Stories

They adored each other. Whenever one went to the garden, the other would stand on the terrace and, looking at the trees, call: “Hallo-o-o, Zhenya!” or “Mamochka, where are you?” They always prayed together, and both had the same beliefs and understood each other very well even when they were silent. And their attitude towards people was the same. Ekaterina Pavlovna, too, soon became accustomed and attached to me, and when I did not appear for two or three days, she would send to find out if I was well. She, too, looked at my studies with admiration, and, as loquaciously and candidly as Missyus, told me about things that had happened and often entrusted me with her domestic secrets.

She stood in awe of her elder daughter. Lida was never tender, she spoke only about serious things; she lived her own separate life and for her mother and sister was as sacred and slightly mysterious a personage as an admiral who always remains in his cabin is for his sailors.

“Our Lida is a remarkable person,” the mother often said. “Isn’t it so?”

And now, as the rain drizzled, we talked of Lida.

“She’s a remarkable person,” the mother said and added in a conspiratorial half-whisper, looking around fearfully: “It would be hard to find the like of her anywhere, though, you know, I’m beginning to worry a little. School, first-aid kits, books—it’s all very good, but why go to extremes? She’s nearly twenty-four, it’s time she thought seriously about herself. With all these books and first-aid kits, she won’t see how life is passing by … She should marry.”

Zhenya, pale from reading, her hair disheveled, raised her head and, looking at her mother, said as if to herself:

“Mamochka, it all depends on God’s will!”

And again she immersed herself in reading.

Belokurov came in a vest and an embroidered shirt. We played croquet and lawn tennis, then, when it grew dark, had a long supper, and Lida again talked about schools and about Balagin, who had the whole district in his hands. Leaving the Volchaninovs’ that evening, I went away with the impression of a very long, idle day, and the sad awareness that everything in this world, however long, comes to an end. Zhenya accompanied us to the gate, and perhaps because she had spent the whole day with me from morning till evening, I felt that without her I was somehow dull and that this whole dear family was close to me; and for the first time all summer I wanted to paint.

“Tell me, why is your life so dull, so colorless?” I asked Belokurov, walking home with him. “My life is dull, heavy, monotonous, because I’m an artist, a strange man, from my youth I’ve been chafed by jealousy, dissatisfaction with myself, lack of faith in what I’m doing, I’m always poor, I’m a vagabond, but you, you’re a healthy, normal person, a landowner, a squire—why do you live so uninterestingly, why do you take so little from life? Why, for instance, haven’t you fallen in love with Lida or Zhenya yet?”

“You forget that I love another woman,” Belokurov replied.

He was speaking of his friend, Lyubov Ivanovna, who lived with him in the cottage. Every day I saw this lady, very stout, plump, imposing, like a well-fed goose, strolling in the garden, in a Russian costume with beads, always under a parasol, and a serving girl kept calling her, now to eat, now to have tea. Some three years before she had rented one of the cottages as a dacha and had simply gone on living at Belokurov’s, apparently forever. She was a good ten years older than he and ruled him so strictly that, whenever he went away from the house, he had to ask her permission. She sobbed frequently in a male voice, and then I would send word that unless she stopped I would give up my lodgings, and she would stop.

When we came home, Belokurov sat on the sofa and frowned pensively, and I began pacing the hall, feeling a quiet excitement, as if I were in love. I wanted to talk about the Volchaninovs.

“Lida can only fall in love with a zemstvo activist, whose passions are the same as hers—hospitals and schools,” I said. “Oh, for the sake of such a girl you could not only join the zemstvo, but even wear out a pair of iron shoes, as in the old tale.⁵ And Missyus? How lovely this Missyus is!”

Belokurov, with his drawn out “E-e-eh,” began talking at length about the disease of the age—pessimism. He spoke confidently and in such a tone as if I were arguing with him. Hundreds of miles of deserted, monotonous, scorched steppe cannot produce such gloom as one man when he sits and talks and nobody knows when he will leave.

“The point isn’t pessimism or optimism,” I said irritably, “but that ninety-nine people out of a hundred are witless.”

Belokurov took it personally, became offended, and left.

III

“The prince is visiting in Malozyomovo and sends you his greetings,” Lida was saying to her mother, having returned from somewhere and taking off her gloves. “He tells many interesting things … He promises to raise the question of a dispensary in Malozyomovo again in the provincial assembly, but he says there’s little hope.” And turning to me, she said: “Excuse me, I keep forgetting that this cannot be of interest to you.”

I felt annoyed.

“Why not?” I asked and shrugged my shoulders. “You have no wish to know my opinion, but I assure you the question is of lively interest to me.”

“It is?”

“Yes, it is. In my opinion there’s no need at all for a dispensary in Malozyomovo.”

My annoyance communicated itself to her; she looked at me, narrowing her eyes, and asked:

“What do they need? Landscapes?”

“No need for landscapes either. They don’t need anything.”

She finished taking off her gloves and opened a newspaper that had just been brought from the post office; after a minute she said softly, obviously restraining herself:

“Last week Anna died in childbirth. If there had been a dispensary nearby, she would still be alive. And it seems to me that gentleman landscape painters ought to have some sort of convictions in that regard.”

“I have very definite convictions in that regard, I assure you,” I replied, but she shielded herself from me with the newspaper as if she did not wish to listen. “In my opinion, dispensaries, schools, libraries, first-aid kits, under