About Love and Other Stories Page 12

  She talked for a long time and with great feeling. For some reason it suddenly occurred to him that over the course of the summer he might become rather attached to this small, frail, talkative creature; he might become attracted to her and fall in love; it would be so possible and so natural for them both in their position! This idea moved him and made him laugh. He leant close to her sweet, worried face and sang softly:

  ‘Onegin, I don’t want to hide it,

  You see, I love Tatyana madly…’ *

  When they arrived home, Yegor Semyonich had already got up. Kovrin did not want to sleep, so he started talking to the old man, and went back into the gardens with him. Yegor Semyonich was tall and broad-shouldered, with a large belly and a problem with breathlessness, but he always walked so fast it was difficult to keep up with him. He seemed to be in a hurry to get somewhere and he looked extremely preoccupied; his expression gave the impression that everything would be ruined if he was late by even one minute!

  ‘So this is the problem, my friend,’ he began, as he stopped to catch his breath. ‘There is frost at ground level, as you can see, but if you lift the thermometer on the stick a few feet higher, it’s warm… Why is that?’

  ‘I really don’t know,’ said Kovrin with a laugh.

  ‘Hmm… I suppose you can’t know everything… However spacious our brains are, they can’t fit everything in. You are still doing more with philosophy these days, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes. I teach psychology, but my work generally is in philosophy.’

  ‘You don’t get bored of it?’

  ‘On the contrary. It’s what I live for.’

  ‘Well, let’s hope it stays that way…’, said Yegor Semyonich, stroking his grey sideburns thoughtfully. ‘Let’s hope it stays that way. I’m very glad for you… very glad, my friend…’

  Suddenly he started listening out for something, and with a terrible expression on his face he ran off and soon vanished in the clouds of smoke behind the trees.

  ‘Who tied the horse to the apple tree?’ came his desperate, heartrending shriek. ‘Which wretched scoundrel dared to tie a horse to the apple tree? Oh God, oh God! They’ve spoiled it all, they’ve let the frost in, they have mucked it up, they’ve fouled everything! The gardens are ruined! They are lost! Oh God!’

  When he came back to Kovrin, he looked exhausted and deeply wounded.

  ‘So what is one to do with these godforsaken people?’ he said in a plaintive voice, throwing up his hands. ‘Stepka was carting the manure last night, and he tied the horse to the apple tree! The miserable wretch tied up the reins so tightly that the bark has been rubbed off in three places. What do you think of that? I had a word with him, but all he does is stand there like an idiot and look blank. Hanging is too good for them!’

  When he had calmed down he embraced Kovrin and kissed him on the cheek.

  ‘Well, let’s keep our fingers crossed… let’s hope things will work out,’ he muttered. ‘I am very glad that you have come. I can’t tell you how glad I am… Thank you.’

  Then, at the same hurried pace and with the same anxious expression, he went round all the gardens, showing his former ward all the conservatories, the hothouses, the sheds for storing compost, and his two apiaries, which he called the miracle of the century.

  While they were walking round the sun came out and flooded the gardens with light. It became warm. Sensing that it would be a long, clear, happy day, Kovrin remembered that it was only the beginning of May after all, and he had ahead of him the whole summer, which would be just as long and clear and happy, and he suddenly felt stirring in his chest the feelings of youth and joy he used to have when he ran about the gardens as a child. He embraced the old man and kissed him affectionately. Feeling rather overcome with emotion, they both went into the house and drank tea from old porcelain cups, with cream and thick pastries, and these small things again reminded Kovrin of his childhood and youth. The glorious present was fusing with the impressions of the past awakening in him; it was all rather overwhelming, but he felt good.

  He waited for Tanya to wake up, drank a cup of coffee with her, and went for a stroll, then he went to his room and sat down to work. He read carefully, making notes; occasionally he lifted his eyes to look out through the open windows, or at the freshly cut flowers, still wet with dew, which were standing in vases on his desk, then he would turn his gaze back to his book again, and he felt as if every vein in his body was trembling and dancing with pleasure.

  II

  He continued to lead the same nervous and restless life in the country as in the city. He read and wrote a great deal, taught himself Italian, and looked forward to resuming work when he was out walking. He slept so little that everyone was astonished; if he happened to fall asleep for half an hour during the day, he would then not sleep all night, but he would feel cheerful and happy after a sleepless night, as if it were nothing untoward.

  He talked a lot, drank wine, and smoked expensive cigars. The young ladies who lived nearby came to visit the Pesotskys often, almost every day, and they would play the piano and sing with Tanya; sometimes the young man who lived nearby and who played the violin well also came to visit. Kovrin listened to the music and the singing with rapt attention and it exhausted him; this was physically expressed by his eyelids half-closing and his head lolling on one side.

  There was one time after evening tea when he was sitting on the balcony reading. In the drawing room they were learning the famous Braga serenade *—Tanya was singing soprano, one of the young ladies had taken the alto part, and the young man was playing the violin. Kovrin listened attentively to the words—they were in Russian—but he just could not work out what they meant. Finally, after he had put down his book and listened very carefully he understoood: a girl with a febrile imagination hears some mysterious sounds one night in the garden, which are so beautiful and strange that she feels compelled to identify them as a sacred harmony incomprehensible to us mortals, which must therefore fly away back to the heavens. Kovrin’s eyes were starting to close. He got up and walked through the drawing room and the ballroom in a state of intense fatigue. When the singing stopped he took Tanya by the arm and went out on to the balcony with her.

  ‘There is a legend that has been in my mind ever since I got up this morning,’ he said. ‘I can’t remember whether I read it somewhere or if I heard about it, but it’s a strange sort of legend, unlike any other. To begin with, it’s not at all straightforward. A thousand years ago a monk dressed in black was apparently walking in the desert, somewhere in Syria or Arabia… A few miles from where he was walking some fishermen saw another black monk moving slowly across the surface of the lake. This second monk was a mirage. Now forget all the laws of optics, which the legend does not seem to recognize, and listen further. The mirage produced another mirage, then another, so the image of the black monk started being transferred from one level of the atmosphere to another. He was seen in Africa, then in Spain and in India and in the Far North… Eventually he went beyond the perimeters of the earth’s atmosphere and now he roams the entire universe, never able to find the right conditions which would allow him to evaporate. Maybe he can be sighted now somewhere on Mars or on one of the stars of the Southern Cross. But the whole point of the legend, my dear, is that exactly a thousand years after the monk first went walking through the desert, the mirage is supposed to enter the earth’s atmosphere again and appear to people. And apparently those thousand years are almost up… According to the legend we ought to see the black monk any day now.’

  ‘That’s a strange kind of mirage,’ said Tanya, who did not like the legend.

  ‘But the most amazing thing,’ said Kovrin with a laugh, ‘is that I can’t for the life of me remember how the legend came into my head. Did I read about it somewhere? Was it something I heard? Or perhaps I dreamt about the black monk? I swear to God, I can’t remember. But the legend has been in my mind. I’ve been thinking about it all day.’

  After he h
ad let Tanya go back to her guests, he went out of the house and walked near the flower-beds, lost in thought. The sun was already setting. Because the flowers had just been watered, they were releasing a moist fragrance that made one’s nose wrinkle. The singing started up again in the house, and from far away the violin sounded like a human voice. Focusing his thoughts in order to try and remember where he had heard or read about the legend, Kovrin set off for the park at a leisurely pace, and before he knew it he had reached the river.

  Following the path which ran down its steep bank past the bare roots, he came to the water’s edge, where he disturbed some sandpipers and frightened a couple of ducks. The last rays of the setting sun were still throwing light on the gloomy pines here and there, but it was definitely already evening on the river’s surface. Kovrin crossed to the other bank on the footbridge. In front of him now lay a broad field covered with young rye, not yet fully grown. There was neither a house nor any living soul visible for far around, and it seemed that if you went along the path, it would lead you straight to that unknown, mysterious place where the sun had just set, and where the far-reaching evening twilight was glowing so majestically.

  ‘There is so much space and freedom and quiet here!’ thought Kovrin as he walked along the path. ‘It feels like the whole world is looking at me, holding its breath and waiting for me to comprehend it…’

  Just then ripples ran along the rye and a light evening breeze gently grazed his uncovered head. A minute later there was another gust of wind, but stronger this time—the rye started rustling and a muffled whisper came from the pines behind him. Kovrin stopped in astonishment. A tall black column had appeared on the horizon, stretching from the ground to the sky like a whirlwind or a sandstorm. Its contours were not clear, but from the very first moment you could see that it was not standing still but moving at a terrifying speed, and moving in his direction, straight towards him; as it came closer it became smaller and more distinct. Kovrin jumped out of the way, into the rye, in order to give it room to pass, and just in the nick of time…

  A monk dressed in black, with grey hair and black eyebrows, his arms crossed over his chest, sped past… His bare feet did not touch the ground. After he had gone on about six yards, he looked back at Kovrin, nodded his head, and gave him a smile that was both warm and rather arch. But what a pale face, what a terribly pale, thin face! Growing larger again, the figure flew over the river, noiselessly hit the clay bank and the pines, and after going straight through them vanished into thin air like smoke.

  ‘So there you are, you see…’, murmured Kovrin. ‘The legend was true.’

  Without trying to explain this strange event to himself, and content simply to have seen not only the monk’s black habit but also his eyes and his face so close up and so distinctly, he returned home in a pleasant state of excitement.

  There were people calmly walking about in the park and in the gardens, and music was being played in the house, which meant that only he had seen the monk. He was dying to tell everything to Tanya and Yegor Semyonich, but he realized they would probably think he was hallucinating, and that would frighten them; it was better to remain silent. He laughed uproariously, sang, danced the mazurka, and enjoyed himself, and everyone, both Tanya and her guests, thought that there was something special, radiant, and inspired about the way he looked that night, and they found him very interesting.

  III

  After supper, when the guests had left, Kovrin went up to his room and lay down on the couch; he wanted to think about the monk. But Tanya came in a minute later.

  ‘Here you are, Andryusha; some articles by my father for you to read,’ she said, as she handed him a sheaf of pamphlets and offprints. ‘They are wonderful articles. He writes beautifully.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about that!’ said Yegor Semyonich, forcing a laugh as he came in behind her; he felt embarrassed. ‘Don’t listen to her, and please don’t feel you have to read them! Although actually if you want to fall asleep, then maybe you should read them: they have excellent sleep-inducing properties.’

  ‘I think they are superb articles,’ said Tanya with deep conviction. ‘Read them, Andryusha, and persuade Papa to write more often. He could write an entire horticultural textbook.’

  Yegor Semonyich chuckled awkwardly and blushed, and then began coming out with the sorts of statements that diffident authors are prone to make. Eventually he started to give in.

  ‘In that case read Gaucher’s article first, * and these Russian pieces here,’ he mumbled as he sorted through the pamphlets with shaking hands; ‘otherwise nothing will make sense. Before you read my objections, you ought to know what it is I am objecting to. Anyway, it’s all nonsense… deeply boring. And it’s bedtime, I think.’

  Tanya went out. Yegor Semyonich sat down by Kovrin on the couch and gave a deep sigh.

  ‘So my friend…’ he began after a brief silence. ‘My dear, learned friend. Here I am writing articles, taking part in shows, receiving medals… Pesotsky’s apples are as big as your head, they say, Pesotsky’s made a fortune for himself out of his orchard, they say. Basically, I’ve done very well for myself. But you can’t help wondering what the point of it all is. The gardens really are wonderful, absolutely first class… They are not gardens but an institution of great state importance, because they are a step on the road to a new era of Russian agriculture and Russian industry. But what is it all for? What is the point?’

  ‘Surely it speaks for itself.’

  ‘That’s not what I mean. What I want to know is: what will happen to the gardens when I die? They won’t even last a month in the state in which you are seeing them now without me. The whole secret of success lies not in the fact that the gardens are huge and that there are many people working in them, but in the fact that I love my work—you understand?—I love it maybe even more than myself. Look at me: I do everything myself. I work from morning to night. I do the grafting myself, I do the pruning myself, and I do the planting myself; I do everything myself. When people help me I become possessive and then so irritated that I start being rude. The secret to it all is love–I mean keeping a watchful, proprietorial eye, and being your own manager, and the feeling you get when you are invited out for an hour or two, and you sit there but your heart’s not in it, you’re not at ease because you’re worried something might happen in the gardens. And who is going to look after it all when I die? Who is going to do the work? The gardener? The workmen? You think so? Well, let me tell you something, my dear friend: our worst enemy in this business is not the hare, and it’s not the cockchafer or the frost, it’s outsiders.’

  ‘What about Tanya?’ asked Kovrin with a laugh. ‘I can’t believe she is worse than a hare. She cares for the business and understands it.’

  ‘Yes, it’s true; she does. If she inherits the gardens after my death and takes over, I couldn’t wish for anything better. But what if, heaven forbid, she goes and gets married?’ whispered Yegor Semyonich, looking at Kovrin in alarm. ‘That’s the worry! She’ll get married and have children, and then there will be no time to think about the gardens. What I most fear is her marrying some young fellow who will become greedy, and rent the gardens out to any old market-women, and then everything will be ruined in the first year! Women are a nightmare in this business!’

  Yegor Semyonich sighed and was silent for a moment.

  ‘It may be selfish of me, but I will be open about it: I don’t want Tanya to get married. I’m scared! There is one upstart who pays visits and scratches away on his violin; I know Tanya won’t marry him, I am sure of that, but I can’t bear seeing him! I’m generally pretty eccentric, my friend. I have to admit it.’

  Yegor Semyonich got up and walked about the room agitatedly, and it was obvious that there was something very important he wanted to say and that he did not quite know how to start.

  ‘I love you dearly and am going to be frank with you,’ he began finally, sticking his hands in his pockets. ‘I like to deal with certain
tricky questions in a straightforward way and say exactly what I think, and I can’t abide it when people tiptoe around them. I’ll be blunt: you are the only person who I wouldn’t mind giving my daughter away to. You’re intelligent and you’ve got a good heart and you wouldn’t let my beloved work be destroyed. But the main reason is that I love you like a son… and I’m proud of you. If romantic feelings were ever to develop between you and Tanya, then–why not? I would be very glad and even happy. I am saying this openly, like an honest person, it’s not pretend.’

  Kovrin laughed. Yegor Semyonich opened the door in order to leave, and stopped on the threshold.

  ‘If you and Tanya were to have a son, I’d make him a gardener,’ he said after a moment’s thought. ‘But anyway, that’s just an idle dream… Goodnight.’

  Now that he was left alone, Kovrin lay down more comfortably and started reading the articles. One was called ‘On Intermediate Culture’, another was called ‘A Few Words in Response to Mr. Z on Digging Double Trenches in a New Garden’, and another ‘Further Thoughts on Grafting with Dormant Buds’—they were all in that vein. But what a restless, uneven tone, and what agitated, almost neurotic fervour! Here was an article which seemed to have the most innocuous title and inoffensive content: it was about Russian Antonovka apples. But Yegor Semyonich had begun it with ‘audiatur altera pars’ and finished it with ‘sapienti sat’, * and in between these two sayings there was a whole stream of poisonous invective aimed at the ‘scholarly ignorance of our supposed gentlemen horticulturalists who observe nature from the heights of their university chairs’, or at Mr Gaucher, ‘who owes his success to ignoramuses and dilettantes’; and then there was also a protracted and insincere expression of regret that peasants could no longer be birched for stealing fruit and damaging trees while they did so.