First Love Read online

  “You’ll never be in love, then?”

  “And you? Don’t I love you?” she said, and she flicked me on the nose with the tip of her glove.

  Yes, Zinaïda amused herself hugely at my expense. For three weeks I saw her every day, and what didn’t she do with me! She rarely came to see us, and I was not sorry for it; in our house she was transformed into a young lady, a young princess, and I was a little overawed by her. I was afraid of betraying myself before my mother; she had taken a great dislike to Zinaïda, and kept a hostile eye upon us. My father I was not so much afraid of; he seemed not to notice me. He talked little to her, but always with special cleverness and significance. I gave up working and reading; I even gave up walking about the neighbourhood and riding my horse. Like a beetle tied by the leg, I moved continually round and round my beloved little lodge. I would gladly have stopped there altogether, it seemed … but that was impossible. My mother scolded me, and sometimes Zinaïda herself drove me away. Then I used to shut myself up in my room, or go down to the very end of the garden, and climbing into what was left of a tall stone greenhouse, now in ruins, sit for hours with my legs hanging over the wall that looked onto the road, gazing and gazing and seeing nothing. White butterflies flitted lazily by me, over the dusty nettles; a saucy sparrow settled not far off on the half crumbling red brickwork and twittered irritably, incessantly twisting and turning and preening his tail-feathers; the still mistrustful rooks cawed now and then, sitting high, high up on the bare top of a birch-tree; the sun and wind played softly on its pliant branches; the tinkle of the bells of the Don monastery floated across to me from time to time, peaceful and dreary; while I sat, gazed, listened, and was filled full of a nameless sensation in which all was contained: sadness and joy and the foretaste of the future, and the desire and dread of life. But at that time I understood nothing of it, and could have given a name to nothing of all that was passing at random within me, or should have called it all by one name—the name of Zinaïda.

  Zinaïda continued to play cat and mouse with me. She flirted with me, and I was all agitation and rapture; then she would suddenly thrust me away, and I dared not go near her—dared not look at her.

  I remember she was very cold to me for several days together; I was completely crushed, and creeping timidly to their lodge, tried to keep close to the old princess, regardless of the circumstance that she was particularly scolding and grumbling just at that time; her financial affairs had been going badly, and she had already had two “explanations” with the police officials.

  One day I was walking in the garden beside the familiar fence, and I caught sight of Zinaïda; leaning on both arms, she was sitting on the grass, not stirring a muscle. I was about to make off cautiously, but she suddenly raised her head and beckoned me imperiously. My heart failed me; I did not understand her at first. She repeated her signal. I promptly jumped over the fence and ran joyfully up to her, but she brought me to a halt with a look, and motioned me to the path two paces from her. In confusion, not knowing what to do, I fell on my knees at the edge of the path. She was so pale, such bitter suffering, such intense weariness, was expressed in every feature of her face, that it sent a pang to my heart, and I muttered unconsciously, “What is the matter?”

  Zinaïda stretched out her head, picked a blade of grass, bit it and flung it away from her.

  “You love me very much?” she asked at last. “Yes?”

  I made no answer—indeed, what need was there to answer?

  “Yes,” she repeated, looking at me as before. “That’s so. The same eyes.” she went on; sank into thought, and hid her face in her hands. “Everything’s grown so loathsome to me,” she whispered, “I would have gone to the other end of the world first—I can’t bear it, I can’t get over it.… And what is there before me!… Ah, I am wretched.… My God, how wretched I am!”

  “What for?” I asked timidly.

  Zinaïda made no answer, she simply shrugged her shoulders. I remained kneeling, gazing at her with intense sadness. Every word she had uttered simply cut me to the heart. At that instant I felt I would gladly have given my life, if only she should not grieve. I gazed at her—and though I could not understand why she was wretched, I vividly pictured to myself, how in a fit of insupportable anguish, she had suddenly come out into the garden, and sunk to the earth, as though mown down by a scythe. It was all bright and green about her; the wind was whispering in the leaves of the trees, and swinging now and then a long branch of a raspberry bush over Zinaïda’s head. There was a sound of the cooing of doves, and the bees hummed, flying low over the scanty grass. Overhead the sun was radiantly blue—while I was so sorrowful.…

  “Read me some poetry,” said Zinaïda in an undertone, and she propped herself on her elbow; “I like your reading poetry. You read it in sing-song, but that’s no matter, that comes of being young. Read me ‘On the Hills of Georgia.’ Only sit down first.”

  I sat down and read “On the Hills of Georgia.”

  “ ‘That the heart cannot choose but love,’ ” repeated Zinaïda. “That’s where poetry’s so fine; it tells us what is not, and what’s not only better than what is, but much more like the truth, ‘cannot choose but love,’—it might want not to, but it can’t help it.” She was silent again, then all at once she started and got up. “Come along. Meidanov’s indoors with mamma, he brought me his poem, but I deserted him. His feelings are hurt, too, now … I can’t help it! you’ll understand it all some day … only don’t be angry with me!”

  Zinaïda hurriedly pressed my hand and ran on ahead. We went back into the lodge. Meidanov set to reading us his “Manslayer,” which had just appeared in print, but I did not hear him. He screamed and drawled his four-foot iambic lines, the alternating rhythms jingled like little bells, noisy and meaningless, while I still watched Zinaïda and tried to take in the import of her last words.

  “Perchance some unknown rival

  Has surprised and mastered thee?”

  Meidanov bawled suddenly through his nose—and my eyes and Zinaïda’s met. She looked down and faintly blushed. I saw her blush, and grew cold with terror. I had been jealous before, but only at that instant the idea of her being in love flashed upon my mind. “Good God! She is in love!”

  X

  My real torments began from that instant. I racked my brains, changed my mind, and changed it back again, and kept an unremitting, though, as far as possible, secret watch on Zinaïda. A change had come over her, that was obvious. She began going on walks alone—and long walks. Sometimes she would not see visitors; she would sit for hours in her room. This had never been a habit of hers till now. I suddenly became—or fancied I had become—extraordinarily penetrating.

  “Isn’t it he? Or isn’t it he?” I asked myself, passing in inward agitation from one of her admirers to another. Count Malevsky secretly struck me as more to be feared than the others, though, for Zinaïda’s sake, I was ashamed to confess it to myself.

  My watchfulness did not see beyond the end of my nose, and its secrecy probably deceived no one; any way, Doctor Lushin soon saw through me. But he, too, had changed of late; he had grown thin, he laughed as often, but his laugh seemed more hollow, more spiteful, shorter, an involuntary nervous irritability took the place of his former light irony and assumed cynicism.

  “Why are you incessantly hanging about here, young man?” he said to me one day, when we were left alone together in the Zasyekins’ drawing room. (The young princess had not come home from a walk, and the shrill voice of the old princess could be heard within; she was scolding the maid.) “You ought to be studying, working—while you’re young—and what are you doing?”

  “You can’t tell whether I work at home,” I retorted with some haughtiness, but also with some hesitation.

  “A great deal of work you do! That’s not what you’re thinking about! Well, I won’t find fault with that … at your age that’s in the natural order of things. But you’ve been awfully unlucky in your choice. Don�
�t you see what this house is?”

  “I don’t understand you,” I observed.

  “You don’t understand? So much the worse for you. I regard it as a duty to warn you. Old bachelors, like me, can come here, what harm can it do us! We’re tough, nothing can hurt us, what harm can it do us; but your skin’s tender yet—this air is bad for you—believe me, you may get harm from it.”

  “How so?”

  “Why, are you well now? Are you in a normal condition? Is what you’re feeling beneficial to you—good for you?”

  “Why, what am I feeling?” I said, while in my heart I knew the doctor was right.

  “Ah, young man, young man,” the doctor went on with an intonation that suggested that something highly insulting to me was contained in these two words, “what’s the use of your prevaricating, when, thank God, what’s in your heart is in your face, so far? But there, what’s the use of talking? I shouldn’t come here myself, if … (the doctor compressed his lips) … if I weren’t such a queer fellow. Only this is what surprises me; how it is, you, with your intelligence, don’t see what is going on around you?”

  “And what is going on?” I put in, all on the alert.

  The doctor looked at me with a sort of ironical compassion.

  “Nice of me!” he said as though to himself, “as if he need know anything of it. In fact, I tell you again,” he added, raising his voice, “the atmosphere here is not fit for you. You like being here, but what of that! It’s nice and sweet-smelling in a greenhouse—but there’s no living in it. Yes! Do as I tell you, and go back to your Keidanov.”

  The old princess came in, and began complaining to the doctor of her toothache. Then Zinaïda appeared.

  “Come,” said the old princess, “you must scold her, doctor. She’s drinking iced water all day long; is that good for her, pray, with her delicate chest?”

  “Why do you do that?” asked Lushin.

  “Why, what effect could it have?”

  “What effect? You might get a chill and die.”

  “Truly? Do you mean it? Very well—so much the better.”

  “A fine idea!” muttered the doctor. The old princess had gone out.

  “Yes, a fine idea,” repeated Zinaïda. “Is life such a festive affair? Just look about you.… Is it nice, eh? Or do you imagine I don’t understand it, and don’t feel it? It gives me pleasure—drinking iced water; and can you seriously assure me that such a life is worth too much to be risked for an instant’s pleasure—happiness I won’t even talk about.”

  “Oh, very well,” remarked Lushin, “caprice and irresponsibility.… Those two words sum you up; your whole nature’s contained in those two words.”

  Zinaïda laughed nervously.

  “You’re late for the post, my dear doctor. You don’t keep a good look-out; you’re behind the times. Put on your spectacles. I’m in no capricious humour now. To make fools of you, to make a fool of myself … much fun there is in that!—and as for irresponsibility.… M’sieu Voldemar,” Zinaïda added suddenly, stamping, “don’t make such a melancholy face. I can’t endure people to pity me.” She went quickly out of the room.

  “It’s bad for you, very bad for you, this atmosphere, young man,” Lushin said to me once more.

  XI

  On the evening of the same day the usual guests were assembled at the Zasyekins’. I was among them.

  The conversation turned on Meidanov’s poem. Zinaïda expressed genuine admiration of it. “But do you know what?” she said to him. “If I were a poet, I would choose quite different subjects. Perhaps it’s all nonsense, but strange ideas sometimes come into my head, especially when I’m not asleep in the early morning, when the sky begins to turn rosy and grey both at once. I would, for instance … you won’t laugh at me?”

  “No, no!” we all cried, with one voice.

  “I would describe,” she went on, folding her arms across her bosom and looking away, “a whole company of young girls at night in a great boat, on a silent river. The moon is shining, and they are all in white, and wearing garlands of white flowers, and singing, you know, something in the nature of a hymn.”

  “I see, I see—go on,” Meidanov commented with dreamy significance.

  “All of a sudden, loud clamour, laughter, torches, tambourines on the bank.… It’s a troop of Bacchantes dancing with songs and cries. It’s your business to make a picture of it, Mr. Poet … only I should like the torches to be red and to smoke a great deal, and the Bacchantes’ eyes to gleam under their wreaths, and the wreaths to be dusky. Don’t forget the tiger-skins, too, and goblets and gold—lots of gold.…”

  “Where ought the gold to be?” asked Meidanov, tossing back his sleek hair and distending his nostrils.

  “Where? On their shoulders and arms and legs—everywhere. They say in ancient times women wore gold rings on their ankles. The Bacchantes call the girls in the boat to them. The girls have ceased singing their hymn—they cannot go on with it, but they do not stir, the river carries them to the bank. And suddenly one of them slowly rises.… This you must describe nicely: how she slowly gets up in the moonlight, and how her companions are afraid.… She steps over the edge of the boat, the Bacchantes surround her, whirl her away into night and darkness.… Here put in smoke in clouds and everything in confusion. There is nothing but the sound of their shrill cry, and her wreath left lying on the bank.”

  Zinaïda ceased. (“Oh! she is in love!” I thought again.)

  “And is that all?” asked Meidanov.

  “That’s all.”

  “That can’t be the subject of a whole poem,” he observed pompously, “but I will make use of your idea for a lyrical fragment.”

  “In the romantic style?” queried Malevsky.

  “Of course, in the romantic style—Byronic.”

  “Well, to my mind, Hugo beats Byron,” the young count observed negligently; “he’s more interesting.”

  “Hugo is a writer of the first class,” replied Meidanov; “and my friend, Tonkosheev, in his Spanish romance, El Trovador.…”

  “Ah! is that the book with the question-marks turned upside down?” Zinaïda interrupted.

  “Yes. That’s the custom with the Spanish. I was about to observe that Tonkosheev.…”

  “Come! you’re going to argue about classicism and romanticism again,” Zinaïda interrupted him a second time. “We’d much better play.…”

  “Forfeits?” put in Lushin.

  “No, forfeits are a bore; at comparisons.” (This game Zinaïda had invented herself. Some object was mentioned, every one tried to compare it with something, and the one who chose the best comparison got a prize.)

  She went up to the window. The sun was just setting; high up in the sky were large red clouds.

  “What are those clouds like?” questioned Zinaïda; and without waiting for our answer, she said, “I think they are like the purple sails on the golden ship of Cleopatra, when she sailed to meet Antony. Do you remember, Meidanov, you were telling me about it not long ago?”

  All of us, like Polonius in Hamlet, opined that the clouds recalled nothing so much as those sails, and that not one of us could discover a better comparison.

  “And how old was Antony then?” inquired Zinaïda. “A young man, no doubt,” observed Malevsky.

  “Yes, a young man,” Meidanov chimed in in confirmation. “Excuse me,” cried Lushin, “he was over forty.”

  “Over forty,” repeated Zinaïda, giving him a rapid glance.…

  I soon went home. “She is in love,” my lips unconsciously repeated.… “But with whom?”

  XII

  The days passed by. Zinaïda became stranger and stranger, and more and more incomprehensible. One day I went over to her, and saw her sitting in a basket-chair, her head pressed to the sharp edge of the table. She drew herself up … her whole face was wet with tears.

  “Ah, you!” she said with a cruel smile. “Come here.”

  I went up to her. She put her hand on my head, an
d suddenly catching hold of my hair began pulling it.

  “It hurts me,” I said at last.

  “Ah! does it? And do you suppose nothing hurts me?” she replied.

  “Ai!” she cried suddenly, seeing she had pulled a little tuft of hair out. “What have I done? Poor M’sieu Voldemar!”

  She carefully smoothed the hair she had torn out, stroked it round her finger, and twisted it into a ring.

  “I shall put your hair in a locket and wear it round my neck,” she said, while the tears still glittered in her eyes. “That will be some small consolation to you, perhaps.… And now good-bye.”

  I went home, and found an unpleasant state of things there. My mother was having a scene with my father; she was reproaching him with something, while he, as his habit was, maintained a polite and chilly silence, and soon left her. I could not hear what my mother was talking of, and indeed I had no thought to spare for the subject; I only remember that when the interview was over, she sent for me to her room, and referred with great displeasure to the frequent visits I paid the princess, who was, in her words, une femme capable de tout. I kissed her hand (this was what I always did when I wanted to cut short a conversation) and went off to my room. Zinaïda’s tears had completely overwhelmed me; I positively did not know what to think, and was ready to cry myself; I was a child after all, in spite of my sixteen years. I had now given up thinking about Malevsky, though Byelovzorov looked more and more threatening every day, and glared at the wily Count like a wolf at a sheep; but I thought of nothing and of no one. I was lost in imaginings, and was always seeking seclusion and solitude. I was particularly fond of the ruined greenhouse. I would climb up on the high wall, and perch myself, and sit there, such an unhappy, lonely, and melancholy youth, that I felt sorry for myself—and how consolatory where those mournful sensations, how I revelled in them!…