Put on your spectacles. This is no time for whims. Make a fool of yourself, make a fool of me…the more the merrier. As for being independent – Monsieur Woldemar,’ Zinaida added suddenly, stamping her foot, ‘don’t try to look so sad. I cannot bear to be pitied,’ and she left us quickly.

‘It is bad, bad for you, the atmosphere here, young man,’ said Looshin again.

11

That same evening there were the usual guests at the Zasyekins’. I was among them. Maidanov’s poem was discussed. Zinaida praised it with complete sincerity.

‘But I will tell you something,’ she said to him. ‘If I were a poet, I would take quite different subjects. Perhaps this is all nonsense, but strange thoughts sometimes come into my head, particularly when I cannot sleep just before morning, when the sky begins to grow pink and grey. I should, for example – you won’t laugh at me?’

‘No, no,’ we all cried with one voice.

‘I would,’ she continued, crossing her arms and gazing away, ‘I would depict a whole company of young girls in a large boat on a quiet river at night. The moon is shining; they are all in white with wreaths of white flowers, and they are singing – you know, something like a hymn.’

‘I understand, I understand; continue,’ said Maidanov, in a meaningful and dreamy tone.

‘Suddenly there is noise, loud laughter, torches, timbrels on the bank. It is a Bacchic rout singing and shouting along the riverside. Now it is your business to paint the picture, Sir Poet, only I want the torches to be red and very smoky, and I want the eyes of the Bacchantes to gleam under their wreaths, and the wreaths of flowers must be dark, and don’t forget the tiger skins and the goblets and the gold – lots of gold.’

‘Where is the gold to be?’ asked Maidanov, throwing back his long hair and dilating his nostrils.

‘Where? On their shoulders, arms, legs, everywhere. They say that in the ancient world women wore gold rings on their ankles. The Bacchantes call to the girls in the boat. The girls have ceased to sing their hymn. They cannot continue it, but they do not stir. The river is carrying them towards the bank. And then suddenly, one of them softly rises. This must be beautifully described. How she rises softly in the moonlight and how frightened her friends are. She has stepped over the edge of the boat. The Bacchantes have surrounded her, and whirled her off into the night, into the dark. Here you must paint the swirling clouds of smoke and everything in chaos. Only their cries can be heard, and her wreath is left lying on the bank.’

Zinaida ceased. (Ah, she is in love, I thought again.)

‘And is that all?’ asked Maidanov.

‘All’ she replied

‘That cannot be the subject for an entire poem,’ he said pompously, ‘but I shall make use of your idea for a lyric.’

‘In the romantic style?’ asked Malevsky.

‘Yes, of course in the romantic style. The Byronic.’

‘In my opinion Hugo is better than Byron,’ carelessly threw out the young count. ‘More interesting.’

‘Hugo is a first-rate writer,’ replied Maidanov, ‘and my friend Tonkosheyev, in his Spanish novel El Trovador…’

‘Oh, is that the book with the question marks upside down?’ Zinaida interrupted.

‘Yes, that is the rule in Spanish. I was going to say that Tonkosheyev…’

‘Oh, you are going to have another argument about classicism and romanticism,’ Zinaida interrupted him again.