IN THE WOOD

Lieutenant Barahmeiev, late of the Hussars, was making amorous advances to his landlord’s wife, a Jewish lady of about thirty. “Your lips are saying No! No! No! whereas your eyes are saying Yes! Yes! Yes!”

Vera Solomonovna looked at him with her golden eyes and shook her handsome head and said to him,

“Boris Nikolàech, you’re thirty-eight, and you have no more sense than a boy of twelve.”

Lieutenant Barahmeiev looked more self-confident than ever. It was a fixed idea with him that no woman could refuse his amorous advances, and that no landlord really meant him, seriously, to pay his rent. To whatever women said in proof of their refusal, to whatever landlords said in confirmation of their claims, Lieutenant Barahmeiev had a simple answer. He called it “bluff.” Some English words like “bluff” and “gentleman” have passed into the Russian tongue in the original. He wasn’t born yesterday, he said.

And fully confident of the result, the Russian officer continued, “Why this pretence, this hypocritical reluctance? Why not be frank about it? To-night,” he whispered. “In my room....”

“Go to the devil!” she said, but her eyes seemed to say, “Go on talking.”

“You say ‘Go to the devil!’ But what do you mean? I know what you mean. Wasn’t born yesterday. Why not be honest about it?”

Odessa had been changing hands from Bolshevik to anti-Bolshevik in turn; but the habit of love-making persists through such irrelevancies as wars and revolutions. Life in the flat of Finkelstein, where Lieutenant Barahmeiev occupied a bedroom, went on essentially as it had gone on before the war. I liked my hosts. She, a woman of considerable beauty, greedy for admiration. He, a successful broker, tall, handsome, prepossessing, inordinately proud of being a Jew and always selling foreign currencies to his guests at table. I liked the free and easy manner in the household, the total absence of suspicion on the part of Finkelstein as regards his handsome wife. No doubt he also had no small opinion of himself, and thought that as compared with the Lieutenant he was the better specimen of male all round. And I think that perhaps he was.

At lunch he was saying to Lieutenant Barahmeiev, “Yes, Boris Nikolàech, you Christians like to run us down. You say that we are swindlers, and ‘Never trust a Jew.’ But the fact is that we Jews can trust each other, but I am dashed if we are often given an opportunity to trust a Christian. Take yourself. You call yourself a ‘paying guest.’ But what right have you to the adjective? If it comes to that, what right have you to the noun? Have I asked you to come and stay with us, and overlooking that point, is it a usual thing for guests to stay indefinitely? But your conscience doesn’t seem to trouble you a bit. You eat and sleep, and there! you even seem to have designs on my wife. Ah, you’re a funny fellow, Boris Nikolàech, but, at any rate, it’s some good to us that you are an officer; it will keep them from commandeering our flat while you are here. But what was I saying? Ah, yes, does any one want to buy Romanov roubles? Or I can sell you francs.”

But the Lieutenant went on talking to the hostess. “What I can’t get over is this utter want of frankness in you, Vera Solomonovna. Your soul, your eyes cry out, ‘Take me! I am yours!’ whereas your lying lips pretend to say, ‘Go to the devil.’ Bluff! All bluff, all bluff!”

She turned to her husband and looking at her guest with compassion, said:

“What can I do with him, Lyova? He doesn’t understand. He can’t. He really thinks he’s irresistible to women. I’ve never seen anything so brazen in my life. To be quite frank, Boris Nikolàech, you’re not the least bit attractive. I wonder who put that idea into your head?”

“Vera Solomonovna,” he implored her, “be frank for once. You know you are in love with me; why all this hypocritical nonsense about my being ‘not the least bit attractive’? Why all this bluff? I wasn’t born yesterday!”

“In matters of love you’re a school boy.”

“Yes, when I was a school boy I had the innocence to take a woman’s No for No. But now, I need hardly say, I believe it no longer.”

“You wise old man then,” she said ironically, rising.

We followed her into the drawing-room. The window panes were blurred with rain. The sea, the sky, was one grey mass, doleful and monotonous. Below, in the street, one could see the shining hoods of passing cabs; the muffled sound of hoofs reached our windows. In the indoor twilight of the flat one felt at rest, one’s limbs were seized with languor. Finkelstein and his stock-exchange associates retired to his study to play cards.

“The rain reminds me, Vera Solomonovna,” said the Lieutenant, “of an incident in my youth. The woman—oh, she had the self-same psychology, if I may say so, as yourself, and in the end, and in the end ... complete capitulation.”

“I am tired of you,” said she, looking languorous rather than tired.

“Vera Solomonovna,” he said, bending over her; then in a whisper: “Don’t forget to-night ... my room.”

She shook her head.

“How blatantly deceitful women really are,” he said. “You shake your head. Why? Why, when I know——”

She flushed. “This is really getting idiotic!”

“Ha! ha! ha! That is exactly what Zina used to say: ‘idiotic.’ I was going to tell you about Zina when you interrupted me. This was a long time ago—let me see—yes, twenty-one years ago, to be exact. I was seventeen then. I was a cadet at the X—— Military School and I was spending the summer vacation with my aunt at S——, a sea side resort some twenty miles from Petersburg. It was an evening in early June, and we were sitting on the open balcony of the pavilion at the local tennis club. We were discussing something—literature I think, and then, quite relevantly, we switched off on to love. There was this Zina I am telling you about, a beautifully developed girl of twenty-five, who was quite vehement in her denunciation of everything relating to the attraction between the sexes, and as she spoke it was urged upon her that for a person with her views the convent was the only proper place. It was a lovely night, but we sat there and exchanged inanities. Gradually some of us dispersed.

“I was standing by a street stall, buying cigarettes, when I noticed Zina coming up. She bought herself some chocolate. We sauntered away from the stall together.”

“Where are you going?” I asked her.

“Nowhere in particular.”

We went along the big road leading to the sea. Our shoulders touched occasionally as we stumbled over the uneven ground.

“They’re so absurd with their revolting sentimentality,” I said.

“Why talk about them? Look at the clouds,” she said. “How they chase each other. We couldn’t keep pace with them if we ran. And the moon! Gone—and out again!”

We made our way together along a narrow lane. The wooden datchas had been left behind.

“Is this ‘The Alley of Kisses’?”

“No, this is ‘The Alley of Sighs.’”

We went on.

“The moon again!”

“Yes.”

“This is ‘The Alley of Kisses,’” she said, as we turned to our left. Beyond I could hear the sound of the sea.

“Let us sit down here.”

It was an old bench considerably disfigured by a penknife; it bore initials, monograms and names of lovers probably who had sat there in former times.

“So this is ‘The Alley of Kisses,’” I repeated. One seizes with gratitude on such openings.

“Yes.” She looked at me strangely. “And the fools at the tennis club talking rubbish!”

“Yes.”

“The sea and the air! and—as I was saying—this ‘Alley of Kisses.’ Can you feel it?”

I moved closer to her. “May I kiss you?” I said.

“Why do you ask?” she whispered.

“What?” said I. (I am slightly deaf, as you know.)

She waited, and I, being timid, added, “After all, we are ‘allies’ in a sort of way....”

She repeated softly: “Why do you ask?”

She had soft, warm lips; I held my breath back; it was long before I released it; and I wasn’t thinking of the night. “My hand——”

Vera Solomonovna became fidgety with excitement. “Lyova! Lyova!” she cried out; and when Finkelstein appeared, she said, “Come here, all of you. Boris Nikolàech is telling of a romantic episode from his life. It’s most attractive, I assure you, most piquant.”

Finkelstein and his stock-exchange associates, abandoning their game of cards, sauntered into the drawing-room, and, still smoking, sank into chairs and stretched out their legs, ready to listen.

“Well, go on,” said Vera Solomonovna.

“My hand, I think I said, was round her waist——”

“Whose waist?” said Finkelstein.

“Zina’s,” explained his wife.

“Who’s Zina, anyhow?”

“Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. Go on, Boris Nikolàech.”

“My hand was round her waist. She pressed it to her bosom. I looked round. There was not a soul around, not a sound abroad but for the waves that broke on the sea shore. Dark clouds ran swiftly across the sky.

“Let us go there,” she said, pointing to the wood. We made our way across the shrubbery. I held her in my arms; she began to breathe in a queer, panting way.

“What is it?” I asked ignorantly.

“It’s ... good,” she whispered.

The moon showed between the tall trees; in a few yards’ distance the sea roared before us. Then a big, heavy drop of rain fell on my face—it was warm; and then another.

I sat on the moss, dazed, completely overtaken by the wonder of it all. Suddenly, I heard the rustle of her movements; she had disappeared behind a bush.

“What are you doing?”

There was no answer. I was rather shy about it all, for I was only seventeen. “Don’t!”

She stood behind a shrub and I could hear the rustle of the twigs, the rustle of silk linen, the hollow sound of press-studs. “Don’t,” I said.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“But why? Why?” I said confusedly. “I don’t want to.”

Unveiled, she stood behind me. The big pale moon looked down upon her, but she didn’t mind it. The dark blue wood leered from behind at her; and the roaring sea rushed to her—and receded, rushed and receded. Drop after drop, at long interval, the soft warm rain fell from the dark gathering clouds. “I want, I want you to remember me,” she said softly, “always, and now you can’t forget ... that the first woman you have ever seen like that ... was me.” Then she crouched to the ground. She began to sob and laugh at the same time. “What am I doing? Oh, I’m mad, mad.... I couldn’t help it. I’ve been reading—all day long I’ve been reading ... such a wicked book. It was awful, unbearable. These silly people on the veranda talked such nonsense, but it wouldn’t have really mattered what they’d said; I would’ve disagreed with them all the same. I couldn’t bear it any longer. And then I felt I wanted—I wanted to do as she, the woman in the book, had done to him. Besides,” she added, “you really are rather attractive, aren’t you? Oh, do you think it’s going to rain properly? It didn’t in the book.”

The Lieutenant ceased.

“Well?” we said. “Go on.”

“That’s all,” said the Lieutenant.

“But what happened afterwards?” asked Vera Solomonovna.

“Nothing happened.”

“But how?” she said in a tone as though she had been wronged.

“Well, that’s all there is to tell.”

“But—it’s no proper story even.”

“I can’t help that,” he answered almost angrily. “This is what happened, and this is where it ended. I can’t falsify the facts to suit your taste. We don’t, my dear Vera Solomonovna, live our lives to provide plots for stories.”

“Well, I am disappointed in you, Boris Nikolàech. Really! To begin so well, so fascinatingly, and then, suddenly, to break off ... so shamelessly! Well, really, you’re just like a boy of twelve. You have no sense of proportion, Boris Nikolàech. None whatever! The whole thing, as it stands, is silly....”

“You are a hopeless washout!” Finkelstein was teasing him. “Miss your opportunity like that! My goodness! And call yourself a Don Juan at that!”

“If that’s the end of it,” said Vera Solomonovna, “there was no need to tell the story. You had no business to begin, Boris Nikolàech. It’s simply disappointing.”

“Well,” said Lieutenant Barahmeiev, who seemed hurt, “if it comes to disappointment, I think I have been disappointed more than anyone.”

“The more fool you,” said Finkelstein.

“Nothing to do with me. Didn’t I tell you it was raining?”

“Raining?”

“Pouring! It came on suddenly, burst upon us through the sky. A flood. The revenge of heaven on us.”

“But what’s the point of your story, anyhow?” asked Finkelstein.

“The point?”

“Yes, the moral? Why have you been telling it?”

“Oh, well, I told it to Vera Solomonovna by way of illustrating the psychology of women, because, like Zina, she affects derision of human passion, calls my amorous advances ‘idiotic’; but just you wait and before the day is up—— There you are!”

Vera Solomonovna rose and left the room in protest.

“There,” said Finkelstein, “you’ve disgusted Vera.”

“Disgusted her! Ha! ha! Don’t you believe it. Bluff! my dear fellow. All bluff. You don’t know women.”

“You’re a funny fellow, Boris Nikolàech. One can’t say you’re altogether stupid, but there are things you simply cannot understand. Impossible to penetrate yon marble brow of yours; it’s just like throwing a rubber ball at a stone wall: jumps back at you every time. And you don’t know women. To take my wife, for instance. She’s had enough of you already; she’s gone back to her bedroom in disgust.”

“To her bedroom?” questioned the Lieutenant in a derisive tone of voice.

“You don’t expect her to go to yours, do you!”

“Why.... Oh, well, really, my dear fellow, I can see that you don’t know women—although you’ve got a wife. Believe me, I know a thing or two about them. Wasn’t born yesterday. Disgusted! Ha, ha, ha! You wait till I finish my cigarette and retire to my bedroom. You may be sure she’s——”

“Boris Nikolàech,” said Finkelstein, looking at him tranquilly through the smoke from his cigar, “you are an optimist.”

And, looking dignified and prepossessing, he sauntered over to his study where his stock-exchange associates were already waiting for him to resume their game of cards.

“Just a moment ...” muttered the Lieutenant, “ ...finish my cigarette....”