‘‘Indeed, what a bad smell!’’ she said, raising her eyebrows. ‘‘What could it be? Stepan, open the windows in the drawing room and start the fire.’’
She ah’d and fussed and went around all the rooms, rustling her skirts and hissing with atomizers. But Orlov was still in bad spirits; he obviously kept himself from being angry out loud, sat at the desk, and quickly began writing a letter. After writing several lines, he snorted angrily and tore up the letter, then began writing again.
‘‘Devil take them!’’ he muttered. ‘‘They want to leave me with a monstrous memory!’’
Finally the letter got written; he stood up from the desk and said, turning to me:
‘‘Go to Znamenskaya Street and deliver this letter to Zinaida Fyodorovna Krasnovsky, into her own hands. But first ask the porter whether the husband, that is, Mr. Krasnovsky, has returned. If he has, don’t deliver the letter, and come back. Wait! . . . In case she asks if there are any people at my place, tell her that some two gentlemen have been sitting with me and writing something since eight in the morning.’’
I went to Znamenskaya Street. The porter told me that Mr. Krasnovsky had not returned yet, and I went to the third floor. A tall, fat, drab servant with black side-whiskers opened the door for me and sleepily, sluggishly, and rudely, as only a servant can speak to a servant, asked me what I wanted. Before I had time to reply, a lady in a black gown quickly came into the front hall from the drawing room. She narrowed her eyes at me.
‘‘Is Zinaida Fyodorovna at home?’’ I asked.
‘‘That’s me,’’ said the lady.
‘‘A letter from Georgiy Ivanych.’’
She impatiently unsealed the letter and, holding it in both hands, displaying her diamond rings for me, began to read. I made out a white face with soft features, a prominent chin, long dark eyelashes. By the looks of her, I would have given this lady no more than twenty-five years.
‘‘Greet him and thank him for me,’’ she said when she finished reading. ‘‘Is there anyone with Georgiy Ivanych?’’ she asked softly, joyfully, and as if ashamed of her mistrust.
‘‘Some two gentlemen,’’ I replied. ‘‘Writing something.’’
‘‘Greet him and thank him for me,’’ she repeated, and inclining her head to one side and reading the letter on the way, she noiselessly went out.
I was meeting few women then, and this lady, whom I had seen fleetingly, made an impression on me. Going back home on foot, I recalled her face and the subtle scent of perfume and dreamed. When I returned, Orlov was no longer at home.
II
AND SO MY master and I lived quietly and peacefully, but all the same, the impure and offensive thing I had been so afraid of when I went to work as a servant was there and made itself felt every day. I did not get along with Polya. She was a well-nourished, pampered creature, who adored Orlov because he was a master, and despised me because I was a servant. Probably, from the point of view of a real servant or a cook, she was seductive: ruddy cheeks, upturned nose, narrow eyes, and a fullness of body that verged on plumpness. She used powder, painted her eyebrows and lips, wore tight corsets and a bustle, and a coin bracelet. She walked with small, bouncy steps; as she went, she twitched or, as they say, wagged her shoulders and behind. In the mornings, when she and I tidied the rooms, the rustling of her skirts, the creaking of her corset, and the jingling of her bracelet, and that boorish smell of lipstick, toilet water, and perfume stolen from her master, aroused a feeling in me as though she and I were doing something loathsome together.
Because I didn’t steal with her, or didn’t show any desire to become her lover, which probably insulted her, or maybe because she sensed a stranger in me, she conceived a hatred for me from the first day on. My ineptitude, my nonservant appearance, and my illness seemed pathetic to her and made her feel squeamish. I coughed badly then and sometimes prevented her from sleeping at night, since her room and mine were separated only by a wooden partition, and every morning she said to me:
‘‘Again you didn’t let me sleep. You should be in the hospital, not in a gentleman’s house.’’
She believed so sincerely that I was not a human being but something placed immeasurably beneath her, that, like Roman matrons, who were not embarrassed to bathe in the presence of their slaves, she sometimes went around in front of me in nothing but her shift.
Once over dinner (we had soup and roast brought from a tavern every day), when I was in a splendid dreamy mood, I asked:
‘‘Polya, do you believe in God?’’
‘‘As if I didn’t!’’
‘‘So then you believe,’’ I went on, ‘‘that there will be a last judgment and we will answer to God for each of our bad acts?’’
She said nothing in reply and only made a scornful grimace, and, looking this time into her cold, sated eyes, I realized that for this wholesome, fully finished nature, there was neither God, nor conscience, nor laws, and that if I had needed to kill, steal, or set a fire, money couldn’t have bought me a better accomplice.
In an inhabitual situation, and unaccustomed as I was to being addressed informally and to constant lying (saying ‘‘The master is not at home’’ when he was), my first week of life at Orlov’s wasn’t easy. In a servant’s tailcoat, I felt as if I was wearing armor. But then I got used to it. I served, tidied the rooms, ran and drove about on all sorts of errands like a real servant. When Orlov didn’t feel like going to a rendezvous with Zinaida Fyodorovna, or when he forgot that he had promised to call on her, I went to Znamenskaya, delivered a letter there into her own hands, and lied. And the result was not at all what I had expected on becoming a servant; each day of this new life of mine turned out to be a waste both for me and for my cause, since Orlov never spoke of his father, nor did his guests, and of the activity of the well-known statesman all I knew was what I managed, as before, to glean from the newspapers and correspondence with friends. The hundreds of notes and documents I found in the study and read, did not have even a remote connection with what I was looking for. Orlov was totally indifferent to his father’s much-touted activity and looked as if he had never heard of it, or as if his father had died long ago.
III
ON THURSDAYS WE received guests.
I would order a roast from a restaurant and telephone Eliseev 2 to have them send us caviar, cheese, oysters, and so forth. I would buy cards. Since morning Polya would be preparing the tea things and laying the supper table. To tell the truth, this slight activity diversified our idle life somewhat, and Thursdays were our
