CHAPTER VI

       Table of Contents

      The telegram was dispatched with one-eyed Kuz’ma. Il’ya was ordered to send carriages to the station in about an hour. In order to kill time, I began leisurely to light the lamps and candles in all the rooms, then I opened the piano and passed my fingers over the keys.

      After that, I remember, I lay down on the same divan and thought of nothing, only waving away with my hand the Count, who came and pestered me with his chatter. I was in a state of drowsiness, half-asleep, conscious only of the brilliant light of the lamps and feeling in a gay and quiet mood… The image of the girl in red, with her head bent towards her shoulder, and her eyes filled with horror at the thought of that dramatic death, stood before me and quietly shook its little finger at me… The image of another girl, with a pale, proud face, in a black dress, flitted past. She looked at me half-entreatingly, half-reproachfully.

      Later on I heard noise, laughter, running about… Deep, dark eyes obscured the light. I saw their brilliancy, their laughter… A joyful smile played about the luscious lips… That was how my gipsy Tina smiled.

      ‘Is it you?’ her voice asked. ‘You’re asleep? Get up, darling… How long it is since I saw you last!’

      I silently pressed her hand and drew her towards me…

      ‘Let us go inside… Everybody has come…’

      ‘Stay! I’m all right here, Tina…’

      ‘But… there’s too much light… You’re mad! Someone might come in…’

      ‘I’ll wring the neck of anyone who does! I’m so happy, Tina… Two years have passed since last we met…

      Somebody began to play the piano in the ballroom.

      ‘Akh! Moskva, Moskva, Moskva, white-stoned Moskva!’… several voices sang in chorus.

      ‘You see, they are all singing there… Nobody will come in…’

      ‘Yes, yes…’

      The meeting with Tina took away my drowsiness… Ten minutes later she led me into the ballroom, where the chorus was standing in a semicircle… The Count, sitting astride a chair, was beating time with his hands… Pshekhotsky stood behind his chair, looking with astonished eyes at these singing birds. I tore the balalaika out of Karpov’s hands, struck the chords, and -

      ‘Down the Volga… down the mother Volga.’

      ‘Down the Vo-o-olga!’ the chorus chimed in.

      ‘Ay, burn, speak… speak…’

      I waved my hand, and in an instant with the rapidity of lightning there was another transition…

      ‘Nights of madness, nights of gladness…’

      Nothing acts more irritatingly, more titillatingly on my nerves than such rapid transitions. I trembled with rapture, and embracing Tina with one arm and waving the balalaika in the air with the other hand, I sang ‘Nights of madness’ to the end… The balalaika fell noisily on the floor and was shivered into tiny fragments…

      ‘Wine!’

      After that my recollections are confused and chaotic… Everything is mixed, confused, entangled; everything is dim, obscure… I remember the grey sky of early morning… We are in a boat… The lake is slightly agitated, and seems to grumble at our debauchery… I am standing up in the middle of the boat, shaking it… Tina tries to convince me I may fall into the water, and implores me to sit down… I deplore loudly that there are no waves on the lake as high as the Stone Grave, and frighten the martins that flit like white spots over the blue surface of the lake with my shouts… Then follows a long, sultry day, with its endless lunches, its ten-year-old liqueurs, its punches… its debauches… There are only a few moments I can remember of that day… I remember swinging with Tina in the garden. I stand on one end of the board, she on the other. I work energetically, using my whole body as much as my strength permits, and I don’t exactly know what I want: that Tina should fall from the swing and be killed, or that she should fly to the very clouds! Tina stands there, pale as death, but proud and determined; she has pressed her lips tightly together so as not to betray by a single sound the fear she feels. We fly ever higher and higher, and… I can’t remember how it ended. Then there follows a walk with Tina in a distant avenue of the park, with green vaults above that protect it from the sun. A poetical twilight, black tresses, luscious lips, whispers… Then the little contralto is walking beside me, a fair-haired girl with a sharp little nose, childlike eyes and a small waist. I walk about with her until Tina, having followed us, makes a scene… The gipsy is pale, and furious… She calls me ‘accursed’, and, much offended,” prepares to return to town. The Count, also pale and with trembling hands, runs along beside us, and, as usual, can’t find the proper words to persuade Tina to remain… In the end she boxes my ears… Strange! I, who fly into a rage at the slightest insult offered me by a man, am quite indifferent to a box on the ear given me by a woman… Again time is dragging heavily after dinner, again there is a snake on the steps, the sleeping figure of Franz with flies round his mouth, the gate… The girl in red is standing on the Stone Grave, but perceiving us from afar, she disappears like a lizard.

      By evening we had made it up with Tina and were again friends. The evening was succeeded by the same sort of wild night, with music, riotous singing, the same nerve-wracking succession of refrains… and not a moment’s sleep!

      ‘This is self-destruction!’ Urbenin whispered to me. He had come in for a moment to listen to our singing.

      He was certainly right. I remember next the Count and I standing in the garden face to face, and quarrelling. Black-browed Kaetan is walking about near us all the time, taking no part in our jollifications, but he had still not slept but had followed us about like a shadow… The sky is already brightening, and on the very summits of the highest trees the golden rays of the rising sun are beginning to shine. Around us is the chatter of sparrows, the songs of the starlings, and the rustle and flapping of wings that had become heavy during the night… The lowing of the herds and the cries of the shepherds can be heard. A table with a marble slab stands before us. On the table are candles that give out a faint light.

      Ends of cigarettes, papers from sweets, broken wineglasses, orange peel…

      ‘You must take it!’ I say, pressing on the Count a parcel of rouble notes. ‘I will force you to take it!’

      ‘But it was I who sent for them and not you!’ the Count insisted, trying to catch hold of one of my buttons. ‘I am the master here… I treated you. Why should you pay? Can’t you understand you even insult me by offering to do so?’

      ‘I also engaged them, so I pay half. You won’t take it? I don’t understand such favours! Surely you don’t think because you are as rich as the devil that you have the right to confer such favours on me? The devil take it! I engaged Karpov, and I will pay him! I want none of your halves! I wrote the telegram!’

      ‘In a restaurant, Serezha, you may pay as much as you like, but my house is not a restaurant… Besides, I really don’t understand why you are making all this fuss. I can’t understand your insistent prodigality. You have little money, while I am rolling in wealth… Justice itself is on my side!’

      ‘Then you will not take it? No? Well, then, you needn’t!’

      I