Short Stories
danced with the lady in the blue scarf through all the figures and through
all the five quadrilles which they had danced that evening, played the same
prank the whole time: that is, he dropped a little behind his partner,
seized the end of her scarf, and as they crossed over succeeded in
imprinting some twenty kisses on the scarf. His partner sailed along in
front of him, as though she noticed nothing. The medical student really did
dance on his head, and excited frantic enthusiasm, stamping, and shrieks of
delight. In short, the absence of constraint was very marked. Ivan Ilyitch,
whom the wine was beginning to affect, began by smiling, but by degrees a
bitter doubt began to steal into his heart; of course he liked free and
easy manners and unconventionality. He desired, he had even inwardly prayed
for free and easy manners, when they had all held back, but now that
unconventionality had gone beyond all limits. One lady, for instance, the
one in the shabby dark blue velvet dress, bought fourth-hand, in the sixth
figure pinned her dress so as to turn it into--something like trousers.
This was the Kleopatra Semyonovna with whom one could venture to do
anything, as her partner, the medical student, had expressed it. The
medical student defied description: he was simply a Fokin. How was it? They
had held back and now they were so quickly emancipated! One might think it
nothing, but this transformation was somehow strange; it indicated
something. It was as though they had forgotten Ivan Ilyitch's existence. Of
course he was the first to laugh, and even ventured to applaud. Akim
Petrovitch chuckled respectfully in unison, though, indeed, with evident
pleasure and no suspicion that his Excellency was beginning to nourish in
his heart a new gnawing anxiety.
"You dance capitally, young man," Ivan Ilyitch was obliged to say to the
medical student as he walked past him.
The student turned sharply towards him, made a grimace, and bringing his
face close into unseemly proximity to the face of his Excellency, crowed
like a cock at the top of his voice. This was too much. Ivan Ilyitch got up
from the table. In spite of that, a roar of inexpressible laughter
followed, for the crow was an extraordinarily good imitation, and the whole
performance was utterly unexpected. Ivan Ilyitch was still standing in
bewilderment, when suddenly Pseldonimov himself made his appearance, and
with a bow, began begging him to come to supper. His mother followed him.
"Your Excellency," she said, bowing, "do us the honour, do not disdain our
humble fare."
"I ... I really don't know," Ivan Ilyitch was beginning. "I did not come
with that idea ... I ... meant to be going...."
He was, in fact, holding his hat in his hands. What is more, he had at that
very moment taken an inward vow at all costs to depart at once and on no
account whatever to consent to remain, and ... he remained. A minute later
he led the procession to the table. Pseldonimov and his mother walked in
front, clearing the way for him. They made him sit down in the seat of
honour, and again a bottle of champagne, opened but not begun, was set
beside his plate. By way of _hors d'oeuvres_ there were salt herrings and
vodka. He put out his hand, poured out a large glass of vodka and drank it
off. He had never drunk vodka before. He felt as though he were rolling
down a hill, were flying, flying, flying, that he must stop himself, catch
at something, but there was no possibility of it.
His position was certainly becoming more and more eccentric. What is more,
it seemed as though fate were mocking at him. God knows what had happened
to him in the course of an hour or so. When he went in he had, so to say,
opened his arms to embrace all humanity, all his subordinates; and here not
more than an hour had passed and in all his aching heart he felt and knew
that he hated Pseldonimov and was cursing him, his wife and his wedding.
What was more, he saw from his face, from his eyes alone, that Pseldonimov
himself hated him, that he was looking at him with eyes that almost said:
"If only you would take yourself off, curse you! Foisting yourself on us!"
All this he had read for some time in his eyes.
Of course as he sat down to table, Ivan Ilyitch would sooner have had his
hand cut off than have owned, not only aloud, but even to himself, that
this was really so. The moment had not fully arrived yet. There was still a
moral vacillation. But his heart, his heart ... it ached! It was clamouring
for freedom, for air, for rest. Ivan Ilyitch was really too good-natured.
He knew, of course, that he ought long before to have gone away, not merely
to have gone away but to have made his escape. That all this was not the
same, but had turned out utterly different from what he had dreamed of on
the pavement.
"Why did I come? Did I come here to eat and drink?" he asked himself as he
tasted the salt herring. He even had attacks of scepticism. There was at
moments a faint stir of irony in regard to his own fine action at the
bottom of his heart. He actually wondered at times why he had come in.
But how could he go away? To go away like this without having finished the
business properly was impossible. What would people say? They would say
that he was frequenting low company. Indeed it really would amount to that
if he did not end it properly. What would Stepan Nikiforovitch, Semyon
Ivanovitch say (for of course it would be all over the place by to-morrow)?
what would be said in the offices, at the Shembels', at the Shubins'? No,
he must take his departure in such a way that all should understand why he
had come, he must make clear his moral aim.... And meantime the dramatic
moment would not present itself. "They don't even respect me," he went on,
thinking. "What are they laughing at? They are as free and easy as though
they had no feeling.... But I have long suspected that all the younger
generation are without feeling! I must remain at all costs! They have just
been dancing, but now at table they will all be gathered together.... I
will talk about questions, about reforms, about the greatness of Russia....
I can still win their enthusiasm! Yes! Perhaps nothing is yet lost....
Perhaps it is always like this in reality. What should I begin upon with
them to attract them? What plan can I hit upon? I am lost, simply lost....
And what is it they want, what is it they require?... I see they are
laughing together there. Can it be at me, merciful heavens! But what is it
I want ... why is it I am here, why don't I go away, why do I go on
persisting?"... He thought this, and a sort of shame, a deep unbearable
shame, rent his heart more and more intensely.
* * * * *
But everything went on in the same way, one thing after another.
Just two minutes after he had sat down to the table one terrible thought
overwhelmed him completely. He suddenly felt that he was horribly drunk,
that is, not as he was before, but hopelessly drunk. The cause of this was
the glass of vodka which he had drunk after the champagne, and which had
immediately produced an effect. He was conscious, he felt in every fibre of
his being that he was growing hopelessly feeble. Of course his assurance
was greatly increased, but consciousness had not deserted him, and it kept
crying out: "It is bad, very bad and, in fact, utterly unseemly!" Of course
his unstable drunken reflections could not rest long on one subject; there
began to be apparent and unmistakably so, even to himself, two opposite
sides. On one side there was swaggering assurance, a desire to conquer, a
disdain of obstacles and a desperate confidence that he would attain his
object. The other side showed itself in the aching of his heart, and a sort
of gnawing in his soul. "What would they say? How would it all end? What
would happen to-morrow, to-morrow, to-morrow?"...
He had felt vaguely before that he had enemies in the company. "No doubt
that was because I was drunk," he thought with agonising doubt. What was
his horror when he actually, by unmistakable signs, convinced himself now
that he really had enemies at the table, and that it was impossible to
doubt of it.
"And why--why?" he wondered.
At the table there were all the thirty guests, of whom several were quite
tipsy. Others were behaving with a careless and sinister independence,
shouting and talking at the top of their voices, bawling out the toasts
before the time, and pelting the ladies with pellets of bread. One
unprepossessing personage in a greasy coat had fallen off his chair as soon
as he sat down, and remained so till the end of supper. Another one made
desperate efforts to stand on the table, to propose a toast, and only the
officer, who seized him by the tails of his coat, moderated his premature
ardour. The supper was a pell-mell affair, although they had hired a cook
who had been in the service of a general; there was the galantine, there
was tongue and potatoes, there were rissoles with green peas, there was,
finally, a goose, and last of all blancmange. Among the drinks were beer,
vodka and sherry. The only bottle of champagne was standing beside the
general, which obliged him to pour it out for himself and also for Akim
Petrovitch, who did not venture at supper to officiate on his own
initiative. The other guests had to drink the toasts in Caucasian wine or
anything else they could get. The table was made up of several tables put
together, among them even a card-table. It was covered with many
tablecloths, amongst them one coloured Yaroslav cloth; the gentlemen sat
alternately with the ladies. Pseldonimov's mother would not sit down to the
table; she bustled about and supervised. But another sinister female
figure, who had not shown herself till then, appeared on the scene, wearing
a reddish silk dress, with a very high cap on her head and a bandage round
her face for toothache. It appeared that this was the bride's mother, who
had at last consented to emerge from a back room for supper. She had
refused to appear till then owing to her implacable hostility to
Pseldonimov's mother, but to that we will refer later. This lady looked
spitefully, even sarcastically, at the general, and evidently did not wish
to be presented to him. To Ivan Ilyitch this figure appeared suspicious in
the extreme. But apart from her, several other persons were suspicious and
inspired involuntary apprehension and uneasiness. It even seemed that they
were in some sort of plot together against Ivan Ilyitch. At any rate it
seemed so to him, and throughout the whole supper he became more and more
convinced of it. A gentleman with a beard, some sort of free artist, was
particularly sinister; he even looked at Ivan Ilyitch several times, and
then turning to his neighbour, whispered something. Another person present
was unmistakably drunk, but yet, from certain signs, was to be regarded
with suspicion. The medical student, too, gave rise to unpleasant
expectations. Even the officer himself was not quite to be depended on. But
the young man on the comic paper was blazing with hatred, he lolled in his
chair, he looked so haughty and conceited, he snorted so aggressively! And
though the rest of the guests took absolutely no notice of the young
journalist, who had contributed only four wretched poems to the
_Firebrand_, and had consequently become a Liberal and evidently, indeed,
disliked him, yet when a pellet of bread aimed in his direction fell near
Ivan Ilyitch, he was ready to stake his head that it had been thrown by no
other than the young man in question.
All this, of course, had a pitiable effect on him.
Another observation was particularly unpleasant. Ivan Ilyitch became aware
that he was beginning to articulate indistinctly and with difficulty, that