated conversation was no longer to be heard. Boats and barges no longer journeyed back and forth. Not a single insect was left to rustle in the grass or a single bird to chirp in the trees. Jackdaws and crows heightened the sense of desolation with their cries, and fish had stopped biting.
Liza continued to wait; she still needed to talk to Alexander to tell him her secret. She still sat on the bench under the tree in her wadded jacket. She had grown thin, and her eyes were sunken; she wore a scarf wrapped around her face, and that is how her father found her one day.
“Let’s go home; no more sitting here!” he said, frowning and shivering with cold. “Look at you – your hands have turned blue; you’re frozen stiff. Liza, do you hear me? Let’s go!”
“Where to?”
“Home; we’re moving to the city today.”
“Why?” she asked in surprise.
“What do you mean, ‘why’? It’s autumn; and we’re the only ones left here in our dacha.”
“But, really,” she said, “it will be so nice here in the winter; do let’s stay!”
“What on earth has got into you? That’s enough! Let’s go!”
“Wait!” she begged him. “The good days will come back again.”
“Listen!” her father replied, patting her cheek and pointing to the spot where the two friends had come to fish. “They’re not coming back…”
“Not… coming back?” she repeated. She was crestfallen, but from the way she said it, it could have been taken as a question. She offered her hand to her father, and quietly, her head bowed, set off home, looking back from time to time.
Aduyev and Kostyakov had long since resumed fishing, but somewhere on the other side of the river.