The town is of stone. And nobody
knows which was named after which;
were the Ordinin princes named after
the town, or was the town named after
the princes?–the Ordinin princes,
however, inter-married with the Popkovs.
A CLOCK BY THE MIRROR–a bronze shepherd and shepherdess (still intact)–here in the hall chimes half past in a refined glassy tone, like the romantic eighteenth century, a cuckoo clock replies to it from the mother’s, Arina Davidovna’s, bedroom–and the cuckoo cries fifteen, and the cuckoo is like Asia, Zakamye, barbarian lands. And a third clock chimes in the cathedral: Dong! Dong! Dong!…–Then once more silence in the large house. Somewhere creaks a floorboard, dried out after the winter dampness. By the house on the ascent burns a lamp, its light furrows the molded partially collapsed ceiling, is refracted in the chandelier–also still intact. Gleb’s cigarette burns with an even red glow by the window, a window with rainbow-shaped panes firmly puttied in, forever. During the two years of Gleb’s absence the house really flew into the abyss–it, the large house, built up over a century, standing on a base of six meters, as if on three whales, in one year decayed, decomposed and disintegrated. Furthermore, the mark of Cain was long ago imprinted on it.
Gleb’s cigarette burns with an even glow by the window, Gleb is listening attentively to the old house. In this house his youth was spent, which always seemed immeasurably bright and clear–and is now cut off by the gloom of the Revolution. And the pain: no more thoughts about art or about prayer–or about a certain fair girl. In the hall on the wall are ancient frameless portraits. A huge, yellow grand piano snarls, like a bulldog, and in the corner are placed screens and behind the screens is Gleb’s narrow bed. In the hall, behind strong frames, there is an unlived-in and damp smell, and the smell is faintly tinged with that of paints and glue–an artistic smell. The mirrors shine dimly, these ones have been neglected and have grown dull. The moon shines outside the windows with a pale pre-morning light. Night–one must be cheerful!
Subtly again chimes the glass clock, the eighteenth century, and the cuckoo clock of Asia replies. And immediately after the clock, simultaneous with the cathedral’s ringing, a bell timidly rings down below, by the entrance, and again silence arrives, the nocturnal house sleeps. Then Gleb lights up a candle-end–a red tip glows, and the blue shadows of the night, becoming dimmer, quickly flee away–it lights up Gleb’s face, his disheveled hair, his crooked and slender nose, his large forehead, like on the ikons–and his face is ikon-like.
Near the mother’s bedroom, through the half-open door snoring is heard–that of the mother, née Popkova, and Yelena Yermilovna’s, and from there comes the smell of a stale human body. In the father’s room–Gleb sees through a chink–a lot of dim lamps and tall, slender candles burn by the ikon case, and Gleb sees by the ikon case his father bowed in prayer, his scrawny back can be seen through his dressing gown and his gray, completely white hair. His father’s face can be seen: in his eyes, in his humped nose, in his semi-open lips, in his beard, tousled and gray–is it ecstasy–or, perhaps, madness?… All his life his father, Prince Ordinin, had lived in debauchery, having, in his youth, secured financial well-being, through lack of will-power, with the Popkovs’ capital–but in the first spring of the Revolution, when the rivers had overflowed with their voluminous spring torrents–his life changed sharply; from a drunken prince he became an ascetic, days and nights in prayer.
In the entrance hall is a wide staircase, worn down by thousands of feet, which goes down to a small trough. Here it is cold, there is a smell of winter, dampness and rotten furs. Along the sides, on the right and the left, doors lead into storerooms–heavy iron doors behind seven locks: behind the doors is kept the wealth of the Popkovs, gathered (stolen, surely?) over the centuries and now scattered–in the bazaars, salvage and communal economy departments.–A candle burns weakly. Gleb opens the outer front door and asks through the inner:
“Who’s there?”
No immediate answer. It becomes very quiet, and a robin is heard singing in the park.
“Who’s that? –is that you, Gleb Yevgrafovich?” a woman’s voice asks from behind the door.
“It’s me. Who’s there?”
“It’s us, I, Marfusha and Yegor Yevgrafovich.”
“Yegorushka?”
And Gleb quickly opens the doors, to see his elder brother, Yegor.
...And beyond the door walks the heady June night.
Yegor is drunk. He is silent. His red bulging eyes are vacant, apart from their characteristic blandness and now embarrassment. He is wearing only an undershirt, torn and filthy, and is barefoot. Behind Yegor stands Marfusha–a distant relative of house-serf descent. A rancid smell emanates from Yegor–of methanol and perspiration. His reply to his brother’s enthusiastic embraces is unsure and embarrassed.
“Yegorushka, my dear!…” says Gleb, embracing his brother. Yegor is silent.
“Why don’t you speak? Aren’t you glad?”
“I’m ashamed, brother,” says Gleb with difficulty. “I’m very ashamed, that you and I should meet like this. Brother, you find it repulsive to kiss me, don’t! I won’t blame you, brother!”
But Gleb without words hugs Yegor’s bony chest harder and kisses his lips and forehead.
“I’m glad to see you, Yegor!…”
“Brother! I stole Natalya’s coat and drank it away. I stole it!… I didn’t want to come at all, but Marfusha found me. I’m ashamed.. Is mother asleep?… And Boris? I hate him, I despise him!… Marfusha found me… I was there with a prostitute…”
Gleb, virgin, interrupts Yegor, embarrassed.
“Yegor, what are you saying? You shouldn’t talk like that!” he says, as only virgins can, and, apologizing for his brother, looks guiltily at Marfusha.
And Marfusha the dishonored virgin understands him; and a look of anguish comes over her pale eyes. She speaks very tiredly and for this reason speaks well:
“Heavens, Gleb Yevgrafovich!… Here’s the jacket which was taken from Natalya Yevgrafovna!… How can it be, eh?… I would give away my own and I don’t know where to buy it back… You could have a talk with Natalya Yevgrafovna and tell her not to tell Arina Davidovna… Arina Davidovna–will suffer.”
Gleb answers quickly:
“Of course, I’ll have a word with her. Of course…”
“Gleb, is mother asleep?”
“She is, yes.”
“I’m scared of her, oh yes!”
Yegor leans on his brother’s shoulder. A slight chill shudder shakes his rickety body. The candle burns.
“Gleb, I was there… there’s vice there!… You stopped me just now. Do you think I didn’t understand? You are a pure man. But I, too, know what purity is,” says Yegor and quietly adds:–“Now I feel like playing…”
By his father’s room Yegor stops for a minute, looks around and whispers half smiling, half penitently:
“I couldn’t resist it! I couldn’t resist the depravity! We used to drink together. I only drank then, but I was pure. Understand?”
But by his mother’s room he bristles and glides noiselessly past. In the hall Gleb gives him his own coat. The candle burns, illuminating the image of the Virgin on an easel, the ikon-image face of Gleb and the naked body of Yegor. –Gleb–consciously?–hides the Virgin from Yegor. Yegor leans on the door, lowers his head meekly, remains silent, thinking; then says quietly:
“Thank you, brother! You really are my brother!… Boris–he’s no brother! You know, he dishonored Marfusha… Don’t tell anyone, mind… We had been drinking together. Then he locked me in and went off to Marfusha’s. Downstairs. I heard everything.”
Again he is silent. Again he speaks:
“I feel like playing the piano… But–they’re asleep!… Sleep, brother, a saintly sleep! I can’t anymore!”
And again, silence. Again Gleb’s cigarette smolders. June moves beyond the house, but inside, winter has settled.
Yegor goes quietly down the narrow staircase, its broken rungs and banister creaking, into the semi-basement where the wide and heavy stone walls are saturated and the windows are dimly visible through iron grilles. The narrow corridor with a stone floor is cluttered with empty chests, and on the empty chests there are forty-pound locks, and the keys are under mother’s pillow.
“Yegor Yevgrafovich, it’s me… I’ll see you to the door!…” says Marfusha tiredly and lovingly.
“Go away! I can’t forgive you! Go to Boris. Go!”
“Yegor Yevgrafovich…”
“Be quiet!…”
The ceilings in Yegor’s room are vaulted and low. And here the windows are bricked up, the damp flows in drops down from the low window, and in the damp on the window sill are scraps of music paper. Yegor is lying on a bed, on his back, his arms folded on his chest, fleshless and asthmatic. His red, bloodshot eyes stare dimly at the door. At the door stands Marfusha.
“Martha!” says Yegor with difficulty.
“No one, except my brother, is guilty. But you don’t know. You don’t know that there is a law in the world which you can’t cross, and it commands us to remain pure. A great catharsis has purged the earth–revolution. You don’t know, what beauty…”
“Yegor Yevgrafovich, why were you enjoying yourself there with that one?..”
“When you forget the law, you want to play the fool. You want to scoff. At yourself!… Go away!”
“Yegor Yevgrafovich…”
“Go away! Be quiet!”
Marfusha stands motionless.
“Go away, I say! You scum! Go away!”
Marfusha slowly walks out, closing the door behind her.
“Marfa… Marfusha… Marfushechka!…” and Yegor convulsively strokes Marfusha’s head with his shaking hands and dried out long (aristocratic) fingers.
“I have no law. But I can’t forget the truth. I can’t act against my convictions. Everything is done for! But what kind of truth has come upon the earth! Mother is wheezing… she’s answering for everyone! For everyone!… I love you, I love trampled purity. Remember–I love you. I’ll go and be a musician, on the council!”
“Yegorushka!…”
Yegor’s breathing is labored and wheezy and he convulsively presses Marfusha’s head against his bony chest. The candle end burns faintly.
And again the clock chimes. The night runs its nightly course–enchanted beyond the house but here it is dead. One more nocturnal hour will pass, and it will be morning. Boris, large, aristocratically corpulent and well-groomed, with the halting gait of a man who has spent his nights wandering in insomnia, comes up to Gleb.
“Gleb, you asleep? I’ve no matches left.”
“Take mine.”
Boris lights up. The match lights up his shaven, well-groomed face, the ring on his little finger flashes. Boris sits down near Gleb, the bed-board creaks under his considerable weight, and he sits, as is his habit, like a product of the Katkov lycée in Moscow, straight and firm, without bending at the waist.
“I just can’t give in to Morpheus,” says Boris, glumly.
Gleb doesn’t answer, he sits hunched up, with his hands on his knees and his head bent towards them.
They are silent.
“Boris, Yegor has just told me about something vile. You did something vile,” says Gleb.
“With Martha, I suppose? It was nothing!” answers Boris slowly, with a sneer, tiredly.
“That’s vile.”
Boris doesn’t answer immediately and speaks thoughtfully, without his usually contemptuous sneer.
“Of course it was nothing! The vilest thing is what I did to myself! Understand?–I lost my innocence! We’ve all lost it.”
Both Boris and Gleb are silent. The moon, following its heavenly route, was casting its rays onto the bed and illuminated Boris with a greenish, ghostly light–the one at which dogs howl nostalgically. Boris smokes tediously.
“Say something, Boris.”
“One time in spring I was standing on Eagle Mountain looking at the water meadows on the other side of the Vologa. It was spring, the Vologa had burst its banks, the sky was blue–life was seething–both around me and within me. And then, I remember, I wanted to embrace the world! I thought then that I was the center from which all radii spread out, that I was everything. Later I realized that in life there are no radii or centers, that in general the Revolution and everything are only pawns in the paws of life.”
Boris is silent for a moment, then says maliciously:
“I just cannot reconcile myself to this. I hate everything and despise everyone. I cannot! I don’t want to! I despise you, too, Gleb, with your purity… Marfusha? There is love. Were Marfa and Yegor in love?–To Hell with you, Devil take you!–Russia, the Revolution, the merchants appropriated mansions in their sleep, but you were born pure (virginal)–to Hell with you!… They called us vultures, but dead bodies are called carcasses when they’re skinned! Furthermore, the lousy merchants have survived the princes!”
Boris grows silent and breathes heavily. Gleb is silent. The silence lasts a long time.
“The boomerang. Do you know what the boomerang is?” asks Boris, wearily. “It’s a kind of instrument the Papuans throw into the air, and it comes back to them again. Everything in life is just like the boomerang… Gleb, my strength is all but gone, now, both the physical and that which makes others submit… and everything I have ever done will come back on me. At twenty five I was deputy public prosecutor, secret circulars were sent to me to guard against Pugachev-like peasant uprisings. Can you blame anyone?”
“I cannot blame anyone. I cannot!…”
“But I do! They’re all villains! All!”
Prince Boris remains agonizingly silent.
“Brother… If I cannot?!”
“I don’t know where your path is. I have also lost faith. I don’t know…”
“I don’t know either.”
“Read the Bible.”
“I’ve read it! I don’t like it,” says Boris sluggishly.
Boris stands up, wearily, walks over to the window, looks at the distant dawn, says, pensively:
“There were nights a million years ago, today there is night, and in another million years also there will be night. You are called Gleb, I am–Boris. Boris and Gleb. According to popular folklore, on our Saints’ day, the second of May, the nightingales begin their singing. I’ve done some vile things, I’ve raped young girls, extorted money, beaten my father. Do you blame me, Gleb?”
“I cannot. I cannot judge,” answers Gleb, hurriedly. “ ‘Mine is the vengeance, I shall repay.’ You spoke about my purity. Yes, it’s a lie…” he says. He walks over to Boris and stands at his side. The last moonlight before morning is shining down on them.
“Boris, do you remember? ‘Mine is the vengeance, I shall repay’…”
“I remember–the boomerang. I don’t like the Bible,” says Boris gloomily, his face sullen. “The boomerang… The most frightening thing I have left now–is the longing for death. The vultures are dying out. Soon my teeth will fall out and my jaws will rot, my nose will cave in. In one year I, the handsome Prince Boris, a lucky man–will be no more… But–but in May the nightingales will sing! It’s sad, you know!” Boris bends his head low, sullenly, surreptitiously looks at the moon, says wearily:–
“The dogs howl when the moon is out… Gleb, I have syphilis, you know…”
“Boris? What are you saying!…”
“Only I don’t know–if it’s the vice of our illustrious fathers or… father won’t say.”
“Boris!…”
But Boris changes suddenly. Proudly, like a beautiful horse, and as they taught him in the lycée, he throws back his head and says, with a sneer,
“Eh?”
“Borya!…”
“It’s most amusing when people behave genteelly. Eh?… My dear younger brother, it’s time to sleep. Adieu!”
Boris walks slowly away from Gleb. Gleb is a lot smaller than Boris. He, small, is overshadowed. Boris walks decisively away from Gleb, his head raised high, silent and serene. But in the corridor he lowers his head, his gait becomes flabby. His large feet shuffle weakly along.
In his room Boris stops by the stove, leans his shoulder against its cold tiles, mechanically, obeying a habit which had persisted since winter, he rubs his hand over the tiles and presses himself–chest, stomach, knees–to the dead stove coldness.
And night is already taking its nightly course. And the crimson dawn–blessed–is about to meet the June morning. Gleb is thinking about himself, about his brothers, about the Virgin, about the Archangel Varakhiil, whose dress must be bedecked with flowers–white lilies… The Revolution came like white blizzards and May storms. Art–ikonography–the old white churches with mica windows. If war broke out in fourteen–
(In our Russia the woods and grasses burned in red conflagrations, like a red disk the sun rose and sank)
–there, in Europe, engendered by the stock exchange, trusts, colonial politics, etc.,–if such a war could take place in Europe, then is it not the aspen stake to all European bowler hat CULTURE?–this Europe hung over Russia jerked up by Peter (the old white churches were bricked up then):–was our Revolution not a May storm?–and weren’t they March flood waters which washed away the scab of two centuries?–But surely there is no God, only an image–the dress of Varakhiil in white lilies!
The artist Gleb Ordinin came here to the land of his birth, with the archeologist Baudek, in order to conduct excavations.
And first to wake up in the house was the mother, Princess Arina Davidovna, née Popkova.
In the torment of dawn dim patches of light lie down on the floor and along the ceiling. Beyond the grilles on the windows is the brilliant dawn, but in Arina Davidovna’s dark room it is dark, abundantly spread about are cupboards, chests of drawers, high-boys and two draped wooden beds. On the dark walls, in circular frames–you can hardly make them out–hang faded head and shoulder portraits and photographs.–And five minutes before Arina Davidovna is due to wake up, when sweetly still the Princess snores, her sister Yelena Yermilovna, née Popkova, noiselessly sits up in bed, crosses herself while getting dressed, brushes her thinning hair–and noiselessly glides through the gray dawn rooms. The house sleeps. Yelena Yermilovna inspects her dress in the entrance hall, and, unheard, opens the door on those who sleep. –And when the cuckoo cuckoos, Arina Davidovna awakes, crossing herself with her mighty hand. From the bed, from the Princess, from her feet comes the stinking smell of an unclean obese human body.
“Let me, sister, put your stockings on your little legs,” says Yelena Yermilovna.
“Thank you, sister,” answers the Princess in a bass voice.
The Princess washes herself the old-fashioned way–in a wash-hand basin. Then the old women pray aloud together, the Princess, moaning with difficulty lowers herself onto her knees three times–“Morning Prayer” “The Heavenly Kingdom” “The Pater Noster,” to her “Guardian Angel,” “To the Mother of God,”–for near ones, absent ones, for sailors and wayfarers. Yelena Yermilovna speaks, taking deep breaths–and speaks in a whispering recitative.
Marfusha runs about through the rooms and says the same thing to all, learned by heart:
“Natalya Yevgrafovna! Time you were off to the hospital, the samovar’s on the table, Mother is cursing!
“Anton Nikolayevich! Time you were off shopping, the samovar’s on the table and Grandmother’s cursing!
“Ksenya Lvovna! Time you were off to market, the samovar’s on the table and Grandmother’s cursing!”
Arina Davidovna in the dining room at an oak table is cutting slices of bread and drinking tea. Yelena Yermilovna noiselessly pours out the tenth cup.
“Yegor Yevgrafovich returned during the night, Marfon’ka brought him, then they called in on Gleb Yevgrafovich. He had sold all his clothes for drink. Gleb Yevgrafovich gave him his own… he opened the door for him.” Yelena Yermilovna speaks with a lisp. “Boris Yevgrafovich also dropped in to see Gleb Yevgrafovich, and then to see father, the Prince. Father prayed till morning. Natalya Yevgrafovna lay down to sleep after eleven, after a walk down the street. She again went with the Bolshevik Arkhip Arkhipov… Tonya also supports the Bolsheviks, he smashed his glass and called me a filthy name.”
“What name?” Arina Davidovna’s lips sag heavily one onto the other–and the third; in her eyes, once brown, now yellow–power.
“Bitch, sister!”
“Oh!”
“Lidia Yevgrafovna with her daughter and Katerina Yevgrafovna returned from the “Venice” at twelve-thirty, Olenka Kuntzova was with them. They sang ballads in the garden…”
“Oh… oh, Lord!”
As if he had broken away from a chain, Anton rattled like huge knives through the house.
“Marfushka, where’s my shopping bag?!”
In the dining room Anton noisily drinks boiled rye, wheezes and whistles, and his feet, like a setter-pup with fleas, twitch under the table. Yelena Yermilovna is stooping by the samovar.
“Hello, Tony, good morning,” she says.
“Good morning,” gloomily answers Anton in a deep, rooster-like bass. “I’m off to enroll in the Youth Organization today. And what tales have you been spreading about people to Grandmother?”
“Ee-ee-ee! Aren’t you ashamed? Aren’t you ashamed, speaking to old folks like that?”
“Now we know! Slander of the first order! If you were even on the second rung in our organization, we would smash your mug and beat you black and blue every time you said anything like that.”
“Barge hauler! Furriner!–I’ll just go and tell your sister…”
“What did I say?!–You’re a spy!.. You should’ve been in the Cheka a long time ago! That’s what I’ll say to the organization.”
“But surely I’m not against the power of the Soviets?”
“We know!… Marfushka… Where’s my shopping bag?!” –again through the whole house various kinds of chains snapped.
In a white dress, alien, silent, Natalya Yevgrafovna drinks tea in the dining room and goes off to the hospital. The three-bucket-capacity samovar has already sung its aria, grows quiet, squeaks like a fly with a spider. The princess is putting on her “bonnet”-hat and is going with Marfusha and Ksenya to the bazaar with bundles, to sell–those old dresses, which have survived from her grandmothers. With them from the bazaar the Tatars will come in nice new galoshes, and they’ll all go down into the lumber room. In the lumber room there is a smell of rats and decay, the walls are lined with stacked drawers, trunks, suitcases, a set of rusty old scales are hanging up. The Tatars will grab at any old hand made candle sticks, silver, porcelain, moth-eaten Uhlan, Hussar, Cavalry officers’, simple gentry and civilian uniforms (of the Ordinin princes) and winter overcoats (of the Popkov merchants), will pitilessly find fault, suggest ridiculous terms and prod with their dried-up little hands in order to do a deal. The Princess will come across some forgotten trinket, dating from her childhood, and will cry bitterly, hiding the trinket, in order to sell it next time. Then the Tatars will gabble in their own language, increase the amount, the Princess will reduce it, they’ll strike a bargain (a bargain has to be struck), the Tatars, habitually-adroitly, will wrap up their purchases in flamboyant parcels, pay thousands from bulky wallets and one-by-one (it has to be one by one!) they’ll go out the back way down the hill, their nice new galoshes gleaming in the sun. And the Princess will cry in the lumber room, recalling the discovered trinket, and everything connected with it.
In the attic, in the maids’ quarters, live the daughters–this has been the custom with the Popkovs and Ordinins for generations. The ceilings are low here, and it is light here–the walls are white and the square windows open. As a girl of eighteen Lidia had married the landowner Polunin right here in Ordinin–and soon left him, exchanging him for Moscow, for Paris (in Paris Ksenya was born), she met and went to live with a Cavalry officer, and parted with him, and immediately after this she met an artist from the Moscow Imperial Bolshoi Theater–and entered Bohemia forever–she began to study singing, and her singing was successful–at twenty-seven she entered the same theater as an actress; where her new husband was in the cast. This new husband she also ditched, but she never left the stage and rushed hither and thither according to the will of God and the entrepreneurs until– –Now she is back at her mother’s. Her younger sister Natalya, following in her footsteps, went to Moscow as a girl, but organized her life differently: she attended medical school under Guerier and completed it:–and she had her first foolish love affair, the one which burns all boats, but if Lidia exchanged love affair for love affair–Natalya decided never to love again and stayed on to become a doctor, as is written on her diploma–and to keep silent.
And again Marfusha walks through all the rooms and says indifferently:
“The samovar’s on the table, Mother has returned… Mother is swearing!”
Following Marfusha at a distance comes Yelena Yermilovna, silently and without being asked she opens doors (and with her the following conversations occur:–“Are you drawing, Gleb Yevgrafovich, sir?”–“I am, Yelena Yermilovna.”–“Well, draw till your heart’s content, and the Lord keep you!…”–“I am reading, smoking, getting dressed, walking, getting angry, going to bed,”–they say to her, and she answers them all:–“Well, read, smoke, get dressed, walk, get angry, go to bed–till your heart’s content, Lord keep you!…”)Yelena Yermilovna silently thrusts her head into Lidia’s room.
“Are you getting dressed, ma’am?”
“Yelena Yermilovna, how many times must I tell you it’s just not done to enter without knocking! Go away! I don’t allow you in here. Go away!”
Yelena Yermilovna silently disappears behind the door.
“She’s like a house-rat,” says Lidia Yevgrafovna is disgust.
Katerina, the youngest, helps her to get dressed. Lidia Yevgrafovna in just a white lace night gown and black stockings which cling to her shapely legs as far as the thigh, is half-lying in a low armchair. The night gown has slipped off her shoulders, her round shoulders are visible and her large, still beautiful bust with matt nipples. Katerina is combing her abundant red hair. Lidia Yevgrafovna has brown eyes, slender is her Roman nose, and she is rapaciously beautiful. Katerina, plump and indolent, is wearing a slovenly-looking dressing gown, but her hair–also red and abundant–is beautiful.
“Aa-a!” Lidia runs through her scales, to try out her voice, and says:
“You’ll have to go and see Natalya, or somebody else… When did you notice?”
“About a month ago, I think,” says Katerina indolently.
“Well, if it’s a month, there’s no rush. Fausse-couche–it’s very simple,” Lidia smiles intimately. “How many times is this?”
“Second.”
“And who is he?”
“Karrik. An army instructor. An officer, a Party member, but not a Communist.”
“And how old are you?”
“Nineteen, nearly twenty.”
“Is that so! At your age I feared marriage like the plague.”
“It happens to Olya Kuntz just about every month. She’s got some midwife… very cheap. You look surprised, everyone now…”
“No, you must see a doctor! No midwives! And in general abortion’s a dangerous business. You’ll see a doctor today! ach!” Lidia is silent for a long time, she rubs her hands and whispers:–“And again such a long day, completely useless, like the desert… Well, yes, and I’m alone, alone! There’s the story about the frog-princess–why, why did young Prince Ivan burn my frog skin?… Ah, well…”
And through the open windows, in the park, it is June over the earth. Over the earth, over the town it was June, always beautiful, always extraordinary, in its crystal dawns, in its dewy mornings, in its light days and nights. In the maids’ attic the ceilings are low, the walls white, and honey bees hum in the open square windows. Every woman–an undrained delight. However, Natalya… That morning Natalya told her mother that she was going away from home, into the hospital. The same morning mother met Yegor in the corridor.
“Yegor, come here! Tell the truth.”
Yegor slowly approaches his mother, stands next to her–his hands are lowered, his head is lowered, there is anguish and shame in his bloodshot eyes.
“Yegor, were you drinking last night? Were you drunk?”
“Yes,” answers Yegor quietly.
“Where did you get the money?”
Yegor is silent.
“Where did you get the money? Tell the truth!”
“I… I sold Natalya’s, Natalya’s coat for the drink money.”
Mother makes a short swing with her mighty fist and strikes Yegor on his flabby cheek. Yegor does not move.
“Take that! Now get out of my sight and don’t dare leave your room. Don’t you dare play any music. Get out of my sight! Keep quiet!”
Yegor moves away with his tail between his legs. And then through the rooms echoes Boris’s wild cry:
“But I don’t want to keep silent! It’s time you were quiet! I’ve had enough. That’ll do!… Yelena Yermilovna, Yelenka! run to Yegor, you rat, and say that I, Gleb, Natalya–we protest! run, rat!… Mother, you merchant’s wife!… take care!… Martha! Vodka!… Mother, you bitch, you merchant’s wife–get it through your bronze skull, that your roberonde days are finished!… Finished, all finished!… Aa-ach!… Yegor, go and play, play, the Internationale!”
“Silence, Bolshevik! I’m your mother, I’ll teach you!… I feed you!”
“Wha-at? You feed me?! Plundered goods feed us–stolen goods!.. Martha, vodka!…”
In the Princess’s room–it is dark, abundantly spread about are cupboards, chests of drawers, tall-boys, two beds with canopies. On the dark walls, in circular frames, hang faded head and shoulder portraits and photographs. The curtains are somberly lowered over the windows. In gold-rimmed spectacles, the Princess is standing by her open writing bureau, open in front of her are her account books: “Provisions,” “Breakages,” “Servants’ account,” “Linen,” “Clothing,” “The children.”
In “Breakages” the princess enters:
“Tonya broke one glass.”
Into “The children”:
“Yegor punished, Natalya gone mad–going to live in the hospital away from her parental home. God is her judge, ten rou(bles) to Ksenya as a gift.”
Into “Linen” and “Clothing” the Princess enters the things sold to the Tatars and at the bazaar, and enters the sum under Income in “Income–Expenditure.”
And the Princess cries. The Princess cries, because she understands nothing, because her iron will, her wealth, her family–have decreased and are slipping away, like water through her fingers.
“In that bustle we sold today,” –she is speaking through tears to Yelena Yermilovna–“I first saw my mother, the Princess, when I arrived as a bride. I had lilacs then in my hair, although it was January.”
However, the Princess is soon no longer crying. She stands by her writing bureau with a pen in her hands, leaning her elbows on her books, and is talking about the distant past, linking one after another, her family’s, her own, distant–and recent–past.
“Near us there was a landowner, Yegorov, a retired colonel, a hunter, dead keen. He came to the estate and–didn’t visit anyone… took two sister-whores away from the village and put them both to sleep with him, and would be drunk for weeks on end, or into the forest hunting for a week. And didn’t visit anyone!.. We had a priest, he talked folk off the bottle, they queued up to see him, his whole church porch was strewn with corks–obviously the last time before oath-taking… Father Christopher. Father Christopher went to see Yegor, to persuade him. Yegor returned the visit–he went to church for Mass, listened to the singing, burst into tears and up to the priest at the altar, and with Father Christopher’s Tatar woman–on the altar!.. And again back to his whores. Then he saw me on the road and–went mad, chased away the sister-whores, settled down and began to strike up acquaintances among the landowners, gave up drinking, and went to dances. He wrote me letters… But once he came to a dance–in a fur coat, and just his birthday suit–then went off again to pray, and the whores came back to him…”
Both the Princess and Yelena Yermilovna sigh deeply.
“Everything’s worsening, sister… everything,” says Yelena Yermilovna with a sigh.
“That’s true, sister. It wasn’t like this before… before…”
“Yet again, sister, your husband has shut himself away from the world.”
“All the Ordinin princes are like that. And the Ordinin father’s the same… It used to be that the Prince…”
“The children are giving me trouble again… There’s Anton Nikolayevich swore at me with a filthy word again.”
“What word?”
“Spy, sister.”
And again Marfusha is going through all the rooms and says indifferently: “The table is laid… First course about to be served… Mummy is cursing!”
The abundant, scorching sun comes through the large, round top windows of the hall, because of the daylight the hall appears empty. Gleb has moved his sketches into a corner, has hidden them behind a screen: there, turned to the wall, stands his Virgin. Gleb is sitting behind the screen on the window, it is quiet in the hall, blue smoke rises from his cigarette. Quietly a tall double door opens and Yegor walks warily towards the piano.
“Glebushka, I can’t stop myself. Forgive me.”
“Play, Yegorushka.”
Yegor presses the soft pedal, plays something of his own, excessively melancholy and virginal.
“I composed this one, Gleb, for Natalya. About her… Mother will hear…”
“Play, keep playing, Yegorushka…”
“But you know, Gleb!… You know, Gleb!… I want to play the Internationale, to the whole world, with all the stops out!.. and –and gently weave “Gretchen” into it, like Peter Verkhovensky in the Governor’s wife’s house in The Devils, –this is for mother!.. and–for Boris. A-ach!…”
Gleb is thinking about the archangel Varakhiil, whose coat is all white lilies–and he painfully remembers his mother… In the mother’s dark room on the walls hang head and shoulder portraits, already faded and in round gold frames; the ceilings in the mother’s room are sooty, with bas-relief Cupids, and on the walls there is damask wallpaper. In the mother’s room, in front of the Princess-mother, Gleb lowers himself onto his knees, extends his hands imploringly and whispers painfully:
“Mummy, Mummy!…”
Someone rings the front door bell, a telegram is brought from Moscow to Lidia Yevgrafovna:
“Health. Love, Brilling.”
Lidia sends Marfusha to reply, and from the lumber room the trunks are brought down to the mezzanine.