it was not she but he who had gone through a battle.
‘‘Yes, my friend, while my nerves were aroused, it all went beautifully,’’ she told him, ‘‘but as soon as night came, I lost heart. You don’t believe in God, Georges, but I believe a little, and I’m afraid of retribution. God demands patience of us, magnanimity, self-sacrifice, and here I refuse to suffer and want to set up my life in my own way. Is that good? But what if it’s suddenly not good from God’s point of view? At two o’clock in the morning my husband came into my room and said: ‘You won’t dare to leave. I’ll summons you back with a scandal, through the police.’ And a short time later, I see he’s in the doorway again, like a shadow. ‘Have mercy on me. Your running away may harm my career.’ Those words had a rude effect on me, they made me feel covered with rust, I thought the retribution was already beginning, and I began to weep and tremble with fear. It seemed to me that the ceiling was going to collapse on me, that I’d be taken to the police at once, that you would stop loving me—in short, God knows what! I’ll go to a convent, I thought, or be a sick-nurse somewhere, and renounce my happiness, but here I remembered that you loved me and that I had no right to dispose of myself without your knowledge, and everything in my head began to get muddled, and I was in despair, I didn’t know what to think or do. But the sun rose, and I became cheerful again. I waited till morning and came racing to you. Ah, how worn out I am, my dear! I haven’t slept for two nights in a row!’’
She was weary and excited. She wanted at the same time to sleep and talk endlessly, and laugh, and cry, and go to a restaurant for lunch, so as to feel herself free.
‘‘Your apartment is cozy, but I’m afraid it will be too small for two,’’ she said after coffee, quickly walking through all the rooms. ‘‘Which room will you give me? I like this one, because it’s next to your study.’’
After one, she changed her clothes in the room next to the study, which after that she began to call hers, and drove off with Orlov to have lunch. They also dined in a restaurant and spent the long stretch between lunch and dinner driving from shop to shop. I kept opening the door to shop clerks and messengers till late in the evening, receiving various purchases. Among other things, they brought a magnificent pier glass, a toilet table, a bed, and a splendid tea service, which we didn’t need. They brought a whole family of copper pots, which we placed side by side on a shelf in our empty, cold kitchen. As we unwrapped the tea service, Polya’s eyes lit up, and she glanced at me two or three times with hatred and fear that maybe not she but I would be the first to steal one of those graceful little cups. They brought a lady’s desk, very expensive but uncomfortable. Evidently Zinaida Fyodorovna had the intention of lodging firmly with us as mistress of the house.
She and Orlov came back after nine. Filled with the proud awareness of having accomplished something brave and extraordinary, passionately in love, and, as it seemed to her, loved passionately, languorous, anticipating a sound and happy sleep, Zinaida Fyodorovna reveled in her new life. Overflowing with happiness, she clasped her hands tightly, convinced that everything was beautiful, and vowed that she would love eternally, and these vows, and her naive, almost childlike confidence that she was also truly loved and would be loved eternally, made her five years younger. She talked sweet nonsense and laughed at herself.
‘‘There’s no higher good than freedom!’’ she said, forcing herself to say something serious and significant. ‘‘How preposterous it is, if you stop to think! We give no value to our own opinion, even if it’s intelligent, but we tremble before the opinion of various fools. Up to the last minute, I was afraid of other people’s opinion, but as soon as I listened to myself and decided to live in my own way, my eyes were opened, I overcame my foolish fear, and now I’m happy and wish everyone such happiness.’’
But her train of thought immediately broke off, and she began talking about a new apartment, wallpaper, horses, traveling to Switzerland and Italy. Orlov, however, was weary from driving around to restaurants and shops, and continued to feel the same confusion before himself that I had noticed in him that morning. He smiled, but more out of politeness than pleasure, and when she said something serious, he ironically agreed: ‘‘Oh, yes!’’
‘‘Stepan, you must find a good cook at once,’’ she turned to me.
‘‘No point hurrying with kitchen matters,’’ said Orlov, giving me a cold look. ‘‘We’ll have to move to a new apartment first.’’
He had never kept a cook or horses because, as he put it, he didn’t want to ‘‘install any mess around him,’’ and he tolerated Polya and me in his apartment only out of necessity. The so-called family hearth with its ordinary joys and squabbles offended his taste, as a banality; to be pregnant or have children and talk about them was bad tone, philistinism. And I now found it extremely curious to picture how these two beings would get along in the same apartment—she, housewifely and practical, with her copper pans and dreams of a good cook and horses, and he, who had often said to his friends that, like a good ship of war, the apartment of a decent, clean man should have nothing superfluous in it— no women, no children, no rags, no kitchenware . . .
V
NOW I’LL TELL you what happened the next Thursday. On that day Orlov and Zinaida Fyodorovna dined at Contan’s or Donon’s. Orlov returned home alone, while Zinaida Fyodorovna, as I learned later, went to her old governess on the Petersburg side, to wait out the time while we were having guests. Orlov didn’t want to show her to his friends. I realized it in the morning over coffee, when he began assuring her that, for the sake of her peace, it would be necessary to cancel the Thursdays.
The guests, as usual, arrived at almost the same time.
‘‘And is the lady at home?’’ Kukushkin asked me in a whisper.
‘‘No, sir,’’ I replied.
He went in with sly, unctuous eyes, smiling mysteriously and rubbing his hands from the cold.
‘‘I have the honor of congratulating you,’’ he said to Orlov, his whole body trembling with obsequious, servile laughter. ‘‘I wish you to be fruitful and multiply like the cedars of Lebanon.’’ 12
The guests went to the bedroom and there exercised their wit at the expense of the woman’s slippers, the rug between the two beds, and the gray bed jacket that was hanging on the back of one bed. They found it funny that this stubborn man, who scorned everything ordinary in love, had suddenly been caught in a woman’s net in such a simple and ordinary way.
‘‘What thou hast mocked, that hast thou also served,’’ Kukushkin repeated several times, having, incidentally, the unpleasant affectation of flaunting Church Slavonic texts.13 ‘‘Quiet!’’ he whispered, putting his finger to his lips, as they went from the bedroom to the room next to the study. ‘‘Shhh! Here Margarete dreams of her Faust.’’14
And he rocked with laughter, as if he had said something terribly funny. I peered at Gruzin, expecting that his musical soul would be unable to bear that laughter, but I was mistaken. His kind, lean face beamed with pleasure. When they sat down to play cards, he said, swallowing his R’s and spluttering with laughter, that to attain full family happiness, it now only remained for Georginka to acquire a cherry-wood chibouk and a guitar. Pekarsky chuckled sedately, but it could be seen from his concentrated expression that he found Orlov’s new love story unpleasant. He did not understand what in fact had happened.
‘‘But what about the husband?’’ he asked in perplexity when they had played three rubbers.
