‘Lady with a Little Dog’ translated by Harvey Pitcher

The Promenade at Yalta, c. 1900, from a tourist brochure
(Click on image to magnify)

Word went round that a newcomer had turned up on the Promenade: a lady with a little

dog. Dmitrii Dmitrich Gurov had already spent a fortnight in Yalta and become used to its

ways, and he too had begun taking an interest in newcomers. From his seat in Vernet’s

Pavilion, he watched the young lady walk the length of the Promenade. She was not very

tall, she had fair hair and was wearing a beret. A white Pomeranian dog ran along behind

her.

After that he came across her several times a day, in the Gardens or in the Square. She

was strolling along alone, always wearing the same beret and with the white Pom. No one

knew who she was and they called her simply ‘the lady with the little dog’.

‘If she’s here without a husband and without friends,’ Gurov reasoned to himself, ‘it

wouldn’t be a waste of time to get to know her.’

He was still under forty, but he already had a daughter of twelve and two schoolboy

sons. He had been married off early, when he was still in his second year at university, and

now his wife seemed half as old again as he was. She was a tall woman, with dark

eyebrows, erect, imposing and forthright, and called herself ‘a thinking person’. She read a

great deal, didn’t use the hard sign in correspondence, and called her husband Demetrius

instead of Dmitrii, but privately he considered her shallow, narrow-minded and inelegant,

he was scared of her and did not like spending time at home. He had begun deceiving her

long ago and did so frequently, which was probably why he almost always referred to

women disparagingly, and if they were mentioned in his presence, he would call them:

‘The lower breed!’

He felt he’d learned enough from bitter experience to call them whatever he liked, but

nevertheless without ‘the lower breed’ he could not have survived for even a couple of

days. In men’s company he was bored and ill at ease, with them he was cold and

uncommunicative, but among women he felt relaxed and knew what to say to them and

how to behave; and he even found it easy to be silent with them. In his outward

appearance, his character and the whole of his nature, there was something attractive,

something elusive, that predisposed women towards him and enticed them. He was

conscious of this and some kind of force also attracted him towards them.

Repeated experience, indeed bitter experience, had long ago taught him that every

liaison, which to begin with offered such a pleasant diversion in life and might be seen as a

nice easy adventure, was bound to escalate with respectable people (especially Muscovites,

so ponderous and indecisive) into a whole problem, of extreme complexity, and the

situation would eventually become oppressive. But he had only to meet an interesting

woman and this experience would somehow drop out of his memory and he wanted to live,

and everything seemed so simple and amusing.

One evening, then, he was dining early in the Gardens when the lady in the beret came

in and walked over unhurriedly to the next table. Her expression, how she walked, her

dress and her coiffure, told him she was a respectable married woman on her own in Yalta

for the first time, and she was bored… The stories one heard about morals being loose here

were largely untrue, he despised them and knew that most of the stories were made up by

people who would gladly have sinned if they had known how to; but when the lady sat

down at the next table three paces from him, he was reminded of those stories of easy

conquests and trips to the mountains, and the tempting thought of a brief fleeting

attachment, an affair with an unknown woman, whose name and surname you didn’t

know, suddenly took possession of him.

He softly beckoned the Pom over to his table, and when the dog came, wagged his

finger at him. The Pom growled. Gurov wagged his finger a second time.

The lady glanced at him and immediately looked down.

‘He doesn’t bite,’ she said and blushed.

‘May I give him a bone?’, and when she nodded in agreement, he asked amiably:

‘Have you been in Yalta long, I wonder?’

‘Four or five days.’

‘And I’m already whiling away my second week.’

There was a short silence.

‘Time passes quickly, but it’s so boring here,’ she said, without looking at him.

‘That’s just the done thing, to say it’s boring in Yalta. A fellow from some distant town

in the provinces doesn’t find his life there boring, but arrive here and it’s nothing but “Oh,

it’s so boring in Yalta! It’s so dusty”. Anyone would think he’d just come from the Riviera.’

She laughed. Then they both went on eating in silence, like strangers; but after dinner

they went off together – and there began the light-hearted conversation of two people who

were at ease and happy, and didn’t mind where they went to and what they talked about.

As they strolled along, they talked about the strange light on the sea: the water was a soft

warm lilac colour, and the moon cast a golden band across it. They talked about how close

it was after the warm day. Gurov told her he was a Muscovite, an arts graduate but

worked in a bank, at one time he’d trained to become a singer in a private opera company

but had given it up, in Moscow he owned two houses… And from her he learned that she’d

grown up in St Petersburg but been married in S., where she’d been living for the past two

years, that she’d be spending another month or so in Yalta and her husband might be

coming to join her, as he also wanted a break. She was at a complete loss to explain where

her husband worked – was it in the provincial government or the provincial regional

council – and she too found this amusing. Gurov also learned that her name was Anna

Sergeyevna.

Later, in his hotel room, he thought about her and how next day she would probably

meet him. It was bound to happen. As he got ready for bed, he called to mind that only a

very short time ago she’d been at boarding school and studying, just as his own daughter

was doing now, and he recalled how timid and awkward she’d been when laughing and

talking with a stranger – it must have been the first time in her life she’d been on her own,

in a situation where she was being followed and looked at and talked to with one secret

intention that she could not fail to divine. He also called to mind her slender, fragile neck,

her beautiful grey eyes.

‘One can’t help feeling a bit sorry for her all the same,’ he thought and began to drop

off.

A week had gone by since their first meeting. It was a public holiday. Indoors it was airless,

but in the swirling dust outside hats were being blown off. All day you felt thirsty and

Gurov kept going in to the Pavilion and offering Anna Sergeyevna a fruit cordial or ice

cream. There was no escaping the heat.

In the evening, when it had quietened down a little, they walked along to the pier to

watch the steamer arrive. Many people were strolling around on the landing-stage: they

had gathered to meet someone and were holding bouquets. Here two features of Yalta’s

smart crowd stood out distinctly: the elderly ladies were dressed like young ones and there

were lots of generals.

On account of the choppy sea, the steamer did not arrive until after sunset, and before

mooring at the pier it spent a long time turning round. Anna Sergeyevna looked

through her lorgnette at the steamer and its passengers, as if searching for people she

knew, and when she addressed Gurov, her eyes were shining. She talked a lot, asked

abrupt questions and immediately forgot what she’d asked about; then she lost her

lorgnette in the crowd.

The smart crowd had dispersed, there was no one around, and the wind had died down

completely, but Gurov and Anna Sergeyevna went on standing there, as if waiting to see if

anyone else would disembark. Anna Sergeyevna was silent now, smelling her flowers and

not looking at Gurov.

‘The weather’s got a bit better in the evening,’ he said. ‘Where shall we go next? How

about a drive somewhere?’

She didn’t reply.

Then he looked at her intently and suddenly embraced her and kissed her on the lips,

breathing in the moist scent of the flowers, and straight away he looked round nervously:

had anyone noticed?

‘Let’s go to your place,’ he said quietly. And they both hurried off.

Her hotel room was airless and smelt of the perfume she had bought at the Japanese

Shop. Looking at her now, Gurov thought: ‘What encounters one does have in life!’ From

his past he retained the memory of carefree, good-hearted women, cheerful lovers who

were grateful to him for even a very brief happiness; and of others, like his wife for

example, who loved insincerely and with lots of needless talk, affectedly and with hysteria,

their expression seeming to say that this was not love or passion, but something more

significant; and of two or three very beautiful cold women, whose faces would suddenly be

lit with a predatory expression, a wilful desire to take, to snatch from life more than life

could offer, and these were women past their prime, capricious, unreflecting, powerful,

unintelligent women, and when Gurov grew cool towards them, their beauty aroused in

him feelings of hatred, and the lace on their underwear seemed to him then like the scales

of a lizard.

But here there was still that same timidity and awkwardness of inexperienced youth,

an uneasy feeling; and she gave an impression of distractedness, as if someone had

suddenly knocked on the door. Anna Sergeyevna, this ‘lady with a little dog’, had reacted

to what had happened in a particular kind of way, very seriously, as if she’d fallen from

grace – or so it seemed, and this was strange and inappropriate. Her features drooped and

faded, loosened hair hung down sadly on either side of her face, and she struck a pose of

thoughtful despondency, like the sinner in an old-style painting.

‘It’s wrong,’ she said. ‘You’ll be the first to despise me now.’

On the table in her room stood a water-melon. Gurov cut himself a slice and began to

eat it without hurrying. At least half an hour went by in silence.

Anna Sergeyevna was a touching sight, she had about her the purity of a naïve,

respectable woman who had seen little of life; the single candle burning on the table

scarcely lit up her face, but her distress was unmistakable.

‘Why should I cease to respect you?’ Gurov asked. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying.’

‘May God forgive me!’ she said and her eyes filled with tears. ‘This is terribly wrong.’

‘You seem to be making excuses for yourself.’

‘Excuses? I’m a bad low woman, I despise myself, excuses don’t come into it. It’s not

my husband I’ve deceived, but myself. And not only now, I’ve been deluding myself for a

long time. My husband may be a good honest man, but he’s nothing but a lackey! I don’t

know what kind of work he does there, but what I do know is – he’s a lackey. I was twenty

when I married him, I was tormented by curiosity, I wanted something better, life must be

different from this, I said to myself, it must be. I wanted to have a life! A life, a real life… I

was burning up with curiosity… You won’t understand this but I swear to God, I couldn’t

control myself, something was happening to me, I couldn’t be held back, I told my

husband I was ill and came down here… And here I’ve been walking about all the time in a

kind of daze, like a mad person… and now I’ve become a cheap bad woman and everyone

has the right to despise me.’

Gurov had become bored listening, he was irritated by the naïve tone and this

confession, so unexpected and inappropriate; and but for the tears in her eyes, one might

have thought she was joking or playing a part.

‘I don’t understand,’ he said quietly, ‘what is it you want?’

She buried her face in his chest and pressed herself against him.

‘Believe me, believe me,’ she said. ‘I implore you. I like everything in life to be pure

and honest, I find sin abhorrent, I don’t know myself why I’m acting like this. The simple

folk say, the Devil tempted me. That’s true of me now, I’ve been tempted by the Devil.’

‘That’s enough now…’ he murmured.

He looked into her unblinking, frightened eyes, kissed her, spoke soft kind words, and

little by little she calmed down and her cheerfulness returned; they both began laughing.

When they went out later, the Promenade was completely deserted and the town with

its cypresses looked completely dead, but the sea was still pounding noisily against the

shore, while on the waves a single launch was rocking to and fro, a lamp on it glimmering

drowsily.

They found a cab and set off for Oreanda.

‘ I learned your surname just now down in the lobby,’ Gurov said. ‘The board says von

Diederitz. Is your husband German?’

‘No, I think his grandfather was German, but he’s Russian Orthodox.’

At Oreanda they sat on a bench near the church and looked down in silence at the sea.

Yalta was barely visible through the morning mist and white clouds hung motionless on

the mountain peaks. Not a leaf was stirring on the trees, cicadas chirped, and the

monotonous boom of the sea from down below spoke of peace and the eternal sleep that

awaits us. It was booming like that down there before Yalta or Oreanda even existed, it is

booming now, and it will go on booming with the same muffled indifference after we have

gone. And in this permanency, this complete indifference to the life and death of each one

of us, there lies concealed, perhaps, a pledge of our eternal salvation, of the continuing

movement of life on earth, of continuing perfection. Sitting alongside a young woman who

looked so beautiful in the dawn light, soothed and spellbound by these magical

surroundings of sea and mountains, of clouds and open sky, Gurov reflected on how

beautiful everything in the world really was when you stopped to think about it, everything

except our own thoughts and actions when we lose sight of the higher aims of existence

and our human dignity.

Someone came up to them – a watchman, probably – took a look and walked off. And

this detail struck them as very mysterious, and beautiful also. They watched the steamer

arriving from Theodosia, lit by the sunrise, its lights already extinguished.

‘There’s dew on the grass,’ Anna Sergeyevna said after a silence.

‘Yes, time to be getting back.’

They returned to the town.

Every day after that they met at midday on the Promenade, lunched and dined

together, went for walks and admired the sea. She complained of sleeping badly and

palpitations, and kept asking exactly the same questions, worried now by jealousy and now

by fear that he didn’t respect her enough. And frequently in the Square or the Gardens,

when there was no one around, he would suddenly draw her to him and kiss her

passionately. The complete idleness, these kisses in broad daylight looking round

anxiously to see if anyone was watching, the heat, the smell of the sea, and the constant

flitting before his eyes of idle, smart, well-fed people, seemed to rejuvenate him; he told

Anna Sergeyevna how beautiful and alluring she was, he could not restrain his passion,

and did not leave her side for a moment, whereas she often became thoughtful and asked

him to admit that he didn’t respect her and didn’t love her in the least, but simply saw her

as a cheap woman. Almost every evening when it was getting late, they went for a drive

somewhere beyond the town, to Oreanda or the waterfall; and the outing went off well, on

each occasion without fail they came away with impressions of beauty and grandeur.

They were expecting the husband to arrive, but a letter came from him to say that his

eyes had become very painful and begging his wife to return home as soon as possible.

Anna Sergeyevna lost no time.

‘It’s a good thing I’m leaving,’ she said to Gurov. ‘It was meant to happen.’

She hired a carriage and he accompanied her. The journey lasted a whole day. After

she’d taken her seat on the express and the second bell rang, she said:

‘Let me have one more look at you… One more. That’s right.’

She wasn’t crying, but was sad, as if unwell, and her face was trembling.

‘I’ll think of you…remember you,’ she was saying. ‘The Lord bless you and keep you.

Don’t think ill of me. We’re saying goodbye forever, that’s as it should be, we ought never

to have met in the first place. God be with you, then.’

The train went off quickly, its lights soon disappeared, and a minute later it was out of

earshot, as if everything had deliberately conspired to bring this sweet oblivion, this

madness, to an end as soon as possible. Standing alone on the platform and peering into

the far darkness, Gurov could hear the sound of the crickets and the humming of the

telegraph wires, and felt as if he had just woken up. This had been another incident or

adventure in his life, he thought, and it too had come to an end, and all that was left now

was a memory… He felt moved and sad, and experienced a slight feeling of remorse; this

young woman, whom he would never see again, hadn’t after all been happy with him; he’d

been kind to her and affectionate, but all the same, in his attitude to her, his tone and his

embraces there’d been a slight touch of mockery, the rather coarse condescension of a

happy man who was also nearly twice her age. She had kept calling him good, unusual and

exalted, so clearly she had not seen him as he really was and that meant he’d involuntarily

deceived her…

Here at the station autumn was already in the air, the evening was cool.

‘Time for me too to head north,’ Gurov thought as he walked off the platform. ‘High

time!’

(To be continued)

SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS

‘This meticulous yet nimble book is bound to remain the definitive account of Calderon’s life’ Charlotte Jones, The Times Literary Supplement

‘The effort of detection, it must be said, was worth it. The biography is a delight to read.’ Emeritus Professor Laurence Brockliss, The London Magazine

‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian

‘This comprehensive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography, which the author describes as a “story” rather than an academic biography…’ Michael Pursglove, East-West Review

‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter

‘The book is written with great assurance and the reader always feels in safe hands. I liked the idea of it being a story and I read it the same way I would read a novel.’ Harvey Pitcher, writer

‘Presents the Edwardian age, and Calderon in particular, as new and forward-looking.’ Emeritus Professor Michael Alexander, in Trinity College, Oxford, Report 2017-18

A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.

A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.