Two camp beds were made up in the room leading to Nikolka's, behind two back-to-back bookcases.
In Professor Turbin's family the room was known as the library. #
As the lights went out in the library, in Nikolka's room and in the dining-room, a dark red streak of light crawled out of Elena's bedroom and into the dining-room through a narrow crack in the door.
The light pained her, so she had draped her bedside lamp with a dark red theater-cloak.
Once Elena used to drive to an evening at the theater in that cloak, once when her arms, her furs and her lips had smelled of perfume, her face had been delicately powdered - and when under the hood of her cloak Elena had looked like Liza in The Queen of Spades.
But in the past year the cloak had turned threadbare with uncanny rapidity, the folds grown creased and stained and the ribbons shabby.
Still looking like Liza in The Queen of Spades, auburn-haired Elena now sat on the turned-down edge of her bed in a neglige, her hands folded in her lap.
Her bare feet were buried deep in the fur of a well-worn old bearskin rug.
Her brief intoxication had gone completely, and now deep sadness enveloped her like a black cloak.
From the next room, muffled by the bookshelf that had been placed across the closed door, came the faint whistle of Nikolka's breathing and Shervinsky's bold, confident snore.
Dead silence from Mysh-Iaevsky and Karas in the library.
Alone, with the light shining on her nightgown and on the two black, blank windows, Elena talked to herself without constraint, sometimes half-aloud, sometimes whispering with lips that scarcely moved.
'He's gone . . .'
Muttering, she screwed up her dry eyes reflectively.
She could not understand her own thoughts.
He had gone, and at a time like this.
But then he was an extremely level-headed man and he had done the right thing by leaving ...
It was surely for the best.
'But at a time like this . . .' Elena whispered, and sighed deeply.
'What sort of man is he?' In her way she had loved him and even grown attached to him.
Now in the solitude of this room, beside these black windows, so funereal, she suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of depression.
Yet neither at this moment, nor for the whole eighteen months that she had lived with this man had there been in her heart of hearts that essential feeling without which no marriage can survive - not even such a brilliant match as theirs, between the beautiful, red-haired, golden Elena and a career officer of the general staff, a marriage with theater-cloaks, with perfume and spurs, unencumbered by children.
Married to a sensible, careful Baltic German of the general staff.
And yet -what was he really like?
What was that vital ingredient, whose lack had created the emptiness in the depth of Elena's soul?
'I know, I know what it is', said Elena to herself aloud. 'There's no respect.
Do you realise, Sergei? I have never felt any respect for you', she announced meaningfully to her cloak, raising an admonitory finger.
She was immediately appalled at her loneliness, and longed for him to be there at that moment.
He had gone.
And her brothers had kissed him goodbye.
Did they really have to do that?
But for God's sake, what am I saying?
What else should they have done?
Held back?
Of course not.
Well, maybe it was better that he shouldn't be here at such a difficult time and he was better gone, but they couldn't have refused to wish him Godspeed.
Of course not.
Let him go.
The fact was that although they had gone through the motions of embracing him, in the depth of their hearts they hated him.
God, yes-they did.
All this time you've been lying to yourself and yet when you stop to think for a moment, it's obvious - they hate him.
Nikolka still has some remnants of kindness and generosity toward him, but Alexei . . .
And yet that's not quite true either.
Alexei is kind at heart too, yet he somehow hates him more.
Oh my God, what am I saying?
Sergei, what am I saying about you?
Suddenly we're cut off . . .
He's gone and here am I . . .
'My husband,' she said with a sigh, and began to unbutton her neglige, 'my husband . . .'
Red and glowing, her cloak listened intently, then asked: