Part 3 (1/2)

'Ni-kolka!' Someone's voice boomed out through the fog and black spots, and it took Alexei several seconds to realise that the voice was his own. 'Nikolka!' he repeated. A white lavatory wall swung open and turned green. 'G.o.d, how sickening, how disgusting. I swear I'll never mix vodka and wine again. Nikol . . .'

'Ah-ah', Myshlaevsky groaned hoa.r.s.ely and sat down on the floor.

A black crack widened and through it appeared Nikolka's head and chevron.

'Nikol. . . help me to get him up. There, pick him up like this, under his arm.'

'Poor fellow', muttered Nikolka shaking his head sympathetically and straining himself to pick up his friend. The half-lifeless body slithered around, twitching legs slid in every direction and the lolling head hung like a puppet's on a string. Tonk-tank went the clock, as it fell off the wall and jumped back into place again. Bunches of flowers danced a jig in the vase. Elena's face was flushed with red patches and a lock of hair dangled over her right eyebrow.

'That's right. Now put him to bed.'

'At least wrap him in a bathrobe. He's indecent like that with me around. You d.a.m.ned fools - you can't hold your drink. Viktor! Viktor! What's the matter with you? Vik . . .'

'Shut up, Elena. You're no help. Listen, Nikolka, in my study . . . there's a medicine bottle ... it says ”Liquor ammonii”, you can tell because the corner of the label's torn off . . . anyway, you can't mistake the smell of sal ammoniac.'

'Yes, right away . . .'

'You, a doctor - you ought to be ashamed of yourself, Alexei. ..'

'All right, I know . . .'

'What? Has his pulse stopped?'

'No, he's just pa.s.sed out.'

'Basin!'

'Ah-aah 'Christ!'

Violent reek of ammonia. Karas and Elena held Myshlaevsky's mouth open. Nikolka supported him while Alexei twice poured white cloudy liquid into his mouth.

'Aah . . . ugh . . . urkhh . . .'

'The snow . . .'

'G.o.d almighty. Can't be helped, though. Only way to do it . . .'

On his forehead lay a wet cloth dripping water, below it the swivelling, bloodshot whites of his eyes under half-closed lids, bluish shadows around the sharpened nose. For an anxious quarter of an hour, b.u.mping each other with their elbows, they strove with the vanquished officer until he opened his eyes and croaked: 'Aah ... let me go . . .'

'Right. That's better. He can stay and sleep here.'

Lights went on in all the rooms and beds were quickly made up.

'Leonid, you'd better sleep in here, next to Nikolka's room.'

'Very well.'

Copper-red in the face but cheerful, Shervinsky clicked his spurs and, bowing, showed the parting in his hair. Elena's white hands fluttered over the pillows as she arranged them on the divan.

'Please don't bother ... I can make up the bed myself.'

'Nonsense. Stop tugging at that pillow - I don't need your help.'

'Please let me kiss your hand ...'

'What for?'

'Grat.i.tude for all your trouble.'

'I can manage without hand-kissing for the moment . . . Nikolka, you're sleeping in your own bed. Well, how is he?'

'He's all right, sleeping it off.' Two camp beds were made up in the room leading to Nikolka's, behind two back-to-back bookcases. In Professor Turbin's family the room was known as the library.

As the lights went out in the library, in Nikolka's room and in the dining-room, a dark red streak of light crawled out of Elena's bedroom and into the dining-room through a narrow crack in the door. The light pained her, so she had draped her bedside lamp with a dark red theater-cloak. Once Elena used to drive to an evening at the theater in that cloak, once when her arms, her furs and her lips had smelled of perfume, her face had been delicately powdered - and when under the hood of her cloak Elena had looked like Liza in The Queen of Spades. The Queen of Spades. But in the past year the cloak had turned threadbare with uncanny rapidity, the folds grown creased and stained and the ribbons shabby. Still looking like Liza in But in the past year the cloak had turned threadbare with uncanny rapidity, the folds grown creased and stained and the ribbons shabby. Still looking like Liza in The Queen of Spades, The Queen of Spades, auburn-haired Elena now sat on the turned-down edge of her bed in a neglige, her hands folded in her lap. Her bare feet were buried deep in the fur of a well-worn old bearskin rug. Her brief intoxication had gone completely, and now deep sadness enveloped her like a black cloak. From the next room, m.u.f.fled by the bookshelf that had been placed across the closed door, came the faint whistle of Nikolka's breathing and Shervinsky's bold, confident snore. Dead silence from Mysh-Iaevsky and Karas in the library. Alone, with the light s.h.i.+ning on her nightgown and on the two black, blank windows, Elena talked to herself without constraint, sometimes half-aloud, sometimes whispering with lips that scarcely moved. auburn-haired Elena now sat on the turned-down edge of her bed in a neglige, her hands folded in her lap. Her bare feet were buried deep in the fur of a well-worn old bearskin rug. Her brief intoxication had gone completely, and now deep sadness enveloped her like a black cloak. From the next room, m.u.f.fled by the bookshelf that had been placed across the closed door, came the faint whistle of Nikolka's breathing and Shervinsky's bold, confident snore. Dead silence from Mysh-Iaevsky and Karas in the library. Alone, with the light s.h.i.+ning on her nightgown and on the two black, blank windows, Elena talked to herself without constraint, sometimes half-aloud, sometimes whispering with lips that scarcely moved.

'He's gone . . .'

Muttering, she screwed up her dry eyes reflectively. She could not understand her own thoughts. He had gone, and at a time like this. But then he was an extremely level-headed man and he had done the right thing by leaving ... It was surely for the best.

'But at a time like this . . .'

Elena whispered, and sighed deeply.

'What sort of man is he?' In her way she had loved him and even grown attached to him. Now in the solitude of this room, beside these black windows, so funereal, she suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of depression. Yet neither at this moment, nor for the whole eighteen months that she had lived with this man had there been in her heart of hearts that essential feeling without which no marriage can survive - not even such a brilliant match as theirs, between the beautiful, red-haired, golden Elena and a career officer of the general staff, a marriage with theater-cloaks, with perfume and spurs, unenc.u.mbered by children. Married to a sensible, careful Baltic German of the general staff. And yet -what was he really like? What was that vital ingredient, whose lack had created the emptiness in the depth of Elena's soul?

'I know, I know what it is', said Elena to herself aloud. 'There's no respect. Do you realise, Sergei? I have never felt any respect for you', she announced meaningfully to her cloak, raising an admonitory finger. She was immediately appalled at her loneliness, and longed for him to be there at that moment. He had gone. And her brothers had kissed him goodbye. Did they really have to do that? But for G.o.d's sake, what am I saying? What else should they have done? Held back? Of course not. Well, maybe it was better that he shouldn't be here at such a difficult time and he was better gone, but they couldn't have refused to wish him G.o.dspeed. Of course not. Let him go. The fact was that although they had gone through the motions of embracing him, in the depth of their hearts they hated him. G.o.d, yes-they did. All this time you've been lying to yourself and yet when you stop to think for a moment, it's obvious - they hate him. Nikolka still has some remnants of kindness and generosity toward him, but Alexei . . . And yet that's not quite true either. Alexei is kind at heart too, yet he somehow hates him more. Oh my G.o.d, what am I saying? Sergei, what am I saying about you? Suddenly we're cut off . . . He's gone and here am I . . .

'My husband,' she said with a sigh, and began to unb.u.t.ton her neglige, 'my husband . . .'

Red and glowing, her cloak listened intently, then asked: 'But what sort of a man is your husband?'

'He's a swine, and nothing more!' said Alexei Turbin to himself, alone in his room across the lobby from Elena. He had divined what she was thinking and it infuriated him. 'He's a swine - and I'm a weakling. Kicking him out might have been going too far, but I should at least have turned my back on him. To h.e.l.l with him. And it's not because he left Elena at a time like this that he's a swine, that has really very little to do with it - no, it's because of something quite different. But what, exactly? It's only too clear, of course. He's a wax dummy without the slightest conception of decency! Whatever he says, he talks like a senseless fathead - and he's a graduate of the military academy, who are supposed to be the elite of Russia . . .'

Silence in the apartment. The streak of light from Elena's room was extinguished. She fell asleep and her thoughts faded away, but for a long time Alexei Turbin sat unhappily at the little writing desk in his little room. The vodka and the hock had violently disagreed with him. He sat looking with red-rimmed eyes at a page of the first book he happened to pick up and tried to read, his mind always flicking senselessly back to the same line: 'Honor is to a Russian but a useless burden . . .'

It was almost morning when he undressed and fell asleep. He dreamed of a nasty little man in baggy check pants who said with a sneer: 'Better not sit on a hedgehog if you're naked! Holy Russia is a wooden country, poor and . . . dangerous, and to a Russian honor is nothing but a useless burden.'

'Get out!' shouted Turbin in his dream. 'You filthy little rat-I'll get you!' In his dream Alexei sleepily fumbled in his desk drawer for an automatic, found it, tried to shoot the horrible little man, chased after him and the dream dissolved.

For a couple of hours he fell into a deep, black, dreamless sleep and when a pale delicate light began to dawn outside the windows of his room that opened on to the verandah, Alexei began to dream about the City.