Marie Tarnowska

The last station of our calvary was at Yalta, in the Crimea. We had gone there with a last up-flaming of hope. There were doctors there whom we had not yet consulted. There was Ivanoff and the world-famed Bobros.

“Continue the same treatment,” said the one.

“You must try never to move your head,” said the other.

That was all.

And to our other tortures was added the martyrdom of complete immobility.

“I want to turn my head,” Bozevsky would say in the night.

“No, dearest, no. I implore you—”

“I must. I must turn it from one side to the other. If I stay like this any longer I shall go mad!”

Then, with infinite precautions, with eyes staring and terror-filled, like one who yields to an overwhelming temptation or performs some deed of insane daring, Bozevsky would turn his sad face slowly round, and let his cheek sink into the pillow.

His fair curls encircled with flaxen gaiety his spent and desolate face.

XVIII

Alone with him during those long terrible hours, my anguish and my terror constantly increased. At last I could endure it no longer and I telegraphed to Stahl:

“Come immediately.”

At dusk the following day Stahl arrived.

I had hoped to derive courage and consolation from his presence. But as soon as he stepped upon the threshold my heart turned faint within me. Thinner and more spectral than ever, with hair dishevelled and eyes sunken and dull, he looked dreamily at me, while a continual tremor shook his hands.

I greeted him timorously, and the touch of his chill, flaccid fingers made me shudder.

Bozevsky seemed glad to see him. Stretching out his wasted hand to him he said at once:

“Stahl, I want to move my head.”

Stahl seemed not to understand, and Bozevsky repeated: “I want to turn my head from one side to another.”

“Why not?” said Stahl, sitting down beside the bed and lighting a cigarette. “Turn it by all means.”

It was growing late; outside it was already dark. I drew the curtains and turned on the lights. Bozevsky began very slowly to turn his head from side to side; at first very timorously with frightened eyes, then by degrees more daringly, from right to left and from left to right.

“Keep still, keep still, dearest,” I entreated, bending over him.

“Stahl said it would not hurt,” panted Bozevsky. “Did you not, Stahl?” Stahl made no reply. He was smoking, with his heavy eyes half closed. At the sight of him I was filled with loathing and fear.

“Have you dined?” I inquired of him after a long silence. He nodded and went on smoking.

I tried to coax Bozevsky to take an egg beaten up in milk, but he continued to turn his head from side to side and would touch nothing. Little by little the sounds in the hotel died away. The gipsy music which had been audible, faintly in the distance, ceased. Night crept upon us sinister and silent.

Presently Stahl roused himself and opened his eyes. He looked at me and then at Bozevsky, who lay in the circular shadow cast by the lamp shade, dozing with his mouth slightly open; he looked pitiful and grotesque in his collar of yellow gauze.

Stahl made a grimace; then his breath became short and hurried as on that night of the ball when he sat beside me in the sleigh. He was panting with a slight sibilant sound and with a quick nervous movement of his head.

“Stahl,” I whispered, leaning towards him and indicating Bozevsky, “tell me—how do you think he is?”

Stahl did not answer. He seemed not to have heard me, but to be absorbed in some mysterious physical suffering of his own.

“What is the matter, Stahl? What is the matter? You are frightening me.”

With a nervous twist of his lips intended for a smile Stahl got up and began to walk up and down the room. His breath was still short and hurried. He drew the air through his teeth like one who is enduring spasms of pain.

Then he began to talk to himself in a low voice. “I can wait,” he said under his breath. “I can wait a little longer. Yes—yes—yes, I can wait a little longer.”

Bozevsky had opened his eyes and was watching him.

Horror held me motionless and shivers ran like icy water down my spine.

“Stahl, Stahl, what is the matter?” I said, and began to cry.

Stahl seemed not to hear me. He continued to walk up and down muttering to himself: “I can wait, I can wait. Just a little longer—a little longer—”

Bozevsky groaned. “Tell him to keep still,” he said, his gaze indicating Stahl.

I seized Stahl by the arm. “You must keep quiet,” I said. “Keep quiet at once.”

He turned to me a vacuous, bewildered face. I grasped his arm convulsively, clutching it with all my strength: “Keep still!”

Stahl sat down. “Right,” he said. “All right.”

He searched his pocket and drew out a small leather case.

Bozevsky moved and moaned. “I am thirsty,” he said. “Give me something to drink.”

I hurried to the bedside, and taking up a glass of sweetened water, I raised him on his pillow and held the glass to his lips. He drank eagerly. Then—horror!… horror! Even as he drank I perceived a spot of pale red color, wetting the gauze round his neck, oozing through it and spreading in an ever-widening stain. What—what could it be? It was the water he was drinking; he was not swallowing it … it was trickling out through the wound in his neck. All the gauze was already wet—now the pillow as well.

“Stahl, Stahl!” I shrieked. “Look, look at this!”

Stahl, who seemed to have suddenly regained his senses, came quickly to the bedside. I had laid Bozevsky back on the pillow and he was looking at us with wide-open eyes.

“Yes,” said Stahl, contemplating him thoughtfully. “Yes.” Suddenly he turned to me. “Come here, come here. Why should I let you suffer?”

Then I saw that he had in his hand a small glass instrument—a morphia syringe. He seized my wrist as in a vice and with the other hand pushed back the loose sleeve of my gown.

“What are you going to do?” I gasped.

“Why, why should you suffer?” cried Stahl, holding me tightly by the arm.

“Are you killing me?” I cried.

“No, no. I shall not kill you. You will see.”

I let him take my arm and he pricked it with the needle of the syringe, afterwards pressing and rubbing the punctured spot with his finger.

“Now you will see, now you will see,” he repeated over and over again with a vague stupefied smile. “Sit down there,” and he impelled me towards an armchair.

Bozevsky in his wet bandages on his wet pillow was watching us. I wanted to go to his assistance, to speak to him—but already a vague torpor was stealing over me, a feeling of gentle langour weighed upon my limbs. My tense and quivering nerves gradually relaxed. I felt as if I were submerged in a vague fluid serenity. Every anxious thought dissolved in a bland and blissful somnolence.... I could see Bozevsky move restlessly and again begin to turn his head from side to side. Sunk in the divine lassitude that held me, I watched his movements, glad that the sight of them gave me no pain.

I saw that Stahl had stretched himself on the couch and lay there with a vacant ecstatic smile on his lips.

All at once Bozevsky uttered a cry. I heard him, but I felt no inclination to answer. He struggled into a sitting position and looked at us both with wide, horrified eyes. He called us again and again. Then he began to weep. I could hear his weeping, but the beatific lethargy which engulfed me held me motionless. Perhaps I was even smiling, so free and so remote did I feel from all distress and suffering.

And now I saw Bozevsky with teeth clenched and hands curved like talons, madly clutching and tearing away the bandages from his neck.

He dragged and tore the gauze with quick frenzied movements, while from his lips came a succession of whimpering cries as of a dog imprisoned behind a door.

I smiled, I know I smiled, as I gazed at him from my armchair.

Stahl's eyes were shut; he was fast asleep.

Even when the wasted neck was stripped bare, those quick, frenzied movements still continued. What my eyes then saw I can never tell....

Thus died Alexis Bozevsky, the handsomest officer in the Imperial Guard.

XIX

After that all is dark. A blood-red abyss seems to open in my memory wherein everything is submerged—even my reason.

My reason! I have felt it totter and fall, like something detached and apart from myself; and I know that it has sunk into the grave that covers Alexis Bozevsky.

Vaguely, from my distant childhood, a memory rises up and confronts me.

I am in a school. I know not where. It is sunset, and I am at play, happy and alone, in the midst of a lawn; the daisies in the grass are already closed and rose-tipped, blushing in their sleep. Some one calls my name, and raising my eyes I see the small eager face of my playmate Tatiana peering out of an oval window in an old turret, where none of us are ever allowed to go. “Mura! Mura! Come quickly,” she cries. “The turret is full of swallows!”

“Full of swallows!” I can still recall the ecstasy of joy with which those three words filled me. I ran to the entrance of the old tower and helter-skeltered up the dark and narrow staircase; then, pushing aside a mildewed door, I found myself with Tatiana in a gloomy loft, and yes, yes! it was full of swallows!

They flew hither and thither, darting over our heads, brushing our faces, making us shriek with delight. We managed to catch any number of them. Many were even lying on the ground. Tatiana filled her apron with the fluttering creatures, while I held some in my handkerchief and some in my hands. Then we ran downstairs into the dining-hall: “Look, look! we have caught a lot of swallows!” I can still see the girls crowding round us, and the face of the mistress bending forward with an incredulous smile; I see her shrink back, horrified and pale, with a cry of disgust: “Mercy upon us! They are all bats!”

Even now the recollection of the shrieks we uttered as we flung them from us makes my flesh creep; even now I seem to feel the slippery smoothness of those cold membranes gliding through my fingers and near my cheeks....

To what end does this childish recollection enter into the dark tragedy of my life? This—that when I mount into the closed turret of my mind in quest of winged thoughts and soaring fancies, alas! there glide through my brain only the monstrous spirits of madness, the black bats of hypochandria....

I remember little or nothing of those somber days in Yalta. I can vaguely recollect Stahl telling me over and over again in answer to my delirious cries for Bozevsky: “He is dead! He is dead! He is dead!” And as I could not and would not believe him, he took me in a closed carriage through many streets; then into a low building and through echoing stone passages into a large bare room—a dissecting room!

The horror of it seals my lips.

Still more vaguely do I recollect the death of Stahl himself. I know that one evening he shot himself through the heart, and was carried to the hospital. I know that he sent me the following words traced in tremulous handwriting on a torn piece of paper: “Mura! I have only half an hour to live. Come to me, I implore you. Come!”

I did not go to him. The terrible lessons he had taught me were bearing fruit; all I did when brought face to face with some new calamity was to take injection after injection of morphia; and thus I sank down again into the twilight world of unreality in which, during that entire period, I moved like one in a dream.

I seemed to be living under water, in a perpetual dimness—a fluid, undulating dusk.

No sooner did I find myself rising to the surface of consciousness, and the noisy harshness of life confronted me again, than my trembling hands sought the case that hid the little glass viper of oblivion—the hypodermic syringe of Pravaz.

Over the tremulous flame of a candle I heated the phial of whitish powder and watched it gradually dissolve into a clear crystalline liquid that the hollow needle thirstily drank up: then I bared my arm and thrust the steel point aslant into my flesh. Soothing and benumbing the morphia coursed through my veins; and I sank once more into the well-known beatific lethargy, the undulating dusk of unreality and sleep....

But one day a call thrilled through the enveloping cloud and reached my heart: it was the call of motherhood. Tioka! Tania! Where were my children? Why, why were my arms empty when these two helpless and beloved creatures were mine?

Horrified at myself and at the dream-like apathy in which I had strayed so long, I tore myself from the degrading captivity of narcotics and with trembling steps tottered towards the threshold of life once more.

With dazed eyes I beheld the altered world around me.

How everything had changed! I was no longer the Countess Tarnowska, flattered, envied and beloved. The women who had formerly been my friends turned their eyes away from me, while on the other hand men stared at me boldly in a way they had never dared to look at me before. Vassili—the frivolous, light-hearted Vassili—shut his door upon me, and secluded himself in grim and formidable silence as in the walls of a fortress. Vainly did I beat upon it with weak hands, vainly did I pray for pity. Inexorable and inaccessible he remained, locked in his scorn and his resentment. Nor ever have the gates of his home or of his heart opened to me again.

I took refuge with my children at Otrada.

My parents received us in sorrow and humiliation. Themselves too broken in spirit to offer me any consolation, they moved silently through the stately mansion, blushing for me before the servants, hiding me from the eyes of their friends.

Even my children hung their heads and crept about on tiptoe, mute and abashed without knowing why.

One day Tania, my little Tania, was snatched from my arms. Vassili took her from me, nor did I ever see her again.

I had gone out, I remember, sad and alone, into the wintry park. By my side trotted Bear, my father's faithful setter, who every now and then thrust his moist and affectionate nose into my hand. In my thoughts I was trying to face what the future might have in store for me.

“When my little Tioka grows up,” I said to myself, “I know, alas! that I shall lose him. He will want to live with his father: he will look forward to entering upon life under happy and propitious auspices. Yes, Tioka will leave me, I know. But my little girl will stay with me. Tania will be my very own. She will grow up, fair and gentle, by my side; I shall forget my sorrows in her clinging love; I shall live my life over again in hers. I shall be renewed, in strength and purity, in my daughter's stainless youth.”

As I thus reflected I saw my mother running to meet me, her gray head bare in the icy wind; she was weeping bitterly. Tania was gone! Vassili had taken her away!

Notwithstanding all my tears and prayers it was never vouchsafed to me to see my little girl again.

But when the day came in which they sought to tear my son from me as well, I fought like a maddened creature, vowing that no human power should take him from me while I lived. I fled with him from Otrada—I fled I knew not and cared not whither, clasping in my arms my tender fair-haired prey, watching over him in terror, guarding him with fervent prayers. I fled, hunted onward by the restlessness that was in my own blood, pursued by the bats of madness in my brain.

Thus began my aimless wanderings that were to lead me so far astray.

Alone with little Tioka and the humble Elise Perrier, I took to the highways of the world.

How helpless and terrified we were, all three of us! It was like living in a melancholy fairy tale; it was like the story of the babes lost in the wood. Sometimes, in the midst of a street in some great unknown city, little Tioka would stop and say: “Mother, let us find some one who knows us, and ask them where we are to go and what we are to do.”

“No, no! Nobody must know us, Tioka.”

Then Tioka would begin to cry. “I feel as if we were lost, as if we were lost!…” And I knew not how to comfort him.

One day—we were at Moscow, I remember—there appeared to me for the first time that lean and threatening wolf which is called—Poverty. Poverty! I had never seen it at close range before. I almost thought it did not really exist. I knew, to be sure, that there were people in the world who were in need of money; but those were the people whom we gave charity to; that was all.

Poverty? What had poverty to do with us?

During all my life I had never given a thought to money.

XX

“Elise, I cannot bear to see myself in this ugly black dress any longer. Write to Schanz and tell him to send me some new gowns. I want a dark green tailor-made costume, and a pearl-gray voile.”

“Yes, my lady. But, begging your ladyship's pardon, Schanz says that he would like to be paid.”

“Well, let us pay him then.”

“Yes, my lady. But, begging your ladyship's pardon, his bill is twenty-five thousand rubles.”

“Well, let him have them.”

“I am sorry, my lady, but we have not got twenty-five thousand rubles.”

It was true. We had not got twenty-five thousand rubles.

“Elise, Tioka wants to be amused. He would like a toy railway.”

“Yes, my lady.”

“Mind,” cried Tioka, “it must be like the one we saw yesterday, with all those stations and canals, and a Brooklyn bridge.”

“Yes, Master Tioka.”

“Well, Elise, what are you waiting for?”

“Begging your ladyship's pardon, it costs eighty rubles.”

“Well?”

“We have not got them.”

True enough; we had not got eighty rubles.

“Elise, I have no more perfumes. Go and get me a bottle of Coty's Origant.”

“Yes, my lady. But—”

“But what?”

“It costs twelve rubles.”

“Well?”

“We have not got them.”

And indeed we had not got twelve rubles.

I thought it very sad not to have twenty-five thousand rubles, nor even twelve rubles, when I required them.

I resolved to telegraph to my mother.

Feeling sad and perplexed, I went to the telegraph office and sat down at a table to write my message:

“Mother, dear, we are unhappy and forlorn; Tioka and I want to come home and stay with you always. Please send us at once—”

I was meditating on what sum to mention, when I felt the touch of a hand upon my shoulder. Startled, I turned, and raised my eyes. Before me stood a man—dark, rather tall, with a brown mustache and pendulous cheeks. Surely I knew him! Where had I seen that face before? Suddenly there flashed into my mind the recollection of a crowded, brilliantly lighted restaurant. I saw Vassili, amid much laughter, counting the dark-eyed tziganes to see if one of them were missing—Prilukoff! “The Scorpion!” It was he who stood before me.

“Countess Tarnowska! Who would have dreamt of finding you here!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing in Moscow?”

“I—I do not know,” I stammered. I had in fact not infrequently asked myself what I was doing in Moscow.

“I have heard of all your misfortunes,” he said, lowering his voice, and gazing at me sympathetically. “I have read the papers and heard all the fuss. Come now, come,” he added, “you must not weep. Let us go and have tea at the Métropole; there we can talk together.” And he took me familiarly by the arm.

I drew back. “I wanted to telegraph—,” I began.

“Telegraph? To whom?” inquired Prilukoff with an authoritative air.

“To my mother.”

“Why? What do you want to telegraph to her for?”

I flushed. “I—I have no money—” I stammered.

“Well, I have,” said Prilukoff, and he drew me out of the office.

At the top of the steps he stopped and looked me in the face. “What a fortunate meeting!” he said. “Our lucky star must have brought it about.” With these words his brown eyes looked straight into mine. “Our lucky star!” he repeated.

Merciful heaven, why did not a whisper, not a breath of warning come to me then? Why did no tremor in my soul admonish me, no heavenly inspiration hold me back? Nothing, nothing checked the smile upon my lips, nor the words in which I gaily answered him:

“Our lucky star! So be it.” And I took his arm.

The die of my destiny was cast. I went out on my way to destruction and ruin.

There were many people and much music in the Métropole when we entered.

It is strange to think how all the memorable and significant hours of my life are associated in my mind with the entrancing rhythm of dance-music, with the lilting tunes of waltz, mazurka and polonaise.

All the tragedies, all the extravagances that convulsed my existence bloomed up like tragic modern flowers in the hothouse of some fashionable restaurant, under the feverish breath of a tzigane orchestra.

So great became the power of this obsession over me, that no sooner did I enter a restaurant where there were people, and lights, and the music of stringed instruments, than I straightway felt as if I had lost my senses. Under the influence of such an atmosphere all my thoughts assumed disordered and extravagant forms. The tones of the violins excited and electrified me; as the bows swept the quivering strings I also quivered and vibrated, shaken with indescribable perturbation. The waves of sound seemed to envelop me in a turbid vortex of sentiment and sensibility.

Ah, if there had been more silence in my life, more shade, more seclusion! It is not within the safe walls of the home, not at one's own peaceful and inviolate hearth that perversity stirs to life and catastrophe is born.

Oh! Tania, my only daughter, if the wishes of your sorrowful mother could but reach you and her prayers for you be granted, they would encompass with shade and silence your young and virginal heart.

And I—ah, if I could but go back to the white vacant land of childhood, I would kneel down and entreat from heaven naught else but shade and silence in my life....

But in the Café Métropole the blazing lights were lit, the orchestra was swinging its unhallowed censer of waltz-music through the perfumed air and the Scorpion was sitting before me drinking his tea and laughing.

“Do you remember how much afraid you were of me at the Strelna, when I jumped from the divan and touched your shoulder? And afterwards—when you found me asleep at the bottom of the sleigh?”

Yes, I remembered.

“And now you are no longer afraid of me?”

No. Now I was no longer afraid of him.

Fate, the Fury, standing behind me, must have laughed as with her nebulous hand she covered my smiling eyes.

XXI

What charmed and delighted me most in the Scorpion was a pet phrase of his that he was constantly using: “Leave that to me!”

He said it every minute, a hundred times a day. Occasionally there might be a slight variation; he might say, “Don't trouble your head about that”; or “Never mind, I'll see to it.” But as a rule it was the brief enchanting sentence: “Leave that to me.”

I cannot possibly describe the sense of utter relief and comfort with which those few words inspired me. I felt unburdened, as it were, exonerated, set free from every responsibility, from every anxiety, almost from every thought. It was as if Prilukoff had said of my very soul, “Leave it to me,” so complete was my sense of tranquil relinquishment.

In truth I had never given much thought to the practical side of life. No sense of responsibility had ever weighed upon my narrow shoulders; there had always been so many people around me to give me advice, to direct me, to think and to act on my behalf!

When I had suddenly found myself alone in the world with Tioka and Elise I had felt more frightened and more helpless than they. But now, here once more was some one ready to direct me, ready to think and act and decide for me. Occasionally, realizing my position, I exclaimed anxiously: “Dear me, what shall I do about money?”

Prilukoff would answer briefly: “Leave that to me.”

“But how shall I pay my bills?”

“Leave your bills to me.”

“And how shall I prevent Vassili from robbing me of Tioka!”

“Don't bother about Tioka. Leave him to me.”

“And, oh dear! I wish I could be divorced from Vassili.”

“You shall be divorced; I shall see to it.”

“But what will my mother say?”

“Leave your mother to me.”

There seemed to be nothing in the world that could not be left to the omniscient and all-sufficing care of Donat Prilukoff. I was deeply moved and grateful.