The Noise of Time Read Online Free PDF Page B

it was worse than that: he was a hysteric. Where did such a temperament come from? Not from his father; nor from his mother. Well, there was no escaping one’s temperament. That too was part of one’s destiny.
    He knew, in his mind, what his ideal of love was —
    But the lift had passed the third floor, and then the fourth, and was now stopping in front of him. He picked up his case, the doors opened, and a man he didn’t know came out whistling ‘The Song of the Counterplan’. Faced with its composer, he broke off in mid-phrase.
    He knew, in his mind, what his ideal of love was. It was fully expressed in that Maupassant short story about the young garrison commander of a fortress town on the Mediterranean coast. Antibes, that was it. Anyway, the officer used to go walking in the woods outside the town, where he kept running into the wife of a local businessman, Monsieur Parisse. Naturally enough, he fell in love with her. The woman repeatedly declined his attentions until the day she let him know that her husband would be away on an overnight trip. An assignation was arranged, but at the last minute the wife received a telegram: her husband’s business had concluded early, and he would be home that evening. The garrison commander, mad with passion, feigned a military emergency and ordered the town’s gates to be closed until the next morning. The returning husband was driven away at bayonet point and obliged to spend the night in the waiting room of Antibes railway station. All so that the officer could enjoy his few hours of love.
    True, he could not imagine himself in charge of a fortress, not even a tumbledown Ottoman gateway in a sleepy Black Sea spa town. But the principle applied. This was how you should love – without fear, without barriers, without thought for the morrow. And then, afterwards, without regret.
    Fine words. Fine sentiments. Yet such behaviour was beyond him. He could imagine a young Lieutenant Tukhachevsky pulling it off, had he ever been a garrison commander. His own case of mad passion … well, it would make a different kind of story. He had been on tour with Gauk – a good enough conductor, but a bourgeois through and through. They were in Odessa. This was a couple of years before he and Nita married. At the time he was still trying to make Tanya jealous. Nita as well, probably. After a good dinner, he had come back to the bar of the London Hotel and picked up two girls. Or perhaps they had picked him up. At any rate, they had joined his table. They were both very pretty, and he was immediately attracted to the one called Rozaliya. They had talked of art and literature while he fondled her buttocks. He drove them home in a horse-drawn carriage and the friend looked away while he touched Rozaliya all over. He was in love, that much was clear to him. The two women had arranged to take a steamer to Batumi the next day, and he went to see them off. But the girls never got beyond the pier, where Rozaliya’s friend was arrested for being a professional prostitute.
    This had come as a surprise to him. At the same time, he felt such a terrible love for Rozochka. He did things like banging his head against the wall, and tearing at his hair; just like a character in a bad novel. Gauk warned him severely against the two women, saying that they were both prostitutes and terrible bitches. But this only increased his excitement – it was all such fun. So much fun that he’d nearly got married to Rozochka. Except that when they got to the registry office in Odessa he realised he’d left his identity documents back at the hotel. And then, somehow – he couldn’t even recall why or how – it had all come to an end with him running away in pouring rain at three o’clock in the morning from a boat which had just docked at Sukhumi. What had all that been about?
    But the point was, he didn’t regret any of it. No barriers, no thought for the morrow. And how come he had nearly married a professional