Mrs. Luzhin, catching sight of her husband, thrust a plate into his hand with a beautifully peeled orange on it and went past him into the study. “And note,” said a plain-looking man who had listened to the whole of the journalist’s idea and appreciated it, “note that Tyutchev’s night is cool and the stars in it are round and moist and glossy, and not simply bright dots.”
He did not say any more, since in general he spoke little, not so much out of modesty, it seemed, as out of a fear of spilling something precious that was not his but had been entrusted to him. Mrs. Luzhin, incidentally, liked him very much, and precisely because of his plainness, the neutrality of his features, as if he were himself only the outside of a vessel filled with something so sacred and rare that it would be a sacrilege to paint the clay. His name was Petrov, not a single thing about him was remarkable, he had written nothing, and he lived like a beggar, but never talked about it to anyone.
His sole function in life was to carry, reverently and with concentration, that which had been entrusted to him, something which it was necessary at all costs to preserve in all its detail and in all its purity, and for that reason he even walked with small careful steps, trying not to bump into anyone, and only very seldom, only when he discerned a kindred solicitude in the person he was talking to did he reveal for a moment—from the whole of that enormous something that he carried mysteriously within him—some tender, priceless little trifle, a line from Pushkin or the peasant name of a wild flower. “I remember our host’s father,” said the journalist when Luzhin’s back retreated into the dining room. “He doesn’t look like him but there’s something analogous in the set of the shoulders. He was a good soul, a nice fellow, but as a writer …
What? Do you really find that those oleographic tales for youngsters …” “Please, please, to the dining room,” said Mrs. Luzhin, returning from the study with three guests she had found there. “Tea is served.
Come, I beg you.” Those already at table were sitting at one end, while at the other a solitary Luzhin, his head bent gloomily, sat chewing a segment of orange and stirring the tea in his glass. Alfyorov was there with his wife, then there was a swarthy, brightly made-up girl who drew marvelous firebirds, and a bald young man who jokingly called himself a worker for the press but secretly yearned to be a political ringleader, and two women, the wives of lawyers.
And also sitting at table was delightful Vasiliy Vasilievich, shy, stately, pure-hearted, with a fair beard and wearing an old-man’s prunella shoes. Under the Tsar he had been exiled to Siberia and then abroad, whence he had returned in 1917 and succeeded in catching a brief glimpse of the revolution before being exiled again, this time by the Bolshevists. He talked earnestly about his work in the underground, about Kautsky and Geneva, and was unable to look at Mrs. Luzhin without emotion, for in her he found a resemblance to the clear-eyed, ideal maidens who had worked with him for the good of the people.
As usually happened at these gatherings, when all the guests had been rounded up and placed at table together silence ensued. The silence was such that the maid’s breathing was clearly audible as she served the tea. Mrs. Luzhin several times caught herself with the impossible thought that it would be a good idea to ask the maid why she breathed so loudly, and could she not do it more quietly. She was not very efficient in general, this pudgy wench—telephone calls were particularly disastrous.
As she listened to the breathing, Mrs. Luzhin recalled briefly how the maid had laughingly informed her a few days beforehand: “A Mr. Fa … Felt … Felty. Here, I wrote down the number.” Mrs. Luzhin called the number, but a sharp voice replied that this was a movie company’s office and that no Mr. Felty was there. Some kind of hopeless muddle. She was about to start criticizing German maids in order to break her neighbor’s silence when she noticed that a conversation had already flared up, that they were talking about a new novel.
Bars was asserting that it was elaborately and subtly written and that every word betrayed a sleepless night; a woman’s voice said, “Oh no, it reads so easily”; Petrov leaned over to Mrs. Luzhin and whispered a quotation from Zhukovsky: “That which took pains to write is read with ease”; and the poet, interrupting someone in mid-word and rolling his “r”s vehemently, shouted that Zhukovsky was a brainless parrot; at which Vasiliy Vasilievich, who had not read the novel, shook his head reproachfully.
Only when they were already in the front hall and everyone was taking leave of the others in a kind of dress rehearsal, for they all took leave of one another again in the street, though they all had to go in the same direction—only then did the actor with the well-manipulated face suddenly clap his hand to his forehead: “I almost forgot, darling,” he said to Mrs. Luzhin, squeezing her hand at each word. “The other day a man from the movie kingdom asked me for your telephone number—” Whereupon he made a surprised face and released Mrs. Luzhin’s hand. “What, you don’t know I’m in the movies now? Oh yes, yes. Big parts with close-ups.” At this point he was shouldered aside by the poet and thus Mrs. Luzhin did not find out what person the actor had meant.
The guests departed. Luzhin was sitting sideways at the table on which, frozen in various poses like the characters in the concluding scene of Gogol’s The Inspector General, were the remains of the refreshments, empty and unfinished glasses. One of his hands lay spread heavily on the tablecloth. From beneath half-lowered, once more puffy lids he looked at the black match tip, writhing in pain after having just gone out in his fingers. His large face with loose folds around the nose and mouth was slightly shiny, and on his cheeks the constantly shaved, constantly sprouting bristle showed golden in the lamplight. His dark gray suit, shaggy to the touch, enfolded him tighter than before, although it had been planned with plenty of room.
Thus Luzhin sat, not stirring, and the glass dishes with bonbons in them gleamed; and a teaspoon lay still on the tablecloth, far from any glass or plate, and for some reason a small cream puff that did not look especially enticing but was really very, very good had remained untouched. What’s the matter? thought Mrs. Luzhin, looking at her husband. Goodness, what’s the matter? And she had an aching feeling of impotence and hopelessness, as if she had taken on a job that was too difficult for her. Everything was useless—there was no point in trying, in thinking up amusements, in inviting interesting guests.
She tried to imagine how she would take this Luzhin, blind and sullen once more, around the Riviera, and all she could imagine was Luzhin sitting in his room and staring at the floor. With a nasty sense of looking through the keyhole of destiny she bent forward to see her future—ten, twenty, thirty years—and it was all the same, with no change, the same, sullen, bowed Luzhin, and silence, and hopelessness.
Wicked, unworthy thoughts! Her soul immediately straightened up again and around her were familiar images and cares: it was time to go to bed, better not buy that shortcake next time, how nice Petrov was, tomorrow morning they would have to see about their passports, the trip to the cemetery was being postponed again. Nothing could have been simpler, it seemed, than to take a taxi and drive out into the suburbs to the tiny Russian cemetery in its patch of wasteland. But it always happened that they were unable to go, either Luzhin’s teeth ached or there was this passport business, or else something else—petty, imperceptible obstacles.
And how many different worries there would be now … Luzhin definitely had to be taken to the dentist. “Is it aching again?” she asked, putting her hand on Luzhin’s. “Yes, yes,” he said, and distorting his face, sucked one cheek in with a popping sound. He had invented the toothache the other day in order to explain his low spirits and silence. “Tomorrow I’ll ring up the dentist,” she said decisively. “It’s not necessary,” muttered Luzhin. “Please, it’s not necessary.”
His lips trembled. He felt as if he were about to burst into tears, everything had become so terrifying now. “What’s not necessary?” she asked tenderly, and expressed the question mark with a little “hm” sound pronounced with closed lips. He shook his head and, just in case, sucked his tooth again. “Not necessary to go to the dentist? No, Luzhin is certainly going to be taken to the dentist. One should not neglect this.” Luzhin rose from his chair and holding his cheek went into the bedroom. “I’ll give him a pill,” she said, “that’s what I’ll do.”
The pill did not work. Luzhin stayed awake for long after his wife fell asleep. To tell the truth, the hours of
