Fifty-Two Stories

She found her husband in his study. He was sitting at his desk and thinking about something. His face was stern, pensive, and guilty. This was no longer the Pyotr Dmitrich who had argued over dinner and whom his guests knew, but a different one—tired, guilty, and displeased with himself—who was known only to his wife. He must have gone to his study to get cigarettes. Before him lay an open cigarette case full of cigarettes, and one hand was lowered into the desk drawer. As he was taking out cigarettes, he had frozen like that.

Olga Mikhailovna felt sorry for him. It was clear as day that the man was anguished and on edge, perhaps struggling with himself. Olga Mikhailovna silently approached the desk; wishing to show that she had forgotten the dinnertime argument and was no longer angry, she closed the cigarette case and put it in his pocket.

“What shall I say to him?” she thought. “I’ll say that lying is like a forest: the further in you go, the more difficult it is to get out. I’ll say: you got carried away with your false role and went too far; you offended people who are attached to you and have done you no wrong. Go and apologize to them, laugh at yourself, and you’ll feel better. And if you want peace and solitude, we’ll go away together.”

Meeting his wife’s eyes, Pyotr Dmitrich suddenly gave his face the expression it had had at dinner and in the garden—indifferent and slightly mocking—yawned, and stood up.

“It’s past five,” he said, glancing at his watch. “If our guests are merciful and leave at eleven, we’ve still got another six hours to wait. Good fun, to say the least!”

And, whistling some tune, slowly, with his usual dignified gait, he left the study. She could hear his dignified footsteps as he walked through the reception room, then through the drawing room, laughed dignifiedly at something, and said “Bra-o! Bra-o!” to the young man at the piano. Soon his footsteps died away: he must have gone out to the garden. And now it was not jealousy or vexation, but a real hatred of his footsteps, his insincere laughter and voice, that came over Olga Mikhailovna. She went to the window and looked out at the garden. Pyotr Dmitrich was already walking down the avenue. One hand in his pocket, snapping the fingers of the other, his head thrown slightly back, he walked with dignity, looking as if he were quite satisfied with himself, his dinner, his digestion, and nature…

Two small schoolboys appeared in the avenue, the children of the landowner Madame Chizhevskaya, who had just arrived, and with them a student-tutor in a white tunic and very tight trousers. Going up to Pyotr Dmitrich, the children and the student stopped and probably congratulated him on his name-day. Handsomely moving his shoulders, he patted the children’s cheeks and casually shook the student’s hand without looking at him. The student probably praised the weather and compared it with Petersburg, because Pyotr Dmitrich said loudly and in a tone as if he were talking not to a guest, but to a court usher or a witness:

“Well, sir, so it’s cold in your Petersburg? And here, my good man, we have seasonable weather and abundance of the fruits of the earth.⁶ Eh? What?”

And, putting one hand in his pocket and snapping the fingers of the other, he walked on. All the while, until he disappeared behind the hazelnut bushes, Olga Mikhailovna gazed at the back of his head in perplexity. Where did this thirty-four-year-old man get such a dignified generalissimo’s gait? Where did he get such a weighty, handsome way of walking? Where did he get such a superior vibration in his voice—“well, sir,” “hm-yes, sir,” “my good man,” and all that?