V

I called on them one evening in Nina’s absence and chanced to find Fanny Ivanovna alone. Nikolai Vasilievich, as ever, was out. Sonia had gone to see a friend.

“Sit down, Andrei Andreiech,” she said. “I am always doing needlework, as you see.⁠ ⁠…”

I took a chair.

“I do it.⁠ ⁠… It is extraordinary, Andrei Andreiech. I thought I would do it so as not to think, but it’s just the very work to make you think. And so I gave it up and began reading in order to forget, in order not to think, and I found, Andrei Andreiech, that I could not read because I had to think. I think all day and night. Ach! Andrei Andreiech.”

And I knew that she was going to confide in me.

“Ach! Andrei Andreiech! Andrei Andreiech! If you only knew.⁠ ⁠…”

She glanced behind her at the door to make sure that nobody could hear her.

“Ach! Andrei Andreiech!”

I waited patiently for her to begin.

She said “Ach! Andrei Andreiech!” several times more and then began. She spoke in marks of exclamation.

“I suppose you know, Andrei Andreiech, that I am not Nikolai Vasilievich’s⁠ ⁠… legal wife?”

“I know,” I said.

“How did you know?” she turned on me.

“I suspected it.”

She paused.

“Well, now that you actually know so much, I feel that I must tell you everything, if only in fairness to myself. But don’t tell the children. They would be shocked if they knew that I had told you.”

“No,” said I.

“Ach! Andrei Andreiech, you know.⁠ ⁠… You know.⁠ ⁠…” She suddenly plunged into her native German, the foreign Russian tongue being inadequate to express her overflowing feelings, but now and then, quite unintentionally, she would employ some Russian word that came handy to her, that in her excitement she could not be bothered to translate as she proceeded to unload her feelings⁠—an urgency too long deferred.

“Andrei Andreiech!” she said again and again in a kind of appeal to my sense of justice. “Sie sollen wissen that I met Nikolai Vasilievich in Switzerland, in Basel, when he was there on a cure, after he had separated from his wife. He was very handsome. He is still very handsome, ach! much too handsome. You would not think that he was fifty-three.⁠ ⁠… Ach! Andrei Andreiech, I have so much, so very much to tell you that I don’t really know where to begin.⁠ ⁠…

“Well, I met him. I knew that he was married; he told me so himself from the first. He was always straight and honourable and aboveboard. He said that he had separated finally from his wife and expected to get a divorce, and that I was to come to Petersburg with him and wait till he got his divorce, and then we were to be married at once. You see, we loved each other.” She looked at me.

“Quite,” I said.

“I must tell you here,” she continued, “more about myself and my feelings and desires at that time. I belong (I hope you will forgive me for saying it, but it is a salient point in my tragedy) to a very proud family indeed. My father and all my brothers were officers in the German Guards. Soon after my father’s death we lost all our money. I had to set out in search of a livelihood because I, as the eldest sister, had to ensure that my sisters’ education was not interrupted and that it should be possible for my brothers to remain in the army. I had a good voice and⁠ ⁠… I went on the stage, into musical comedy. And, Andrei Andreiech, curious, is it not, that in spite of the fact that I and I alone kept the whole of our family⁠—my sisters, my brothers, my aged mother, my grandfather, my grandmother and two of my aunts⁠—they were ashamed of me. You see, I became almost what you would call ‘a star.’ I don’t want you to misunderstand me. I shouldn’t have said that they were ashamed of me. That is misleading. They were ashamed of my profession, as I was myself, of course. I understood them. I revelled in my sacrifice. I was young, good-looking then. Don’t look at me now, Andrei Andreiech. I have changed through suffering and age. Then, suddenly, I was seized by a craving for decency, respectability. You see, no woman really knows what it means to be respectable until she’s had to give it up. I thought: if only I could marry a man who was respectable and rich, who would be willing to support my family! My heart craved for the title, the status, of a married woman because that title was denied me.

“And then came Nikolai Vasilievich.

“I loved him. Love was thrown into the bargain. It was unexpected, irrelevant. And then love became salient, supreme, altogether dominating; and as I realized how I loved him, so I realized that my family, my sacrifice and all that this had once meant to me, were but of secondary importance in the face of my love. Love was some greater thing⁠—altogether greater. And Nikolai was rich. He owned a large house in Petersburg and had gold-mining concessions in Siberia. But that seemed a minor point. He was to get his divorce and then we would be married.

“We came to Petersburg and immediately got busy with the divorce. He visited lawyers. His friends and relatives all intervened and gave him advice, some in favour of a divorce and others against it. I did not at that time know what a hopeless, cruel and heartbreaking thing a Russian divorce really is. Nikolai’s wife did all she possibly could to prevent his getting a divorce. Eisenstein, the man she ran away with before Nikolai Vasilievich and I met, had no money. He was a Jew dentist, with no practice. They succeeded in proving to Nikolai Vasilievich’s satisfaction⁠—I never quite followed the case⁠—that if he asked for a divorce he would be compelled to plead guilty and so lose the children; and Nikolai Vasilievich was determined to keep the children. On my advice, Andrei Andreiech. I had begged of him, entreated him, insisted on it. ‘Divorce or no divorce, you must keep the children, Nikolai,’ I said. I knew that they would be spoilt, their lives marred and wasted, if they fell into the clutches of their mother and that Jew dentist. Yes, I insisted on it, Andrei Andreiech, even if it meant that there was to be no divorce. And what that cost me!⁠ ⁠…

“For I hadn’t told my people in Germany that Nikolai was married at the time. I didn’t want to add further injury to their pride. I thought it would be a matter of a few weeks and that then Nikolai and I would be married, and all would be well. How could I know? How could we know?

“We had the children⁠—and what sweet girls they were⁠—but no divorce. Nikolai sent money to his wife regularly every month, so as to keep the children; and so I lived with him just as if I were his wife, and indeed few people knew that I was not. We lived very happily. He sent money to my large family in Germany, regularly every month, and naturally they thought that I was married to him. How could I tell them that I was not? What did it matter after all, provided that they didn’t know? I felt that it was my duty to sacrifice my personal pride for Nikolai’s children. And such nice, tender, beautiful girls they were too, Sonia and Nina, so loving, so good, so pretty, so obedient, so well-behaved. Everyone who saw them said to me: ‘Fanny Ivanovna, what nice children you have. You must be so proud of them!’ I was. And, Andrei Andreiech, I didn’t tell them, you know, that they were not my children. It may have been wrong of me; but I did not. I was really so proud of them, Andrei Andreiech, and as I had sacrificed the divorce for them⁠ ⁠… it made me feel as if they were my own.

“Nikolai was still always sending money to his wife to keep her quiet. She always threatened to make a nuisance of herself. She wanted the money, too⁠—badly indeed, because that man Eisenstein she lived with wasted her money in speculation on the Stock Exchange. Often she would demand money in excess, and when Nikolai refused, she would come up to Petersburg, enter our house, or go to their school and carry the children off to Moscow and keep them there with Eisenstein. Once she even threatened to bring a case against Nikolai Vasilievich on the ground that he had run away from her with me, if you please! She was tired of Eisenstein, who had spent all her money and proved a dismal failure in dentistry, and, I think, she was anxious to get back to Nikolai. I was in the way, you see. So what do you think she did? She spread stories about me. She said I was a German governess in her household and had beguiled Nikolai into running away with me. She spread this tale among our friends and relatives each time she came up to Petersburg.”

“And what about the girls?” I asked. “What did they think of Moscow and their mother?”

“Andrei Andreiech!” she pleaded with all the fervour of a woman at a disadvantage. “A mother is a mother to her children, always, whatever she has been or is. She can plead love and sympathy and unhappiness with success. But the sudden changes certainly affected the children’s characters.

“One evening on their return from Moscow, when we had guests to dinner, Nina, who was only eight, said:

“ ‘Do you know, Papa, Mama says that Fanny Ivanovna is just a lapdog you cuddle on your knee for a while and then chase away.’

“How that stabbed me⁠ ⁠… to the very heart!⁠ ⁠… But Nikolai was kind to me. I looked after him. I worshipped him. He would come to me in the evening and say:

“ ‘Fanny, I don’t know what I would do without you.’ And then he would think of what he could say to comfort me, and unconscious of my happiness (happiness, Andrei Andreiech, because I trusted him implicitly) he would say:

“ ‘When the children grow up we will get a divorce, Fanny.’

“ ‘Never mind the divorce,’ I would say. ‘So long as my people in Germany don’t know, it is all I want. I am happy, Nikolai, really. I know that I am your real wife. Let the children grow up first. We must think first of the children. Always, Nikolai.’

“And then I would find myself returning to the question of divorce involuntarily. You see, in my secret heart I wanted his divorce so much. And I would say again:

“ ‘We must not think of the divorce, Nikolai;’ just to make him repeat his promise.

“ ‘When the children grow up we will, Fanny. I will get a divorce then.’

“And the children, as I say, were such a pride and consolation to me. There were moments when I looked at them and thought I wanted no divorce. Those were my best moments⁠ ⁠… when I thought that⁠ ⁠… that I did not really care whether he got it at all. Sonia and Nina were the compensation.”

“What about Vera?” I asked.

Fanny Ivanovna paused suddenly. She looked as if she were going to reveal an unspeakable secret, but then decided not to.

“Oh, Vera⁠ ⁠… she always lived with the mother. Nikolai Vasilievich hates her.⁠ ⁠… She is different.”

There was another pause.

“We lived like that eleven years,” she said, and stopped.

“And now?” I asked, and was horrified at my disastrous question.

“And now,” she said, her face quivering with emotion, “… he wants to marry⁠ ⁠… a young girl of⁠ ⁠… sixteen.⁠ ⁠…” She burst into tears.

She sobbed hysterically, and I stood there, helpless, filled with pity and an eagerness to help, and not knowing how to do it⁠—saying:

“Fanny Ivanovna⁠ ⁠… Fanny Ivanovna⁠ ⁠… don’t cry.⁠ ⁠…”

Then I tried to think of what was usually done on such occasions. I rushed for a glass of water.

When she had drunk it and wiped her tear-stained face with her little lace handkerchief, she continued, breathing heavily:

“He came to me one evening in April and said:

“ ‘Fanny, I must talk to you very seriously.’

“ ‘And what might it be that you want to talk to me about so seriously, du alter Schimmel?’ I said, and followed him happily into his study, thinking that he wished to consult me about some business transaction. He often consulted me on his affairs.

“ ‘Sit down, Fanny,’ he said, and I was astonished at his seriousness. I sat down and he seemed to be waiting till I was comfortably settled in my chair.

“ ‘Fanny,’ he said, ‘⁠—don’t be frightened⁠—I’ve got to marry Zina.’

“Zina, Andrei Andreiech, was a girl in Sonia’s school and Sonia’s class, of Sonia’s age. Seventeen, Andrei Andreiech.

“I laughed. I could see that he was joking. I thought of the date. It was April⁠—not the first but the twenty-first⁠—yes, I remember perfectly.

“ ‘Don’t laugh,’ he said. ‘I am perfectly serious. I must. I have thought of it all. I fought against it. I have thought of every possible way that I could settle it. There is no other way. I can’t, Fanny. It is love, this time, real love. There is nothing that you can say that I have not thought of. There is nothing that you can say that will alter my decision.⁠ ⁠…’

“ ‘Nikolai! You are mad! Du bist verrückt!’ I cried. ‘Wahnsinnich!’

“And again I tried to think that he was joking. But Nikolai is obstinate as a mule. Obstinacy runs in the family. His grandmother was like that. Nina has it from her father. Obstinacy! What a terrible vice! There is no reason, no meaning in obstinacy beyond further obstinacy. It’s a disease. There is no strength, no character about it. The weakest thing on earth is so often obstinate. Take Nikolai. A weak and sloppy man, and such a mule!” She paused. “Perhaps I like to think that it is obstinacy. I cannot bear, Andrei Andreiech, to think that it is love.

“ ‘Nikolai!’ I cried, and laughed. I really felt it was funny. ‘Think of yourself! Look at yourself in the glass. Romeo! Look at your grey hairs and those wrinkles!’ (Those dear, dear wrinkles. He had acquired them in my time, and so I had an absurd conviction that they should be mine.) ‘You’re fifty-three and she is a girl of sixteen.’

“ ‘Seventeen,’ he said, as though it mattered.

“ ‘Seventeen!’ I cried. ‘Ha! ha! ha!’ I tried to laugh, but it had no effect on him. I expect, too, that my laughter lacked real merriment. ‘O mein Gott, mein Gott, mein Gott!’

“ ‘It is love,’ he said very seriously. ‘It has come late, but still it has come at last, and I am proud⁠—don’t laugh⁠—I am proud that at my age I should be capable of such love. I thought that I had loved, I had loved, you, Fanny; but this is the love that comes once only, to which you yield gloriously, magnificently, or you are crushed and broken and thrust aside.⁠ ⁠…’

“ ‘Du bist verrückt, Nikolai,’ I repeated. ‘Wahnsinnich.⁠ ⁠…’

“And then I thought of my people. And then I cried.⁠ ⁠…”

She fumbled for her handkerchief. She sobbed again. Again I dashed for a glass of water, this time doing the job gallantly, efficiently, as though I had been doing that sort of thing all my life.

She was bent on going on.

“I cried and he cried with me and tried to console me, but I only thought of what I could say to stop him from taking this mad, disastrous step.

“He said, ‘I know it is terrible, heartbreaking for you, Fanny, and the children.⁠ ⁠…’

“The children, Andrei Andreiech⁠—I had forgotten them! I who had sacrificed everything for them, divorce and everything else, I had never given them a thought in my disaster. I took it up, Andrei Andreiech, promptly⁠—I even admit somewhat dishonestly⁠—for I was thinking more of myself, of me. Me! me! me! I had lived with him for eleven years!

“ ‘Think of your children,’ I cried. ‘Think of your children, Nikolai. They are yours. They are not my children, and yet I have sacrificed my life and my honour for them.’

“I tried to shame him, but I had to realize that indeed nothing could shame him. I mean, he was already ashamed to his full capacity, conscious of unpardonable sin, conscious of being a bad man, the very worst man⁠—had admitted it all to himself⁠ ⁠… and was satisfied, as though this confession to himself had cleansed him of his wickedness and he had come out of it, clean, sanctified. That’s what I couldn’t stand, Andrei Andreiech. That he should have told himself that so good and wise and indeed well versed was he in his own wickedness, that there could be no crime, no sin, of which we others could accuse him of which he had not already in his goodness and wisdom accused himself, and so forgiven himself and started clear, afresh, with our lives all wrecked and ruined⁠—that’s what I can’t forgive him. That’s what Nina can’t forgive him. But imagine our consternation when he tells us that he had never really expected our forgiveness when he had made up his mind to marry Zina, his mind evidently having been made up in spite of that knowledge. Why, it would be far better if he had not realized how he had sinned than to plume himself on being a sinner unavoidably and bowing to his fate so readily that you almost suspected that, after the manner of his race, he had bribed it heavily to please him. I am afraid I am overstraining this point, Andrei Andreiech. But it is, after all, the point.

“At last I sprang upon him. ‘What do you propose to do, Nikolai? What do you want us to do? Speak, tell me!’

“He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Live on as we have been living, you looking after the children. What if I am married to Zina? I can still come home every night to you and the children. It changes nothing.’

“ ‘Nein, besten Dank!’ I said. ‘No, thank you, blagadaru vas! I will return to Germany as soon as you give me the money⁠—provide for me for life. I will not leave otherwise.’ ”

In her great tragedy she was still a sound business woman.