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A.P. Chekhov
- An Anonymous Story
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VIII
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XV At Venice I had an attack of pleurisy. Probably I had caught
cold in the evening when we were rowing from the station to the
Hotel Bauer. I had to take to my bed and stay there for a
fortnight. Every morning while I was ill Zinaida Fyodorovna came
from her room to drink coffee with me, and afterwards read aloud
to me French and Russian books, of which we had bought a number
at Vienna. These books were either long, long familiar to me or
else had no interest for me, but I had the sound of a sweet,
kind voice beside me, so that the meaning of all of them was
summed up for me in the one thing -- I was not alone. She would
go out for a walk, come back in her light grey dress, her light
straw hat, gay, warmed by the spring sun; and sitting by my bed,
bending low down over me, would tell me something about Venice
or read me those books -- and I was happy.
At night I was cold, ill, and dreary, but by day I revelled in
life -- I can find no better expression for it. The brilliant
warm sunshine beating in at the open windows and at the door
upon the balcony, the shouts below, the splash of oars, the
tinkle of bells, the prolonged boom of the cannon at midday, and
the feeling of perfect, perfect freedom, did wonders with me; I
felt as though I were growing strong, broad wings which were
bearing me God knows whither. And what charm, what joy at times
at the thought that another life was so close to mine! that I
was the servant, the guardian, the friend, the indispensable
fellow-traveller of a creature, young, beautiful, wealthy, but
weak, lonely, and insulted! It is pleasant even to be ill when
you know that there are people who are looking forward to your
convalescence as to a holiday. One day I heard her whispering
behind the door with my doctor, and then she came in to me with
tear-stained eyes. It was a bad sign, but I was touched, and
there was a wonderful lightness in my heart.
But at last they allowed me to go out on the balcony. The
sunshine and the breeze from the sea caressed and fondled my
sick body. I looked down at the familiar gondolas, which glide
with feminine grace smoothly and majestically as though they
were alive, and felt all the luxury of this original,
fascinating civilisation. There was a smell of the sea. Some one
was playing a stringed instrument and two voices were singing.
How delightful it was! How unlike it was to that Petersburg
night when the wet snow was falling and beating so rudely on our
faces. If one looks straight across the canal, one sees the sea,
and on the wide expanse towards the horizon the sun glittered on
the water so dazzlingly that it hurt one's eyes to look at it.
My soul yearned towards that lovely sea, which was so akin to me
and to which I had given up my youth. I longed to live -- to
live -- and nothing more.
A fortnight later I began walking freely. I loved to sit in the
sun, and to listen to the gondoliers without understanding them,
and for hours together to gaze at the little house where, they
said, Desdemona lived -- a na?e, mournful little house with a
demure expression, as light as lace, so light that it looked as
though one could lift it from its place with one hand. I stood
for a long time by the tomb of Canova, and could not take my
eyes off the melancholy lion. And in the Palace of the Doges I
was always drawn to the corner where the portrait of the unhappy
Marino Faliero was painted over with black. "It is fine to be an
artist, a poet, a dramatist," I thought, "but since that is not
vouchsafed to me, if only I could go in for mysticism! If only I
had a grain of some faith to add to the unruffled peace and
serenity that fills the soul!"
In the evening we ate oysters, drank wine, and went out in a
gondola. I remember our black gondola swayed softly in the same
place while the water faintly gurgled under it. Here and there
the reflection of the stars and the lights on the bank quivered
and trembled. Not far from us in a gondola, hung with coloured
lanterns which were reflected in the water, there were people
singing. The sounds of guitars, of violins, of mandolins, of
men's and women's voices, were audible in the dark. Zinaida
Fyodorovna, pale, with a grave, almost stern face, was sitting
beside me, compressing her lips and clenching her hands. She was
thinking about something; she did not stir an eyelash, nor hear
me. Her face, her attitude, and her fixed, expressionless gaze,
and her incredibly miserable, dreadful, and icy-cold memories,
and around her the gondolas, the lights, the music, the song
with its vigorous passionate cry of "Jam-mo! Jam-mo!" -- what
contrasts in life! When she sat like that, with tightly clasped
hands, stony, mournful, I used to feel as though we were both
characters in some novel in the old-fashioned style called "The
Ill-fated," "The Abandoned," or something of the sort. Both of
us: she -- the ill-fated, the abandoned; and I -- the faithful,
devoted friend, the dreamer, and, if you like it, a superfluous
man, a failure capable of nothing but coughing and dreaming, and
perhaps sacrificing myself.
But who and what needed my sacrifices now? And what had I to
sacrifice, indeed?
When we came in in the evening we always drank tea in her room
and talked. We did not shrink from touching on old, unhealed
wounds -- on the contrary, for some reason I felt a positive
pleasure in telling her about my life at Orlov's, or referring
openly to relations which I knew and which could not have been
concealed from me.
"At moments I hated you," I said to her. "When he was
capricious, condescending, told you lies, I marvelled how it was
you did not see, did not understand, when it was all so clear!
You kissed his hands, you knelt to him, you flattered him. . ."
"When I . . . kissed his hands and knelt to him, I loved him . .
." she said, blushing crimson.
"Can it have been so difficult to see through him? A fine
sphinx! A sphinx indeed -- a kammer-junker! I reproach you for
nothing, God forbid," I went on, feeling I was coarse, that I
had not the tact, the delicacy which are so essential when you
have to do with a fellow-creature's soul; in early days before I
knew her I had not noticed this defect in myself. "But how could
you fail to see what he was," I went on, speaking more softly
and more diffidently, however.
"You mean to say you despise my past, and you are right," she
said, deeply stirred. "You belong to a special class of men who
cannot be judged by ordinary standards; your moral requirements
are exceptionally rigorous, and I understand you can't forgive
things. I understand you, and if sometimes I say the opposite,
it doesn't mean that I look at things differently from you; I
speak the same old nonsense simply because I haven't had time
yet to wear out my old clothes and prejudices. I, too, hate and
despise my past, and Orlov and my love. . . . What was that
love? It's positively absurd now," she said, going to the window
and looking down at the canal. "All this love only clouds the
conscience and confuses the mind. The meaning of life is to be
found only in one thing -- fighting. To get one's heel on the
vile head of the serpent and to crush it! That's the meaning of
life. In that alone or in nothing."
I told her long stories of my past, and described my really
astounding adventures. But of the change that had taken place in
me I did not say one word. She always listened to me with great
attention, and at interesting places she rubbed her hands as
though vexed that it had not yet been her lot to experience such
adventures, such joys and terrors. Then she would suddenly fall
to musing and retreat into herself, and I could see from her
face that she was not attending to me.
I closed the windows that looked out on the canal and asked
whether we should not have the fire lighted.
"No, never mind. I am not cold," she said, smiling listlessly.
"I only feel weak. Do you know, I fancy I have grown much wiser
lately. I have extraordinary, original ideas now. When I think
of my past, of my life then . . . people in general, in fact, it
is all summed up for me in the image of my stepmother. Coarse,
insolent, soulless, false, depraved, and a morphia maniac too.
My father, who was feeble and weak-willed, married my mother for
her money and drove her into consumption; but his second wife,
my stepmother, he loved passionately, insanely. . . . What I had
to put up with! But what is the use of talking! And so, as I
say, it is all summed up in her image. . . . And it vexes me
that my stepmother is dead. I should like to meet her now!"
"Why?"
"I don't know," she answered with a laugh and a graceful
movement of her head. "Good-night. You must get well. As soon as
you are well, we'll take up our work. . . It's time to begin."
After I had said good-night and had my hand on the door-handle,
she said:
"What do you think? Is Polya still living there?"
"Probably."
And I went off to my room. So we spent a whole month. One grey
morning when we both stood at my window, looking at the clouds
which were moving up from the sea, and at the darkening canal,
expecting every minute that it would pour with rain, and when a
thick, narrow streak of rain covered the sea as though with a
muslin veil, we both felt suddenly dreary. The same day we both
set off for Florence.
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