Fifty-Two Stories

No one was there. Who would come there at midnight? But Startsev waited, and, as if the moonlight were warming the passion in him, he waited passionately, his imagination picturing kisses, embraces. He sat by the memorial for about half an hour, then strolled in the side alleys, hat in hand, waiting and thinking about the many women and girls buried here in these graves, who had been beautiful, charming, who had loved, had burned with passion at night, yielding to caresses. What wicked tricks, indeed, Mother Nature plays on human beings, how vexing the awareness of it! So Startsev thought, and at the same time he felt like crying out that he wanted, that he was waiting for love at all costs; it was no longer pieces of marble that showed white before him, but beautiful bodies, he saw shapes that modestly hid in the shade of the trees, he felt warmth, and this languor was becoming oppressive…

And like the lowering of a curtain, the moon went behind a cloud, and suddenly everything around became dark. Startsev barely managed to find the gate—it was already as dark as on an autumn night. Then he wandered for an hour and a half, looking for the lane where he had left his horses.

“I’m tired, I can barely keep my feet,” he said to Panteleimon.

And, delightedly seating himself in the carriage, he thought:

“Oof, I’d better not gain weight!”

III

The next day, in the evening, he went to the Turkins’ to propose. But this turned out to be awkward, because Ekaterina Ivanovna was in her room having her hair done by a hairdresser. She was getting ready for an evening dance at the club.

Again he had to sit for a long time in the dining room having tea. Ivan Petrovich, seeing that the guest was pensive and bored, took some notes from his waistcoat pocket and read an amusing letter from a German manager about how all the lockitudes on the estate were broken, and there was a crashing of the wallery.

“And they’ll probably provide no small dowry,” thought Startsev, listening distractedly.

After a sleepless night, he was in a stunned state, as if he had been given something sweet and somniferous; his heart was foggy, but joyful, warm, and at the same time some cold, heavy little snippet in his head was reasoning:

“Stop before it’s too late! Is she any match for you? She’s spoiled, capricious, she sleeps till two, and you’re a churchwarden’s son, a country doctor…”

“Well, what then?” he thought. “So be it!”

“Besides, if you marry her,” the little snippet went on, “her family will make you drop your zemstvo work and live in town.”

“Well, what of it?” he thought. “If it’s town, it’s town. They’ll give a dowry, we’ll buy furniture…”

Finally Ekaterina Ivanovna came in wearing a ball gown, décolleté, pretty, clean, and Startsev admired her so much and went into such rapture that he could not utter a single word, but only looked at her and laughed.

She started saying goodbye, and he—there was no longer any reason for him to stay—stood up, said it was time he went home: his patients were waiting.

“Nothing to be done,” said Ivan Petrovich. “Go, then, and on your way take Kotik to the club.”

Outside it was drizzling rain, very dark, and only by Panteleimon’s rough coughing could they tell where the horses were. They put up the hood.

“I lie on the rug,” said Ivan Petrovich, seating his daughter in the carriage, “he lies like a rug…Touch ’em up! Goodbye if you please!”

They drove off.

“I went to the cemetery last night,” Startsev began. “That was so ungenerous and unmerciful on your part…”

“You went to the cemetery?”

“Yes, I was there and waited for you till nearly two o’clock. I suffered…”

“Suffer, then, if you don’t understand jokes.”

Ekaterina Ivanovna, pleased that she had so cleverly played a joke on the amorous man and that he was so much in love, laughed loudly and suddenly cried out in fright, because just then the horses turned sharply through the gates of the club, and the carriage tilted. Startsev put his arm around Ekaterina Ivanovna’s waist, and she, frightened, pressed herself to him. He could not help himself and kissed her passionately on the lips, on the chin, and tightened his embrace.

“Enough,” she said drily.

A moment later she was no longer in the carriage, and the policeman by the lit-up entrance of the club yelled at Panteleimon in a disgusting voice:

“What’re you stopping for, you old crow? Keep driving!”

Startsev went home, but soon came back. At midnight, in a borrowed tailcoat and a stiff white cravat that somehow kept sticking out and trying to slip from the collar, he was sitting in the club drawing room and saying to Ekaterina Ivanova with enthusisasm: