Forty Stories

women, a fact widely known in the town. They said that every day he went on a round of visits among his adorers, exactly like a doctor visiting his patients. Even now, in spite of his gray hair, wrinkles, and spectacles, his lean face, especially in profile, remained handsome.

Sophia Lvovna’s father was an army doctor who had once served in the same regiment as Yagich. Volodya’s father was also an army doctor; at one time he had served in the same regiment as Yagich and her father. In spite of many turbulent and complicated love affairs, Volodya had been a brilliant student, and now, having completed his course at the university with great success, he was specializing in foreign literature and, as they say, writing his dissertation. He lived in the barracks with his father, the army doctor, and although he was now thirty years old he still had no means of subsistence. As children, Sophia Lvovna and he had lived under the same roof, though in different apartments, and he often came to play with her, and they learned dancing and took French lessons together. As he grew to become a well-built, exceedingly handsome young man, she began to feel shy in his presence and fell madly in love with him, and she remained in love with him right up to the moment when she married Yagich. He, too, had been extraordinarily successful with women almost from the age of fourteen, and the women who deceived their husbands with him usually justified themselves by saying that Volodya was only a boy. Recently the story got around that when he was a student living in lodgings near the university, anyone who went to call on him would hear footsteps behind the door and there would come a whispered apology: “Pardon, je ne suis pas seul?” Yagich was enthusiastic about him, and as Derzhavin blessed Pushkin,¹ so Yagich blessed the young student, solemnly regarding him as his successor; and apparently he was very fond of him. For whole hours they played billiards or piquet together without saying a word, and if Yagich drove out on his troika he always took Volodya with him; and Yagich alone was initiated into the mysteries of his dissertation. Earlier, when the colonel was younger, they were often rivals in love, but there was never any jealousy between them. In the society in which they moved, Yagich was nicknamed Big Volodya and his friend Little Volodya.

On the sleigh, besides Sophia Lvovna, Big Volodya, and Little Volodya, there was still another person— Margarita Alexandrovna, known as Rita, a cousin of Madame Yagich, a very pale woman, over thirty, with black eyebrows and wearing pince-nez; she smoked cigarettes continually even in the bitterest frosty weather: there was always cigarette ash on her knees and on the front of her dress. She spoke through her nose, drawling out each word, a coldhearted woman who could drink any amount of liqueurs and brandy without getting drunk, and she liked telling anecdotes with double-entendres in a tasteless way. At home she read serious magazines from morning to night, while strewing cigarette ash all over them and eating frozen apples.

“Oh, Sonya, stop behaving like a lunatic!” she said, drawling out the words. “Really, it is too silly for words!”

When they were in sight of the town gate, the troika went more slowly, as houses and people began to flicker past; and now Sophia Lvovna grew quiet, nestling against her husband and surrendering to her own thoughts. Sitting opposite her was Little Volodya. Her happy, lighthearted thoughts were mingled with melancholy ones. She thought: “This man who is sitting opposite me knows I loved him, and it is very likely he believes the gossip that I married the colonel par depit?” Not once had she ever told him she was in love with him, and she had never wanted him to know this, and accordingly she had concealed her feelings; but from the expression on his face it was perfectly obvious that he had seen through her, and her pride suffered. The most humiliating thing was that ever since the wedding Little Volodya had been forcing his attentions upon her, and this had never happened before. He spent long hours with her in complete silence or talking about nothing at all, and even now in the sleigh, though he did not speak to her, he would gently touch her feet or her hands. It appeared that he wanted nothing more and was delighted with her marriage; it also appeared that he despised her and she excited in him an interest of a certain kind, as though she were an immoral, disreputable woman. And when her triumphant affection for her husband mingled in her soul with feelings of humiliation and wounded pride, she was overcome with a fierce resentment and wanted to sit in the coachman’s box and whistle and scream at the horses.

They were just passing the nunnery when the huge sixteen-ton bell rang out. Rita crossed herself.

“Our Olga lives in the nunnery,” Sophia Ivanovna said, and then she crossed herself and shivered.

“Why did she enter a nunnery?” the colonel asked.

“Par depit” Rita said angrily, with obvious reference to Sophia Lvovna’s marriage to Yagich. “Par depit is all the rage now. Defy the whole world—that’s what they do. She was a furious little coquette, always giggling, and she only liked balls and cavaliers and then suddenly—she had gone away, and everyone was surprised!”

“Not true at all!” said Little Volodya, turning down the collar of his fur coat and revealing his handsome face. “It wasn’t par depit at all, but something quite horrible, if you please. Her brother Dmitry went to penal servitude, and no one knows where he is. Her mother died of grief.”

Then he turned up his collar.

“Olga did well,” he added in a muffled voice. “Living as an adopted child and with that paragon of virtue Sophia Lvovna—you have to take that into account, too!”

Sophia Lvovna was well aware of the note of contempt in his voice and she wanted to say something to hurt him, but she remained silent. Once again she was overcome with a passion of remonstrance, and she rose to her feet and shouted in a tear-filled voice: “I want to go to the early service! Turn back, driver! I want to see Olga!”

They turned back, and the deep-toned nunnery bell reminded Sophia of Olga and about all Olga’s life. Other church bells were also ringing. When the driver brought the troika to a stop, Sophia Lvovna jumped from the sleigh, and ran unescorted up to the gate of the nunnery.

“Please be quick!” her husband shouted after her. “We’re already late!”

She went through the dark gateway and then along an avenue which led from the gateway to the largest of the churches, while the snow crackled under her feet and the church bells rang directly over her head, so that they seemed to penetrate her whole being. Then she came to the church door; there were three steps leading down, and a porch with icons on each side which smelled of incense and juniper, and then there was another door, and a dark figure opened it and bowed low to the ground. Inside the church, the service had not yet begun. One of the nuns was walking past the iconostasis and lighting the candles on the tall candlesticks, while another lit the candles on the luster. Here and there by the columns and the side chapels stood black motionless figures. “I suppose they will be standing there as they are now until tomorrow morning,” Sophia Lvovna thought, and it seemed to her that everything in the church was cold, dark, and boring—more boring than a cemetery. With a bored gaze she watched those motionless figures growing colder each minute, and suddenly she felt as though a hand were squeezing her heart. She recognized Olga, who was one of the nuns, with thin shoulders, a black kerchief over her head, and quite short. She was sure she had seen her, though when Olga had entered the nunnery she was plump and seemed taller. Hesitating, completely overwhelmed by what she had seen, Sophia Lvovna went up to the nun and looked at her over her shoulder, and she was sure it was Olga.

“Olga!” she cried, and clapped her hands, and she was so tongue-tied that she could only say: “Olga!”