Several years passed by. My aunt was dead; I had left Moscow and settled
in Petersburg. Fustov too had moved to Petersburg. He had entered the
department of the Ministry of Finance, but we rarely met and I saw
nothing much in him then. An official like every one else, and nothing
more! If he is still living and not married, he is, most likely,
unchanged to this day; he carves and carpenters and uses dumb-bells, and
is as much a lady-killer as ever, and sketches Napoleon in a blue
uniform in the albums of his lady friends. It happened that I had to go
to Moscow on business. In Moscow I learned, with considerable surprise,
that the fortunes of my former acquaintance, Mr. Ratsch, had taken an
adverse turn. His wife had, indeed, presented him with twins, two boys,
whom as a true Russian he had christened Briacheslav and Viacheslav, but
his house had been burnt down, he had been forced to retire from his
position, and worst of all, his eldest son, Viktor, had become
practically a permanent inmate of the debtors' prison. During my stay in
Moscow, among a company at a friendly gathering, I chanced to hear an
allusion made to Susanna, and a most slighting, most insulting allusion!
I did all I could to defend the memory of the unhappy girl, to whom fate
had denied even the charity of oblivion, but my arguments did not make
much impression on my audience. One of them, a young student poet, was,
however, a little moved by my words. He sent me next day a poem, which I
have forgotten, but which ended in the following four lines:
'Her tomb lies cold, forlorn, but even death
Her gentle spirit's memory cannot save
From the sly voice of slander whispering on,
Withering the flowers on her forsaken tomb....'
I read these lines and unconsciously sank into musing. Susanna's image
rose before me; once more I seemed to see the frozen window in my room;
I recalled that evening and the blustering snowstorm, and those words,
those sobs.... I began to ponder how it was possible to explain
Susanna's love for Fustov, and why she had so quickly, so impulsively
given way to despair, as soon as she saw herself forsaken. How was it
she had had no desire to wait a little, to hear the bitter truth from
the lips of the man she loved, to write to him, even? How could she
fling herself at once headlong into the abyss? Because she was
passionately in love with Fustov, I shall be told; because she could not
bear the slightest doubt of his devotion, of his respect for her.
Perhaps; or perhaps because she was not at all so passionately in love
with Fustov; that she did not deceive herself about him, but simply
rested her last hopes on him, and could not get over the thought that
even this man had at once, at the first breath of slander, turned away
from her with contempt! Who can say what killed her; wounded pride, or
the wretchedness of her helpless position, or the very memory of that
first, noble, true-hearted nature to whom she had so joyfully pledged
herself in the morning of her early days, who had so deeply trusted her,
and so honoured her? Who knows; perhaps at the very instant when I
fancied that her dead lips were murmuring, 'he did not come!' her soul
was rejoicing that she had gone herself to him, to her Michel? The
secrets of human life are great, and love itself, the most impenetrable
of those secrets.... Anyway, to this day, whenever the image of Susanna
rises before me, I cannot overcome a feeling of pity for her, and of
angry reproach against fate, and my lips whisper instinctively, 'Unhappy
girl! unhappy girl!'
1868.