The Complete Short Novels

‘‘I don’t know,’’ Orlov replied.

Pekarsky combed his big beard with his fingers and fell to thinking and was silent afterwards right up until supper. When they sat down to supper, he said slowly, drawing out each word:

‘‘Generally, excuse me, but I don’t understand the two of you. You could be in love with each other and break the seventh commandment as much as you like—that I understand. Yes, that I understand. But why initiate the husband into your secrets? Was it really necessary?’’

‘‘But does it make any difference?’’

‘‘Hm . . .’’ Pekarsky fell to thinking. ‘‘I’ll tell you this, my gentle friend,’’ he went on with evident mental strain, ‘‘if I ever get married a second time, and you decide to make me a cuckold, do it so that I don’t notice. It’s much more honest to deceive a man than to spoil the order of his life and his reputation. I understand. You both think that by living openly, you are acting with extraordinary honesty and liberalism, but with this...how is it called? . . . with this romanticism I cannot agree.’’

Orlov made no reply. He was out of sorts and did not want to talk. Pekarsky, continuing to be perplexed, drummed the table with his fingers, thought, and said:

‘‘I still don’t understand the two of you. You’re not a student, and she’s not a seamstress. You’re both people of means. I suppose you could arrange a separate apartment for her.’’

‘‘No, I couldn’t. Go and read Turgenev.’’¹⁵

‘‘Why should I read him? I already have.’’

‘‘Turgenev teaches in his works that every noble-hearted, honest-minded girl should go to the ends of the earth with the man she loves and serve his idea,’’ Orlov said, narrowing his eyes ironically. ‘‘The end of the world is licentia poetica: the whole world, with all its ends, is located in the apartment of the man she loves. Therefore, not to live in the same apartment with the woman who loves you—means to reject her in her lofty purpose and not to share her ideals. Yes, my dear fellow, Turgenev wrote this porridge, and now I have to slop it up for him.’’

‘‘I don’t understand what Turgenev has to do with it,’’ Gruzin said softly and shrugged his shoulders. ‘‘But do you remember, Georginka, how, in ‘Three Meetings,’ he’s walking late in the evening somewhere in Italy and suddenly hears: ‘Vieni pensando a me segretamente!’ ’’⁵ Gruzin sang. ‘‘That’s good!’’

‘‘But she didn’t force herself on you,’’ said Pekarsky. ‘‘You wanted it yourself.’’

‘‘Well, that’s a good one! I not only didn’t want it, I didn’t even think it would ever happen. When she said she’d move in with me, I thought it was a nice joke.’’

They all laughed.

‘‘I couldn’t want it,’’ Orlov went on in such a tone as if he felt forced to justify himself. ‘‘I’m not a Turgenev hero, and if I ever need to liberate Bulgaria,¹⁶ I won’t want the company of women. I look at love first of all as a need of my organism, low and hostile to my spirit; it should be satisfied reasonably or renounced entirely, otherwise it will introduce elements as impure as itself into your life. So that it will be an enjoyment and not a torment, I try to make it beautiful and surround it with a host of illusions. I will not go to a woman if I’m not convinced beforehand that she will be beautiful, attractive; nor will I go to her if I’m not at my best myself. And it’s only under those conditions that we manage to deceive each other, and it seems to us that we love and are happy. But can I want copper pans and uncombed hair, or that I should be seen when I’m unwashed and out of sorts? Zinaida Fyodorovna, in the simplicity of her heart, wants to make me love something I’ve been hiding from all my life. She wants my apartment to smell of cooking and dishwashing; she needs to move noisily to a new apartment, drive around with her own horses; she needs to count my linen and look after my health; she needs to interfere in my private life every moment and watch over my every step, and at the same time to assure me sincerely that my habits and freedom will remain my own. She’s convinced that we’ll

take a trip in the nearest future, like newlyweds; that is, she wants to be with me constantly on the train and in hotels, and yet I like to read when I travel and can’t bear talking.’’

‘‘But you can admonish her,’’ said Pekarsky.

‘‘How? Do you think she’d understand me? Mercy, we think so differently! In her opinion, to leave her papa and mama or her husband for the man she loves is the height of civic courage, but in my opinion, it’s childishness. To fall in love, to become intimate with a man, means starting a new life for her, but in my opinion, it doesn’t mean anything. Love and a man constitute the main essence of her life, and maybe in this respect the philosophy of the unconscious¹⁷ is at work in her. Try convincing her that love is only a simple need, like food and clothing, that the world is by no means perishing because husbands and wives are bad, that one can be a debauchee, a seducer, and at the same time a man of genius and nobility, and, on the other hand, that one can renounce the pleasures of love and at the same time be a stupid, wicked animal. The contemporary cultured man, even if he stands very low—a French worker, for instance— spends ten sous a day on dinner, five sous on wine to go with dinner, and from five to ten sous on a woman, while giving his mind and nerves entirely to his work. Zinaida Fyodorovna gives not sous but her whole soul to love. I could perhaps admonish her, but in reply, she’ll cry out sincerely that I have ruined her, that she has nothing left in life.’’

‘‘Don’t say anything to her,’’ said Pekarsky, ‘‘simply rent a separate apartment for her. That’s all.’’

‘‘It’s easy to say . . .’’

A brief silence ensued.

‘‘But she’s sweet,’’ said Kukushkin. ‘‘She’s charming. Such women imagine they’re going to love eternally and give themselves with pathos.’’

‘‘But you’ve got to have a head on your shoulders,’’ said Orlov, ‘‘you’ve got to reason. All the experiences known to us from everyday life, and set down in the scrolls of countless novels and plays, unanimously confirm that no adulterous relations and cohabitations among decent people, however great their love is in the beginning, last longer than two years, three at the most. She should know that. And so all these moves, pots and pans, and hopes for eternal love and harmony, are nothing more than a wish to deceive herself and me. She’s sweet and charming —who’s arguing? But she has upset the applecart of my life. What I’ve considered stuff and nonsense till now, she forces me to raise to the degree of a serious question, I serve an idol I’ve never considered a god. She’s sweet and charming, but for some reason now, when I come home from work, I’m uneasy at heart, as if I expect to encounter some discomfort at home, like stove-makers who have dismantled all the stoves and heaped up mountains of bricks. In short, it’s not sous that I give for love now, it’s part of my peace and my