After tea, Yartsev sang romances, accompanying himself on the piano, while Yulia and Kochevoy sat silently and listened, only Yulia got up from time to time and quietly went to look at the baby and at Lida, who for two days now had lain in a fever and eaten nothing.
‘‘ ‘My friend, my tender friend...’ ’ sang Yartsev. ‘‘No, ladies and gentlemen, you can put a knife in me,’’ he said and shook his head, ‘‘but I don’t understand why you’re against love! If I weren’t busy fifteen hours a day, I’d certainly fall in love.’’
Supper was served on the terrace; it was warm and still, but Yulia wrapped herself in a shawl and complained of the dampness. When it got dark, she felt out of sorts for some reason, kept shuddering, and asked her guests to stay longer; she offered them wine and had cognac served after supper to keep them from leaving. She did not want to be left alone with the children and the servants.
‘‘We dacha women are organizing a show for the children,’’ she said. ‘‘We already have everything—the space and the actors—all we need is a play. About two dozen plays have been sent to us, but not a single one of them will do. Now, you love theater and you know history well,’’ she turned to Yartsev, ‘‘so write us a history play.’’
‘‘Well, that’s possible.’’
The guests drank all the cognac and got ready to leave. It was past ten o’clock, late by dacha standards.
‘‘How dark, dark as pitch!’’ Yulia said, seeing them off to the gate. ‘‘I don’t know how you’ll make it, gentlemen. Anyhow, it’s cold!’’
She wrapped herself more tightly and went back to the porch.
‘‘And my Alexei must be playing cards somewhere!’’ she called. ‘‘Good night!’’
After the bright rooms, nothing could be seen. Yartsev and Kostya felt their way like blind men, reached the railroad tracks, and crossed them.
‘‘Can’t see a damned thing!’’ Kostya suddenly said in a bass voice, stopping and looking at the sky. ‘‘But the stars, the stars, like new coins! Gavrilych!’’
‘‘Eh?’’ Yartsev responded somewhere.
‘‘I say: can’t see a thing. Where are you!’’
Yartsev, whistling, came up to him and took his arm.
‘‘Hey, dacha people!’’ Kostya suddenly shouted at the top of his voice. ‘‘We’ve caught a socialist!’’
When tipsy, he was always very restless, shouted, picked on policemen and cabbies, sang, guffawed furiously.
‘‘Nature, devil take it!’’ he shouted.
‘‘Now, now,’’ Yartsev tried to calm him down. ‘‘Mustn’t do that. I beg you.’’
Soon the friends became accustomed to the darkness and began to make out the silhouettes of the tall pines and telephone poles. Rare whistles reached them from the Moscow stations, and the wires hummed plaintively. The grove itself made no sound, and in this silence, something proud, strong, mysterious could be felt, and now, at night, it seemed that the tops of the pines almost touched the sky. The friends found their cutting and went along it. It was quite dark here, and only by the long strip of sky spangled with stars, and the trampled ground under their feet, did they know they were going along a path. They walked side by side in silence, and both fancied there were people coming in the opposite direction. The drunken mood left them. It occurred to Yartsev that the souls of Moscow tsars, boyars, and patriarchs might be flitting about in this grove now, and he was going to say so to Kostya but restrained himself.
When they came to the city gate, there was a slight glimmer in the sky. Still silent, Yartsev and Kochevoy walked along the pavement past cheap dachas, taverns, lumber yards; under the railway arch, the dampness, pleasant, scented with lindens, chilled them, and then a long, wide street opened out, with not a soul on it, not a light... When they reached Krasny Pond, day was already breaking.
‘‘Moscow is a city that still has much suffering ahead of her,’’ Yartsev said, looking at the Alexeevsky Monastery.
‘‘How did that enter your head?’’
‘‘It just did. I love Moscow.’’
Yartsev and Kostya had both been born in Moscow and adored her, and for some reason regarded other cities with hostility; they were convinced that Moscow was a remarkable city and Russia a remarkable country. In the Crimea, in the Caucasus, and abroad, they felt bored, uncomfortable, ill at ease, and they found the gray Moscow weather most pleasant and healthy. Days when cold rain raps at the windows, and dusk falls early, and the walls of houses and churches take on a brown, mournful color, and you do not know what to put on when you go outside—such days pleasantly excited them.
Finally, near a train station, they took a cab.
‘‘In fact, it would be nice to write a history play,’’ said Yartsev, ‘‘but you know, without the Liapunovs and the Godunovs, from the times of Yaroslav or Monomakh21... I hate all Russian history plays, except for Pimen’s monologue.22 When you deal with some historical source, or even when you read a textbook of Russian history, it seems that everything in Russia is remarkably talented, gifted, and interesting, but when I watch a history play in the theater, Russian life begins to seem giftless, unhealthy, and unoriginal to me.’’
Near Dmitrovka, the friends parted, and Yartsev went further on to his place on Nikitskaya. He dozed, rocking in the cab, and kept thinking about the play. Suddenly he imagined an awful noise, clanging, shouts in some unknown language like Kalmyk; and some village, all caught in flames, and the neighboring forest, covered with hoarfrost and a tender pink from the fire, can be seen far around, and so clearly that each little fir tree is distinct; some wild people, on horseback and on foot, rush about the village, their horses and themselves as crimson as the glow in the sky.
‘‘It’s the Polovtsi,’’23 thinks Yartsev.
One of them—old, frightening, with a bloody face, all scorched—is tying a young girl with a white Russian face to his saddle. The old man shouts something furiously, but the girl watches sorrowfully, intelligently... Yartsev shook his head and woke up.
‘‘ ‘My friend, my tender friend...’ ’he sang.
Paying the cabby and then going up the stairs to his place, he still could not quite recover, and saw the flames sweep on to the trees, the forest crackle and smoke; an enormous wild boar, mad with terror, rushes through the village... But the girl tied to the saddle keeps watching.
When he entered his apartment, it was already light. On the grand piano, near an open score, two candles were burning down. On the couch lay Rassudina, in a black dress with a sash, a newspaper in her hand, fast asleep. She must have played for a long time, waiting for Yartsev to come back, and fallen asleep before he came.
‘‘Eh, quite worn out!’’ he thought.
He carefully took the newspaper from her hand, covered her with a plaid, put out the candles, and went to his bedroom. Lying down, he thought about the history play, and the refrain ‘‘My friend, my tender friend...’ would not leave his head.
Two days later, Laptev stopped by for a moment to tell him that Lida had come down with diphtheria, and that Yulia Sergeevna and the baby had caught it from her, and in another five days came the news that Lida and Yulia were recovering, but the baby had died, and the Laptevs had fled from their Sokolniki dacha to the city.
XIV
IT BECAME UNPLEASANT for Laptev to stay long at home. His wife often went to the wing, telling him she had to do lessons with the girls, but he knew she went there not to give lessons but to weep at Kostya’s. The ninth day came, then the twentieth, then the fortieth,24 and he had to go each time to the Alexeevskoe cemetery and listen to the memorial service, and then torment himself all day thinking only about the unfortunate baby and saying all sorts of banalities to his wife in consolation. He rarely went to the warehouse now and was occupied only with charity, thinking up various cares and chores, and he was glad when he chanced to drive around for a whole day on account of some trifle. Recently he had been preparing to go abroad, in order to acquaint himself there with the setting up of night shelters, and this thought now diverted him.