The Complete Short Novels

curiosity. You really are an extraordinary man.’’

I told her once again who I was and why I had been living at Orlov’s, and I spoke longer and in more detail than the evening before. She listened with great attention and, without letting me finish, said:

‘‘It’s all over for me there. You know, I couldn’t restrain myself and wrote a letter. Here’s the reply.’’

On the sheet of paper she handed me, there was written in Orlov’s hand: ‘‘I will not justify myself. But you must agree: it was you who were mistaken, not I. I wish you happiness and ask you to quickly forget your respectful G.O. —P.S. I am sending your belongings.’’

The trunks and baskets, sent by Orlov, were standing there in the living room, and among them was my pitiful little suitcase as well.

‘‘Which means . . .’’ said Zinaida Fyodorovna and did not finish.

We were silent for a while. She took the note and for a minute or two held it before her eyes, and at that moment her face took on the same haughty, scornful, and proud, hard expression it had had the day before at the beginning of our talk; tears welled up in her eyes, not timid, not bitter, but proud, angry tears.

‘‘Listen,’’ she said, getting up impulsively and going to the window, so that I couldn’t see her face. ‘‘I’ve decided like this: tomorrow I’ll go abroad with you.’’

‘‘That’s splendid. I’m even ready to go today.’’

‘‘Recruit me. Have you read Balzac?’’ she asked suddenly, turning around. ‘‘Have you? His novel Pere Goriot²⁴ ends with the hero looking at Paris from the top of a hill and threatening the city: ‘Now we’ll have it out!’ And after that a new life begins. So, too, when I look at Petersburg for the last time from the train, I’ll say to it: ‘Now we’ll have it out!’ ’’

And having said that, she smiled at her joke and, for some reason, shuddered all over.

XV

IN VENICE I began to have pleuritic pains. I had probably caught a cold the evening we went by boat from the train station to the Hotel Bauer. From the first day, I had to take to my bed and stayed in it for about two weeks. Every morning while I was ill, Zinaida Fyodorovna came to me from her room so that we could have coffee together, and then she read aloud to me from French and Russian books, of which we had bought many in Vienna. I had been long familiar with those books or was not interested in them, but beside me was the sound of a dear, kind voice, so that the contents of them all came down to one thing for me: I was not lonely. She would go for a walk, come back in her pale gray dress, in her light straw hat, cheerful, warmed by the spring sun, and, sitting at my bedside, bending low towards my face, would tell me something about Venice or read those books—and I felt good.

At night I was cold, bored, and in pain, but by day I reveled in life—I can’t think of a better expression. The bright, hot sun beating in through the open windows and the balcony door, the shouts below, the splashing of oars, the ringing of bells, the rolling thunder of the cannon at noon, and the feeling of total, total freedom worked miracles with me; I felt strong wide wings at my sides, which carried me God knows where. And what enchantment, how much joy sometimes at the thought that next to my life now went another life, that I was the servant, the guardian, the friend, the needed companion of a beautiful and rich but weak, insulted, lonely young being! It is even pleasant to be ill when you know there are people who wait for your recovery as for a feast. Once I heard her and my doctor whispering outside the door, and then she came into my room with tearful eyes—a bad sign—but I was moved and felt extraordinarily light in my soul.

But now I was allowed to go out on the balcony. The sun and the light breeze from the sea pamper and caress my ailing body. I look down on the long-familiar gondolas, which float with feminine grace, smoothly and majestically, as if they are alive and feel all the luxury of this original, charming culture. There is a smell of the sea. Somewhere a stringed instrument is being played and two voices are singing. How good! How unlike that Petersburg night when wet snow was falling and lashing my face so rudely! Now, if you look directly across the channel, you can see the seashore, and over the vastness of the horizon, the sun ripples so brightly on the water that it hurts to look. My soul is drawn there, to the dear, good sea to which I gave my youth. I want to live! To live—and nothing more!

In two weeks I began going wherever I wanted. I liked to sit in the sun, to listen to a gondolier without understanding, and to spend whole hours looking at the little house where they say Desdemona lived—a naive, sad little house with a virginal expression, light as lace, so light that it seems you could move it from its spot with one hand. I would stand for a long time by the tomb of Canova,²⁵ not tearing my eyes from the mournful lion. And in the Doges’ Palace, I was always drawn to the corner where the unfortunate Marino Faliero²⁶ was daubed over with black paint. It’s good to be an artist, a poet, a playwright, I thought, but if that’s inaccessible to me, I could at least throw myself into mysticism! Ah, if only there was a bit of some sort of faith to add to this untroubled peace and satisfaction that fills my soul.

In the evenings we ate oysters, drank wine, went for boat rides. I remember our black gondola quietly rocking in one spot, the water splashing barely audibly under it. Here and there, reflections of the stars and coastal lights tremble and sway. Not far from us, in a gondola hung with colorful lanterns, which are reflected in the water, some people are sitting and singing. The sounds of guitars, violins, mandolins, male and female voices ring out in the darkness, and Zinaida Fyodorovna, pale, with a serious, almost stern face, sits beside me, tightly clenching her lips and hands. She’s thinking about something, and won’t even stir an eyebrow, and doesn’t hear me. Her face, her posture, her immobile gaze, expressive of nothing, and her memories—unbelievably dismal, eerie, cold as snow— and around us gondolas, lights, music, the song with its energetic, passionate cry: ‘‘Jam-mo!... Jam-mo! . . .’’ What contrasts of life! When she sat that way, with her hands clenched, stony, grief-stricken, I imagined both of us participating in some novel in the old-fashioned taste, entitled An Ill-fated Woman, An Abandoned Woman, or something of the sort. Both of us: she ill-fated, abandoned, and I a true, faithful friend, a dreamer, and, if you like, a superfluous man,²⁷ a luckless fellow, incapable of anything but coughing and dreaming, and maybe also of sacrificing himself... but to whom and for what are my sacrifices needed now? And what am I to sacrifice, may I ask?

Each time, after the evening promenade, we drank tea in her room and talked. We weren’t afraid of touching old, stillunhealed wounds—on the contrary, for some reason, I even felt pleasure when I told her about my life at Orlov’s or openly referred to relations that were known to me and could not have been concealed from me.

‘‘There were moments when I hated you,’’ I said. ‘‘When he fussed, condescended, and lied, it struck me how it could be that you didn’t see anything, didn’t understand, when everything was so clear. You kiss his hands, go on your knees, flatter...’’

‘‘When I ... kissed his hands and went on my knees, I loved him . . .’’ she said, blushing.

‘‘Could it have been so hard to see through him? A fine sphinx he is! A kammerjunker sphinx! I’m not reproaching you for anything, God forbid!’’ I went on, feeling that I had been a bit crude, that I lacked worldliness and that delicacy which was so necessary when dealing with another person’s soul; before I met her, I had never noticed this shortcoming in myself. ‘‘But how could you not have guessed?’’ I repeated, more softly now and with