answer. . . . 'Cab,' I repeated, 'hey, Cab!'
"But there was no cab of any description. The silence of the grave. I
could hear nothing but the murmur of the drowsy sea and the beating of
my heart from the wine. Lifting my eyes to the sky I found not a single
star. It was dark and sullen. Evidently the sky was covered with clouds.
For some reason I shrugged my shoulders, smiling foolishly, and once
more, not quite so resolutely, shouted for a cab.
"The echo answered me. A walk of three miles across open country and in
the pitch dark was not an agreeable prospect. Before making up my mind
to walk, I spent a long time deliberating and shouting for a cab; then,
shrugging my shoulders, I walked lazily back to the copse, with no
definite object in my mind. It was dreadfully dark in the copse. Here
and there between the trees the windows of the summer villas glowed a
dull red. A raven, disturbed by my steps and the matches with which I
lighted my way to the summer-house, flew from tree to tree and rustled
among the leaves. I felt vexed and ashamed, and the raven seemed to
understand this, and croaked 'krrra!' I was vexed that I had to walk,
and ashamed that I had stayed on at Kisotchka's, chatting like a boy.
"I made my way to the summer-house, felt for the seat and sat down. Far
below me, behind a veil of thick darkness, the sea kept up a low angry
growl. I remember that, as though I were blind, I could see neither sky
nor sea, nor even the summer-house in which I was sitting. And it seemed
to me as though the whole world consisted only of the thoughts that were
straying through my head, dizzy from the wine, and of an unseen power
murmuring monotonously somewhere below. And afterwards, as I sank into a
doze, it began to seem that it was not the sea murmuring, but my
thoughts, and that the whole world consisted of nothing but me. And
concentrating the whole world in myself in this way, I thought no more
of cabs, of the town, and of Kisotchka, and abandoned myself to the
sensation I was so fond of: that is, the sensation of fearful isolation
when you feel that in the whole universe, dark and formless, you alone
exist. It is a proud, demoniac sensation, only possible to Russians
whose thoughts and sensations are as large, boundless, and gloomy as
their plains, their forests, and their snow. If I had been an artist I
should certainly have depicted the expression of a Russian's face when
he sits motionless and, with his legs under him and his head clasped in
his hands, abandons himself to this sensation. . . . And together with
this sensation come thoughts of the aimlessness of life, of death, and
of the darkness of the grave. . . . The thoughts are not worth a brass
farthing, but the expression of face must be fine. . . .
"While I was sitting and dozing, unable to bring myself to get up--I was
warm and comfortable--all at once, against the even monotonous murmur of
the sea, as though upon a canvas, sounds began to grow distinct which
drew my attention from myself. . . . Someone was coming hurriedly along
the avenue. Reaching the summer-house this someone stopped, gave a sob
like a little girl, and said in the voice of a weeping child: 'My God,
when will it all end! Merciful Heavens!'
"Judging from the voice and the weeping I took it to be a little girl of
ten or twelve. She walked irresolutely into the summer-house, sat down,
and began half-praying, half-complaining aloud. . . .
"'Merciful God!' she said, crying, 'it's unbearable. It's beyond all
endurance! I suffer in silence, but I want to live too. . . . Oh, my
God! My God!'
"And so on in the same style.
"I wanted to look at the child and speak to her. So as not to frighten
her I first gave a loud sigh and coughed, then cautiously struck a
match. . . . There was a flash of bright light in the darkness, which
lighted up the weeping figure. It was Kisotchka!"
"Marvels upon marvels!" said Von Schtenberg with a sigh. "Black night,
the murmur of the sea; she in grief, he with a sensation of
world--solitude. . . . It's too much of a good thing. . . . You only want
Circassians with daggers to complete it."
"I am not telling you a tale, but fact."
"Well, even if it is a fact . . . it all proves nothing, and there is
nothing new in it. . . ."
"Wait a little before you find fault! Let me finish," said Ananyev,
waving his hand with vexation; "don't interfere, please! I am not
telling you, but the doctor. . . . Well," he went on, addressing me and
glancing askance at the student who bent over his books and seemed very
well satisfied at having gibed at the engineer--"well, Kisotchka was not
surprised or frightened at seeing me. It seemed as though she had known
beforehand that she would find me in the summer-house. She was breathing
in gasps and trembling all over as though in a fever, while her tear-
stained face, so far as I could distinguish it as I struck match after
match, was not the intelligent, submissive weary face I had seen before,
but something different, which I cannot understand to this day. It did
not express pain, nor anxiety, nor misery--nothing of what was expressed
by her words and her tears. . . . I must own that, probably because I
did not understand it, it looked to me senseless and as though she were
drunk.
"'I can't bear it,' muttered Kisotchka in the voice of a crying child.
'It's too much for me, Nikolay Anastasyitch. Forgive me, Nikolav
Anastasyitch. I can't go on living like this. . . . I am going to the
town to my mother's. . . . Take me there. . . . Take me there, for God's
sake!'
"In the presence of tears I can neither speak nor be silent. I was
flustered and muttered some nonsense trying to comfort her.
"'No, no; I will go to my mother's,' said Kisotchka resolutely, getting
up and clutching my arm convulsively (her hands and her sleeves were wet
with tears). 'Forgive me, Nikolay Anastasyitch, I am going. . . . I can
bear no more. . . .'
"'Kisotchka, but there isn't a single cab,' I said. 'How can you go?'
"'No matter, I'll walk. . . . It's not far. I can't bear it. . . .'
"I was embarrassed, but not touched. Kisotchka's tears, her trembling,
and the blank expression of her face suggested to me a trivial, French
or Little Russian melodrama, in which every ounce of cheap shallow
feeling is washed down with pints of tears.
"I didn't understand her, and knew I did not understand her; I ought to
have been silent, but for some reason, most likely for fear my silence
might be taken for stupidity, I thought fit to try to persuade her not
to go to her mother's, but to stay at home. When people cry, they don't
like their tears to be seen. And I lighted match after match and went on
striking till the box was empty. What I wanted with this ungenerous
illumination, I can't conceive to this day. Cold-hearted people are apt
to be awkward, and even stupid.
"In the end Kisotchka took my arm and we set off. Going out of the gate,
we turned to the right and sauntered slowly along the soft dusty road.
It was dark. As my eyes grew gradually accustomed to the darkness, I
began to distinguish the silhouettes of the old gaunt oaks and lime
trees which bordered the road. The jagged, precipitous cliffs,
intersected here and there by deep, narrow ravines and creeks, soon
showed indistinctly, a black streak on the right. Low bushes nestled by
the hollows, looking like sitting figures. It was uncanny. I looked
sideways suspiciously at the cliffs, and the murmur of the sea and the
stillness of the country alarmed my imagination. Kisotchka did not
speak. She was still trembling, and before she had gone half a mile she
was exhausted with walking and was out of breath. I too was silent.
"Three-quarters of a mile from the Quarantine Station there was a
deserted building of four storeys, with a very high chimney in which
there had once been a steam flour mill. It stood solitary on the cliff,
and by day it could be seen for a long distance, both by sea and by
land. Because it was deserted and no one lived in it, and because there
was an echo in it which distinctly repeated the steps and voices of
passers-by, it seemed mysterious. Picture me in the dark night arm-in-
arm with a woman who was running away from her husband near this tall
long monster which repeated the sound of every step I took and stared at
me fixedly with its hundred black windows. A normal young man would have
been moved to romantic feelings in such surroundings, but I looked at
the dark windows and thought: 'All this is very impressive, but time
will come when of that building and of Kisotchka and her troubles and of
me with my thoughts, not one grain of dust will remain. . . . All is
nonsense and vanity. . . .'
"When we reached the flour mill Kisotchka suddenly stopped, took her arm
out of mine, and said, no longer in a childish voice, but in her own:
"'Nikolay Anastasvitch, I know all this seems strange to you. But I am
terribly unhappy! And you cannot even imagine how unhappy! It's
impossible to imagine it! I don't tell you about it because one can't
talk about it. . . . Such a life, such a life! . . .'
"Kisotchka did not finish. She clenched her teeth and moaned as though
she were doing her utmost not to scream with pain.
"'Such a life!' she repeated with horror, with the cadence and the
southern, rather Ukrainian accent which particularly in women gives to
emotional speech the effect of singing. 'It is a life! Ah, my God, my
God! what does it mean? Oh, my God, my God!'
"As though trying to solve the riddle of her fate, she shrugged her
shoulders in perplexity, shook her head, and clasped her hands. She
spoke as though she were singing, moved gracefully, and reminded me of a
celebrated Little Russian actress.
"'Great God, it is as though I were in a pit,' she went on. 'If one
could live for one minute in happiness as other people live! Oh, my God,
my God! I have come to such disgrace that before a stranger I am running
away from my husband by night, like some disreputable creature! Can I
expect anything good after that?'
"As I admired her movements and her voice, I began to feel annoyed that
she was not on good terms with her husband. 'It would be nice to have
got on into relations with her!' flitted through my mind; and this
pitiless thought stayed in my brain, haunted me all the way and grew
more and more alluring.
"About a mile from the flour mill we had to turn to the left by the
cemetery. At the turning by the corner of the cemetery there stood a
stone windmill, and by it a little hut in which the miller lived. We
passed the mill and the hut, turned to the left and reached the gates of
the cemetery. There Kisotchka stopped and said:
"'I am going back, Nikolay Anastasyitch! You go home, and God bless you,
but I am going back. I am not frightened.'
"'Well, what next!' I said, disconcerted. 'If you are going, you had
better go!'
"'I have been too hasty. . . . It was all about nothing that mattered.
You and your talk took me back to the past and put all sort of ideas
into my head. . . . I was sad and wanted to cry, and my husband said
rude things to me before that officer, and I could not bear it. . . .
And what's the good of my going to the town to my mother's? Will that
make me any happier? I must go back. . . . But never mind . . . let us
go on,' said Kisotchka, and she laughed. 'It makes no difference!'
"I remembered that over the gate of the cemetery there was an
inscription: 'The hour will come wherein all they that lie in the grave
will hear the voice of the Son of God.' I knew very well that sooner or
later I and Kisotchka and her husband and the officer in the white tunic
would lie under the dark trees in the churchyard; I knew that an unhappy
and insulted fellow-creature was walking beside me. All this I
recognised distinctly, but at the same time I was troubled by an
oppressive and unpleasant dread that Kisotchka would turn back, and that
I should not manage to say to her what had to be said. Never at any
other time in my life have thoughts of a higher order been so closely
interwoven with the basest animal prose as on that night. . . . It was
horrible!
"Not far from the cemetery we found a cab. When we reached the High
Street, where Kisotchka's mother lived, we dismissed the cab and walked
along the pavement. Kisotchka was silent all the while, while I looked
at her, and I raged at myself, 'Why don't you begin? Now's the time!'
About twenty paces from the hotel where I was staying, Kisotchka stopped
by the lamp-post and burst into tears.
"'Nikolay Anastasyitch!' she said, crying and laughing and looking at me
with wet shining eyes, 'I shall never forget your sympathy . . . . How
good you are! All of you are so splendid--all of you! Honest, great-
hearted, kind, clever. . . . Ah, how good that is!'
"She saw in me a highly educated man, advanced in every sense of the
word, and on her tear-stained laughing face, together with the emotion
and enthusiasm aroused by my personality, there was clearly written
regret that she so rarely saw such people, and that God had not
vouchsafed her the bliss of being the wife of one of them. She muttered,
'Ah, how splendid it is!' The childish gladness on her face, the tears,
the gentle smile, the soft hair, which had escaped from under the
kerchief, and the kerchief itself thrown carelessly over her head, in
the light of the street lamp reminded me of the old Kisotchka whom one
had wanted to stroke like a kitten.
"I could not restrain myself, and began stroking her hair, her
shoulders, and her hands.
"'Kisotchka, what do you want?' I muttered. 'I'll go to the ends of the
earth with you if you like! I will take you out of this hole and give
you happiness. I love you. . . . Let us go, my sweet? Yes? Will you?'
"Kisotchka's face was flooded with bewilderment. She stepped back from
the street lamp and, completely overwhelmed, gazed at me with wide-open
eyes. I gripped her by the arm, began showering kisses on her face, her
neck, her shoulders, and went on making vows and promises. In love
affairs vows and promises are almost a physiological necessity. There's
no getting on without them. Sometimes you know you are lying and that
promises are not necessary, but still you vow and protest. Kisotchka,
utterly overwhelmed, kept staggering back and gazing at me with round
eyes.
"'Please don't! Please don't!' she muttered, holding me off with her
hands.
"I clasped her tightly in my arms. All at once she broke into hysterical
tears. And her face had the same senseless blank expression that I had
seen in the summer-house when I lighted the matches. Without asking her
consent, preventing her from speaking, I dragged her forcibly towards my
hotel. She seemed almost swooning and did not walk, but I took her under
the arms and almost carried her. . . . I remember, as we were going up
the stairs, some man with a red band in his cap looked wonderingly at me
and bowed to Kisotchka. . . ."
Ananyev flushed crimson and paused. He walked up and down near the table
in silence, scratched the back of his head with an air of vexation, and
several times shrugged his shoulders and twitched his shoulder-blades,
while a shiver ran down his huge back. The memory was painful and made
him ashamed, and he was struggling with himself.
"It's horrible!" he said, draining a glass of wine and shaking his head.
"I am told that in every introductory lecture on women's diseases the
medical students are admonished to remember that each one of them has a
mother, a sister, a fiancée, before undressing and examining a female
patient. . . . That advice would be very good not only for medical
students but for everyone who in one way or another has to deal with a
woman's life. Now that I have a wife and a little daughter, oh, how well
I understand that advice! How I understand it, my God! You may as well
hear the rest, though. . . . As soon as she had become my mistress,
Kisotchka's view of the position was very different from mine. First of
all she felt for me a deep and passionate love. What was for me an
ordinary amatory episode was for her an absolute revolution in her life.
I remember, it seemed to me that she had gone out of her mind. Happy for
the first time in her life, looking five years younger, with an inspired
enthusiastic face, not knowing what to do with herself for happiness,
she laughed and cried and never ceased dreaming aloud how next day we
would set off for the Caucasus, then in the autumn to Petersburg; how we
would live afterwards.
"'Don't worry yourself about my husband,' she said to reassure me. 'He
is bound to give me a divorce. Everyone in the town knows that he is
living with the elder Kostovitch. We will get a divorce and be married.'
"When women love they become acclimatised and at home with people very
quickly, like cats. Kisotchka had only spent an hour and a half in my
room when she already felt as though she were at home and was ready to
treat my property as though it were her own. She packed my things in my
portmanteau, scolded me for not hanging my new expensive overcoat on a
peg instead of flinging it on a chair, and so on.
"I looked at her, listened, and felt weariness and vexation. I was
conscious of a slight twinge of horror at the thought that a
respectable, honest, and unhappy woman had so easily, after some three
or four hours, succumbed to the first man she met. As a respectable man,
you see, I didn't like it. Then, too, I was unpleasantly impressed by
the fact that women of Kisotchka's sort, not deep or serious, are too
much in love with life, and exalt what is in reality such a trifle as
love for a man to the level of bliss, misery, a complete revolution in
life. . . . Moreover, now that I was satisfied, I was vexed with myself
for having been so stupid as to get entangled with a woman whom I should
have to deceive. And in spite of my disorderly life I must observe that
I could not bear telling lies.
"I remember that Kisotchka sat down at my feet, laid her head on my
knees, and, looking at me with shining, loving eyes, asked:
"'Kolya, do you love me? Very, very much?'
"And she laughed with happiness. . . . This struck me as sentimental,
affected, and not clever; and meanwhile I was already inclined to look
for 'depth of thought' before everything.
"'Kisotchka, you had better go home,' I said, or else your people will
be sure to miss you and will be looking for you all over the town; and
it would be awkward for you to go to your mother in the morning.'
"Kisotchka agreed. At parting we arranged to meet at midday next morning
in the park, and the day after to set off together to Pyatigorsk. I went
into the street to see her home, and I remember that I caressed her with
genuine tenderness on the way. There was a minute when I felt unbearably
sorry for her, for trusting me so implicitly, and I made up my mind that
I would really take her to Pyatigorsk, but remembering that I had only
six hundred roubles in my portmanteau, and that it would be far more
difficult to break it off with her in the autumn than now, I made haste
to suppress my compassion.
"We reached the house where Kisotchka's mother lived. I pulled at the
bell. When footsteps were heard at the other side of the door Kisotchka
suddenly looked grave, glanced upwards to the sky, made the sign of the
Cross over me several times and, clutching my hand, pressed it to her
lips.
"'Till to-morrow,' she said, and disappeared into the house.
"I crossed to the opposite pavement and from there looked at the house.
At first the windows were in darkness, then in one of the windows there
was the glimmer of the faint bluish flame of a newly lighted candle; the
flame grew, gave more light, and I saw shadows moving about the rooms
together with it.
"'They did not expect her,' I thought.
"Returning to my hotel room I undressed, drank off a glass of red wine,
ate some fresh caviare which I had bought that day in the bazaar, went
to bed in a leisurely way, and slept the sound, untroubled sleep of a
tourist.
"In the morning I woke up with a headache and in a bad humour. Something
worried me.
"'What's the matter?' I asked myself, trying to explain my uneasiness.
'What's upsetting me?'
"And I put down my uneasiness to the dread that Kisotchka might turn up
any minute and prevent my going away, and that I should have to tell
lies and act a part before her. I hurriedly dressed, packed my things,
and left the hotel, giving instructions to the porter to take my luggage
to the station for the seven o'clock train in the evening. I spent the
whole day with a doctor friend and left the town that evening. As you
see, my philosophy did not prevent me from taking to my heels in a mean
and treacherous flight. . . .
"All the while that I was at my friend's, and afterwards driving to the
station, I was tormented by anxiety. I fancied that I was afraid of
meeting with Kisotchka and a scene. In the station I purposely remained
in the toilet room till the second bell rang, and while I was making my
way to my compartment, I was oppressed by a feeling as though I were
covered all over with stolen things. With what impatience and terror I
waited for the third bell!
"At last the third bell that brought my deliverance rang at last, the
train moved; we passed the prison, the barracks, came out into the open
country, and yet, to my surprise, the feeling of uneasiness still
persisted, and still I felt like a thief passionately longing to escape.
It was queer. To distract my mind and calm myself I looked out of the
window. The train ran along the coast. The sea was smooth, and the
turquoise sky, almost half covered with the tender, golden crimson light
of sunset, was gaily and serenely mirrored in it. Here and there fishing
boats and rafts made black patches on its surface. The town, as clean
and beautiful as a toy, stood on the high cliff, and was already
shrouded in the mist of evening. The golden domes of its churches, the
windows and the greenery reflected the setting sun, glowing and melting
like shimmering gold. . . . The scent of the fields mingled with the
soft damp air from the sea.
"The train flew rapidly along. I heard the laughter of passengers and
guards. Everyone was good-humoured and light-hearted, yet my
unaccountable uneasiness grew greater and greater. . . . I looked at the
white mist that covered the town and I imagined how a woman with a
senseless blank face was hurrying up and down in that mist by the
churches and the houses, looking for me and moaning, 'Oh, my God! Oh, my
God!' in the voice of a little girl or the cadences of a Little Russian
actress. I recalled her grave face and big anxious eyes as she made the
sign of the Cross over me, as though I belonged to her, and mechanically
I looked at the hand which she had kissed the day before.
"'Surely I am not in love?' I asked myself, scratching my hand.