The liturgy had only just begun and the Gospel was being read. The silence of the church was only broken by the voice of the reader and the footsteps of the incense-bearing deacon. The people stood silent and immovable, gazing with reverence through the wide-open holy gates of the altar and listening to the drawling voice of the reader. Village decorum, or, to speak more correctly, village propriety, strictly represses every inclination to violate the reverend quiet of the church. I always felt ashamed when in a church anything caused me to smile or speak. Unfortunately it is seldom that I do not meet some of my acquaintances who, I regret to say, are only too numerous, and it generally happens that I have hardly entered the church before I am accosted by one of the ‘intelligentsia’ who, after a long introduction about the weather, begins a conversation on his own trivial affairs. I answer ‘yes’ and ‘no’, but I am too considerate to refuse to give him any attention. While I talk I glance bashfully at my neighbours who are praying, fearing that my idle chatter may wound them.
This time, as usual, I did not escape from acquaintances. When I entered the church I saw my heroine standing close to the door - that same ‘girl in red’ whom I had met on the way to Tenevo.
Poor little thing! There she stood, red as a crawfish, and perspiring in the midst of the crowd, casting imploring glances on all those faces in the search for a deliverer. She had stuck fast in the densest crowd and, unable to move either forward or backward, looked like a bird who was being tightly squeezed in a fist. When she saw me she smiled bitterly and began nodding her pretty chin.
‘For God’s sake, escort me to the front!’ she said, seizing hold of my sleeve, it is terribly stuffy here - and so crowded… I beg you!’
‘In front it will be as crowded,’ I replied.
‘But there, all the people are well dressed and respectable… Here are only common people. A place is reserved for us in front… You, too, ought to be there…’
So she was red not because it was stuffy and crowded in the church. Her little head was troubled by the question of precedence. I granted the vain girl’s prayer, and by carefully pressing aside the people I was able to conduct her to the very dais near the altar on which the flower of our district beau-monde was collected. Having placed Olenka in a position that was in accordance with her aristocratic desires, I took up a post at the back of the beau-monde and began an inspection.
As usual, the men and women were whispering and giggling. The Justice of the Peace, Kalinin, gesticulating with his hands and shaking his head, was telling the landowner, Deryaev, in an undertone all about his ailments. Deryaev was abusing the doctors almost aloud and advising the justice of the peace to be treated by a certain Evstrat Ivanych. The ladies, perceiving Olenka, pounced upon her as a good subject for their criticism and began whispering. There was only one girl who evidently was praying… She was kneeling, with her black eyes fixed in front of her; she was moving her lips. She did not notice a curl of hair that had got loose under her hat and was hanging in disorder over her temple… She did not notice that Olenka and I had stopped beside her.
She was Nadezhda Nikolaevna, Justice Kalinin’s daughter. When I spoke above of the woman, who, like a black cat, had run between the doctor and me, I was speaking of her… The doctor loved her as only such noble natures as my dear ‘Screw’s’ are able to love. Now he was standing beside her, as stiff as a pikestaff, with his hands at his sides and his neck stretched out. From time to time his loving eyes glanced inquiringly at her concentrated face. He seemed to be watching her pray and in his eyes there shone a melancholy, passionate longing to be the object of her prayers. But, to his grief, he knew for whom she was praying… It was not for him…
I made a sign to Pavel Ivanovich when he looked round at me, and we both left the church.
‘Let’s stroll about the market,’ I proposed.
We lighted our cigarettes and went towards the booths.
CHAPTER IX
How is Nadezhda Nikolaevna?’ I asked the doctor as we J. -L entered a tent where toys were being sold.
‘Pretty well… I think she’s all right…’ the doctor replied, frowning at a little soldier with a lilac face and a crimson uniform. ‘She asked about you…’
‘What did she ask about me?’
‘Things in general… She is angry that you have not been to see them for so long… she wants to see you and to inquire the cause of your sudden coldness towards their household… You used to go there nearly every day and then - dropped them! As if cut off… You don’t even acknowledge them in the street.’
‘That’s not true, Screw… Want of leisure is really the cause of my ceasing to go to the Kalinins. What’s true is true! My connection with that family is as excellent as formerly… I always bow if I happen to meet any of them.’
‘However, last Thursday, when you met her father, for some reason you did not return his bow.’
‘I don’t like that old blockhead of a Justice,’ I said, ‘and I can’t look with equanimity at his phiz; but I still find myself able to bow to him and to press the hand he stretches out to me. Perhaps I didn’t notice him on Thursday, or I didn’t recognize him. You’re not in a good humour today, Screwy, and are trying to pick a quarrel.’
‘I love you, my dear boy,’ Pavel Ivanovich sighed; ‘but I don’t believe you… “Didn’t notice, didn’t recognize”! I don’t require your justifications nor your evasions… What’s the use of them when there’s so little truth in them? You’re an excellent, a good man, but there’s a kind of a screw loose in your brain that makes you - forgive me for saying it - capable of anything.’
‘I’m humbly obliged.’
‘Don’t be offended, golubchek… God grant that I may be mistaken, but you appear to me to be something of a psychopath. Sometimes, quite in spite of your will and the dictates of your excellent nature, you have attacks of such desires and commit such acts that all who know you as a respectable man are quite nonplussed. You make one marvel how your highly moral principles, which I have the honour of knowing, can exist together with your sudden impulses, which, in the end, produce the most screaming abominations! What animal is this?’ Pavel Ivanovich asked the salesman abruptly in quite another tone, lifting close to his eyes a wooden animal with a man’s nose, a mane, and a grey stripe down its back.
‘A lion,’ the salesman answered, yawning. ‘Or perhaps some other sort of creature. The deuce only knows!’
From the toy booths we went to the shops where textiles were sold and trade was already very brisk.
‘These toys only mislead children,’ the doctor said. ‘They give the falsest ideas of flora and fauna. For example, that lion… striped, purple, and squeaking… Whoever heard of a lion that squeaks?’
‘I say, Screwy,’ I began, ‘you evidently want to say something to me and you seem not to be able… Go ahead! I like to hear you, even when you tell me unpleasant things…’
‘Whether pleasant or unpleasant, friend, you must listen to me. There is much I want to talk to you about.’
‘Begin… I am transformed into one very large ear.’
I have already mentioned to you my supposition that you are a psychopath. Now have the goodness to listen to the proofs… I will speak quite frankly, perhaps sometimes sharply… My words may jar on you, but don’t be angry, friend… You know my feelings for you: I like you better than anybody else in the district I speak not to reprove, nor to blame, nor to upset you. Let us both be objective, friend… Let us examine your psyche with an unprejudiced eye, as if it were a liver or a stomach…’
‘All right, let’s be objective,’ I agreed.
‘Excellent! Then let us begin with your connection with