CHAPTER IV

Anninka spent a restless night. The hysterical mood that had overtaken her at Pogorelka still persisted. There are moments when a person who has been merely existing suddenly realizes that there is a vile ulcer of some kind festering in his life. Where it came from, how it formed itself--one cannot always explain to oneself. In most cases it is not ascribed to the causes that have really brought it on. But an explanation is not even needed. It is sufficient that such an ulcer exists. The effects of such a sudden discovery, while equally painful to everyone, vary in their practical results, with the individual's temperament. Some are rejuvenated and inspired with a determination to begin a new life on new foundations. Others feel but a passing pain that will not bring a profound change for the better, but is even sharper than when the disturbed conscience sees the faint hope of a brighter future.

Anninka was not of those in whom the consciousness of ulcers produces the impulse to rejuvenation. Nevertheless, she realized, being an intelligent person, that there was an abyss between the vague dreams of honest toil which had impelled her to leave Pogorelka forever and her position of provincial actress. Instead of a life of quiet and toil, she had fallen upon a stormy existence, filled with perpetual debauchery, shameless obscenity and cynicism, with vain and everlasting bustle. Instead of the privations and stern surroundings in which she had once lived, she had met comparative ease and comfort. She could not think of it now without a blush of shame. She had hardly noticed the gradual transformation. She had wanted to go to a good place but had entered the wrong door. Her desires had been very modest, indeed. How often she had dreamed, in the attic of Pogorelka, of becoming an earnest girl, working, thirsting for education, bearing hardships with fortitude, all for the sake of the good. (It is true, "good" hardly had definite meaning to her.) But as soon as she had stepped out on to the highroad of independent activity, bitter reality had shattered her dreams at once. An honest livelihood does not come of itself, but is attained only by persistent search and previous training which help in the quest to some extent. But neither Anninka's temperament nor education provided her with this. Her temperament was not marked by passion, it was simply sensitive. The material that her education had given her and on which she meant to build up her life of honest toil was so unreliable and poor that it could hardly serve as a basis for serious work. Her education was of the boarding-school, music-hall kind, with the balance tipping to the side of the music-hall. It was a chaotic heap in which problems were piled up about a flock of geese, dancing steps with a shawl, the sermons of Peter of Picardy, the exploits of Fair Helen, the _Ode to Felitza,_ and the prescribed feeling of gratitude to the instructors and patrons of the institution. What was left clear of this chaotic jumble in her soul might quite properly be called a _tabula rasa_. There was scarcely a thing to be read in it; it certainly offered no possibility of finding a starting-point in her for better things. Whatever preparation she had had inspired not love for work but love for a "society" life, the desire to be surrounded by admirers and listen to their flattery, the desire to plunge into the social din, glamor and whirlwind.

If she had listened to herself, she would have discovered that even in Pogorelka, when just beginning to make plans for a life of honest toil as a deliverance from Egyptian bondage, she could have caught herself dreaming not so much of work as of being surrounded by a society of congenial people, frittering her time away in empty talk. Of course, the people of her dreams were clever, and their conversation was honest and serious, but the idle side of life was always in the foreground. Poverty was distinguished by neatness, privations amounted merely to a lack of luxuries. So, when her dreams of a life of work came to a head and she was offered a part in one of the provincial theatres, she hesitated little, though the contrast between dream and reality was great. She hastily freshened up her school information about the relations of Helen and Menelaus, supplemented it by some biographical details from the life of the splendid Prince of Tauris and decided that that was quite sufficient to produce _Fair Helen_ and _Episodes from the Life of the Duchess of Herolstein_ in the provincial theatres and at the fairs. To clear her conscience she recalled the words of a student she had met in Moscow who used to exclaim repeatedly, "Sacred Art!" She made this her slogan, because it was the easiest way out, and gave at least outward decorum to the path she had chosen--the path toward which the whole of her being was instinctively tending.

The life of an actress upset her. Alone, without the guidance of proper preparation, without a conscious aim, with only a temperament craving for din, glamor, and applause, she soon found herself surrounded by a chaos in which many persons thronged, some coming, others going, without apparent order or connection. There were people of the most diverse characters and views, so that the motives for becoming intimate with this one or that one were not the same. Nevertheless, they were all integral parts of her circle, so that there really could be no question of motives.

Her life had become like the gate to an inn, at which every gay, wealthy, young man could knock and claim entrance. Clearly it was not a matter of selecting a congenial company, but of fitting into any kind of company so as not to die of ennui. Her "sacred art" had really thrown her into a mire, but her head was turned, and she did not notice her position. Neither the dirty faces of the porters nor the slimy, dilapidated stage properties, nor the din, stench, and noise of the hotels and inns, nor the obscene behavior of her admirers--none of these things produced a sobering effect. She did not even notice that she was always in the society of men only, and that there was a permanent barrier between her and the women of _established position._

The visit to Golovliovo sobered her for a moment.

In the morning, almost immediately after her arrival, she began to feel uneasy. Highly impressionable, she quickly absorbed new sensations and quickly adapted herself to new situations. Consequently, as soon as she reached Golovliovo, she felt herself a "lady." She suddenly recalled that she had something of her own: her own home, her own graves. She became filled with a desire to see herself in her former surroundings, to breathe the air from which she had only recently fled. But her impression was immediately dispelled by contact with the reality she found there. Her experience in this was like that of a person who enters with a smile among friends he has not seen for a long time, and suddenly notices that everybody responds to his cordial greetings coldly. The nasty glances Yudushka cast at her figure reminded her that her position was questionable and not easy to change. When she remained alone, after the naïve questions of the Pogorelka servants, after the pious sighs of warning of the Pogorelka priest and his wife, after the fresh sermons of Yudushka, when she examined her impressions of the day at leisure, she became convinced that the former "lady" was gone forever and that from now on she was only an actress in a miserable provincial theatre, and the position of a Russian actress was not far removed from that of a street woman. Until now she had lived as if in a dream. She would go out half-naked in _Fair Helen,_ would appear intoxicated in _Pericola,_ would sing all sorts of indecencies in the _Episodes from the Life of the Duchess of Herolstein,_ and would even regret that it was not the custom to represent _la chose_ and _l'amour_ on the stage, imagining how enticingly her hips would quiver and how alluring her every movement would be. But it had never occurred to her to give earnest thought to what she was doing. She had only tried to make everything appear "charming" and _chic_ and at the same time please the army officers of the town regiment. But what it all meant, and what the sensation was that her quivering hips produced in the army officers, she did not consider. The army officers were the element that set the tone for the town, and she realized that her success depended upon them. They would intrude behind the scenes, would unceremoniously knock at the door of her dressing-room when she was yet half-clad, would address her in endearing terms--and she looked upon it all as a simple formality, an inevitable feature incidental to her profession. All she asked herself was whether she rendered a feature "charmingly" or not.

Until now she had not thought of her body or her soul as being public, but for a moment feeling herself a "lady" again, she looked on her past in utter disgust and abhorrence, as if she had been stripped naked and were being exposed on the public square; as if all those vile creatures infected with the odors of wine and the stable had suddenly gripped her in their embrace, as her body felt the contact of hands moist with perspiration, of slabbery lips and the dull, greedy, brutal eyes that lingered animal-like over the curved lines of her nude body.

Where was she to go? How was she to throw off that accumulated load, which began to leave its mark on her shoulders? The question tossed in her head desperately--tossed, indeed, for she neither found nor, as a matter of fact, sought an answer. This stay in Golovliovo, too, was a kind of dream. Her past life had been a dream, and her present awakening was a dream. Something had made the little girl ill at ease, and she had become sentimental--that was all. It would pass. There are pleasant moments and there are unpleasant ones--that is how they go. Both merely glide past but do not alter the course of life once determined upon. To give life a new course, to divert its channel, one needs not only moral but also physical courage. It is almost the same as suicide. Before attempting suicide a man may denounce his life, he may be certain that death is the only salvation, yet the weapon of death trembles in his hands, the knife slides harmlessly over the neck, the bullet, instead of striking the forehead, hits lower and only cripples. That is what happened in Anninka's case. She had to kill her former life, but though killing it, she herself had to remain alive. The "nothingness" that in regular suicide is attained by merely pressing the trigger, was to be attained in the peculiar suicide called rejuvenation only after many stern almost ascetic efforts.

A pampered person already undermined by the habit of easy living will turn dizzy at the mere perspective of a rejuvenation. He instinctively turns his head away and shuts his eyes. Then filled with shame and accusing himself of lack of courage, he will take the easy way again.

Oh, the life of toil is a glorious thing! Yet none but strong people can live it and those who are destined for it because of original sin. They are the only ones it does not frighten; the former because they realize the significance and resources of toil and can find pleasure in it; the latter, because to them toil is first a duty, then a habit.

Anninka did not think of remaining at Golovliovo or Pogorelka for even a moment. In this she was fortified by the business routine of her circumstances, to which she clung instinctively. She had been given leave of absence and had arranged her schedule ahead of time, even designating the day on which she was to leave Golovliovo. For people of weak wills the external checks upon their life considerably lighten its burdens. In difficult cases they cling to them instinctively and use them as a justification for their acts.

Anninka decided to leave Golovliovo as soon as possible, and if uncle persisted in his coaxing, to counter him by invoking the necessity of reporting for duty on the set date.

When she arose in the morning she walked leisurely through all the rooms of the vast Golovliovo mansion. She found them dreary, uninviting, deserted. There was an air of decay and haunting unfriendliness about them. The thought of living there indefinitely quite frightened her. "Never!" she kept repeating in a state of inexplicable agitation, "Never!"