‘‘I’m not waiting for anything,’’ she said. ‘‘I’m lost.’’
‘‘Why say that? Better let’s think over together what we’re going to do. Neither you nor I can stay here now . . . Where do you intend to go from here?’’
Suddenly the bell rang in the front hall. My heart skipped a beat. Might it not be Orlov, to whom Kukushkin had complained about me? How would we meet? I went to open the door. It was Polya. She came in, shook the snow off her cape in the front hall, and, without saying a word to me, went to her room. When I returned to the drawing room, Zinaida Fyodorovna, pale as a corpse, was standing in the middle of the room and looked at me with big eyes as I came in.
‘‘Who came?’’ she asked softly.
‘‘Polya,’’ I replied.
She ran her hand over her hair and closed her eyes in exhaustion.
‘‘I’ll leave here at once,’’ she said. ‘‘Be so kind as to take me to the Petersburg side. What time is it now?’’
‘‘A quarter to three.’’
XIV
WHEN WE LEFT the house a little later, the street was dark and deserted. Wet snow was falling, and a damp wind lashed at our faces. I remember it was then the beginning of March, there was a thaw, and for several days the cabs had been driving on wheels. Under the impression of the back stairway, the cold, the darkness of night, and the caretaker in a sheepskin coat, who questioned us before letting us out the gate, Zinaida Fyodorovna became quite faint and dispirited. When we got into the cab and put the top up, she was shivering all over and hastily began telling me how grateful she was to me.
‘‘I don’t doubt your good will, but I’m ashamed that you’re troubling yourself . . .’’ she murmured. ‘‘Oh, I understand, I understand... When Gruzin visited today, I felt he was lying and concealing something. Well, so what? Let it be. But even so, I’m ashamed that you’re going to such trouble.’’
She still had some lingering doubts. To disperse them definitively, I told the cabby to drive down Sergievskaya. Stopping by Pekarsky’s porch, I got out of the cab and rang the bell. When the porter came out, I asked loudly, so that Zinaida Fyodorovna could hear, whether Georgiy Ivanych was at home.
‘‘He’s at home,’’ the porter replied. ‘‘He came about half an hour ago. He must be asleep now. What do you want?’’
Zinaida Fyodorovna couldn’t help herself and stuck her head out of the cab.
‘‘Has Georgiy Ivanovich been living here long?’’ she asked.
‘‘It’s the third week now.’’
‘‘And he never went away anywhere?’’
‘‘No,’’ the porter replied and looked at me in surprise.
‘‘Tell him tomorrow early,’’ I said, ‘‘that his sister from Warsaw has come to see him. Good-bye.’’
Then we drove on. The cab had no front flap, the snow poured on us in big flakes, and the wind, especially on the Neva, pierced us to the bone. It began to seem to me that we had been driving for a long time, suffering for a long time, that I had been listening to Zinaida Fyodorovna’s quavering breath for a long time. Fleetingly, in some sort of half-delirium, as if falling asleep, I looked back over my strange, senseless life, and for some reason I remembered the melodrama
‘‘What am I now?’’ Zinaida Fyodorovna was saying in a voice husky from the cold and damp. ‘‘Where am I to go? What am I to do? Gruzin said: go to a convent. Oh, I would go! I’d change my clothes, my face, name, thoughts... everything, everything, and hide myself forever. But they won’t let me into a convent. I’m pregnant.’’
‘‘Tomorrow you and I will go abroad,’’ I said.
‘‘That’s impossible. My husband won’t give me a passport.’’
‘‘I’ll get you there without a passport.’’
The cab stopped by a two-story wooden house painted a dark color. I rang. Taking from me a light little basket—the only baggage we had brought with us—Zinaida Fyodorovna smiled somehow sourly and said:
‘‘These are my bijoux . . .’’
But she was so weak that she was unable to hold these bijoux. They didn’t open the door for a long time. After the third or fourth ring, light flashed in the windows, and footsteps, coughing, and whispering were heard; at last the lock clicked and a fat woman with a red, frightened face appeared in the doorway. Behind her, at some distance, stood a small, thin old lady with short gray hair, in a white chemise, and with a candle in her hand. Zinaida Fyodorovna rushed into the front hall and threw herself on this old lady’s neck.
‘‘Nina, I’ve been deceived!’’ she sobbed loudly. ‘‘I’ve been crudely, vilely deceived! Nina! Nina!’’
I handed the basket to the woman. The door was locked again, but I could still hear sobbing and the cry: ‘‘Nina!’’ I got into the cab and told the cabby to drive unhurriedly to Nevsky Prospect. I had to think about where to spend the night.
The next day, before evening, I was at Zinaida Fyodorovna’s. She was much changed. Her pale face, now grown very thin, showed no trace of tears, and its expression was different. I don’t know whether it was because I now saw her in different, far from luxurious surroundings, or because our relations were altered, or maybe strong grief had already left its mark on her, but now she did not appear so graceful and well dressed as always; her figure seemed to have become smaller; in her movements, in her gait, in her face, I noticed an unnecessary nervousness, an impulsiveness, as if she was in a hurry, and there was not even the former softness in her smile. I was now dressed in an expensive two-piece suit, which I had bought in the afternoon. Her eyes first took in this two-piece suit and the hat in my hand, then she rested her impatient, searching gaze on my face, as if studying it.
‘‘Your transformation still seems some sort of miracle to me,’’ she said. ‘‘Excuse me for studying you with such
