Part 17

“‘Allow me,’ I said greatly disconcerted by this reception. ‘What is it you are saying? Is there no Boless?’

“‘Yes, there is none. But what of it?’

“‘And no Teresa either?’

“‘No, no Teresa either; that is, yes, I am her.’

“I could not understand a word. I stared straight into her eyes, trying to determine which of us two had lost our reason. And she returned once more to the table, rummaged for some time in the drawer, and coming back to me said in an offended tone:

“‘Here is the letter you wrote for me, take it back. You do not wish to write me a second one anyway. Others will probably be kinder than you and would do so.’

“I recognized the letter she held out to me as the one I wrote for her to Boless. Humph!

“‘Look here, Teresa,’ I said to her. ‘Will you please explain to me what it all means? Why do you ask people to write letters for you when you do not find it necessary even to post them?’

“‘Post them? Where to?’

“‘Why, to this Boless, of course.’

“‘But he does not exist!’

“I really could not understand a word. There was nothing left for me to do but to spit and walk out of the room. But she explained herself.

“‘Well, what of it?’ she began in an offended voice. ‘He does not exist. He does not, so,’ and she extended her hands as if she could not herself clearly understand why he did not exist in reality. ‘But I want him to. Am I not as much of a human being as the others? Of course I--I know.--But it does no harm to any one, that I am writing to him.--’

“‘Allow me--to whom?’

“‘To Boless, of course.’

“‘But he does not exist.’

“‘Oh, Mother of God! What if he does not exist? He does not; still to me he does. And Teresa--this is myself, and he replies to my letters, and I write to him again.’

“I understood. I felt so sick at heart, so ashamed of myself to know that alongside of me, only three paces removed, lived a human being who had no one in the whole world to love and sympathize with her, and that this being had to invent a friend for herself.

“‘Here you have written a letter from me to Boless, and I gave it to another to read, and when I hear it read it really begins to seem to me as if there is a Boless. And then I ask that a letter be written from Boless to Teresa--that is to me. And when such a letter is written and is read to me then I am almost entirely convinced that there is a Boless, and that makes my life easier.’

“Yes, the devil take it all,” continued my acquaintance. “To make a long story short I began from that time on to write with the greatest punctuality twice a week letters to Boless and vice versa. I wrote splendid replies to her. She used to listen to my reading of those epistles and to weep in her bass voice. In return for this she used to mend my clothes and darn my socks.

“Three months later she was thrown into prison for some reason or other and by now she must surely be dead.”

My acquaintance blew the ashes from his cigarette, looked thoughtfully at the sky, and concluded:

“Y-e-s, the more a human being has drunk of the cup of bitterness the more ardently he longs for sweetness. And we, enveloped in our worn-out virtues and gazing at each other through the haze of self-sufficiency and convinced of our righteousness, fail to understand it.

“And the whole affair turns out very stupid, and very cruel. Fallen people we say--but who and what are those fallen ones? First of all they are human beings of the very same bone and blood, of the very same flesh and nerves as ourselves. We have been told the very same thing for whole ages, day in and day out. And we listen and--and the devil alone knows how stupid it all is! In reality we, too, are but fallen people and more deeply fallen too, probably--into the abyss of self-sufficiency, convinced of our own sinlessness and superiority, the superiority of our own nerves and brains over the nerves and brains of those who are only less crafty than we are, and who can not, as we can, feign a goodness they do not possess--but enough of this. It is all so old and stale--so old and stale indeed that one is ashamed to speak of it--”

FOOTNOTES:

[10] Pan is Polish for Mister.

THE LOVE OF A SCENE-PAINTER BY “SKITALITZ”

_“Skitalitz,” meaning “wanderer,” is the nom de plume of a very talented young author by the name of A. Petrov. He is about 36 years old and a native of Nijni-Novgorod. Students of Russian literature have generally thought “Skitalitz” to be a nom de plume of Leonid Andreiev, but that is incorrect. Nearly all his works have been published by the “Znaniye” Company, which is backed by Gorki, and which until lately was the standard of Russian literature. “Skitalitz” writes poetry as well as prose. His works have been translated into the chief European languages, English included._

THE LOVE OF A SCENE-PAINTER BY “SKITALITZ”

Translated by Lizzie B. Gorin. Copyright, 1907, by P. F. Collier & Son.

The scene-painter Kostovsky had gone on a spree just at a time when he should not have done so: preparations were afoot for the presentation of a spectacular play, the success of which wholly depended upon the beauty of the decorations. The posters were already scattered all over the city; it was necessary to hurry forward the different arrangements and to paint the new scenery, and now something happened that the stage-manager had feared all along: Kostovsky went on a spree.

This always occurred just at a time when he was indispensable. As if an evil spirit prompted him just at such time and the forbidden liquid became more tempting than ever, he felt an unconquerable longing to experience a feeling of guilt, to act against the will of every one, against his own interests, but certainly not against the promptings of the Evil One, who had, for the time being, wholly taken possession of him.

His impetuous nature, full of talent, could not exist, it seemed, without powerful impressions--and he found them only in carousing. The days of revelry were for him always full of interesting encounters and strange adventures peculiar only to himself. But as soon as he came to his senses and sobered up, he took to his work with a sort of furious energy: everything around him at such times was at a fever-heat of excitement and he himself was burning with the fire of inspiration. Only because he was a wonderful scene-painter, a genius of his craft, he was not discharged. He hurt the reputation of the company with his scandals, adventures, and careless, soiled dress, his whole plebeian appearance; but for all that, from under his brush came the most exquisite, artistically executed decorations, for which the public often called the “decorator” before the curtain, and about which the press remarked afterward.

Behind the scenes the members of the company kept aloof from Kostovsky, and no one wanted to be on intimate terms with him; the chorus-singers “drank,” too, but considered themselves of a higher breed than the workman-decorator, and did not want him in their society, and the chorus-girls and ballet-dancers treated him like some sexless being, kept aloof from him, and looked at him with a grimace of disgust. He, on his part, also took little interest in them.

He admired only Julia, a little ballet-dancer, and even her he loved only as an artist, when she danced on the stage enveloped in the electric rays of the reflector which he himself manipulated. He liked the turn of her pretty little head, and he admired her, distinguishing her in the crowd of the other ballet-dancers by an exceptionally bright ray. “In life” he never spoke to her, and she pretended that she did not notice his attentions at all.

Living in a strange solitude, without love or friends, not having the sympathy of any one in the company, but being at the same time “indispensable” to it, he experienced an immeasurable feeling of “offense,” and caroused, as happened now when he was so badly “needed.”

The stout stage-manager stood on the stage after the rehearsal and spoke about Kostovsky with the business-manager of the troupe, an elegant, dark-complexioned man of the Hebrew type.

The broad, fat face of the stage-manager expressed restrained wrath, anxiety, and sorrow.

“Well, just tell me, please,” he spoke tearfully, while in his heart a storm was raging, “what am I to do now? What am I to do n-o-w?”

And, crossing his fat hands helplessly on his paunch, he wrathfully and sorrowfully looked at his companion.

“Hoggishness, that is all!” replied the business-manager. “He started to drink on the steamer when we were coming here and has not sobered up yet. And do you know, he fell into the sea on the way here! That was a joke. I was suddenly awakened by the cry: ‘Man overboard!’ I sprang to my feet. ‘Who is it?’ ‘Kostovsky!’ ‘Ah, Kostovsky, and I thought it was--some one else!’ And I again went to bed as if nothing had happened, because, in my opinion, Kostovsky is not a man, but a pig.”

“How did he come to fall into the water? Was he drunk?”

“Of course he must have been drunk. He fell asleep on the deck and was forgotten. The vessel lurched and he rolled over.”

“Ho-ho-ho!” the stage-manager’s deep laugh rang out.

“He-he-he!” chorused the business-manager in his thin, piping laugh. “But what is still funnier, the sea would have none of him, and he was fished out even before he had time to become entirely awake. A wonderful accident, really! The sea even refused to swallow such a rascal!”

“But where is he now?” inquired the stage-manager after he had ceased laughing, and a little softened by the story of Kostovsky’s mishap at sea.

“Here. He is sobering up a little in the wardrobe. They searched for him all over town, and at last they found the darling in a tavern engaged in a hot battle with some apprentice; they did not even allow him to finish the fistic argument, but pulled them apart, and brought him here. Now he is nursing a beautiful black eye.”

“Bring him in here, the rascal.”

The young man ran briskly across the stage and vanished behind the scenes. And immediately the empty theatre loudly resounded with his piping voice:

“Kostovsky! Kostovsky!”

“He will come at once,” the man said on returning, and winked his eye as if wishing to say: “The comedy will start immediately.”

A slow, unsteady step was heard approaching, and upon the stage appeared the man who had caused so much bad blood and ill-feeling and whom the sea would not accept.

He was of middle height, sinuous, muscular, and slightly round-shouldered, dressed in a coarse blue blouse full of paint spots and girded by a leather strap; his trousers, bespattered with paint, he wore tucked into his tall boots. Kostovsky had the appearance of a common workman, with long, muscular hands like those of a gorilla, and probably of great strength; his far from good-looking but very characteristic face, with its prominent cheek-bones and long, reddish mustaches, breathed of power. From under knitted brows gloomily, and at the same time good-naturedly, looked out a pair of large blue eyes. The main peculiarity of this face was an expression of impetuousness and energy; his left eye was embellished by a large discoloration--the mark of a well-aimed blow--and his coarse, reddish locks bristled out rebelliously in all directions. On the whole, Kostovsky impressed one as a bold, untamable being.

He bowed, at once shamefacedly and proudly, and did not offer any one his hand.

“What are you up to now, Kostovsky? Eh?” the stage-manager spoke in a freezingly cold manner. “The play is announced for to-morrow and we shall have to revoke it! What are you doing me all this injury for? Is it honest of you? Why are you drinking? Just look what an ornament you have under the eye! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!”

Kostovsky took a step backward, thrust his long fingers through his locks, and suddenly became alight with a passionate, indomitable emotion:

“Mark Lukich!” he exclaimed in a dull, husky, but convincing voice: “I drank! That is true! But now--basta! I will make everything necessary! To-day is Saturday and there is no performance, I shall not go out of here till to-morrow! I shall work the whole night through! I! I--Ach, thou great God!”

Kostovsky waved his hands in the air, and it seemed that he was suddenly possessed with a desperate energy. He longed for work as for expiation.

“But do you understand what there is to be done? Entirely new scenery must be painted. And painted good! Do you understand? Painted g-o-o-d!”

“I shall paint it well, no fear of that!” exclaimed Kostovsky enthusiastically, once more running all his ten fingers through his coarse locks. After musingly pacing the stage for some moments, he stopped before the stage-manager.

“Please tell me all about it, what sort of scenery is wanted, and for what it is needed,” he said in a more calm voice.

“You see, this will be the second act. Two people are lost in the steppe at night. The place must be a dull, obscure wilderness, a terrible fear possesses them, and supernatural things take place there. You must paint for us this steppe; everything must be in it: the impression of remoteness, the darkness and clouds, and so vividly that a shiver of dread should run through the public.”

“That is enough!” interrupted Kostovsky. “I shall paint you the steppe. I will work the whole night on the stage by lamplight and to-morrow everything will be ready. Have you the necessary material?”

“Everything is ready, all that is necessary is to work!” put in the business-manager.

But Kostovsky already felt the inspiration of the decorator. He turned away from his superiors, no longer even aware of their presence, and, standing in the centre of the stage, he shouted in a powerful, imperious voice:

“Here, Pavel, hurry there! Vanka, here with you! Lively there, you sons of the devil, Kostovsky means to work now!”

The stage-workman Pavel and the apprentice Vanka, a nimble, slouchy fellow, passionately devoted to the stage, came rushing in and immediately began to bustle about, spreading the enormous canvas and bringing forward the paints and brushes.

“Well,” said the business-manager to the stage-manager, “thank God, he has come to his senses at last; we will not be compelled now to revoke the play! Let us go and have our dinner. He must not be interfered with now.”

The whole night the stage was brightly illuminated, and in the empty theatre reigned the quiet of the grave. Only the tread of Kostovsky could be heard as, with his long brush in his hand, he continually approached and retreated from his canvas; all around stood pails and pots of paint.

He made rapid strides in his work. With a blue mark under his eye, dirty with paint, with bristling hair and mustaches, he accomplished with his enormous brush a titanic kind of work. His eyes were ablaze and his face looked inspired. He created.

At eleven o’clock in the morning the whole company, which had gathered for the rehearsal, stood agape before the creation of Kostovsky. The actors, chorus-singers, male and female, and the ballet-dancers gazed at the enormous canvas from the stage and afterward from the orchestra, and freely expressed their opinions. The whole background of the stage was occupied by the gigantic picture. It was the steppe. On the edge it was overgrown with tall, dense burdocks and other steppe-grass, farther could be seen a desolate-looking steppe-grave, thickly overgrown with grass, and still farther unrolled the cheerless, dull steppe with a wonderful, immeasurable perspective, a steppe out of the fairy-tales, out of the times of knighthood--pathless and unpeopled. It seemed to the onlookers that suddenly the famous Knight of the Russian fairy-tale, Ilia Muromets, would appear from behind the mound and would bawl out: “Is there a live man in this field?” But the bleak steppe was silent, terribly, gloomily silent; looming up against the sky were dark grave-mounds, and sinister, black, bushy clouds were gathering. There was no end to these clouds and grave-mounds, and the measureless vista of this steppe. The whole picture breathed gloom and oppressed the soul. It seemed as if something terrible would immediately take place, that the grave-mounds and the clouds had a symbolic meaning, that they were in a way animated. True, when one stepped up too close to Kostovsky’s scenery he could not make out anything: he saw before him a mere daub and splash made with the large brush--hasty, bold strokes, and nothing more. But the farther the spectator retreated from the canvas the clearer appeared the picture of the enormous steppe, spiritualized by a powerful mood, and the more attentively he looked at it, all the more was he possessed by the feeling of uncanny dread.

“Well, what do you say to this!” hummed the crowd. “Devilish fellow, Kostovsky! A real talent! Just see what deviltry he has let loose!”

“Well, that is nothing!” he replied naively. “We are simple workmen: when we work we work, but when once we are bent on having a good time we take our fill--that is how we are!”

They all laughed at him, but they spoke about him the whole day: he had never succeeded so well as at this time.

And he continued at his work; it seemed as if his energy had only just now become aroused. While the rehearsal was going on, he painted a “Hindu Temple,” shouted at his helpers, and in the heat of inspiration even railed at the stage-manager, who wanted to draw his attention to something.

He was untamable, irresponsible, and great. Dirtier and more unkempt than ever, he strutted through his workroom at the back of the stage, painted the superbly beautiful, fantastic “Temple,” and lived through the happiness of inspiration. His whole appearance, excited by the sleepless night full of inspiration, was the embodiment of power and passionate energy: the pale face with the blue discoloration under the eye, the bristling locks, and the flaming eyes that seemed to emanate blue rays--all this showed that the inspiration of Kostovsky did not flash up for a moment, but that it burned long and steadily with an inexhaustible, even light.

He was wholly engrossed by his “Temple,” when he suddenly felt close to him some one’s light step, and an exquisite perfume was wafted to where he stood. He turned around--before him stood Julia.

She wore the costume of a ballet-dancer, that is, almost no costume, as she had to dance at the rehearsal. She was a pretty little thing in pink tights, white satin slippers, and short gauze skirts; her high, strong bosom heaved tranquilly and peacefully, and her creamy face smiled. Her black, almond-shaped, languid eyes looked tenderly and promisingly at Kostovsky. In the costume of a ballet-dancer she looked like a being just out of fairyland, and it was difficult to imagine a being so totally different from Kostovsky as was this fairy. She was all exquisite grace and litheness; he, ungainly, dark, and big, stood before her abashed and confused, and gazed at her with delight and admiration; the long brush was lowered to the floor to her feet.

Kostovsky forgot his work, and Julia broke into a ringing laugh, and, sparkling with her sharp little teeth, she came nearer to him with her light, graceful step, and, stretching out to him her beautiful little hand, she boldly said: “How do you do, Kostovsky!”

* * * * *

Several months passed. The enormous opera-house was crowded to the doors. Behind the scenes they were hot at work, crowding one another, bustling and pushing. Through the curtain came the hum of the public and the solemn waves of the orchestra music.

The stage-workmen ran about like men possessed, adjusting and shifting the scenery, and from somewhere in the darkness above rose and descended enormous canvases, the walls of temples, steeples, woods, and sea-waves.

All this work was superintended by Kostovsky. He was unrecognizable, his face looked years younger and brighter, his blue eyes were alight with joy and happiness, his feet were encased in shiny patent-leather boots, and he wore a well-fitting, elegant velvet jacket; his fair locks were no longer bristling.

“Let down the bottom of the sea!” he commanded in a ringing voice.

The enormous canvas on which was depicted the bottom of the sea was lowered. The decorator retreated a few steps and once more looked lovingly at the “sea bottom.” This was his latest creation.

“Listen, Pavel!” he shouted, “when the mermaids begin to swim, you will let Julia come first and lower than all the rest; let her down to the very bottom!”

“It shall be done!”

At last everything was ready for the mermaids to swim through the bottom of the sea. Kostovsky was already on the elevation, with the electric reflector turned on the stage; he himself had to manage the lighting up of the scenery and the actors. The “Bottom of the Sea” became suffused with a tender, poetic light. This greenish-silvery light seemed to penetrate the water as if with the bright sunlit day above. And here at the bottom everything lived, knowing no light. In the distance stood a coral-reef, and everywhere half-alive vegetation greedily stretched its branches over the water, and all around floated slimy medusæ.

Underneath, the first thing to meet the eye was the yawning mouth of a submarine cave, from which were thrust out the arms of a hideous, enormous devil-fish that, without moving, glared out of its two green eyes.

And from amid this primitive, abnormal world appeared a wonderfully beautiful woman with flowing hair and bare shoulders, with the form of a fish below the waist, covered with shining, silvery scales. The loveliness of her head and the beauty of her shoulders was enhanced by the ugliness of the submarine world.

She swam like a fish, easily and gracefully, turning and twisting, her scales sparkling and glittering; she was followed by another mermaid, a whole school.

Lighted by the rays of the reflector, at the will of Kostovsky, they became marvelous, fairy-like beauties.

But they were all eclipsed by one. She swam lower than all, and was distinguished from all by the radiance of her beauty. She was lighted better and more alluringly than the rest, the tenderest rays of the reflector warmly and lovingly fell upon her, ran after her, and lovingly caressed her graceful body, adding a seductive expression to her face and making her eyes shine like stars. She seemed to be created of light, and this light changed with every moment, and she changed with it, garbed in thousands of different tints. A veritable queen of the deep. She felt that the enchanter decorator had bestowed on her a marvelous loveliness, that the delighted public was ready to break forth into a storm of applause in honor of this beauty, and, swimming close to the decorator, she gratefully waved her sparkling fish-tail, over which, by the will of the generous, enamored decorator, suddenly fell a shower of many-colored diamonds.

She swam behind the scenes, and he, rising on tiptoe and smiling happily, sent her an airy kiss from behind the reflector.

All in the company knew of this love affair behind the scenes: Julia always left the theatre in the company of Kostovsky, they stayed at the same hotel, and his room adjoined hers. Kostovsky was always with her, enjoying to the full the pleasure that the contemplation of her beauty afforded him, while she willingly allowed him to pay court to her. He followed her like a faithful dog, and waited long and patiently at the door of the women’s dressing-room while she leisurely removed the make-up from her face, dressed, and chatted with the other girls.