A Hero of Our Time - Mikhail IUr'evich Lermontov [65]
Werner left in the full certainty that he had cautioned me. From his words, I noted that various nasty rumors regarding the princess and myself had spread in the town: Grushnitsky will receive his comeuppance!
June 10
It is already three days since I arrived in Kislovodsk. Every day I see Vera at the well and during the promenade. In the morning, upon waking, I sit in the garden that leads from our houses down to the well. The bracing mountain air has returned strength and color to her face. It is for good reason that the Narzan is called a mighty spring. The local residents confirm that the air of Kislovodsk disposes one toward love, and that all love affairs that begin somewhere in the foothills of Mount Mashuk have their denouements here. And it is true, everything here breathes seclusion; everything here is mysterious. The thick canopies of the linden avenues lean over a stream, which falls with foam and noise from rock to rock, cutting itself a path between the verdant mountains. The ravines, full of mist and silence, diverge like branches in all directions. The freshness of the aromatic air is burdened with the scents of the high southern grasses and the white acacia. And there is the constant sweet and soporific sound of the very cold streams, which meet at the bottom of the valley, chasing one another amicably, flinging themselves finally into the Podkumok River. On this side, the ravine is wider and turns into a green hollow, along which winds a dusty road. Every time I look at it, it seems to me that there is a carriage passing along it and that there is a rosy face looking out of its window. Lots of carriages do pass along this road, but that one hasn’t appeared yet. The slobodka behind the fortress is densely settled; evening lights in the restaurant built on the hill a few paces from my quarters are starting to twinkle through two rows of poplars. Noise and the ringing of glasses stretch late into the night.
Nowhere do people drink so much Kakhetian wine and mineral waters as here.
But there is a willing multitude
Who mix these two occupations,
I am not in their numbers16
Grushnitsky and his gang rage in the tavern every day and barely bow when they see me.
He arrived only yesterday but has already managed to argue with three old men, who tried to sit in the baths before him: misfortune definitely produces a warring spirit in him.
June 11
Finally they have arrived. I was sitting at the window when I heard the clatter of their carriage: my heart started . . . what was that? I couldn’t be in love. Yet I am so inanely composed that you might expect something like this of me.
I dined at their house. The Princess Ligovsky looks at me very affectionately and doesn’t leave the young princess’s side . . . not good! But to make up for it, Vera is jealous of the princess’s effect on me. To have attained such success! What a woman wouldn’t do to upset a rival! I remember one girl that fell in love with me because I loved another. There isn’t anything as paradoxical as a woman’s mind; it’s hard to convince a woman of anything, you have to lead them to convince themselves. The order of proof with which they destroy their caution is very original; to learn their dialect, you have to overturn all the rules of logic you learned at school. For example, this is the usual way:
This man loves me, but I am married: therefore I should not love him.
A woman’s way:
I should not love him for I am married; but he loves me, therefore . . .
Here: an ellipsis, for common sense has already fallen silent. And most of the speaking is done like this: by the tongue, then the eyes, and, following them, the heart, if it is able.
What would happen if a woman’s eyes were to fall on these diaries? “Slander!” she would scream with indignation.
Since poets started writing, and women have been reading them (and for this, profound gratitude is owed), women have been called angels so many times that, with heartfelt simplicity, they actually believe this compliment, forgetting that these are the