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

“Oh! our famous Petersburg life!” Volochine, who chattered with ease, looked like a silly little monkey babbling of things that it did not comprehend.

“Who knows?” he thought to himself, his gaze riveted on Lida’s beautiful form.

“I assure you on my word of honour that our life is extremely dull and colourless. Until today I thought that life, generally, was always dull, whether in the town or in the country.”

“Not really!” exclaimed Lida, as she half closed her eyes.

“What makes life worth living is⁠ ⁠… a beautiful woman! And the women in big towns! If you could only see what they were like! Do you know, I feel convinced that if the world is ever saved it will be by beauty.” This last phrase Volochine unexpectedly added, believing it to be most apt and illuminating. The expression of his face was one of stupidity and greed, as he kept reverting to his pet theme, Woman. Sarudine alternately flushed and pale with jealousy, found it impossible to remain in one place, but walked restlessly up and down the path.

“Our women are all alike⁠ ⁠… stereotyped and made-up. To find one whose beauty is worthy of adoration, it is to the provinces that one must go, where the soil, untilled as yet, produces the most splendid flowers.”

Sanine scratched the nape of his neck, and crossed his legs.

“Ah! of what good is it if they bloom here, since there is no one worthy to pluck them?” replied Lida.

“Aha!” thought Sanine, suddenly becoming interested, “so that’s what she’s driving at!”

This wordplay, where sentiment and grossness were so obviously involved, he found extremely diverting.

“Is it possible?”

“Why, of course! I mean what I say, who is it that plucks our unfortunate blossoms? What men are those whom we set up as heroes?” rejoined Lida bitterly.

“Aren’t you rather too hard upon us?” asked Sarudine.

“No, Lidia Petrovna is right!” exclaimed Volochine, but, glancing at Sarudine, his eloquence suddenly subsided. Lida laughed outright. Filled with shame and grief and revenge, her burning eyes were set on her seducer, and seemed to pierce him through and through. Volochine again began to babble, while Lida interrupted him with laughter that concealed her tears.

“I think that we ought to be going,” said Sarudine, at last, who felt that the situation was becoming intolerable. He could not tell why, but everything, Lida’s laughter, her scornful eyes and trembling hands were all to him as so many secret boxes on the ear. His growing hatred of her, and his jealousy of Volochine as well as the consciousness of all that he had lost, served to exhaust him utterly.

“Already?” asked Lida.

Volochine smiled sweetly, licking his lips with the tip of his tongue.

“It can’t be helped! Victor Sergejevitsch apparently is not quite himself,” he said in a mocking tone, proud of his conquest.

So they took their leave; and, as Sarudine bent over Lida’s hand, he whispered:

“This is goodbye!”

Never had he hated Lida as much as at this moment.

In Lida’s heart there arose a vague, fleeting desire to bid tender farewell to all those bygone hours of love which had once been theirs. But this feeling she swiftly repressed, as she said in a loud, harsh voice:

“Goodbye! Bon voyage! Don’t forget us, Pavel Lvovitsch!”

As they were going, Volochine’s remark could be distinctly heard.

“How charming she is! She intoxicates one, like champagne!”

When they had gone, Lida sat down again in the rocking-chair. Her position was a different one, now, for she bent forward, trembling all over, and her silent tears fell fast.

“Come, come! What’s the matter?” said Sanine, as he took hold of her hand.

“Oh! don’t! What an awful thing life is!” she exclaimed, as her head sank lower, and she covered her face with her hands, while the soft plait of hair, slipping over her shoulder, hung down in front.

“For shame!” said Sanine. “What’s the use of crying about such trifles?”

“Are there really no other⁠ ⁠… better men, then?” murmured Lida.

Sanine smiled.

“No, certainly not. Man is vile by nature. Expect nothing good from him.⁠ ⁠… And then the harm that he does to you will not make you grieve.”

Lida looked up at him with beautiful tear-stained eyes.

“Do you expect nothing good from your fellow-men, either?”

“Of course not,” replied Sanine, “I live alone.”

On the following day Dounika, bareheaded and barefooted, came running to Sanine who was gardening.

“Vladimir Petrovitch,” she exclaimed, and her silly face had a scared look, “the officers have come, and they wish to speak to you.” She repeated the words like a lesson that she had learnt by heart.

Sanine was not surprised. He had been expecting a challenge fro Sarudine.

“Are they very anxious to see me?” he asked in a jocular tone.

Dounika, however, must have had an inkling of something dreadful, for instead of hiding her face she gazed at Sanine in sympathetic bewilderment.

Sanine propped his spade against a tree, tightened his belt and walked towards the house with his usual jaunty step.

“What fools they are! What absolute idiots!” he said to himself, as he thought of Sarudine and his seconds. By this no insult was intended; it was just the sincere expression of his own opinion.

Passing through the house, he saw Lida coming out of her room. She stood on the threshold; her face white as a shroud, and her eyes, anxious and distressful. Her lips moved, yet no sound escaped from them. At that moment she felt that she was the guiltiest, most miserable woman in all the world.

In an armchair in the morning-room sat Maria Ivanovna, looking utterly helpless and panic-stricken. Her cap that resembled a cock’s comb was poised sideways on her head, and she gazed in terror at Sanine, unable to utter a word. He smiled at her and was inclined to stop for a moment, yet he preferred to proceed.

Tanaroff and Von Deitz were sitting in the drawing-room bolt upright, with their heads close together, as if in their white tunics and tight riding-breeches they felt extremely uncomfortable. As Sanine entered