Many of the female occupants of the datchas, even some of the young and pretty ones, were woken by the noise and dashed out with no shoes on. And all sorts ofotherthingsoccurred which I hesitate to recount.
'Ooh, I am scared!' squealed the variegated young ladies. 'Oh, isn't it awful!'
'Mesdames, please carry out your observations!' I shouted. 'Time is precious!'
I myselfwas makinghastetomeasure the diameter . . . Remember- ing about the corona I looked for the ex-officer. He was standing doing nothing.
'What are you standing there for?' I shouted. 'What about the corona?'
He shrugged his shoulders and glanced down helplessly. Varieg- ated damsels were clinging to both of the poor fellow's arms, pres- sing up against him in terror and preventing him from working. I took my pencil and noted the time precisely to the second: that was important. I noted down the geographical location of the observa- tion point: that too was important. I was about to measure the diameter when Mashenka caught my arm and said: 'Don't forget: this morning at eleven!' ,
I freed my arm and knowing that every second counted, attempted to continue my observations, but Varenka seized my arm convul- sively .and pressed herself to my side. Everything - my pencil, my dark glasses and my drawings - fell on to the grass. For crying out loud! Whencver was this girl going to realise that I'm quick- tempered and once roused I go berserk and cannot answer for my actions?
I couldn't wait to continue — but the eclipse was already over!
'Look at me!' she whispered tenderly.
Oh, this was the absolute limit! It's perfectly obvious that anyone who tries a man's patience like that has got it coming to them. If I murder someone, don't blame me! Dammit, I will not allow myself to be made a fool of, and by God, when my hackles are up, I wouldn't advise anyone to come within a mile of me! I'm capable ofanything!
One of the damsels, presumably seeing by my face that I was furious and obviously intending to mollify me, said:'/ did as you told me, Nikolay Andreyevich. I observed the mammals. Just before the eclipse I saw a grey dog chasing a cat. Then it wagged its tail for a long nme afterwards.'
So the eclipse came to nothing. I went home. But as it was raining I didn't go out on to the balcony to work. The wounded officer had risked coming out on to his and even got as far as writing 'I was born in . . .' when I saw one of the variegated damsels dragging him off to her datcha. I couldn't work because I was still livid and could feel my heart thumping. Nor did I go to the summer-house. Maybe that wasn't polite, but it's perfectly obvious I couldn't be expected to go in the rain, could I? At twelve o'clock I got a letter from Mashenka written as if we were the most intimate of friends, full of reproaches, and asking me to come to the summer-house . .. At one o'clock I received a second letter, at two yet another ... I would have to go. But first I would have to consider what to say to her. I would act in an honourable manner. Firstly, I would tell her she was wrong in imagining that I loved her. Yetonecannot really say a thing like that to a woman. To say to a woman 'I do not love you' is as tactless as saying to a writer: 'You don't know how to write'. The best thing would be to explain to Varenka my views on marriage. So I put on my warm overcoat, took my umbrella and made my way to the summer-house. Knowing how quick-tempered I am, I was afraid of what I might come out with. I would try to restrain myself.
She was there in the summer-house waiting for me. Nadenka's face was pale and tcar-stained. When she saw me she gave a shriek of joy and flung her arms round my neck, saying: 'Oh, at last! You're trying my patience so badly. I didn't sleep all night . .. I was thinking and thinking. And I feel if I got to know you better I would ... would come to love you.'
I sat down and began to expound my viewson marriage. To avoid going tov) deeply into the subject and in order to be as concise as possible, I put things briefly into their historical perspective. I spoke about marriage among the Hindus and Egyptians, then came on to more recent times with a few of Schopenhauer's ideas. Mashenka listened attentively, but suddenly she felt obliged to interrupt me with a curious non seqMitMr.
'Nicolas, give me a kiss!'
I was so embarrassed I didn't know what to say to her. She repeated her demand. So there was nothing else for it - I got up and put my lips to her elongated face, experiencing the same sensation I had as a child when I was made to kiss my dead grandmother's face at her funeral. Not satisfied with the kiss I had given her, Varenka leapt to her feet and impetuously flung her arms around me. At that moment Mashenka's maman appeared at the summer-house door .. . She gave us a startled glance and saying to someone behind her: 'Shhhh!', vanished like Mephistopheles down a stage trapdoor.
I went back home feeling furious and embarrassed, only to find Varenka'srnaman there embracing my raaman with tears in her eyes. My maman was saying tearfully: 'My dream has come true!'
And then - well, would you believe it? - Nadenka'smaman came up to me, put her arms around me and said:
'May God bless you both! Take good care of her . .. Never forget the sacrifice she is making . . .'
Sonow I'mabout tobemarried. As I write these lines the best man is looming over me telling me to hurry up. These people just don't know who they're dealing with! I am extremely quick-tempered and I can't answer for my actions! Dammit, you'd better watch out! Leading a quick-tempered, violent man to the altar - so far as I'm concerned it's as rash as sticking your hand into a frenzied tiger's cage. You'd better watch out, I tell you!
So here I am married. Everybody congratulates me and Varcnka keeps pressing up to me and saying: 'Oh, to think that now you arc mine, minc! Tcll me you love me! Tell me, darling!'
And her nose goes all puffy.
I learned from the best man that the wounded officer had escaped Hymen's clutches by a cunning ruse. He produced for his variegatcd young lady a medical ccrtificate to prove that as a rcsult of the wound in his templc he was non compos mentis and therefore lcgally barred from getting married. Brilliant! I could have got a certificate too. Onc of my uncles drank like a fish, another was extremely absent-minded (he once put a lady's muff on his head instead of his fur hat) and my aunt was always playing the grand piano and sticking her tongue out at men in the street. Then there's my extremc quick-temperedness — that's another very dubious symptom. But why is it that good idcas always come too late? Why, why?
The Reed-Pipe
Stifled by the cloying air of the fir plantation and all covered in spiders' webs and fir-needles, Meliton Shishkin, the bailiff from the Dementyevs' farm, was slowly working his way to the edge of the wood, his shot-gun in his hand. His dog Lady, a cross between a mongrel and a setter, extremely thin and heavy with young, was trailing along behind her master with her wet tail between her legs, and doing her best not to get her nose pricked. It was a dull, overcast morning. Great splashes of water fell from the mist-shrouded trees and the bracken, and the damp wood exuded a pungent odour of decay.
Ahead, where the plantation came to an end, stood silver birches, and between their trunks and branches the misty horizon could be seen. Beyond the birches someone was playing on a shepherd's rustic pipe. They were playing no more than five or six notes, drawing them out lazily and making no effort to combine them into a tune, yet in the high-pitched wail of the pipe there was something both sombre and singularly mournful.