‘‘If you need him, introduce yourself to him. He receives every morning from ten to ten-thirty.’’
‘‘How base you are!’’ said Zinaida Fyodorovna, wringing her hands in despair. ‘‘Even if you’re not sincere and aren’t saying what you think, for this cruelty alone one could come to hate you! Oh, how base you are!’’
‘‘We keep circling around and can’t talk our way to the real essence. The whole essence is that you were mistaken and don’t want to admit it out loud. You imagined I was a hero and had some sort of extraordinary ideas and ideals, but it turned out in reality that I’m a most ordinary official, a cardplayer, and have no interest in any ideas. I’m the worthy offspring of that same rotten society you fled from, outraged at its triviality and triteness. Confess it and be fair: get indignant not with me but with yourself, since it was you who were mistaken, not I.’’
‘‘Yes, I confess: I was mistaken!’’
‘‘That’s splendid. We’ve talked our way to the main thing, thank God. Now listen further, if you like. I can’t raise myself up to you, because I’m too corrupt; neither can you lower yourself to me, because you’re too high. There remains, then, one thing . . .’’
‘‘What?’’ Zinaida Fyodorovna asked quickly, with bated breath and suddenly turning white as paper.
‘‘There remains the resort to the aid of logic . . .’’
‘‘Georgiy, why are you tormenting me?’’ Zinaida Fyodorovna suddenly said in Russian, with a cracked voice. ‘‘Why? Understand my suffering . . .’’
Orlov, frightened of tears, quickly went to the study and, I don’t know why—wishing to cause her some extra pain, or remembering that this was the practice in such cases— locked the door behind him with a key. She cried out and ran after him, her dress rustling.
‘‘What does this mean?’’ she asked, knocking on the door. ‘‘What . . . what does this mean?’’ she repeated in a thin voice breaking with indignation. ‘‘Ah, is that how you are? Then know that I hate and despise you! Everything’s finished between us! Everything!’’
Hysterical weeping and laughter followed. Something small fell off the table in the drawing room and broke. Orlov stole from the study to the front hall by another door and, with a cowardly glance behind him, quickly put on his overcoat and top hat and left.
Half an hour went by, then an hour, and she was still weeping. I remembered that she had no father, no mother, no family, that she was living now between a man who hated her and Polya, who stole from her—and how joyless her life appeared to me! Not knowing why myself, I went to her in the drawing room. Weak, helpless, with beautiful hair, she who seemed to me the image of tenderness and grace suffered like a sick person; she was lying on the sofa, hiding her face, and her whole body shaking.
‘‘Madam, wouldn’t you like me to go for the doctor?’’ I asked quietly.
‘‘No, no need... it’s nothing,’’ she said and looked at me with tearful eyes. ‘‘I have a slight headache... Thank you.’’
I went out. But in the evening she wrote letter after letter and sent me now to Pekarsky, now to Kukushkin, now to Gruzin, and finally wherever I liked, so long as I found Orlov quickly and gave him the letter. When I came back each time with the letter, she scolded me, pleaded with me, put money in my hand—as if in a fever. And at night she didn’t sleep but sat in the drawing room and talked to herself.
The next day Orlov came back for dinner, and they made peace.
On the first Thursday after that, Orlov complained to his friends about his unbearably hard life; he smoked a lot and said with irritation:
‘‘This isn’t life, it’s an inquisition. Tears, shouts, wise words, pleas for forgiveness, again tears and shouts, and as a result—I now have no place of my own, I’m worn out and I’ve worn her out. Can it be I’ll have to live like this for another month or two? Can it be? And yet it’s possible!’’
‘‘Why don’t you talk it over with her?’’ said Pekarsky.
‘‘I’ve tried, but I can’t. You can boldly speak any truth you like to an independent, reasoning man, but here you have to do with a being who has no will, no character, no logic. I can’t stand tears, they disarm me. When she cries, I’m ready to vow eternal love and start crying myself.’’
Pekarsky did not understand, scratched his wide brow, and said:
‘‘Really, you should rent her a separate apartment. It’s so simple!’’
‘‘She needs me, not an apartment. What’s there to talk about?’’ sighed Orlov. ‘‘All I hear is endless talk, but I don’t see any way out of my situation. Truly, I’m blamelessly to blame! I didn’t sow, but I have to reap. All my life I’ve shunned the role of hero, I never could stand Turgenev’s novels, and suddenly, as if in mockery, I’ve wound up a veritable hero. I assure her on my word of honor that I’m not a hero at all, I supply irrefutable proofs, but she doesn’t believe me. Why doesn’t she believe me? There must indeed be something heroic in my physiognomy.’’
‘‘Why don’t you go and inspect the provinces?’’ Kukushkin said with a laugh.
‘‘That’s the only thing left.’’
A week after this conversation, Orlov announced that he was being sent on business to the senator again, and in the evening of that same day he drove to Pekarsky’s with his suitcases.
XI
ON THE THRESHOLD stood an old man of about sixty, in a floor-length fur coat and a beaver hat.
‘‘Is Georgiy Ivanych at home?’’ he asked.
At first I thought he was a moneylender, one of Gruzin’s creditors, who occasionally came to Orlov for small handouts, but when he came into the front hall and opened his coat, I saw the thick eyebrows and characteristically compressed lips I had come to know so well from photographs, and two rows of stars on his uniform tailcoat. I recognized him: it was Orlov’s father, the well-known statesman.
I replied that Georgiy Ivanych was not at home. The old man pressed his lips tightly together and looked away, pondering, showing me his dry, toothless profile.
‘‘I’ll leave a note,’’ he said. ‘‘Show me in.’’
He left his galoshes in the front hall and, without taking off his long, heavy fur coat, went to the study. There he sat down in the armchair at the desk and, before taking up the pen, thought about something for three minutes or so, shielding his eyes as if from the sun—exactly as his son did when he was out of sorts. His face was sad, pensive, with an expression of that submissiveness which I had seen only in the faces of old and religious people. I stood behind him, looking at his bald spot and the depression on his nape, and it was clear as day to me that this weak, ailing old man was now in my hands. For there was not a soul in the whole apartment except me and my enemy. I had only to use a little physical force, then tear off his watch so as to camouflage my purpose, and leave by the back stairs, and I would have gotten immeasurably more than I had counted on when I became a servant. I thought: I’ll hardly ever have a luckier chance. But instead of acting, I went on looking with complete indifference now at the bald spot, now at the fur, and calmly reflected on the relations between this man and his only son, and that people spoiled by wealth and power probably don’t want to die . . .
‘‘Have you worked for my son long?’’ he asked, tracing large letters on the paper.
‘‘This is the third month, Your Excellency.’’