Alexei Tolstoy. Kaliostro
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Russian translation by Olga Shartse
Raduga Publishers, Moscow, 1991
Origin: http://home.freeuk.net/russica2/
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A Soviet writer, Alexei Tolstoy (1883-1945) was an aristocrat by birth
- he inherited the title of count-and a distant relative of Lev Tolstoy. He
studied engineering at the St. Petersburg Technological Institute. It was
his admiration for symbolist poetry that inspired him to write. His early
stories, such as those of the collection Eccentrics (1910), depict the decay
of the life of the provincial gentry. At first opposing the Revolution,
Alexei Tolstoy emigrated in 1919, going to Paris and then to Berlin. In 1923
he returned to the Soviet Union where he was hailed as a great writer. His
books were tremendously popular: with Sholokhov he was probably the most
widely read novelist of the late 1930s and the early 1940s. Tolstoy's
masterpiece is his trilogy, Ordeal (completed in 1941) which attempts to
give a broad picture of the historical events of the Revolution and Civil
War, and their effect on a group of intellectuals, who at first oppose the
Reds, but gradually come to understand and accept the "people's" cause. The
unfinished Peter the Great (1929-45) also has claims to be regarded as a
masterpiece. Though Peter is the central figure, the author gives a vivid
portrayal of Russia at the time of reforms. Tolstoy was to try his hand at
sci-fi: the fantastic romance, Aelita (1924), was followed by Engineer
Garin's Death Ray (1925-26); Tolstoy also wrote two plays about Ivan the
Terrible in which Ivan's cruelty is minimized as incidental to his struggle
to unite and strengthen the Russian land.
In Smolensk Uyezd, on the tall bank of the river, in the middle of a
hilly plain, covered with stripes of wheat fields and small birch woods,
sprawled an estate called White Springs, the ancient family seat of the
Princes Tulupov. The original wooden house, standing in a dip of the land,
had been boarded up and abandoned. The new mansion with columns in the Greek
style faced the river and the fields beyond. At the back of the house there
were two wings which stretched into the park, complete with ponds, islands,
and fountains.
Besides, in different corners of the park one could come upon a stone
woman with an arrow, or an urn with this inscription on the socle: "Sit here
a while and ponder how fleet is time", or else some sad ruins, now tangled
in creepers. The house and the park had been completed some five years
earlier when the mistress of White Springs, Princess Praskovia Tulupova,
widow of the Brigadier, suddenly died in her prime. The estate was inherited
by her third cousin Alexei Fedyashev, then serving as an officer in St.
Petersburg.
Alexei sent in his papers and settled down to a quiet existence in the
privacy of White Springs together with his aunt Fedosia Ivanovna Fedyasheva.
He was a quiet, dreamy sort, and still very young-he had just turned
nineteen. He gladly resigned from the military service because the noise and
bustle of the Court receptions, the din of the regimental drinking parties,
the laughter of the beauties at the balls, the smell of powder and the
rustle of their silk skirts gave him a splitting headache and a stitch in
his heart.
With quiet joy he welcomed this privacy amid the fields and woods.
Sometimes he rode out to look at the haymaking or reaping, sometimes he sat
angling on the bank of the river under an old willow, and sometimes he gave
orders for the village girls to dance around the pond in the park and
watched this picturesque scene from a window. On winter evenings he read
avidly, while Fedosia Ivanovna played solitaire, as the wind howled in the
tall garrets, and the little old man who took care of the stoves shuffled
along the creaking floorboards to stoke up the fire here and there.
And that is how they lived, in peace and quiet. But soon Fedosia
Ivanovna began to notice that something was not quite right with Alexis, as
she called her nephew. He was strangely moody, absent-minded and pale. And
once Fedosia Ivanovna ventured to say to him:
"Isn't it time, my dear, for you to take the plunge and marry, because,
after all, if you go on looking at an old mushroom like me all life long,
something might go wrong with you..."
What a hope! He actually stamped his foot in anger. "Stop it, auntie...
I have no wish now or ever to sink into such boring prosiness: going about
in a dressing gown all day long and playing tre-septs with guests... And
then whom would you have me marry, I'd like to know?"
"Prince Shakhmatov has five daughters," replied his aunt. "All
excellent wenches. And then Prince Patrikeyev has fourteen daughters... Then
there are the Svinyins-Sasha, Masha, Dasha..."
"Ah, auntie, auntie dear, all the girls you have named possess
excellent qualities, but just think: supposing my heart is fired with
passion, we marry, and what then? The one whose glove or garter should
excite and thrill me, starts running about with a bunch of keys, poking into
the barn, puttering in the store-rooms, or else ordering chicken noodle soup
for dinner and spooning it up in my presence..."
"But why must it be noodle soup, Alexis? And even if it is noodle soup,
what's wrong with that?"
"No, auntie, only a superhuman passion could break down my
melancholy... But there is no woman capable of this in the world."
Saying this he glanced with languid longing at the wall on which hung a
large, full-length portrait of the beautiful Praskovia Tulupova. Then, with
a sigh, he snugly wrapped himself into his dressing-gown made of silk with a
Chinese pattern, filled his pipe, and settled down in an armchair at the
window, to puff on his pipe and gaze at the thin plumes of smoke curling up.
However, it seems that he did let something slip and his aunt did
understand something, because, glancing at him in wonder, she said:
"If you're a man, then love a woman and not some lunatic dream, for
mercy's sake..."
Alexei said nothing in reply. In the yard, overgrown with curly grass,
where his bored gaze travelled, a reddish calf stood sucking at the ear of
another calf. The yard sloped down to the river, on the bank of which, amid
the burdocks sat several white geese, much like lumps of snow; one of the
geese rose, flapped its wings and sat down again. It was sultry and quiet at
this midday hour. Hazy waves of heat hovered and quivered above the wheat
fields beyond the river. A peasant came riding along the road that emerged
from a small birch wood, then he went down to the ford, the horse stepped
belly-deep into the water and began to drink. Now he turned the horse round,
scattering the frightened geese, galloped up the slope, sticking out his
elbows and dangling his bare feet, called out something to a servant girl
carrying an armful of straw, guffawed, but suddenly noticing the master in
the window, quickly jumped down from the horse and doffed his cap. This was
the Fedyashevs' messenger boy who was sent once a week to fetch the mail.
This time he brought a letter for Fedosia Ivanovna and a batch of books for
the master.
Fedosia Ivanovna went to fetch her glasses. Alexei started glancing
through the books. His attention was caught by an article in the 28th issue
of the Economic Magazine on the causes of hypochondria. "The primary
unfortunate source of hypochondria is a cruel and lasting indulgence in
carnal desires and such passions which maintain the spirit in perpetual
melancholy; a man, troubled by such desires for which he does not see an
outlet, seeks privacy, sinks more and more into the depths of sadness, until
at last the nerves of his stomach and intestines become utterly
exhausted..."
After reading these lines, Alexei closed the book. And so, hypochondria
was in store for him, since there was no outlet for the passion, devouring
his soul.
About half a year ago, when Alexei was finishing the interior
decoration of some of the rooms, he went to the old house to see if there
were any things there worth salvaging. He remembered going there as if it
were yesterday. The sun was setting in colours that presaged hard frost. Dry
snow was already swirling over the cooling fields. An ancient crow, croaking
harshly, took wing from a birch tree, adorned with hoarfrost, and sifted
snow over Alexei who, in a jacket lined with fox fur, was walking along a
path on the river bank which had just been swept clean of snow.
A village girl, squatting beside the ice-hole on the river, was drawing
water; she filled her pails, lifted them on the yoke over her shoulder, and
went home, turning her round, black-browed face at the master every now and
again. In the village, lights were appearing in the snow-crusted little
windows in the cottages here and there between the snowdrifts; gates could
be heard creaking, and voices that sounded clear in the frosty air. A bleak,
peaceful picture.
Alexei mounted the porch steps of the old house, ordered the boards to
be ripped off the front door, and entered the rooms. Everything was covered
with dust, everything terribly old and gone to rack and ruin. The servant
boy who walked ahead of him with a lantern threw the light on some gilding
on the wall, and then on broken bits of furniture dumped into a corner. A
large rat ran across the room. Apparently, everything of any value at all
had been taken out of the house. Alexei was about to turn back, but then,
going past a low-ceilinged empty room, he looked in and saw, hanging
crookedly on the wall, a large, full-length portrait of a young woman. The
servant boy raised the lantern. There was a film of dust on the canvas, but
the colours were fresh, and Alexei discerned a face of wondrous beauty,
smoothily dressed and powdered hair, arched eyebrows, a small and passionate
mouth with the corners curling up, and a cream-coloured gown cut very low on
the high, maidenly bosom. The hand which lay serenely under the breast held
a rose.
Alexei guessed that this was a portrait of the late Princess Praskovia
Pavlovna Tulupova, his third cousin whom he had seen only when he was a
child. He had the portrait moved to the new house at once and hung in the
library.
He saw the portrait there before him all the time. Whether he was
reading a book-he loved reading the description of travels in savage
lands-or making notes in his note-book, while smoking a pipe, or whether in
his slippers sown with glass beads he was simply wandering about the rooms
with the freshly waxed hardwood floors, he would pause for a long look at
the lovely portrait. Little by little he bestowed upon this image all the
most excellent qualities of kindness, wisdom and passion. To himself he
started calling Praskovia Pavlovna the friend who shared his lonely hours
and inspired his dreams.
Once, he had a dream about her in which she was as motionless and
haughty as in the portrait, but the rose in her hand was fresh, he reached
for it but could not take it out of her hand. He awoke with an alarmingly
beating heart and a burning head. After that night he could not look at the
portrait without a thrill of excitement. The woman in it had wholly captured
his imagination.
Fedosia Ivanovna came back with the letter in her hand, her spectacles
on her nose, and, seating herself in an armchair facing Alexei, said:
"Pavel Petrovich writes..."
"What Pavel Petrovich, auntie?"
"Why, bless you, Alexis, my dear, Pavel Petrovich Fedyashev, the
second-major... Well then, he writes about this and that, and here's
something for you: A great to-do has been caused here with us in St.
Petersburg by the well-known Count Fenix, or as he is called-Cagliostro. He
cured Princess's Volkonskaya's sick pearls, increased the ruby in General
Bibikov's ring by eleven carats, and what's more, destroyed the air bubble
inside the stone. He showed Kostich the famous deal in a bowl of punch, and
the very next day Kostich won more than a hundred thousand roubles. For
Golovina, the lady-in-waiting, he materialized the ghost of her dead husband
out of her locket, and the husband actually spoke to her and held her hand,
after which the poor old lady became quite daft... In short, the miracles
are too many to enumerate... The Empress was of a mind to summon him to the
palace, but here a most funny thing happened. Prince Potyomkin fell
violently in love with the wife of this Count Fenix, a Chech lady, I have
not seen her myself, but people say she is a beauty. Potyomkin had a lot of
money, costly carpets and objets d'art passed on to the Count, but when he
saw there was no buying him off with money, he decided to steal the beauty
at his own ball. But that very day the Count, together with his wife,
vanished from St. Petersburg no one knows where, and the police have been
looking for them in vain till this day...'"
Alexei listened to the letter very attentively, and then read it over
himself. A light flush appeared on his cheeks.
"All these miracles are a manifestation of an incomprehensible magnetic
force," he said. "If only I could meet that man... Oh, if I could just meet
him..." He started pacing the floor, uttering these ejaculations: "Oh, if
only... I would find the right words to persuade him... Let him experiment
on me... Let him embody my dream... Let my dream become reality, and let my
life dissolve like smoke. I won't regret it..."
Fedosia Ivanovna looked at her nephew with fright, her faded eyes all
but starting out of her head. It was enough to give anyone a fright. Alexei
had flung himself into an armchair and with a dreamy smile stared through
the window at the two village girls who had come close to the window with a
basket of mushrooms, but he saw neither the mushrooms, nor the girls, not
the field where a tall pillar of dust started whirling along a balk, and
drifted away, swirling and scaring the birds in the roadside birch.
The next morning Alexei woke up with a splitting headache. The sky was
sultry in spite of the early hour. The leaves hung motionlessly on the
trees, everything seemed mesmerized, and the green had a metallic sheen like
the leaves on a tin gravestone wreath. The hens did not cluck; a red cow
that looked bloated lay without moving or chewing on the slope going down to
the river. Even the sparrows were subdued. In the north-east, close to the
ground the colour of the sky was dark, dull and harsh.
The steward came into the dining-room with his report. Alexei left him
with Fedosia Ivanovna and, grimacing from the pain in his temples, went to
the library, opened a book but very soon grew bored with it, so he took up a
pen, but all he could do was practise his signature.
Then he began to contemplate the portrait of Praskovia Pavlovna, but
even the portrait, like everything else around him, seemed cruel and
sinister. Three flies were sitting on the face. Alexei felt that he would
burst into sobs if everything that surrounded him remained so glaringly
clear-cut and harsh much longer. His soul was sick with misery.
Suddenly, a window banged open somewhere in the house, there was the
sound of shattered glass and frightened voices. Alexei went and stood at the
library window. A huge, dense cloud, as dark as the sky at night, was
advancing on the estate, creeping low over the fields. The water in the
river turned dark blue and had a sullen look. The reeds thrashed about and
then lay down in crumpled heaps. A strong wind picked up the goose feathers
on the bank, tore the crow's nest down from the old willow, tousled the
branches, chased the hens down the yard, rocked the wooden fence, picked up
the skirt of a peasant woman and threw it over her head, and then pounced on
the house with all its might, tore into the windows and set up a wail in the
chimneys. A flash of light appeared in the dark cloud and with blinding
zigzags like a tree root ran all the way down to the ground. The sky split
apart, and thunder crashed. The house shook. The spring in the mantelpiece
clock rang sadly in response.
Alexei was standing at the window with the wind tearing at his long
hair and fluttering the skirts of his dressing-gown. His aunt came running
in, she gripped him by the hand, pulled him away from the window and shouted
something, but the second, even more terrible crash of thunder, drowned out
her words. The next minute came the first heavy drops of rain, and then it
came pouring down in a grey curtain, drumming and frothing on the panes of
the closed window. It grew quite dark outside.
"Alexis," said his aunt, still breathing heavily from the scare she had
suffered. "I'm telling you: we have guests."
"Guests? Who are they?"
"I don't rightly know myself. Their carriage broke down, they're
frightened of the storm and are asking us to put them up for the night."
"They're welcome, of course."
"I've already given the orders. They're taking off their wet things
just now. And you might go and dress too."
Alexei hurried out of the library, but in the door he all but collided
with Fimka, the parlour maid, who cannoned in with her hair hanging loose,
her sarafan rain-soaked, and cried in a panic:
"Mistress, mistress dear, these guests, I swear it's the honest
truth-one of them is as black as the devil!"
The rain went on pouring for the rest of the day, and candles had to be
lit earlier than usual. Quiet came after the storm. The windows and doors
into the garden were flung open, and there a gentle, warm rain was falling
in the darkness, pattering softly on the leaves.
Alexei stood in the door wearing a silk kaftan, a waistcoat with a
design of forget-me-nots woven on the cream ground, he carried a sword and
his hair had been curled and powdered. The wet grass on the lawn looked grey
where the light fell on it. The air smelt of damp and flowers.
Alexei stood looking at the lighted windows of the right wing of the
house which was built in a semicircle and ended behind the lime trees.
There, shadows appeared on the lowered white window curtains: now the shadow
of a man in a huge wig, now the graceful shadow of a woman, and now that of
the servant-a tall person wearing a turban.
They were the guests. They had long changed their wet clothes, had had
a rest, and were now evidently dressing for dinner. Alexei watched the
movement of the shadows on the curtains with impatience. The smell of the
rain, the flowers and the burning candles made him dizzy.
And now the long shadow of the servant appeared again, it bowed and
vanished, and measured steps were heard in the house. Alexei stepped back
from the door. In came a tall, perfectly black man, the whites of his eyes
like hard-boiled eggs. He had on a long raspberry-red robe belted with a
scarf, and another scarf was wound round his head. With a deferential, yet
dignified bow he said in broken French:
"My master salutes you, sir, and has asked me to tell you that he
accepts your invitation to have supper with you with exceptional pleasure."
Alexei smiled and, coming close to him, asked: "Tell me please what is
your master's name and title?"
With a sigh the servant dropped his head "I do not know."
"What do you mean-you don't know?" "His name has been concealed from
me."
"Oh, I can see you're a rogue, my good man. But then your own name, at
least, can you tell me?"
"Margadon."
"What are you-an Ethiopian?"
"I was born in Nubia," Margadon replied calmly, looking down on Alexei.
"In the reign of Pharaoh Amenkhosiris I was taken prisoner and sold to my
master."
Alexei backed away from him and frowned.
"What nonsense are you telling me? How old are you then?"
"Over three thousand."
"See if I don't tell your master to have you flogged properly for
this!" cried Alexei, flushing an angry red. "Get out!"
Margadon bowed as deferentially as before and walked out. Alexei
cracked his fingers as he pulled himself together, then he pondered for a
moment and burst out laughing.
At this very moment the servant boy flung open both halves of the
carved door, and into the room came a gentleman with a lady on his arm. Bows
and introductions began.
The gentleman was perhaps in his fifties and solidly built. His
purplish-red face with a hooked nose was cushioned in lace. His huge wig
with locks, of a style worn at the dawn of the century, was carelessly
powdered. His coat of stiff blue silk was embroidered in gold thread with
masks and flowers. On top of this coat he wore a green overcoat lined with
blue foxes. His black stockings were also embroidered with gold thread.
Diamonds sparkled on the buckles of his velvet shoes, and each finger of his
blunt, hairy hands was adorned with two or even three precious rings.
In a duskish deep voice this gentleman greeted his host, and then,
moving a step aside from the lady, presented her.
"Countess-our host. Sir-my wife."
This done, he busied himself with his snuff-box, sniffing, blowing his
nose, and throwing back his head. Alexei expressed his regret to the
Countess on account of the bad weather and his keenest delight which this
unexpected acquaintance with them afforded him. He offered her his arm, and
led the way to the table.
The Countess answered him in monosyllables and seemed tired and
depressed. But even so she was startlingly lovely. Her blond hair was
dressed simply. Her face, a face of a child rather than that of a woman,
seemed transparent, for so soft and clear was the skin; she kept her eyelids
modestly lowered over her blue eyes, and her sweet mouth slightly parted-she
must have been gladly breathing in the freshness pouring in from the garden.
Fedosia Ivanovna met the guests at the table laden with cold and hot
dishes. Her French was poor, the guests did not speak Russian at all, and so
Alexei had to do all the talking. The guests, it appeared, were travelling
from St. Petersburg to Warsaw without changing horses and had already been
on the road for two weeks.
"Do forgive me," said Alexei, "but I did not quite get your name."
"Count Fenix," replied the guest, greedily plunging his strong white
teeth into a chicken leg.
Alexei quickly set down the glass that had started shaking badly in his
hand, and turned whiter than his napkin.
"Then you are the celebrated Cagliostro whose miracles the whole world
is talking about?" asked Alexei.
Count Fenix raised his shaggy greying eyebrows, poured some wine into
his glass and poured it down his throat, without gulping.
"Yes, I'm Cagliostro," he said, complacently smacking his thick lips.
"The whole world is talking about my wonders. But that comes from ignorance.
There are no wonders. Just knowledge of natural elements, that is to say:
fire, water, earth and air; the substances of nature, that is, the solid,
the liquid, the soft, and the volatile; the forces of nature: attraction,
repulsion, motion and tranquillity; the elements of nature of which there
are thirty six, and finally the energy of nature: electric, magnetic, light,
and sensitive. All this is subordinate to three things: knowledge, logic and
will, which are contained right here," at this, he banged himself on the
forehead. He put his napkin down on the table, took a golden toothpick out
of his waistcoat pocket, and went to work at his teeth with a determined
air.
Alexei watched him like a timid little rabbit. Dinner over, he took the
guests to the library where logs were blazing in the fireplace, driving away
the evening damp. Fedosia Ivanovna, who had not understood a word throughout
dinner, stayed behind in the dining-room to see to things.
Cagliostro sat down in a leather armchair and between pinches of snuff
held forth on the beneficial effects of a good digestion. The Countess
seated herself on a small chair near the fireplace and gazed at the fire,
deep in thought. Her hands, folded in her lap, sank in the blue silk of her
gown.
"My friend, a doctor of philosophy who died in Nuremberg in fourteen...
What a cursed memory," muttered Cagliostro, drumming his fingers on his
snuffbox, "my friend, Doctor Bombastus Theophrastus Paracelsus, told me
again and again: chew, chew, chew, - that is the first commandment of the
wise: chew..."
Alexei glanced at him in puzzlement, but the very next moment, as it
often happens in dreams, the inconceivable merged effortlessly with reality,
he felt slightly dizzy for a moment as his mind took it in, but the
dizziness passed at once.
"I, too, have often heard, Your Excellency, that a good digestion
inspires happy thoughts and a poor digestion plunges one into sadness and
even causes hypochondria," said Alexei. "However, there are other reasons
besides..."
"Undoubtedly," said Cagliostro, lowering his eyebrows.
"I make so bold as to speak of myself as an example... It was the
portrait over there that started my nervous distress..."
Cagliostro turned his head, looked the portrait up and down, and again
lowered his eyebrows over his eyes.
And then Alexei told his guests the story of the portrait painted in
France (this he had learnt from his aunt), and how he found it in the old
house, and ended by pouring out all his feelings and hopeless desires which
had brought on his hypochondria.
During the telling of the story he glanced at the Countess now and
again. She was listening attentively. Alexei rose from his armchair and
pointing at the portrait exclaimed:
"Only today I was telling Fedosia Ivanovna that if only I could meet
Count Fenix I would persuade him to embody my dream, to bring the portrait
alive, and after that-even if it cost me my life..."
A look of horror appeared in the Countess's blue eyes when he said
this, she quickly dropped her head and again stared into the fire.
"The materialization of emotional ideas," said Cagliostro, yawning and
covering his mouth with a hand glittering with precious stones, "is one of
the most difficult and dangerous tasks of our science... During the
materialization, fatal defects of the idea that is being materialized are
very often disclosed, and sometimes its utter uselessness too... However, I
should like to ask our host to allow us to retire for an early night."
Alexei did not shut his eyes all night. At daybreak, he put on a robe,
went down to the river and jumped into the water, invisible through the
mist. On the surface it was lukewarm, but deep down it was icy. After the
bathe, he got dressed, had his hair waved, drank some hot milk with honey,
and went down into the garden-his thoughts were excited, and his head was
afire.
The morning was humid and still. Blackbirds, looking worried, were
running about the grass. A golden oriole was whistling as if it were blowing
into a warbler. In the bluish mist hovering over the pool with the fountains
playing at half strength, a dove was sobbing tenderly somewhere in the tall,
spreading trees.
The walks had been washed clean and were still damp, and on one of them
Alexei noticed the prints of a woman's feet. He followed them, and in a
glade where the outlines of a round folly and the huge black poplars beside
it stood out from the bluish mist, he saw the Countess. She was standing on
the steps with drooping arms and listening to the cuckoo calling in the
grove.
When he came closer his heart began to hammer, for tears were pouring
down the young woman's face, and her bare shoulders were jerking. Startled
by the sound of his footsteps, she turned round, gasped and ran, holding up
her full skirt with both hands. However, at the pond she stopped and faced
him. A blush suffused her cheeks, and tears stood in her frightened blue
eyes. She quickly wiped them with a tiny handkerchief and smiled contritely.
"I frightened you, forgive me," said Alexei.
"No, oh no," she replied, tucked the handkerchief into the low neck of
her dress, and curtsied. Alexei kissed her hand politely. "The morning was
so lovely, the cuckoo called so nicely, that I felt sad, and you gave me a
fright." She walked beside Alexei along the shore. "Don't you feel sad when
you see how lovely is God's world? You know, I was thinking about what you
told us last night. You are living in such plenty, unattached. And young...
But why, why is there no happiness?"
She stopped short and looked into his eyes. Alexei answered the first
thing that came into his head-something about the coarseness of life and the
impossibility of happiness. Saying this he gave her a wide smile and the
smile remained on his lips.
As they continued their stroll and talked, he saw before him only her
blue eyes-they seemed to be suffused with the morning's loveliness, he heard
only the sound of her voice and the distant incessant calls of the cuckoo.
The Countess told him that she had been born in a village near Prague,
she was an orphan, she was called Augusta, though her real name was Maria,
that for three years now she had been travelling about the world with her
husband, that what she had seen in that time was more than others saw in a
lifetime, and that just now, in this morning mist, all her past flashed by
before her mind's eye, and made her cry.
"I was married when I was a mere child, but during these three years my
heart matured," she said, and again glanced gently and straight into
Alexei's eyes. "I do not know you, but for some reason I trust you as if
I've known you for a long time. You won't think ill of me for chattering,
will you?"
He took her hand and, leaning low over it, kissed it several times, and
at his last kiss her hand turned palm upward, pressed his lips lightly, and
slipped away.
"Couldn't you have found a wife, could you not have fallen in love with
a woman instead of some incorporeal dream or something?" Maria asked in a
quivering voice. "You are inexperienced and naive... You don't know what a
horror your dream is..."
She went to a stone seat and sat down. Alexei sat down beside her.
"But why a horror?" he asked. "What is so sinful in my dreaming of
something that does not exist in life"?
"The more reason... On a morning like this you must not, you must not
dream of something that cannot be," she said, and tears rose to her eyes
again.
He moved closer to her and took her hand.
"I feel that you are unhappy..."
She nodded silently and quickly. She was touching like a little girl in
her agitation. Alexei felt that she wanted with her whole heart and soul to
draw his thoughts and emotions to her own self. His heart felt hot-a
tenderness towards this woman swept over it like a gust of wind that,
running through a field, causes the grass to lie low.
"Who makes you suffer?" he asked in a whisper.
And Maria replied hurriedly as if afraid to lose a minute of this
conversation:
"I fear... I hate my husband... He's a monster, the world has never
seen his like... He tortures me... Oh, if you only knew... I have no one in
the whole world... My love has been sought by many, but what is it to me...
Not one of them asked me with sympathy whether my life was happy or not...
You and I have barely met, and we have to part, but I shall forever remember
this minute when you asked me..." her lips began to quiver, she was
obviously mastering her shyness with a great effort, and suddenly she
blushed furiously and said: "The moment I saw you my heart told me: trust
him."
"Oh good God ... it's unbearable... I shall kill him!" cried Alexei,
clenching the handle of his sword.
And in the next instant someone sneezed loudly behind them. Maria gave
a feeble cry, like a bird. Alexei leapt to his feet and between the lime
trees saw Cagliostro. He had on the same green overcoat and large-brimmed
hat from which white ostrich feathers fell on his shoulders and back.
Holding his snuff-box in his hand, he was making terrible faces with the
next sneeze coming on. In the light of day his face seemed purple, for that
is how full-blooded and swarthy he was.
Keeping his hand on the handle of his sword, Alexei glared at this
extraordinary man. Cagliostro, changing his mind about sneezing, held out
his snuff-box and said:
"Have a pinch."
Instinctively Alexei raised his hand, but gripped his sword handle
again at once.
"Well, if you don't want to take a pinch, don't," said Cagliostro.
"Countess, I've been looking for you all over the garden, my bag has been
packed, but I have not touched your things." Turning to Alexei again, he
said: "Well then, if our carriage has been repaired, we shall be on our
way."
He offered an arm to Maria; meekly, without raising her head, she took
her husband's arm, and they started towards the house walking along a path
between tall grasses.
Alexei covered his face with his hands and sank down on the garden
seat.
He sat thus for a long time in a trance, hearing neither the whistling
of the birds nor the splashing of the fountains which the gardener had now
turned full on. He stared at the sand under his feet and the bugs crawling
about there. These were the flat red bugs each of which had a funny face
painted on its back. Some crawled clutched together-one funny face next to
another, while some crawled in and out of the crack in the hard-packed earth
of the walk without any apparent need.
Alexei was thinking that the enchantment of the morning had wrecked his
life. He could never go back now to the cosiness of his hopeless
day-dreaming about ideal love: Maria's blue eyes, these twin blue rays, had
reached into his heart and aroused it. Maria was going away and they would
never meet again. Both dream and reality had been shattered-what other
enchantments could he expect from life now?
Suddenly he remembered the crooked leer with which Cagliostro had
offered him his snuff-box, and his blood boiled with fury. He sprang to his
feet and, without knowing yet what he was going to do, but something
resolute anyway, he pulled his hat down over his eyes and strode to the
house.
In the door he was met by Fedosia Ivanovna.
"Alexis," she cried fretfully. "The blacksmith has just been and he
told me, the rogue, that he simply could not get the Count's carriage fixed
in less than two days from now."
The news that the guests were staying quite confused all Alexei's
thoughts, he began to shiver as in a fever and his hands trembled. He went
into the house with his aunt and sat down on a love-seat. Fedosia Ivanovna,
unable to read his thoughts, asked him if in that case they should not send
to the nearest village for more blacksmiths.
"Not on any account!" Alexei shouted. "Don't you dare send for any
blacksmiths!" Then he smiled suddenly. "No, Fedosia Ivanovna, let our guests
stay with us for another couple of days... Auntie, I don't suppose you
understood who our guest was, right?"
"Some Fenin or something."
"That's the whole point-not Fenin, but Count Fenix- Cagliostro
himself!"
Fedosia Ivanovna opened wide her eyes and fluttered her plump hands.
Fedosia Ivanovna, however, was a Russian woman, and so the news that they
had a famous sorcerer in the house impressed her on quite a different
account, and she spat angrily.
"A heathen, with no cross on him, for mercy's sake," she said with
disgust. "We'll have to wash all the crockery with holy water now, and have
a service sung in all the rooms... A worry we could very well do without...
And she, is she a sorceress too?"
"Yes, auntie, the Countess is a sorceress."
"Why then, I guess they need quite other food, those cursed
magicians... Oh, Alexis... Maybe they can't eat our food, and you never
guessed... Go and ask them what they want for breakfast..."
Alexei burst out laughing, and went to the library. There, lighting a
pipe, he started walking up and down the room and suddenly clenched his
teeth so hard on the tip of his pipe that the amber cracked.
"I shall challenge the Count to a duel, kill him, and flee abroad with
Maria," he thought, and flung his pipe on to the window-sill. "What cause
have I for the duel? Oh, never mind what..."
He drew his sword out of the sheath and examined the blade. "Can I
challenge a guest though?" The floorboard creaked at the back of the room
where a dark-red curtain draped a niche. He quickly raised his head, but
instantly forgot about the sound, for his thoughts were in a whirl. "No,
I'll have to wait until they leave, overtake them beyond the river and there
pick a quarrel with him." He stopped beside the window and, listening to the
hammering of his heart, mentally reviewed the whole of his stroll with
Maria, from the folly, along the shore of the pond, to the stone garden
seat. "Oh darling," he whispered.
Breakfast was announced. Alexei awaited his guests in the dining-room.
When he heard their footsteps he went dizzy for a moment. Maria walked in
with lowered eyes, curtsied before Fedosia Ivanovna, and took her seat. Her
face was pale and powdered, and the fire in her soul seemed to have been
quenched. Cagliostro unfolded his napkin, silently gave Alexei an oblique
glance, and throughout breakfast remained in a huff, chewing loudly and most
unpleasantly. Fedosia Ivanovna gave Fimka her orders in a whisper, and did
not eat a thing herself.
In vain Alexei tried with his hot glances to evoke a blush or even a
barely perceptible movement in Maria's face: she sat like a waxen figure,
and Alexei's hot glances invariably met her husband's keen, hard glances.
And true to character, Alexei fell suddenly into despair.
Breakfast was over. Maria, never raising her eyes, retired to her room.
Cagliostro expressed a desire to smoke a pipe with his host in the library,
and stepped aside at the door to let him go in first.
Sprawling in the same armchair as he had done the night before,
Cagliostro sucked wheezingly on his pipe for some time, glancing now and
then from under his bushy eyebrows at Alexei who was moping at the window,
and suddenly pronounced in a loud, imperative tone:
"I have thought it over and decided to carry out your wish tonight: I
shall perform a perfect and complete materialization of Madame Tulupova's
portrait."
Alexei gave him a startled look and ran his tongue over his parched
lips. Cagliostro left his armchair and, taking a magnifying glass framed in
silver from his pocket, peered at the portrait, clicking his tongue and
wheezing.
Within an hour preparations were begun. Margadon took down the portrait
from the wall, dusted it carefully, set it against the wall and spread a
carpet on the floor before it. All the things that would not be needed were
carried out of the room, and the curtains were drawn across the windows.
Alexei was ordered to undress and stay in bed until dusk without eating or
drinking anything.
Alexei did everything he was told. Lying in his darkened bedroom, he
felt only that his head was bound with hoops of lead. At five o'clock
Cagliostro brought him an infusion of rhubarb and holly, and though the
taste was awful he drank it up. At seven o'clock his bowels were evacuated.
At eight, wearing a loose and light robe, he went, together with Cagliostro,
into the library where wax candles were burning in candelabra before the
portrait, brightly illumining it.
"Do not breathe too deeply or too lightly. Your breathing must go
smoothly without any yawning, gurgling, coughing, panting or sneezing, for
magnetic substance cannot stand jolts."
Thus spoke Cagliostro as he seated Alexei in a low armchair before the
portrait. Drops of perspiration streamed from under his wig down his red
face with the twitching eyebrows. As he moved about he did not stop talking
for a minute, and gave Margadon his orders by signs.
The Ethiopian took several bunches of dried herbs from a box, put them
in a copper bowl, set it down on a low table in front of Alexei, then took a
sort of mandolin with a long finger-board out of its case, carried it into
the back of the room, then went and brought a large, thin and obviously very
strong net, stretched it out on his hands, and squatted on the floor near
the door.
While he did all this, Cagliostro chalked a large circle on the floor
near the armchair in which sat Alexei.
"I repeat," he said. "You must strain all your imagination and picture
this person," he indicated the portrait with the chalk, "unveiled, that is
naked... All the details of her body will depend on the power of your
imagination... I recall in 1519 in Paris the due de Guise asked me to
materialize Madame de Sevignac who died from a gastric disease... I was not
quick enough to warn the due, he was too impatient, and Madame de Sevignac
turned out to be something like a bag stuffed with straw under her dress...
I lost eight thousand livres, and it took me a great deal of trouble to
drive that enraged scarecrow back into the portrait. And so, when you have
very meticulously pictured the body of your heart's desire, you must picture
it fully dressed, and here you must proceed without haste for, as it
happened in 1251 when at the request of the widow I called out the spirit of
the deceased French king Louis the Bald, he appeared with only the front of
his body clothed, while he was naked behind, which caused much amazement..."
Straightening up and licking the chalk from his fingers, he said: "Margadon,
go and call the Countess."
He stepped back a little, measured the circle with his eyes, then bent
down again and, going round the circle, chalked on it the twelve signs of
the zodiac, the twenty two signs of the cabbala, the keys and the gates, the
four elements, the three beginnings, and the seven spheres. This done, he
entered the circle.
"You shall have a perfect example of my art," he said importantly. "Her
ability to speak, her digestion, all the bodily functions and sensitivity
will be just like those in a person born by a woman."
He leaned over Alexei who lay like a corpse in his armchair, took his
pulse, ordered him to close his eyes, and placed his hot, fat hand on his
forehead. In this moment Alexei heard light steps and the rustle of silk. He
knew that it was Maria who had come in, and moaned, making a desperate
effort to break free of the terrible will of this man whose fingers were
pressing down painfully on his eyeballs.
"Do not move, concentrate, follow my instructions... I begin,"
Cagliostro said imperatively, took a long stiletto from the little table,
entered the circle and traced the great sign of Makropozopus. Standing
inside the circle, he threw up his arms, and his deeply lined face with the
drooping nose turned to stone.
Behind his back Alexei heard the sweet sounds of the mandolin. "I am
locked in. I am securely protected by all the signs,
I am strong. I order," spoke Cagliostro in a sing-song voice, which
mounted and mounted in volume. "O spirits of the air, Sylphs, I call you in
the name of the Inexpressible which is pronounced as the word Esha... Do
what you must..."
Alexei stared at the candle-lit haughty face of Praskovia Pavlovna,
proudly set on the tall neck. In that minute he remembered all the anguish
of his dreamings, all the longing of his sleepless nights, and now her face,
so beloved only yesterday, appeared frightening, hurtful, feverishly sallow
like an illness. However, feeling that he should obey just the same, he
looked down from the face to Praskovia Pavlovna's bared shoulders, and
forced himself to picture her as told. The blood rushed to his face. He felt
a stab of shame and a sharp pain in his chest.
When Cagliostro uttered the word Esha, the candle-flames began to
waver, and a whiff of rancid air ran through the room. Alexei dug his
fingers into the arms of his chair. Cagliostro continued in an ever stronger
voice:
"Spirits of the earth, Gnomussi, I call you in the name of the
Inexpressible which is pronounced as the syllable El. Do what you must."
He raised the stiletto and lowered it, and suddenly the whole house
shook as from an earthquake, the crystal chandelier tinkled, doors banged
everywhere in the house, the door of the book-case flew open and a book fell
out. Cagliostro continued:
"Spirits of the waters, Nymphs, I call you in the name of the
Inexpressible which is pronounced as the sound Ra... Come and do what you
must..."
At these words Alexei heard the distant sound of the surf and never
taking his eyes off Praskovia Pavlovna noticed to his horror that her
features were becoming hazy and elusive...
"Spirits of the fire," Cagliostro now spoke in a thunderous voice. "The
mighty and the wilful, I call you in the name of the Inexpressible which is
pronounced as the letter Y. Spirits of the fire, Salamanders, I call you and
adjure you with the sign of Solomon to obey and do what you must..." He
raised both arms and strained upward on tiptoe in extreme tension. "Do what
you must according to the laws of nature, without digressing from the form,
without mocking and without breach of your obedience to me..."
Whereupon, a soundless, dancing flame ran round the carved frame, it
was so bright that the candle-flames blushed, and all of a sudden blinding
rays of light started from Praskovia Pavlovna's image. The herbs in the
copper bowl caught fire. Maria's voice, quavering and feeble, sang something
not Russian behind Alexei.
But before she had finished singing, Alexei cried out wildly: Praskovia
Pavlovna, freeing herself, released her head from the canvas and unsealed
her lips.
"Give me your hand," she said in a thin, cold and spiteful voice.
In the ensuing silence, Alexei heard the mandolin fall on the floor
with a thump, Maria's quick sigh, and Cagliostro's wheezing breath.
"Give me your hand, I said, and I shall be free," said Praskovia
Pavlovna.
"Your hand, give her your hand!" cried Cagliostro.
As in a trance Alexei went to the portrait. Praskovia Pavlovna quickly
thrust out her small hand and gripped Alexei's with cold, dry fingers. He
sprang back and she, pulled along by him, stepped out of the portrait and
jumped down on to the carpet.
This was a thin, very beautiful and posturing woman of the medium
height. Her movements were somewhat erratic like the flight of a bat. She
ran up to the pier-glass and, looking at herself this way and that, spoke as
she patted her hair in place:
"Surprising... Was I asleep or what? What a sallow colour! And my gown
all crumpled... The cut is funny too, too tight in the chest... Oh dear, I
can't remember rightly... I've forgotten... (And she rubbed her eyes.) I've
forgotten everything..."
Holding up her full skirt with the tips of her fingers, she walked up
and down the room, and then brought her dark, lustreless eyes to rest on
Alexei. Slowly she smiled, revealing her small, sharp teeth and pale gums,
and took his arm.
"You look at me so strangely, you frighten me," she said with a coy
little laugh, and drew him to the balcony door. "We must have a talk."
When they left the room, Cagliostro hugged himself under his fur-lined
overcoat and laughed.
"That was an excellent cadaver," he said, his whole body shaking with
laughter. Then, he turned on his heels and, no longer laughing, fixed his
stare on Maria. "Crying, are you?" She quickly brushed away her tears and,
rising from her chair, stood before her husband with lowered head. "Even
this has not convinced you of my enormous power over dead and living nature,
isn't it so?" Without lifting her head Maria glanced at her husband with
obstinate hatred. The fright she had gone through and the aversion she felt
distorted her sweet face. "And your Prince Charming chose to find
consolation with that nauseating cadaver and not you."
"You will answer for practising black magic on Judgement Day," Maria
said in a low yet firm voice.
At this Cagliostro turned quite purple, pulled his hands out from under
his overcoat, and glowered at her ferociously from under his bushy eyebrows.
Maria, however, stood perfectly still before him, and he said with utmost
unctuousness:
"For three years, madam, I have been patiently waiting for your love
without resorting to any art at all, while you have nothing but escape on
your ungrateful little mind. You should not let my patience run thin."
"You have no power over my love anyway," Maria retorted. "You can't
make me love you..."
"Yes, I can." Maria smirked at this, and instantly the blood rushed to
his eyes. "I shall seal you into a little phial, madam, and carry you about
in my pocket."
"Just the same you have no power over my love," Maria repeated. "If I
survive I'll give my love to another man, never to you."
"This time you've said too much," muttered Cagliostro and snatched up
the stiletto from the table, but in the nick of time Margadon, who until
then had been standing motionless behind his back, sprang forward and caught
hold of his hand with amazing agility. Cagliostro growled, hit Margadon on
the face with his left hand, flung away the stiletto, noisily exhaled a
chestful of air and strode out of the room.
Alexei with the thing that had a likeness to a woman and was addressed
as Praskovia Pavlovna by him, walked along the path across the lawn to the
ponds. The air was damp. The moon had risen over the garden, and its greyish
light illumined the whole of the wide lawn. Spider webs, already stretched
by their busy weavers, glinted here and there in the dark-blue grass. The
flowers made whitish blots, a copious dew had fallen and the drops sparkled
prettily. In the distance beyond the ponds the vapour rose in a silvery
halo.
Alexei walked without speaking, clenching his teeth and staring under
his feet. Praskovia Pavlovna talked without a pause as she looked at the
silver ball of the moon hanging over the lush greenery.
"Ah, the moon, the moon! Alexis, how insensitive you are to this
magic!"
The words her cold thin voice dropped were like bits of glass, the
swish of her silk skirt scraped at Alexei's nerves unbearably with its
whistling sound, making him clench his teeth. His heart felt like a heavy
lump of ice. It did not surprise him that walking arm in arm with him was
something which an hour ago had lived only in his imagination. This
jabbering, posturing creature in the full-skirted gown with a narrow bodice,
pale-faced from the moonlight with deep shadows in the eye hollows, seemed
as incorporeal to him as his dream. And in vain he told himself again and
again: "Gratify your desire, come on, she's yours to enjoy..."-he simply
could not overcome his aversion.
When they came to the pond and the stone seat on which that morning he
had talked with Maria, he asked Praskovia Pavlovna if she would not care to
sit down. She sat down at once, flaring her skirt about her.
"Alexis," she whispered, smiling widely at the moon. "Alexis, you are
sitting with a lady so unfeelingly. After all, you should know how pleasant
boldness is for a woman."
He replied through set teeth:
"If you knew how I dreamed of you you would not rebuke me."
"Rebuke you?" She laughed, and it sounded like bits of glass scattered
on the ground. "Rebuke you indeed, when all you do is press my hands, and
that very weakly too. You might at least take me in your arms."
Alexei raised his head, peered at her and his heart quavered. He put
his right arm round her shoulders, and in his left hand he took both her
hands. In the low-cut gown he could see her chest with the slightly
protruding collar-bones breathing calmly and evenly. He brought his face
close to hers, trying to recapture the enchantment it had had for him.
"My dream," he said with anguish. She drew away from him slightly,
smiling and shaking her head, and then looked straight into his eyes with
her transparent eyes that glittered like dots of moonlight. "You feel
elusive as a dream..."
"Hold me tighter then," she said.
He crushed her with all his might and kissed her on her cool lips, and
she responded with such unexpected and urgent eagerness that he instantly
sprang back: repugnance, loathing and horror made his gore rise.
Stretching languidly and all but purring, she said after a while:
"It's damp here, and I want to eat."
Alexei got up quickly and started for the house. When he heard the
swish of her silk skirts behind him, he walked faster and even changed to a
run, but Praskovia Pavlovna caught up with him at once, and hung on his arm.
"Alexis, you're such a very difficult person!"
"Look here," he shouted, stopping. "We'd better part, don't you think?"
"No, I don't think so at all," she replied, looking up into his face.
"I like being with you."
"But I think you loathsome, can't you understand?" He gave his arm a
jerk to break free of her hold and ran, but she clung fast to his hand and
flew after him down the path.
"I don't believe you, I don't believe you, you did say yourself that I
was your dream..."
"Will you let me be or not?"
"Never, mon cher, not until I die!"
Thus, holding hands, they flew into the house. Alexei collapsed into an
easy chair, while she stood before him, fanning herself and looking buoyant.
"I shall have to work very, very hard, my dear, to curb your temper...
You are selfish, you know." She folded her fan, perched on the arm of his
chair, and said: "Darling, I terribly want something all the time, I don't
know if I'm hungry or thirsty... At moments I feel as if cold water was
trickling down my body..."
Alexei leapt out of the chair, and gave the beaded tassel of the
bell-rope a vigorous tug.
"You'll be brought food, water, anything you want, so don't worry."
Fedosia Ivanovna's soft steps were heard in response to the bell
ringing somewhere in the back rooms.
Blocking the half-open door with his body, Alexei asked his aunt to
order some food to be brought to the library. Fedosia Ivanovna gave her
nephew a strangely searching look, silently pushed him out of her way,
walked into the room and saw a skinny-as she afterwards told it-dark-haired
woman, not really a woman but a dead moth more like-standing there, twirling
her fan, and looking at her piercingly.
Fedosia Ivanovna's mouth fell open and her knees all but gave way.
"Theodosie, don't you know me, ma chere!" asked the dark-haired one in
a squeaky voice.
Fedosia Ivanovna felt her legs folding up as she stared at the empty
portrait frame on the wall. When Praskovia Pavlovna came a step closer to
her, she quickly raised her arm and made the sign of the cross.
"Come, auntie, what's there to be afraid of," said Alexei with
something like exasperation. "It's all very simple: this lady is the product
of Count Fenix's sorcery, do go and see about the food..."
Wincing as from heartburn, he went to the door opening into the garden
and, leaning against the doorframe, gazed at the moonlit lawn. He heard his
aunt mumbling a prayer, then dashing off in her Mother Goose waddle,
Praskovia Pavlovna snickering spitefully in her wake, and a panicky
running-about and whispering starting in the house. He did not look round,
though, and gazed miserably at the lighted windows of the guest wing.
The tinkle of glasses and crockery sounded in the room- that was Fimka
laying the small table, setting down the plates and dishes and probably
casting horrified looks over her shoulder all the time.
Praskovia Pavlovna sat down at the table and asked Fimka:
"Slavewoman, what's in that dish?"
"Mushrooms, mistress."
"I'll have some."
Fimka served the mushrooms and then stood behind her chair, and covered
her mouth with her apron. Praskovia Pavlovna ate the mushrooms and ordered
Fimka to give her some chicken noodle soup.
"Your serving manners are atrocious," said Praskovia Pavlovna, as,
Fimka set down the plate before her. "You may be a village wench, but your
serving manners should be genteel."
"I'll try to please, mistress."
"Curtsy when you are speaking to your mistress!" said Praskovia
Pavlovna, glaring at the poor girl with her dark eyes. Suddenly she banged
her soup spoon on the table. "Curtsy, slavewoman! Bend your right leg...
Don't wobble to left or right, keep a straight back... Pick up your skirt...
Smile... Sweetly, more sweetly!"
Alexei watched this scene with loathing.
"Leave the girl alone," he said at last. "Fimka, go."
Still holding the soup spoon in her hand, Praskovia Pavlovna looked
round at him in amazement, and shrugged a shoulder.
"Alexis, mon cher, I am the mistress here, it's not you who gives the
orders. I shall have that wench flogged so she'll be quicker to learn..."
The blood rushed to his head, but he controlled his fury and went out
into the garden.
His hands stuffed into the pockets of his coat, Alexei walked across
the lawn, his hose getting soaked up to the knees in the dew. Schemes, one
madder than the other, were born in his head. Escape? Jump into the pond?
Kill her? Kill the Count? Kill himself? But these schemes were like sparks
that went out at once-he felt that he was doomed, that the cursed creature
had him in its web like a spider, and who could tell what other frightening
powers it possessed?
"It was all my own, my own doing," he muttered. "I myself wanted my
dream, I wanted the fantasy of my sleepless nights to come alive... We built
up her body with horrible black magic... The most febrile of imaginations
could never have thought up such nastiness..."
He stopped and mopped the cold sweat on his brow. "But what if it's
only a bad dream? I'll pinch myself and wake up in my clean bed in the
morning... I'll see that pretty little meadow, the white geese, a peasant
girl with a rake..."
In utter misery he shook his head and raised his eyes. The moon was
high above the garden, its light muted by hazy little clouds. The dismal
croaking of the frogs reached him from the river...
Suddenly, the silence of the garden was shattered by Praskovia
Pavlovna's thin, shrill voice calling "Alexis! Alexis!" He stamped his foot
in annoyance. Going to her in response to her call was out of the question,
and running away was shameful. And now he saw three figures coming towards
him: Margadon, Cagliostro and Praskovia Pavlovna. She reached him first and
cried spitefully:
"I know everything, my good sir! I thought your preoccupied look and
your impudent talk was all part of a love game, but now I see that you have
another woman on your mind! I won't have another woman anywhere near me, you
hear?"
"Oh for shame, for shame!" said Cagliostro as he approached Alexei. "I
toiled in the sweat of my brow for you, and you turn your nose away from
her!"
"You fickle lover," shrieked Praskovia Pavlovna. "I'll have you chained
to the wall in the basement!"
"No, madam, chaining him to the wall won't do," objected Cagliostro.
"As for you, sir, don't be so mulish, it's time to go home-the lady wants to
sleep, and going to bed all by herself will distress her."
The inertia he felt before took hold of him again, he sighed and
shuffled homewards, pulled along by Praskovia Pavlovna, hanging on his arm.
They were almost at the door into the library when he turned round and saw a
woman's shadow on the curtain of the guest wing. He tried to break free of
Praskovia's clutch and shouted "Maria!" but he was gripped from behind by
Margadon who pushed him into the room and locked the door behind him.
Alexei had given that shout because the scales seemed to fall from his
eyes and he understood in what lay his salvation. Left tete-a-tete with
Praskovia Pavlovna, he lit his pipe, sat down on a rung of the step-ladder
and pretended to be listening. She threatened to keep him chained to the
wall till he rotted, she screamed that the whole household was against her,
that in the morning she would throw out Fedosia Ivanovna's junk, tear out
Fimka's hair with her own hands, have all the servants flogged, and
establish her own rule in the house...
Alexei waited for the screaming to tire her, but her anger showed no
signs of abating. He listened but did not hear her-his heart was hammering
so. He decided to take action. He knocked out his pipe, stood up and took a
stretch.
"Those are all small things," he said, yawning. "Let's go to bed."
Praskovia Pavlovna immediately broke off her stream of words and her
parched lips parted in a smile of happy surprise. Alexei took the
candelabrum with lighted candles from the table and drew back the curtain
screening the alcove, inviting Praskovia Pavlovna to go in first. The moment
she had gone in, he held the candelabrum close to the curtain and the
crimson velvet caught fire at once.
"Fire!" Alexei shouted in a voice that did not sound like his own,
threw down the candelabrum and started running along the gallery leading to
the guest wing.
Only once he paused and, turning round, saw Praskovia Pavlovna pulling
down the blazing curtain with her skinny hands, emitting frightened cries as
she did so. When he heard voices and the thudding of feet at the far end of
the gallery, he darted to the nearest window and flattened himself against
the wall of the deep niche. Margadon, his robe streaming behind him, and
Cagliostro wearing a night cap, a long patterned nightgown and no trousers,
ran past him with frightened cries. They disappeared
behind the turning in the gallery whence thick smoke came pouring out.
And then Alexei dashed to the guest wing, and saw Maria standing in the door
opening into the garden. She was fully dressed and had a white shawl draped
on her shoulders. Alexei jumped out into the garden from the window in the
gallery and ran to her.
"Maria, just say the word," he said, folding his hands on his chest.
"Wait... If it's no, then it's all up with me... If it's yes, I live, I
shall live forever... Tell me-do you love me?"
With a small cry, she raised her arms, put them round Alexei's neck,
and throwing back her head, looking into his eyes through her tears, said:
"I love you."
And when she had spoken these words, he came out of the spell, his
heart thawed out, the blood ran hotly and noisily in his veins, joyfully he
drew in a breath of the scented night's air and of Maria's fragrant young
body, cupped her weeping face in his hands and kissed her on the eyes.
"Maria, run down this walk to the pond and wait for me in the folly.
When you have crossed the little bridge don't forget to give the chain a
tug, and it will be raised... You will be perfectly safe there."
She nodded to say that she understood, picked up her skirts and started
briskly down the path, turning round once to smile at him happily before she
vanished in the thick darkness of the trees.
Alexei drew his sword then and rushed back into the house.
He knocked Fimka off her feet, resolutely pushed away Fedosia Ivanovna
who tried to hold on to his arm, elbowed his way through the crowd of
frightened servants, and flew into the library. The room was full of smoke.
The five candles in the twin candelabrum with their smoking little tongues
of flame barely illumined the books scattered all over the floor from the
bookcase which had toppled over, Margadon who was stamping the smouldering
carpet, and Cagliostro crouching beside an armchair in which sat a cringing
creature whose body with protruding dark ribs was barely covered with the
tatters of her burnt gown. On seeing Alexei, the creature hissed, leapt to
its feet and rushed towards him. He uttered a shout, thrust his sword
forward and the creature, with a wail of despair and fury, sprang back from
the menacing blade, ran to the back of the room and disappeared behind the
book-cases.
Cagliostro, now barricaded by the armchair, was making some signs to
Margadon, who stopped stamping the carpet and began to steal up to Alexei
pulling his dagger out from behind his belt. Alexei, however, forestalling
the man's leap, himself made a lunge with the sword in his outstretched arm,
and it pierced Margadon's shoulder, buried in his flesh to half its length.
Margadon gave a grunt, gasped for air with his open mouth, and' fell on his
back. And then Cagliostro threw the armchair at Alexei, and whirled about
the room with a nimbleness amazing for his age and his girth, ducking behind
various objects and throwing them. Alexei ran about the room after him,
trying to hit him with his sword, but Cagliostro managed to slip out into
the gallery, from there he jumped out into the garden from the very first
open window he came to, and kicking up his bare legs in large leaps made for
the ponds.
Alexei only caught up with him at the little bridge leading to the
folly where Maria's white gown made a pale blur between the columns. With a
growl Cagliostro started up the bridge, but coming to the edge, with the
other half raised, he flung up his arms and with a heavy splash fell into
the water. Maria's faint cry was heard. Moonlit ripples appeared on the
water, and a frightened bird flew low over the grass with a lingering
whistling call. All was still once more: not a sound was heard either on the
pond or in the dark thickets.
Alexei stepped on to the bridge and peered down. Suddenly he saw a pair
of eyes at the very pile supporting the structure, and these eyes slowly
winked. Now he made out Cagliostro's upraised face, bristly skull and ugly
ears.
"That pile is slippery and you won't be able to climb out anyway," he
said to Cagliostro. "And I'm warning you, if you start anything again I'll
stab you with my sword. You're a scoundrel. So better sit there quietly,
you'll be pulled out just now." Cupping his hands round his mouth he
shouted: "Hey, come here someone, here!" Very soon voices were heard in the
distance, and people came running-youngsters, servant men and wenches, some
armed with pitchforks, some with scythes, and some simply with clubs. All of
them had been roused from their beds and were tousled from sleep.
Alexei ordered the men to fetch ropes, tie up Cagliostro and pull him
out of the water. Three hefty men went down into the water, first taking off
their pants and crossing themselves. A tussle started under the bridge
between the piles.
"Master, he's scratching, damn him," one of he rescuers called out.
"Grab him by the jowls and pull him out," men shouted from the bridge.
Finally, Cagliostro was tied up with ropes and hauled out. The fight
had gone out of him and, with drooping head, teeth chattering from the cold,
and wet shirt sticking to his body, he tramped towards the house in the
crowd of servants.
When everyone had gone, Alexei started calling Maria, first softly, and
then in an ever louder voice, more and more tinged with fear. She did not
respond. He then ran round the pond, jumped into an old boat he found there
and poled himself across to the island. Maria was lying on the wooden floor
of the folly. Alexei put his arms round her, raised her up, held close her
helplessly drooping head, and kissed her face, all but weeping from love and
pity for her. At last he felt her body growing lighter, she raised her head
and cushioned it snugly on his chest. And without opening her eyes she
whispered:
"Do not desert me."
The fire was put out. Only the library had suffered: fire and water had
ruined a great number of books and things in it, and nothing remained of the
canvas on which Praskovia Pavlovna's portrait had been painted.
At daybreak, a cart was brought to the front porch, and on the fresh
hay it was carpeted with the servants placed the luggage of the guests and
then seated Margadon who was in a very bad way: his face was quite ashen,
his mouth hung open, and he had two shawls wound round his head. The people
crowding round the cart and standing at the porch felt sorry for the poor
old chap-he was another servant, after all, he had come to grief through no
fault of his own. The dairy woman gave him a baked egg to eat on the way.
But then when Cagliostro was brought out of the house, still bound with
ropes, wearing his wig, stuck lopsidedly on his head, his hat with the now
tousled feathers, and his fur-lined greatcoat flung over his nightgown, the
youngsters began to whistle, the women to spit, and Spiridon, a purblind
peasant-hatless, barefoot, his coat unbelted-who had bustled more than
anyone else all night for the master to notice, sprang at Cagliostro, swung
out an arm to give him a good cuff, but was pulled back in time. Cagliostro
got into the cart unaided, his bushy eyebrows hooding his eyes. A fat-faced
young chap, famed in the village for his strength and his recklessness,
jumped cheerfully on to the driver's seat, wound the rope reins round his
wrist, the old grey mare pushed her head into the horse-collar, and the cart
moved off to the accompaniment of the servants' whistling and whooping.
"Fedka," Alexei shouted to the driver from the front porch, "take them
straight to Smolensk, and there hand them over to the police."
"I sure will!" Fedka shouted back. "I'll hand them over all in one
piece, it's not the first time."
After her fainting fit in the folly, Maria was barely able to walk back
to the house. She was put to bed in the bedroom kept for especially honoured
guests. The drapes were drawn across the windows, the bed-curtain was folded
back, and she fell asleep. She slept till noon. Fedosia Ivanovna, who came
up to the door every now and again, heard her muttering, so she went in and
found Maria lying in bed with her eyes closed, bright-red spots on her
cheeks, and muttering something without a pause in a low voice. The illness
kept her hovering between life and death for a whole month.
Alexei almost went out of his mind with fright, and that same day he
galloped off to Smolensk to fetch a doctor. On the way back he learnt from
this doctor that two foreigners had been brought to the police in a cart;
first thing they were arrested, and then despatched on the way to Warsaw
with great pomp and ceremony.
After examining Maria, the doctor said that it would be one of two
things: either the fever would defeat the patient, or the patient would get
the better of the fever.
Alexei stayed at Maria's bedside all the time now; at night he dozed in
an easy chair beside the window; he hardly ate at all, he grew terribly
thin-his face became manlier, his eyes limpid, and a white strand appeared
in his chestnut hair.
Once, towards evening, he was dozing in his easy chair. Through the
peach-coloured curtains the sun had stretched its long rays into the room
with motes of dust dancing in them, and a sleepy fly was beating against the
window-pane. Ungluing his eyelids with an effort, he glanced now at the
motes, now at the fly. The clock on the mantelpiece calmly ticked off the
minutes of life. And suddenly, through his drowsiness, Alexei became aware
of some change in everything, he shifted round in his chair, looked at the
bed and saw that Maria's blue eyes were wide open. She was looking at him
and wrinkling up her face very comically from amazement and the effort to
remember. He fell on his knees beside the bed.
"Please tell me where am I and who are you?" she asked. Too overcome to
utter a word, Alexei gently took her hand and pressed his lips to it. "I've
been watching you dozing for a long time," Maria continued. "You had such a
sad face, like someone near and dear to me," she wrinkled up her face again,
and gave up trying to remember. "Now, if you opened the window it would be
very nice."
Alexei pulled apart the curtains, opened the window, and the merry
whistling and singing of birds poured into the bedroom together with the
warm and scented air. Colour appeared in Maria's cheeks. She listened to the
jolly sounds with a smile, and then she heard a late cuckoo calling three
times. Tears rose to her eyes. Alexei bent over her and she whispered:
"Thank you for everything..."
Soon she fell fast asleep and slept for a long time. Her convalescence
began, and Alexei could no longer spend the nights in her bedroom.
Fedosia Ivanovna alone clearly understood the situation which Maria's
recovery had brought about. She and Alexei could not stay apart for a
minute, but when they were together neither said a word: Maria brooded, and
Alexei frowned, bit his lips, and stood or sat in the most uncomfortable
attitudes imaginable.
Once his aunt broached the subject with him.
"Forgive me for being indiscreet, Alexis, but just what are your plans
for Maria? Are you going to send her back to her husband, or what?"
Alexei cried furiously:
"Maria is no wife to her husband. Her home is here. And if she doesn't
want to see me, I can go away, I can join the army and let the bullets find
their mark!"
His nights were wretched: he had terrible nightmares, they strangled
him, they choked the breath out of his body. He got up in the morning
feeling all done in and until Maria awakened he wandered sullenly about the
house, but the moment he heard her voice his bad mood evaporated, he hurried
to her and gazed at her with tortured, sunken eyes.
It was August now. Myriads of stars came out and glimmered in the
ponds, while the Milky Way appeared as a pale, hazy cloud. The smell of damp
leaves came from the garden. Gone were the birds.
On one such night, Alexei and Maria were sitting in her bedroom in
front of the fireplace, gazing at the little lights that ran up and down the
smouldering log. And suddenly, in the semi-darkness, a shadow appeared from
the draped alcove at the far end of the room. Startled, Alexei peered hard
at the shadow. Maria also raised her head. Slowly, the shadow vanished. A
minute of dead silence passed. Maria threw her arms round Alexei, pressed
close to him and repeated in a desperate voice:
"You're mine... You're mine..."
In that minute, all the obstacles to their love-imaginary, complex, and
insurmountable-dissipated like smoke, blown away by the wind. There were
only lips, pressed to lips, eyes gazing into eyes, the happiness of love,
perhaps short-lived, perhaps sad-who could measure it?
Last-modified: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 11:28:00 GMT