IV
For a whole fortnight I did nothing. I went to the Academy merely to paint the programme picture, a terrible Biblical study—the turning of Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt. Everything was ready—Lot and his family—but the pillar! I could not imagine it—whether to paint it as a sort of tombstone or a simple statue of Lot’s wife made of rock-salt.
Life dragged along wearily. I received two letters from Sonia. I read her pretty prattle about life in the Institute—how she read secretly, evading the Argus-eyed class mistress—and I added her letters to the others, bound up by a pink ribbon. I had kept this ribbon for fifteen years, and up to the present had not been able to make up my mind to throw it away. Why throw it away? With whom did it interfere? But what would Bezsonow have said had he seen this evidence of my sentimentality? Would he again have gone into raptures over my “cleanness,” or commenced to jeer?
However, it was no laughing matter which had vexed me. What was to be done? Give up the picture, or search again for a model?
An unexpected chance helped me. One day, as I was lying on my sofa, with a stupid translation of a French novel, and had lain there until my head ached and my brain reeled from stories of morgues, police detectives, and the resurrection of people who ought to have died twenty times over—the door opened, and in came Helfreich.
Imagine a pair of thin, rather bandy legs, a huge body crushed by two humps, a pair of skinny arms, high hunched-up shoulders, expressive of a sort of perpetual doubt, and a young, pale, slightly bloated, but kind-expressioned face on a head thrown well back. He was an artist. Amateurs know his pictures well. Painted for the most part on one subject. His heroes were cats. He has painted sleeping cats, cats with birds, cats arching their backs, even a tipsy cat, with merry eyes, behind a glass of wine. In cats he had reached the acme of perfection, but he never tried anything else. If in the picture there were certain accessories besides the cats—foliage, from out of which a pink-tipped nose with gold-coloured eyes and narrow pupils should appear, any drapery, a basket in which were a whole family of kittens with large transparent ears—then he used to turn to me. And on this occasion he arrived with something wrapped up in dark blue paper. Having given me his white, bony hand, he put the parcel on the table and commenced to unwrap it.
“Cats again?” I asked.
“Again … You see, this one wants a little bit of carpet putting in … and in the other a corner of a sofa.”
He unrolled the paper and showed me two not big paintings. The figures of the cats were quite finished, but were painted on a background of white canvas.
“Either a sofa, or something of that sort. … Invent it yourself. I am sick of it.”
“Are you going to give up these cats soon, Simon Ivanovich?”
“Yes, I ought to. They are hindering me very much. But what will you? There is money in them! For this rubbish, two hundred roubles.”
And, spreading out his legs, he shrugged his already permanently hunched shoulders and threw out his hands, as if to express his astonishment that such rubbish found purchasers.
In two years he had obtained a reputation with his cats. Never before or since (with the exception of the late Huna) had there been such mastery in the depictment of cats of every possible age, colour, and condition. But, having devoted his attention exclusively to them, Helfreich had abandoned all else.
“Money, money …” he repeated musingly. “And why do I, a humpbacked devil, want so much money? And all the time I feel it is becoming harder and harder for me to take up regular work. I envy you, Andrei. For two years I have painted nothing but this trash. … Of course, I am very fond of cats, especially live cats. But I feel that it is sucking me drier and drier. And yet I have more talent than you, Andrei. What do you think?” he asked me in a good-natured tone.
“I don’t think,” I replied, smiling, “I know it.”
“And what about your Charlotte?”
I waved my hand.
“Bad?” he asked. “Show me …” and, seeing that I made no move, he went himself and rummaged about in the heap of old canvases lying in the corner of the room. Then he placed the reflector on the lamp, put my unfinished picture on the easel, and lighted it up. He said nothing for a long time, and then exclaimed:
“I understand you. This might turn out all right. Only it is Anna Ivanovna. Do you know why I came here? Come along with me.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere. For a walk. I am depressed, Andrei; afraid I shall again fall into sin.”
“What nonsense!”
“No, it is not nonsense. I feel that something is already gnawing away at me here” (he pointed to the lower part of his chest). “I would fain forget and sleep”—he suddenly sang in a thin tenor—“and I have come here so as not to be alone. Once it begins, it will last a fortnight, and then afterwards I am ill. And, finally, it is very bad for me with such a body.” And he turned himself round twice on his heels to show me both his humps.
“I tell you what,” I suggested; “come and stay with me as my guest!”
“It would be very nice. I will think about it. And now come along.”
I dressed, and we went out.
We long sauntered along in the Petersburg slush. It was autumn. A strong wind was blowing from the sea, and the Neva had risen. We walked along the Palace Quay. The angry river was foaming and whipping the granite parapets of the Quay with its waves. From out of the blackness in which the opposite side had become hidden there came occasional spurts of flame, quickly followed by a loud roar. The guns in the Fortress were firing. The water was rising.
“I should like it to rise still higher. I have never seen a flood, and it would be interesting,” said Helfreich.
We sat for a long time on the Quay, silently watching the stormy darkness.
“It will not rise any more,” said Helfreich at length; “the wind seems to be dying down. I am sorry I have not seen a flood. … Let us go.”
“Where?”
“Follow our noses … Come with me. I will take you to a place. Nature in a silly humour frightens me. Better to go and look at human folly.”
“Where is it? Senichka?”
“I know. … Izvoschik!” he called out.
We got in and started off. On the Fontanka, opposite some gaudily painted wooden gates, decorated with carved work, Helfreich stopped the izvoschik. We passed through a dirty yard between the two-storied wings of an old building. Two powerful reflector lamps threw brilliant rays of light into our faces. They hung on either side of a flight of steps leading to the entrance, old, but also plentifully decorated with different coloured woodwork, carved in the so-called Russian taste. In front and behind us people were going in the same direction as ourselves—men in furs, women in long wraps of pretentiously costly material, silk-woven flowers on a plush ground, with boas round their necks, and white silk mufflers on their heads. All were making for the entrance, and, having gone up several steps of the staircase, were taking off their wraps, displaying for the most part pitiful attempts at luxurious toilettes, in which silk was half cotton, bronze took the place of gold, cut glass did substitute for brilliants and powder, carmine and terre de sienne took the place of freshness of face and brilliancy of eyes.
We took tickets at the booking-office, and passed into a whole suite of rooms furnished with little tables. The stifling atmosphere, reeking of strange fumes, seized me. Tobacco smoke mingled with the fumes of beer and cheap pomade. The crowd was a noisy one. Some were aimlessly wandering about, others were seated behind bottles at the little tables. There were men and women, and the expression on their faces was strange. They all pretended to be jovial, and were chatting away about something—what, goodness knows! We sat down at one of the tables, and Helfreich ordered some tea. I stirred mine with a spoon and listened, as, just alongside me, a short fat brunette with a gipsy type of face, slowly, and with a tone of dignity in her voice which betrayed a strong German accent and some pride, replied to a query from the young man with whom she was sitting as to whether she often came here.
“I come here once a week. I cannot come oftener, because I have to go to other places. The day before yesterday I was at the German Club; yesterday at the Orpheus; today here; tomorrow at the Bolshoi Theatre; the day after tomorrow at the Prikazchick; then to the operetta and the Château de Fleurs. … Yes, I go somewhere every day, and so the time passes, ‘die ganze Woche.’ …” And she proudly looked at her companion, who had already curled up at hearing so magnificent a programme of delights.
We got up, and began to stroll through the rooms. At the extreme end a wide door led into a hall for dancing. The windows had yellow silk blinds, the ceiling was a painted one; and there were rows of cane chairs along the walls; whilst in a corner of the hall there was a large white alcove, shell-shaped, in which the orchestra of fifteen men sat. The women, for the most part arm-in-arm, walked up and down the hall in pairs; the men sat on the chairs and watched them. The musicians were tuning their instruments. The face of the first violin seemed familiar to me.
“Is it you? Theodore Carlovich!” I asked, touching him on the shoulder.
Theodore Carlovich turned round towards me. My goodness! how flabby he had become! bloated and grey.
“Yes, it is I, Theodore Carlovich. And what do you want?”
“Don’t you remember me at the Gymnasium? … You used to come with your violin for the dancing lessons. …”
“Ach! yes. And now I sit here on a stool in a corner of the hall. I remember you. … You waltzed very well.”
“Have you been long here?”
“This is my third year.”
“Do you remember how you came early, and in the empty room played Ernst’s Elegy, and I listened?”
The musician’s bleary eyes glistened.
“You heard! you listened! I thought that no one heard. Yes, I could play once. Now I cannot. Here now, on all holidays. At the booths in the daytime, and nighttime here. …” He remained silent for a bit. “I have four boys and one girl,” he murmured quietly. “One of the boys finishes at the Anne Schule this year, and is going to the University. I cannot play Ernst’s Elegy.”
The leader waved his baton several times, and the small but loud orchestra broke into a deafening polka. The leader, having marked the time three or four times, joined with his squeaky violin in the general noise. Couples began to revolve whilst the orchestra thundered.
“Come on, Senia,” I said; “this is boring. Let’s go home and have some tea, and talk of something nice.”
“ ‘Of something nice?’ ” he inquired, with a smile. “All right; let’s go.”
We began to push our way through towards the exit, when suddenly Helfreich stopped.
“Look!” said he. “Bezsonow!”
I looked, and saw Bezsonow. He was sitting at a marble-topped table, on which stood bottles of wine, glasses, and something else. Bending over, his eyes sparkling, he was whispering something in an animated manner to a woman dressed in black silk sitting at the same table, but whose face I could not see. I could only note her well-made figure, delicate hands and neck, and her black hair smoothly done up on the top of her head.
“Thank Fate!” said Helfreich to me. “Do you know who she is? Rejoice! That is your Charlotte Corday.”
“She? Here!”