government-owned house. While they were playing cards, the wives of the officials would come in—ugly, tastelessly dressed, coarse as cooks—and the gossip that circulated through the apartment was as ugly and tasteless as the women themselves. Sometimes it happened that Modest Alexeich took Anna to the theater. During the entr’acte he would not let her move an inch from his side, but walked with her on his arm in the foyer and in the corridors. Whenever he bowed to anyone he would immediately whisper to Anna: “He’s a State Councilor … attends the receptions of His Excellency,” or “Very well-to-do … has a house of his own.” Passing the buffet, Anna was overwhelmed with a desire for sweets; she loved chocolate and apple tarts, but she had no money and did not like to ask her husband. He would take up a pear, pinch it with his fingers, and ask uncertainly: “How much?”
“Twenty-five kopecks.”
“Good heavens!” he would say, replacing the pear, but as it was awkward to leave the buffet without buying anything he would order a bottle of seltzer water and drink it all himself, while tears would come to his eyes. At such times Anna loathed him. Or else, suddenly blushing scarlet, he would say quickly: “Bow to that old lady!”
“But I’ve never been introduced to her.”
“It doesn’t matter. She’s the wife of the director of the local treasury. Yes, I’m talking to you—bow to her!” he would grumble insistently. “Your head won’t fall off!”
Anna bowed, and her head did not fall off, but it was sheer torture. She did everything her husband wanted her to do, and was furious with herself for letting him deceive her like the silliest little fool. She had only married him for his money, and yet she had less money now than before her marriage. Formerly her father would sometimes give her a twenty-kopeck piece, but now she did not have a kopeck to her name. She could not bring herself to steal money or ask for it: she was afraid of her husband and trembled before him. She felt as though she had been afraid of him for many years. In her childhood the most imposing and terrifying person had been the principal of her high school, a man who swept down on her like a thundercloud or a steam engine about to crush her. Another great power, often discussed by her family and inordinately feared, was His Excellency. Among the dozen less formidable powers were her high-school teachers, stern and implacable, with their shaved upper lips. But now she feared Modest Alexeich most of all, that man of principle, whose face even resembled the face of her high-school principal. In Anna’s imagination all these powers merged into one single power which took the form of a huge and terrifying white bear which attacked the guilty and those who were weak like her father. The thought of contradicting her husband terrified her, and so she smiled her strained smile and pretended to be pleased when he caressed her in a coarse way or defiled her with his embraces, which filled her with horror.
Only once did Pyotr Leontyich make bold to ask him for a loan of fifty rubles to pay off a most unpleasant debt, but what agony it was!
“Very well, I shall give you the money,” Modest Alexeich said after a moment’s thought, “but I warn you—it will be impossible for me to help you again until you give up drinking! Such a weakness in a man who is in government service is a downright disgrace! I must remind you of the well-established fact that many capable people have been ruined by this addiction, and they were people, moreover, who might have reached very high rank if they had acquired the gift of temperance!”
There followed long-winded paragraphs—“whereas,” “in the measure of,” “in view of the aforesaid”—and all the time poor Pyotr Leontyich suffered agonies of humiliation and an intense craving for a drink.
When the boys came to visit Anna, usually in broken boots and threadbare trousers, they too had to listen to his sermons.
“Everyone has a duty to perform!” Modest Alexeich would say.
He never gave them any money. But he gave Anna rings, bracelets, and brooches, explaining that they would come in usefully on a rainy day. Often he would open her chest of drawers for a formal inspection: to see whether they were still safe.
II
Meanwhile winter was coming on. Long before Christmas there was an announcement in the local newspaper to the effect that on December 29 the usual winter ball would be held in the Hall of Nobles. In excited whispers Modest Alexeich would confer with the wives of his colleagues after the evening game of cards. He would glance anxiously at Anna, and then for a long time he would pace across the room, sunk in thought. At last, late one evening, he stood quite still in front of Anna and said: “You really must have a ball dress made. Do you understand me? Only please consult Marya Grigoryevna and Natalya Kuzminishna.”
He gave her a hundred rubles. She took the money, but when ordering the gown she consulted no one, and spoke only with her father, and she tried to imagine how her mother would have dressed for a ball. Her lamented mother had always dressed her in the latest fashion, taking trouble over her clothes, dressing her daintily like a doll, teaching her to speak French and to dance the mazurka superbly. (She had been a governess for five years before her marriage.) Like her mother, Anna could make a new dress out of an old one, clean gloves with benzine, and rent jewels. Like her mother, she knew how to squint, speak with a lisp, assume ravishing poses, and whenever it was necessary she could get wildly enthusiastic or look mysterious and melancholy. From her father she had inherited her dark hair and dark eyes, her nervous temperament, and her habit of always appearing at her best.
Half an hour before leaving for the ball Modest Alexeich came into her bedroom, coatless. He wanted to put his order round his neck in front of her mirror. He was so dazzled by her beauty and by the splendor of her fresh, gossamer-like gown that he complacently stroked his side whiskers and said: “So that’s what my wife looks like.… Look at you, Anyuta!” Suddenly assuming a solemn tone, he went on: “Anna, my dear, I have given you happiness, and today you have the opportunity to give me happiness. I am begging you to obtain an introduction to the wife of His Excellency! For God’s sake do this for me! Through her I may be able to get the post of senior reporter!”
They drove to the ball. There was a uniformed doorman in the lobby of the Hall of Nobles. The vestibule was a sea of fur coats, hatstands, hurrying lackeys, and decollete ladies hiding behind their fans to avoid the drafts: the place smelled of illuminating gas and soldiers. Walking up the stairs on her husband’s arm, Anna heard music and caught a glimpse of herself in an immense mirror in the glow of innumerable lamps, and there came a rush of joy to her heart and she knew the same presentiment of happiness which had come to her on a moonlit night at the railway station. She walked proudly, sure of herself, and for the first time felt she was no longer a girl, but a lady, and unconsciously she found herself imitating her mother in her walk and in her manner. For the first time in her life she felt rich and free. Even the presence of her husband did not embarrass her, for as she passed through the entrance leading into the Hall of Nobles she had instinctively guessed that the presence of an elderly husband did not in the least detract from her; on the contrary, it gave her an air of seductive mystery, which is always pleasing to men. The orchestra had already struck up in the ballroom, and the dances had begun. After their apartment, Anna was overwhelmed by the lights, the bright colors, the music, the noise, and looking round the ballroom, she thought: “Oh, how adorable!” and immediately she recognized in the crowd the acquaintances she had met at parties and picnics: officers, teachers, lawyers, officials, landowners, His Excellency, Artynov, and also those very decollete ladies dressed in their finery, the hideous and the beautiful, and they were already in their places in the pavilions and booths which made up the charity bazaar, and they were all ready to sell things for the benefit of the poor. A huge officer with epaulettes—she had been introduced to him once before in Old Kiev Street when she was attending high school, but she could no longer remember his name—this officer seemed to rise out of the ground to ask her for a waltz, and she flew away from her husband, feeling like someone caught in the midst of a violent storm in a sailing boat, while her husband was left far behind on the shore.… She danced a waltz, and then a polka,
