The Lady with the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896-1904

The Bride

I

It was ten o’clock in the evening and a full moon was shining over the garden. At the Shumins’ the service held at Grandmother’s request had just finished. Nadya had gone out into the garden for a moment and now she could see them laying the table for supper, with Grandmother fussing about in her splendid silk dress. Father Andrey, a cathedral dean, was chatting to Nina Ivanovna, Nadya’s mother. In the window, in the evening light, her mother looked somehow very young. Father Andrey’s son (also called Andrey) was standing nearby listening attentively.

The garden was quiet and cool, and deep, restful shadows lay on the earth. Somewhere, far, far away, probably on the other side of town, she could hear frogs croaking. May, beautiful May, was all around! She could breathe deeply and she liked to imagine that somewhere else, beneath the sky, above the trees, far beyond the town, in the fields and forests, spring was unfolding its own secret life, so lovely, rich and sacred, beyond the understanding of weak, sinful man. And she felt rather like crying.

Nadya was twenty-three now. Since the age of sixteen she had longed passionately for marriage and now, at last, she was engaged to that Andrey Andreich whom she could see through the window. She liked him, the wedding was fixed for 7 July, and yet she felt no joy, slept badly and was miserable. Through an open window she could hear people rushing about, knives clattering, a door banging on its block and pulley in the basement where the kitchen was. There was a smell of roast turkey and pickled cherries. She felt that life would go on for ever like this, never changing.

Just then someone came out of the house and stopped on the steps. It was Aleksandr Timofeich, or Sasha for short: he was one of the guests who had arrived from Moscow about ten days before. Once, a long time ago, a distant relative of Grandmother’s by the name of Marya Petrovna – an impoverished, widowed gentlewoman, small, thin and in poor health – used to call on her and be given money. Sasha was her son. People said for some mysterious reason that he was a fine artist, and when his mother died Grandmother sent him off to the Komissarov School in Moscow, for the good of her soul. About two years later he transferred to the Fine Arts Institute, where he stayed almost fifteen years, just managing in the end to qualify in architecture. But he did not practise architecture and worked for a firm of lithographers in Moscow instead. Seriously ill most of the time, he would come and stay at Grandmother’s nearly every summer to rest and recuperate.

He was wearing a buttoned-up frock-coat and shabby canvas trousers that were ragged at the bottoms. His shirt had not been ironed and on the whole he looked somewhat grubby. Although very thin, with large eyes, long gaunt fingers, a beard and swarthy complexion, he was still a handsome man. He was like one of the family with the Shumins and felt quite at home with them. The room in which he stayed had been known as Sasha’s for years.

As he stood in the porch he caught sight of Nadya and went up to her.

‘Nice here, isn’t it?’ he remarked.

‘Why, of course. You ought to stay until the autumn.’

‘Yes, I might have to. Yes, I may well stay until September.’

For no reason he laughed and sat down next to her.

‘Here I am sitting watching Mother,’ Nadya said. ‘She looks so young from here!’ After a brief silence she added, ‘Mother does have her weak points. Despite that, she’s a remarkable woman.’

‘Yes, she’s a good woman,’ Sasha agreed. ‘In her own way your mother’s very kind and charming of course, but… how can I put it?… early this morning I popped into the kitchen and four of the servants were asleep on the bare floor. They don’t have beds; instead of bedding all they have is rags, stench, bugs, cockroaches. It’s all exactly the same as twenty years ago – nothing’s changed. Well, don’t blame your grandmother, it’s not her fault. But your mother speaks French, doesn’t she? She takes part in amateur dramatics. You would have thought that she would understand.’

When Sasha spoke he would point two long, emaciated fingers towards the person he was talking to.

‘When you’re not used to it here it all seems a bit primitive,’ he went on. ‘No one does a damned thing! Your mother spends the whole day running around enjoying herself like some duchess. Your grandmother doesn’t do anything either, nor do you. The same goes for your fiancé Andrey.’

Nadya had heard all this last year and the year before that, she thought. She knew that Sasha just could not think in any other way. This was amusing once; now it rather irritated her.

‘That’s all old hat, so boring,’ she said, getting up. ‘You might try and think of something new.’

He laughed as he too got up and both of them walked towards the house. Tall, pretty, with a good figure, she looked so healthy, so attractive next to him. She sensed this and felt sorry for him and somewhat embarrassed. ‘You’re always going too far!’ she said. ‘Just now you said something about my Andrey, for example. But you don’t know him, do you?’

‘“My” Andrey! Blow your Andrey! It’s your youth I feel sorry for.’

As they entered the large dining-room, everyone was already sitting down to supper. Grandmother, known as ‘Grannie’ by everyone in that house, was a very stout, ugly woman with bushy eyebrows and whiskers. She spoke loudly and it was plain from her voice and manner who was head of the house. She owned rows of stalls in the market, and this old house with its columns and garden, but every morning she asked God to spare her from bankruptcy, crying as she prayed. And then there was her daughter-in-law Nina Ivanovna (Nadya’s mother), a fair-haired, tightly corseted woman with pincenez, and diamonds on every finger. There was Father Andrey, a skinny toothless old man, who always seemed about to tell some very funny story. And there was his son Andrey Andreich, Nadya’s fiancé: he was stout, handsome, with curly hair, and he looked like an actor or an artist. All three of them were discussing hypnotism.

‘One week here with me and you’ll be better,’ Grannie told Sasha. ‘But you must eat more – what do you look like!’ she sighed. ‘Really awful, a true Prodigal Son.’

‘He wasted his substance with riotous living,’¹ Father Andrey observed slowly, with laughter in his eyes. ‘He filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat.’

‘I do love that dear old father of mine,’ Andrey said, touching his father’s shoulder. ‘He’s wonderful – so kind.’

No one said a word. Sasha suddenly burst out laughing and pressed a serviette to his mouth.

‘So you believe in hypnotism?’ Father Andrey asked Nina Ivanovna.

‘I wouldn’t venture to assert, of course, that I believe in it,’ Nina Ivanovna replied, assuming a deadly serious, almost grim expression. ‘But I must admit that nature is full of mysterious, incomprehensible things.’

‘I agree entirely, only I would add that religion significantly reduces the domain of the Mysterious.’

A large, extremely plump turkey was served. Father Andrey and Nina Ivanovna carried on talking. The diamonds sparkled on Iavnovna’s fingers, then tears sparkled in her eyes. She was excited.

‘I daren’t even argue with you,’ she said. ‘Still, you must agree that life has so many insoluble puzzles.’

‘Not one, may I assure you.’

After supper Andrey Andreich played the violin and Nina Ivanovna accompanied him on the piano. Ten years ago he had taken a degree in modern languages, but he had never worked anywhere and had no fixed occupation apart from occasionally participating in charity concerts. In town he was called ‘The Musician’.

They all listened in silence as Andrey Andreich played. The samovar quietly bubbled on the table – only Sasha drank tea. Then, when twelve o’clock struck, a violin string suddenly snapped. Everyone burst out laughing, rushed around and began to say farewell.

After she had seen her fiancé out, Nadya went upstairs, where she and her mother lived (Grandmother occupied the lower floor). Downstairs, in the dining-room, they had started putting the lights out, but Sasha still sat there drinking his tea. He always took a long time over it, Moscow style, and would drink seven glasses at one sitting. For a long while after she had undressed and gone to bed, Nadya could hear the servants clearing away downstairs and Grannie getting cross. Finally, everything was quiet, except for the occasional sound of Sasha’s deep cough from his room downstairs.

II

It must have been about two in the morning when Nadya woke up. Dawn was breaking. Somewhere in the distance a nightwatchman was banging away. She did not feel sleepy. The bed was uncomfortable – much too soft. As she used to do on May nights in the past she sat up in bed to take stock. Her thoughts were just the same as last night’s – monotonous, barren, obsessive thoughts about Andrey Andreich courting her and proposing, about her accepting him and then gradually coming to appreciate the true worth of that kind, clever man. But now, with the wedding less than a month away, she began to feel scared for some reason, uneasy, as if something vaguely unpleasant lay in store for her.

Once again she heard the watchman lazily beating his stick.

Through the large old window she could see the garden and then, a little further away, the richly blossoming lilac bushes, sleepy and lifeless in the cold. A dense white mist was drifting towards the lilac, wanting to envelop it. Drowsy crows cawed in far-off trees.

‘God, why am I so miserable?’

Perhaps every bride felt like this before her wedding – who knows? Or was it Sasha’s influence? But hadn’t he been saying the same old thing for years now, as if reciting from a book? He sounded so naïve, so peculiar. Then why couldn’t she get Sasha out of her head? Why?

The watchman had long stopped banging. Birds began to chirp beneath the window, and in the garden the mist disappeared and everything around was illumined in the smiling spring sunlight. Soon the whole garden, warmed and caressed by the sun, came to life, and dewdrops glittered on leaves like diamonds. That morning the old, long-neglected garden seemed so young, so decked out.

Grannie was already awake. Sasha was producing his deep rough cough. She could hear them downstairs putting on the samovar and moving the chairs.

The hours passed slowly. Nadya had been up and taken her garden stroll long ago, but still the morning dragged on.

Then Nina Ivanovna came out with a glass of mineral water, her eyes full of tears. She practised spiritualism and homoeopathy, read a great deal and liked talking about the doubts that were plaguing her – all this (so she thought) had some profound, mysterious meaning. Nadya kissed her mother and walked along with her.

‘What were you crying about, Mother?’ she asked.

‘Last night I started reading a story about an old man and his daughter. The old man was working somewhere and his boss fell in love with his daughter. I didn’t finish it, but there was one part you couldn’t help crying over.’ Nina Ivanovna took a sip from her glass. ‘I remembered it this morning and started crying again.’

‘I’ve been feeling so miserable recently,’ Nadya said. ‘Why can’t I sleep at night?’

‘I don’t know, my dearest. Whenever I can’t sleep I close my eyes ever so tight – like this – and imagine Anna Karenina walking and talking. Or I think of something from history, from the ancient world.’ Nadya felt that her mother did not and could not understand her – this she felt for the first time in her life, and it really frightened her. She wanted to hide, so she went up to her room.

They had lunch at two. As it was a Wednesday – a fast day – Grandmother was served borsch and then bream with buckwheat.

To tease Grandmother, Sasha ate both the borsch and some meat broth of his own concoction. All through lunch he joked, but his clumsy, moralizing witticisms misfired. When he lifted those long, emaciated, corpse-like fingers before launching some joke and you could see how very ill he was – not long for this world perhaps – the effect was far from funny, and you felt so sorry you could have cried.

After lunch Grandmother went to her room to lie down. Nina Ivanovna played the piano for a short while and then she too left.

‘Oh, my dear Nadya,’ Sasha said, embarking on his customary after-lunch speech. ‘If you would only, if you would only… listen to me…’

She was deep in an antique armchair, eyes closed, while he slowly paced the room.

‘If you would only go away and study!’ he said. ‘The only interesting people are the educated and idealistic, they’re the ones we need. The more there are of these people, the quicker God’s kingdom will come on earth – agreed? Very gradually, not one stone of your town will be left on another, everything will be turned upside down, everything will change as if by magic. And then there will be magnificent, huge houses, wonderful gardens, splendid fountains, remarkable people. But that’s not the most important part of it. The main thing is, the mob, as we know it, as it exists now – that evil will be no more, since every man will have something to believe in, everyone will know what the purpose of his life is and no one will seek support from the masses. My dear, darling girl, get away from here! Show everyone that you’re sick of this vegetating, dull, shameful existence! At least show yourself!’

‘I can’t, Sasha. I’m getting married.’

‘That’s a fat lot of good! You can’t mean it!’

They went out into the garden and walked a little.

‘You can say what you like, my dear,’ Sasha continued, ‘but you must try and realize how squalid and immoral this idle existence of yours is. You must see that! If you, your mother and that Grannie of yours, for example, never do a stroke of work, it means others are doing the work for you, you’re ruining the lives of people you’ve never even met. Isn’t that squalid, dishonourable?’

Nadya felt like saying, ‘Yes, that’s the truth.’ She wanted to tell him that she understood, but her eyes filled with tears, and she suddenly grew quiet, hunched her shoulders and went to her room.

Andrey Andreich arrived in the late afternoon and gave his usual lengthy performance on the violin. On the whole he was rather taciturn and perhaps he liked playing the violin because then he didn’t have to talk. After ten o’clock, when he was preparing to leave and had already put on his coat, he embraced Nadya, hungrily kissing her face, shoulders and hands. ‘My dear beautiful darling!’ he muttered. ‘Oh, how happy I am! I’m going mad with ecstasy!’

Nadya thought that she had heard all this long, long ago – or that she had read it somewhere, in an old, dog-eared, long-abandoned novel.

Sasha was sitting at the dining-room table drinking tea with the saucer balanced on his five long fingers. Grannie was playing patience, Nina Ivanovna was reading. The icon-lamp sputtered and everything seemed serene and happy. Nadya said goodnight and went up to her room, got into bed and fell asleep immediately. However, as on the previous night, she awoke at the first glimmer of dawn. She wasn’t sleepy and felt uneasy and depressed. Her head on her knees, she sat thinking about her fiancé, about the wedding. For some reason she recalled that her mother hadn’t loved her husband (he had died), that now she had nothing, being completely dependent on Grannie, Nina’s mother-in-law. However hard she thought about it Nadya just could not understand why, up to now, she had looked on her mother as someone special, unusual. Why hadn’t she realized that she was just a very simple, ordinary, unhappy sort of woman?

Downstairs, Sasha couldn’t sleep either. She could hear him coughing. He was a strange, naïve person, thought Nadya, and there was something absurd in those dreams of his, in all those marvellous gardens and extraordinary fountains. But somehow, in that very naïvety – even in his absurdity – there was so much that was fine that the mere thought of going away to study was enough to send a cold shiver through her heart and breast, and flood her whole being with joy and rapture.

‘But it’s best not to think about it,’ she whispered. ‘I mustn’t think about it.’

Far off she could hear the night watchman’s knocking.

III

In the middle of June, Sasha suddenly felt bored and prepared to leave for Moscow.

‘I just can’t live in this town,’ he said gloomily. ‘There’s no running water, no drains. And I’m a bit squeamish about eating meals here – that kitchen’s positively filthy!’

‘Now, wait a minute, Prodigal Son,’ Grandmother urged, whispering for some reason. ‘The wedding’s on the seventh!’

‘I don’t want to stay any longer.’

‘But I thought you’d be here until September!’

‘Well, I don’t want to stay now. I have work to do.’

Summer had turned out cold and damp, the trees were soaking wet and the whole garden looked miserable and uninviting: it really did make you feel like working. In the upstairs and downstairs rooms unfamiliar women’s voices rang out. The sewing-machine in Grandmother’s room rattled away – they were hurrying to get the trousseau finished. There were no fewer than six fur coats and the cheapest was costing three hundred roubles, according to Grandmother. All this fuss irritated Sasha, who stayed in his room getting very cross. All the same they persuaded him to stay on and he gave his word not to leave before 1 July.

Time flew. On St Peter’s Day,² after lunch, Andrey Andreich went to Moscow Street with Nadya to have another look at the house that had been rented and prepared for the young couple a long time before. There were two floors, but so far only the upper one had been decorated. There was a glittering floor painted to look like parquet in the lounge, bentwood chairs, a grand piano and a violin-stand. The room smelt of paint. A large oil painting of a naked lady with a broken-handled, violet-coloured vase by her side hung in its gilt frame on the wall.

‘Marvellous!’ Andrey Andreich said with a respectful sigh. ‘It’s a Shishmachevsky.’³

After that came a sitting-room, with a round table, sofa and armchairs upholstered in a bright blue material. A large photograph of Father Andrey, in priest’s hat and wearing decorations, hung over the sofa. Then they entered the dining-room, with its sideboard, and then the bedroom. Here in the half-light, two beds stood side by side, giving the impression that the room had been furnished with the intention that everything there would always be perfect and could never be otherwise. Andrey Andreich led Nadya through the whole house, keeping his arm around her waist all the time. But she felt weak and guilty, hating all those rooms, beds and armchairs, and nauseated by that naked lady. Now she clearly understood that she no longer loved Andrey Andreich and that perhaps she never had. But how could she put it into words, whom could she tell and what good would it do? This was something she did not and could not understand, although she had thought about it for days and nights on end. He was holding her round the waist, talking to her so affectionately, so modestly – he was happy walking around his new house. But all she saw was vulgarity, stupid, fatuous, intolerable vulgarity, and that arm round her waist seemed as hard and cold as an iron hoop. Every minute she was on the verge of running away, sobbing, throwing herself out of the window. Andrey Andreich led her to the bathroom, where he placed his hand on a tap set in the wall – and suddenly water flowed.

‘What do you think of that?’ he said, laughing. ‘I had a two-hundred-gallon tank put in the loft. Now you and I shall have water.’

They strolled around the yard and then went out into the street, where they took a cab. Thick clouds of dust blew about, and it looked like rain.

‘Don’t you feel cold?’ Andrey Andreich asked, screwing up his eyes from the dust.

She did not reply.

‘Do you remember how Sasha told me off yesterday for doing nothing?’ he asked after a short silence. ‘Well, he’s absolutely right! I never do a thing, I just can’t. Why is it, my dear? Why does the mere thought of pinning a cockade on my hat and entering government service repel me so much? Why do I feel so edgy when I see a lawyer, a Latin teacher or a local councillor? Oh, Russia, Russia! What a lot of useless idlers you carry on your shoulders! My dear, long-suffering native land, there’s so many like me you have to tolerate!’

He was trying to turn the fact that he did nothing into a general truth, seeing it as a sign of the times.

‘When we’re married,’ he continued, ‘we’ll both go into the country and we’ll work! We’ll buy a small plot of land with a garden, near a river, we’ll slave away and observe the life all around us. Oh, that will be so wonderful!’

He took off his hat and his hair streamed in the wind. As she listened she thought, ‘Good God, I want to go back home!’

They were almost back at the house when they overtook Father Andrey.

‘There’s Father!’ Andrey Andreich said, joyfully waving his hat. ‘I’m so fond of my old man, I really am,’ he said as he paid the cab-driver. ‘He’s such a kind old boy.’

Nadya entered the house feeling angry and unwell. She thought about the guests she would have to entertain all evening – she would have to smile, listen to that violin and all sorts of rubbish, and talk of nothing except that wedding.

Impressive and splendid in her silk dress, Grandmother was sitting by the samovar. She looked haughty, as she invariably did to her guests. Father Andrey came in, smiling his crafty smile.

‘I have the pleasure and inestimable satisfaction of seeing you in good health,’ he told Grandmother, and it was hard to tell if this was meant seriously or as a joke.

IV

The wind beat against the windows and roof. There was a whistling noise and the hobgoblin in the stove sang its song, plaintively, mournfully. It was past midnight. Everyone in the house had gone to bed, but no one slept and Nadya fancied she could hear someone playing the violin downstairs. Then there was a sharp bang – a shutter must have been torn off its hinges. A minute later Nina Ivanovna entered in her nightdress, with a candle.

‘Nadya, what was that bang?’ she asked.

With her hair done up in a single plait and smiling timidly, her mother looked older, uglier and shorter on that stormy night. Nadya recalled how, not long ago, she had looked on her mother as an extraordinary woman and had listened proudly to her every word. But now she could not remember those words: everything that came to mind was so feeble and useless.

Suddenly, several deep voices began droning in the stove and she could even make out the words, ‘O-oh! Good Go-od!’ Nadya sat up in bed, suddenly clutched her head and burst out sobbing.

‘Dearest Mother,’ she sobbed, ‘if only you knew what’s happening to me! I beg you, implore you, let me go away from here. Please!’

‘But where?’ Nina Ivanovna asked, not understanding. ‘Where to?’

Nadya wept for a long time, and could not say one word. ‘Please let me leave this town!’ she said at last. ‘There can’t be any wedding, there shan’t be any wedding, so there! I don’t love that man and I can’t bear talking about him.’

‘No, my darling, no,’ Nina Ivanovna said quickly, absolutely horrified. ‘Please calm down. You’re not yourself at the moment, it will pass. These things happen. You’ve probably had a little argument with Andrey, but love’s not complete without a quarrel.’

‘Please leave me alone, Mother. Please!’ sobbed Nadya.

‘Yes,’ Nina Ivanovna said after a brief silence. ‘Not long ago you were a child, just a little girl, and now you’re going to be married. This transmutation of matter is constantly taking place in nature. Without even noticing it, you’ll be a mother yourself, then an old lady – and then you’ll have a stubborn little daughter like I have.’

‘My sweet darling, you are clever, but you’re unhappy,’ Nadya said. ‘You’re very unhappy, but why say such nasty things? In heaven’s name why?’

Nina Ivanovna wanted to speak, but she was unable to utter one word. Sobbing, she went to her room. Those deep voices began droning in the stove again and Nadya suddenly felt terrified. She leapt out of bed and dashed to her mother’s room. Nina Ivanovna was lying under a light blue quilt, book in hand; her eyes were filled with tears.

‘Mother, please hear what I have to say!’ Nadya said. ‘Now think and try to see my point of view. Just look how petty and degrading our lives are. My eyes have been opened, I can see everything clearly now. What’s so special about Andrey? He’s not very clever, is he, Mother? Heavens, can’t you see that he’s stupid!’

Nina Ivanovna sat up abruptly. ‘You and your grandmother are torturing me,’ she sobbed. ‘I want some life… some life!’ she repeated, striking herself twice on the chest with her fist. ‘Give me my freedom. I’m still young, I want some life, but you two have made an old woman out of me.’

She wept bitterly, lay down and curled up under the quilt – she seemed so small, pathetic, stupid. Nadya went to her room, dressed, and sat by the window to wait for morning. All night long she sat there brooding, while someone seemed to be banging the shutter from outside and whistling.

In the morning Grandmother complained that the wind had blown all the apples off the trees during the night and broken an old plum tree. Everything was so grey, dull and cheerless, it seemed dark enough for lighting the lamps. Everyone complained of the cold, and the rain lashed the windows. After her morning tea, Nadya went to Sasha’s room. Without a word she knelt in the corner by his armchair and covered her face in her hands.

‘What’s the matter?’ Sasha asked.

‘I can’t stand it any more,’ she said. ‘I just don’t understand how I could ever have lived in this place. It’s beyond me. I despise my fiancé, I despise myself and I despise this idle existence.’

‘It’s all right now,’ Sasha said, not yet realizing what was wrong. ‘It’s all right. Everything’s fine.’

For a minute, Sasha looked at her in amazement. Finally he understood and was as happy as a little boy. He waved his arms and delightedly performed a tapdance in his slippers.

‘Wonderful!’ he said, rubbing his hands. ‘God, that’s wonderful!’

Like one enchanted, her large eyes full of love, she looked at him unblinking, expecting him to tell her something vitally, immensely important there and then. He had not told her anything yet, but she felt that a new, boundless world that she had never known was opening up before her. She watched him, full of expectation and ready for anything – even death.

‘I’m leaving tomorrow,’ he said after a moment’s thought, ‘and you can come to the station, so that it looks as if you’re seeing me off. I’ll put your luggage in my trunk and get your ticket. When the departure bell rings, on you get and off we go. Come with me as far as Moscow, then travel on to St Petersburg on your own. Do you have a passport?’⁴

‘Yes.’

‘You won’t be sorry, I swear it. You won’t have any regrets,’ Sasha said enthusiastically. ‘You’ll start your studies and then it’s all in the hands of fate. Drastically alter your way of life and then everything else will change too. The most important thing is to make a completely fresh start, the rest doesn’t matter. So, we’ll leave tomorrow then?’

‘Oh yes, for God’s sake yes!’

Nadya felt very agitated, more depressed than ever before – and now there was the prospect of going through sheer mental hell until the time came to leave. But the moment she went upstairs and lay on her bed she fell asleep. And she slept soundly, right until the evening, and there was a smile on her tear-stained face.

V

A cab had been ordered. With her hat and coat on, Nadya went upstairs for one more look at her mother, at all that had been hers. In her own room she stood by the bed – still warm – looked around and then went to her mother’s room without making a sound. Nina Ivanovna was asleep and it was quiet there. Nadya kissed her mother, smoothed her hair and stood still for a couple of minutes. Then she slowly went downstairs.

It was pelting with rain. The cab’s top was up and the driver was standing near the porch, soaking wet.

‘There won’t be enough room for you, Nadya,’ Grandmother said when the servants started putting the luggage in. ‘Fancy seeing someone off in this weather! You should stay at home! Heavens, just look at that rain!’

Nadya wanted to say something, but she couldn’t. Sasha helped her to sit down, covered her legs with a rug and sat beside her.

‘Good luck! God bless!’ Grandmother shouted from the porch. ‘Mind you write to us from Moscow, Sasha.’

‘Of course. Cheerio, Grannie.’

‘May God protect you!’

‘What lousy weather,’ Sasha said.

Only now did Nadya begin to cry. Only now did she realize that she was actually leaving – even when she had said goodbye to Grandmother and looked at her mother she still hadn’t believed it. Farewell, dear old town! Suddenly she remembered everything: Andrey, his father, the new house, the naked lady with the vase. None of these things frightened or oppressed her any more – it all seemed so mindless and trivial, and was receding ever further into the past. When they climbed into the carriage and the train moved off, all that past existence which had seemed so large, so serious, now dwindled into insignificance, and a vast, broad future opened out before her, a future she had hardly dreamt of. The rain beat against the carriage windows and all she could see was green fields, with glimpses of telegraph poles and birds on the wires. Suddenly she gasped for joy: she remembered that she was travelling to freedom, that she was going to study – it was exactly the same as running away to join the Cossacks, as it was called long, long ago. She laughed, she wept, she prayed.

‘Don’t worry!’ Sasha said, grinning. ‘Everything’s going to be all right!’

VI

Autumn passed, winter followed. Nadya felt very homesick. Every day she thought about Mother and Grandmother, and about Sasha. The letters from home were calm and affectionate and it seemed that all had been forgiven and forgotten. After the May examinations she went home feeling healthy and cheerful, stopping at Moscow on the way to see Sasha. He looked just the same as last summer: bearded, hair dishevelled, with the same frock-coat and canvas trousers, the same big, handsome eyes. But he looked ill and worn out, and he had aged, grown thinner and was always coughing. Somehow he struck Nadya as dull, provincial.

‘Good God, Nadya’s here!’ he said, laughing cheerfully. ‘My dear little darling!’

They sat in the smoky printing-room with its suffocating, overwhelming smell of Indian ink and paint. Then they went to his room, also full of the smell of stale tobacco, and with saliva stains. On the table, next to a cold samovar, lay a broken plate and a piece of dark paper. Both table and floor were covered with dead flies. Everything showed what a slipshod existence Sasha led – he was living any old how, with a profound contempt for creature comforts. If someone had spoken to him about his personal happiness, his private life, about someone being in love with him, he wouldn’t have understood – he would have just laughed.

‘It’s all right, everything’s turned out nicely,’ Nadya said hurriedly. ‘Last autumn Mother came to St Petersburg to see me. She told me that Grandmother isn’t angry, but she keeps going to my room and making the sign of the cross over the walls.’

Sasha looked at her cheerfully, but he kept coughing and spoke in a cracked voice. Nadya watched him closely, unable to tell whether he really was seriously ill or if she was imagining it.

‘Dear Sasha, you really are ill, aren’t you?’ she asked.

‘No, it’s nothing. I’m ill, but not terribly…’

‘Good God,’ Nadya said, deeply disturbed. ‘Why don’t you go and see a doctor, why don’t you look after your health? My dear, sweet Sasha!’ The tears spurted from her eyes. For some strange reason, Andrey, that naked lady with the vase, her entire past which now seemed as remote as her childhood – all this loomed in her imagination now. She wept because Sasha did not seem as abreast of things, as intellectual, as interesting as last year.

‘Dear Sasha, you are very, very ill. I would do anything in the world to stop you being so pale and thin. I owe you so much. You can’t imagine how much you’ve done for me, my good Sasha! Really, you’re my very nearest and dearest now.’

They sat talking for a while. But now, after that winter she had spent in St Petersburg, everything about Sasha – his words, his smile, his whole presence – seemed outmoded, old-fashioned, obsolete and lifeless.

‘I’m going down to the Volga the day after tomorrow,’ Sasha said, ‘and then I’ll be taking the fermented mare’s milk cure – drinking koumiss.⁵ A friend of mine and his wife are coming with me. The wife’s quite amazing. I’ve been trying to win her over and persuade her to go and study. I want her life to be transformed.’

After their talk they went to the station. Sasha treated her to tea and some apples. As he stood there smiling and waving his handkerchief while the train pulled out, one could tell just by looking at his legs that he was desperately ill and did not have long to live.

Nadya arrived at her home town at noon. As she drove from the station, the streets seemed very wide, but the houses small and squat. No one was about, except for a German piano-tuner in his brown coat. All the houses seemed covered in dust. Grandmother, who was really quite ancient now and as plump and ugly as ever, flung her arms round Nadya and wept for a long time, pressing her face to her shoulder and unable to tear herself away. Nina Ivanovna also looked a great deal older and had deteriorated considerably. She had a hunched-up look, but was still as tightly corseted as before and diamonds still sparkled on her fingers.

‘My darling!’ she exclaimed, trembling all over. ‘My darling!’

They sat down, silently weeping. Grandmother and Mother plainly sensed that the past had gone for ever, that nothing could bring it back. No longer did they have any position in society, reputation, the right to entertain guests. It was rather like when, in the midst of a life without cares, the police raid the house suddenly one night and the master turns out to be an embezzler and forger – then it’s goodbye for ever to any carefree, untroubled existence!

Nadya went upstairs and saw that same bed, those same windows with their simple white curtains, that same cheerful, noisy garden bathed in sunlight. She touched her table, sat down and pondered. Then she ate a fine lunch and drank tea with delicious rich cream. But something was missing, however – the rooms seemed empty and the ceilings low. That night, when she went to bed and pulled up the blankets, it was somehow rather funny lying in that warm, very soft bed again.

Nina Ivanovna came in for a moment and sat down guiltily, timidly glancing around her.

‘Well, how are you, Nadya?’ she asked after a brief silence. ‘Are you happy? Very happy?’

‘Yes I am, Mother.’

Nina Ivanovna stood up and made the sign of the cross over Nadya and the windows.

‘As you see, I’ve become religious. You know, I’m studying philosophy now and I think a great deal. Many things have become as clear as daylight now. Filter your whole life through a prism – that’s the most important thing.’

‘Tell me, Mother, how’s Grandmother’s health these days?’

‘Not too bad, it seems. After you left with Sasha and your telegram arrived, Grandmother collapsed when she read it. She lay for three days without moving. Then she kept praying and crying. But she’s all right now.’

She stood up and paced the room.

That knocking could be heard again – it was the night watchman.

‘Your whole life must be filtered through a prism, that’s what’s most important,’ she said. ‘In other words, one’s perception of life must be broken down into its simplest elements, like the seven primary colours, and each element must be studied separately.’

Whatever else Nina Ivanovna said, Nadya didn’t hear. And she didn’t hear her leave either, as she was soon fast asleep.

May passed, June began. Nadya had grown used to that house again. Grandmother fussed over the samovar, heaving deep sighs, and Nina Ivanovna talked about her philosophy in the evenings. She was still in the ignominious position of hanger-on in that household and had to turn to Grandmother for every twenty-copeck piece. The house was full of flies and the ceilings seemed to get lower and lower. Grannie and Nina Ivanovna never went out into the street, for fear of meeting Father Andrey, or Andrey his son. Nadya would walk around the garden, down the street, look at the houses, the grey fences. Everything in that town struck her as ancient, obsolete – either it was awaiting its own demise or perhaps some fresh beginning. Oh, if only that bright new life would come quickly, then one could face one’s destiny boldly, cheerful and free in the knowledge that one was right! That life would come, sooner or later. Surely the time would come when not a trace would remain of Grandmother’s house, where four servants were forced to live in one filthy basement room – it would be forgotten, erased from the memory. The only distraction for Nadya was the small boys from next door. Whenever she strolled in the garden they would bang on the fence, laugh and taunt her with the words, ‘And she thought she was going to get married, she did!’

A letter came from Sasha – from Saratov.⁶ In that sprightly, dancing hand of his he wrote that his trip on the Volga had been a huge success, but that he hadn’t been well in Saratov, had lost his voice and had been in hospital for two weeks. Nadya understood what this meant and felt a deep foreboding that was very similar to absolute certainty. But her forebodings and thoughts about Sasha did not trouble her as much as before, and this she found disagreeable. She passionately wanted a full life and to go to St Petersburg again, and her friendship with Sasha seemed a thing of the far distant past, even though she still cherished it. She lay awake the whole night and next morning sat by the window listening. And she did hear voices down below – Grandmother, highly agitated, was asking one question after another.

Then someone began to cry. When Nadya went downstairs she saw Grandmother standing in a corner praying, her face tear-stained. On the table lay a telegram.

Nadya paced the room for a long time listening to Grandmother crying, then she picked up the telegram and read it. The news was that yesterday morning Aleksandr Timofeich (or Sasha for short) had died of tuberculosis in Saratov.

Grandmother and Nina Ivanovna went to church to arrange a prayer service, while Nadya kept pacing the house, thinking things over. She saw quite clearly that her life had been turned upside down, as Sasha had wanted, that she was a stranger in this place, unwanted, and that there was nothing in fact that she needed from it. She saw how her whole past had been torn away, had vanished as if burnt and the ashes scattered in the wind.

She went to Sasha’s room and stood there for a while.

‘Goodbye, dear Sasha!’ she thought, and before her there opened up a new, full and rich life. As yet vague and mysterious, this life beckoned and lured her.

She went upstairs to pack and next morning said goodbye to her family. In a lively, cheerful mood she left that town – for ever, so she thought.