The Beauties: Essential Stories Read online

  “That’s nice, upon my soul…” he muttered, looking us up and down as if we were shop dummies. “That’s exactly what life’s about… That’s what real life is supposed to be like. And you, Pelageya Ivanovna, why don’t you say anything?” he went on, turning to Tatyana Ivanovna.

  She coughed in embarrassment.

  “Carry on talking, gentlemen, sing… and play! Don’t waste any time. That villain, Time, is running on, he won’t wait for you! Upon my soul, before you’ve had time to look around you, old age will be upon you… And then it’ll be too late to live! That’s how it is, Pelageya Ivanovna… No sense just sitting there and saying nothing…”

  At that point our supper was brought over from the kitchen. My uncle came into the hut to keep us company, and ate five curd cheese pastries and a duck wing. As he ate, he watched us. He found us all delightful and touching. Whatever rubbish my dear tutor came out with, whatever Tatyana Ivanovna did, everything was sweet and charming. After supper, when Tatyana Ivanovna sat modestly down in the corner and picked up her knitting, he never took his eyes off her little hands, while chattering away non-stop.

  “You, my friends, have got to hurry up and start living, as quick as you can…” he said. “God forbid that you sacrifice the present for the sake of the future! Youth, health, ardour, are all in the present; the future is nothing but smoke and deception! The day you hit twenty, you have to start to live.”

  Tatyana Ivanovna dropped a needle. My uncle leapt up, picked up the needle and handed it to her with a bow. That was when I first realized that some people were even more refined than Pobedimsky.

  “Yes…” my uncle went on. “Love, and get married… and play the fool. Folly is far more alive and healthy than all our efforts as we strive for a rational life.”

  My uncle talked a great deal, for a long time, so long that we got bored with him. I sat on a box to one side, listening to him and dozing. I was tormented by the fact that in all this time he hadn’t once taken any notice of me. He left the hut at two in the morning, by which time I had succumbed to drowsiness and fallen fast asleep.

  From then on my uncle began visiting our hut every evening. He joined in our singing, ate supper and stayed on till two in the morning every time, relentlessly chattering on, always about the same thing. He gave up working in the evenings and at night, and by the end of June, when he had learnt how to eat Mother’s turkeys and fruit compotes, he gave up daytime work as well. He tore himself away from his work table and threw himself into “life”. By day he would stride around the garden, whistling at the farmhands and getting in the way of their work, forcing them to tell him all their various histories. When he caught sight of Tatyana Ivanovna, he would run up to her, and if she was carrying something he’d offer his help, to her great embarrassment.

  The longer the summer went on, the more frivolous, fidgety and absent-minded my dear uncle became. Pobedimsky was greatly disappointed in him.

  “He has a one-track mind…” he said. “There’s nothing in the least to show that he’s in the top echelons of the administration. He doesn’t even know how to talk. Every other word he says is ‘upon my soul’. No, I don’t like him!”

  From then on, when my uncle came to visit our hut, Fyodor and my tutor showed a noticeable change in their behaviour. Fyodor stopped going out to hunt, came home early, became even more taciturn, and seemed to glare particularly savagely at his wife. My tutor stopped talking about epizootics in my uncle’s presence, looked sulky, and even wore a scornful smile.

  “Here comes our mousy little colt!” he once muttered when my uncle was on his way over to our hut.

  I accounted for the change in these two men by deciding that they felt offended by my uncle. The absent-minded man would muddle up their names; right up to his departure, he never managed to work out which one of them was the tutor and which was Tatyana Ivanovna’s husband. And Tatyana Ivanovna herself he sometimes called Nastasya, sometimes Pelageya, or Yevdokia. Filled with tender delight at us, he laughed and treated us like little children… All that, of course, could have offended the young people. But it wasn’t a question of offence, as I later discovered, but of more delicate feelings.

  On one of those evenings, I remember, I was sitting on my box and struggling to stay awake. A stickiness had settled on my eyes, and my body, worn out by running around all day, was sagging to one side. But I was fighting against sleep, and trying to watch. It was around midnight. Tatyana Ivanovna, rosy-faced and demure as ever, was sitting at a little table, stitching a shirt for her husband. Fyodor was glaring at her from one corner, sulky and morose, while in the other corner sat Pobedimsky, sinking down into the high collar of his tunic and sniffing crossly. My uncle was pacing back and forth around the room, thinking about something. Silence reigned; the only sound to be heard was the rustle of linen in Tatyana Ivanovna’s hands. Suddenly my uncle stopped in front of Tatyana Ivanovna and said:

  “You’re all so young and fresh and good-looking, and you lead such untroubled lives in the midst of this quiet – I really envy you. I’ve become attached to this life of yours; my heart aches when I remember that I have to leave… Believe me, I mean what I say!”

  My eyelids drooped with weariness, and I knew no more. A thump of some kind woke me, and I saw my uncle standing in front of Tatyana Ivanovna, gazing tenderly at her. His cheeks were flushed.

  “My life has been wasted,” he said. “I’ve never had a life! Your young face reminds me of my lost youth – I’d be willing to stay here looking at you till the day I die. I’d love to take you to Petersburg with me.”

  “What for?” demanded Fyodor hoarsely.

  “I’d stand her on my desk in a glass case to admire her, and show her off to other people. You know, Pelageya Ivanovna, we don’t have women like you back there. We have rich ones, and noble ones, and a few beautiful ones, but there’s none of this genuine life… this healthy serenity…”

  My uncle sat down facing Tatyana Ivanovna and took her by the hand.

  “So you won’t come to Petersburg with me?” he laughed. “At least give me your hand to take with me, then… What a lovely little hand! Can’t I take it? Oh you mean thing, let me kiss it at least…”

  Suddenly there came the loud creak of a chair. Fyodor sprang to his feet and walked up to his wife with heavy, measured steps. His face was greyish pale and shaking. With a swing of his arm he banged his fist hard down on the table, saying hoarsely:

  “I won’t have it!”

  At that same moment Pobedimsky, too, leapt up from his chair. Pale with fury, he went up to Tatyana Ivanovna and also banged his fist on the table…

  “I… I won’t have it!” he said.

  “What? What’s up?” asked my uncle in astonishment.

  “I won’t have it!” repeated Fyodor, banging the table again.

  My uncle jumped to his feet and blinked nervously. He was on the point of saying something, but was too startled and frightened to bring out a single word. With an embarrassed smile, he shuffled out of the hut like an old man, leaving his hat behind. When, shortly after that, my mother ran into the hut in alarm, Fyodor and Pobedimsky were still banging their fists on the table like a pair of blacksmiths with their hammers, repeating “I won’t have it!”

  “What’s going on here?” asked Mother. “Why has my brother been taken ill? What’s up?”

  One look at Tatyana Ivanovna’s pale, terrified face and her husband’s blind fury was probably enough for her to guess. She heaved a sigh and shook her head.

  “That’ll do, that’s quite enough thumping the table!” she said. “Stop it, Fyodor! And what are you banging it for, Yegor Alexeyevich? What’s it to do with you?”

  Pobedimsky came to his senses and looked embarrassed. Fyodor stared intently at him, then at his wife, and started pacing about the room. When my mother had left the hut I saw something which afterwards I believed for a long time had been a dream. I saw Fyodor grab hold of my tutor, lift him in the air and hurl him out o
f the door…

  When I awoke next morning the tutor’s bed was empty. I asked the nurse where he was and she whispered that he’d been carried off to hospital early that morning with a broken arm. Remembering yesterday’s row, I was upset by the news, and went outside. It was a grey day. Clouds covered the sky, and dust, scraps of paper and feathers were blowing about in the wind… You could feel rain not far off. The people and the animals all looked dejected. When I entered the house, I was told not to tramp around because my mother was in bed with a migraine. What was I going to do? I went out of the gate, sat down on a bench and tried to make sense of all I had seen and heard the day before. A road ran down from our gate, past the forge and a puddle that never dried out, to join the main post road… I looked at the telegraph poles, with clouds of dust eddying about them, and the sleepy birds perched on the telegraph wires, and suddenly I felt so depressed that I burst into tears.

  A dusty wagonette crammed full of townspeople drove by along the main road; they were probably on their way to the shrine. No sooner had it disappeared from sight than a light carriage and pair appeared, carrying our police inspector Akim Nikitich, who was standing up and holding on to the coachman’s belt. To my great surprise, the carriage swung into our drive and flew past me into the gates. As I stood there wondering why the police inspector had shown up, there was another noise, and a troika came into view trotting along the road. In that carriage stood the district police chief, pointing our gates out to his driver.

  “And what’s this one come for?” I wondered, looking at the police chief all covered with dust. “Pobedimsky must have complained to the police about Fyodor and now they’ve come to carry him off to prison.”

  But the riddle wasn’t that simple. The inspector and his chief were just the advance guard; no more than five minutes later, a carriage drove in through our gates, flashing past me so quickly that all I could glimpse through the window was a ginger beard.

  Lost in surmises, and with an ominous feeling that all was not well, I ran to the house. The first person I saw in the hallway was my mother. She was pale and horror-struck, watching a door through which men’s voices could be heard. The visitors had taken her by surprise at the height of her migraine.

  “Who’s come, Mama?” I asked.

  “Sister!” came my uncle’s voice. “Serve us up a bite, the Governor and me!”

  “A bite! Easy to say!” whispered my mother, sinking with dread. “Whatever can I manage to prepare on the spot? Put to shame in my old age!”

  Clutching her head, she rushed into the kitchen. The unannounced arrival of the Governor had galvanized and overwhelmed everyone in the place. A merciless slaughter began. A dozen chickens were killed, five turkeys and eight ducks. Our old gander, Mother’s favourite and the forefather of our whole flock of geese, got beheaded in the confusion. The coachmen and the cook went mad and slaughtered birds right and left, paying no regard to their age or breed. For the sake of some sauce or other, a pair of my precious tumbler pigeons perished, though I loved them as dearly as Mother had loved her gander. It was a long time before I forgave the Governor for their deaths.

  That evening, when the Governor and his retinue, after their lavish dinner, took their seats in their carriages and drove away, I went into the house to look at the remains of the banquet. Peeping into the drawing room from the hallway, I saw my uncle and my mother. My uncle, hands behind his back, was pacing irritably back and forth by the wall, shrugging his shoulders. Mother, exhausted and looking much thinner than before, was sitting on the divan and following her brother’s movements with heavy eyes.

  “I’m sorry, sister, but it won’t do…” grumbled my uncle with a scowl. “I present the Governor to you, and you don’t even offer him your hand! He was quite put out, poor man! It’s just not good enough… Simplicity is all very well, but there are limits… upon my soul… And then that dinner! How can you serve a dinner like that? I mean, what was that mess you served up for the fourth course?”

  “That was duck in a sweet sauce…” replied Mother softly.

  “Duck… I’m sorry, sister, but… but now I’ve got heartburn! I’m ill!”

  He put on a sour, tearful face and went on:

  “Why the devil did that Governor have to turn up! Much I needed him here! Blp… got heartburn! I won’t be able to sleep, or work… I’m in a mess… And I don’t see how you can all live here, doing no work… in this deadly boring place! Now I’ve got a pain coming on in the pit of my stomach!…”

  He scowled and paced about a bit faster.

  “Brother,” my mother asked softly, “how much would it cost for you to go abroad?”

  “Not less than three thousand…” my uncle said tearfully. “I’d go, but where am I to find the money? I haven’t a kopek! Blp… got heartburn!”

  He stopped still, looked miserably up at the window and the overcast grey sky outside, and started pacing about again.

  There was a silence… Mother looked at the icon for a long time, thinking something over, then started crying, and said:

  “I’ll give you the three thousand, brother…”

  Three days later the majestic trunks were despatched to the station, and the Privy Councillor drove off after them. Taking leave of my mother, he wept, and for a long time couldn’t remove his lips from her hand. But when he got into the carriage, his face lit up with childish joy… Radiantly happy, he settled himself down comfortably, kissed his hand in farewell to my weeping mother, and then suddenly and unexpectedly rested his eyes on me. A look of absolute astonishment spread over his face.

  “And who’s this lad?” he asked.

  My mother, who had assured me that my uncle had been sent to us by God as a stroke of luck for me, was utterly mortified by this question. But I was in no mood for questions. I looked at my uncle’s happy face, and for some reason felt terribly sorry for him. I couldn’t stop myself jumping up into his carriage and tightly hugging this frivolous man, weak as all men are. Looking into his eyes and wishing to say something nice to him, I asked him:

  “Uncle, have you ever been in a war?”

  “Ah, dear boy…” laughed my uncle, giving me a kiss. “Such a dear boy, upon my soul. How natural, how full of life this all is… upon my soul…”

  The carriage moved off… I watched it go, and that parting “upon my soul” stayed with me a long time.

  THE KISS

  AT EIGHT O’CLOCK on the evening of 20th May, all six batteries of the N—— Reserve Artillery Brigade stopped for the night in the village of Mestechki, en route for their encampment. At the height of the general commotion, with some officers busying themselves around the guns while others gathered in the square by the church railings to listen to the billeting officers, a rider in civilian dress emerged from behind the church, riding a peculiar horse. It was a small dun-coloured animal with a fine neck and a short tail. Instead of walking straight ahead, it seemed to sidle along, performing little dancing movements with its legs as though they were being whipped. Coming up to the officers, the horseman raised his hat and said:

  “His Excellency Lieutenant-General Von Rabbeck, the landowner here, invites the officers to come and drink tea with him this minute…”

  The horse bowed its head, did a little dance and sidled backwards; the rider raised his hat once more, and an instant later he and his strange horse had vanished behind the church.

  “What the devil!” grumbled some of the officers as they walked off to their billets. “What we want to do is sleep, and here’s this Von Rabbeck and his tea party! We know what sort of a tea we’ll get!”

  The officers from all six batteries well remembered the occasion during manoeuvres last year, when they, along with the officers of a Cossack regiment, had been invited to tea in just the same way by a certain count, a local landowner and retired army officer. The hospitable and genial count had made much of them, laid on food and drink, and wouldn’t let them go back to their billets in the village, but had them stay t
he night. That was all very well, of course, one couldn’t have asked for better, but the trouble was that this old soldier got quite carried away by his young guests, kept them up till dawn telling them stories about his distinguished past, guided them all over the house, showed them his valuable paintings and his old engravings and antique weapons, read them out handwritten letters from important people, while the officers, shattered with exhaustion, listened and looked and longed for their beds, furtively yawning into their sleeves. By the time their host let them go, it was too late for bed.

  Was Von Rabbeck another of that sort? Whether he was or not, there was no help for it. The officers changed, smartened up and set out en masse to find this landowner’s home. On the square by the church they were told that they could get to his Excellency’s by the lower path, going down behind the church to the river and following the riverbank all the way to his garden, where the garden paths would lead them the rest of the way; or by the upper path, straight down the road from the church, which would end up at the estate barns half a mile from the village. The officers decided to go the upper way.

  “Who’s this Von Rabbeck?” they wondered as they walked. “Is he the one who commanded the N—— cavalry division at Plevna?”

  “No, that wasn’t Von Rabbeck, he was just Rabbe, with no ‘von’.”

  “Isn’t this great weather!”

  The road reached the first of the estate barns and branched into two. One branch led straight on till it vanished in the evening shadows, the other went to the right, towards the manor. The officers took the right turn and talked more quietly… The road was lined on either side by stone barns with red roofs, heavy and forbidding structures that looked very much like the barracks of a district town. Ahead of them were the lit windows of the manor house.