Later I learned that Vassili had given himself up to the authorities,
and that my grief-stricken mother had come to fetch our children and had
taken them with her to Otrada. To her and to my father they were the
source of much melancholy joy.
Thus did the old garden of my youth open again its shadowy pathways and
flowery lawns to the unconscious but already sorrow-touched childhood of
little Tioka and Tania--those tragic children whose father was in prison
and whose mother, far away from them, watched and suffered by the
sinister death-bed of a stranger. To me the two innocent, angelic
figures often came in my dreams; and I cried out to them with bitterest
tears: "Oh, my own children, my two loved ones, forgive your mother that
she does not forsake one who is dying for her sake. This very night,
perhaps, or to-morrow--soon, soon, alas!--his life will end. And with a
broken heart your mother will return to you."
But Bozevsky did not die that night. Nor the following day. Nor the day
after.
Fate had in store for him and for me a much more appalling doom. He
dragged his frightful death-agony through the interminable hours of a
hundred days and a hundred nights. He was doomed to trail his torment
from town to town, from surgeon to surgeon, from specialist to
charlatan. One after another, they would unbandage the white and
withered neck, probe the blue-edged wound, and then cover up again with
yellow gauze the horrifying cavity; leaving us to return, heart-stricken
and silent, to the luxurious hotels that housed our irremediable
despair.
About that time I heard that Vassili had been released on bail. Later on
he was acquitted by a jury in the distant city of Homel, on the ground
of justifiable homicide.
Perhaps it was a just verdict. But for him whom he had struck down--and
for me--what anguish, great Heavens! What lingering torture of
heart-breaking days and nights.
Ah, those nights, those appalling nights! We dreaded them as one dreads
some monstrous wild beast, lurking in wait to devour us. All day long we
thought only of the night. As soon as twilight drew near Bozevsky, lying
in his bed with his face towards the window, clutched my hand and would
not let it go.
"I am afraid," he would murmur. "I wish it were not night. If only it
were not night!"
"Nonsense, dearest," I would say, cheerfully. "It is quite early. It is
still broad daylight. Everybody is moving about. The whole world is
awake and out of doors."
But night, furtive and grim, crouched in the shadowy room, lurked in
dark corners, and then suddenly was upon us, black, silent, terrifying.
Round us the world lay asleep, and we two were awake and alone with our
terror.
Then began the never-ending question, ceaselessly repeated, reiterated
throughout the entire night:
"_What is the time?_"
It was only nine o'clock. It was half-past nine.... Ten... Half-past
ten... A quarter to eleven... Eleven o'clock... Five minutes past...
As soon as it was dawn, at about four o'clock, Bozevsky grew calm.
Silence fell, and he slept.
The last station of our calvary was at Yalta, in the Crimea. We had gone
there with a last up-flaming of hope. There were doctors there whom we
had not yet consulted. There was Ivanoff and the world-famed Bobros.
"Continue the same treatment," said the one.
"You must try never to move your head," said the other.
That was all.
And to our other tortures was added the martyrdom of complete
immobility.
"I want to turn my head," Bozevsky would say in the night.
"No, dearest, no. I implore you--"
"I must. I must turn it from one side to the other. If I stay like this
any longer I shall go mad!"
Then, with infinite precautions, with eyes staring and terror-filled,
like one who yields to an overwhelming temptation or performs some deed
of insane daring, Bozevsky would turn his sad face slowly round, and let
his cheek sink into the pillow.
His fair curls encircled with flaxen gaiety his spent and desolate face.