Sanine by Mikhail Artsybashev (ebook pdf reader for pc .TXT) 📕

In a moment as if from each a stiff, heavy garb had fallen off, the other three persons became changed. Maria Ivanovna looked pale and shrunken, Volochine’s eyes expressed animal fear, and Sarudine slowly and irresolutely rose.

“What do you mean?” he asked in a hoarse voice.

Volochine tittered, and looked about nervously for his hat.

Sanine did not reply to the question, but maliciously handed Volochine the hat. From the latter’s open mouth a stifled sound escaped like a plaintive squeak.

“What do you mean by that?” cried Sarudine angrily, aware that he was losing his temper. “A scandal!” he thought to himself.

“I mean what I say,” replied Sanine. “Your presence here is utterly unnecessary, and we shall all be delighted to see the last of you.”

Sarudine took a step forward. He looked extremely uncomfortable, and his white teeth gleamed threateningly, like those of a wild beast.

“Aha! That’s it, is it?” he muttered, breathing hard.

“Get out!” said Sanine contemptuously, yet in so terrible a tone tha Sarudine glared, and voluntarily drew back.

“I don’t know what the deuce it all means!” said Volochine, under his breath, as with shoulders raised he hurried to the door.

But there, in the doorway, stood Lida. She was dressed in a style quite different from her usual one. Instead of a fashionable coiffure, she wore her hair in a thick plait hanging down her back. Instead of an elegant costume she was wearing a loose gown of diaphanous texture, the simplicity of which alluringly heightened the beauty of her form.

As she smiled, her likeness to Sanine became more remarkable, and, in her sweet, girlish voice she said calmly:

“Here I am. Why are you hurrying away? Victor Sergejevitsch, do put down your cap!”

Sanine was silent, and looked at his sister in amazement. “Whatever does she mean?” he thought to himself.

As soon as she appeared, a mysterious influence, at once irresistible and tender, seemed to make itself felt. Like a lion-tamer in a cage filled with wild beasts, Lida stood there, and the men at once became gentle and submissive.

“Well, do you know, Lidia Petrovna⁠ ⁠…” stammered Sarudine.

At the sound of his voice, Lida’s face assumed a plaintive, helpless expression, and as she glanced swiftly at him there was great grief at her heart not unmixed with tenderness and hope. Yet in a moment such feelings were effaced by a fierce desire to show Sarudine how much he had lost in losing her; to let him see that she was still beautiful, in spite of all the sorrow and shame that he had caused her to endure.

“I don’t want to know anything,” she replied in an imperious, almost a stagy voice, as for a moment she closed her eyes.

Upon Volochine, her appearance produced an extraordinary effect, as his sharp little tongue darted out from his dry lips, and his eyes grew smaller and his whole frame vibrated from sheer physical excitement.

“You haven’t introduced us,” said Lida, looking round at Sarudine.

“Volochine⁠ ⁠… Pavel Lvovitsch⁠ ⁠…” stammered the officer.

“And this beauty,” he said to himself, “was my mistress.” He felt honestly pleased to think this, at the same time being anxious to show off before Volochine, while yet bitterly conscious of an irrevocable loss.

Lida languidly addressed her mother.

“There is someone who wants to speak to you,” she said.

“Oh! I can’t go now,” replied Maria Ivanovna.

“But they are waiting,” persisted Lida, almost hysterically.

Maria Ivanovna got up quickly.

Sanine watched Lida, and his nostrils were dilated.

“Won’t you come into the garden? It’s so hot in here,” said Lida, and without looking round to see if they were coming, she walked out through the veranda.

As if hypnotized, the men followed her, bound, seemingly, with the tresses of her hair, so that she could draw them whither she wished. Volochine walked first, ensnared by her beauty, and apparently oblivious of aught else.

Lida sat down in the rocking-chair under the linden-tree and stretched out her pretty little feet clad in black openwork stockings and tan shoes. It was as if she had two natures; the one overwhelmed with modesty and shame, the other, full of self-conscious coquetry. The first nature prompted her to look with disgust upon men, and life, and herself.

“Well, Pavel Lvovitsch,” she asked, as her eyelids drooped, “What impression has our poor little out-of-the-way town made upon you?”

“The impression which probably he experiences who in the depth of the forest suddenly beholds a radiant flower,” replied Volochine, rubbing his hands.

Then began talk which was thoroughly vapid and insincere, the spoken being false, and the unspoken, true. Sanine sat silently listening to this mute but sincere conversation, as expressed by faces, hands, feet and tremulous accents. Lida was unhappy, Volochine longed for all her beauty, while Sarudine loathed Lida, Sanine, Volochine, and the world generally. He wanted to go, yet he could not make a move. He was for doing something outrageous, yet he could only smoke cigarette after cigarette, while dominated by the desire to proclaim Lida his mistress to all present.

“And how do you like being here? Are you not sorry to have left Petersburg behind you?” asked Lida, suffering meanwhile intense torture, and wondering why she did not get up and go.

“Mais au contraire!” lisped Volochine, as he waved his hand in a finicking fashion and gazed ardently at Lida.

“Come! come! no pretty speeches!” said Lida, coquettishly, while to Sarudine her whole being seemed to say:

“You think that I am wretched, don’t you? and utterly crushed? But I am nothing of the kind, my friend. Look at me!”

“Oh, Lidia Petrovna!” said Sarudine, “you surely don’t call that a pretty speech!”

“I beg your pardon?” asked Lida drily, as if she had not heard, and then, in a different tone, she again addressed Volochine.

“Do tell me something about life in Petersburg. Here, we don’t live, we only vegetate.”

Sarudine saw that Volochine was smiling to himself, as if he did not believe that the former had ever been on intimate terms with Lida.

“Ah! Ah! Ah! Very good!” he said