Stories

“It’s not good,” she said. “You’ll be the first not to respect me now.”

There was a watermelon on the table in the hotel room. Gurov cut himself a slice and unhurriedly began to eat it. At least half an hour passed in silence.

Anna Sergeevna was touching, she had about her a breath of the purity of a proper, naive, little-experienced woman; the solitary candle burning on the table barely lit up her face, but it was clear that her heart was uneasy.

“Why should I stop respecting you?” asked Gurov. “You don’t know what you’re saying yourself.”

“God forgive me!” she said, and her eyes filled with tears. “This is terrible.”

“It’s like you’re justifying yourself.”

“How can I justify myself? I’m a bad, low woman, I despise myself and am not even thinking of any justification. It’s not my husband I’ve deceived, but my own self! And not only now, I’ve been deceiving myself for a long time. My husband may be an honest and good man, but he’s a lackey! I don’t know what he does there, how he serves, I only know that he’s a lackey. I married him when I was twenty, I was tormented by curiosity, I wanted something better. I told myself there must be a different life. I wanted to live! To live and live … I was burning with curiosity … you won’t understand it, but I swear to God that I couldn’t control myself any longer, something was happening to me, I couldn’t restrain myself, I told my husband I was ill and came here … And here I go about as if in a daze, as if I’m out of my mind … and now I’ve become a trite, trashy woman, whom anyone can despise.”

Gurov was bored listening, he was annoyed by the naive tone, by this repentance, so unexpected and out of place; had it not been for the tears in her eyes, one might have thought she was joking or playing a role.

“I don’t understand,” he said softly, “what is it you want?”

She hid her face on his chest and pressed herself to him.

“Believe me, believe me, I beg you …” she said. “I love an honest, pure life, sin is vile to me, I myself don’t know what I’m doing. Simple people say, ‘The unclean one beguiled me.’ And now I can say of myself that the unclean one has beguiled me.”

“Enough, enough …” he muttered.

He looked into her fixed, frightened eyes, kissed her, spoke softly and tenderly, and she gradually calmed down, and her gaiety returned. They both began to laugh.

Later, when they went out, there was not a soul on the embankment, the town with its cypresses looked completely dead, but the sea still beat noisily against the shore; one barge was rocking on the waves, and the lantern on it glimmered sleepily.

They found a cab and drove to Oreanda.

“I just learned your last name downstairs in the lobby: it was written on the board—von Dideritz,” said Gurov. “Is your husband German?”

“No, his grandfather was German, I think, but he himself is Orthodox.”¹

In Oreanda they sat on a bench not far from the church, looked down on the sea, and were silent. Yalta was barely visible through the morning mist, white clouds stood motionless on the mountain-tops. The leaves of the trees did not stir, cicadas called, and the monotonous, dull noise of the sea, coming from below, spoke of the peace, of the eternal sleep that awaits us. So it had sounded below when neither Yalta nor Oreanda were there, so it sounded now and would go on sounding with the same dull indifference when we are no longer here. And in this constancy, in this utter indifference to the life and death of each of us, there perhaps lies hidden the pledge of our eternal salvation, the unceasing movement of life on earth, of unceasing perfection. Sitting beside the young woman, who looked so beautiful in the dawn, appeased and enchanted by the view of this magical decor—sea, mountains, clouds, the open sky—Gurov reflected that, essentially, if you thought of it, everything was beautiful in this world, everything except for what we ourselves think and do when we forget the higher goals of being and our human dignity

Some man came up—it must have been a watchman—looked at them, and went away And this detail seemed such a mysterious thing, and also beautiful. The steamer from Feodosia could be seen approaching in the glow of the early dawn, its lights out.

“There’s dew on the grass,” said Anna Sergeevna after a silence.

“Yes. It’s time to go home.”

They went back to town.

After that they met on the embankment every noon, had lunch together, dined, strolled, admired the sea. She complained that she slept poorly and that her heart beat anxiously, kept asking the same questions, troubled now by jealousy, now by fear that he did not respect her enough. And often on the square or in the garden, when there was no one near them, he would suddenly draw her to him and kiss her passionately. Their complete idleness, those kisses in broad daylight, with a furtive look around and the fear that someone might see them, the heat, the smell of the sea, and the constant flashing before their eyes of idle, smartly dressed, well-fed people, seemed to transform him; he repeatedly told Anna Sergeevna how beautiful she was, and how seductive, was impatiently passionate, never left her side, while she often brooded and kept asking him to admit that he did not respect her, did not love her at all, and saw in her only a trite woman. Late almost every evening they went somewhere out of town, to Oreanda or the cascade; these outings were successful, their impressions each time were beautiful, majestic.

They were expecting her husband to arrive. But a letter came from him in which he said that his eyes hurt and begged his wife to come home quickly. Anna Sergeevna began to hurry.

“It’s good that I’m leaving,” she said to Gurov. “It’s fate itself.”

She went by carriage, and he accompanied her. They drove for a whole day. When she had taken her seat in the express train and the second bell had rung, she said:

“Let me have one more look at you … One more look. There.”

She did not cry, but was sad, as if ill, and her face trembled.

“I’ll think of you … remember you,” she said. “God be with you. Don’t think ill of me. We’re saying good-bye forever, it must be so, because we should never have met. Well, God be with you.”