Muza

I was then no longer in the first flush of youth, but came up with the idea of studying painting – I had always had a passion for it – and, abandoning my estate in the Tambov Province, I spent the winter in Moscow: I took lessons from a talentless, but quite well-known artist, an untidy, fat man who had made a very good job of adopting for himself all that is expected: long hair thrown back in big, greasy curls, a pipe in his teeth, a garnet-coloured velvet jacket, dirty grey gaiters on his shoes – I particularly hated them – a careless manner, condescending glances at a pupil’s work through narrowed eyes and, muttering, as if to himself:

“Amusing, amusing… Undoubted progress…”

I lived on the Arbat, by the Prague restaurant, in the Capital rooms. I worked at the artist’s and at home in the daytime, and not infrequently spent the evenings in cheap restaurants with various new acquaintances from Bohemia, both young and worn, but all equally attached to billiards and crayfish with beer… I had an unpleasant and boring life! That effeminate, slovenly artist, his “artistically” neglected studio, crammed with all kinds of dusty props, that gloomy Capital… What remains in my memory is snow falling continually outside the window, the muffled rumbling and ringing of horse-drawn trams down the Arbat, in the evening the sour stench of beer and gas in a dimly lit restaurant… I don’t understand why I led such a wretched existence – I was far from poor at the time.

But then one day in March, when I was sitting working with pencils at home, and through the open transoms of the double glazing there was no longer the reek of the wintry damp of sleet and rain, the horseshoes were clattering along the roadway no longer in a wintry way, and the trams seemed to be ringing more musically, someone knocked at the door of my entrance hall. I called out: “Who’s there?” but no reply ensued. I waited, called out again – again silence, then a fresh knock. I got up and opened the door: by the threshold stands a tall girl in a grey winter hat, in a straight, grey coat, in grey overshoes, looking fixedly, her eyes the colour of acorns, and on her long lashes, on her face and hair beneath the hat shine drops of rain and snow. She looks and says:

“I’m a Conservatoire student, Muza Graf. I heard you were an interesting person and I’ve come to meet you. Do you have any objection?”

Quite surprised, I replied, of course, with a courteous phrase:

“I’m most flattered, you’re very welcome. Only I must warn you that the rumours that have reached you are scarcely true: I don’t think there’s anything interesting about me.”

“In any event, do let me come in, don’t keep me at the door,” she said, still looking at me in the same direct way. “If you’re flattered, then let me come in.”

And having entered, quite at home, she began taking off her hat in front of my greyly silver and in places blackened mirror, and adjusting her rust-coloured hair; she threw off her coat and tossed it onto a chair, remaining in a checked flannel dress, sat down on the couch, sniffing her nose, wet with snow and rain, and ordered:

“Take my overshoes off and give me my handkerchief from my coat.”

I gave her the handkerchief, she wiped her nose, and stretched out her legs to me:

“I saw you yesterday at Shor’s concert,” she said indifferently.

Restraining a silly smile of pleasure and bewilderment – what a strange guest! – I obediently took off the overshoes, one after the other. She still smelt freshly of the air, and I was excited by that scent, excited by the combination of her masculinity with all that was femininely youthful in her face, in her direct eyes, in her large and beautiful hand – in everything that I looked over and felt, while pulling the high overshoes off from under her dress, beneath which lay her knees, rounded and weighty, and seeing her swelling calves in fine, grey stockings and her elongated feet in open, patent-leather shoes.

Next she settled down comfortably on the couch, evidently not intending to be leaving soon. Not knowing what to say, I began asking questions about what she had heard of me and from whom, and who she was, where and with whom she lived. She replied:

“What I’ve heard and from whom is unimportant. I came more because I saw you at the concert. You’re quite handsome. And I’m a doctor’s daughter, I live not far from you, on Prechistensky Boulevard.”

She spoke abruptly somehow, and concisely. Again not knowing what to say, I asked:

“Do you want some tea?”

“Yes,” she said. “And if you have the money, order some rennet apples to be bought at Belov’s – here on the Arbat. Only hurry the boots along, I’m impatient.”

“Yet you seem so calm.”

“I may seem a lot of things…”

When the boots brought the samovar and a bag of apples, she brewed the tea and wiped the cups and teaspoons… And after eating an apple and drinking a cup of tea, she moved further back on the couch and slapped the place beside her with her hand:

“Now come and sit with me.”

I sat down and she put her arms around me, unhurriedly kissed me on the lips, pulled away, had a look and, as though satisfied that I was worthy of it, closed her eyes and kissed me again – assiduously, at length.

“There,” she said, as if relieved. “Nothing more for now. The day after tomorrow.”

The room was already completely dark – there was just the sad half-light from the lamps in the street. What I was feeling is easy to imagine. Where had such happiness suddenly come from! Young, strong, the taste and shape of her lips extraordinary… I heard as if in a dream the monotonous ringing of trams, the clatter of hooves…

“The day after tomorrow I want to have dinner with you at the Prague,” she said. “I’ve never been there, and I’m very inexperienced in general. I can imagine what you think of me. But in actual fact, you’re my first love.”

“Love?”

“Well, what else do you call it?”

Of course, I soon abandoned my studies, she somehow or other continued hers. We were never apart, lived like newly-weds, went to picture galleries, to exhibitions, attended concerts and even, for some reason, public lectures. In May I moved, at her wish, to an old country estate outside Moscow, where a number of small dachas had been built and were to let, and she began to come and visit me, returning to Moscow at one in the morning. I had not expected this at all either – a dacha outside Moscow: I had never before lived the life of a dacha-dweller, with nothing to do, on an estate so unlike our estates in the steppe, and in such a climate.

Rain all the time, pinewoods all around. In the bright blue above them, white clouds keep piling up, there is a roll of thunder on high, then gleaming rain begins to pour through the sunshine, quickly turning in the sultriness into fragrant pine vapour… All is wet, lush, mirror-like… In the estate park the trees were so great that the dachas built there in places seemed tiny beneath them, like dwellings under trees in tropical countries. The pond was a huge, black mirror, and half of it was covered in green duckweed… I lived on the edge of the park, in woodland. My log-built dacha was not quite finished – the walls not caulked, the floors not planed, the stoves without doors, hardly any furniture. And from the constant damp, my long boots, lying about under the bed, soon grew a velvety covering of mould.

It got dark in the evenings only towards midnight: the half-light in the west lay and lay over the motionless, quiet woods. On moonlit nights this half-light mixed strangely with the moonlight, motionless and enchanted too. And from the tranquillity that reigned everywhere, from the clarity of the sky and air, it forever seemed that now there would be no more rain. But there I would be, falling asleep after seeing her to the station – and suddenly I would hear it: torrential rain crashing down again onto the roof with peals of thunder, darkness all around and vertical flashes of lightning. In the morning, on the lilac earth in the damp avenues of trees there was the play of shadows and blinding patches of sunlight, the birds called flycatchers would be clucking, the thrushes would be chattering hoarsely. By midday it would be sultry again, the clouds would gather and the rain would start to pour. Just before sunset it would become clear and, falling into the windows through the foliage, on my log walls there would tremble the crystalline golden grid of the low sun. At this point I would go to the station to meet her. The train would arrive, innumerable dacha-dwellers would tumble out onto the platform, there was the smell of the steam engine’s coal and the damp freshness of the wood, she would appear in the crowd with a string bag, laden with packets of hors d’oeuvres, fruits, a bottle of Madeira… We dined amicably, alone. Before her late departure we would wander through the park. She would become somnambulistic and walk with her head leaning on my shoulder… The black pond, the age-old trees, receding into the starry sky… The enchanted light night, endlessly silent, with the endlessly long shadows of trees on the silvery lakes of the glades…

In June she went away with me to my village – without our having married, she began living with me as a wife, began keeping house. She spent the long autumn without getting bored, with everyday cares, reading. Of the neighbours, a certain Zavistovsky visited us most often, a solitary poor landowner who lived a couple of kilometres from us, puny, gingery, not bold, not bright – and not a bad musician. In the winter he began appearing at our house almost every evening. I had known him since childhood, but now I grew so used to him that an evening without him was strange for me. He and I played draughts, or else he played piano duets with her.

Just before Christmas I happened to go into town. I returned when the moon was already up. And going into the house, I could find her nowhere. I sat down at the samovar alone.

“And where’s the mistress, Dunya? Has she gone out for a walk?”

“I don’t know, sir. She’s been out ever since breakfast.”

“Got dressed and went,” said my old nanny gloomily, passing through the dining room without raising her head.

“She probably went to see Zavistovsky,” I thought. “She’ll probably be here with him soon – it’s already seven o’clock…” And I went and lay down for a while in the study, and suddenly fell asleep – I had been frozen all day in the sledge on the road. And I came to just as suddenly an hour later – with a clear and wild idea: “She’s abandoned me, hasn’t she! She’s hired a peasant in the village and left for the station, for Moscow – anything’s possible with her! But perhaps she’s come back?” I walked through the house – no, she hadn’t come back. The humiliation in front of the servants…

At about ten o’clock, not knowing what to do, I put on my sheepskin coat, took a rifle for some reason, and set off down the main road to see Zavistovsky, thinking: “As if on purpose, he hasn’t come today either, and I still have a whole terrible night ahead! Is it really true that she’s left, abandoned me? Of course not, it can’t be!” I walk, crunching along the well-trodden path amidst the snows, and the snowy fields are gleaming on the left beneath the low, meagre moon… I turned off the main road and went towards Zavistovsky’s estate: an avenue of bare trees leading towards it across a field, then the entrance to the yard, to the left the old, beggarly house; the house is dark… I went up onto the ice-covered porch, with difficulty opened the heavy door, its upholstery all in shreds – in the entrance hall is the red of the open, burning stove, warmth and darkness… But the reception hall is dark as well.

“Vikenty Vikentich!”

And noiselessly, in felt boots, he appeared on the threshold of the study, lit too only by the moon through the triple window.

“Ah, it’s you… Come in, please, come in… As you see, I’m sitting in the dusk, whiling the evening away without light…”

I went and sat on a lumpy couch.

“Just imagine, Muza’s disappeared somewhere…”

He remained silent. Then in an almost inaudible voice:

“Yes, yes, I understand you…”

“That is, what do you understand?”

And at once, also noiselessly, also in felt boots, with a shawl on her shoulders, from the bedroom adjoining the study came Muza.

“You’ve got a rifle,” she said. “If you want to shoot, shoot not at him, but at me.”

And she sat down on the other couch opposite.

I looked at her felt boots, at the knees under the grey skirt – everything was easily visible in the golden light falling from the window – and I wanted to shout out: “Better you kill me, I can’t live without you, for those knees alone, for the skirt, for the felt boots, I’m prepared to give my life!”

“The matter’s clear and done with,” she said. “Scenes are no use.”

“You’re monstrously cruel,” I articulated with difficulty.

“Give me a cigarette, dear,” she said to Zavistovsky.

He strained timorously towards her, reached out a cigarette case, started rummaging through his pockets for matches…

“You’re already speaking formally to me,” I said, gasping for breath, “you might at least not be so intimate with him in front of me.”

“Why?” she asked, raising her eyebrows, holding a cigarette with outstretched hand.

My heart was already pounding right up in my throat, my temples were thumping. I rose and, reeling, went away.

17th October 1938