Moscovskaya Street for one more look at the house that had been rented and long since prepared for the young couple. It was a two-story house, but so far only the upper story was furnished. In the reception room a shiny floor, painted to look like parquet, bentwood chairs, a grand piano, a music stand for the violin. It smelled of paint. On the wall hung a big oil painting in a gilt frame: a naked lady, and beside her a purple jug with the handle broken off.
“A wonderful painting,” said Andrei Andreich, sighing with respect. “By the artist Shishmachevsky.”
Further on was the drawing room, with a round table, a sofa, and armchairs upholstered in bright blue material. Over the sofa, a big photographic portrait of Father Andrei wearing a kamilavka3and medals. Then they went into the dining room with its cupboard, then into the bedroom; there in the half-darkness two beds stood next to each other, and it looked as if, when the bedroom was being decorated, it was with the idea that it should always be good there and could not be otherwise. Andrei Andreich led Nadya through the rooms, his arm all the while around her waist; and she felt herself weak, guilty, she hated all these rooms, beds, armchairs, was nauseated by the naked lady. It was clear to her now that she had stopped loving Andrei Andreich, or perhaps had never loved him; but how to say it, whom to say it to, and why, she did not and could not figure out, though she thought about it every day and every night … He held her by the waist, spoke so tenderly, so modestly, was so happy going around this apartment of his; while in all of it she saw only banality, stupid, naive, unbearable banality, and his arm that encircled her waist seemed to her as hard and cold as an iron hoop. And she was ready to run away, to burst into tears, to throw herself out the window at any moment. Andrei Andreich brought her to the bathroom and touched the faucet built into the wall, and water suddenly flowed.
“How about that?” he said and laughed. “I ordered a hundred-bucket cistern installed in the attic, and now you and I will have water.”
They strolled through the courtyard, then went out to the street and got into a cab. Dust flew up in thick clouds, and it looked as if it was about to rain.
“You’re not cold?” asked Andrei Andreich, squinting from the dust.
She did not answer.
“Yesterday, you remember, Sasha reproached me for not doing anything,” he said after a short pause. “Well, he’s right! Infinitely right! I don’t do anything and can’t do anything. Why is that, my dear? Why am I repulsed even by the thought that one day I might stick a cockade to my forehead and go into government service? 4Why am I so ill at ease when I see a lawyer or a Latin teacher, or a member of the town council? O Mother Russia! O Mother Russia, how many idle and useless people you still carry on your back! How many you have who are like me, O long-suffering one!”
And he generalized from the fact that he did nothing, and saw it as a sign of the times.
“When we’re married,” he went on, “we’ll go to the country together, my dear, we’ll work there! We’ll buy a small piece of land with a garden, a river, we’ll work, observe life … Oh, how good it will be!”
He took his hat off and his hair flew in the wind, and she listened to him, thinking: “God, I want to be home! God!” Almost in front of the house they overtook Father Andrei.
“There goes my father!” Andrei Andreich joyfully waved his hat. “I love my papa, I really do,” he said as he paid the cabby. “A nice old man. A kind old man.”
Nadya went into the house angry, unwell, thinking that there would be guests all night, that she would have to entertain them, smile, listen to the violin, listen to all sorts of nonsense, and talk only of the wedding. Her grandmother, imposing, magnificent in her silk dress, haughty, as she always seemed when there were guests, sat by the samovar. Father Andrei came in with his sly smile.
“I have the pleasure and blessed consolation of finding you in good health,” he said to the grandmother, and it was hard to tell whether he was joking or serious.
IV
The wind rapped on the windows, on the roof; a whistling was heard, and the household goblin in the stove sang his little song, plaintively and gloomily. It was past midnight. Everyone in the house was already in bed, but no one slept, and Nadya kept having the feeling that someone was playing the violin downstairs. There was a sharp knock, probably a blind being torn off its hinge. A moment later Nina Ivanovna came in in just her nightgown, holding a candle.
“What was that knocking, Nadya?”
Her mother, her hair plaited in a single braid, smiling timidly, seemed older, smaller, plainer on this stormy night. Nadya recalled how still recently she had considered her mother an extraordinary woman and had proudly listened to the words she spoke; and now she could not recall those words; everything that came to her mind was so weak, so useless.
From the stove came the singing of several basses, and one could even hear: “O-o-oh, my Go-o-od!” Nadya sat up in bed and suddenly seized herself strongly by the hair and broke into sobs.
“Mama, mama,” she said, “my dear mama, if only you knew what’s happening to me! I beg you, I implore you, let me go away! I implore you!”
“Where?” asked Nina Ivanovna, not understanding, and she sat on the bed. “Go away where?”
Nadya wept for a long time and could not utter a word.
“Let me go away from this town!” she said at last. “There should not be and will not be any wedding, understand that! I don’t love this man … I can’t even speak of him.”
“No, my dear, no,” Nina Ivanovna began speaking quickly, terribly frightened. “Calm yourself—it’s because you’re in a bad mood. It will pass. It happens. You’ve probably had a falling out with Andrei, but lovers’ trials end in smiles.”
“Oh, leave me, mama, leave me!” Nadya sobbed.
“Yes,” said Nina Ivanovna after a silence. “Not long ago you were a child, a little girl, and now you’re already a fiancee. There’s a constant turnover of matter in nature. And you won’t notice how you yourself become a mother and an old woman and have a daughter as rebellious as mine is.”
“My dear, kind one, you’re intelligent, you’re unhappy,” said Nadya, “you’re very unhappy—why do you talk in banalities? For God’s sake, why?”
Nina Ivanovna wanted to say something but was unable to utter a word, sobbed, and went to her room. The
