The Beauties: Essential Stories Read online

  Her thoughts were as confused as her emotions. Like anyone unaccustomed to struggling with unpleasant thoughts, Lubyantseva was trying with all her might not to think about her trouble, and the harder she tried, the more vividly Ilyin stood out in her imagination, with the sand on his knees, and the fluffy clouds, and the train…

  “Why was I such a fool as to go out today?” she tormented herself. “Am I really the sort of person who can’t trust herself?”

  Fear makes everything seem bigger. By the time Andrey Ilyich was finishing his final course, she had firmly made up her mind to tell her husband everything, and escape the danger!

  “Andrey, I have to have a serious talk with you,” she began after dinner, when her husband was taking off his coat and boots to lie down for a rest.

  “Well?”

  “Let’s go away from here!”

  “Hmm… where to? It’s too soon to go back to town.”

  “No, let’s go on a journey, or something like that…”

  “A journey…” muttered the notary, stretching his limbs. “I’d been dreaming of that myself – but where would we get the money, and whom could I leave in charge of the office?”

  He thought a bit, and added:

  “You’re right, you’re bored here. Go off by yourself, if you like!”

  Sofia Petrovna agreed, but then realized at once that Ilyin would leap at his chance and go with her, on the same train, in the same carriage… She thought about it and looked at her husband, satisfied now he had eaten, but still weary. For some reason she found herself looking at his feet, small and almost feminine, in striped socks: each sock had a little thread sticking up from the toe…

  Behind the lowered blind, a bumblebee was buzzing and knocking against the glass. Sofia Petrovna looked at the threads, listened to the bumblebee, and imagined herself in the train… Day and night, Ilyin is sitting opposite her, never taking his eyes off her, furious at his helplessness and pale with spiritual pain. He calls himself a depraved little schoolboy, abuses her, tears his hair – but once darkness falls, he seizes his moment while the other passengers are falling asleep or getting out to walk along a station platform, and falls on his knees before her, embracing her knees as he did by that bench…

  She suddenly realized that she was enjoying this daydream…

  “Listen, I won’t go on my own!” she said. “You have to come with me!”

  “Nonsense, Sofia, that’s out of the question!” sighed her husband. “You have to be realistic – there’s no sense in wishing for what’s impossible.”

  “You’ll come with me all right when you find out!” thought Sofia Petrovna.

  Once she had decided that whatever happened, she would leave, she felt herself to be out of danger. Gradually her thoughts arranged themselves, her spirits lifted, and she even allowed herself to think about everything. Think what you like, dream what you like, but you’re going away, no matter what! Meanwhile her husband was asleep, and gradually the evening drew on… She sat down in the drawing room and played the piano. The lively comings and goings in the street outside, the sound of the music, and above all the thought that she had been so clever and found a solution to her troubles, all thoroughly cheered her up. Other women, her satisfied conscience told her, could never have resisted in her situation, they would have been in an absolute whirl; but she herself had almost burnt up with shame, she had been miserable, and now she was running away from a danger which perhaps was no danger at all! She was so touched by her own virtue and determination that she even took two or three glances at herself in the mirror.

  When darkness had fallen, the guests turned up. The men sat down in the dining room to play cards, while the ladies occupied the drawing room and the veranda. Last to arrive was Ilyin. He was gloomy, morose, and looked ill. He sat down at one end of the divan, and never moved from there all evening. Usually lively and talkative, on this occasion he remained silent, scowling and rubbing his eyes. When obliged to answer a question, he forced a smile with his upper lip and gave an abrupt, angry reply. Five times or so he said something witty, but his witticisms came out harsh and cutting. Sofia Petrovna had the impression that he was on the verge of hysteria. Only now, as she sat at the piano, did she see clearly that this miserable man had no stomach for wit, he was sick in his soul, and felt out of place everywhere. For her sake, he was sacrificing the finest days of his youth and his career, wasting the last of his money renting his summer home, abandoning his mother and sisters to their fate; and worst of all – he was wearing himself out in this tormenting inner battle. Common humanity demanded that she should take him seriously…

  She could see all this quite clearly, and it pained her very heart; and if at that point she had gone up to Ilyin and simply said “No!”, there would have been so much power in her voice that its message would have been hard to miss. But she did not go up to him, did not say that, and did not even think of doing it… The petty selfishness of her youthful nature, so it seemed, had never governed her as strongly as it did that evening. She could feel that Ilyin was miserable, that he was sitting on that divan as though it were a bed of live coals, and she suffered for him; but at the same time, the presence of a man who suffered such agonies of love for her filled her soul with triumph and a sense of her own power. She was aware of her own youth, her beauty, her unattainability, and – since she had resolved to leave! – she allowed herself free rein that evening. She flirted, and giggled without ceasing, and sang with particular feeling and inspiration. Everything delighted her, and she found everything funny. She laughed to herself when she thought back to what had happened by the bench, and the sentry watching them. She found the guests funny, and Ilyin’s cutting witticisms, and the pin in his cravat, which she had never noticed before. The pin was in the shape of a little red snake with diamond eyes; she found it so comic, she would have liked to cover it with kisses.

  Her singing was tense, with a sort of half-drunk recklessness; and as though wanting to mock another person’s grief, she chose sad, melancholy songs about lost hopes, times gone by, old age… “Old age is treading ever closer…” she sang. What did she care about old age?

  “I feel there’s something bad going on inside me…” she thought from time to time, through her laughter and singing.

  The guests dispersed at midnight. The last to leave was Ilyin. Sofia Petrovna still had enough mischief left in her to accompany him as far as the bottom step of the veranda. She felt she wanted to tell him that she was going away with her husband, and to see what effect that had on him.

  The moon was hidden behind clouds, but it was light enough for Sofia Petrovna to see the wind playing with the skirts of his overcoat and the awning of the veranda. And she could see how pale Ilyin was, and how he twisted his upper lip as he attempted to smile…

  “Sonia, Sonechka… my dearest girl!” he whispered, not allowing her to speak. “My sweet one, my lovely one!”

  Overcome with tenderness for her, with a voice filled with tears, he poured out loving words to her, each one more tender than the last, using intimate words to her as if she were his wife or his mistress. He surprised her by passing one arm round her waist, while holding her elbow in the other hand.

  “My love, my precious one…” he whispered, kissing her on the nape of her neck. “Be honest, come with me now!”

  She slipped out of his embrace and raised her head, all ready to burst out in anger and indignation; but no indignation came out, and all her vaunted virtue and purity barely sufficed for her to come out with the same words that every ordinary woman uses at a time like this:

  “You’re out of your mind!”

  “I mean it, come with me!” Ilyin went on. “Just now, and back there by the bench, Sonia, it was obvious that you’re just as helpless as me… You’re done for, just as I am! You love me, and now you’re wasting time haggling with your conscience…”

  Seeing that she was leaving him, he grabbed her by her lace sleeve and hurriedly added:


  “If you don’t do it today, you will tomorrow – eventually you’ll have to give in! Why drag things out? My darling, beloved Sonia, the sentence is passed, so what’s the point of putting off its execution? Why try to fool yourself?”

  Sofia Petrovna slipped from his grasp and darted in through the door. Back in the drawing room, she closed the piano mechanically, stared for a long time at the music stand, and sat down. She couldn’t stand, or even think… After all her reckless excitement, she now felt only fearfully weak, listless and dull. Her conscience whispered that during this past evening she had behaved badly and foolishly, like a wild young girl; that she had just been embracing on the veranda, and even now had an uneasy feeling at her waist and around her elbow. There was not a soul in the drawing room, and only one candle was lit. Lubyantseva sat on the round piano stool, not moving, as if waiting for something to happen. And gradually she succumbed to an overpowering, oppressive desire which seemed to take advantage of her extreme lassitude and of the darkness. It gripped her limbs and her soul like a boa constrictor, growing in strength every second; and now it no longer menaced her as it had done before, but stood openly before her in all its nakedness.

  For half an hour she sat there without moving, and making no effort to avoid thinking about Ilyin. Then she rose languidly to her feet and wandered into the bedroom. Andrey Ilyich was already in bed. She sat down by the open window and gave herself over to her desire. She no longer had that “muddle’ in her head – all her thoughts and feelings were concentrated on one clear purpose. She tried to fight them, but instantly gave up… Now she understood the enemy’s implacable power. Fighting against him would need strength and firmness of purpose, but her birth, upbringing and life had given her no means of support.

  “Immoral creature! Disgusting wretch!” she castigated herself for being so helpless. “Is this what you’re like?”

  Her outraged sense of propriety was so indignant at her helplessness that she called herself all the insulting names she knew, and told herself a great many hurtful and humiliating truths. She told herself, for instance, that she never had been a moral person, and that the only reason she had not succumbed before was that the occasion had never arisen; and that the battle she had been fighting all day had been no more than an amusing farce.

  “Perhaps I even did put up a fight,” she thought, “but what sort of a fight was it? Even those women who sell themselves put up a fight first; but they still sell themselves. This wasn’t much of a fight – just like milk, it only took a day to turn bad! A single day!”

  She found herself guilty of the charge that it was neither her emotions, nor Ilyin’s personality, that were pulling her away from her home – it was the sensations that awaited her out there… She was nothing but a lady having a fling on her holiday, like so many others!

  “That poo-oor little fledgling, his mo-other was killed!” a hoarse tenor voice sang outside the window.

  “If I’m going, I’d better go now,” thought Sofia Petrovna. Her heart suddenly began pounding terribly hard.

  “Andrey!” she almost shrieked. “Listen, we’ll… we’ll go away, shall we?”

  “Yes… I told you before – you go on your own!”

  “No, but listen…” she brought out. “If you don’t come with me, you might lose me! I think… I’ve fallen in love!”

  “Who with?” asked Andrey Ilyich.

  “That shouldn’t matter to you, who it is!” cried Sofia Petrovna.

  Andrey Ilyich sat up, hung his legs out of the bed, and gazed in astonishment at the dark shape of his wife.

  “What a crazy idea!” he yawned.

  He didn’t believe her, but even so he was frightened. He thought a bit, and asked his wife a number of trivial questions; then he told her what he thought about family life, and infidelity… He talked in an apathetic way for some ten minutes, and got back into bed. His pronouncements were not a success. What a lot of different opinions there are in this world, and a good half of them belong to people who have never suffered misfortune!

  Despite the late hour, there were still some summer visitors around. Sofia Petrovna threw on a light cape, and stood and thought for a bit… She still had enough determination left to ask her sleepy husband:

  “Are you asleep? I’m going out for a walk… Want to come with me?”

  That was her last hope. Receiving no answer, she went out. A cold wind was blowing. Unaware of either the wind or the darkness, she walked on and on… She was being driven by an irresistible force, and if she had stopped, she felt it would have shoved her in the back.

  “Immoral creature!” she muttered mechanically. “Disgusting!”

  Panting for breath, burning with shame, unaware of her feet carrying her, she was propelled by something more powerful than her shame, her reason, or her fear…

  SERGEANT PRISHIBEYEV

  “SERGEANT PRISHIBEYEV! You are hereby charged that on the third day of this month of September you did insult, by words and deeds, Police Constable Zhigin, village elder Alyapov, Police Assistant Yefimov, the witnesses Ivanov and Gavrilov, and a further six villagers, the first three persons named having been subjected to abuse in the course of their official duties. Do you plead guilty to the charge?”

  Prishibeyev, a wrinkled, stubble-chinned non-commissioned officer, draws himself up to attention and replies in a hoarse, throaty voice, barking out each word as though shouting a command:

  “Your Honour, Mr Justice of the Peace, sir! All the provisions of the law impose a duty to relate every circumstance in reciprocity. It’s not me what’s guilty but everyone else. This whole business is come about through a dead corpse, God rest its soul. On the third of the month I was proceeding in an orderly manner with my wife Anfisa, when I see a crowd of all different sorts of people standing on the riverbank. By what right have these folk gathered here, I ask myself. What for? Does the law tell people to go swarming about in herds? So I shouted ‘Clear off!’ And I began pushing people away, ordering them back home, and I told the police assistant to clear them away by the scruff of their necks…”

  “Excuse me, but you’re not a policeman or an elder – what business is it of yours to chase people away?”

  “No business of his! None at all!” The voices rang out from different parts of the courtroom. “He gives us no peace, your Honour! Fifteen years we’ve been putting up with him! Ever since he came back from the army – it’s been enough to drive anyone out of the village. Everyone’s sick of him!”

  “That’s just how it is, your Honour!” said the village elder, a witness in the trial. “The whole community is complaining. There’s no living with him! Suppose we’re carrying icons in a procession, or there’s a wedding, or, you know, something happens – he’s always there shouting and kicking up a fuss and ordering people about. He pulls the children by their ears, and spies on the womenfolk in case they’re up to anything – just as if he was their father-in-law or something… The other day he was going from house to house telling people not to sing songs or light fires. There’s no law, he says, telling people to sing songs.”

  “Wait a bit, you’ll be able to give your evidence later on,” says the magistrate. “But now let Prishibeyev go on. Carry on, Prishibeyev!”

  “Yessir!” barks the sergeant. “Your Honour, you was good enough to say that it’s not my business to disperse people… Very well… But supposing there’s some disorder? Is it right to let people cause a disturbance? Where’s the law says people have to be let to do as they like? I can’t have that, sir. If I don’t disperse them, and penalize them, who’s going to do it? Nobody don’t know how to keep proper order – I’m the only one in the whole village, you might say, your Honour, that knows how to deal with the common people. I understand all about them, your Honour. I’m not a common peasant, I’m a non-commissioned officer, quartermaster-sergeant, retired. I served at Warsaw, at HQ, and after that, for your information, when I was discharged, I was in the fire service, and then on ac
count of my adverse health I left the fire service and served two years as porter in a boys’ classical primary school… I know all about regulations, sir. Your peasant, he’s a simple fellow, he don’t understand a thing, so he has to do as I say, because – it’s for his own good. Just look at this here case, for instance. I’m dispersing the crowd, and on the bank there’s a drowned cadaver of a deceased person lying on the sand. By what disposition, I ask myself, is he lying there? Is that right and proper? What’s the police constable doing, looking on? Why don’t you report this to the authorities, constable, I ask him. Maybe this late drowned individual drowned by his own accord, or maybe he didn’t and it’s something as smells of Siberia. Maybe this here is a case of criminal murder… But Constable Zhigin, he takes no notice, just goes on smoking his fag. Who’s this busybody giving orders? he says. Where’s he sprung from? As if we didn’t know our business without him to tell us, he says. – I can see you don’t know it, you idiot, I says, seeing you’re just standing there taking no notice. – Reported it to the district police chief yesterday, he says. – Why go to him, I wants to know. What section of the law book says that? That sort of thing, drownings and stranglings and all – the district police chief can’t do nothing. This is a criminal matter, I tells him, a civil matter… What you need to do at once, I says, is send a messenger to his Honour the Examining Magistrate and the judges. But the very first thing to do, I tells him, is write an official report and send it to his Honour the Justice of the Peace. But him, that copper, he just stands there listening and laughing at me. And those peasants too. Everybody was laughing, your Honour. I’ll swear to that on the Bible. This one here, he was laughing, and him over there, and Zhigin, he was laughing too. What are you all grinning about, I says to them. And the copper says, This sort of thing is nowt to do with the Justice of the Peace. When he said that, I fair lost my rag. Constable, you did say that, didn’t you?” he demanded of Constable Zhigin.