The Darling | Page 7

and cried. When she put him to bed, she would
stay a long time making the Cross over him and murmuring a prayer;
then she would go to bed and dream of that far-away misty future when
Sasha would finish his studies and become a doctor or an engineer,
would have a big house of his own with horses and a carriage, would
get married and have children. . . . She would fall asleep still thinking
of the same thing, and tears would run down her cheeks from her
closed eyes, while the black cat lay purring beside her: "Mrr, mrr, mrr."
Suddenly there would come a loud knock at the gate.
Olenka would wake up breathless with alarm, her heart throbbing. Half
a minute later would come another knock.
"It must be a telegram from Harkov," she would think, beginning to
tremble from head to foot. "Sasha's mother is sending for him from
Harkov. . . . Oh, mercy on us!"
She was in despair. Her head, her hands, and her feet would turn chill,
and she would feel that she was the most unhappy woman in the world.
But another minute would pass, voices would be heard: it would turn
out to be the veterinary surgeon coming home from the club.
"Well, thank God!" she would think.
And gradually the load in her heart would pass off, and she would feel
at ease. She would go back to bed thinking of Sasha, who lay sound
asleep in the next room, sometimes crying out in his sleep:
"I'll give it you! Get away! Shut up!"
ARIADNE
ON the deck of a steamer sailing from Odessa to Sevastopol, a rather
good-looking gentleman, with a little round beard, came up to me to
smoke, and said:
"Notice those Germans sitting near the shelter? Whenever Germans or
Englishmen get together, they talk about the crops, the price of wool, or
their personal affairs. But for some reason or other when we Russians
get together we never discuss anything but women and abstract

subjects--but especially women."
This gentleman's face was familiar to me already. We had returned
from abroad the evening before in the same train, and at Volotchisk
when the luggage was being examined by the Customs, I saw him
standing with a lady, his travelling companion, before a perfect
mountain of trunks and baskets filled with ladies' clothes, and I noticed
how embarrassed and downcast he was when he had to pay duty on
some piece of silk frippery, and his companion protested and threatened
to make a complaint. Afterwards, on the way to Odessa, I saw him
carrying little pies and oranges to the ladies' compartment.
It was rather damp; the vessel swayed a little, and the ladies had retired
to their cabins.
The gentleman with the little round beard sat down beside me and
continued:
"Yes, when Russians come together they discuss nothing but abstract
subjects and women. We are so intellectual, so solemn, that we utter
nothing but truths and can discuss only questions of a lofty order. The
Russian actor does not know how to be funny; he acts with profundity
even in a farce. We're just the same: when we have got to talk of trifles
we treat them only from an exalted point of view. It comes from a lack
of boldness, sincerity, and simplicity. We talk so often about women, I
fancy, because we are dissatisfied. We take too ideal a view of women,
and make demands out of all proportion with what reality can give us;
we get something utterly different from what we want, and the result is
dissatisfaction, shattered hopes, and inward suffering, and if any one is
suffering, he's bound to talk of it. It does not bore you to go on with this
conversation?
"No, not in the least."
"In that case, allow me to introduce myself," said my companion, rising
from his seat a little:
"Ivan Ilyitch Shamohin, a Moscow landowner of a sort. . . . You I know
very well."
He sat down and went on, looking at me with a genuine and friendly
expression:
"A mediocre philosopher, like Max Nordau, would explain these
incessant conversations about women as a form of erotic madness, or
would put it down to our having been slave-owners and so on; I take

quite a different view of it. I repeat, we are dissatisfied because we are
idealists. We want the creatures who bear us and our children to be
superior to us and to everything in the world. When we are young we
adore and poeticize those with whom we are in love: love and
happiness with us are synonyms. Among us in Russia marriage without
love is despised, sensuality is ridiculed and inspires repulsion, and the
greatest success is