Read A Hero of Our Time Online
Authors: Mikhail Lermontov
Tags: #Fiction, #Classics, #Historical, #Literary
A Hero of Our Time (16 page)
“Have you been to Moscow, doctor?”
“Yes, I have practiced there a bit.”
“Continue.”
“Well, I have said everything, it seems . . . Yes! One more thing: the young princess, it seems, loves to discuss feelings, passions, and the like . . . She was in Petersburg for a winter, and it didn’t please her, especially the society there. I suppose they received her coldly.”
“You didn’t see anyone with them today?”
“On the contrary: there was one adjutant, one tense-looking guardsman, and a lady who has just arrived, a relative of the princess by marriage, very pretty, but very poorly, it seems . . . Didn’t you meet her at the well? She is of medium height, fair, with regular features and a consumptive color to her face, and there is a mole on her right cheek. Her expressive face is most striking.”
“A mole!” I muttered through my teeth. “Really?”
The doctor looked at me and said solemnly, putting his hand on my heart: “You are acquainted with her . . . !”
Indeed, my heart was beating more strongly than usual. “Now it is your turn to celebrate!” I said. “Only I am counting on you: don’t lie to me. I haven’t yet seen her, but I am sure that I recognize a certain woman in your portrait, whom I loved in days of old . . . But do not breathe a word about me to her; if she asks, treat me with disdain.”
“As you like!” said Werner, shrugging his shoulders.
When he left, a terrible sadness squeezed my heart. Had fate led us again to the Caucasus, or had she purposefully come here, knowing she would find me? . . . And how will we meet? . . . And also, is it really her? . . . My sense of premonition has never lied to me. There isn’t a person in the world over whom the past gains such power as it does over me. Every memory of a past sorrow or joy hits my soul painfully and elicits from it the same sounds it once did . . . I am a foolish creature: I don’t forget anything—ever!
After dinner, at about six o’clock, I went to the boulevard: there was a crowd. Princess Ligovsky and Princess Mary sat on a bench, surrounded by young men, who were vying with one another to pay them their compliments. I placed myself on another bench at some distance and stopped two officers from the D——regiment whom I knew, and started to tell them something. Obviously it was funny because they started to laugh as loudly as lunatics. The curiosity of several of those surrounding the young princess was piqued. One by one, they all abandoned her and joined my circle. I didn’t stop: my anecdotes were so clever that they were silly; my mockeries of the eccentrics walking past were mean to the point of brutality . . . I continued to entertain the public until the sun went down. Several times, the young princess walked past with her mother, arm in arm, accompanied by some limping little old man. Several times her gaze, falling on me, expressed contempt while trying to express indifference . . .
“What stories was he telling?” she asked one of the young people who turned to her in politeness. “I suppose it was a very enthralling story—about his victory in battle . . . ?” she said rather loudly and, probably, with the intention of taunting me.
“Aha,” I thought, “you have become angry indeed, dear princess; but wait, there is more!”
Grushnitsky followed her movements like a predatory beast—she didn’t leave his sight. I’ll wager that tomorrow he will be begging someone to introduce him to her. She will be very glad of it because she is bored.
May 16Over the last two days, my affairs have progressed tremendously. The young princess decidedly hates me. Two or three epigrams at my expense have already been circulated, and they were rather biting but also very flattering. It is horribly strange to her that, accustomed as I am to good society, and as friendly as I am with her cousins and aunties, I am not making any attempt to become acquainted with her. We encounter each other every day at the well and on the boulevard. I make every effort, and do my utmost to distract her admirers—the shining adjutants, pale Muscovites and others—and I am almost always successful. I have always hated having guests but now I have a full house every day; they have dinner, supper, they gamble—and, alas, my champagne is triumphing over the power of her magnetic little eyes!
Yesterday, I encountered her in Chelakhov’s shop. She was bargaining for a marvelous Persian rug. The young princess was entreating her mama not to begrudge her—this rug would decorate her dressing room so nicely! . . . I offered forty rubles more and bought it—and for that I was rewarded with a look that shined with the most ravishing fury. Near dinner-time, I ordered my Circassian horse to be led past her window, covered with this rug, just for fun. Werner was at their house at the time and told me that the effect of this scene was most dramatic. The young princess now wants to drum up a militia against me. I have already noticed that two adjutants bow to me very dryly in her presence, even though they dine at my house every day.
Grushnitsky has taken on a mysterious look: he walks around, with his hands behind his back, and doesn’t acknowledge anyone. His leg has suddenly healed: he barely limps. He has found occasion both to enter into conversation with the Princess Ligovsky, and to give some sort of compliment to the young princess. She, evidently, is not very discriminating, because since then she has replied to his bows with the sweetest of smiles.
“You are resolute in not wanting to be introduced to the Ligovskys?” he said to me yesterday.
“Resolute.”
“As you please! It is the most pleasant household at the spa! All the best society here . . .”
“My friend, I’m tired even of the best society that is not here. Have you been to their house?”
“Not yet. I have spoken twice with the young princess, not more, but you know, somehow it is not appropriate to impose oneself on a household, though it is done here . . . It would be another matter if I wore epaulets . . .”
“Come now! You are much more interesting as you are! You simply don’t know how to make best use of your advantageous situation . . . That soldier’s greatcoat makes you into a hero or a martyr in the eyes of any sentimental young lady.”
Grushnitsky smiled in a self-satisfied way.
“What nonsense!” he said.
“I am sure,” I continued, “that the young princess is already in love with you.”
He blushed to his ears and puffed out his chest.
Oh vanity! You are the lever with which Archimedes wanted to raise the earthly globe!
“Everything is a joke to you!” he said, pretending to be angry. “Firstly, she knows me so little yet . . .”
“Women only love those that they don’t know.”
“Well, I don’t have the least impression that she likes me. I simply want to make acquaintance with a pleasant household, and it would be very funny if I had any hopes . . . But you, for example, are another matter! You Petersburg conquerors: one look from you and the women melt . . . And do you know, Pechorin, that the young princess has been talking about you?”
“What? She has already spoken of me to you?”
“Well, don’t start rejoicing yet. I somehow entered a conversation with her at the well, by accident. And her third comment was: ‘Who is this gentleman who has such an unpleasant and oppressive gaze? He was with you when . . .’
“She blushed and didn’t want to say which day, having remembered her charming gesture.
“‘You don’t have to tell me which day,’ I responded to her. ‘It will always be in my memory . . .’
“My friend Pechorin! I congratulate you: you are on her black list . . . and this is a shame indeed! Because Mary is very charming . . .”
It must be remarked that Grushnitsky is one of those people, who, in speaking about a woman with whom they are barely acquainted, will call her
my Mary, my Sophie,
if she has the good fortune to have taken their fancy.
my Mary, my Sophie,
if she has the good fortune to have taken their fancy.
I assumed a serious air and responded to him:
“Yes, she is not foolish . . . But be careful, Grushnitsky! Young Russian ladies live on platonic love for the most part, without adding the thought of marriage to it. And platonic love is the most unsettling of all. The young princess, it seems, is one of those ladies who want you to entertain them. If they are bored with you for more than two minutes in a row, then you are irretrievably finished. Your silence must excite her curiosity, your conversation should never quench it. You must continue to disturb her with every passing minute. She will disregard considered opinion for you ten times in public, then call it a sacrifice; and in order to reward herself for it, she will torment you, and afterward will simply say that she cannot stand you. If you don’t gain power over her, then her first kiss will not give you the right to a second. She will flirt with you abundantly, and after about two years she will marry a monster, out of deference to her mother, and will start to convince herself that she is wretched, that she only loved one person—you, that is—but that the heavens didn’t unite her with him, because he wore a soldier’s greatcoat, though under that thick, gray greatcoat, an ardent and noble heart was beating . . .”
Grushnitsky banged his fist on the table and started to pace the room.
I was laughing loudly inside and almost smiled twice, but he, fortunately, didn’t notice this. It was clear that he was in love, because he became even more gullible than before. He even began to wear a silver ring with black enamel, made locally. It seemed a little dubious to me . . . I started to scrutinize it and what did I see? . . . Engraved on the inside in tiny letters, was the name “Mary,” and next to it, the date of the day she picked up the famous glass. I hid my discovery. I don’t want to force a confession from him. I want him to choose me as a confidante, and then I will really enjoy it . . .
Today I was up late; I arrived at the well—and no one was there anymore. The day began to get hot. White, shaggy rain clouds quickly sped down from the snowy mountains, promising a storm. The head of Mount Mashuk was smoking like an extinguished torch. Gray shreds of cloud twisted and crawled around it, like snakes, and they seemed to be held back in their strivings, as if they had been caught up in its prickly shrubbery. The air was filled with electricity. I went deep into the grapevine alley that led to a grotto; I was melancholy. I was thinking about the young woman whom the doctor had mentioned, with the mole on her cheek . . . Why is she here? Is it she? And why do I think that it is she? And why am I even convinced of it? Are women with moles on their cheeks so very rare? Thinking in this way, I walked right up to the grotto and looked: on a stone bench in the cool shadows of its entrance, a woman was sitting, wrapped in a black shawl, wearing a straw hat, with her head lowered onto her chest. The hat covered her face. I wanted to turn, in order not to ruin her daydreaming, when she caught sight of me.
“Vera!” I exclaimed involuntarily.
She shuddered and went pale.
“I knew you were here,” she said.
I sat next to her and took her hand. A long forgotten feeling of awe ran along my veins at the sound of this sweet voice. She looked me in the eyes with her deep and peaceful eyes. They expressed mistrust and something like reproach.
“We haven’t seen each other in a long while,” I said.
“A long time, and we have both changed in many ways!”
“I assume you don’t love me anymore?”
“I am married!” she said.
“Again? But this reason also existed a few years ago, and yet . . .”
She pulled her hand out of mine, and her cheeks blazed.
“Maybe you love your second husband?”
She didn’t answer and turned away.
“Or he is very jealous?”
Silence.
“Well? He is young, handsome, special, faithful, rich, and you are afraid . . .”
I looked at her and became scared: her face expressed deep despair; tears were sparkling in her eyes.
“Tell me,” she finally whispered, “is it fun for you to torture me? . . . I should really hate you. Ever since we have known each other, you have given me nothing but suffering . . .” Her voice trembled, she leaned toward me, and lowered her head onto my breast.
“Perhaps,” I thought, “this is exactly why you loved me: joys are forgotten, but sadness, never . . .”
I hugged her tightly and we stayed like that for a long time. Finally, our lips approached each other and merged into a hot, intoxicating kiss. Her hands were as cold as ice, and her head was burning. Then one of those conversations started up between us, which don’t make any sense on paper, which you can’t repeat, and which you can’t even remember. The meanings of the sounds replace and add to the meanings of the words, as in an Italian opera.
She absolutely doesn’t want me to be introduced to her husband—the limping little old man whom I saw in passing on the boulevard. She married him for her son’s sake. He is rich and suffers from rheumatism. I didn’t allow myself to make even one mockery of him: she respects him, like a father—and will deceive him like a husband . . . It is a strange thing the human heart in general—and the female one in particular!
Vera’s husband, Semyon Vasilievich G——v, is a distant relative of Princess Ligovsky. He lives near her. Vera is often a guest of the princess. I gave her my word that I would make acquaintance with the Ligovskys and would flirt with the princess in order to deflect attention from her. This way, my plans won’t be spoiled in the slightest and it will be amusing for me . . .
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