VI

Autumn had passed and winter, too, had gone. Nadya had begun to be

very homesick and thought every day of her mother and her grandmother;

she thought of Sasha too. The letters that came from home were kind

and gentle, and it seemed as though everything by now were forgiven

and forgotten. In May after the examinations she set off for home

in good health and high spirits, and stopped on the way at Moscow

to see Sasha. He was just the same as the year before, with the

same beard and unkempt hair, with the same large beautiful eyes,

and he still wore the same coat and canvas trousers; but he looked

unwell and worried, he seemed both older and thinner, and kept

coughing, and for some reason he struck Nadya as grey and provincial.

"My God, Nadya has come!" he said, and laughed gaily. "My darling

girl!"

They sat in the printing room, which was full of tobacco smoke, and

smelt strongly, stiflingly of Indian ink and paint; then they went

to his room, which also smelt of tobacco and was full of the traces

of spitting; near a cold samovar stood a broken plate with dark

paper on it, and there were masses of dead flies on the table and

on the floor. And everything showed that Sasha ordered his personal

life in a slovenly way and lived anyhow, with utter contempt for

comfort, and if anyone began talking to him of his personal happiness,

of his personal life, of affection for him, he would not have

understood and would have only laughed.

"It is all right, everything has gone well," said Nadya hurriedly.

"Mother came to see me in Petersburg in the autumn; she said that

Granny is not angry, and only keeps going into my room and making

the sign of the cross over the walls."

Sasha looked cheerful, but he kept coughing, and talked in a cracked

voice, and Nadya kept looking at him, unable to decide whether he

really were seriously ill or whether it were only her fancy.

"Dear Sasha," she said, "you are ill."

"No, it's nothing, I am ill, but not very . . ."

"Oh, dear!" cried Nadya, in agitation. "Why don't you go to a doctor?

Why don't you take care of your health? My dear, darling Sasha,"

she said, and tears gushed from her eyes and for some reason there

rose before her imagination Andrey Andreitch and the naked lady

with the vase, and all her past which seemed now as far away as her

childhood; and she began crying because Sasha no longer seemed to

her so novel, so cultured, and so interesting as the year before.

"Dear Sasha, you are very, very ill . . . I would do anything to

make you not so pale and thin. I am so indebted to you! You can't

imagine how much you have done for me, my good Sasha! In reality

you are now the person nearest and dearest to me."

They sat on and talked, and now, after Nadya had spent a winter in

Petersburg, Sasha, his works, his smile, his whole figure had for

her a suggestion of something out of date, old-fashioned, done with

long ago and perhaps already dead and buried.

"I am going down the Volga the day after tomorrow," said Sasha,

"and then to drink koumiss. I mean to drink koumiss. A friend and

his wife are going with me. His wife is a wonderful woman; I am

always at her, trying to persuade her to go to the university. I

want her to turn her life upside down."

After having talked they drove to the station. Sasha got her tea

and apples; and when the train began moving and he waved his

handkerchief at her, smiling, it could be seen even from his legs

that he was very ill and would not live long.

Nadya reached her native town at midday. As she drove home from the

station the streets struck her as very wide and the houses very

small and squat; there were no people about, she met no one but the

German piano-tuner in a rusty greatcoat. And all the houses looked

as though they were covered with dust. Granny, who seemed to have

grown quite old, but was as fat and plain as ever, flung her arms

round Nadya and cried for a long time with her face on Nadya's

shoulder, unable to tear herself away. Nina Ivanovna looked much

older and plainer and seemed shrivelled up, but was still tightly

laced, and still had diamonds flashing on her fingers.

"My darling," she said, trembling all over, "my darling!"

Then they sat down and cried without speaking. It was evident that

both mother and grandmother realized that the past was lost and

gone, never to return; they had now no position in society, no

prestige as before, no right to invite visitors; so it is when in

the midst of an easy careless life the police suddenly burst in at

night and made a search, and it turns out that the head of the

family has embezzled money or committed forgery--and goodbye then

to the easy careless life for ever!

Nadya went upstairs and saw the same bed, the same windows with

naïve white curtains, and outside the windows the same garden, gay

and noisy, bathed in sunshine. She touched the table, sat down and

sank into thought. And she had a good dinner and drank tea with

delicious rich cream; but something was missing, there was a sense

of emptiness in the rooms and the ceilings were so low. In the

evening she went to bed, covered herself up and for some reason it

seemed to her to be funny lying in this snug, very soft bed.

Nina Ivanovna came in for a minute; she sat down as people who feel

guilty sit down, timidly, and looking about her.

"Well, tell me, Nadya," she enquired after a brief pause, "are you

contented? Quite contented?"

"Yes, mother."

Nina Ivanovna got up, made the sign of the cross over Nadya and the

windows.

"I have become religious, as you see," she said. "You know I am

studying philosophy now, and I am always thinking and thinking. . . .

And many things have become as clear as daylight to me. It seems

to me that what is above all necessary is that life should pass as

it were through a prism."

"Tell me, mother, how is Granny in health?"

"She seems all right. When you went away that time with Sasha and

the telegram came from you, Granny fell on the floor as she read

it; for three days she lay without moving. After that she was always

praying and crying. But now she is all right again."

She got up and walked about the room.

"Tick-tock," tapped the watchman. "Tick-tock, tick-tock. . . ."

"What is above all necessary is that life should pass as it were

through a prism," she said; "in other words, that life in consciousness

should be analyzed into its simplest elements as into the seven

primary colours, and each element must be studied separately."

What Nina Ivanovna said further and when she went away, Nadya did

not hear, as she quickly fell asleep.

May passed; June came. Nadya had grown used to being at home. Granny

busied herself about the samovar, heaving deep sighs. Nina Ivanovna

talked in the evenings about her philosophy; she still lived in the

house like a poor relation, and had to go to Granny for every

farthing. There were lots of flies in the house, and the ceilings

seemed to become lower and lower. Granny and Nina Ivanovna did not

go out in the streets for fear of meeting Father Andrey and Andrey

Andreitch. Nadya walked about the garden and the streets, looked

at the grey fences, and it seemed to her that everything in the

town had grown old, was out of date and was only waiting either for

the end, or for the beginning of something young and fresh. Oh, if

only that new, bright life would come more quickly--that life in

which one will be able to face one's fate boldly and directly, to

know that one is right, to be light-hearted and free! And sooner

or later such a life will come. The time will come when of Granny's

house, where things are so arranged that the four servants can only

live in one room in filth in the basement--the time will come

when of that house not a trace will remain, and it will be forgotten,

no one will remember it. And Nadya's only entertainment was from

the boys next door; when she walked about the garden they knocked

on the fence and shouted in mockery: "Betrothed! Betrothed!"

A letter from Sasha arrived from Saratov. In his gay dancing

handwriting he told them that his journey on the Volga had been a

complete success, but that he had been taken rather ill in Saratov,

had lost his voice, and had been for the last fortnight in the

hospital. She knew what that meant, and she was overwhelmed with a

foreboding that was like a conviction. And it vexed her that this

foreboding and the thought of Sasha did not distress her so much

as before. She had a passionate desire for life, longed to be in

Petersburg, and her friendship with Sasha seemed now sweet but

something far, far away! She did not sleep all night, and in the

morning sat at the window, listening. And she did in fact hear

voices below; Granny, greatly agitated, was asking questions rapidly.

Then some one began crying. . . . When Nadya went downstairs Granny

was standing in the corner, praying before the ikon and her face

was tearful. A telegram lay on the table.

For some time Nadya walked up and down the room, listening to

Granny's weeping; then she picked up the telegram and read it.

It announced that the previous morning Alexandr Timofeitch, or more

simply, Sasha, had died at Saratov of consumption.

Granny and Nina Ivanovna went to the church to order a memorial

service, while Nadya went on walking about the rooms and thinking.

She recognized clearly that her life had been turned upside down

as Sasha wished; that here she was, alien, isolated, useless and

that everything here was useless to her; that all the past had been

torn away from her and vanished as though it had been burnt up and

the ashes scattered to the winds. She went into Sasha's room and

stood there for a while.

"Good-bye, dear Sasha," she thought, and before her mind rose the

vista of a new, wide, spacious life, and that life, still obscure

and full of mysteries, beckoned her and attracted her.

She went upstairs to her own room to pack, and next morning said

good-bye to her family, and full of life and high spirits left the

town--as she supposed for ever.