Читать книгу Marie Tarnowska - Annie Vivanti - Страница 10

For how many months was I ill? I do not know. Vassili, restless and idle, “carted” me and my medicines and my sufferings from Pegli to Genoa, from Genoa to Florence. He seemed to have forgotten that we had a home; he seemed to have forgotten that we had a child.

Our rooms at the hotel in Florence were bright with sunshine and with the frivolous gaiety of a graceful trio of Russian ladies—the Princess Dubinskaja, her sister Vera Vojatschek, and the fair-haired Olga Kralberg, who came to see us every day. But I felt lost and lonely, as if astray in the world. My mother had returned to Russia, and my vacant and aching heart invoked Vassili, who, alas! was never by my side.

“You must win him back,” said Olga Kralberg to me one day—she, whose fate it was on a not distant day to commit suicide for his sake. “Every man, especially if he is a husband, has—after some time—to be won back again.”

“That is sooner said than done,” I replied despondently. “To win a man is easy enough. But to win him back—”

“There are various ways of doing it,” she said. “Have you tried being very affectionate?”

“Yes, indeed,” said I.

“How did it answer?”

“He was bored to death.”

“Have you tried being cool and distant? Being, so to speak, a stranger to him?”

“Yes, I have.”

“And he?”

“He never even noticed that I was being a stranger to him. He was as happy and good-tempered as ever.”

Olga shook her head dejectedly. “Have you tried being hysterical?” she asked after a while.

I hesitated. “I think so,” I said at last. “But I do not quite know what you mean.”

“Well,” explained Olga sententiously, “with some men, who cannot bear healthy normal women, hysteria is a great success. Of course, it must be esthetic hysteria—you must try to preserve the plastic line through it all,” and Olga sketched with her thumb a vague painter's gesture in the air. “For example, you deluge yourself in strange perfumes. You trail about the house in weird clinging gowns. You faint away at the sight of certain shades of color—”

“What an absurd idea!” I exclaimed.

“Not at all. Not in the least,” said Olga. “On the contrary, it is very modern, very piquant to swoon away every time you see a certain shade of—of mauve, for instance.”

“But what if I don't see it?”

“Silly! You must see it. Give orders to a shop to send you ten yards of mauve silk. Open the parcel in your husband's presence. Then—then you totter; you fall down—but mind,” added Olga, “that you fall in a graceful, impressionist attitude. Like this.” And Olga illustrated her meaning in what appeared to me a very foolish posture.

“I think it ridiculous,” I said to her. And she was deeply offended.

“Good-by,” she said, pinning her hat on briskly and spitefully.

“No, no! Don't go away. Do not desert me,” I implored. “Try to suggest something else.”

Olga was mollified. After reflecting a few moments she remarked.

“Have you tried being a ray of sunshine to him?”

I lost patience with her. “What do you mean by a 'ray of sunshine'? You seem to be swayed by stock phrases, such as one reads in novels.”

This time Olga was not offended. She explained that in order to be a ray of sunshine in a man's life, one must appear before him gay, sparkling and radiant at all hours of the day.

“Always dress in the lightest of colors. Put a ribbon in your hair. When you hear his footsteps, run to meet him and throw your arms round his neck. When he goes out, toss a flower to him from the window. When he seems dull or silent, take your guitar and sing to him.”

“You know I don't play the guitar,” I said pettishly.

“That does not matter. What really counts is the singing. The atmosphere that surrounds him should be bright with unstudied gaiety. He ought to live, so to speak, in a whirlwind of sunshine!”

“Well, I will try,” I sighed, without much conviction.

I did try.

I dressed in the lightest of colors and I pinned a ribbon in my hair. When I heard his footstep, I ran to meet him and threw my arms round his neck.

“What is the matter?” he asked. “And what on earth have you got on your head? You look like a barmaid.”

To the best of my powers I was a whirlwind of sunshine; and as soon as I saw that he was dull and silent (and this occurred almost immediately) I said to myself that the moment was come for me to sing to him.

I sat down at the piano. I have not much ear, but a fine strong voice, even if not always quite in tune.

At the second bar Vassili got up, took his hat and left the house. I threw a flower to him from the window.

He did not come back for three days.