order to see into the mad enchantment of the earth, and to call everything by name, and if that was beyond her strength, then, out of love for life, to give birth to her successors, who would do it in her place.
That summer Lara arrived overtired from the excessive work she had heaped on herself. She was easily upset. A self-consciousness developed in her that had not been there before. This feature lent a certain pettiness to her character, which had always been distinguished by its breadth and lack of touchiness.
The Kologrivovs did not want to let her go. She was surrounded by the same affection as ever with them. But since Lipa was on her feet now, Lara considered herself superfluous in their house. She refused her salary. They made her take it. At the same time she needed money, and to earn an independent income while being a guest was awkward and practically unfeasible.
Lara considered her position false and untenable. It seemed to her that she was a burden to them all and they simply did not show it. She was a burden to herself. She wanted to flee from herself and the Kologrivovs wherever her feet would take her, but, according to her own notions, to do so she would have to repay the money to the Kologrivovs, and at the moment she had nowhere to get it. She felt herself a hostage on account of Rodya’s stupid embezzlement, and her impotent indignation gave her no peace.
She seemed to see signs of negligence in everything. If the Kologrivovs’ visiting acquaintances made much of her, it meant they were treating her as an uncomplaining “ward” and easy prey. But when she was left in peace, it proved that she was a nonentity and they did not notice her.
Her fits of hypochondria did not keep Lara from sharing in the amusements of the numerous company that visited Duplyanka. She bathed and swam, went boating, took part in nighttime picnics across the river, set off fireworks, and danced. She acted in amateur theatricals and with particular passion competed in target shooting from short Mauser rifles, to which, however, she preferred Rodya’s light revolver. She came to fire it with great accuracy and jokingly regretted that she was a woman and the career of a swashbuckling duelist was closed to her. But the merrier Lara’s life was, the worse she felt. She did not know what she wanted herself.
This increased especially after her return to the city. Here to Lara’s troubles were added some slight disagreements with Pasha (Lara was careful not to quarrel seriously with him, because she considered him her last defense). Lately Pasha had acquired a certain self-confidence. The admonishing tones in his conversation upset her and made her laugh.
Pasha, Lipa, the Kologrivovs, money—it all started spinning in her head. Life became repugnant to Lara. She was beginning to lose her mind. She felt like dropping everything familiar and tested and starting something new. In that state of mind, around Christmastime of the year 1911, she came to a fateful decision. She decided to part from the Kologrivovs immediately and somehow build her life alone and independently, and to ask Komarovsky for the money needed for that. It seemed to Lara that after all that had happened and the subsequent years of her hard- won freedom, he should help her chivalrously, not going into any explanations, disinterestedly and without any filth.
With that aim she went, on December 27, to the Petrovsky neighborhood and, on the way out, put Rodya’s revolver, loaded and with the safety off, into her muff, intending to shoot Viktor Ippolitovich if he should refuse her, understand her perversely, or humiliate her in any way.
She walked in terrible perturbation along the festive streets, not noticing anything around her. The intended shot had already rung out in her soul, with total indifference to the one it had been aimed at. This shot was the only thing she was conscious of. She heard it all along the way, and it was fired at Komarovsky, at herself, at her own fate, and at the oak in Duplyanka with a target carved on its trunk.
8
“Don’t touch the muff,” she said to the oh-ing and ah-ing Emma Ernestovna when she reached out to help Lara take off her coat.
Viktor Ippolitovich was not at home. Emma Ernestovna went on persuading Lara to come in and take off her coat.
“I can’t. I’m in a hurry. Where is he?”
Emma Ernestovna said he was at a Christmas party. Address in hand, Lara ran down the gloomy stairs with the stained glass coats of arms in the windows, which vividly reminded her of everything, and set out for the Sventitskys’ in Flour Town.
Only now, going out for the second time, did Lara look around properly. It was winter. It was the city. It was evening.
It was freezing cold. The streets were covered with black ice, thick as the glass bottoms of broken beer bottles. It was painful to breathe. The air was choked with gray hoarfrost, and it seemed to tickle and prickle with its shaggy stubble, just as the icy fur of Lara’s collar chafed her and got into her mouth. With a pounding heart Lara walked along the empty streets. Smoke came from the doorways of tearooms and taverns along the way. The frostbitten faces of passersby, red as sausage, and the bearded muzzles of horses and dogs hung with icicles emerged from the mist. Covered with a thick layer of ice and snow, the windows of houses were as if painted over with chalk, and the colorful reflections of lighted Christmas trees and the shadows of merrymakers moved over their opaque surface, as if the people outside were being shown shadow pictures from inside on white sheets hung before a magic lantern.
In Kamergersky Lara stopped. “I can’t do it anymore, I can’t stand it” burst from her almost aloud. “I’ll go up and tell him everything,” she thought, regaining control of herself, opening the heavy door of the imposing entrance.
9
Red from the effort, his tongue stuck in his cheek, Pasha struggled before the mirror, putting on his collar and trying to stick the recalcitrant stud through the overstarched buttonhole of his shirt front. He was getting ready to go out, and he was still so pure and inexperienced that he became embarrassed when Lara came in without knocking and found him in such a minor state of undress. He noticed her agitation at once. Her legs were giving way under her. She came in, pushing her dress ahead at each step as if crossing a ford.
“What is it? What’s happened?” he asked in alarm, rushing to meet her.
“Sit down beside me. Sit down as you are. Don’t smarten yourself up. I’m in a hurry. I’ll have to leave at once. Don’t touch the muff. Wait. Turn away for a moment.”
He obeyed. Lara was wearing a two-piece English suit. She took the jacket off, hung it on a nail, and transferred Rodya’s revolver from the muff to the jacket pocket. Then, returning to the sofa, she said:
“Now you can look. Light a candle and turn off the electricity.”
Lara liked to talk in semidarkness with candles burning. Pasha always kept a spare unopened pack for her. He replaced the burned-down end in the candlestick with a new whole candle, placed it on the windowsill, and lit it.
