And afterwards, when everyone was sitting at the big table, he had the same feeling you get when you come home after matins to the festive table with its gilt-horned ram made of butter, a ham, and a virgin-smooth pyramid of paschal cottage cheese that you want to start on right away, bypassing the ham and eggs. It was hot and noisy, and lots of people were sitting at table who must have been in church as well—never mind, never mind, let them stay a while for the time being.… Mrs. Luzhin looked at her husband, at his curl, at his beautifully tailored dress suit and at the crooked half-smile with which he greeted the courses.
Her mother, liberally powdered and wearing a very low dress that showed, as in the old days, the tight groove between her raised, eighteenth-century breasts, was bearing up heroically and even used the familiar second person singular (“ty”) to her son-in-law, so that at first Luzhin did not realize to whom she was speaking. He drank two glasses of champagne in all and a pleasant drowsiness began to come over him in waves.
They went out onto the street. The black, windy night struck him softly on the breast, which was unprotected by his underdeveloped dress waistcoat, and his wife requested him to button up his overcoat. Her father, who had been smiling the whole evening and silently raising his glass in some special way—until it was level with his eyes—a mannerism he had adopted from a certain diplomat who used to say “sköl” very elegantly—now raised a bunch of door keys, glinting in the lamplight, as a mark of farewell, still smiling with his eyes alone. Her mother, with an ermine wrap on her shoulders, tried not to look at Luzhin’s back as he climbed into the taxicab.
The guests, all a little drunk, took leave of their hosts and one another and laughing discreetly surrounded the car, which finally moved off, and then someone yelled “hurrah” and a late passerby, turning to his woman companion, remarked approvingly: “zemlyachki shumyat—fellow countrymen celebrating.”
Luzhin immediately fell asleep in the cab; reflected gleams of whitish light unfolded fanwise, bringing his face to life, and the soft shadow made by his nose circled slowly over his cheek and then his lip, and again it was dark until another light went by, stroking Luzhin’s hand in passing, which appeared to slide into a dark pocket as soon as darkness returned. And then came a series of bright lights and each one flushed out a shadowy butterfly from behind his white tie, and then his wife carefully adjusted his muffler, since the cold of the November night penetrated even into the closed automobile. He woke up and screwed up his eyes, not realizing immediately where he was, but at that moment the taxi came to a halt and his wife said softly: “Luzhin, we’re home.”
In the elevator he stood smiling and blinking, somewhat dazed but not in the least drunk, and looked at the row of buttons, one of which his wife pressed. “Quite a way up,” he said and looked at the elevator ceiling, as if expecting to see the summit of their journey. The elevator stopped. “Hic,” said Luzhin and dissolved into quiet laughter.
They were met in the entrance hall by the new servant—a plumpish wench who immediately held out her red, disproportionately large hand to them. “Oh, why did you wait for us?” said his wife. Speaking rapidly the maid congratulated them, and reverently took Luzhin’s opera hat. Luzhin, with a subtle smile, showed her how it banged flat. “Amazing,” exclaimed the maid. “You can go, go to bed,” repeated his wife anxiously. “We’ll lock up.”
The lights went on in turn in the study, drawing room and dining room. “Extends like a telescope,” mumbled Luzhin sleepily. He did not look at anything properly—he could not keep his eyes open enough. He was already on his way into the dining room when he noticed he was carrying in his arms a large, plush dog with pink soles. He put it on the table and a fluffy imp hanging from the lamp immediately came down like a spider.
The rooms went dark like the sections of a telescope being folded together and Luzhin found himself in the bright corridor. “Go to bed,” again shouted his wife to someone who at the far end rustled and bid them good night. “That’s the servant’s room,” said his wife. “And the bathroom’s here, to the left.” “Where’s the little place?” whispered Luzhin. “In the bathroom, everything’s in the bathroom,” she replied and Luzhin cautiously opened the door, and when he had convinced himself of something he speedily locked himself in.
His wife passed through the hallway into the bedroom and sat down in an armchair, looking at the entrancingly flocculent beds. “Oh, I’m tired.” She smiled and for a long time watched a big, sluggish fly that circled around the Mauretanian lamp, buzzing hopelessly, and then disappeared. “This way, this way,” she cried, hearing Luzhin’s uncertain, shuffling step in the hallway. “Bedroom,” he said approvingly, and placing his hands behind his back he looked about him for a while. She opened the wardrobe where she had put away their things the day before, hesitated, and turned to her husband. “I’ll take a bath,” she said. “All your things are in here.”
“Wait a minute,” said Luzhin and suddenly yawned with his mouth wide open. “Wait a minute,” he repeated in a palatal voice, gulping down between syllables the elastic pieces of yawn. But picking up her pajamas and bedroom slippers she quickly left the room.
The water poured from the tap in a thick blue stream and began to fill the white bathtub, steaming tenderly and changing the tone of its murmur as the level rose. Looking at its gushing gleam she reflected with some anxiety that the limits of her feminine competency were now in sight and that there was one sphere in which it was not her place to lead. As she immersed herself in the bath she watched the tiny water bubbles gathering on her skin and on the sinking, porous sponge.
Settling down up to the neck, she saw herself through the already slightly soapy water, her body thin and almost transparent, and when a knee came just barely out of the water, this round, glistening, pink island was somehow unexpected in its unmistakable corporeality. “After all it’s none of my affair,” she said, freeing one sparkling arm from the water and pushing the hair back from her forehead.
She turned on the hot water again, reveling in the resilient waves of warmth as they passed over her stomach, and finally, causing a small storm in the bathtub, she stepped out and unhurriedly began to dry herself. “Turkish beauty,” she said, standing only in her silk pajama pants before the slightly sweating mirror. “Pretty well built on the whole,” she said after a while. Continuing to look at herself in the mirror, she began slowly to draw on her pajama top. “A bit full in the hips,” she said.
The water in the bath that had been flowing out with a gurgle suddenly squeaked and all was quiet: the bathtub was now empty, and only the plug-hole retained a tiny, soapy whirlpool. Suddenly she realized she was dawdling on purpose, standing in her pajamas before the mirror—and a shiver went through her breast, as when you are leafing through last year’s magazine, knowing that in a second, in just a second, the door will open and the dentist will appear on the threshold.
Whistling loudly she walked to the bedroom, and the whistle was immediately cut short: Luzhin, covered to the waist by an eiderdown, his starched shirtfront undone and bulging, was lying on the bed with his hands tucked under his head and emitting a purring snore. His collar hung on the foot of the bed, his trousers sprawled on the floor, their suspenders spread out, and his dress coat, set crookedly on the shoulders of a hanger, was lying on the couch with one tail tucked underneath it.
All this she quietly picked up and put away. Before going to bed she moved back the window curtain to see if the blind had been lowered. It had not been. In the dark depths of the courtyard the night wind rocked a shrub and in the faint light shed from somewhere unknown something glistened, perhaps a puddle on the stone path that skirted the lawn, and in another place the shadow of some railings fitfully appeared and disappeared. And suddenly everything went dark and there was only a black chasm.
She thought she would fall asleep as soon as she jumped into bed but it turned out otherwise. The cooing snore beside her, a strange melancholy, and this dark, unfamiliar room kept her suspended and would not allow her to slip off into sleep. And for some reason the word “match” kept floating through her brain—“a good match,” “find yourself a good match,” “match,” “match,” “an unfinished, interrupted match,” “such a good game.” “Give the Maestro my anxiety, anxiety …” “She could have made a brilliant match,” said her mother clearly, floating past in the darkness. “Let’s drink a toast,” whispered a tender voice, and
