Fifty-Two Stories

“You’re bored without your friend,” she said.

I laughed.

“For the sake of friendship, it would be enough to come here once a month, but I come here more than once a week.”

Having said that, I got up and paced the room in agitation. She also got up and went to the fireplace.

“What do you mean to say by that?” she asked, raising her big, clear eyes to me.

I said nothing.

“You weren’t telling the truth,” she went on after reflecting. “You come here only for the sake of Dmitri Petrovich. Well, I’m very glad. In our time one rarely sees such friendship.”

“Aha!” I thought, and, not knowing what to say, I asked: “Would you like to take a stroll in the garden?”

“No.”

I stepped out on the terrace. My scalp was tingling, and I was chilled with excitement. I was already certain that our conversation would be very insignificant and that we would not be able to say anything special to each other, but that during that night what I did not even dare to dream of would certainly take place. Certainly, that night, or never.

“What fine weather!” I said loudly.

“For me it’s decidedly all the same,” came the answer.

I went into the drawing room. Maria Sergeevna was standing by the fireplace as before, her hands behind her back, thinking about something and looking away.

“Why is it decidedly all the same for you?” I asked.

“Because I’m bored. You’re only bored without your friend, but I’m always bored. However…that doesn’t interest you.”

I sat down at the piano and played several chords, waiting for what she would say.

“Please don’t stand on ceremony,” she said, looking at me angrily and as if she were about to weep with vexation. “If you want to go to bed, go. Don’t think that, if you’re Dmitri Petrovich’s friend, you’re obliged to be bored with his wife. I don’t want any sacrifices. Please go.”

I didn’t go, of course. She went out to the terrace, and I stayed in the drawing room and spent some five minutes leafing through the scores. Then I, too, went out. We stood next to each other in the shadow of the curtains, and below us were the steps flooded with moonlight. The black shadows of trees stretched across the flower beds and over the yellow sand of the paths.

“I also have to leave tomorrow,” I said.

“Of course, if my husband isn’t home, you can’t stay here,” she said mockingly. “I can imagine how miserable you’d be if you fell in love with me! Just wait, someday I’ll up and throw myself on your neck…I’ll watch how you flee from me in terror. It will be interesting.”

Her words and her pale face were angry, but her eyes were filled with the most tender, passionate love. I already looked upon this beautiful creature as my property, and now I noticed for the first time that she had golden eyebrows, lovely eyebrows, such as I had never seen before. The thought that I could now draw her to me, caress her, touch her wonderful hair, suddenly seemed so monstrous to me that I laughed and shut my eyes.

“However, it’s already time…Sleep well,” she said.

“I don’t want to sleep well,” I said, following her to the drawing room. “I’ll curse this night if I sleep at all.”

Pressing her hand and walking her to the door, I could see from her face that she understood me and was glad that I also understood her.

I went to my room. On my desk by the books lay Dmitri Petrovich’s cap, and that reminded me of his friendship. I took a walking stick and went out to the garden. Here the mist was already rising, and around the trees and bushes, embracing them, wandered the same high and narrow apparitions I had just seen on the river. What a pity I couldn’t speak with them!

In the extraordinarily transparent air, every little leaf, every drop of dew stood out distinctly—it all smiled to me in silence, half awake, and, passing by the green benches, I recalled words from some play of Shakespeare’s: how sweetly sleeps the moonlight upon this bench!²

There was a small hummock in the garden. I went up it and sat down. An enchanting feeling came over me. I knew for certain that I was about to embrace her luxurious body, to press myself to it, to kiss those golden eyebrows, and I wanted not to believe it, to excite myself, and was sorry that she had tormented me so little and yielded so soon.

But here I suddenly heard heavy footsteps. A man of average height appeared in the path, and I immediately recognized him as Forty Martyrs. He sat down on a bench and sighed deeply, then crossed himself three times and lay down. A minute later he sat up and turned on the other side. Mosquitoes and the night’s dampness kept him from sleeping.

“Ah, life!” he said. “Miserable, bitter life!”

Looking at his scrawny, bent body and hearing deep, hoarse sighs, I remembered the other miserable, bitter life confessed to me that day, and my blissful state became eerie and frightening to me. I left the hummock and headed home.

“Life, in his opinion, is frightening,” I thought, “so don’t stand on ceremony with it, break it, and, before it crushes you, take all you can grab from it.”