He got into such a state that he could have gone on talking for a very long time, but fortunately we heard the coachman’s voice. Our horses came. We got into the carriage, and Forty Martyrs, taking off his hat, helped us both in with such a look as if he had long been waiting for a chance to touch our precious bodies.
“Dmitri Petrovich, allow me to come to you,” he said, blinking hard and tilting his head to the side. “Show me divine mercy! I’m perishing from hunger!”
“Oh, all right,” Silin said. “Come, stay for three days, and then we’ll see.”
“Yes, sir!” Forty Martyrs was overjoyed. “I’ll come today, sir.”
It was four miles to the house. Dmitri Petrovich, pleased that he had finally spoken everything out to a friend, held me by the waist all the way and, now without bitterness and without fright, but cheerfully, said to me that, if everything had been well with him in his family, he would have gone back to Petersburg and taken up science. The trend, he said, which had driven so many gifted young people to the countryside, was a deplorable trend. There was a great deal of rye and wheat in Russia, but there was a dearth of cultivated people. Gifted, healthy youths should take up science, the arts, and politics; to do otherwise was even wasteful. He philosophized with pleasure and expressed regret that he must part from me early the next morning, because he had to go to a woodlot auction.
But I felt awkward and sad, and it seemed to me that I was deceiving the man. And at the same time I was pleased. I looked at the enormous crimson moon, which was rising, and pictured to myself a tall, slender blonde, pale, always smartly dressed, fragrant with some special perfume like musk, and for some reason I was cheered by the thought that she did not love her husband.
We came home and sat down to supper. Maria Sergeevna, laughing, served us our purchases, and I found that she did in fact have wonderful hair and that she smiled like no other woman. I watched her, and I wanted to see in her every movement and glance that she did not love her husband, and it seemed to me that I did see it.
Dmitri Petrovich soon began fighting off drowsiness. After supper he sat with us for some ten minutes, then said:
“Do as you like, my friends, but I have to get up tomorrow at three in the morning. Allow me to leave you.”
He tenderly kissed his wife, shook my hand firmly, with gratitude, and made me promise that I would come next week without fail. So as not to oversleep the next morning, he went to spend the night in the cottage.
Maria Sergeevna stayed up late, Petersburg fashion, and now for some reason I was glad of it.
“And so?” I began, when we were left alone. “And so, you’re going to be kind and play something for me.”
I didn’t want any music, but I didn’t know how to begin the conversation. She sat down at the piano and played, I don’t remember what. I sat near her, looked at her plump white hands, and tried to read something in her cold, indifferent face. But then she smiled for some reason and looked at me.
“You’re bored without your friend,” she said.
I laughed.
“For the sake of friendship, it would be enough to come here once a month, but I come here more than once a week.”
Having said that, I got up and paced the room in agitation. She also got up and went to the fireplace.
“What do you mean to say by that?” she asked, raising her big, clear eyes to me.
I said nothing.
“You weren’t telling the truth,” she went on after reflecting. “You come here only for the sake of Dmitri Petrovich. Well, I’m very glad. In our time one rarely sees such friendship.”
“Aha!” I thought, and, not knowing what to say, I asked: “Would you like to take a stroll in the garden?”
“No.”
I stepped out on the terrace. My scalp was tingling, and I was chilled with excitement. I was already certain that our conversation would be very insignificant and that we would not be able to say anything special to each other, but that during that night what I did not even dare to dream of would certainly take place. Certainly, that night, or never.
“What fine weather!” I said loudly.
“For me it’s decidedly all the same,” came the answer.
I went into the drawing room. Maria Sergeevna was standing by the fireplace as before, her hands behind her back, thinking about something and looking away.
“Why is it decidedly all the same for you?” I asked.
“Because I’m bored. You’re only bored without your friend, but I’m always bored. However…that doesn’t interest you.”
I sat down at the piano and played several chords, waiting for what she would say.
“Please don’t stand on ceremony,” she said, looking at me angrily and as if she were about to weep with vexation. “If you want to go to bed, go. Don’t think that, if you’re Dmitri Petrovich’s friend, you’re obliged to be bored with his wife. I don’t want any sacrifices. Please go.”
I didn’t go, of course. She went out to the terrace, and I stayed in the drawing room and spent some five minutes leafing through the scores. Then I, too, went out. We stood next to each other in the shadow of the curtains, and below us were the steps flooded with moonlight. The black shadows of trees stretched across the flower beds and over the yellow sand of the paths.
“I also have to leave tomorrow,” I said.
“Of course, if my husband isn’t home, you can’t stay here,” she said mockingly. “I can imagine how miserable you’d be if you fell in love with me! Just wait, someday I’ll up and throw myself on your neck…I’ll watch how you flee from me in terror. It will be interesting.”
Her words and her pale face were angry, but her eyes were filled with the most tender, passionate love. I already looked upon this beautiful creature as my property, and now I noticed for the first time that she had golden eyebrows, lovely eyebrows, such as I had never seen before. The thought that I could now draw her to me, caress her, touch her wonderful hair, suddenly seemed so monstrous to me that I laughed and shut my eyes.
“However, it’s already time…Sleep well,” she said.
“I don’t want to sleep well,” I said, following her to the drawing room. “I’ll curse this night if I sleep at all.”
Pressing her hand and walking her to the door, I could see from her face that she understood me and was glad that I also understood her.
I went to my room. On my desk by the books lay Dmitri Petrovich’s cap, and that reminded me of his friendship. I took a walking stick and went out to the garden. Here the mist was already rising, and around the trees and bushes, embracing them, wandered the same high and narrow apparitions I had just seen on the river. What a pity I couldn’t speak with them!
In the extraordinarily transparent air, every little leaf, every drop of dew stood out distinctly—it all smiled to me in silence, half awake, and, passing by the green benches, I recalled words from some play of Shakespeare’s: how sweetly sleeps the moonlight upon this bench!2