Natasha remains standing a little while, then turns back. Her feet sink
in the wet grass. The tall stalks half wind themselves round her ankles
and rustle against the hem of her light-coloured dress. Natasha’s
graceful arms, half hidden by the grey knitted kerchief, hang subdued
at her sides. Her eyes have already lost their fixed expression, and
have begun to jump from object to object.
How often have they walked this road, all together, her little sisters,
and Borya! They were noisy with merriment. What did they not talk
about! Their quarrels! What proud songs they sang! Now she was alone,
and there was no sign of Borya.
Why were they waiting for him? In what manner would he come? She did
not know. Perhaps she would not recognize him.
There awakens in Natasha’s heart a presentiment of bitter thoughts.
With a heavy rustle an evil serpent begins to stir in the darkness of
her wearied memory.
Slowly and sorrowfully Natasha turns her steps homeward. Her eyes are
drowsy and seem to look aimlessly, with fallen and fatigued glances.
The grass now seems disagreeably damp, the wind malicious; her feet
feel the wet, and the hem of her thin dress has grown heavy with
moisture. The new light of a new day, resplendent, glimmering with the
play of the laughing dew, resounding with the hum of birds and the
voices of human folk, becomes again for Natasha tiresomely blatant.
What does a new day matter? Why invoke the unattainable?
The murmur of pitiless memory, at first faint, grows more audible. The
heavy burden of insurmountable sorrow falls on the heart like an
aspen-grey weight. The heart feels proudly the pressure of the
inexpressibly painful foreboding of tears.
As she nears the house Natasha increases her pace. Faster and yet
faster, in response to the growing beat of her sorrowful heart, she is
running over the dry clay of the road, over the wet grass of the
bypath, trodden by pedestrians, over the moist, crunching, sandy
footpaths of the garden, which still treasure the gentle traces left by
her at dawn. Natasha runs across the warm planks, as yet unswept of
dust and litter. And she no longer tries to step lightly and inaudibly.
She stumbles across the astonished, open-mouthed Glasha. She runs
impetuously and noisily up the stairway to her room, and throws herself
on the bed. She pulls the coverlet over her head, and falls asleep.
X
Borya’s grandmother, Elena Kirillovna, sleeps below. She is old, and
she cannot sleep in the morning; but never in all her life has she
risen early; so even now she is awake only a little later than Natasha.
Elena Kirillovna, straight, thin, motionless, the back of her head
resting on the pillow, lies for a long time waiting for the maid to
bring her a cup of coffee—she has long ago accustomed herself to have
her coffee in bed.
Elena Kirillovna has a dry, yellow face, marked with many wrinkles; but
her eyes are still sparkling, and her hair is black, especially by day,
when she uses a cosmetic.
The maid Glasha is habitually late. She sleeps well in the morning, for
in the evening she loves to stroll over to the bridge in the village.
The harmonica makes merry there, and on holidays all sorts of jolly
folk and maidens dance and sing.
Elena Kirillovna rings a number of times. In the end the unanswering
stillness behind the door begins to irritate her. Sadly she turns on
her side, grumbling. She stretches her dry, yellow hand forward and
with a kind of concentrated intentness presses her bent, bony finger a
long time on the white bell-button lying on the little round table at
her head.
At last Glasha hears the prolonged, jarring ring above her head. She
jumps quickly from her bed, and anxiously gropes about for something or
other in her narrow quarters under the stairway of the mezzanine; then
she throws a skirt over her head, and hurries to her old mistress.
While running she arranges somehow her heavy, tangled braids.
Glasha’s face is angry and sleepy. She reels in her drowsiness. On the
way to her mistress’s bedroom the morning air refreshes her a little.
She faces her mistress looking more or less normal.
Glasha has on a pink skirt and a white blouse. In the semi-darkness of
the curtained windows her sunburnt arms and strong legs seem almost
white. Young, strong, rustic and impetuous, she suddenly appears before
her old mistress’s bed, her vigorous tread causing the heavy metal bed
with its nickelled posts and surmounting knobs to rattle slightly, and
the tumbler on the small round table to tinkle against the flagon.