Berezovo: A Revolutionary Russian Epic

Still smiling, he returned his gaze to the ceiling, expecting at any moment to hear the sound of the second shoe striking the worn carpet beside her bed. But as the silence lengthened, fresh doubts began to assail him. Perhaps it had just been a hairbrush, or she had knocked something off the dressing table as she was searching for the scripts. On the other hand, she could just be playing with him, tantalising him. Shutting his eyes, he imagined her lying there, smiling to herself in the dark as she dangled the shoe over the side of her bed…

Well, he thought, two can play at that game.

Opening his eyes, he stared unseeing at his reflection as he considered what to do. He would have another cigarette, he decided, and smoke it in a detached and nonchalant fashion just to show her that he was not at her beck and call. Obeying the impulse, he fumbled in his pockets and, finding his packet of cigarettes, opened it and took one out.

It is time I possessed a proper cigarette case, he thought. An expensive one, inscribed with my own monogram.

Putting the cigarette in his mouth he took a box of matches off the mantelpiece, extracted one and struck it. As the match flared up, he paused, listening hard for any sound of movement above him, but none came. His brow creased in irritation. She was keeping him waiting for far too long.

What should I say when I open the door? he asked himself. “Yeliena Mihailovna, I heard a noise and wondered if you were all right?”

Perhaps she was taking off her clothes; that would explain the delay. The idea thrilled and terrified him at the same time. So awesome was it that he realised too late the match in his hand was burning low. Feeling its flame begin to sear his flesh he flung the match away with a curse into the fire. Tearing the cigarette from his lips he put his injured fingers into his mouth and sucked them, tasting on his tongue the acrid taste of the phosphorous that had impregnated his skin.

Another thought rose to confront him: that it must have been a very weighty shoe to have made the noise he had heard.

Of course, he reasoned, it need not have been a shoe at all. It could have been a boot. Either that or she has deliberately thrown something at the floor, as a signal that she is ready to receive me; that I should come up.

With his fingers still in his mouth, he began once more to pace to and fro in front of the hearth.

No, he thought, that is too far-fetched. Or is it? Has she been waiting all this time for me to come to her, while I’ve been standing here like a booby at a fair, striking poses in front of the mirror and burning myself for my pains?

His inner conflict began again as he debated what he was to do. If he went to her now, she might already have grown bored; or worse, cold. Either way, there was a good chance that she would reject him. And if it had been a hairbrush she had dropped by accident, what credible excuse could he give for such an intrusion so late after the event, especially remembering the circumstances preceding the previous occasion he had been in her room? Once was a forgivable error: to assume twice that her bedroom door was open to him would be scandalous!

Had it been an invitation or a hairbrush?

Why, oh why, hadn’t he gone up straight away?

By now, he decided, she must know that I am not coming: that I lack the courage. Only the brave deserve the fair, and I have failed her.

A second sound reached his ears, as unmistakeable in its own way as the first had been. It was the sound of Yeliena Mihailovna opening and then closing her bedroom door and walking across the landing to the top of the stairs. With a heartfelt curse, Anton Ivanovich scuttled back to his seat and prepared himself to face his hostess.

When Yeliena entered the room, she found him sitting upright in his chair, a bound volume of the Medical Journal open upon his knees. In his right hand an unlit cigarette was held at a rakish angle between two wet and swollen fingers.

“Anton Ivanovich, you shouldn’t smoke so much,” she scolded him. “And you are reading in a very poor light. You will damage your eyes.”

Meekly, her husband’s assistant closed the heavy volume and discarded the moist cigarette.