“Well, to hell with her,” he thought, leaving the study, and went into the dining room, where the servants were lowering the blinds on the tall, sunny windows, glanced for some reason to the right, through the doors of the reception hall, where in the late afternoon light the glass cups on the feet of the grand piano were reflected in the parquet, then passed to the left, into the drawing room, beyond which was the divan room; from the drawing room he went out onto the balcony, descended to the brightly multicoloured flower bed, walked around it, and wandered off down a shady avenue lined by tall trees… It was still hot in the sunshine, and there were still two hours left until dinner.

At half-seven a gong began howling in the vestibule. He was the first to enter the dining room, with its festively glittering chandelier, where beside a table by the wall there already stood a fat, clean-shaven cook all in starched white, a lean-cheeked footman in a frock coat and white, knitted gloves, and a little maid, delicate in a French way. A minute later, his aunt came in unsteadily like a milky-grey queen, in a straw-colored silk dress with cream lace, her ankles swelling above tight silk shoes, and, at long last^[95], her. But after wheeling his uncle up to the table, she immediately, without turning round, glided out – the student only had time to notice a peculiarity of her eyes: they did not blink. His uncle made little signs of the cross over his light-grey, double-breasted general’s jacket, the student and his aunt devoutly crossed themselves standing up, then sat down ceremoniously and opened out their gleaming napkins. Washed, pale, with combed, wet, straggly hair, his uncle displayed his hopeless illness particularly obviously, but he spoke and ate a lot and with gusto, and shrugged his shoulders, talking about the war – it was the time of the Russo-Japanese War^[96]: what the devil had we started it for! The footman waited with insulting apathy, the maid, assisting him, minced around on her elegant little feet, the cook served the dishes with the pomposity of a statue. They ate burbot soup, hot as fire, rare roast beef, new potatoes sprinkled with dill. They drank the white and red wines of Prince Golitsyn^[97], the uncle’s old friend. The student talked, replied, gave his agreement with cheerful smiles, but like a parrot, and with the nonsense with which he had got changed a little while before in his head, thinking: and where is she having dinner, surely not with the servants? And he waited for the moment when she would come again, take his uncle away, and then meet with him somewhere, and he would at least exchange a few words with her. But she came, pushed the wheelchair away, and again disappeared somewhere.

In the night, the nightingales sang cautiously and assiduously in the park, into the open windows of the bedroom came the freshness of the air, the dew and the watered flowers in the flower beds, and the bedclothes of Dutch linen were cooling. The student lay for a while in the darkness and had already decided to turn his face to the wall and go to sleep, but suddenly he lifted his head and half-rose: while getting undressed, he had seen a small door in the wall by the head of the bed, had turned the key in it out of curiosity, had found behind it a second door and had tried it, but it had proved to be locked from the other side – now someone was walking about softly behind those doors, was doing something mysterious – and he held his breath, slipped off the bed, opened the first door, listened intently: something made a quiet ringing noise on the floor behind the second door… He turned cold: could it really be her room? He pressed up against the keyhole – fortunately there was no key in it – and saw light, the edge of a woman’s dressing table, then something white which suddenly rose and covered everything up… There was no doubt that it was her room – who ever else’s? They wouldn’t put the maid here, and Maria Ilyinishna, his aunt’s old maidservant, slept downstairs next to his aunt’s bedroom. And it was as though he were immediately taken ill^[98] with her nocturnal proximity, here, behind the wall, and her inaccessibility. He did not sleep for a long time, woke up late and immediately sensed again, mentally pictured, imagined to himself her transparent nightdress, bare feet in slippers…

“This very day would be the time to leave!” he thought, lighting a cigarette.

In the morning they all had coffee in their own rooms. He drank, sitting in his uncle’s loose-fitting nightshirt, in his silk dressing gown, and with the dressing gown thrown open he examined himself with the sorrow of uselessness.

Lunch in the dining room was gloomy and dull. He had lunch only with his aunt, the weather was bad – outside the windows the trees were rocking in the wind, above them the clouds both light and dark were thickening…

“Well, my dear, I’m abandoning you,” said his aunt, getting up and crossing herself. “Entertain yourself as best you can, and do excuse your uncle and me with our illnesses, we sit in our own corners until tea. There’ll probably be rain, otherwise you could have gone out riding…”

He replied brightly:

“Don’t worry, Aunt, I’ll do some reading…”

And he set off for the divan room, where every wall was covered with shelves of books.

On his way there through the drawing room, he thought perhaps he should have a horse saddled after all. But visible through the windows were various rain clouds and an unpleasant metallic azure amidst the purplish storm clouds above the swaying treetops. He went into the divan room, cosy and smelling of cigar smoke – where, beneath shelves of books, leather couches occupied three whole walls – looked at the spines of some wonderfully bound books, and sat down helplessly, sank into a couch. Yes, hellish boredom. If only he could simply see her, chat with her… find out what sort of voice she had, what sort of character, whether she was stupid or, on the contrary, very canny, performing her role modestly until some propitious time. Probably a self-assured bitch who looks after herself very well… And most likely stupid… But how good-looking she is! And to spend the night alongside her again! He got up, opened the glass door onto the stone steps into the park, and heard the trilling of the nightingales through its rustling, but at that point there was such a rush of chill wind through some young trees on the left that he leapt back into the room. The room had gone dark, the wind was flying through those trees, bending their fresh foliage, and the panes of glass in the door and windows began sparkling with the sharp splashes of light rain.

“And it all means nothing to them!” he said loudly, listening to the trilling of the nightingales, now distant, now nearby, which reached him from all directions because of the wind. And at the same moment he heard an even voice:

“Good day.”

He threw a glance and was dumbstruck: she was standing in the room.

“I’ve come to change a book,” she said, cordially impassive. “It’s the only pleasure I have, books,” she added with an easy smile, and went up to the shelves.

He mumbled:

“Good day. I didn’t even hear you come in…”

“Very soft carpets,” she replied and, turning round, now gave him a lengthy look with her unblinking grey eyes.

“And what do you like reading?” he asked, meeting her gaze a little more boldly.

“I’m reading Maupassant now, Octave Mirbeau^[99]…”

“Well yes, that’s understandable. All women like Maupassant. Everything in him is about love.”

“But then what can be better than love?”

Her voice was modest, her eyes smiled quietly.

“Love, love!” he said, sighing. “There can be some amazing encounters, but… Your name, nurse?”

“Katerina Nikolayevna. And yours?”

“Call me simply Pavlik,” he replied, becoming ever bolder.

“Do you think I’ll do as an aunt for you as well?”

“I’d give a lot to have such an aunt! For the time being I’m only your unfortunate neighbour.”

“Is it really a misfortune?”

“I could hear you last night. Your room turns out to be next to mine.”

She laughed indifferently:

“And I could hear you. It’s wrong to eavesdrop and spy.”

“How impermissibly beautiful you are!” he said, fixedly examining the variegated grey of her eyes, the matt whiteness of her face and the sheen of the dark hair beneath her white headscarf.

“Do you think so? And do you want not to permit me to be so?”

“Yes. Your hands alone could drive anyone mad…”

And with cheerful audacity he seized her right hand with his left. She, standing with her back to the shelves, glanced over his shoulder into the drawing room and did not remove the hand, gazing at him with a strange grin, as though waiting: well, and what next? He, not releasing her hand, squeezed it tightly, pulling it away downwards, and he gripped her waist with his right arm. She again glanced over his shoulder and threw her head back slightly, as though protecting her face from a kiss, but she pressed her curving torso against him. He, catching his breath with difficulty, stretched towards her half-open lips and moved her towards the couch. She, frowning, began shaking her head, whispering: “No, no, we mustn’t, lying down we’ll see and hear nothing…” and with eyes grown dim she slowly parted her legs… A minute later his face fell onto her shoulder. She stood for a little longer with clenched teeth, then quietly freed herself from him and set off elegantly through the drawing room, saying loudly and indifferently to the noise of the rain:

“Oh, what rain! And all the windows are open upstairs…”

The next morning he woke up in her bed – she had turned onto her back in bed linen rucked up and warmed in the course of the night, with her bare arm thrown up behind her head. He opened his eyes and joyfully met her unblinking gaze, and with the giddiness of a fainting fit sensed the pungent smell of her armpit…

Someone knocked hastily at the door.

“Who’s there?” she asked calmly, without pushing him aside. “Is it you, Maria Ilyinishna?”

“Me, Katerina Nikolayevna.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Let me come in, I’m afraid someone will hear me and they’ll run and frighten the General’s wife…”

When he had slipped out into his room, she unhurriedly turned the key in the lock.

“There’s something wrong with His Excellency, I think an injection needs to be given,” Maria Ilyinishna started whispering as she came in. “The General’s wife is still asleep, thank God, go quickly…”

Maria Ilyinishna’s eyes were already becoming rounded like a snake’s: while speaking, she had suddenly seen a man’s shoes beside the bed – the student had fled barefooted. And she also saw the shoes and Maria Ilyinishna’s eyes.

Before breakfast she went to the General’s wife and said she must leave all of a sudden: started calmly lying that she had received a letter from her father – the news that her brother was seriously wounded in Manchuria – that her father, by reason of his widowerhood, was completely alone in such misfortune…

“Ah, how I understand you!” said the General’s wife, who already knew everything from Maria Ilyinishna. “Well, what’s to be done, go. Only send a telegram to Dr Krivtsov from the station for him to come at once and stay with us until we find another nurse…”

Then she knocked at the student’s door and thrust a note upon him: “All’s lost, I’m leaving. The old woman saw your shoes beside the bed. Remember me kindly.”

At breakfast his aunt was just a little sad, but spoke with him as though nothing were wrong.

“Have you heard? The nurse is going away to her father’s. He’s alone and her brother is terribly wounded…”

“I’ve heard, Aunt. What a misfortune this war is, so much grief everywhere. And what was the matter with Uncle after all?”

“Ah, nothing serious, thank God. He’s a dreadful hypochondriac. It seems to be the heart, but it’s all because of the stomach…”

At three o’clock Antigone was driven away to the station by troika. Without raising his eyes, he said goodbye to her on the perron, as though having run out by chance to order a horse to be saddled. He was ready to cry out from despair. She waved a glove to him from the carriage, sitting no longer in a headscarf, but in a pretty little hat.

2nd October 1940