IV

After five o’clock the guests began to arrive. Prince Vasily Lvovich brought his widowed sister, Lyudmila Lvovna Durasova, a stout, good-natured woman who spoke very little; Vasyuchok, a wealthy young scapegrace and rake, whom everybody in town called by that familiar name, and who was very good company because he could sing and recite poetry, as well as arrange tableaux, plays and charity bazaars; the famous pianist Jennie Reiter, a friend of Princess Vera’s from the Smolny Institute; and also his brother-in-law, Nikolai Nikolayevich. After them came in a motor-car Anna’s husband, along with the fat, hulking Professor Speshnikov, and the vice-governor, von Seek. The last to arrive was General Anosov, who came in a fine hired landau, accompanied by two officers: Staff Colonel Ponamaryov, looking older than his age, a lean, bilious man worn out by clerical drudgery, and Guards Lieutenant Bakhtinsky of the Hussars, who was reputed to be the best dancer and master of ceremonies in Petersburg.

General Anosov, a silver-haired old man, tall and obese, stepped heavily down from the footboard, holding on to the rail of the box with one hand and to the back of the landau with the other. In his left hand he carried an ear-trumpet and in his right a rubber-tipped cane. He had a large, coarse, red face with a fleshy nose, and he looked out of narrowed eyes with the dignified, mildly contemptuous good humour typical of courageous and plain men who have often met danger and death face to face.

The two sisters, who recognized him from afar, ran up to the landau just in time to support him half-jokingly under the arms.

“You’d think I was the bishop,” said the general in a friendly, husky boom.

“Grandad, dear Grandad!” said Vera, a little reproachfully. “All these days we’ve been expecting you, and you haven’t let us get so much as a glimpse of you.”

“Our Grandad’s lost all shame here in the south,” said Anna with a laugh. “As if you couldn’t have thought of your godchild. You behave like a shameless old fop, and you’ve forgotten all about us.”

The general, who had bared his majestic head, kissed the hands of the sisters, then he kissed both women on the cheeks and again on the hands.

“Wait, girls, don’t scold me,” he said, pausing for breath after each word, because of his long-standing asthma. “Upon my honour – those wretched doctors – have been treating my rheumatism all summer – with some sort of foul jelly – it smells awful – And they wouldn’t let me go – You’re the first – I’m calling on – Very glad – to see you – How are you getting along? You’re quite the lady, Vera – you look very much like – your late mother – When’ll you be inviting me to the christening?”

“I’m afraid never, Grandad.”

“Don’t give up hope – it’ll come yet – Pray to God. And you, Anna, you haven’t changed a bit – At sixty you’ll be – the same fidget. But wait. Let me introduce these gentlemen to you.”

“I had the honour long ago,” said Colonel Ponamaryov, bowing.

“I was introduced to the princess in Petersburg,” added the Hussar.

“Well, then, Anna, may I introduce to you Lieutenant Bakhtinsky. He’s a dancer and brawler, but a good horseman all the same. There, my dear Bakhtinsky, take that thing from the carriage. Come along, girls. What are you going to feed us on, Vera dear? After the starvation diet – those doctors kept me on – I have the appetite of an ensign – on graduation.”

General Anosov had been a companion-in-arms and devoted friend of the late Prince Mirza Bulat-Tuganovsky. After the prince’s death he had passed on to his daughters all his love and affection. He had known them when they were quite small – indeed, he was Anna’s godfather. At that time he had been, as he still was, governor of a big but almost abandoned fortress in the town of K., and had come to Tuganovsky’s almost daily. The children literally adored him because he pampered them, gave them presents, and offered them boxes at the circus or the theatre, and also because no one could play with them so well as he could. But what they liked and remembered best was his stories of military campaigns, of battles and bivouacs, of victories and retreats, of death and wounds and severe frosts – artless unhurried stories, calm as an epic, told between evening tea and the hated hour when the children were told to go to bed.

This fragment of old times appeared as a colossal and strangely picturesque figure. He combined those simple but deep and touching traits which, even in his day, were more often to be found among the privates than among the officers, those purely Russian, muzhik traits which, taken together, form an exalted character that sometimes makes our soldier not only invincible but a martyr, almost a saint. He has a guileless, naive faith, a clear, cheerfully good-natured view of life, cool and matter-of-fact courage, humility in the face of death, pity for the vanquished, infinite patience, and amazing physical and moral stamina.

Since the Polish War Anosov had taken part in every campaign except the Japanese. He would not have hesitated to go to that war, either, but he was not called upon, and he had a maxim which was great in its modesty: “Never challenge death until you’re called.” Throughout his service he never struck any of his men, let alone had them flogged. During the Polish uprising he refused to shoot a group of prisoners despite the regimental commander’s personal orders. “If it’s a spy, I can not only have him shot,” he said, “but am ready to kill him with my own hand if you command me to. But these men are prisoners, and I can’t do it.” And he said that simply and respectfully, without the least hint of challenge or bravado, looking his superior straight in the eyes with his own clear, steady eyes, so that instead of shooting him for disobeying orders they let him alone.

During the war of 1877–1879, he rose very quickly to the rank of colonel, although he lacked proper education or, as he put it himself, had finished only a “bear’s academy.” He took part in crossing the Danube and the Balkan Mountains, camped at Shipka through the winter, and was among those who launched the last attack on Plevna; he was wounded five times, once seriously, and got severe concussion from a grenade splinter. General Radetsky and Skobelev knew him personally and had a great respect for him. It was about him that Skobelev had said, “I know an officer who is much braver than I am, and that officer’s Major Anosov.”

He returned from the war almost deaf from the grenade splinter; three toes on one foot had been amputated as a result of frost-bite during the Balkan march, and he had contracted an acute rheumatism at Shipka. After two years of peace-time service it was deemed timely to retire him, but he rebelled. The governor of the territory, who had witnessed his cool courage in crossing the Danube, brought his influence to bear at the critical moment. The Petersburg authorities decided not to hurt the feelings of the distinguished colonel and gave him for life the governorship of K., an office which was honorary rather than indispensable for the defence of the country.

Everyone in town knew him and good-naturedly made fun of his foibles and habits and the way he dressed. He never carried arms, and he went about in a long, old-fashioned coat and a cap with a Large top and an enormous straight visor, a cane in his right band and an ear-trumpet in his left; he was always accompanied by two fat, Lazy, hoarse pugs with tongues lolling between their clamped jaws. If in the course of his morning stroll he met an acquaintance, the passers-by several blocks away could hear him shouting and the pugs barking in unison.

Like many people who are hard of hearing, he was passionately fond of opera, and sometimes, during a romantic duet, his commanding boom would suddenly resound throughout the hall, “Why, that was a jolly good C, damn him! Cracked it right through like a nut.” Subdued laughter would ripple across the hall, but the general would suspect nothing, being under the impression that he had merely whispered a comment in his neighbour’s ear.

As part of his official duties he often visited, together with his wheezing pugs, the guard-house where officers under arrest relaxed comfortably from the hardships of military service, telling stories over tea and cards. He would carefully question each of them, “Your name? Who; arrested you? For how long? What for?” Sometimes he would quite unexpectedly commend an officer for a courageous if unlawful act, or take him to task so loudly that he could be heard outside. But when he had finished shouting he would inquire almost in the same breath! where the officer got his meals and how much they cost him. It sometimes happened that a lieutenant, who had erred and been sent for a prolonged detention from an out-of-the-way corner that had no guard-room of its own, would confess that, being short of funds, he had to eat with the privates. Anosov then would immediately order meals to be supplied to the poor devil from his own home, which was no more than a hundred yards from the guardhouse.

It was in K. that he had grown intimate with the Tuganovsky family and established a close friendship with the children, so that with him it had become a virtual necessity to see them every evening. If it so happened that the young ladies went away somewhere or he himself was kept away by his official duties, he would feel terribly lonely and melancholy in the large rooms of the governor’s mansion. Every summer he would take his leave and spend a whole month at the Tuganovsky estate, Yegorovskoye, some forty miles from K.

All his repressed tenderness and his longing for love had gone out to the children, especially the girls. Once he had been married, but that had been so long ago that he hardly remembered it. It was before the war that his wife had eloped with a strolling actor, who had fascinated her with his velvet jacket and lace cuffs. Anosov paid her an allowance as long as she lived, but did not permit her to come back to him despite all the scenes of repentance and tearful letters. They had had no children.