There is a proverb: if an old woman has no problems, she’ll buy a piglet. The Luganovichs had no problems so they made friends with me. If I didn’t go to town for a while, it must mean I was sick or something had happened to me, and both of them grew terribly anxious. They worried that I, an educated person who knew languages, lived in the country instead of occupying myself with science or serious literary work, went round like a squirrel in a cage, worked a lot but never had a penny. To them it seemed that I must be suffering, and if I chatted, appeared confident, ate well, it must be an attempt at concealing my suffering, and even in happy moments, when everything was fine with me, I had the sense of their searching looks. They were especially full of concern when I was actually having a hard time of it, when one creditor or another oppressed me or when money was insufficient for the payments demanded; husband and wife whispered together by the window, and in a while he’d come up to me and say, with a serious look, ‘Pavel Konstantinich, if at present you should be in need of money, then my wife and I beg you not to feel shy, but to apply to us.’
And his ears grew red with embarrassment. That’s just how it would happen, the whispering by the window and he would come toward me with red ears and say, ‘My wife and I beg you earnestly to accept this present from us.’
Then he gave me some cufflinks, a cigarette case, or a lamp; and in response to this I would send from the country a dressed fowl, butter, flowers. It’s to the point to say that both of them were well-to-do. From the first I had borrowed money and wasn’t especially fastidious, borrowed where I could, but no power on earth would make me borrow from the Luganovichs. That’s all there is to be said about that!
I was wretched. At home in the field or in a shed I thought about her, and I tried to see through the mystery of this young, beautiful, intelligent woman married to an uninteresting man, almost old – the husband was over forty – and bearing his children. How to understand the mystery of this uninteresting man, a good soul, a simple heart, who deliberated with such boring sobriety at balls and evening parties, took his place among responsible people, listless, superfluous, with a humble, apathetic expression, as if they might have brought him there for sale, who all the same believed in his right to be contented, to have children with her, and I struggled to understand why she was his and not mine, and why it must be that such a terrible mistake ruled our lives.
Arriving in the city, I saw in her eyes each time that she had been waiting for me; she herself confessed to me that whenever she perceived something unusual outside her window she guessed that I was arriving. We talked for hours or were silent, but we didn’t confess to each other that we were in love; shyly, jealously, we dissembled. We were afraid of anything that might reveal our secret, even to ourselves. I loved her tenderly, deeply, but I debated, questioned myself about what our love might lead to if our strength wasn’t sufficient for the battle against it; it seemed to me incredible that this calm melancholy love of mine might suddenly tear apart the happy, pleasing course of life of her husband and children, of everything in that house where they loved and trusted me so. Was this a decent thing to do? She might come to me, but where? Where could I take her away? It would be another thing altogether if mine were a pleasant, interesting life, if for example I were struggling to emancipate my native land, were a famous scholar, artist, painter, but no, I would carry her out of an ordinary, dull condition to another much the same, or to something even more humdrum. And how long would our happiness last? What would happen to her in case of my illness, death, or if we should simply stop loving each other?
And she, apparently, was having the same thoughts. She considered her husband, her children, her mother who loved the husband like a son. If she should give herself up to her feelings, then she would have to tell lies about her state or to speak the truth, and either one would be awkward and horrible. And this question tormented her: should she offer me happiness, her love, or not further complicate my life, already difficult, full of every kind of unhappiness? It seemed to her that she was already insufficiently youthful for me, insufficiently industrious and energetic to start a new life; she often talked to her husband about it – how I needed to marry a clever, worthy girl who would be a good housewife, a helper – and at once added that such a girl could hardly be found in the whole city.
Meanwhile the years passed. Anna Alexeyevna now had two children. When I arrived at the Luganovichs’ the maid smiled pleasantly, the children shouted that Uncle Pavel Konstantinich had arrived and wrapped their arms round my neck, and everyone was happy. They didn’t understand what was going on in my soul, and they thought that I too was happy. They all saw in me a noble being. Both the adults and the children felt that some noble being had entered the room and this induced in them an attitude of particular delight with me, as if in my presence their life was finer and more pleasant. Anna Alexeyevna and I went to the theatre together, always on foot; we sat in the row of chairs with our shoulders touching. In silence I took from her hand the opera glasses, and at that moment I sensed her closeness to me, that she was mine, and each of us was nothing without the other – yet by some strange misunderstanding, leaving the theatre we would each time say farewell and separate like strangers. What people in the city said about us, God knows, but in all they said there was not one word of the truth.
In the following years Anna Alexeyevna began to go away more often to visit her mother or her sister; bad moods came over her, a sense that her life was wrong, tainted, and then she didn’t want to see either her husband or her children. By now she was receiving treatment for a nervous disorder.
We were silent, everyone was silent, but in the presence of strangers she experienced some odd irritation with me; she would disagree with whatever I said, and if I raised a question she would take the side of my opponent. When I dropped something she would say coldly, ‘Congratulations.’
If, having gone to the theatre with her, I forgot to take the opera glasses, she would say, ‘I knew you’d forget.’
Fortunately or unfortunately, nothing happens in our lives that doesn’t end sooner or later. A time of separation came about when Luganovich was appointed Chairman in one of the western provinces. They had to sell furniture, horses, the summer place. When they went out to the cottage and back, looked around for a final time, looked at the garden, the green roof, it was sad for everyone, and I understood that the time had come to say goodbye, and not just to the cottage. It was decided that at the end of August we would see Anna Alexeyevna off to the Crimea, where her doctors were sending her, and a little later Luganovich would leave with the children for his western province.
We sent Anna Alexeyevna off, in a great crowd. When she had said goodbye to her husband and children, and there remained only an instant before the third bell, I came running toward her in her compartment in order to set on a shelf something from her work basket that she had almost forgotten; and we had to say goodbye. When our glances met, there in the compartment, strength of mind abandoned us both, I held her in my arms, she pressed her face to my chest, and tears flowed from her eyes; I kissed her face, shoulders, hands, all wet with tears – oh how unhappy we were about it! I confessed my love for her, and with a burning pain in my heart I understood how superfluous and small and illusory everything was that prevented us from loving. I understood that when you love, and when you think about this love, you must proceed from something higher, of more importance than happiness or unhappiness, sin or virtue in the commonplace sense; or you mustn’t think about it at all.