A little later my sister and I were walking along the street. I covered
her with the skirt of my overcoat; we hurried along through by-streets,
where there were no lamps, avoiding the passers-by, and it was like a
flight. She did not weep any more, but stared at me with dry eyes. It
was about twenty minutes' walk to Mikhokhov, whither I was taking her,
and in that short time we went over the whole of our lives, and talked
over everything, and considered the position and pondered....
We decided that we could not stay in the town, and that when I could get
some money, we would go to some other place. In some of the houses the
people were asleep already, and in others they were playing cards; we
hated those houses, were afraid of them, and we talked of the
fanaticism, callousness, and nullity of these respectable families,
these lovers of dramatic art whom we had frightened so much, and I
wondered how those stupid, cruel, slothful, dishonest people were better
than the drunken and superstitious peasants of Kurilovka, or how they
were better than animals, which also lose their heads when some accident
breaks the monotony of their lives, which are limited by their
instincts. What would happen to my sister if she stayed at home? What
moral torture would she have to undergo, talking to my father and
meeting acquaintances every day? I imagined it all and there came into
my memory people I had known who had been gradually dropped by their
friends and relations, and I remember the tortured dogs which had gone
mad, and sparrows plucked alive and thrown into the water--and a whole
long series of dull, protracted sufferings which I had seen going on in
the town since my childhood; and I could not conceive what the sixty
thousand inhabitants lived for, why they read the Bible, why they
prayed, why they skimmed books and magazines. What good was all that had
been written and said, if they were in the same spiritual darkness and
had the same hatred of freedom, as if they were living hundreds and
hundreds of years ago? The builder spends his time putting up houses all
over the town, and yet would go down to his grave saying "galdary" for
"gallery." And the sixty thousand inhabitants had read and heard of
truth and mercy and freedom for generations, but to the bitter end they
would go on lying from morning to night, tormenting one another, fearing
and hating freedom as a deadly enemy.
"And so, my fate is decided," said my sister when we reached home.
"After what has happened I can never go _there_ again. My God, how good
it is! I feel at peace."
She lay down at once. Tears shone on her eyelashes, but her expression
was happy. She slept soundly and softly, and it was clear that her heart
was easy and that she was at rest. For a long, long time she had not
slept so well.
So we began to live together. She was always singing and said she felt
very well, and I took back the books we had borrowed from the library
unread, because she gave up reading; she only wanted to dream and to
talk of the future. She would hum as she mended my clothes or helped
Karpovna with the cooking, or talk of her Vladimir, of his mind, and his
goodness, and his fine manners, and his extraordinary learning. And I
agreed with her, though I no longer liked the doctor. She wanted to
work, to be independent, and to live by herself, and she said she would
become a school-teacher or a nurse as soon as her health allowed, and
she would scrub the floors and do her own washing. She loved her unborn
baby passionately, and she knew already the colour of his eyes and the
shape of his hands and how he laughed. She liked to talk of his
upbringing, and since the best man on earth was Vladimir, all her ideas
were reduced to making the boy as charming as his father. There was no
end to her chatter, and everything she talked about filled her with a
lively joy. Sometimes I, too, rejoiced, though I knew not why.
She must have infected me with her dreaminess, for I, too, read nothing
and just dreamed. In the evenings, in spite of being tired, I used to
pace up and down the room with my hands in my pockets, talking about
Masha.
"When do you think she will return?" I used to ask my sister. "I think
she'll be back at Christmas. Not later. What is she doing there?"
"If she doesn't write to you, it means she must be coming soon."
"True," I would agree, though I knew very well that there was nothing to
make Masha return to our town.
I missed her very much, but I could not help deceiving myself and wanted
others to deceive me. My sister was longing for her doctor, I for Masha,
and we both laughed and talked and never saw that we were keeping
Karpovna from sleeping. She would lie on the stove and murmur:
"The samovar tinkled this morning. Tink-led! That bodes nobody any good,
my merry friends!"
Nobody came to the house except the postman who brought my sister
letters from the doctor, and Prokofyi, who used to come in sometimes in
the evening and glance secretly at my sister, and then go into the
kitchen and say:
"Every class has its ways, and if you're too proud to understand that,
the worse for you in this vale of tears."
He loved the expression--vale of tears. And--about Christmas time--when
I was going through the market, he called me into his shop, and without
giving me his hand, declared that he had some important business to
discuss. He was red in the face with the frost and with vodka; near him
by the counter stood Nicolka of the murderous face, holding a bloody
knife in his hand.
"I want to be blunt with you," began Prokofyi. "This business must not
happen because, as you know, people will neither forgive you nor us for
such a vale of tears. Mother, of course, is too dutiful to say anything
unpleasant to you herself, and tell you that your sister must go
somewhere else because of her condition, but I don't want it either,
because I do not approve of her behaviour."
I understood and left the shop. That very day my sister and I went to
Radish's. We had no money for a cab, so we went on foot; I carried a
bundle with all our belongings on my back, my sister had nothing in her
hands, and she was breathless and kept coughing and asking if we would
soon be there.