“That’s enough, Petya; what are you saying?” said Rameyev with annoyance.
Elisaveta smiled an incredulous smile, full of gentle irony; a golden, saddened smile, set off by the melancholy yellow rose in her black hair. And Elena’s astonished eyes dilated widely.
“Think it over yourself, uncle,” went on Piotr, “and look around you. He has bewitched our little girls completely!”
“Well, if he has,” said Elena with a gay smile, “it’s only just a little as far as I am concerned.”
Elisaveta flushed but said with composure:
“Yes, he’s interesting to listen to; and it’s no use stuffing one’s ears.”
“There, she admits it!” exclaimed Piotr angrily.
“Admits what?” asked Elisaveta in astonishment.
“That for the sake of this cold, vain egoist you are ready to forget everyone.”
“I’ve not noticed either his vanity or his egoism,” said Elisaveta coldly. “I wonder how you’ve managed to know him so well—or so ill.”
“All this is pitiful and absurd nonsense, only an excuse for starting a quarrel,” said Piotr angrily.
“Petya, you envy him,” retorted Elisaveta with unaccustomed sharpness. Then, feeling that she had overstepped the mark, she added:
“Do forgive me, Petya, but really you are exasperating sometimes with your personal attacks.”
“Envy him? Why should I?” he said hotly. “Tell me, what useful thing has he done? To be sure, he has published a few tales, a volume of verses—but name me even a single work of his prose or verse that contains the slightest sense or beauty.”
“His verses. …” began Elisaveta.
But Piotr would not let her continue.
“Tell me, where is his talent? What is he famous for? All that he writes only seems like poetry. If you look at it closely you will see that it is bookish, forced, dry—it is diabolically suggestive without being talented.”
Rameyev interrupted in a conciliatory tone:
“You’re unjust. You can’t deny him everything.”
“Let us admit, then, that there’s something in his work not altogether bad,” continued Piotr. “Who is there nowadays who cannot put together some nice-sounding versicles! Yet what is there really I should respect in him? He’s nothing but a corrupt, bald-headed, ridiculous, and dull-sighted person—yet Elisaveta considers him a handsome man!”
“I never said anything about his being handsome,” protested Elisaveta. “As for his corruption, isn’t it purely town tattle?”
She frowned and grew red. Her blue eyes flared up with small greenish flames. Piotr walked angrily out of the room.
“Why is he so annoyed?” asked Rameyev in astonishment.
Elisaveta lowered her head and said with childish bashfulness:
“I don’t know.”
She could not repress an ashamed smile at her timid words, because she felt like a little girl who was concealing something. At last she overcame her shame and said:
“He’s jealous!”
XII
Trirodov loved to be alone. Solitude and silence were a holiday to him. How significant seemed his lonely experiences to him, how delicious his devotion to his visions. Someone came to him, something appeared before him, wonderful apparitions visited him, now in dream, now in his waking hours, and they consumed his sadness.
Sadness was Trirodov’s habitual state. Only while writing his poems and his prose did he find self-oblivion—an astonishing state, in which time is shrivelled up and consumed, in which great inspiration consoles her chosen ones with divine exultation for all burdens, for all annoyances in life.
He wrote much, published little. His fame was very limited—there were few who read his verses and prose, and even among these but a few who acknowledged his talent. His stories and lyrical poems were not distinguished by any especial obscurity or any especial decadent mannerisms. They bore the imprint of something strange and exquisite. It needed an especial kind of soul to appreciate this poetry which seemed so simple at the first glance, yet actually so out of the ordinary.
To others, from among those who knew him, the public’s ignorance of him appeared inexplicable. His capabilities seemed sufficiently great to awaken the attention and admiration of the crowd. But he, to some extent, detested people—perhaps because he was too confident of his own genius—and he never made a definite effort to gratify them. And that was why his works were only rarely published.
In general, Trirodov did not encourage intimacies with people. He found it painful to look with involuntary penetration into the confusion of their dark, foggy souls.
He found himself at ease only in the company of his wife. Love makes kin of souls. But his wife had died a few years ago, when Kirsha was six years old. Kirsha remembered her; he could not forget her, and kept on recalling her. Trirodov for some reason associated his wife’s death with the birth of his son, though there was no obvious connection: his wife died from a casual, sharp illness. Trirodov thought:
“She bore, and therefore had to die. Life is only for the innocent.”
After her death he always awaited her; there was for him the consoling thought:
“She will come. She will not deceive me. She will give a sign. She will take me with her.”
And life became as easy to bear as a vacillant vision seen in dream.
He loved to look at his wife’s portrait. It was painted by a celebrated English artist and hung in his study. There were also many photographic reproductions of her. It was his joy to muse of her and, musing, to delight in images of her handsome face and her lovely body.
Sometimes his solitude was broken by the intrusion of external life and external, unemotional love. A woman used to come in to him sometimes—a strange, undemanding woman who seemed to come from nowhere and to lead to nowhere. Trirodov had had relations with her for several months. She was an instructress in the local girls’ school, Ekaterina Nikolayevna Alkina—a quiet, tranquil, cold creature with dark red hair and a thin face, the dull pallor of which emphasized the impressively vivid lips of her large mouth; it seemed as if all the sensuality and colour of the face had poured themselves into the lips and made them
