Forty Stories

sea translucent—a ravishing place!

The owner of the villa, Maria Yegorovna Mikshadze, the widow of a Georgian or perhaps Circassian princeling, was about fifty. She was tall and well fleshed, and no doubt had once been a beauty. She was well-disposed, good- tempered, and hospitable, but altogether too strict. Perhaps “strict” is not the word; let us say she was capricious. She always gave us the best food and fine wines, she lent us money with openhanded generosity, and she was a dreadful torment to us. She had two hobbyhorses: one was etiquette, the other was being the wife of a prince. Driven by these hobbyhorses, she had a mania for carrying things too far. For example, she never permitted herself to smile, perhaps thinking a smile would be out of place on her face, or on the face of any grande dame. Anyone younger than she, even if he was only younger by a single year, was regarded as a whippersnapper. She held that nobility was a virtue in comparison with which everything else was sheer poppycock. She hated frivolity and lightheadedness, she honored those who kept their mouths shut, and so on. Sometimes, indeed, she could be quite insupportable. Had it not been for her daughter, probably none of us would be cherishing our memories of Green Scythe. The old lady was well-disposed to us, but she threw a dark shadow over our lives. Her daughter Olya was the pride and joy of Green Scythe. She was small and well formed, a pretty nineteen-year- old blonde, quite lively and not at all stupid. She knew how to draw, she was a student of botany, spoke excellent French and poor German, read a great deal, and danced like Terpsichore herself. She had studied music at the conservatory, and played the piano passably well. We men loved the little blue-eyed girl, but we were not in love with her. She was dear and precious to us, and Green Scythe would have been unbearable without her. This charming creature stood out against a charming landscape—I am myself little enamored of landscapes without human figures in them. The whisper of the waves and the rustling of the leaves were pretty enough in themselves, but when Olya sang soprano to a piano accompaniment and our own basses and tenors, then the sea and the garden became an earthly Paradise. We loved the little princess, for it was impossible not to love her. We called her the daughter of our regiment. And Olya in turn loved us, gravitating towards us, her male companions, feeling in her natural element only when she was with us. Our little band consisted of house guests, summer visitors, and some of the neighbors. Among the house guests were Doctor Yakovkin, the journalist Mukhin from Odessa, Fiveysky the former physics instructor, now a professor, three students, the artist Chekhov, a Kharkov baron who practiced law, and myself. (I had been Olya’s tutor—I taught her to speak bad German and how to catch goldfinches.)

Every May we descended upon Green Scythe, taking over all the spare rooms and wings of the medieval castle for the entire summer. Every March we received two letters inviting us to stay at the house—one letter was stern and pompous, full of reprimands: this one came from the Princess. The other one was very long and gay and full of madcap projects: this came from her daughter, who found time hanging heavy on her hands in our absence. So we would come and stay until September. Then there were the neighbors who joined us every day. Among them were the retired lieutenant of artillery Yegorov, a young man who had twice taken the entrance examination for the Military Academy and had twice failed, a personable and cultivated fellow; and then Korobov, the medical student, and his wife Ekaterina Ivanovna; also Aleutov, a landowner; also a considerable number of landowners, some active, some retired, some gay, some dull, some good-for-nothings, some dregs from the vat. All summer long, all day and all night, these people drank and ate and played and sang and set off fireworks and quips. Olya was passionately fond of them. She shouted happily and whirled around and made more noise than any of us. She was the heart and soul of the company.

Every evening the Princess summoned us to her drawing room, and purple with anger, she would scold us for our “unconscionable behavior,” putting us to shame, as she declared that she had a splitting headache and it was all our fault. She loved to reprimand us. Her reprimands were utterly sincere, and she deeply believed that they were delivered for our benefit. She was harder on Olya than on anyone else. It was the Princess’s belief that Olya was the most deserving of punishment. Olya was afraid of her mother. She idolized her, and would stand quite still, silent and blushing, while her mother lectured her. The Princess regarded Olya as a child. She even made her stand in a corner and go without lunch and dinner. Interceding for Olya would only have poured oil on the flames. If it had been possible, the Princess would have put us in the corner, too. She made us attend vespers, commanded us to read the Lives of the Martyrs, counted each article of our laundry, and interfered in all our affairs. We were always being sent to fetch and carry for her, and we were always losing her scissors, smelling salts, and thimbles.

“Clumsy fool!” she would say. “You made me drop it when you came blundering along, and now you won’t even pick it up! Pick it up! Pick it up this moment! God sent you to punish me! You are in the way!”

Sometimes we would commit small crimes for fun. Inevitably we would be brought before the old lady for an interrogation.

“So it is you who stepped on my flower bed?” the judge would say. “How dare you?…”

“It was only an accident.…”

“Shut up! I am asking you how you could dare to step on my flower bed!”

Such trials always ended with a free pardon, the kissing of the Princess’s hands, and the withdrawal of the culprit to the sound of Homeric laughter from behind the door. The Princess never spoiled us: she reserved her kinder words for old ladies and little children.

I never saw her smile. There was an old general who came over to play piquet with her on Sundays, who was once the recipient of her whispered confidence that every one of us—all these doctors, professors, artists, writers, and baronial lawyers-would have come to a bad end if it had not been for her good offices. We did not try to make her change her mind. Let her think as she pleased! We would have tolerated the Princess more if she had not made us get up no later than eight o’clock in the morning and go to bed no later than midnight. Poor Olya had to go to bed at eleven o’clock. Useless to contradict her. But we derived a good deal of fun from her illegal attempts to encroach upon our freedom! The whole crowd of us would go up to her and beg her pardon, or we would address complimentary verses to her in the style of Lomonosov, and we would draw up the genealogical tree of the Mikshadze princes, and so on. The Princess would accept all these offerings as pure gold, while we roared with laughter. She loved us, and there was nothing in the least insincere about her deep-throated sighing over the fact that we were not princes. She grew accustomed to us, as one grows accustomed to children.

The only one of us she did not love was Lieutenant Yegorov. She cordially disliked him, and nourished an unwavering antipathy toward him. She only let him come to Green Scythe because they had some financial dealings together, and for reasons of etiquette. There was a time when the lieutenant had been her favorite. He spoke rarely, was handsome and witty, and was “army”: the Princess held the Army in high regard. Sometimes Yegorov behaved strangely. He would sit down, prop his head in his hands, and start saying the most awful things. He would say them about anyone and anything, sparing neither the living nor the dead. The Princess would be beside herself, and whenever he said these awful things she would send us all packing from the room.

One day at lunch Yegorov propped his head in his hands and for no reason at all he embarked on a speech about Caucasian princes, and then he pulled a copy of The Dragonfly from his pocket, and in the presence of the Princess he had the effrontery to read the following passage: “Tiflis is a grand city. Among the merits of this beautiful city, where the ‘princes’ are street-sweepers and hotel bootblacks, must be included …” The Princess rose from the table and left the room in silence. Her hatred for him was all the more inopportune and unfortunate because the lieutenant dreamed of marrying Olya, and Olya herself was in love with him. The lieutenant dreamed furiously, but had little hope that his dreams would come true. Olya loved him secretly, stealthily, imperceptibly, keeping her love to herself. It was contraband love, on which a cruel veto had been placed. She was not permitted to love.

CHAPTER 2