The Beauties: Essential Stories Read online

  “There’s dew on the grass,” said Anna Sergeyevna after a silence.

  “Yes. Time to go home.”

  They drove back to town.

  After that they met on the promenade every day at noon, ate lunch and dinner together, walked about and admired the sea. She complained that she had trouble sleeping, that her heart pounded with anxiety, and kept asking him the same questions over and over again, tormented either by jealousy or by the fear that he didn’t respect her enough. And when they were in the square or the gardens, if there was nobody nearby, he would often draw her to him and kiss her passionately. This state of utter idleness, these kisses in broad daylight, looking fearfully over his shoulder in case anybody saw, and the heat, and the smell of the sea, and the constant sight of idle, elegant, well-fed people, seemed to make a new man of him. He would tell Anna Sergeyevna how lovely she was, and how seductive; he was impatiently passionate with her, not moving an inch from her side; while she often became pensive and repeatedly begged him to confess that he didn’t respect her, nor love her in the least, but merely saw her as a worthless woman. Almost every day they drove out of town in the late evening, to Oreanda or to the waterfall, and every expedition was a success, always impressing them with the beauty and majesty of the spectacle.

  They were expecting her husband to arrive, but a letter came from him to say that he was having trouble with his eyes, and begging his wife to come home at once. Anna Sergeyevna hurriedly prepared to go.

  “It’s good that I’m leaving,” she said to Gurov. “It’s fate.”

  She left by coach, and he went with her. They drove for a whole day. When she got into her compartment on the express train, and the second bell went, she said:

  “Come and let me have another look at you. One more look. There.”

  She was not crying, but she was sad, as though she were unwell, and her face trembled.

  “I shall think of you… and remember you,” she said. “God bless you, be happy. Don’t think ill of me. We’re parting for ever, that’s how it has to be, because we should never have met. Well, God bless you.”

  The train moved off quickly, its lights soon vanished, and a minute later no sound of it could be heard, as if everything was conspiring to put an end to this sweet dream, this madness. Left alone on the platform, Gurov gazed into the dim distance and listened to the grasshoppers shrilling and the telegraph wires humming, and felt that he had only just awoken. He reflected that this had been another experience, another adventure in his life, and now it too was over, and what was left to him was the memory of it… He was touched, and sad, and felt a little remorseful; for this young woman whom he would never meet again had not been happy with him. He had been genuinely affectionate towards her, but all the same – the way he treated her, his tone of voice, his caresses, had all carried a slight tinge of mockery, the rough arrogance of a lucky man, and what was more, a man who was almost twice her age. She had always called him kind, exceptional, exalted; she had evidently regarded him as different from what he really was, so he had been unwittingly deceiving her…

  There was a smell of autumn here on the station. The evening was chilly.

  “High time for me to go north again too,” thought Gurov as he left the platform. “High time!”

  III

  Back in Moscow the winter routine had already started, stoves were lit, and in the mornings when the children drank their tea and got ready for school it was still dark, and their nurses lit the lamps for a while. The frosts had already started. When the first snow falls, on the first day when you ride out on a sleigh, it’s good to see the white earth, and white roofs, and draw in soft, wonderful breaths, and remember the days of your youth. The old limes and birches, white with hoarfrost, wear cheerful expressions; they’re closer to our hearts than cypresses and palm trees, and when you’re near them you no longer want to think of the mountains or the sea.

  Gurov was a Muscovite; he had come back to Moscow on a fine, frosty day, and once he had put on his greatcoat and warm gloves and gone out for a walk along the Petrovka, and had heard the bells ringing on a Saturday evening, his recent journey and the places he had visited lost all their charm for him. Bit by bit he immersed himself in Moscow life, hungrily read through three newspapers a day, though he claimed never to read the Moscow papers on principle. He was already drawn to restaurants and clubs, dinner parties and celebrations, and felt flattered because he was visited by well-known lawyers and actors, and played cards with a professor at the doctors’ club. He could already manage a whole serving of Russian meat stew…

  Another month or two would pass, he thought, and Anna Sergeyevna would vanish in the mists of memory, only to reappear once in a while in his dreams, with her touching smile, just as he dreamed of the others. But over a month had passed, it was deepest winter already, and his memory of her was still clear, as though they had only parted yesterday. And his memories glowed ever more vividly. If ever he heard the voices of children preparing their lessons as he sat in his study on a quiet evening, or listened to a song or an organ playing in a restaurant, or if the wind howled in his chimney on a stormy night, his memory at once called everything up – what had happened on the breakwater, and the early morning with the mist on the mountains, and the steamer from Feodosia, and the kisses. He would walk round the room for a long time, remembering, and smiling; and then the memories would turn into dreams, and past events mingled in his mind with what was to come. Anna Sergeyevna was no dream – she followed him around everywhere like a shadow, and haunted him. When he shut his eyes he could see her like a living being, and she seemed more beautiful, younger and more tender than she was; and he seemed to himself to be better than he had been there, in Yalta. In the evenings she gazed at him from the bookshelf, the fireplace, or the corner; he could hear her breathing and the gentle rustle of her dress. In the street he followed women with his eyes, trying to find someone who looked like her…

  He was oppressed by a compelling need to share his memories with somebody. But at home he could not talk about his love, and away from home there was no one he could tell. Certainly not his tenants; nor anyone at the bank. And what could he have talked about? Had he really been in love then? Had there really been anything beautiful, poetic, instructive, or even merely interesting, in his relations with Anna Sergeyevna? He found himself reduced to talking vaguely about love, or women, and nobody guessed what it was all about; except that his wife would raise her dark eyebrows and say:

  “Dimitry, pretending to be a man about town doesn’t suit you a bit.”

  One night when he left the doctors’ club with his partner at cards, he couldn’t stop himself exclaiming:

  “If only you knew what an enchanting woman I got to know in Yalta!”

  The official took his seat on the sledge and drove off, but suddenly turned and called:

  “Dmitry Dmitrich!”

  “What?”

  “You were right just now: that sturgeon was a bit off!”

  Those very ordinary words for some reason made Gurov indignant – he felt they were degrading and unclean. What dreadful manners, what people! What pointless nights, and what uninteresting, unremarkable days! All this desperate card-playing, gluttony, drunkenness and endless talk on one single topic. Most of your time and energy goes on pointless activities, and conversations about one and the same thing, and all you’re left with at the end is a sort of truncated, wing-clipped life, a rubbishy life; yet you can’t run away and escape from it – it’s like being shut up in a madhouse or a prison camp!

  Gurov lay awake all night, full of indignation, and then had a headache for the whole of the next day. And he slept badly during the following nights, sitting up in bed and thinking, or pacing to and fro in his room. He was fed up with his children, and fed up with the bank, and he didn’t feel like going anywhere or talking about anything.

  When the December holidays arrived he made preparations to leave, and told his wife he was going to Petersburg
to pull strings on some young man’s behalf – and he left for S——. What for? He himself didn’t really know. He wanted to see Anna Sergeyevna, and talk to her, and arrange a meeting with her if he could.

  He arrived at S—— in the morning and took the best room in the hotel. The whole floor was carpeted in grey army cloth, and the table had an inkstand on it, grey with dust, with the figure of a rider on horseback waving his hat in his hand, and with his head broken off. The hotel porter gave him the information he needed: Von Diederitz lived in Old Potters Street, in a house of his own, not far from the hotel. He was rich and lived in style, with his own horses; everyone in town knew him. The porter pronounced his name “Dridirits”.

  Gurov took a leisurely stroll to Old Potters Street and found the house. Right opposite the house was a long fence decorated with nails.

  “That’s a fence one would want to run away from,” thought Gurov, looking up at the house windows, and over at the fence, and back again.

  He worked out that today was not a working day, so the husband would probably be at home. In any case it would have been tactless to enter the house and cause embarrassment. And if he sent a note, it would probably fall into the husband’s hands, and that could spoil everything. The best thing to do was leave it to chance. So he started walking up and down the street and along the fence, waiting for that chance. He saw a beggar go in through the gates, and get attacked by dogs; then, an hour later, he heard a piano being played: the sounds that reached him were faint and indistinct. That must have been Anna Sergeyevna playing. Suddenly the front door opened and an old woman emerged, with the familiar white Pomeranian running after her. Gurov wanted to call the dog, but his heart suddenly started pounding, and in his anxiety he couldn’t remember the dog’s name.

  He went on walking up and down, loathing the grey fence more and more, and had already decided in his annoyance that Anna Sergeyevna had forgotten about him, and indeed might be amusing herself with some other man. That would have been quite natural in this young woman’s situation, forced to look out at that damned fence from morning to night. He went back to his hotel room and spent a long time sitting on his sofa, not knowing what to do; then he had dinner, and took a long nap.

  “How stupid and upsetting all this is,” he thought when he woke up and looked at the dark windows. It was late evening. “I’ve slept all I want, for some reason. What am I going to do all night now?”

  He was sitting on his bed, covered with a cheap grey blanket that might have come from a hospital. In his irritation, he tormented himself with the thought:

  “So much for your Lady with the Little Dog… So much for your adventure… Now you can just sit here.”

  That same morning at the station, he had noticed a poster in huge print: the premiere of The Geisha was on that evening. Now he remembered that, and drove to the theatre.

  “It’s quite possible that she goes to premieres,” he thought.

  The theatre was full. As in every provincial theatre, there was a fog above the candelabra, the gallery was full of noise and excitement; the local dandies were standing in the front row, hands behind their backs, waiting for the performance to begin; and here, in the front seat of the Governor’s box, was the Governor’s daughter in a feather boa, while the Governor himself hid modestly behind the door and only his hands could be seen. The curtain swayed, the orchestra spent ages tuning up. Spectators were coming in and taking their seats; and all this time Gurov was eagerly searching with his eyes.

  And Anna Sergeyevna entered. She sat down in the third row, and when Gurov looked at her, he felt a tightening of the heart and understood clearly that there was nobody closer or dearer or more important to him in the whole world now than her. Lost as she was in this provincial crowd, this small and in no way remarkable woman, holding a vulgar lorgnette in her hand, now filled his whole life. She was his grief and his joy, the only happiness that he wished for now. And listening to the sounds of the second-rate orchestra, the wretched provincial fiddles, he thought about how beautiful she was. He thought, and he dreamed.

  When she entered the theatre, Anna Sergeyevna was accompanied by a young man with short side whiskers, who sat down beside her. He was very tall, and walked with a stoop; at every step he nodded his head, and seemed to be constantly greeting people. This was probably her husband, whom in Yalta she had once described, in an outburst of bitterness, as a flunkey. And indeed, with his lanky figure, and his side whiskers, and his little bald patch, there was something of the obsequious flunkey about him. He had a simpering smile, and there was some sort of badge of office in his buttonhole, like a footman’s number.

  During the first interval the husband went out for a smoke, while she remained in her seat. Gurov, who also had a seat in the stalls, went over to her and said in a trembling voice, with a forced smile:

  “Good evening.”

  She looked up at him and turned pale; then she looked again, horrified and unable to believe her eyes. She clenched her fingers round her fan and lorgnette together, evidently struggling to keep herself from fainting. Neither spoke. She sat, he stood before her, alarmed by her confusion and not daring to sit down beside her. The violins and the flute sang out as they were tuned, and they had the frightening feeling that the spectators in all the boxes were looking at them. But then she stood up and walked quickly to the exit; he followed her; and they both walked without knowing where they were going, along corridors, up and down stairs, catching glimpses of people wearing the uniforms of judges, teachers, civil servants, all with their badges; there were ladies, and fur coats hanging up, and a draught that filled the place with the smell of cigarette ends. And Gurov, his heart pounding, thought:

  “O God! What’s the point of all these people, and this orchestra?…”

  And at that moment he suddenly remembered standing at the station that other evening, seeing Anna Sergeyevna off and telling himself that it was all over, that they’d never meet again. How far that had been from the end of it all!

  She stopped on a dark, narrow staircase, under a sign saying “To the Amphitheatre”.

  “How you frightened me!” she said, breathing in gasps, still pale and quite overcome. “Oh, how you frightened me! I almost died. Why are you here? What have you come for?”

  “Please understand, Anna, you have to understand…” he said hastily under his breath. “I beg you, you must see…”

  She looked at him with eyes full of terror, and entreaty, and love; she stared at him, trying to fix his features for ever in her memory.

  “I’m suffering so much!” she went on, not listening to him. “All this time I’ve only ever thought about you, I’ve lived by thinking about you. And I wanted to forget – to forget – but why, why have you come here?”

  There were two high school boys on the landing above, smoking and looking down at them, but Gurov didn’t care, he drew Anna Sergeyevna to him and began kissing her face, her cheeks, her arms…

  “What are you doing? What are you doing?” she said in alarm, trying to push him away. “We’ve gone mad, you and I. You must leave today, straight away… I beg you by all that’s holy, I implore you… Someone’s coming!”

  Someone was climbing the stairs from below.

  “You have to leave…” Anna Sergeyevna went on in a whisper. “Do you hear, Dmitry Dmitrich? I’ll come to Moscow to see you. I’ve never been happy, and now I’m miserable, and I’ll never, ever be happy, never! Don’t make me suffer even more! I promise faithfully, I’ll come to Moscow. But now we have to separate! My sweet, kind, dear one, we must part!”

  She squeezed his hand and quickly set off down the stairs, repeatedly looking round at him, and her eyes showed how unhappy she really was. Gurov stayed where he was for a while, listening, and when all the sounds had died away he hunted out his overcoat on its hanger and left the theatre.

  IV

  And Anna Sergeyevna began coming to visit him in Moscow. Once every two or three months she would leave S——
and tell her husband she was going to consult a professor about her woman’s disorder – and her husband believed her and didn’t believe her. When she arrived in Moscow, she would stay at the Slavonic Bazaar hotel and at once send Gurov a messenger in a red cap. Gurov visited her there, and nobody in Moscow knew.

  One day he was on his way to her like this on a winter morning. The messenger had been at his house the previous evening and not found him at home. Now he was walking with his daughter, because he wanted to see her to school and it was on his way. Heavy wet snowflakes were falling.

  “It’s three degrees above zero, and yet it’s snowing,” said Gurov to his daughter. “But of course it’s only warm here on the earth’s surface – the temperature in the upper atmosphere is quite different.”

  “Papa, why aren’t there thunderstorms in winter?”

  He explained that too. He talked, while thinking about the fact that here he was, on his way to an assignation, and not a living soul knew, and probably never would. He had two lives: an open one which everyone saw and knew about if they cared to, full of conventional truths and conventional deceits, just like the lives of all his friends and acquaintances; and another life that ran its course in secret. And through some strange chain of circumstances, perhaps just a chance one, everything that was important or interesting or essential for him, everything in which he was honest and did not deceive himself, everything that constituted the core of his life, happened in secret from everyone else; while everything that made up his lies, the cloak he hid behind to conceal the truth – his work at the bank, for instance, and his arguments at the club, and his talk about “the inferior race”, and attending celebratory dinners with his wife – all that was out in the open. And he judged everyone else like himself, not believing what he could see and always assuming that each person led his own real, interesting life in secret, under cover of night as it were. Each individual existence relies on secrecy; that may be part of the reason why a civilized person is so anxious to ensure that privacy is respected.