Futility (5 page)

“Kniaz has some shares,” she explained, “in a limited company, but they are worthless—always have been—and never paid any dividends. Never so long as anybody can remember.”

“Has he always lived on you, then?”

“He lived on his brother when he was alive. He had great expectations from his brother. But his brother died and left him more shares, quite a number of shares, in the same limited company. Whom the brother lived on when he was alive, Lord only knows!”

“Did they get their shares from their father?”

“Their uncle.”

“Did
he
get any dividends?”

“Nikolai says no. But he seems to have put all his money into them.”

“And now I suppose you invite Kniaz to come and live with you?” I asked.

“He comes of his own accord.”

“You don’t object to his coming?”

“No one would tell him even if they did. It’s not a Russian habit to object to any one who comes to your house. It isn’t much good objecting either. They’ll come anyhow. But never mind.”

“Extraordinary man,” said I. “What does he propose to do? Has he any plan?”

“He believes in the shares.”

“Have you ever tried to disillusion him?”

“I wouldn’t be so heartless,” said Fanny Ivanovna.

“And the girls?”

“For them money does not exist. They are sublimely indifferent to it.”

“And Nikolai Vasilievich?”

“Nikolai Vasilievich believes in the mines. Kniaz helps him to sustain that belief in return for Nikolai’s faith in the shares. The money Kniaz borrows from Nikolai Vasilievich he regards merely as an advance on his future dividends.”

“And does Nikolai Vasilievich regard it in that light?” I asked.

“He pretends he does. But he always says: ‘Never mind, if only the mines begin to pay all will be well, Pàvel Pvlovich.’ ”

“And the ‘family,’ Fanny Ivanovna,” I cried, “I mean his wife and her family, his fiancée and her family, you and your family, his sisters and cousins, Kniaz and the others and their families—do
they
believe in the mines?”

“More firmly than Nikolai. If, in fact, one fine day Nikolai
turned a sceptic in matters mining, they would, I am sure, suspect him of shamming poverty to prevent them from getting their legitimate share.”

“Fanny Ivanovna,” I sighed, “good night.”

“I know it is amusing,” she said. “I wish it wasn’t real life, our life, my life. Then I would find it a trifle more amusing.”

I hailed a driver who slumbered in his sleigh on the corner of the Mohovaya and the Pantilemenskaya. As I drove home across the frozen river, on which the moon spread its yellow light, I thought of the Bursanovs’ muddled fife, and then Chekhov’s
Three Sisters
dawned upon my memory.

I understood now why Nikolai Vasilievich sympathized so heartily with the people in the play.

THAT EVENING I REMEMBER AS AN EVER-deepening initiation into the very complicated affairs of the Bursanov family. It had been raining again, and the washed cobbles on either side of the street looked clean and shining as if newly polished. For once Nikolai Vasilievich was at home, but he had gone into his study, and, sitting at the piano, I could not help listening to what was said in the room.

“But Mama
does
want a divorce herself, Fanny Ivanovna,”—from Nina.

“She didn’t before,” said Fanny Ivanovna.

“She does now,” said Nina.

“I wonder why?”

“I don’t really think, Fanny Ivanovna, that you have any right to know that.”

“She can’t have a divorce, anyhow,” said Fanny Ivanovna. “And I have asked you to make that clear to her.”

“You see,” said the girl of fifteen, “Mama has her own point of view. She doesn’t look at things from your point of view. Why should she?”

“Why should she …” repeated Fanny Ivanovna. And there was a long pause.

“I’ve done what you asked me,” said her ambassador, shrugging her pretty shoulders.

I stopped playing.

Nikolai Vasilievich came back and we sat down to dinner, and amongst us appeared Vera. I was to understand her presence a little afterwards. The atmosphere was tense. No doubt they had all been discussing the family tangle. No doubt Nikolai Vasilievich and Fanny Ivanovna had been shouting and blackguarding each other as usual. But silence reigned for the moment. It was as if they had all been a little overstrained by this uncanny family burden. Then there was a ring at the bell.

It was merely the postman, and the maid brought in a letter for Fanny Ivanovna. So soon as she caught sight of the envelope she got flushed and wildly excited.

“It’s from Germany,” she cried, and something about her flush, about her manner, told us that the letter was a painful reminder of her painful circumstances, rather than a joy. She tore it open, and for some reason the room grew still: all seemed to watch her in perfect silence. And then she fluttered the letter and flushed again, and cried out to Nikolai Vasilievich in a voice of deep sorrow and reproach, as a tear welled up from her eye:

“Listen.… ‘Dear Fanny … 
and Nikolai!’ And Nikolai! And Nikolai!
… Do you hear:
And Nikolai!
…”

‘Nikolai—i—i—’ echoed with pathetic insistence. It was a
sound that rent the heart. Tears flushed her eyes, sobs choked her throat. And for the moment, at all events, they forgot her clumsy stupidities; they felt only how irreparably they had wronged her.

And then, like the announcement of the next act, there was another ring. We heard an unfamiliar voice inquire in the hall if Nikolai Vasilievich was at home. Then the visitor’s card was brought in by the maid.

“No!” said Nikolai Vasilievich, rising very emphatically. “I draw the line there.” And he walked away to his study.

Fanny Ivanovna, her tragedy forgotten in the excitement of the visit, snatched at the card.

“Eisenstein!” she exclaimed.

“Och!”
cried the three sisters in disgust.

And then, uninvited, unannounced, Eisenstein walked into the dining-room.

He was a tall, flabby man, with prominently Jewish features, and probably good-looking as Jews of that type go.

“Nina,” he said, looking round. “I want to see Nina. I missed seeing her in Moscow.”

“Yes?” Nina said, “I am here.”

Fanny Ivanovna looked at Eisenstein with scrutiny. I think she could feel no real enmity to this man because he had, after all, run away with Nikolai Vasilievich’s wife—to all appearance a necessary preliminary to her own advent into his life. It was quite obvious that Eisenstein was not in the least seeking a
tête-à-tête
with Nina, but on the contrary, desired to exhibit his overflowing emotions to as large an audience as possible.

“Nina,” he said, halting in the middle of the room. And I remembered that Eisenstein had been an actor in his youth, a conjurer and ventriloquist. “Nina, she mustn’t leave me. You who have such influence over your mother must insist on that.”
And sooner than any one had been prepared for it his body quivered and he wept bitter tears.

“Moesei Moeseiech,” Nina said, “you mustn’t cry. That won’t do at all.”

“Monsieur Eisenstein,” intervened Fanny Ivanovna, rising dramatically, “this is my house and I won’t allow it.”

“You leave him alone, Fanny Ivanovna,” said Nina.

“I can’t bear it, Nina,” he said, coming up to her. “Why must she leave me? Haven’t I always been very kind to her, Nina? She says I speculate. But why do I speculate? For
her
, Nina.”

“For her!” cried Nina in bewilderment.

But he misunderstood her intonation.

“Why, of course!”

“With her money, Moesei Moeseiech?”

“My dear child, even if it is her money, what of it? I am still doing it for her, trying to get her more. My heart bleeds for her. She has so little money. Your father in his immoral pursuits of other women has forgotten his own wife.”

“Moesei Moeseiech, leave us.”

“But why, Nina?”

“You’re … hopeless.”

“Hopeless? And you say that, Nina. Haven’t I always been a good father to you when you came to live with us at Moscow? Haven’t I always been a good father to you? Now, have I not? Nina, Nina! You alone can stop her.”

“I’ve had too many fathers, Moesei Moeseiech, and I am not sure, if not too many mothers.” She paused. But when he opened his mouth to speak, she rose abruptly, turned on her heel and left the room. Fanny Ivanovna rose a second time.

“Monsieur Eisenstein,” she said, “you have upset everybody. I must ask you to leave my house. I cannot have you exhibiting your domestic difficulties in this strange manner
before our friends. We all have our sorrows, but we must keep them to ourselves. They are of no interest to others. Please leave us.” Again she must have thought of him as the man who had delivered Nikolai Vasilievich from his wife. She had a kind look for him, but she was a determined lady.

But for not being put out even by the most determined lady, give me a Russian Jew. Eisenstein looked round and saw Vera in the twilight, mute and hostile, perched up on the arm-chair in the corner …

“Vera! Verochka!” he cried. “You, my daughter—”

“S—s—s—sh!” Fanny Ivanovna hissed like a serpent. “You must not!”

“Must not, why? Why mustn’t I?” he said with that characteristically Jewish intonation. “Why should I be ashamed of my own daughter? You treat me as if I was an outsider and didn’t belong to the family. Why should my daughter be ashamed of me? She
is
my daughter, and you know it, Fanny Ivanovna.”

Whether this was a revelation to Vera, or only a confirmation of what she already knew or had perhaps suspected, it was hard to tell. She sat there on her perch, mute, aloof.

“Now,” said Fanny Ivanovna, coming up to him with indomitable determination, “you must certainly go.” And he left the room, sobbing.

“How horribly he cried,” said Sonia. I followed her out into the drawing-room. When I returned I perceived that Vera was wiping her tear-stained eyes and telling Fanny Ivanovna who had evidently been consoling her:

“And I had hated him so.… Oh, I still hate him so … so.…” She half sobbed again, wiping her tear-stained face with her little handkerchief. And I thought that I could now discover something Jewish about her pretty features.

And then there was another bell. It seemed that evening
that it was one long succession of bells each carrying in its trail some fresh dramatic revelation, as though we had been privileged to witness some three-act soul-shattering melodrama. It was to be a night of bells and sobs.

THIS TIME THERE WAS A GOOD DEAL OF WHISPERING between the maid on the one hand, and Sonia and Nina and Vera on the other. Then the three sisters vanished into the hall, and there was more whispering. It seemed that the heavy front door had been only half shut and that they had all gone out on to the landing.

About five minutes later they returned to Fanny Ivanovna, purring round her like three pretty kittens, till Fanny Ivanovna became suspicious. Then they grew still, and a mysterious look came on Nina’s face.

“Fanny Ivanovna,” she said.

“Yes?”

“Will you do something for me, Fanny Ivanovna?”

“I will. You know, Nina, that I will do anything for you, anything—reasonable.”

“I’m afraid you will think it unreasonable, Fanny Ivanovna.”

“What is it?” said Fanny Ivanovna, for some reason looking round at me, as though I were a party to the conspiracy.

Nina looked at Sonia, and Sonia nodded.

“Mama is outside—on the landing. She wants to see you. Will you see her? Please, Fanny Ivanovna,
please
.”

I understood now why Vera had come back to Petersburg.

“Please!”
cried Sonia.

“Please!”
echoed Vera.

Fanny Ivanovna rose very swiftly, as if by the swiftness of her movement she intended to intercept at the root that which she considered quite inadmissible.

“No!” she said, colouring highly. “No!”

“Fanny Ivanovna,
please
!”

“No, Nina, no. It’s out of the question.”

“Oh, Fanny Ivanovna,
please
!” they entreated her. “She is our mother, Fanny Ivanovna. We can’t have our mother waiting on the landing. After all, she’s our mother.”

“After all,”
said Fanny Ivanovna, putting a terrible meaning of her own into these simple words, “
after all
I am the mistress of this house. True, I have been thrown into the mud and trampled on, told I am not wanted, done away with, about to be thrown into the street like a dog, but while I am here I am the mistress of this flat.
After all
, I am!” she cried out, almost in tears.

“Very well, then, I will never speak to you again,” said Nina.

The three sisters again vanished on the landing, and whispers were renewed, and Fanny Ivanovna resumed her needlework, her agile fingers, it seemed to me, moving quicker than was their custom.

“The lap-dog …” she whispered, turning her face to me. “The German governess.… Andrei Andreiech, why should I? Why should I?…”

When at last the three sisters returned from the landing, such depressing silence descended upon the room that I thought I would do well to follow the example of the two Pàvel Pàvlovichi and go home. There was no one to see me out this time. As I reached the lower steps of the broad winding staircase I heard the faint sound of a woman weeping. Then
I could see a dark silhouette between the large glass double-doors leading out into the dim street. It was also dim in the vestibule. As I came nearer I saw that it was Magda Nikolaevna Bursànova.

My first impulse was to dash upstairs for a glass of water. But the sobs died away at my approach.

It was still raining heavily.

I raised my hat.

“I have sent the porter for a cab,” she said, wiping her tears hurriedly. “I don’t know if he’ll get one now. It’s raining terribly.”

And as we waited, before I knew where I was, she too began her confession.

“You must have heard of me very often,” she said in her gentle, musical voice. She was a very gentle-mannered woman and in her youth she must have been curiously like Nina. She even had, I thought, the sidelong look. “I am sure,” she said, “I shouldn’t like to hear all that you have, no doubt, been told about me.”