Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 2 полностью

‘ “You’ve got your way, killed …” and through the look of suffering and even the nearness of death her face had the old expression of cold animal hatred that I knew so well.

“I shan’t … let you have … the children, all the same.… She (her sister) will take …”

‘Of what to me was the most important matter, her guilt, her faithlessness, she seemed to consider it beneath her to speak.

‘ “Yes, look and admire what you have done,” she said looking towards the door, and she sobbed. In the doorway stood her sister with the children. “Yes, see what you have done.”

‘I looked at the children and at her bruised disfigured face, and for the first time I forgot myself, my rights, my pride, and for the first time saw a human being in her.⁹⁷ And so insignificant did all that had offended me, all my jealousy, appear, and so important what I had done, that I wished to fall with my face to her hand, and say: “Forgive me,” but dared not do so.

‘She lay silent with her eyes closed, evidently too weak to say more. Then her disfigured face trembled and puckered. She pushed me feebly away.

‘ “Why did it all happen? Why?”

‘ “Forgive me,” I said.

⁹⁸‘ “Forgive! That’s all rubbish!… Only not to die!…” she cried, raising herself, and her glittering eyes were bent on me. “Yes, you have had your way!… I hate you! Ah! Ah!” she cried, evidently already in delirium and frightened at something. “Shoot! I’m not afraid!… Only kill everyone …! He has gone …! Gone …!”

‘After that the delirium continued all the time. She did not recognize⁹⁹ anyone. She died towards noon that same day. Before that they had taken me to the police-station and from there to prison. There, during the eleven months I remained awaiting trial, I examined myself and my past, and understood it. I began to understand it on the third day: on the third day they took me there …’

He was going on but, unable to repress his sobs, he stopped. When he recovered himself he continued:

‘I only began to understand when I saw her in her coffin …’

He gave a sob, but immediately continued hurriedly:

‘Only when I saw her dead face did I understand all that I had done. I realized that I, I, had killed her; that it was my doing that she, living, moving, warm, had now become motionless, waxen, and cold, and that this could never, anywhere, or by any means, be remedied. He who has not lived through it cannot understand.… Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!…’ he cried several times and then was silent.

We sat in silence a long while. He kept sobbing and trembling as he sat opposite me without speaking. His face had grown narrow and elongated and his mouth seemed to stretch right across it.

‘Yes,’ he suddenly said. ‘Had I then known what I know now, everything would have been different. Nothing would have induced me to marry her.… I should not have married at all.’

Again we remained silent for a long time.

¹⁰⁰‘Well, forgive me.…’¹⁴ He turned away from me and lay down on the seat, covering himself up with his plaid. At the station where I had to get out (it was at eight o’clock in the morning) I went up to him to say good-bye. Whether he was asleep or only pretended to be, at any rate he did not move. I touched him with my hand. He uncovered his face, and I could see he had not been asleep.

‘Good-bye,’ I said, holding out my hand. He gave me his and smiled slightly, but so piteously that I felt ready to weep.

‘Yes, forgive me …’ he said, repeating the same words with which he had concluded his story.

¹ It was customary in Russia for a first, second and third bell to ring before a train left a station.

² Literally ‘in the terem’, the terem being the woman’s quarter where in older times the women of a Russian family used to be secluded in oriental fashion.

³The Housebuilder, a sixteenth-century manual, by the monk Silvester, on religion and household management.

⁴ One Russian edition adds: ‘First women’s rights, the civil marriage, and then divorce, come as unsettled questions.’

⁵ Tea in Russia is usually drank out of tumblers.

⁶ In Russia, as in other continental countries and formerly in England, the maisons de tolérance were under the supervision of the government; doctors were employed to examine the women, and, as far as possible, see that they did not continue their trade when diseased.

⁷ A notorious Parisian cancanière.

⁸ Streets in Moscow in which brothels were numerous.

⁹ In the printed and censored Russian edition the word ‘Court’ was changed to ‘most refined’.

¹⁰ In Russia wet-nurses were usually provided with an elaborate national costume by their employers.

¹¹ The practice of employing wet-nurses was very much more general in Russia than in the English-speaking countries.

¹² The card-game named in the original, and then much played in Russia, was vint, which resembles bridge.

¹³Vánka the Steward is the subject and name of some old Russian poems. Vánka seduces his master’s wife, boasts of having done so, and is hanged.