You are driving me into brain fever. Do you suppose I am afraid of a scandal? Your anger—why, what is your anger to me? I love you without hope, and I know that after this I shall love you a thousand times more than ever. If ever I do kill you I shall have to kill myself, too. Oh, well, I shall put off kilUng myself as long as possible, so as to go on feeling this insufferable pain of being witiiout you. Do you know something incredible? I love you more every day, and yet that is almost impossible. And how can I help being a fatalist? Do you remember the day before
yesterday, on the Schlangentoerg, I whispered at your provocation, 'Say the word, and I will leap into that abyss' ? If you had said that word I should have jumped in then. Don't you believe that I would have leapt down?'
'What stupid talk!' she cried.
'I don't care whether it is stupid or clever!' I cried. 'I know that in your presence I must talk, eind talk, and talk— and I do talk. I lose cill self-respect in your presence, and I don't care.'
'What use would it he for me to order you to jump off the Schlangenberg?' she said in a dry and peculiarly insulting manner. 'It would be absolutely useless to me.'
'Splendid,' I cried; 'you said that splendid 'useless' on purpose to overwhelm me. I see through you. Useless, you say? But pleasure is always of use, and savage, unbounded power—if only over a fly—is a pleasure in its way, too. Man is a despot by nature, and loves to be a torturer. You like it awfuDy.'
I remember she looked at me with peculiar fixed attention. My face must have expressed my incoherent and absurd sensations. I remember to this moment that our conversation actually was almost word for word exactly as I have described it here. My eyes were Hoodshot. There were flecks of foam on my Ups. And as for the Schlangenberg, I swear on my word of honour even now, if she had told me to fling myself down I should have flung myself down! If only for a joke she had said it, with contempt, if with a jeer at me she had said it, I should even then have leapt down!
'No, why? I believe you,' she pronounced, as only she knows how to speak, with such contempt and venom, with such scorn that, by God, I could have killed her at the moment.
She risked it. I was not lying about that, too, in what I said to her.
'You are not a coward?' she asked me suddenly.
'Perhaps I am a coward. I don't know. ... I have not thought about it for a long time.'
'If I were to say to you, 'Kill this man,' would you kill him?'
'Whom?'
'Whom I choose.'
'The Frenchman?'
'Don't ask questions, but answer. Whom I tell you. I want to know whether you spoke seriously just now?'
She waited for my answer so gravely and impatiently that it struck me as strange.
'Come, do tell me, what has been happening here?' I cried, 'What are you afraid of—me, or what? I see all the muddle here for myself. You are the stepdaughter of a mad and ruined man possessed by a passion for that devil—^Blanche. Then there is this Frenchman, with his mysterious influence over you, and—here you ask me now so gravely . . . such a question. At any rate let me know, or I shall go mad on the spot and do something. Are you ashamed to deign to be open with me? Surely you can't care what I think of you?'
'I am not speaking to you of that at all. I asked you a question and I'm waiting for an answer.'
'Of course I will kill anyone you tell me to,' I cried. 'But can you possibly . . . could you tell me to do it?'
'Do you suppose I should spare you? I shall tell you to, and stand aside and look on. Can you endure that? Why, no, as though you could I You would kill him, perhaps, fi you were told, and then you would come and kill me for having dared to send you.'
I felt as though I were stunned at these words. Of course, even then I looked upon her question as half a joke, a challenge; yet she had spoken very earnestly. I was struck, nevertheless, at her speaking out so frankly, at her maintaining such rights over me, at her accepting such power over me and saying so bluntly: 'Go to ruin, and I'll stand siside and look on.' In those words there was something so open and cynical that to my mind it was going too far. That, then, was how she looked at me. This was something more than slavery or insignificance. If one looks at a man like that, one exalts him to one's own level, and absurd and incredible as all our conversation was, yet there was a throb at my heart.
Suddenly she laughed. We were sitting on a bench, before the pla3dng children, facing the place where the carriages used to stop and people used to get out in the avenue before the Casino.
'Do you see that stout baroness?' she cried. 'That is Baroness Burmerhelm. She has only been here three days. Do you see her husband—a tall, lean Prussian with a stick? Do you remember how he looked at us the day before yesterday? Go up to the Baroness at once, take off your hat, and say something to her in French.' 'Why?'
'You swore that you would jump down the Schlangenberg; you swear you are ready to kill anyone if I tell you. Instead of these murders and tragedies I only want to laugh. Go without discussing it. I want to see the Baron thrash you with his stick.'
'You challenge me; you think I won't do it?' 'Yes, I do challenge you. Go; I want you to!' 'By all means, I am going, though it's a wild freak. Only, I say, I hope it won't be unpleasant for the General, and through him for you. Upon my honour, I am not thinking of myself, but of you and the General. And what a mad idea to insult a woman!'
'Yes, you are only a chatterer, as I see,' she said contemptuously. 'Your eyes were fierce and bloodshot, but perhaps that was only because you had top much wine at dinner. Do you suppose that I don't understand that it is stupid and vulgar, and that the General would be angry? I simply want to laugh; I want to, and that's all about it I And what should you insult a woman for? Why, just to be thrashed.'
I turned and went in silence to cany out her commission. Of course it was stupid, and of course I did not know how to get out of it, but as I began to get closer to the Baroness I remember, as it were, something within myself urging me on; it was an impulse of schoolboyish mischief. Besides, I was horribly overwrought, and felt just as though I were drunk.
CHAPTER VI
NOW two days have passed since that stupid day. And what a noise and fuss and talk and uproar there was 1 And how unseemly and disgraceful, how stupid and vulgar, it was I And I was the cause of it all. Yet at times it's laughabler—to me, at any rate. I can't make up my mind what happened to me, whether I really was in a state of frenzy, or whether it was a momentary aberration and I behaved disgracefully till I was pulled up. At times it seemed to me that my mind was giving way. And at times it seems to me that I have not outgrown childhood and schoolboyishness, and that it was simply a crude schoolboy's prank.
It was Polina, it was all Polina! Perhaps I shouldn't have behaved hke a schoolboy if it hadn't been for her. Who knows? perhaps I did it out of despair (stupid as it seems, though, to reason like that). And I don't understand, I don't understand what there is fine in her! She is fine, though; she is; I beheve she's fine. She drives other men off their heads, too. She's taU and graceful, only very slender. It seems to me you could tie her in a knot or bend her double. Her foot is long and narrow—^tormenting. Tormenting is just what it is. Her hair has a reddish tint. Her eyes are regular cat's eyes, but how proudly and disdainfully she can look with them. Four months ago, when I had only just come, she was talking hotly for a long while one evening with De Grieux in the drawing-room, and looked at him in such a way . . . that afterwards, when I went up to my room to go to bed, I imagined that she must have just given him a slap in the face. She stood facing him and looked at him. It was from that evening that I loved her.
To come to the point, however.
I stepped off the path into the avenue, and stood waiting for the Baron and the Baroness. When they were five paces from me I took off my hat and bowed.
I remember the Baroness was wearing a light grey dress of immense circumference, with flounces, a crinoline, and a train. She was short and exceptionally stout, with such a fearful double chin that she seemed to have no neck. Her face was crimson. Her eyes were small, spiteful and insolent. She walked as though she were doing an honour to all beholders. The Baron was lean and tall. Like most Germans, he had a wry face covered with thousands of fine wrinkles, and wore spectacles; he was about forty-five. His legs seemed to start from his chest: that's a sign of race. He was as proud as a peacock. He was rather clumsy. There was something like a sheep in the expression of his face that would pass with them for profundity.
