‘Let’s play a game instead.’

‘Forfeits?’ said Looshin.

‘No, forfeits are boring. Let’s play analogies.’ (Zinaida had invented this game herself. An object would be named, and everyone tried to compare it with something else. The person who thought of the best analogy won the prize.) She walked to the window. The sun had just set. Long red clouds stood high in the sky.

‘What are those clouds like?’ asked Zinaida, and without waiting for our answer said: ‘I think they are like those purple sails on the golden ship in which Cleopatra sailed to meet Antony. Do you remember, Maidanov? You were telling me about it not long ago.’

All of us, like Polonius in Hamlet, decided that the clouds reminded us of precisely those sails, and that none of us could find a better analogy.

‘How old was Antony then?’ asked Zinaida.

‘Oh, he must surely have been young,’ observed Malevsky.

‘Yes, young,’ Maidanov agreed confidently.

‘I beg your pardon,’ exclaimed Looshin, ‘he was over forty.’

‘Over forty,’ repeated Zinaida, giving him a quick glance.

I went home soon after. ‘She is in love,’ my lips whispered involuntarily, ‘but with whom?’

12

The days were passing. Zinaida grew stranger and stranger, more and more unaccountable. One day I went to see her and found her sitting on a wicker chair with her head pressed against the sharp edge of the table. She drew herself up…her whole face was wet with tears.

‘Ah! You!’ she said with a cruel smile. ‘Come here.’

I went up to her. She placed her hand on my head, suddenly seized me by the hair, and began to twist it.

‘It hurts,’ I said at last.

‘Ah, it hurts, does it? And do you think it doesn’t hurt me? Doesn’t hurt me?’ she repeated.

‘Ai!’ she cried suddenly, when she saw she had pulled out a small lock of my hair. ‘What have I done? Poor M’sieu Woldemar.’

She carefully straightened the torn lock, curled it round her finger and twisted it into a little ring.

‘I shall put your hair in my locket and I shall wear it,’ she said, and her eyes were still full of tears. ‘This will perhaps comfort you a little…And now, good-bye.’

I returned home to find a disagreeable state of affairs. My mother was trying to ‘have things out’ with my father. She was reproaching him for something, and he, as was his habit, answered with polite and frigid silences, and soon went away. I could not hear what my mother was saying, nor was I in a mood to listen. I remember only that when the scene was over, she sent for me to the study, and spoke with great disapproval about my frequent visits to the old princess who, in her words, was une femme capable de tout. I bowed to kiss her hand (I always did this when I wanted to end a conversation) and went up to my room.

Zinaida’s tears were altogether too much for me. I simply didn’t know what to think and was on the point of tears myself. I was after all still a child, in spite of my sixteen years. I no longer thought about Malevsky, though Byelovzorov every day glared more and more savagely at the wily count, like a wolf at a sheep. But then, I had no thought for anything or anybody. I gave myself up to fruitless speculation, and was always looking for secluded places. I became particularly fond of the ruined greenhouse. I used to climb, I remember, on to the high wall, settle myself on it and sit there, a youth afflicted by such misery, solitude and grief that I would be overcome with self-pity. How I revelled in these melancholy feelings – how I adored them.

One day I was sitting on the wall staring into space, and listening to the bells chiming. Suddenly something went through me, softer than the gentlest puff of wind, scarcely a shiver, like a scarcely perceptible breath, the sense of someone’s presence. I looked down.