“Only not in my home …” she said coldly. “Take me somewhere.”
“Let’s go to Muridov’s. That’ll be best.”
“Where is that?”
“By the old seawall.”
She quickly walked along the street and then turned in to the side street that led to the mountains. It was dark. Here and there along the pavement lay pale, luminous stripes from illuminated windows, and it seemed to her that she, like a fly, either found herself immersed in ink or crawled out of it into the light. Kirilin walked behind her. At one point, he stumbled, nearly fell over and burst out laughing.
He’s drunk …, thought Nadezhda Fyodorovna. Either way … either way … Let it be.
Achmianov also excused himself from the gathering in a hurry and followed the trail of Nadezhda Fyodorovna, so that he could invite her to go for a boat ride. Nearing her house, he peered through the small front garden: the windows were wide open, no flame shone.
“Nadezhda Fyodorovna!” he called out.
A minute passed. He called out again.
“Who’s there?” Olga’s voice was heard.
“Is Nadezhda Fyodorovna home?”
“She’s not here. She hasn’t returned yet.”
That’s strange … Very strange, Achmianov thought, beginning to feel a powerful unease. “She went home …”
He walked along the boulevard, then along the street and glanced in Sheshkovsky’s windows. Laevsky was sitting at the table without his frock coat and attentively gazed into his cards.
“Strange, strange …” muttered Achmianov, and faced with the recollection of the hysterics that had occurred with Laevsky, he became embarrassed. “If she’s not home, then where is she?”
He once again returned to Nadezhda Fyodorovna’s chambers and looked at the dark windows.
This is deceit, deceit …, he thought, remembering that she herself had met him at noon that day at Bityugov’s and had promised that they would take a boat ride together in the evening.
The windows of the house where Kirilin lived were dark, and at the gateway a policeman sat on a little bench and slept. Everything became clear to Achmianov when he looked at the windows and the policeman. He decided to go home, and went on his way, but again wound up near the chambers of Nadezhda Fyodorovna. He sat down on a little bench there and removed his hat, feeling that his head was aflame with jealousy and hurt.
The town church bells rung the time only twice in the twenty-four-hour cycle: at noon and at midnight. Right after they’d tolled midnight, hastened steps could be heard.
“This means once again tomorrow evening at Muridov’s!” Achmianov heard, and recognized Kirilin’s voice. “At eight o’clock. Goodbye, milady!”
Nadezhda Fyodorovna appeared near the little front garden. Not noticing that Achmianov sat on the bench, she passed him as a shadow, opened the little gate and, leaving it unlatched, entered her home. She lit a candle in her room, quickly undressed, but did not get into bed, instead got down on her knees before a chair, embraced it and pressed her forehead against it.
Laevsky returned home in the third hour.
XV
Having decided not to lie all at once, but in parts, the next day in the second hour, Laevsky went to Samoylenko to ask for the money, so that Saturday he may leave without fail. After yesterday’s hysterics, which added a sense of biting shame to the already heavy state his soul was in, staying in town was unthinkable. If Samoylenko would insist on his conditions, he thought, perhaps it would be possible to agree to them and take the money, but tomorrow, minutes before his departure, say that Nadezhda Fyodorovna had refused to go; from this evening on it could be possible to convince her that everything was being done for her own good. But if Samoylenko, finding himself blatantly under Von Koren’s influence, completely refused the money or requested some new condition, then he, Laevsky, would set off on a cargo ship that very day, or even a sailing vessel, to New Athos or Novorossiysk, and from there he would send his mother a self-effacing telegram and then live there for as long as it took his mother to dispatch money for the road.
Arriving at Samoylenko’s, he found Von Koren in the drawing room. The zoologist had only just arrived for dinner and, according to habit, having opened the album, scrutinized the men in top hats and ladies in bonnets.
How inopportune, Laevsky thought, seeing him. He may interfere. “Hello!”
“Hello,” Von Koren answered, without looking up at him.
“Is Alexander Davidich home?”
“Yes. In the kitchen.”
Laevsky proceeded to the kitchen, but at the door, seeing that Samoylenko was busy with the salad, returned to the drawing room and sat down. He always felt awkward in the presence of the zoologist, and now he feared that he would have to talk about his hysterics. Over a minute passed in silence. Suddenly, Von Koren raised his eyes to Laevsky and asked:
“How are you feeling after yesterday?”
“Superb,” Laevsky answered, reddening. “In actuality, it was really nothing out of the ordinary …”
“Until yesterday I had understood that hysteria only occurred with the ladies; that’s why I initially thought that you were doing the dance of Saint Vitus.”
Laevsky smiled ingratiatingly and thought:
How indelicate he’s being for his part. He knows perfectly well that I’m going through a difficult time … “Yes, it was a funny affair,” he said, continuing to smile. “I laughed about it the entire morning today. It’s curious that in the throes of a hysterical fit, what you know becomes absurd, and you laugh at it from your soul while crying at the same time. In our nerve-racking era we are slaves to our nerves; they are our masters and do with us what they please. Civilization has proven to be a bearish hindrance, in this case …”
Laevsky spoke, and he found it unpleasant that Von Koren was seriously and attentively listening to him and attentively watching him, unblinking, indeed studying him; and he felt annoyed at himself that, not taking into account his lack of love for Von Koren, he just couldn’t rid his face of that ingratiating smile.
“Still, I must confess,” he continued, “there were more immediate reasons for the fit and rather sound ones. Recently my health has been seriously shaken. Add to that the ennui, a perpetual lack of money … the absence of likeminded people … I’m in a governor’s predicament.”
“Yes, there’s no way out of your predicament,” Von Koren said.
Those calm, cold words, embodying not just mockery, not just a gratuitous prediction, were insulting to Laevsky. He remembered the expression on the zoologist’s face yesterday, full of mockery and revulsion, and didn’t stay quiet for long and, no longer smiling, asked:
“And how is it that you are aware of my predicament?”
“You were just speaking of it yourself, yes, and your friends take such a burning interest in you that all day long, all one hears is what’s going on with you.”
“What friends? You mean Samoylenko?”
“Yes, him too.”
“I should really ask Alexander Davidich and my friends in general to talk less about me.”
“Here comes Samoylenko; why don’t you ask him to be less concerned with you.”
“I don’t understand your tone …” Laevsky muttered; he was seized by the sensation that he only just now realized that the zoologist hated him, found him contemptible and sought to humiliate him and that the zoologist was his bitterest and most uncompromising enemy. “Save that tone for someone else,” he said quietly, not having the energy to speak louder from the hatred that now kneaded at his chest and neck, as the desire to laugh had yesterday.