Dark Avenues / Темные аллеи. Книга для чтения на английском языке

Spinning around in his head there was still the cheerful nonsense with which he had driven onto the estate – “my uncle, the most honest fellow”[90 - my uncle, the most honest fellow: The opening line of the novel in verse Eugene Onegin (1823–31) by Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (1799–1837), where the eponymous hero is thinking of the dull life awaiting him as he travels to his sick uncle’s rural estate. (прим. перев.) «Мой дядя самых честных правил»] – but already there was something else too: there’s a woman for you!

Humming, he began to shave, wash and get changed, and he put on trousers with straps under the feet, thinking:

“Such women really do exist! And what would you give for the love of such a woman! And how with such beauty can you possibly be pushing old men and women around in wheelchairs!”

And absurd ideas came into his head: to go on and stay here for a month, for two, to enter in secret from everyone into friendship with her, intimacy, to arouse her love, then say: be my wife, I’m all yours and for ever.

Running down the stairs to his aunt and uncle – their rooms were downstairs – he thought:

“What rubbish does enter my head, though! It stands to reason[91 - it stands to reason – разумеется], you can stay here on some pretext or other… you can start unobtrusively paying court[92 - to pay court – ухаживать], pretend to be madly in love… But will you achieve anything? And even if you do, what next? How do you finish the story off? Really get married, do you?”

For about an hour he sat with his aunt and uncle in the latter’s huge study, with a huge writing desk, with a huge ottoman, covered with fabrics from Turkestan, with a rug on the wall above with crossed oriental weapons hanging all over it, with inlaid tables for smoking, and with a large photographic portrait in a rosewood frame under a little gold crown on the mantelpiece, on which was the free flourish, made with his own hand: Alexander[93 - Alexander: This could be Alexander II or his son, Alexander III (1845–94), who ruled Russia after his father’s assassination in 1881.