globes on massive brackets.
In winter the place frowned with gloomy haughtiness. Here lived serious, self-respecting, and well-paid people of the liberal professions.
Here Viktor Ippolitovich Komarovsky rented his luxurious bachelor quarters on the second floor, up a wide staircase with wide oak banisters. Solicitously entering into everything, and at the same time not interfering with anything, Emma Ernestovna, his housekeeper—no, the matron of his quiet seclusion—managed his household inaudibly and invisibly, and he repaid her with chivalrous gratitude, natural in such a gentleman, and did not suffer the presence in his apartment of guests and lady visitors incompatible with her untroubled, old-maidenly world. With them reigned the peace of a monastic cloister—drawn blinds, not a speck, not a spot, as in an operating room.
On Sundays before dinner Viktor Ippolitovich was in the habit of strolling with his bulldog on Petrovka and Kuznetsky Most, and at one of the corners, Konstantin Illarionovich Satanidi, an actor and gambler, would come to join them.
Together they would set off to polish the pavements, exchanging brief jokes and observations so curt, insignificant, and filled with such scorn for everything in the world that without any loss they might have replaced those words with simple growls, as long as they filled both sides of Kuznetsky with their loud bass voices, shamelessly breathless, as if choking on their own vibrations.
12
The weather was trying to get better. “Drip, drip, drip” the drops drummed on the iron gutters and cornices. Roof tapped out to roof, as in springtime. It was a thaw.
She walked all the way home as if beside herself and only when she got there did she realize what had happened.
At home everyone was asleep. She again lapsed into torpor and in that distraction sank down at her mother’s dressing table in her pale lilac, almost white dress with lace trimmings and a long veil, taken from the shop for that one evening, as if for a masked ball. She sat before her reflection in the mirror and saw nothing. Then she leaned her crossed arms on the table and dropped her head on them.
If mama finds out, she’ll kill her. Kill her and then take her own life.
How did it happen? How could it happen? Now it’s too late. She should have thought earlier.
Now she’s—what is it called?—now she’s—a fallen woman. She’s a woman from a French novel, and tomorrow she will go to school and sit at the same desk with those girls, who, compared to her, are still unweaned babies. Lord, Lord, how could it happen!
Someday, many, many years from now, when it was possible, she would tell Olya Demina. Olya would clutch her by the head and start howling.
Outside the window the drops prattled, the thaw was talking away. Someone in the street banged on the neighbors’ gate. Lara did not raise her head. Her shoulders shook. She was weeping.
13
“Ah, Emma Ernestovna, dearest, that’s of no importance. It’s tiresome.”
He was flinging things around on the carpet and sofa, cuffs and shirt fronts, and opening and closing the drawers of the chest, not understanding what he wanted.
He needed her desperately, and to see her that Sunday was impossible. He rushed about the room like a beast, unable to settle anywhere.
She was incomparable in her inspired loveliness. Her arms amazed one, as one can be astonished by a lofty way of thinking. Her shadow on the wallpaper of the hotel room seemed the silhouette of her uncorruption. The nightshirt stretched over her breasts was ingenuous and taut, like a piece of linen on an embroidery frame.
Komarovsky drummed his fingers on the windowpane in rhythm with the horses’ hoofs unhurriedly clattering over the asphalt of the street downstairs. “Lara”—he whispered and closed his eyes, and her head mentally appeared in his hands, her sleeping head with its eyelashes lowered, knowing not that it had been gazed at sleeplessly for hours on end. Her shock of hair, scattered in disorder over the pillow, stung Komarovsky’s eyes with the smoke of its beauty and penetrated his soul.
His Sunday stroll did not come off. Komarovsky went several steps down the sidewalk with Jack and stopped. He imagined Kuznetsky, Satanidi’s jokes, the stream of acquaintances he was going to meet. No, it was beyond his strength! How repugnant it had all become! Komarovsky turned back. The surprised dog rested his disapproving gaze on him from below and reluctantly trudged after him.
“What is this bedevilment?” he thought. “What does it all mean?” Was it awakened conscience, a feeling of pity or repentance? Or was it worry? No, he knew she was safe at home. Why, then, could he not get her out of his head!
Komarovsky went through the front door, went upstairs to the landing, and turned. There was a Venetian window with ornamental coats of arms in the corners of the glass. It cast colored reflections on the floor and the windowsill. Halfway up the next flight Komarovsky stopped.
Do not give in to this gnawing, martyrizing anguish! He is not a boy, he must realize how it would be for him if, from a means of diversion, this girl, his late friend’s daughter, this child, should turn into the object of his madness. Come to your senses! Be true to yourself, don’t change your habits. Otherwise everything will fly to pieces.
Komarovsky squeezed the wide banister with his hand until it hurt, closed his eyes for a moment, and, resolutely turning back, began to go downstairs. On the landing with the sun reflections he caught the adoring gaze of his bulldog. Jack was looking at him from below, raising his head like a slobbering old dwarf with sagging cheeks.
The dog did not like the girl, tore her stockings, growled and snarled at her. He was jealous of Lara, as if fearing that his master might get infected by her with something human.
“Ah, so that’s it! You’ve decided everything will be as before—Satanidi, the meanness, the jokes? Take that, then, take that, take that, take that!”
He started kicking the bulldog and beating him with his cane. Jack made his escape, howling and squealing, and, his behind twitching, hobbled up the stairs to scratch at the door and complain to Emma Ernestovna.
Days and weeks went by.
14
