Fifty-Two Stories

They all surrounded her, congratulated her, marveled, assured her that it was long since they had heard such music, and she listened silently, smiling slightly, and triumph was written all over her.

“Wonderful! Superb!”

“Wonderful,” Startsev said as well, succumbing to the general enthusiasm. “Where did you study music?” he asked Ekaterina Ivanovna. “At the conservatory?”

“No, I’m still just preparing for the conservatory, and meanwhile I’ve been studying here with Madame Zavlovsky.”

“Have you finished your studies in the local high school?”

“Oh, no!” Vera Iosifovna answered for her. “We invited teachers to the house. In high school or boarding school, you’ll agree, there may be bad influences; while a girl is growing up, she should remain under the influence of her mother alone.”

“But all the same I’m going to the conservatory,” said Ekaterina Ivanovna.

“No, Kotik loves her mama. Kotik is not going to upset her papa and mama.”

“No, I’m going! I’m going!” Ekaterina Ivanovna said, jokingly and capriciously, and stamped her little foot.

At supper Ivan Petrovich displayed his talents. Laughing with his eyes only, he told anecdotes, cracked jokes, asked amusing questions and answered them himself, and all the while spoke his extraordinary language, elaborated during long exercises in witticism, and obviously long since become habitual to him: biggy, none too bad, I hummingly thank you…

But that was not all. When the guests, sated and content, were crowding in the front hall sorting out their coats and canes, bustling about them was the lackey Pavlusha, or Pava, as he was called there, a boy of about fourteen, short-haired, with plump cheeks.

“Go on, Pava, perform!” Ivan Petrovich said to him.

Pava assumed a pose, raised his arm, and said in a tragic tone:

“Die, wretched woman!”

And they all laughed.

“Amusing,” thought Startsev, going outside.

He stopped at a restaurant and drank some beer, then went home to Dyalizh on foot. He walked and sang to himself all the way:

“Thy voice for me, affectionate and languid…”⁷

Having walked six miles and then gone to bed, he did not feel the least bit tired; on the contrary, it seemed to him that he would gladly have walked another fifteen.

“None too bad…,” he remembered, falling asleep, and he laughed.

II

Startsev kept thinking about visiting the Turkins, but there was a great deal of work in the hospital, and he could never find any free time. More than a year went by like that, in toil and solitude; but then a letter in a blue envelope was brought from town…

Vera Iosifovna had been suffering from migraine for a long time, but lately, when Kotik threatened every day that she was going to the conservatory, the attacks began to recur more frequently. All the doctors in town visited the Turkins, and finally the zemstvo doctor’s turn came. Vera Iosifovna wrote him a touching letter, asking him to come and ease her suffering. Startsev came and after that started visiting the Turkins often, very often…In fact he helped Vera Iosifovna a little, and she was already telling all her guests that he was an extraordinary, amazing doctor. But he no longer went to the Turkins’ on account of her migraine…

A holiday. Ekaterina Ivanovna finished her long, wearisome piano exercises. Then they sat in the dining room for a long time having tea, and Ivan Petrovich was telling some funny story. But the bell rang; he had to go to the front hall to meet some guest; Startsev profited from the moment of confusion and said to Ekaterina Ivanovna in a whisper, greatly agitated:

“For God’s sake, I beg you, don’t torment me, let’s go to the garden!”

She shrugged her shoulders, as if perplexed and wondering what he wanted from her, but she got up and went.

“You spend three or four hours playing the piano,” he said, walking after her, “then you sit with Mama, and there’s no possibility of talking with you. Grant me at least a quarter of an hour, I beg you.”

Autumn was coming, and in the old garden it was quiet, sad, and dark leaves lay along the paths. Dusk fell early.

“I haven’t seen you for a whole week,” Startsev went on, “and if you only knew what suffering it is! Let’s sit down. Listen to me.”

They both had a favorite place in the garden: a bench under an old spreading maple. And now they sat down on that bench.

“What can I do for you?” Ekaterina Ivanovna asked in a dry, business-like tone.

“I haven’t seen you for a whole week, I haven’t heard you for so long. I passionately want, I yearn for your voice. Speak.”