VI

She was silent for some time.

“Andrei Andreiech, does she love him? Cannot live without him? ‘Don’t you believe it,’ I told Nikolai Vasilievich. ‘She will leave you as soon as she has robbed you of your money.’

“ ‘Then I shall come back to you,’ he said.

“ ‘Thank you for nothing,’ I said. ‘I shan’t want you then.’

“Andrei Andreiech, it is all his money. It is really comic, but they all believe him to be preposterously rich. A house-owner in Petersburg! Goldmines in Siberia! A millionaire! Zina’s people keep telling her, ‘Stick to him, stick to him, don’t let him go. These goldmines in Siberia, these millions, this house in the Mohovaya!’ That’s all, in fact, they are after. Why won’t his wife give him his divorce and be done with him? Because she believes in the goldmines. Why does Baron Wunderhausen always hang about here? Why does he run after Nina, Vera, and Sonia? The goldmines again, and the house in the Mohovaya.”

“What of me!” I cried in horror. “I come here every evening, Fanny Ivanovna, and stay till late in the night.”

“Oh, you are different.”

“I shall have to stop coming now.”

“You may as well dismiss at once from your mind any suspicion of an ulterior motive,” said Fanny Ivanovna, rising to the occasion. “They are worth nothing, anyhow⁠ ⁠… both the goldmines in Siberia and the house in the Mohovaya.”

“Worthless! You don’t mean it?”

“Absolutely.”

“Do the goldmines pay nothing?”

“Andrei Andreiech, I have lived with Nikolai Vasilievich now for over eleven years. I don’t remember their ever paying a copeck. They may have paid before my time. But I doubt it. Nikolai Vasilievich, though, is constantly pouring money into them, every month, every year, to keep them going. And this, Andrei Andreiech, what with the money he has to fork out for his wife and Eisenstein and what we spend ourselves and what he gives Zina and her people, who are very poor, and”⁠—she blushed⁠—“what he sends my own people in Germany, and his own sisters and cousins and several other friends and dependents⁠ ⁠… why, Andrei Andreiech, it takes all he can scrape together.⁠ ⁠…”

“But the house in the Mohovaya?”

“Precisely. He has been compelled to mortgage the house to be able to manage at all⁠ ⁠… and keep the other thing going.”

I whistled under my breath. I remember how Baron Wunderhausen had grasped me by the arm one day as he spoke with enthusiasm of Nikolai Vasilievich.

“Rich as Croesus,” he had said.

Well, I felt sorry for him.⁠ ⁠…

I heard a little nervous cough and a rustle, and a harmless little old man, like a mouse, whom I had not noticed in the room before, rose and walked out.

I was horrified.

“Fanny Ivanovna,” I cried, “that man has heard everything you’ve said.”

“Oh, Kniaz!” she said with undisguised contempt. “He’s heard it all before.”

I felt that this startling news rather took the gilt off the confession. I had flattered myself on being the first, in fact the only one.

“He’s heard it many times,” said Fanny Ivanovna. “Every now and then I feel that I absolutely must confess it all to somebody⁠ ⁠… no matter who it is.”

“I thought,” I said a little reproachfully, “that you had told nobody, Fanny Ivanovna.”

“Andrei Andreiech!” she cried in her tone of appeal to my sense of justice, “I haven’t spoken of it to anyone for more than two weeks. If you hadn’t come here today, I don’t know.⁠ ⁠… I really think I should have confessed it to the hall-porter. You don’t understand.”

“I do understand,” I said, but I could not help feeling misused and mishandled. I almost begrudged her the gallantry of my dash for water⁠—two separate dashes, to be exact⁠—when I remembered that they must have been carried out by other men before me, the confession tonight being, of course, an exact replica of the confessions that had preceded it, Lord knows how many times, like a melodrama with its laughter and hysterics occurring always at the proper interval as it is produced each night. And I was led to revise my recently adopted theory that I was indeed a born confidant by virtue of my understanding personality, tempting strange women into thrilling, exhilarating confessions of their secrets. Rather did I feel the victim of a lengthy and tedious autobiography inflicted on me under false pretences.

I heard the sound of the outer door closing on the old Prince.

“Kniaz,” said Fanny Ivanovna, “is also one of those who live on Nikolai Vasilievich. He always comes here. Never misses a day. Sits, reads, eats, and then goes. And all without uttering a word. When he borrows money from Nikolai Vasilievich he naturally opens his mouth, and then shuts it until the next occasion.”

The old Prince was one of those quiet nonentities who enter unasked and leave unhindered almost any Russian home; and no one is likely to object to their coming because no one is likely to notice them. They have a face, a name, a manner so ordinary that you cannot remember them, ever. They are so colourless, so blank that they seem scarcely to exist at all. I think Goncharov speaks of them somewhere, but I would not be sure of it. “Kniaz” was like that. His name was some very ordinary name, and it even seemed odd that he should not have a more exclusive name for his title. But no one cared. No one, to be sure, knew what his name was. His imya otchestvo was Pàvel Pàvlovich, like the Baron’s, and so he was called by all but Fanny Ivanovna, who called him “Kniaz,” sarcastically⁠—a Prince without a copeck to his title! I only remember that he was always very neatly dressed, shaved regularly and wore a very stiff and sharp collar which seemed to torture his dry and skinny neck.

“Kniaz has some shares,” she explained, “in a limited company, but they are worthless⁠—always have been⁠—and never paid any dividends. Never so long as anybody can remember.”

“Has he always lived on you, then?”

“He lived on his brother when he was alive. He had great expectations from his brother. But his brother died and left him more shares, quite a number of shares, in the same limited company. Whom the brother lived on when he was alive, Lord only knows!”

“Did they get their shares from their father?”

“Their uncle.”

“Did he get any dividends?”

“Nikolai says no. But he seems to have put all his money into them.”

“And now I suppose you invite Kniaz to come and live with you?” I asked.

“He comes of his own accord.”

“You don’t object to his coming?”

“No one would tell him even if they did. It’s not a Russian habit to object to anyone who comes to your house. It isn’t much good objecting either. They’ll come anyhow. But never mind.”

“Extraordinary man,” said I. “What does he propose to do? Has he any plan?”

“He believes in the shares.”

“Have you ever tried to disillusion him?”

“I wouldn’t be so heartless,” said Fanny Ivanovna.

“And the girls?”

“For them money does not exist. They are sublimely indifferent to it.”

“And Nikolai Vasilievich?”

“Nikolai Vasilievich believes in the mines. Kniaz helps him to sustain that belief in return for Nikolai’s faith in the shares. The money Kniaz borrows from Nikolai Vasilievich he regards merely as an advance on his future dividends.”

“And does Nikolai Vasilievich regard it in that light?” I asked.

“He pretends he does. But he always says: ‘Never mind, if only the mines begin to pay all will be well, Pàvel Pàvlovich.’ ”

“And the ‘family,’ Fanny Ivanovna,” I cried, “I mean his wife and her family, his fiancée and her family, you and your family, his sisters and cousins, Kniaz and the others and their families⁠—do they believe in the mines?”

“More firmly than Nikolai. If, in fact, one fine day Nikolai turned a sceptic in matters mining, they would, I am sure, suspect him of shamming poverty to prevent them from getting their legitimate share.”

“Fanny Ivanovna,” I sighed, “good night.”

“I know it is amusing,” she said. “I wish it wasn’t real life, our life, my life. Then I would find it a trifle more amusing.”

I hailed a driver who slumbered in his sleigh on the corner of the Mohovaya and the Pantilemenskaya. As I drove home across the frozen river, on which the moon spread its yellow light, I thought of the Bursanovs’ muddled life, and then Chekhov’s Three Sisters dawned upon my memory.

I understood now why Nikolai Vasilievich sympathized so heartily with the people in the play.