The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

“Don’t leave, Ivan Golovanych, let’s go to the dressing room there behind the wardrobes, she’ll never bring him there, and we can chat some more.”

I agreed, because, given Tatyana Yakovlevna’s talkativeness, I hoped to find out something useful for Grusha from her, and since Evgenia Semyonovna had sent me a little lodicolone bottle of rum to have with tea, but by then I was no longer drinking, I thought: “If I lace the blessed old woman’s tea with a bit of chat from this little bottle, maybe, in her goodness, she’ll let slip to me something she wouldn’t tell otherwise.”

We left the nursery and went to sit behind the wardrobes, and that little dressing room was so narrow it was more like a corridor with a door at the end, and that door gave directly onto the room where Evgenia Semyonovna was receiving the prince, and even right onto the sofa they were sitting on. In short, all that separated me from them was that closed door with its cloth curtain on the other side, so that I heard everything just like I was sitting in the same room with them.

As soon as he comes in, the prince says:

“Greetings, my old friend, tried and true!”

And she replies:

“Greetings, Prince! To what do I owe the pleasure?” And he to her:

“Of that we shall speak later, but first let me greet you and allow me to kiss you on your little head”—and I hear him give her a smacking kiss on the head and ask about their daughter. Evgenia Semyonovna replies that she is at home.

“Is she well?”

“Quite well,” she says.

“And grown, most likely?”

Evgenia Semyonovna laughs and replies:

“Naturally, she’s grown.”

The prince asks:

“You’ll show her to me, I hope?”

“Why not?” she replies. “With pleasure”—and she gets up, goes to the nursery, and calls for this same nanny, Tatyana Yakovlevna, with whom I’m having tea.

“Nanny,” she says, “bring Lyudochka to the prince.”

Tatyana Yakovlevna spits, puts the saucer down on the table, and says:

“Oh, dash it all! You just sit down, in the right appetite for talking with a man, and they’re sure to interrupt you, they never let you enjoy anything the way you’d like to!” And she quickly covers me with her mistress’s skirts, which are hanging on the walls, and says: “Sit here”—and she herself goes out with the girl, and I’m left there alone behind the wardrobes, and suddenly I hear the prince kiss the girl a couple of times and dandle her on his knee and say:

“My anfan, would you like to go for a ride in the carriage?”

The girl makes no reply. He says to Evgenia Semyonovna:

“Zhe voo pree, please let her and the nanny go out for a ride in my carriage.”

She also says something to him in French, what for and poorkwa, but he says something like “It’s absolutely necessary,” and so they exchange words some three times, and then Evgenia Semyonovna reluctantly says to the nanny:

“Get her dressed and go for a ride.”

They left, and these two remained alone, with me there listening in secret, because I couldn’t come out from behind the wardrobes, and I thought to myself: “My time has come, and now I’ll really discover if anyone has bad thoughts against Grusha.”

XVI

Having come to this decision to eavesdrop, I didn’t content myself with that, but wanted to see what I could with my own eyes, and I succeeded in that as well: I quietly climbed onto a stool, and at once found a little chink above the door and put my greedy eye to it. I see the prince sitting on the sofa, and the lady standing by the window and probably looking at her child being put in the carriage.

The carriage drives off; she turns and says:

“Well, Prince, I’ve done everything as you wanted: tell me now, what business do you have with me?”

And he replies:

“Ah, why talk of business! … It won’t run away. Come here to me, first: we’ll sit next to each other and talk nicely, like the old times, like we used to.”

The lady stands there, hands behind her back, leaning against the window, and says nothing. She is frowning. The prince asks:

“What’s the matter? I beg you: we must talk.”

She obeys, goes to him; seeing that, he at once jokes again:

“Well, let’s sit, let’s sit like the old times”—and he goes to embrace her, but she pushes him away and says:

“Business, Prince, talk business: what can I do for you?”

“What’s this?” asks the prince. “You mean I should just lay it out openly, without any preamble?”

“Of course,” she says, “explain straight out what the business is. You and I are close acquaintances—there’s no need to stand on ceremony.”

“I need money,” says the prince.

She says nothing and looks at him.

“Not a lot of money,” he says.

“How much?”

“Just twenty thousand this time.”