He finished writing and stood up. I still had time. I prodded myself and clenched my teeth, trying to squeeze from my soul at least a drop of my former hatred; I remembered what a passionate, stubborn, and indefatigable enemy I had been still recently . . . But it’s hard to strike a match on a crumbling wall. The sad old face and the cold gleam of the stars called up only petty, cheap, and useless thoughts about the frailty of all earthly things, about the proximity of death...
‘‘Good-bye, brother!’’ the old man said, put his hat on, and left.
It was no longer possible to doubt it: a change had taken place in me, I had become different. To test myself, I started to remember, but at once felt eerie, as if I had accidentally glanced into a dark, damp corner. I remembered my friends and acquaintances, and my first thought was of how I would now blush and be at a loss when I met one of them. Who am I now? What am I to think about, and what am I to do? Where am I to go? What am I living for?
I understood nothing and was clearly aware of only one thing: that I must quickly pack my bags and leave. Before the old man’s visit, my lackeydom still had meaning, but now it was ridiculous. Teardrops fell into my open suitcase, I was unbearably sad, but how I wanted to live! I was ready to embrace and pack into my short life all that was accessible to man. I wanted to talk, and read, and pound with a hammer somewhere in a big factory, and stand watch, and till the soil. I was drawn to Nevsky Prospect, and to the fields, and to the sea—wherever my imagination could reach. When Zinaida Fyodorovna came back, I rushed to open the door for her, and with special tenderness helped her out of her fur coat. For the last time!
Besides the old man, two others came to us that day. In the evening, when it was already quite dark, Gruzin came unexpectedly to pick up some papers for Orlov. He opened the desk, took out the necessary papers, and, rolling them into a tube, told me to put them in the front hall by his hat while he himself went to Zinaida Fyodorovna. She was lying on the sofa in the drawing room with her hands behind her head. Five or six days had gone by since Orlov left on inspection, and no one knew when he would be back, but she no longer sent telegrams or expected any. Polya still lived with us, but she didn’t seem to notice her. ‘‘Let it be!’’—I read on her dispassionate, very pale face. Like Orlov, she now wanted to be unhappy out of stubbornness; to spite herself and the whole world, she spent whole days lying motionless on the sofa, wishing only the bad for herself and expecting only the bad. She was probably imagining Orlov’s return and the inevitable quarrels between them, then his cooling off, his infidelities, then how they would break up, and these tormenting thoughts may have afforded her pleasure. But what would she have said if she had suddenly learned the real truth?
‘‘I love you, my friend,’’ said Gruzin, greeting her and kissing her hand. ‘‘You’re so kind! And Georginka’s gone away,’’ he lied. ‘‘Gone away, the villain!’’
He sat down with a sigh and tenderly stroked her hand.
‘‘Allow me, my dove, to sit with you for a little hour,’’ he said. ‘‘I don’t really want to go home, and it’s too early to go to the Birshovs’. Today is their Katya’s birthday. A nice girl!’’
I served him a glass of tea and a decanter of cognac. He drank the tea slowly, with obvious reluctance, and, as he returned the glass to me, asked timidly:
‘‘My lad, mightn’t you have a little something... to eat? I haven’t had dinner yet.’’
We had nothing. I went to the restaurant and brought him an ordinary one-rouble dinner.
‘‘To your health, my dove!’’ he said to Zinaida Fyodorovna and drank a glass of vodka. ‘‘My little one, your goddaughter sends you her greetings. The poor thing has scrofula! Ah, children, children!’’ he sighed. ‘‘Say what you like, my dear, but it’s nice to be a father. Georginka doesn’t understand that feeling.’’
He drank again. Skinny, pale, with the napkin on his chest like a bib, he ate greedily and, raising his eyebrows, glanced guiltily now at Zinaida Fyodorovna, now at me, like a little boy. It seemed if I hadn’t given him grouse or jelly, he would have wept. Having satisfied his hunger, he cheered up and laughingly began telling something about the Birshovs’ family, but, noticing that it was boring and that Zinaida Fyodorovna was not laughing, he fell silent. And somehow it suddenly became boring. After dinner the two of them sat in the drawing room with only one lamp lit and were silent: it was painful for him to lie, and she wanted to ask him about something but could not make up her mind to do it. Half an hour went by that way. Gruzin looked at his watch.
‘‘But perhaps it’s time I left.’’
‘‘No, stay a little . . . We must talk.’’
Again they were silent. He sat down at the piano, touched one key, then began to play and sing softly: ‘‘ ‘What does the morrow hold for me?’ ’’—but as usual got up at once and shook his head.
‘‘Play something, my friend,’’ Zinaida Fyodorovna requested.
‘‘But what?’’ he asked, shrugging his shoulders. ‘‘I’ve forgotten everything. I stopped playing long ago.’’
Looking at the ceiling as if in recollection, he played two pieces by Tchaikovsky with wonderful expression, so warmly, so intelligently! His face was the same as ever— neither intelligent nor stupid—and to me it seemed simply a wonder that a man whom I was used to seeing in the most mean, impure surroundings was capable of such a high and, for me, inaccessible upsurge of feeling, of such purity. Zinaida Fyodorovna became flushed and began pacing the drawing room in agitation.
‘‘But wait now, my friend, if I can remember it, I’ll play a little piece for you,’’ he said. ‘‘I heard it played on the cello.’’
Timidly and tentatively at first, then with assurance, he began playing the ‘‘Swan Song’’ by Saint-Saëns.19 He played it and repeated it.
‘‘Nice, isn’t it?’’ he said.
Agitated, Zinaida Fyodorovna stopped by him and asked:
‘‘Tell me sincerely, as a friend: what do you think of me?’’
‘‘What can I say?’’ he said, raising his eyebrows. ‘‘I love you and think only good things of you. If you want me to speak generally on the question that interests you,’’ he went on, brushing his sleeve at the elbow and frowning, ‘‘then, my dear, you know . . . To freely follow the yearnings of one’s heart does not always bring good people happiness. To feel yourself free and at the same time happy, it seems to me, you mustn’t conceal from yourself the fact that life is cruel, crude, and merciless in its conservatism, and you must respond to it according to its worth; that is, be just as crude and merciless in your yearning for freedom. That’s what I think.’’
‘‘It’s beyond me!’’ Zinaida Fyodorovna smiled sadly. ‘‘I’m already weary, my friend. I’m so weary that I won’t lift a finger to save myself.’’
‘‘Go to a convent, my friend.’’
He said it jokingly, but after his words, Zinaida Fyodorovna and then he himself had tears glistening in their eyes.
‘‘Well, ma’am,’’ he said, ‘‘we’ve sat and sat, now off we go. Good-bye, my dear friend. May God keep you well.’’
He kissed both her hands and, stroking them tenderly, said he would be sure to visit her one of those days. In the front hall, putting on his coat that resembled a child’s capote, he searched in his pockets for a long time, so as to give me a tip, but found nothing.
‘‘Good-bye, my dove!’’ he said sadly and left.
Never will I forget the mood this man left behind him. Zinaida Fyodorovna still went on pacing the drawing room in agitation. She did not lie down but paced—that was one good thing. I wanted to take advantage of this mood to have a candid talk with her and leave at once, but no sooner had I seen Gruzin off than the bell rang. It was Kukushkin.