extent personal happiness counts in love—all these things are unknown and you can argue about them as much as you please. So far there has been only one incontestably true statement made on the subject of love, and that is the statement that love is the most wonderful thing in the world: everything else which has been written or spoken on the subject of love is incomplete and inconclusive, nothing more than a list of unanswered questions. The explanation which seems to fit one case fails to fit a dozen others, and in my opinion the very best thing is to offer explanations in particular cases rather than generalizations. As the doctors say, each case should receive individual treatment.”
“Perfectly true,” Burkin assented.
“We educated Russians have a partiality for unanswered questions. We usually poeticize love, prettifying it with roses and nightingales, and so we Russians prettify our love affairs with these fatal questions, and usually we choose the least interesting questions. In Moscow when I was a student I had a girl, a charming creature, who was always thinking about the monthly allowance I would give her and the price of a pound of beef whenever I embraced her. So, too, when we are in love, we never weary of asking ourselves questions about whether it is honorable or dishonorable, sensible or stupid, and where this love affair will lead us, and things like that. I don’t know whether this is a good thing or not, but I do know these questions get in the way, and are irritating and unsatisfying.”
He had the appearance of a man who wants to tell a story. People who lead lonely lives always have something on their minds they are eager to talk about. Bachelors living in town visit bathhouses and restaurants for no other reason except to talk, and sometimes they tell exceedingly interesting stories to the waiters and bathhouse attendants; and in the country they will usually pour out their hearts to their guests. Through a window we could see a gray sky and trees drenched in rain. It was the kind of weather which makes it impossible to go anywhere, when the only thing to do is to tell stories and to listen to them. So Alyokhin began his story:
I have been living and farming at Sofino for a long time, ever since I finished at the university. By education I belong to the class of idlers, and by avocation to the study. When I came here I found the estate heavily mortgaged, and since my father had got into debt partly because he had spent so much money on my education, I decided to remain and work until the debt was paid off. That was what I decided to do, but I must confess that I did not settle down to work without some repugnance. The land here does not yield very much, and unless you are going to farm at a loss you have to employ serfs and hired hands, which is about the same thing, or else you have to work like the peasants—I mean, you and your whole family working in the fields. There is no middle way. But in those days I wasn’t concerned with such subtleties. I did not leave a single clod of earth unturned, I gathered together all the peasants and the peasant women from the neighboring villages, and work went on at a furious pace. I myself plowed, sowed, and reaped, and was bored by it all, and frowned with disgust, like a village cat driven by hunger to eat cucumbers in the kitchen garden. My body ached, and I would fall asleep while walking. At first I thought it would be easy to reconcile my life as a toiler with my educated habits. To do this, I thought, it was only necessary to lead an outwardly orderly life. So I settled down here, upstairs in the best rooms, and bade them serve me coffee and liqueurs after breakfast and dinner, and every night when I went to bed I read
During those first years I was elected honorary justice of the peace. Sometimes I would have to go to town to take part in the assizes—the circuit courts—and this pleased and delighted me. When you have lived here for two or three months without ever leaving the place, then—and this happens especially in winter—you finally come to yearn for the sight of a black coat. Now, uniforms and black coats and frock coats were in evidence at the circuit courts; they were worn by lawyers, who are men who have received a liberal education; and there were people to talk to. After sleeping in a sleigh and eating in the servants’ kitchen it was the purest luxury to sit in an armchair wearing clean linen and soft boots, with a chain of office round one’s neck.
I was warmly received in the town, and eagerly made friends. Of these friendships the most intimate and, to speak truthfully, the most delightful for me was my friendship with Luganovich, the vice-chairman of the circuit court. You both know him, of course—a wonderfully charming fellow. All this happened after a celebrated case of arson. The preliminary investigation lasted two days, leaving us exhausted. Luganovich looked over to me and said: “Look here, come and have dinner with me.”
This was an unexpected invitation because I scarcely knew Luganovich except in his official capacity, and I had never been to his house. I returned to my hotel room for a few moments to change, and then went off to dinner. And there it happened that I met Anna Alexeyevna, Luganovich’s wife. In those days she was still a very young woman, no more than twenty-two, and her first child had been born only six months before. This all happened a long time ago, and nowadays I would find it hard to understand what was so remarkable about her, and what attracted me to her, but during the dinner it was all perfectly clear to me. I saw a young woman who was kind, beautiful, clever, fascinating, such as I had never met before. I felt her as a being who was close to me, and already familiar to me: it was as though I had seen her face and those friendly intelligent eyes long ago in the days of my childhood, in the album which lay on my mother’s chest of drawers.
In the arson case, four Jews, said to be members of a gang, were placed on trial; in my opinion they were completely innocent. At dinner I was very much agitated and disturbed, and I no longer remember what I said. All I recall is that Anna Alexeyevna kept shaking her head and saying to her husband: “Dmitry, how can this be?”
Luganovich was a good-natured fellow, one of those simple-minded people who hold firmly to the opinion that once a man is brought before the court he must be guilty, and that one should not express any doubts about the correctness of a judgment unless all legal formalities have been complied with, and never over a dinner or in the course of a private conversation.
“You and I did not set fire to the place,” he said softly, “and as you see, we are not on trial, and we are not in prison.”
Both the husband and the wife tried to make me eat and drink as much as possible. From little things that happened—for example, the way they made coffee together, the way they understood one another without finishing their words or sentences—I came to the conclusion they were living peacefully and in harmony together, and were glad to welcome a visitor. After dinner they played a duet on the piano, then it grew dark and I drove home. It was then the beginning of spring. After that I spent the whole summer at Sofino without a break, and I had no time even to think of the town, but the memory of that handsome fair-haired woman remained with me through all those days. I did not think about her, but it was as though her shadow lay lightly over my soul.
In the late autumn a theatrical performance was given for charity in the town. I went to the governor’s box, having been invited during the entr’acte, and looked and saw Anna Alexeyevna sitting with the governor’s wife; and again there was the same overwhelming and irresistible impression of beauty, and the adorable caressing eyes, and again the same feeling of closeness.
We sat side by side, and later went out in the foyer.
“You have grown thinner,” she said. “Have you been ill?”
