Annie Vivanti
Marie Tarnowska
III
I see the ensuing days as through a vague blue mist. I see myself reclining in an armchair, and my mother sitting beside me with her crochet-work. She is crocheting something of yellow wool. It is strange how the sight of that yellow wool hurts and repels me, but I cannot find words in which to express it, I seem unable to speak; and mother crochets on calmly, with quick white hands. I am conscious of a dull pain in the nape of my neck. Then I see Vassili come in; he is carrying an enormous cage in his hand; and Olga follows him, laughing and radiant. “Here he is! here he is!” cries Vassili triumphantly, putting the cage down beside me; and in it, to my horror, I see a parrot, a huge gray and scarlet creature, twisting a hard black tongue round and round as he clambers about the cage. I cry out in terror: “Why—why do they bring me things that frighten me?” And I burst into tears. Every one gazes at me in amazement; my mother bends tenderly over me: “But, my own darling, yesterday you said you wanted to have a parrot. Vassili has been all the way to Moscow to buy it for you.”
“No, no! it is not true! I never said I wanted a parrot! Take it away! It frightens me. And so does the yellow wool.” I hear myself weeping loudly; then everything is blotted out and vanishes—parrot, Vassili, yellow wool, Olga—nothing remains but my mother's sad and anxious face bending above me, dim and constant as the light of a lamp in a shadowy chapel.
When I was able to come down to breakfast for the first time, my father stood waiting for me, straight and solemn at the foot of the great staircase. He gave me his arm with much ceremony and led me to my place, where flowers lay in fragrant heaps round my plate. Every one embraced and complimented me and I was very happy.
“I feel as if I were a princess!” I cried, clapping my hands; and they all laughed except my father, who answered gravely:
“If it is your wish, you may become one. Prince Ivan has asked for your hand.”
“Ivan? Ivan Troubetzkoi?” All the gladness went out of my heart.
“Yes. And so has Katerinowitch,” exclaimed Olga, with a bitter smile; and I noticed that she looked pale and sad.
“Both Ivan and Katerinowitch? How extraordinary!” Then glancing at my mother, whose eyes were fixed upon her plate, I added jestingly, “Is that all? No one else?”
My pleasantry fell flat, for no one answered, and I saw my father knitting his brows. But my mother lifted her eyes for an instant and looked at me. In the blue light of that dear gaze I read my happiness!
But Olga was speaking. “Yes,” she said, “there is some one else. Vassili Tarnowsky has asked to marry you.” And she added, with a touch of bitterness: “I wonder what has possessed all three of them!”
Vassili! Vassili! Vassili! The name rang like a clarion in my ears. I should be Vassili's wife! I should be the Countess Tarnowska—the happiest woman in all this happy world. Every other girl on earth—poor luckless girls who could not marry Vassili—would envy me. On his arm I should pass proudly and serenely through life, rejoicing in his beauty, protected by his strength. Sheltered on his breast the storms would pass over my head, nor could sorrow ever touch me.
“I trust that your choice will fall on Troubetzkoi,” said my father.
“Or on Vassili,” cried Olga quickly.
I jumped up and embraced her. “It shall not be Katerinowitch, that I promise,” I whispered, kissing the little pink ear that nestled under her fair curls. “He is to be for you!”
Time was to fulfil this prophecy.
As I went round the table, and passed my mother—poor little nervous mother!—I laid my hand on her arm. I noticed that she was trembling all over. Then I summoned up courage and approached my father.
“Father, dear, if you want your little Mura to be happy, you must let her marry Vassili.”
“Never,” cried my father, striking the table with his fist. The soul of the ancient O'Rourke—a demoniacal Irish ancestor of ours whose memory always struck terror to our souls—had awakened in him. I saw Olga and my mother turn pale. Nevertheless I laughed and kissed him again. “If I do not marry Vassili, I shall die! And please, father, do not be the Terrible O'Rourke, for you are frightening mother!”
But papa, dominated by the atavistic influence of the O'Rourke, grew even more terrible; and mother was greatly frightened. She sat white and rigid, with scarcely fluttering breath; suddenly in her transparent eyes the pupils floated upward like two misty pale-blue half-moons; she was in the throes of one of her dreaded epileptic seizures.
Then they were all around her, helping her, loosening her dress, fanning her; while I stood aside trembling and woebegone, and the pains in the nape of my neck racked me anew.
I said to myself that my father was hard and wicked, that I should marry Vassili and carry mother off with me, ever so far away!
As for papa, he should only be allowed to see us once a year. At Christmas.
I have married Vassili.
········
I pretended to be seized with such convulsions that my poor dear mother, being at her wits' end, at last allowed me to run away with him.
Do I say “I pretended”? I am not sure that that is correct. At first the convulsions were certainly a mere pretense. I would say to myself: “Now I shall make myself have convulsions.” But as soon as I had begun I could not stop. After I had voluntarily gnashed my teeth they seemed to become locked as in a vice; my fists that I had purposely clenched would not reopen. My nails dug into the palms of my hands, and I could see the blood flowing down my wrists without being able to unclasp or relax my fingers.
Doctor Orlof, summoned in haste from Kieff, shook his head gravely.
“There are indications of epilepsy, due to the fall from the swing.”
“No, no, no!” I cried. “Not the swing! It is because of Vassili!”
My mother trembled and wept.
How cruel we are in our childhood! How we torture the mothers that adore us, even though we love them with all our hearts. And oh! the tragedy of not understanding this until it is too late, when we can never, never ask for their forgiveness, nor console them or atone to them again.
I married Vassili.
My father, more the Terrible O'Rourke than ever, at once refused to have anything to do with me. He denied me his kiss and his forgiveness. I was very unhappy.
“Oh, don't bother your head about that tiresome old man,” said Vassili, much annoyed by my tears.
As for my mother, she could only entreat Vassili to be kind and gentle with me.
“Take care of her, Vassili,” she implored. “I have given her to you lest she should die of a broken heart: but she is really too young to be any one's wife—she is but a child! I do not know whether you understand me. Remember she is not yet a woman. She is a child.”
“Yes, yes, yes,” said Vassili, without paying much attention. “That's all right. I shall tweak her nose if she is naughty.”
“And if I am good?” I asked, lifting ecstatic eyes to his handsome nonchalant face.
“If you are good you shall have sweets and kisses!” and he laughed, showing all his white teeth.
“Promise me, Vassili, that you will always sing my favorite song: 'Oh distant steppes, oh savage plains,' to me, and to no one else.”
“To you and to no one else,” said Vassili with mock solemnity. “Come then, Marie Tarnowska!” and he drew my arm under his, patting my hand on which the new nuptial ring shone in all its brightness.
“Marie Tarnowska!” What a beautiful name! I could have wished the whole world to know that name; I could have wished that every one seeing me should say: “Behold, behold Marie Tarnowska, happiest and most blessed among women.”
IV
On my wedding night, in the hotel at Kharkoff, I summoned the chambermaid. She knocked and entered. She was a pert, pretty creature, and after surveying me from head to foot she threw a rapid glance at Vassili. He was seated in an armchair, lighting a cigarette.
“What is your name?” he asked the girl.
“Rosalia, at your service, sir,” she replied.
“Very good, Rosalia,” said my husband. “This evening we shall do without you. Possibly in a day or two I may wish to see you again.”
The girl laughed, made a slight curtsey, and went out, closing the door behind her.
“But who is going to do my hair?” I asked, feeling very much out of countenance and shy at remaining alone with him.
“Never mind about your hair,” said Vassili. “Don't be so tedious. You're a little bore.” And he kissed me.
Then he sat down and smoked his cigarette, watching me out of narrowed eyelids as I wandered about the room in great trepidation and embarrassment. I was about to kneel down by the bedside to say my prayers, when he suddenly grasped my wrist and held it tightly.
“What are you doing now?” he inquired.
“I am going to say my prayers,” I replied.
“Don't bother about your prayers,” he said. “Try not to be such an awful little bore. Really you are quite insufferable.”
But I would not have missed my prayers for the world. At home prayers had always been a matter of great importance. Olga and I used to say them aloud in unison morning and evening. And now that Olga was far away I must say them alone. I buried my face in my hands and said them devoutly, with all my heart.
They were, I admit, numerous and long; and they were in many languages, for every nurse or governess that came to us in Otrada had taught us new ones; and Olga and I were afraid to leave any out, lest God should be offended; we were also rather doubtful as to which language He understood the best.
I had just come to an English prayer—
Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake…
(Here Olga and I used always to interpolate a short prayer of our own invention: “Please, dear God, do not on any account let us die to-night. Amen.”)—when Vassili interrupted me.
“Haven't you finished?” he cried, putting his arm round my neck. “You are very tiresome. You bore me to extinction.”
“You bore me!” That was the perpetual refrain of all his days. I always bored him. Perhaps it was not surprising. At seventeen one is not always clever and entertaining, especially outside the family circle. At home I had always been considered rather witty and intelligent, but to Vassili I was never anything but “a dreadful bore.”
When I caught sight of him pinching Rosalia's cheek and I burst into tears: “You are a fearful bore,” he said crossly. If I noticed the scent of musk or patchouli on his coat and ventured to question him about it—“You are an insufferable little bore,” would be all the answer I got. When he went out (taking the music of “My Savage Plains” with him) and stayed away all night, on his return next morning I sobbed out my anguish on his breast. “I must say you bore me to death,” he yawned.
And one day I heard that he had had a child by a German baroness.
At the sight of my paroxysm of despair he grew angry. “What does it matter to you, silly creature, since you have not got one yourself?” he exclaimed. “Wearisome little bore that you are; you can't even have a child.”
I was aghast. What—what did he mean? Why could I not—?
“No! no!” he shouted, with his handsome mouth rounded and open like those of the stone cherubs on the walls of his castle, “you will never have any children. You are not a woman. Your mother herself said so.” And the look which he flashed across my frail body cut me like a sword.
I fell fainting to the ground.
Then he became alarmed. He called everybody. He summoned the whole staff of the hotel. He sent for all the ladies he knew in Kharkoff (and they were many) imploring them all to save me, to recall me to life. When I came to myself the room was filled with women: there was Rosalia, and two Hungarian girls from the adjoining apartment, and there was also the German baroness, and little Julia Terlezkaja, the latest and fairest of my husband's conquests. All these graceful creatures were bending over my couch, while Vassili on his knees with his head buried in the coverlet was sobbing: “Save her! She is dead! I have killed her!”
I put out my hand and touched his hair.
“I am alive,” I said softly; and he threw himself upon me and kissed me. The women stood round us in a semi-circle, gay and graceful as the figures on a Gobelin tapestry.
“I love you,” Vassili was exclaiming; “I love you just as you are. I should hate you to be like everybody else.” And in French he added, looking at Madame Terlezkaja: “C'est très rigolo d'avoir une femme qui n'est pas une femme.”
I hid my face in the pillow, and wept; while the fair Terlezkaja, who seemed to be the kindest of them all, bent over and consoled me.
“Pay no heed to him,” she whispered. “I think he has been drinking a little.”
The door opened. A doctor, who had been sent for by the manager of the hotel, entered with a resolute authoritative air. At the sight of him the women disappeared like a flight of startled sparrows. Of course they took Vassili with them.
To the good old doctor I confided the secret which Vassili had disclosed to me and which was burning my heart.
“I want to have a child, a little child of my own!” I cried.
“Of course. Of course. So you shall,” said the old doctor, with a soothing smile. “There is no reason why you should not. You are a little anemic, that is all.”
He scribbled some prescriptions on his tablets.
“There. You will take all that. And you will go to Franzensbad. Within a year you will be asking me to act as godpapa.”
I took all he prescribed. But I did not go to Franzensbad. Vassili wanted to go to Petersburg, so, of course, it was to Petersburg we went.
The very first evening we were there a number of his friends came to call on him.
I remember, among the rest, a certain German Grand Duke, who, after showing me an infinite amount of attention, drew Vassili aside and spoke to him in undertones. I heard him mention the name of a famous restaurant and the words: “A jolly supper-party to-night—some ravishingly pretty tziganes....” There followed names of men and women whom I did not know, and my husband laughed loudly.
Then the Grand Duke turned to me, and bowing deeply and ceremoniously kissed my hand.
For an instant a frenzied impulse came over me to clutch that well-groomed head and cry: “Wicked man! Why are you trying to lure my husband from me?” But social conventions prevailed over this elementary instinct, and when the Grand Duke raised his patrician head he found me all amiability and smiles.
“She is indeed a bewitching creature!” I heard him mutter to Vassili. “Looks just like one of Botticelli's diaphanous angels. Well then, at eleven o'clock to-night, at the 'Hermitage.'”
Promptly at a quarter to eleven Vassili, sleek, trim and immaculate, kissed my cheek gaily and went out.
I was alone. Alone in the great drawing-room, gorgeous with lights and mirrors and gilded decorations. What was the good of being a bewitching creature? What was the good of looking like one of Botticelli's diaphanous angels?…
V
I rang for my maid, Katja, a good creature, ugly beyond words—and gladly chosen by me on that account—and I told her that she was to undress me for I was going to bed. While she was unfastening my dress I could hear her muttering: “If it were me, I should not go to bed. If it were me, I should put on my diamonds and my scarlet chiffon gown; I should take a good bottle of vitriol in my pocket, and go and see what they were up to.”
“Katja, what are you mumbling? Do you mean to say that you—that you think I ought to go—?”
“Of course,” she cried, and her small squinting eyes shot forth, to the right and left, fierce, divergent flashes of indignation. “Why should my lady not go?”
Why should I not, indeed? Had I not the right—nay, the duty—to follow Vassili? Had I not most solemnly promised so to do, in the little church on the steppes a year ago? “Follow him!” With what tremulous joy had I repeated after the priest those two words of tenacity and submission. Had they no application to the Hermitage restaurant?
“Perhaps I might venture to go,” I murmured, “but, Katja, do not other women always have rouge and powder to put on when they go out? I have nothing.”
“Nothing but your eighteen years, madame,” replied Katja.
She dressed me in the low-necked scarlet chiffon gown. She drew on my flame-colored stockings, and my crimson shoes. On my head she placed the diamond and ruby tiara, and about my shoulders she wound a red and gold scarf which looked like a snake of fire.
“Alas, Katja!” I sighed as I looked at myself in the mirror; “what would my mother say if she were to see me like this? What do I look like?”
“You look like a lighted torch,” said Katja.
I made her come with me in the troika, which sped swiftly and silently through the dim snow-covered streets. I was shaking with fear at the thought of Vassili. Katja was mumbling some prayers.
We drew up at the brilliant entrance of the restaurant.
“Oh, heavens, Katja! What will my husband say?”
“He will say that you are beautiful.”
How did I ever venture across that threshold of dazzling light? How was I able to ascend the red-carpeted stairs, preceded and followed by bows and smiles and whispers? At the head of the wide staircase, in front of a double-paneled door of white and gold, I paused with beating heart, almost unable to breathe. I could hear the gipsy-music inside, and women's voices and men's laughter and the tinkling of glasses.
An impassive head-waiter stood before me, calmly awaiting my orders.
“Tell”—I stammered—“tell—” as I thought of Vassili my courage failed me—“tell his Highness the Grand Duke that I wish to see him.”
Then I clung to the balustrade and waited. As the door opened and was quickly closed again, there came forth a puff of heat and sound which enwrapped me like a flame.
Almost immediately the door opened again and the Grand Duke appeared upon the threshold, his countenance still elated by recent laughter. He stared at me in astonishment, without recognition. “What—what can I do for you?” he asked. Then his eyes widened in limitless astonishment. “Upon my word! It is the Botticelli angel!”
I said “Yes,” and felt inclined to weep.
“Come in, come in!” he cried eagerly, taking me by the arm and leading me to the door.
A waiter threw it wide open. I had a dazzling vision of a table resplendent with crystal, silver, and flowers, and the bare jeweled shoulders of women.
“Tarnowsky!” called the Grand Duke from the threshold. “Fortunate among men! Behold—the most glorious of your conquests!”
Vassili had started to his feet and was looking at me with amazed and incredulous eyes. There was a deep silence. I felt as if I should die. Vassili came up to me. He took me brusquely by the hand, crushing my fingers in his iron clasp. “You are mad!” he said. Then he looked at me from head to foot—not with the gaze of a husband, nor yet with that of a lover, but with the cold curious scrutiny of the perfect connoisseur.
“Come,” he said at last, drawing me towards the others who were in a riot of laughter. “I have always told my friends that you were a chilling, lily-white flake of snow. You are not!” And he laughed. “You are a blazing little firebrand! Come in!”
Thenceforward my husband would always have me with him. My untutored adolescence was trailed from revelry to revelry, from banquet to orgy; my innocence swept into the maelstrom of a licentious life. I was forced to look into the depths of every depravity; to my lips was proffered every chalice of shame.
Oh, if as I stood trembling on the confines of maidenhood, some strong and tender hand had drawn me into safety, should not I have been like other women, those happy women who walk with lofty brows in the sunshine, august and ruthless in their purity?
But, alas! when with tardy and reluctant step I issued forth from my long childhood, a thousand cruel hands were thrust out to push me towards the abyss.
Oh, white pathway of innocence which knows no return! Oh, tenuous light of purity which, once quenched, kindles no more! Did I not grieve and mourn for you when I lost you before my twentieth year? Sadly, enviously, like some poor exile, I saw other girls of my age passing in blithe security by the side of their mothers, blushing at an eager word or at a daring glance. Alas! I felt that I was unworthy to kiss the hem of their skirts.
But bliss was to be vouchsafed to me. Redeeming and triumphant there came to me at last the Angel of Maternity. With proud humility I bore the little human flower fluttering in my breast. At every throb of life I felt myself swooning with joy—with the ineffable joy of my reconquered purity.
My mother was with me, and in the tender haven of her arms I found shelter for my meek and boundless ecstasy.
How is it possible, I asked myself, that there are women who dread this perfect happiness, who weep and suffer through these months fraught with rapturous two-fold life?
For me, I felt like a flowering plant in springtime, impelled by some potent influence towards its perfect blossoming. The whole of that blissful period seemed a sublime ascent to unalloyed felicity; everything enchanted me, from the awed and tremulous waiting to the final crowning consummation.
When at last the fragile infant—my son!—lay in my arms, he seemed to me sufficient to fill my entire life. I nursed him into ever-growing wonder and beauty. Day by day he seemed fairer, more entrancing, like a delicate flower in some fantastic lunar legend.
Oh, the wee groping hands against my face! The wilful little caprices, the cries like those of an angry dove! And the dimples on the elbows; the droll battle with the little cap always awry, and the joyous impatience of the tiny kicking feet!
Each day my mother and I invented new names for him—names of little flowers, names of little animals, nonsense-names made up of sweet senseless sounds.
I had no thought, I had no desire. Pale and pure I sat enthroned in the milk-white paradise of maternity.
