Great Russian Short Stories (21 page)

EASTER WAS drawing near. Esper Konstantinovitch Saksaulov was in a worried, weary mood. It began, seemingly, from the moment when at the Gorodishchevs' he was asked, “Where are you spending the festival?”

Saksaulov for some reason delayed his reply.

The hostess, a stout, short-sighted, bustling lady, said, “Come to us.” Saksaulov was annoyed. Was it with the girl, who, at her mother's words, glanced at him quickly and instantly withdrew her gaze as she continued her conversation with the young assistant professor?

Saksaulov was eligible in the eyes of mothers of grown-up daughters, and this fact irritated him. He regarded himself as an old bachelor, and he was only thirty-seven. He replied curtly: “Thank you. I always spend this night at home.”

The girl glanced at him, smiled, and said, “With whom?”

“Alone,” Saksaulov replied, with a slight surprise in his voice.

“What a misanthrope!” said Madame Gorodishchev with a sour smile.

Saksaulov liked his freedom. There were occasions when he wondered how at one time he had nearly come to marry. He was now used to his small flat, furnished in severe style, used to his own valet, the aged, sedate Fedot, and to his no less aged wife, Christine, who cooked his dinner—and was thoroughly convinced that he did not marry because he wished to remain true to his first love. In reality his heart had grown cold from indifference resulting from his solitary, aimless life. He had independent means, his father and mother were long since dead, and of near relations he had none. He lived an assured, tranquil life, was attached to some department, intimately acquainted with contemporary literature and art, and took an Epicurean pleasure in the good things of life, while life itself seemed to him empty and meaningless. Were it not for a solitary bright and pure dream that came to him sometimes, he would have grown quite cold, as so many other men have done.

His first and only love, that had ended before it had blossomed, in the evening sometimes made him dream sad sweet dreams. Five years ago he had met the young girl who had produced such a lasting impression on him. Pale, delicate, with slender waist, blue-eyed, fair-haired, she had seemed to him an almost celestial creature, a product of air and mist, accidentally cast by fate for a short span into the city din. Her movements were slow; her clear, tender voice sounded soft, like the murmur of a stream rippling gently over stones.

Saksaulov—was it by accident or design?—always saw her in a white dress. The impression of white became to him inseparable from his thought of her. Even her name, Tamara, seemed to him always white, like the snow on the mountain tops. He began to visit Tamara's parents. On more than one occasion had he resolved to speak those words to her that bind the fate of one human being with that of another. But she always eluded him; fear and anguish were reflected in her eyes. Of what was she afraid? Saksaulov saw in her face the signs of girlish love; her eyes lighted up when he appeared, and a faint blush spread over her cheeks.

But on one never-to-be-forgotten evening she listened to him. The time was early spring. It was not long since the river had broken up and the trees had clothed themselves in a soft green gown. In a flat in town Tamara and Saksaulov sat by the open window facing the Neva. Without troubling himself about what to say and how to say it, he spoke sweet, for her terrifying, words. She turned pale, smiled absently, and got up. Her delicate hand trembled on the carved back of the chair.

“To-morrow,” Tamara said softly, and went out.

Saksaulov, with a tense expectancy, sat for a long time staring at the door that had hidden Tamara. His head was in a whirl. A sprig of white lilac caught his eye; he took it and went away without bidding good-bye to his hosts.

At night he could not sleep. He stood by the window staring into the dark street that grew lighter towards the morning, smiling and toying with the sprig of white lilac. When it grew light he saw that the floor of the room was littered with petals of white lilac. This struck him as naïve and ridiculous. He took a bath, which made him feel as though he had almost regained his composure, and went to Tamara.

He was told that she was ill, she had caught a chill somewhere. And Saksaulov never saw her again. In two weeks she was dead. He did not go to her funeral. Her death left him almost unshaken. Already he could not tell whether he had loved her or if it were merely a brief passing fascination.

Sometimes in the evening he would dream of her; then her image began to fade. Saksaulov had no portrait of Tamara. It was only after several years had gone by, during last spring, that he was reminded of Tamara by a sprig of white lilac in the window of a restaurant, sadly out of place amidst the rich food. And from that day he again liked to think of Tamara in the evenings. Sometimes when he dozed off, he dreamt that she had come and sat down opposite him and looked at him with a fixed, caressing gaze, seeming to want something. It oppressed and hurt him sometimes to feel Tamara's expectant gaze.

Now, as he left the Gorodishchevs, he thought apprehensively:

“She will come to give me the Easter greeting.”

The fear and loneliness were so oppressive that he thought: “Why shouldn't I marry? I need not be alone then on holy mystic nights.”

Valeria Michailovna—the Gorodishchev girl—came into his mind. She was not beautiful, but she always dressed well. It seemed to Saksaulov that she liked him and would not refuse him if he proposed.

In the street the noise and crowd distracted his attention; his thoughts of the Gorodishchev girl became tinged with the usual cynicism. Moreover, could he be untrue to Tamara's memory for anyone? The whole world seemed to him so petty and commonplace that he longed for Tamara—and Tamara only—to come and give him the Easter greeting.

“But,” he reflected, “she will again fix on me that expectant gaze. Pure, gentle Tamara, what does she want? Will her soft lips kiss mine?”

With tormenting thoughts of Tamara, Saksaulov wandered about the streets, peering into the faces of the passers-by; the coarse faces of the men and women disgusted him. He reflected that there was no one with whom he would care to exchange the Easter greeting with any pleasure or love. There would be many kisses on the first day—coarse lips, tangled beards, an odor of wine.

If one had to kiss anyone at all it should be a child. The faces of children became pleasing to Saksaulov.

He walked about for a long time; he grew tired and went into a churchyard off the noisy street. A pale boy, sitting on a seat, glanced up at Saksaulov apprehensively and then sat on motionless, staring straight in front of him. His blue eyes were sad and caressing, like Tamara's. He was so tiny that his feet were not long enough to dangle, but projected straight in front of the seat. Saksaulov sat down beside him and regarded him with a sympathetic curiosity. There was something about this lonely little boy that stirred sweet memories. To look at he was the most ordinary child; in torn, ragged clothes, a white fur cap on his fair little head, and dirty, worn boots on his feet.

For a long time he sat on the seat, then he got up and began to cry pitifully. He ran out of the gate and along the street, stopped, set off in the opposite direction and stopped again. It was clear that he did not know which way to go. He cried softly to himself, the big tears dropping down his cheeks. A crowd gathered. A policeman came up. The boy was asked where he lived.

“Gluikhov House,” he lisped in the manner of very young children.

“In what street?” the policeman asked.

But the boy did not know the street, and only repeated, “Gluikhov House.”

The policeman, a jolly young fellow, reflected for a moment, and decided that there was no such house in the immediate neighborhood.

“Whom do you live with?” asked a gloomy-looking workman; “have you got a father?”

“I haven't got a father,” the boy replied, looking at the crowd with tearful eyes.

“Got no father! dear, dear,” the workman said solemnly, shaking his head. “Have you got a mother?”

“Yes, I have a mother,” the boy replied.

“What is her name?”

“Mother,” the boy replied, then reflecting for a moment added, “Black Mother.”

“Black? Is that her name?” the gloomy workman asked.

“First I had a white mother and now I have a black mother,” the boy explained.

“Well, my boy, we shall never make head or tail of you,” the policeman said decisively. “I had better take you to the police-station. They can find out where you live on the telephone.”

He went up to the gate and rang. At this moment a porter, catching sight of the policeman, came out with a broom in his hand. The policeman told him to take the boy to the police-station, but the boy bethought himself and cried, “Let me go; I will find the way myself!”

Was he frightened by the porter's broom, or had he indeed remembered something? At any rate, he ran away so quickly that Saksaulov nearly lost sight of him. Soon, however, the boy slackened his pace. He went up the street, running from one side to the other, trying in vain to find the house he lived in. Saksaulov followed him silently. He did not know how to speak to children.

At last the boy became tired. He stopped by a lamp-post and leant against it. The tears glistened in his eyes.

“Well, my boy,” Saksaulov began, “can't you find the house?”

The boy looked at him with his sad, gentle eyes, and suddenly Saksaulov realized what had made him follow the boy so persistently.

In the gaze and mien of the little wanderer there was something very like Tamara.

“What is your name, my dear?” Saksaulov asked gently.

“Lesha,” the boy replied.

“Do you live with your mother, Lesha?”

“Yes, with mother—but she is a black mother; I used to have a white mother.”

Saksaulov thought that by black mother he must mean a nun.

“How did you get lost?”

“I walked with mother, and we walked and walked. She told me to sit down and wait, and then she went away. And I got frightened.”

“Who is your mother?”

“My mother? She is black and angry.”

“What does she do?”

The boy thought a while.

“She drinks coffee,” he said.

“What else does she do?”

“She quarrels with the lodgers,” Lesha replied after a pause.

“And where is your white mother?”

“She was carried away. She was put into a coffin and carried away. And father was carried away, too.”

The boy pointed into the distance somewhere and burst into tears.

“What can I do with him?” Saksaulov thought.

Then suddenly the boy began to run again. After having run round a few street-corners he slackened his pace. Saksaulov caught him up a second time. The boy's face expressed a strange mixture of fear and joy.

“Here is the Gluikhov House,” he said to Saksaulov, as he pointed to a big, five-storied, ugly building.

At this moment there appeared at the gates of the Gluikhov House a black-haired, black-eyed woman in a black dress, on her head a black kerchief with white spots. The boy shrank back in fear.

“Mother!” he whispered.

His step-mother looked at him in astonishment.

“How did you get here, you rascal?” she cried. “I told you to stop on the seat, didn't I?”

She would have struck him, but observing a gentleman of solemn dignified mien who seemed to be watching them, she lowered her voice.

“Can't you be left for half an hour without running away? I've tired myself out looking for you, you rascal!”

She snatched the boy's little hand in her big one and dragged him within the gate.

Saksaulov made a note of the street and went home.

Saksaulov liked to listen to Fedot's sound judgments. When he reached home he told him about the boy Lesha.

“She had left him on purpose,” Fedot announced. “What a wicked woman, to take the boy so far from home!”

“What made her do it?” Saksaulov asked.

“One can't tell. Silly woman—no doubt she thought the boy would wander about the streets until someone or other would pick him up. What can you expect from a step-mother? What use is the child to her?”

“But the police would have found her,” Saksaulov said incredulously.

“Perhaps; but she may be leaving the town altogether, and how could they find her then?”

Saksaulov smiled. “Really,” he thought, “Fedot should have been an examining magistrate.”

However, sitting near the lamp with a book, he dozed off. In his dreams he saw Tamara—gentle and white—she came and sat beside him. Her face was wonderfully like Lesha's. She gazed at him incessantly, persistently, seeming to expect something. It was oppressive for Saksaulov to see her bright, pleading eyes and not to know what it was that she wanted. He got up quickly and walked over to the chair where Tamara appeared to be sitting. Standing before her he implored aloud:

“What do you want? Tell me.”

But she was no longer there.

“It was only a dream,” Saksaulov thought sadly.

Coming out of the Academy exhibition on the following day, Saksaulov met the Gorodishchevs.

He told the girl about Lesha.

“Poor boy!” Valeria Michailovna said softly: “his step-mother simply wants to get rid of him.”

“That is by no means certain,” Saksaulov replied, annoyed that both Fedot and the girl should take such a tragic view of a simple incident.

“It is quite obvious. The boy has no father and lives with his step-mother. She finds him a nuisance. If she can't get rid of him decently she will cast him off altogether.”

“You take too gloomy a view,” said Saksaulov with a smile.

“Why don't you adopt him?” Valeria Michailovna suggested.

“I?” Saksaulov asked in surprise.

“You live alone,” she persisted; “you have no one belonging to you. Do a good deed at Easter. You will have someone with whom to exchange the greeting, at any rate.”

“But what could I do with a child, Valeria Michailovna?”

“Get a nurse for it. Fate seems to have sent the child to you.”

Saksaulov looked at the flushed, animated face of the girl in wonder, and with an unconscious gentleness.

When Tamara again appeared to him in his dreams that evening it seemed to him that he knew what she wanted. And in the stillness of his room the words seemed to ring softly: “Do as she has told you.”

Saksaulov got up rejoicing, and passed his hand over his sleepy eyes. He caught sight of a sprig of white lilac on the table. Where had it come from? Had Tamara left it in token of her will?

And suddenly it occurred to him that by marrying the Gorodishchev girl and adopting Lesha he would fulfill Tamara's wish. Gladly he breathed in the fragrant perfume of the lilac.

He recollected that he had bought the flower himself that day, but instantly thought, “It makes no difference that I bought it myself. There is an omen in the fact that I wished to buy it and then forgot that I had bought it.”