‘Olga,’ I said sternly, ‘you must tell me! I demand it!’
‘Yes, there is something I want to tell you,’ she whispered. ‘I love you — I can’t live without you — but… my darling, don’t come to see me any more. Don’t love me any more, and don’t call me Olia. It can’t go on… It’s impossible… And don’t let anybody see that you love me.’
‘But why is this?’
‘I want it. The reasons you need not know, and I won’t tell you. Go… Leave me!’
I did not leave her, and she herself was obliged to bring our conversation to an end. Taking the arm of her husband, who was passing us at that moment, she nodded to me with a hypocritical smile, and went away.
The Count’s other hare - Nadenka Kalinin - was honoured that evening by the Count’s special attention. The whole evening he hovered around her, he told her anecdotes, he was witty, he flirted with her, and she, pale and exhausted, drew her lips to one side in a forced smile. The Justice of the Peace, Kalinin, watched them all the time, stroking his beard and coughing importantly. That the Count was paying court to his daughter was agreeable to him. ‘He has a Count as son-in-law!’ What thought could be sweeter for a provincial bon vivant? From the moment that the Count began to pay court to his daughter he had grown at least three feet in height in his own estimation. And with what stately glances he measured me, how maliciously he coughed when he talked to me! ‘So you stood on ceremonies and went away - it was all one to us! Now we have a Count!’
The day after the party I was again at the Count’s estate. This time I did not talk with Sasha but with her brother, the schoolboy. The boy led me into the garden and poured out his whole soul to me. These confidences were the result of my questions as to how he got on with his ‘new mother’.
‘She’s a friend of yours,’ he began, nervously unbuttoning his uniform. ‘You will repeat it to her; but I don’t care. You may tell her whatever you like! She’s spiteful, she’s base!’
He told me that Olga had taken his room from him, she had sent away their old nurse who had served at Urbenin’s for ten years, she was always screaming about something and always angry.
‘Yesterday you admired sister Sasha’s hair… Hadn’t she pretty hair? Just like flax! This morning she cut it all off!’
‘That was jealousy,’ I thus explained to myself Olga’s invasion into the hairdresser’s domain.
‘She was evidently envious that you had praised Sasha’s hair and not her own,’ the boy said in confirmation of my thought. ‘She worries papasha, too. Papasha is spending a terrible lot of money on her, and is neglecting his work… He has begun to drink again! Again! She’s a little fool… She cries all day that she has to live in poverty in such a small house. Is it papasha’s fault that he has little money?’
The boy told me many sad things. He saw that which his blinded father did not see or did not want to see. In the poor boy’s opinion his father was wronged, his sister was wronged, his old nurse had been wronged. He had been deprived of his little den where he had been used to occupy himself with his books, and feed the goldfinches he had caught. Everybody had been wronged, everybody was scorned by his stupid and all-powerful stepmother! But the poor boy could not have imagined the terrible wrong that his young stepmother would inflict on his family, and which I was to witness that very evening after my talk with him. Everything else grew dim before that wrong, the cropping of Sasha’s hair appeared as a mere trifle in comparison with it.
CHAPTER XVIII
Late at night I was sitting with the Count. As usual, we were drinking. The Count was quite drunk, I only slightly.
‘Today I was allowed accidentally to touch her waist,’ he mumbled. ‘Tomorrow, therefore, we can begin to go further.’
‘Well, and Nadia? How do things stand with Nadia?’
‘We are progressing! I’ve only just begun with her as yet. So far, we are passing through the period of conversations with the eyes. I love to gaze into her sad black eyes, brother. Something is written there that words are unable to express, that only the soul can understand. Let’s have another drink!’
‘It seems that you must please her since she has the patience to listen to you for hours at a time. You also please her papa!’
‘Her papa? Are you talking about that blockhead? Ha, ha! The simpleton suspects me of honourable intentions.’
The Count coughed and drank.
‘He thinks I’ll marry her! To say nothing of my not being able to marry, when one considers the question honestly it would be more honest in me to seduce a girl than to marry her… A life spent in perpetuity with a drunken, coughing, semi-old man… br-r-r! My wife would pine away, or else run off the following day… What noise is that?’
The Count and I jumped up… Several doors were slammed to, and almost at the same moment Olga rushed into the room. She was as white as snow, and trembled like a chord that had been struck violently. Her hair was falling loose around her. The pupils of her eyes were dilated. She was out of breath and was crumpling in her hand the front pleats of her dressing-gown.
‘Olga, what is the matter with you?’ I asked, seizing her by the hand and turning pale.
The Count ought to have been surprised at this familiar form of address, but he did not hear it. His whole person was turned into one large note of interrogation, and with open mouth and staring eyes he stood looking at Olga as if she were an apparition.
‘What has happened?’ I asked.
‘He beats me!’ Olga said, and fell sobbing on to an armchair. ‘He beats me!’
‘Who is he?’
‘My husband! I can’t live with him! I have left him!’
‘This is disgraceful!’ the Count exclaimed, and he struck the table with his fist. ‘What right has he? This is tyranny! This… the devil only knows what it is! Beating his wife? Beating her! What did he do it for?’
‘For nothing, for nothing at all,’ Olga said, wiping away her tears. ‘I pulled my handkerchief out of my pocket, and the letter you sent me yesterday fell on the floor… He seized it and read it… and began to beat me… He clutched my hand and crushed it - look, there are still red marks on it - and demanded an explanation… Instead of explaining, I ran here… Can’t you defend me? He has no right to treat his wife so roughly! I’m no cook! I’m a noblewoman!’
The Count paced about the room and jabbered with his drunken, muddling tongue some sort of nonsense which when rendered into sober language was intended to mean something about ‘the status of women in Russia’.
‘This is barbarous! This is like New Zealand! Does this muzhik also think that his wife is going to cut her throat at his funeral - like savages going into the next world and taking their wives with them!’
I could not recover from my surprise… How was this sudden visit of Olga’s in a nightdress to be understood? What was I to think - what to decide? If she had been beaten, if her dignity had been wounded, why had she not run away to her father or to the housekeeper?… Lastly why not to me, who was certainly near to her? And had she really been insulted? My heart told me of the innocence of simple-minded Urbenin, and understanding the truth, it sank with the pain that the stupefied husband must have been feeling at that time. Without asking any questions, not knowing where to commence, I began to soothe Olga and offered her wine.
‘What a mistake I made! What a mistake!’ she sighed between her tears, lifting the wineglass to her lips. ‘How sanctimonious he pretended to be when he was courting me! I thought