trembling, too. She kept glancing helplessly at the soup and the pirozhki, waiting for the trembling to calm down, and suddenly couldn’t help herself and looked at Polya.
‘‘You may go, Polya,’’ she said. ‘‘Stepan will do by himself.’’
‘‘No matter, I’ll stay, ma’am,’’ Polya replied.
‘‘There’s no need for you to stay. Leave here altogether... altogether!’’ Zinaida Fyodorovna went on, getting up in great agitation. ‘‘You may find yourself another place. Leave at once!’’
‘‘I can’t leave without my master’s orders. He hired me. It will be as he orders.’’
‘‘I’m also ordering you! I’m the mistress here!’’ said Zinaida Fyodorovna, and she turned all red.
‘‘Maybe you’re the mistress, but only the master can dismiss me. He hired me.’’
‘‘Don’t you dare stay here another moment!’’ cried Zinaida Fyodorovna, and she banged her knife on her plate. ‘‘You’re a thief! Do you hear?’’
Zinaida Fyodorovna flung her napkin on the table and, with a pitiful, suffering face, quickly left the dining room. Polya, sobbing loudly and muttering something, also left. The soup and grouse got cold. And for some reason, all this restaurant luxury on the table now seemed to me paltry, thievish, like Polya. Two pirozhki on a little plate had the most pathetic and criminal look: ‘‘Today we’ll be taken back to the restaurant,’’ they seemed to be saying, ‘‘and tomorrow we’ll be served for dinner again to some official or famous diva.’’
‘‘A grand lady, just think!’’ came to my ears from Polya’s room. ‘‘If I wanted, I’d have been just as much of a lady long ago, but I have some shame! We’ll see who’ll be the first to go! Oh, yes!’’
Zinaida Fyodorovna rang the bell. She was sitting in her room, in the corner, with such an expression as if she had been put in the corner as a punishment.
‘‘Have they brought a telegram?’’ she asked.
‘‘No, ma’am.’’
‘‘Ask the porter, maybe there’s a telegram. And don’t leave home,’’ she said after me, ‘‘I’m frightened to be left alone.’’
After that I had to run downstairs to the porter almost every hour to ask whether there was a telegram. It was an eerie time, I must confess! So as not to see Polya, Zinaida Fyodorovna took dinner and tea in her room, slept there on a short couch resembling the letter E, and made her bed herself. For the first few days, it was I who took the telegrams, but, receiving no answer, she stopped trusting me and went to the telegraph office herself. Looking at her, I also waited impatiently for a telegram. I hoped he would invent some lie, for instance, arrange to have a telegram sent to her from some station. If he was too busy playing cards, I thought, or had already managed to become infatuated with another woman, then of course Gruzin and Kukushkin would remind him of us. But we waited in vain. Five times a day I went to Zinaida Fyodorovna’s room to tell her the whole truth, but she looked like a goat, her shoulders drooping and her lips moving, and I went away without saying a word. Compassion and pity robbed me of all my courage. Polya, cheerful and content, as though nothing had happened, tidied up the master’s study, the bedroom, rummaged in the cupboards and clattered the dishes, and, when going past Zinaida Fyodorovna’s door, hummed some tune and coughed. She liked being hidden from. In the evenings she went off somewhere and rang the bell at two or three in the morning, and I had to open the door for her and listen to her remarks about my coughing. There would at once be another ring, I would run to the room next to the study, and Zinaida Fyodorovna, thrusting her head out the door, would ask: ‘‘Who rang?’’ And she would look at my hands to see if there wasn’t a telegram in them.
When at last the bell rang downstairs on Saturday and a familiar voice was heard on the stairs, she was so glad that she burst into sobs; she rushed to meet him, embraced him, kissed his chest and sleeves, said something that couldn’t be understood. The porter brought in the suitcases, Polya’s cheerful voice was heard. As if somebody had come on vacation!
‘‘Why didn’t you send me any telegrams?’’ Zinaida Fyodorovna said, breathing heavily with joy. ‘‘Why? I was tormented, I barely survived this time . . . Oh, my God!’’
‘‘Very simple! The senator and I went to Moscow that first day, I never received your telegrams,’’ said Orlov. ‘‘After dinner, my heart, I’ll give you a most detailed report, but now sleep, sleep, sleep . . . I got worn out on the train.’’
It was obvious that he hadn’t slept all night: he probably played cards and drank a lot. Zinaida Fyodorovna put him to bed, and after that, we all went around on tiptoe till evening. Dinner passed quite successfully, but when they went to the study for coffee, a talk began. Zinaida Fyodorovna spoke of something quickly, in a low voice; she spoke in French, and her speech bubbled like a brook, then came a loud sigh from Orlov and the sound of his voice.
‘‘My God!’’ he said in French. ‘‘Don’t you have any fresher news than this eternal song about the villainous maid?’’
‘‘But my dear, she stole from me and said all sorts of impudent things.’’
‘‘But why doesn’t she steal from me and say impudent things? Why do I never notice maids, or caretakers, or servants? My dear, you’re simply capricious and don’t want to show character... I even suspect you’re pregnant. When I offered to dismiss her for you, you demanded that she stay, and now you want me to chase her out. But I’m also stubborn on such occasions: I answer caprice with caprice. You want her to go, well, and now I want her to stay. It’s the only way to cure you of your nerves.’’
‘‘Well, all right, all right!’’ Zinaida Fyodorovna said fearfully. ‘‘Let’s stop talking about it . . . Let’s put it off till tomorrow. Now tell me about Moscow... What’s happening in Moscow?’’
X
AFTER LUNCH THE next day—it was the seventh of January, the day of John the Baptist—Orlov put on a black tailcoat and a decoration to go to his father and wish him a happy name day. He was to go by two, but when he finished dressing, it was only half past one. How to spend this half hour? He paced about the drawing room and declaimed the congratulatory verses he used to read to his father and mother as a child. Zinaida Fyodorovna, who was about to go to the seamstress or the store, was sitting there and listening to him with a smile. I don’t know how the conversation started, but when I brought Orlov his gloves, he was standing in front of Zinaida Fyodorovna, saying to her with a capricious, pleading face:
‘‘For God’s sake, for the sake of all that’s holy, don’t talk about something that’s already known to each and every one! What is this unfortunate ability our intelligent, thinking ladies have to speak with passion and an air of profundity about something that has long since set even schoolboys’ teeth on edge? Ah, if only you could exclude all these serious questions from our marital program! What a favor it would be!’’
