A Cold Autumn

In June that year he was a guest on our estate – he was always considered one of the family: his late father had been a friend and neighbour of my father. On 15th June Ferdinand was killed in Sarajevo. On the morning of the 16th the newspapers were brought from the post office. With a Moscow evening paper in his hand, my father came out of his study into the dining room, where Mama, he and I were still sitting at the tea table, and said:

“Well, my friends, it’s war! The Austrian Crown Prince has been killed in Sarajevo. It’s war!”

On Peter’s Day a lot of people descended on us – it was my father’s name day – and at dinner he was declared my fiancé. But on 19th July, Germany declared war on Russia…

In September he came to see us for just twenty-four hours – to say goodbye before leaving for the front (everyone thought then that the war would soon end, and our wedding had been postponed until the spring). And so our farewell evening arrived. After supper the samovar was brought, as usual, and looking at the windows that had misted over because of its steam, my father said:

“It’s an amazingly early cold autumn!”

We sat quietly that evening, just occasionally exchanging insignificant, exaggeratedly calm words, concealing our secret thoughts and feelings. And it was with feigned naturalness that Father had spoken of the autumn. I went up to the balcony door and wiped the glass with a handkerchief: in the garden, in the black sky, pure, icy stars were glittering clearly and sharply. Father was lying back in an armchair smoking, gazing absent-mindedly at the hot lamp that hung above the table, and under its light Mama, wearing glasses, was diligently mending a little silk pouch – we knew what it was, and it was both touching and horrible. Father asked:

“So you nevertheless want to go in the morning, and not after lunch?”

“Yes, if you’ll allow me, in the morning,” he replied. “It’s very sad, but I’ve not yet finished making arrangements about the house.”

Father gave a little sigh:

“Well, as you wish, my dear. Only in that case it’s time for bed for Mama and me, we want to be sure to see you off tomorrow…”

Mama stood up and made the sign of the cross over her future son, and he bent over her hand, and then over Father’s. Left alone, we stayed in the dining room a little longer – I took it into my head to play patience, while he walked from corner to corner in silence, and then asked:

“Do you want to go for a little walk?”

My heart was becoming heavier and heavier, and I responded with indifference:

“Very well…”

Putting on his things in the hall, he continued thinking about something, and with a sweet smile recalled some lines of Fet:

 

“Oh, what an extremely cold autumn!

To put on your housecoat is wise…”

 

“I don’t have a housecoat,” I said. “How does it carry on?”

“I don’t remember. Like this, I think:

 

Oh see – through the black of the pine trees,

It looks like a fire on the rise…”

 

“What fire?”

“The moon rising, of course. There’s a sort of rural, autumnal delight in those lines. ‘To put on your housecoat is wise…’ Our grandfathers’ and grandmothers’ times… Oh, my God, my God!”

“What is it?”

“Nothing, darling. I do feel sad, you know. Sad and happy. I love you very, very much…”

After putting on our things, we went through the dining room onto the balcony and down into the garden. At first it was so dark that I held on to his sleeve. Then in the lightening sky black branches began to be revealed, sprinkled with stars that shone like minerals. Pausing, he turned around towards the house:

“Look at how the windows of the house shine in a very particular way, autumnally. As long as I’m alive, I shall remember this evening for ever…”

I looked, and he put his arms around me in my Swiss cloak. I drew my downy scarf back from my face, and bent my head back slightly for him to kiss me. He kissed me, then looked me in the face:

“How your eyes are shining,” he said. “You’re not cold? The air’s quite wintry. If I’m killed, you won’t forget me immediately, will you?”

I thought: “And what if he really is killed? And will I actually forget him after a certain time – everything gets forgotten in the end, doesn’t it?” And I replied hastily, frightened by my thought:

“Don’t talk like that! I won’t survive your death!”

After a pause he slowly uttered:

“Well then, if I’m killed, I’ll wait for you there. You live, be happy in the world, and then come to me.”

I began crying bitterly…

In the morning he left. Mama put that fateful pouch she had been mending in the evening around his neck – in it was a little gold icon which her father and grandfather had worn in war – and we all made the sign of the cross over him with a sort of impulsive despair. Gazing after him, we stood for a while on the porch in that torpor which is always there when you see someone off before a long separation, feeling only the amazing incompatibility between ourselves and the joyous, sunny morning that surrounded us, glittering with rime on the grass. After a while we went into the emptied house. I set off through the rooms, my hands clasped behind my back, not knowing what to do with myself now, nor whether I should burst out sobbing, or singing at the top of my voice…

He was killed – what a strange word! – a month later in Galicia. And now thirty whole years have passed since that time. And many, many things have been lived through during those years, which seem so long when you think about them carefully, when you pick over in your memory all the magical, unintelligible things, incomprehensible both for the mind and the heart, that are called the past. In the spring of 1918, when neither my father nor my mother was alive any more, I was living in Moscow, in a basement, with a tradeswoman from the Smolensk Market who was forever mocking me: “Well, Your Majesty, how would your riches be?” I was engaged in trade as well, selling, as many were selling then, some of the things I had left – now some ring or other, now a crucifix, now a moth-eaten fur collar – to soldiers in Caucasian fur hats and unbuttoned greatcoats, and it was there, trading on the corner of the Arbat and the Market, that I met a man of rare, fine spirit, a middle-aged, retired military man, whom I shortly married and with whom in April I left for Yekaterinodar. We were almost two weeks travelling there with his nephew, a boy of about seventeen, who was also stealing through to the Volunteers – I as a peasant woman in bast shoes, he in a worn, homespun Cossack coat with a growth of black beard streaked with grey – and we spent more than two years on the Don and in the Kuban. In winter, in a hurricane, we sailed from Novorossiisk for Turkey with an innumerable crowd of other refugees, and on the way, at sea, my husband died of typhus. After that I had only three people dear to me left in the world: my husband’s nephew, his young wife and their little girl, a child of seven months. But the nephew and his wife sailed away too after a certain time to the Crimea, to Wrangel, leaving the child in my hands. And it was there that they went missing. But I continued to live in Constantinople for a long time, making a living for myself and the child by really hard unskilled labour. And then, like many, where didn’t I roam with her! Bulgaria, Serbia, Czechia, Belgium, Paris, Nice… The girl grew up long ago and stayed in Paris; she had become completely French, very pretty and utterly indifferent to me; she worked in a chocolate shop beside the Madeleine, using her well-groomed little hands with silver nails to wrap boxes in satin paper and tie them with golden strings – while I lived, and still do live in Nice, as before, any way I can. I was in Nice for the first time in 1912 – and could I have thought in those happy days what it would one day become for me!

And thus I survived his death, having once precipitately said that I would not survive it. But, recalling all that I have lived through since then, I always ask myself: yes, and what has there been in my life after all? And I answer myself: only that cold autumn evening. Did it really once happen? And after all, it did. And that is all there has been in my life – the rest is an unwanted dream. And I believe, I fervently believe: somewhere there he is waiting for me – with the same love and youth as on that evening. “You live, be happy in the world, and then come to me…” I have lived, have been happy, and now I shall soon be coming.

3rd May 1944

The Steamer Saratov

In the dusk outside the window was the noise of a brief May shower. The pockmarked batman who was drinking tea in the kitchen by the light of a tin lamp looked at the clock ticking on the wall, stood up and, awkwardly, trying not to let his new boots squeak, went through into the dark study and up to the ottoman:

“Your Honour, it’s gone nine…”

He opened his eyes in fright:

“What? Gone nine? It can’t have…”

Both windows were open to the street, remote, all gardens – through the windows came the smell of the freshness of spring damp and poplars. He had that sharpness of smell that people sometimes do after deep, youthful sleep, he sensed those smells and briskly threw his legs down off the ottoman:

“Light the light and go and get a cab quickly. Find me a fast one…”

And he went to get washed and changed, he poured cold water over his head, put on eau de cologne, and combed his short, curly hair, then glanced in the mirror once more: his face was fresh, his eyes shone; from one until six he had been lunching with a large party of officers, at home he had fallen into that instantaneous sleep you fall into after several hours of incessant drinking, smoking, laughter and chatter, yet he now felt excellent. In the hall the batman handed him his sabre, cap and light summer greatcoat and threw open the door onto the porch – and leaping up lightly into the cab, he cried somewhat hoarsely:

“Drive on, lively now! A rouble for your tip!”

Under the dense, oily greenery of the trees could be glimpsed the clear lustre of the streetlamps, the smell of the wet poplars was both fresh and heady, the horse rushed along, striking red sparks with its shoes. Everything was splendid: the greenery, the streetlamps, the imminent rendezvous and the taste of the cigarette he contrived to light while flying along. And everything merged into one: a happy feeling of readiness for absolutely anything. Is it the vodka, the Benedictine, the Turkish coffee? Nonsense, it’s simply the spring, and everything’s excellent…

The door was opened by a small and, to look at, very wanton maid on slender, wobbly high heels. Quickly throwing off his greatcoat and unbuckling his sabre, he tossed his cap onto the mirror table, fluffed his hair up a little and, with his spurs ringing, went into a small room made cramped by the excess of boudoir furniture. And straight away she too came in, wobbling a little as well on backless high-heeled shoes, and with her bare heels pink – long and undulating, in a tight housecoat that was mottled like a grey snake, with hanging sleeves slit up to the shoulder. Long too were her somewhat slanting eyes. In a long, pale hand was a smoking cigarette in a long amber cigarette holder.

Kissing her left hand, he clicked his heels together:

“Forgive me, for God’s sake, I was delayed through no fault of my own…”

She looked from the height of her stature at the wet gloss of his short, tightly curling hair, at his shining eyes, and she sensed his winey smell:

“A fault long known…”

And she sat down on a silk pouffe, putting her left hand under the elbow of her right arm, holding the raised cigarette up high, crossing her legs and opening the side slit of the housecoat to above the knee. He sat down opposite on a silk canapé, pulling his cigarette case out from a trouser pocket:

“You see, what happened…”

“I see, I see…”

He lit up quickly and deftly, waved the burning match about and threw it into an ashtray on the oriental table beside the pouffe, settling down more comfortably and gazing with his usual immoderate rapture at her bare knee in the slit of the housecoat:

“Well, splendid, if you don’t want to listen, you don’t have to… This evening’s programme: do you want to go to the Merchants’ Garden? There’s some ‘Japanese night’ on there today – you know, those lanterns, geishas on the stage, ‘I won first prize for beauty…’”

She shook her head:

“No programmes. I’m staying at home today.”

“As you wish. That’s not a bad thing either.”

Her eyes ran over the room:

“My dear, this is our last rendezvous.”

He was cheerfully amazed:

“That is, how do you mean, last?”

“Just that.”

His eyes began to sparkle still more cheerfully:

“Permit me, permit me, this is amusing!”

“I’m not being in the least amusing.”

“Splendid. But nonetheless, I’d be interested to know what this dream’s supposed to mean? Wha’s the ’itch all on a su’en, as our sergeant major says.”

“What sergeant majors say is of little interest to me. And to tell the truth, I don’t quite understand why you’re so cheerful.”

“I’m cheerful, as always, when I see you.”

“That’s very sweet, but on this occasion not entirely appropriate.”

“But really, the devil take it, I don’t understand a thing all the same. What’s happened?”

“What has happened is what I should have told you about a long time ago. I’m going back to him. Our splitting up was a mistake.”

“Mamma mia! Are you being serious?”

“Absolutely serious. I was criminally at fault before him. But he’s prepared to forgive and forget everything.”

“Wha-at magnanimity!”

“Stop playing the fool. I was already seeing him in Lent…”

“That is, in secret from me, and continuing…”

“Continuing what? I understand, but all the same… I was seeing him – and, it stands to reason, secretly, not wishing to cause you suffering – and it was then that I realized that I’d never stopped loving him.”

He narrowed his eyes, chewing on the filter of his cigarette:

“That is to say, his money?”

“He’s no richer than you. And what’s the money of either of you to me! If I wanted—”

“Forgive me, only cocottes talk like that.”

“And what am I, if not a cocotte? Do I live on my own money and not on yours?”

In the clipped speech of an officer he muttered:

“When there’s love, the money has no significance.”

“But I love him, don’t I?”

“And so I, then, was just a temporary toy, an amusement to counter boredom and one of your profitable keepers?”

“You know very well you were far from an amusement or a toy. And yes, I’m a kept woman, but it’s nonetheless vile to remind me of it.”

“Take care on the bends! Choose your expressions well, as the French say!”

“I advise you to stick to that rule as well. In a word…”

He stood up and felt a new wave of that readiness for anything with which he had been dashing along in the cab, he walked around the room, collecting his thoughts, still not believing the absurdity, the unexpectedness that had suddenly destroyed all his joyful hopes for that evening, he kicked aside a yellow-haired doll in a red sarafan which was lying on a rug and sat down again on the canapé, gazing at her fixedly:

“I’ll ask again: this isn’t all a joke?”

Closing her eyes, she gave a wave with the cigarette which had gone out long before.

He fell into thought, lit another cigarette, and again began chewing the filter, saying distinctly:

“And what, do you think I’ll give up these arms and legs of yours to him just like that, that he’ll be kissing this knee here that I was kissing just yesterday?”

She raised her eyebrows:

“You know, my dear, I’m not an object, after all, that can be given up or not given up. And what right have you…”

He hurriedly put the cigarette down in the ashtray and, bending, took out of the back pocket of his trousers a slippery, small, weighty Browning, and rocked it on the palm of his hand:

“This is my right.”

She looked askance with a bored smile:

“I’m not a lover of melodramas.”

And raised her voice dispassionately:

“Sonya, give Pavel Sergeyevich his greatcoat.”

“Wha-at?”

“Nothing. You’re drunk. Go away.”

“Is that your last word?”

“It is.”

And she rose, adjusting the slit over her leg. He stepped towards her with joyful decisiveness:

“Mind it doesn’t indeed become your last!”

“Drunken actor!” she said fastidiously and, straightening her hair at the back with her long fingers, she set off out of the room. He seized her so firmly by her bared forearm that she bent backwards and, turning quickly, with eyes that slanted even more, she aimed a blow at him. Dodging deftly, with a sarcastic grimace, he fired.

In December of that same year the Volunteer Fleet’s steamer Saratov was in the Indian Ocean on its way to Vladivostok. Under a hot awning stretched out on the forecastle, in the motionless sultry heat, in the hot half-light, in the brilliance of the mirrored reflections from the water, prisoners sat or lay on the deck, stripped to the waist with half-shaved, ugly heads, wearing trousers of white canvas, with the rings of shackles on the ankles above their bare feet. Like all of them, he too was stripped to the waist, his thin body brown with sunburn. Only half of his head, too, was dark with short-cropped hair, the coarse hairs on his long unshaven, thin cheeks were redly black and his eyes glistened feverishly. Leaning on the handrail, he stared at the densely blue waves, flying down below in humps along the high wall of the ship’s side, and from time to time he spat into them.

16th May 1944