Seryozha, snorting and snuffling with emotion, almost carried him back into the living-room, seated him in the armchair, and knelt at his feet, stroking the old twitching, tear-smeared cheeks. “Papa, papa—my papa,” said Seryozha in a soft voice, feeling that there was nobody he loved so much in the world.
Anna, panting behind her son (who had run to his father), arrived in the doorway. She came and leaned over the back of her husband’s chair, feeling so full of delight that even the narrow wispy skull of the old man—across which she saw Seryozha’s face—looked lovely to her.
“And he looks so well,” she said, ardently describing the boy to her husband. “Thinner, perhaps—but so well. … Tschah! there’s no doubt about it, he’s a fine boy, our boy,” she added with a deafening hiccup, as she shook her husband’s shoulder. Neither the old man nor the young one acknowledged her remarks. Seryozha went on saying, “Papa—papa—papa,” stroking inquiringly with gentle blunt fingers the skin round his father’s eye-sockets. Seryozha felt a creator’s pride—almost a paternal pride, as if he had begotten a new papa. “Let there be light,” he had said, he was the god of a new genesis.
The dog was not being welcomed home at all, but it did not mind. It wandered about the room, sniffing deeply, welcoming itself home. A dog’s nose may be said to do something more for it than simply reconstruct the past, since the word reconstruct implies a certain effort of the imagination—an element of guesswork. A dog, I think, smelling a smell, does not guess what has happened, it takes for granted—just as we, hearing a friend calling us, a horse neighing, or a clock striking, have no need for guesswork; our sense has told us something, not hinted at something. The dog, smelling traces of a past event, is a witness of that event; time is no obstacle; as long as a smell clings, so long is yesterday—to a dog—current news. A dog could surely make some contribution to the theory of relativity. “Here,” mused Seryozha’s dog, “that horrid little goat lay down … here, the old woman dropped an egg … here stood that Korean water-carrier whom I always bite … in this chair a missionary sat, carrying a parcel of clothes the paper of which once had something to do with dried raisins. …” The room confessed its past to the dog, reserving nothing that a smell could tell. Presently the dog had a piece of luck—a pleasure of the present interrupted inquiry into the past. Near the threshold it found a piece of fish offal in such a condition of delicious decay as even the dog—a connoisseur in putrescence—seldom had the good fortune to unearth. It stood warily half in and half out of the door, fearing to have its treasure snatched from it, masticating hastily with a breathy sound like ga-haow—ga-haow—ga-haow.
Anna began to feel a little offended with her family for being so preoccupied. “And where is the bride?” she said, a little less sweetly, straightening herself. “Have you dropped her somewhere on the road?”
“Yes,” said Seryozha, dreamily, and then, as if ceasing to murmur the word “papa” had broken a spell, he pulled himself together and rose from his knees. With a lighthearted leap backward, using his arms as crutches, he sat on the table.
“Oh, papa,” he began in his natural, noisy, indifferent young voice, “everything went so beautifully. I got your money—or rather, Mr. Chew got it—”
“Where have you left Mr. Chew?”
“He was here. I expect he went back to show Tanya the way. But, papa, Olga Ivanovna was—”
“Yes, but where is—”
“Well, but, papa, how much d’you think we got? Guess. Well, your two hundred yen had swelled to three hundred and fifty! Worth going for, wasn’t it? And, papa, I saw a mare give birth to a foal. You’ve no idea—Oh, but listen, papa, at Mi-san they have eighteen horses, counting the three yearlings—”
Anna stood looking along the table at his broad back and shoulders, feeling injury swelling in her heart, like the hot assembling blood in a pinched finger. “What’s this—papa—papa—papa—no mamma at all?” Was it for this she had counted the days, rolled her curl-papers on a tear-wet pillow through long nights? She made a difficult effort to keep her voice sweet. “Begin at the beginning, darling boy, and tell us everything. It isn’t really true that you’re married, is it?” Perhaps the bride called Death was a dream, she thought, or Seryozha’s letter a joke. She had the unphilosophical habit of challenging proven facts to prove themselves again—and yet again—and even then of blotting out those twice-proven facts like hated dreams, daring them to materialize again.
“Yes, I am married,” said Seryozha, checked in his boisterousness, but still looking at his father as if he shared a secret with him.
“Such nonsense!” said Anna, vehemently, almost glad to have an excuse to sharpen her voice. “If you could see the child,” she added to her husband, nudging him to remind him that he should join in the reproach, “you would say like me that for such a baby to marry without his parents’ consent is worse than nonsense—it’s wicked, undutiful nonsense.”
“Papa can see me,” said Seryozha, and Anna had once more the impotent sense of speaking to unhearing space—as a diver’s voice, under the sea, is swallowed up, reabsorbed, by his own imprisoned hearing.
“Such nonsense!” she said again, more bitterly, and then, realizing what Seryozha had said, she looked rather sharply at her husband to see what the boy could mean. Although it seemed to her that there was a look of vision in the old man’s eyes, she discounted the remark as nonsense, for the present, for she had no attention to spare for her husband. “Get off the table, Seryozha, and let me get tea ready.” She would not try to make curd cakes
