‘Have you dined, Mr Albert?’ asked Delésov.
Albert made an affirmative gesture with his head and, after a frightened look at Delésov, lowered his eyes. Delésov felt uncomfortable.
‘I spoke to the director of the theatre about you to-day,’ he said, also lowering his eyes. ‘He will be very glad to receive you if you will let him hear you.’
‘Thank you, I cannot play!’ muttered Albert under his breath, and went into his room, shutting the door behind him very softly.
A few minutes later the door-knob was turned just as gently, and he came out of the room with the violin. With a rapid and hostile glance at Delésov he placed the violin on a chair and disappeared again.
Delésov shrugged his shoulders and smiled.
‘What more am I to do? In what am I to blame?’ he thought.
‘Well, how is the musician?’ was his first question when he returned home late that evening.
‘Bad!’ said Zakhár, briefly and clearly. ‘He has been sighing and coughing and says nothing, except that he started begging for vodka four or five times. At last I gave him one glass – or else we might finish him off, sir. Just like the clerk …’
‘Has he not played the violin?’
‘Didn’t even touch it. I took it to him a couple of times, but he just took it up gently and brought it out again,’ Zakhár answered with a smile. ‘So your orders are not to give him any drink?’
‘No, we’ll wait another day and see what happens. And what’s he doing now?’
‘He has locked himself up in the drawing-room.’
Delésov went into his study and chose several French books and a German Bible. ‘Put these books in his room to-morrow, and see that you don’t let him out,’ he said to Zakhár.
Next morning Zakhár informed his master that the musician had not slept all night: he had paced up and down the rooms, and had been into the pantry, trying to open the cupboard and the door, but he (Zakhár) had taken care to lock everything up. He said that while he pretended to be asleep he had heard Albert in the dark muttering something to himself and waving his arms about.
Albert grew gloomier and more taciturn every day. He seemed to be afraid of Delésov, and when their eyes met his face expressed sickly fear. He did not touch the books or the violin, and did not reply to questions put to him.
On the third day of the musician’s stay Delésov returned home late, tired and upset. He had been driving about all day attending to a matter that had promised to be very simple and easy but, as often happens, in spite of strenuous efforts he had been quite unable to advance a single step with it. Besides that he had called in at his club and had lost at whist. He was in bad spirits.
‘Well, let him go his way!’ he said to Zakhár, who told him of Albert’s sad plight. ‘To-morrow I’ll get a definite answer out of him, whether he wants to stay here and follow my advice, or not. If not, he needn’t! It seems to me that I have done all I could.’
‘There now, try doing good to people!’ he thought to himself. ‘I put myself out for him, I keep that dirty creature in my house, so that I can’t receive a visitor in the morning. I bustle and run about, and he looks on me as if I were a villain who for his own pleasure has locked him up in a cage. And above all, he won’t take a single step to help himself. They are all like that.’ (The ‘they’ referred to people in general, and especially to those with whom he had had business that day.) ‘And what is the matter with him now? What is he thinking about and pining for? Pining for the debauchery from which I have dragged him? For the humiliation in which he was? For the destitution from which I have saved him? Evidently he has fallen so low that it hurts him to see a decent life …
‘No, it was a childish act,’ Delésov concluded. ‘How can I improve others, when God knows whether I can manage myself?’ He thought of letting Albert go at once, but after a little reflection put it off till the next day.
During the night he was roused by the sound of a table falling in the hall, and the sound of voices and footsteps. He lighted a candle and listened in surprise.
‘Wait a bit. I’ll tell my master,’ Zakhár was saying; Albert’s voice muttered something incoherently and heatedly. Delésov jumped up and ran into the hall with the candle. Zakhár stood against the front door in his night attire, and Albert, with his hat and cloak on, was pushing him aside and shouting in a tearful voice:
‘You can’t keep me here! I have a passport,11 and have taken nothing of yours. You may search me. I shall go to the chief of police!…’
‘Excuse me, sir!’ Zakhár said, addressing his master while continuing to guard the door with his back. ‘He got up during the night, found the key in my overcoat pocket, and drank a whole decanter of liqueur vodka. Is that right? And now he wants to go away. You ordered me not to let him out, so I dare not let him go.’
On seeing Delésov Albert made for Zakhár still more excitedly.
‘No one dare hold me! No one has a right to!’ he shouted, raising his voice more and more.
‘Step aside, Zakhár!’ said Delésov. ‘I can’t and don’t want to keep you, but I advise you to stay till the morning,’ he said to Albert.
‘No one can keep me! I’ll go to the chief of police!’ Albert cried louder and louder, addressing himself to Zakhár alone and not looking at Delésov. ‘Help!’ he suddenly screamed in a furious voice.
‘What are you screaming like that for? Nobody is keeping you!’ said Zakhár, opening the door.
Albert stopped shouting. ‘You didn’t succeed, did you? Wanted to do for me – did you!’ he muttered to himself, putting on his goloshes. Without taking leave, and continuing to mutter incoherently, he went out. Zakhár held a light for him as far as the gate, and then came back.
‘Well, God be thanked, sir!’ he said to his master. ‘Who knows what might happen? As it is I must count the silver plate …’
Delésov merely shook his head and did not reply. He vividly recalled the first two evenings he had spent with the musician, and recalled the last sad days which by his fault Albert had spent there, and above all he recalled that sweet, mixed feeling of surprise, affection and pity, which that strange man had aroused in him at first sight, and he felt sorry for him. ‘And what will become of him now?’ he thought. ‘Without money, without warm clothing, alone in the middle of the night …’ He was about to send Zakhár after him, but it was too late.
‘Is it cold outside?’ he inquired.
‘A hard frost, sir,’ replied Zakhár. ‘I forgot to inform you, but we shall have to buy more wood for fuel before the spring.’
‘How is that? You said that we should have some left over.’
VII
IT was indeed cold outside, but Albert, heated by the liquor he had drunk and by the dispute, did not feel it. On reaching the street he looked round and rubbed his hands joyfully. The street was empty, but the long row of lamps still burned with ruddy light; the sky was clear and starry. ‘There now!’ he said, addressing the lighted window of Delésov’s lodging, thrusting his hands into his trouser pockets under his cape, and stooping forward. He went with heavy, uncertain steps down the street to the right. He felt an unusual weight in his legs and stomach, something made a noise in his head, and some invisible force was throwing him from side to side, but he still went on in the direction of Anna Ivánovna’s house. Strange, incoherent thoughts passed through his mind. Now he remembered his last altercation with Zakhár, then for some reason the sea and his first arrival in Russia by steamboat, then a happy night he had passed with a friend in a small shop he was passing, then suddenly a familiar motif began singing itself in his imagination, and he remembered the object of his passion and the dreadful night in the theatre. Despite their incoherence all these memories presented themselves so clearly to his mind that, closing his eyes, he did not know which was the more reaclass="underline" what he was doing, or what he was thinking. He did not realize or feel how his legs were moving, how he swayed and bumped against the wall, how he looked around him, or passed from street to street. He realized and felt only the things that, intermingling and fantastically following one another, rose in his imagination.