The Eternal Husband and Other Stories

Pavel Pavlovich cringed all over, the drunkenness even fell from him; his lips trembled.

“Is it me, Alexei Ivanovich, that you’re calling a scoundrel—you calling me, sir?”

But Velchaninov had already recovered himself.

“I’m ready to apologize,” he answered, after pausing briefly in gloomy reflection, “but only in the case that you yourself wish to be direct, and that at once.”

“And in your place I’d apologize anyway, Alexei Ivanovich.”

“Very well, so be it,” Velchaninov again paused briefly, “I apologize to you; but you must agree, Pavel Pavlovich, that after all this I no longer reckon myself as owing to you, that is, I’m speaking with regard to the whole matter, and not only the present case.”

“Never mind, sir, what is there to reckon?” Pavel Pavlovich grinned, looking down, however.

“And if so, all the better, all the better! Finish your wine and lie down, because I’m not letting you go even so…”

“What of the wine, sir…” Pavel Pavlovich, as if a bit embarrassed, nevertheless went up to the table and began to finish his already long filled last glass. Perhaps he had drunk a lot before then, so that his hand shook now and he splashed some of the wine on the floor, on his shirt, and on his waistcoat, but he drank it to the bottom even so, just as if he were unable to leave it undrunk, and, having respectfully placed the empty glass on the table, obediently went over to his bed to undress.

“Wouldn’t it be better… not to spend the night?” he said suddenly, for some reason or other, having taken one boot off already and holding it in his hands.

“No, not better!” Velchaninov replied irately, pacing the room tirelessly, without glancing at him.

The man undressed and lay down. A quarter of an hour later, Velchaninov also lay down and put out the candle.

He had trouble falling asleep. Something new, confusing the matter still more, appearing suddenly from somewhere, alarmed him now, and at the same time he felt that, for some reason, he was ashamed of this alarm. He was dozing off, but some sort of rustling suddenly awakened him. He turned at once to look at Pavel Pavlovich’s bed. The room was dark (the curtains were fully drawn), but it seemed to him that Pavel Pavlovich was not lying down but had gotten up and was sitting on the bed.

“What’s with you?” Velchaninov called.

“A shade, sir,” Pavel Pavlovich uttered, barely audibly, after waiting a little.

“What’s that? What kind of shade?”

“There, in that room, through the doorway, I saw as if a shade, sir.”

“Whose shade?” Velchaninov asked, after a brief pause.

“Natalia Vassilievna’s, sir.”

Velchaninov stood on the rug and himself peeked through the hall into the other room, the door to which was always left open. There were no curtains on the windows there, only blinds, and so it was much brighter.

“There’s nothing in that room, and you are drunk—lie down!” Velchaninov said, lay down, and wrapped himself in the blanket. Pavel Pavlovich did not say a word and lay down as well.

“And have you ever seen a shade before?” Velchaninov suddenly asked, some ten minutes later.

“I think I did once, sir,” Pavel Pavlovich responded weakly and also after a while. Then silence fell again.

Velchaninov could not have said for certain whether he slept or not, but about an hour went by—and suddenly he turned over again: was it some kind of rustling that awakened him?—he did not know that either, but it seemed to him that amid the perfect darkness something was standing over him, white, not having reached him yet, but already in the middle of the room. He sat up in bed and stared for a whole minute.

“Is that you, Pavel Pavlovich?” he said in a weakened voice. His own voice, sounding suddenly in the silence and darkness, seemed somehow strange to him.

There came no reply, but there was no longer any doubt that someone was standing there.

“Is that you… Pavel Pavlovich?” he repeated more loudly, even so loudly that if Pavel Pavlovich had been peacefully asleep in his bed, he could not have failed to wake up and reply.

But again there came no reply, and instead it seemed to him that this white and barely distinguishable figure moved still closer to him. Then a strange thing happened: something in him suddenly as if came unhinged, just as earlier, and he shouted with all his might in the most absurd, enraged voice, choking on almost every word:

“If you, you drunken buffoon—dare merely to think—that you can—frighten me—I’ll turn to the wall, cover my head with the blanket, and not turn around once during the whole night—to prove to you how greatly I value—even if you stand there till morning… buffoonishly… and I spit on you!”

And, having spat furiously in the direction of the presumed Pavel Pavlovich, he suddenly turned to the wall, wrapped himself, as he had said, in the blanket, and as if froze in that position without moving. A dead silence fell. Whether the shade was moving closer or remained where it was—he could not tell, but his heart was pounding— pounding—pounding… At least five full minutes went by; and suddenly, from two steps away, came the weak, quite plaintive voice of Pavel Pavlovich:

“Alexei Ivanovich, I got up to look for…” (and he named a most necessary household object). “I didn’t find it there where I was… I wanted to look quietly by your bed, sir.”

“Then why were you silent… when I shouted!” Velchaninov asked in a faltering voice, after waiting for about half a minute.

“I was frightened, sir. You shouted so… I got frightened, sir.”

“It’s in the corner to the left, toward the door, in the cupboard, light a candle…”