Heartrending scenes followed, one more unbearable than the other. Voitkovskaya—because this happened while Lara was still living on the Arbat—Voitkovskaya, seeing the tearful Pasha, rushed from the corridor to her side, threw herself on the sofa, and laughed herself sick, repeating: “Ah, I can’t stand it, I can’t stand it! No, I must say, that’s really … Ha, ha, ha! A mighty man! Ha, ha, ha! Eruslan Lazarevich!”3
To rid Pasha of this defiling attachment, to tear it out by the root and put an end to his suffering, Lara announced to Pasha that she flatly refused him, because she did not love him, but she sobbed so much as she uttered this renunciation that it was impossible to believe her. Pasha suspected her of all the deadly sins, did not believe a single word of hers, was ready to curse and hate her, and loved her devilishly, and was jealous of her thoughts, of the mug she drank from, and of the pillow she lay on. So as not to lose their minds, they had to act resolutely and quickly. They decided to get married without delay, even before the end of examinations. The plan was to marry on the first Sunday after Easter. The marriage was postponed again at Lara’s request.
They were married on the Day of the Holy Spirit, the Monday after the feast of Pentecost, when there was no doubt of their successful graduation. It was all organized by Liudmila Kapitonovna Chepurko, the mother of Tusya Chepurko, Lara’s classmate, who graduated with her. Liudmila Kapitonovna was a beautiful woman with a high bosom and a low voice, a good singer, and terribly inventive. On top of the actual superstitions and beliefs known to her, she spontaneously invented a multitude of her own.
It was terribly hot in town when Lara was “led under the golden crown,” as Liudmila Kapitonovna murmured to herself in the bass voice of the Gypsy Panina,4 as she dressed Lara before setting off. The gilded cupolas of the churches and the fresh sand of the walks were piercingly yellow. The dusty birch greens cut the day before for Pentecost hung downcast on the church fences, rolled up in little tubes and as if scorched. It was hard to breathe, and everything rippled before one’s eyes from the sunshine. And it was as if thousands of weddings were being celebrated round about, because all the girls had their hair in curls and were dressed in white like brides, and all the young men, on the occasion of the feast, had their hair pomaded and were wearing tight-fitting two-piece suits. And everyone was excited, and everyone was hot.
Lagodina, the mother of another of Lara’s classmates, threw a handful of silver coins under Lara’s feet as she stepped onto the rug, to signify future wealth, and Liudmila Kapitonovna, with the same purpose, advised Lara, when she was standing under the crown, not to cross herself with her bare arm sticking out, but to half cover it with gauze or lace. Then she told Lara to hold the candle high and she would have the upper hand in the house. But, sacrificing her future in favor of Pasha’s, Lara held the candle as low as possible, though all in vain, for no matter how she tried, it always came out that her candle was higher than his.
From the church they went straight to a party in the artist’s studio, which was also the Antipovs’ housewarming. The guests shouted: “Bitter, we can’t drink it!” And in reply from the other end they roared in unison: “Make it sweeter!” And the newlyweds smiled bashfully and kissed. In their honor, Liudmila Kapitonovna sang “The Vineyard” with its double refrain, “God grant you love and concord,” and the song “Be undone, thick braid, fall free, golden hair.”
When everyone went home and they were left alone, Pasha felt ill at ease in the suddenly fallen silence. Across the yard from Lara’s window there was a lighted street lamp, and no matter how Lara arranged the curtains a strip of light, narrow as the edge of a board, came through the space between the two panels. This bright strip bothered Pasha, as if someone were spying on them. Pasha discovered with horror that he was more concerned with this street lamp than with himself, Lara, and his love for her.
In the course of that night, which lasted an eternity, the recent student Antipov, “Stepanida” and “Fair Maiden” as his comrades called him, visited the heights of bliss and the depths of despair. His suspicious surmises alternated with Lara’s confessions. He asked and his heart sank after each answer from Lara, as if he were falling into an abyss. His much-wounded imagination could not keep up with the new revelations.
They talked till morning. In Antipov’s life there was no change more striking and sudden than that night. In the morning he got up a different man, almost astonished that he still had the same name.
4
Ten days later their friends organized a farewell party in that same room. Pasha and Lara had both graduated, both equally brilliantly, both had offers of jobs in the same town in the Urals, and they were to leave for there the next morning.
Again there was drinking, singing, and noise, only now it was just young people, without their elders.
Behind the partition that separated the living quarters from the large studio, where the guests gathered, stood Lara’s big wicker hamper and a medium-sized one, a suitcase, and a crate of dishes. In the corner lay several sacks. They had a lot of things. Part of them would leave the next morning by slow freight. Almost everything had been packed, but not quite. The crate and the hampers stood open, not filled to the top. From time to time Lara remembered something, took the forgotten thing behind the partition and, putting it in a hamper, evened out the unevenness.
Pasha was already at home with the guests when Lara, who had gone to her school’s office to get her birth certificate and some papers, came back accompanied by the yard porter with a bast mat and a big coil of stout, thick rope to tie up their luggage tomorrow. Lara dismissed the porter and, making the round of the guests, greeted some with a handshake and kissed others, and then went behind the partition to change. When she came out after changing, everyone applauded, broke into chatter, started taking their seats, and the noise began, just as some days ago at the wedding. The most enterprising took to pouring vodka for their neighbors, many hands, armed with forks, reached to the center of the table for bread and to plates of food and hors d’oeuvres. They speechified, grunted after wetting their gullets, and cracked jokes. Some quickly became drunk.
“I’m dead tired,” said Lara, sitting beside her husband. “Did you manage to do everything you wanted?”
“Yes.”
“And even so I’m feeling remarkably well. I’m happy. And you?”
“Me, too. I feel good. But that’s a long story.”
As an exception, Komarovsky was admitted to the young people’s party. At the end of the evening, he wanted to say that he would be orphaned after his young friends’ departure, that Moscow would become a desert for him, a Sahara, but he was so deeply moved that he sobbed and had to repeat the phrase interrupted by his agitation. He asked the Antipovs for permission to correspond with them and visit them in Yuriatin, their new place of residence, if he could not bear the separation.
“That is totally unnecessary,” Lara retorted loudly and carelessly. “And generally it’s all pointless— correspondence, the Sahara, and all that. And don’t even think of visiting. With God’s help you’ll survive without us, we’re not such a rarity—right, Pasha? Maybe you’ll find somebody to replace your young friends.”
And totally forgetting whom she was talking with and about what, Lara remembered something and, hastily getting up, went behind the partition to the kitchen. There she dismantled the meat grinder and began stuffing the
