‘But why is the doctor taking so long to get here from Moscow?’ said the princess. (In accordance with the wishes of Liza and Prince Andrey they had sent for a Moscow doctor and he was expected at any moment.)
‘It doesn’t matter, Princess. You mustn’t worry,’ said Marya Bogdanovna. ‘We can manage without a doctor.’
Five minutes later, from inside her room the princess heard something heavy being carried past. She peeped out. For some reason the footmen were moving a leather sofa from Prince Andrey’s study into the bedroom. The men looked all solemn and subdued.
Princess Marya sat alone in her room, listening to the sounds of the house, opening the door from time to time if someone went past and watching any action in the corridor. Some of the female staff that kept padding to and fro would glance across at the princess and quickly turn away. Afraid to ask any questions, she would go back into her room closing the door behind her and sit down in an armchair, or pick up her prayer-book, or kneel down at the icon-stand. She was unpleasantly surprised to discover that prayer did nothing to calm her nerves. Suddenly her door opened softly and there in the doorway stood her old nurse, Praskovya Savishna, with a scarf over her head. The old prince was so strict that the old woman almost never entered her room.
‘It’s only me, little Masha,’ said the nurse. ‘I’ve come to sit with you for a few minutes and look, I’ve brought the prince’s wedding candles to light before his saint, my angel,’ she said with a deep sigh.
‘Oh, nurse, I’m so pleased to see you!’
‘God is merciful, my darling.’ The nurse lit the gilt candles, placed them before the icon-stand and sat down near the door with her knitting. Princess Marya picked up a book and started reading. Only when they heard footsteps or voices did they look up at each other, the princess anxiously wondering, the nurse full of reassurance. The emotions that Princess Marya was feeling as she sat in her room had spread through the whole house and taken possession of everyone in it. Acting on the old superstition that the fewer the people who know about the sufferings of a woman in labour, the less she suffers, everyone pretended to know nothing about it. Nobody said anything, but the usual steadiness and respectful sense of propriety that was always to be expected from servants in the prince’s household had been overtaken by a general feeling of anxiety, a melting of hearts and an awareness that at this time they were in the presence of some great, unfathomable mystery. No laughter came from the large parlour assigned to the maids. In their hall the men sat in silence, ready to turn their hands to anything. Torches and candles were still burning in the serfs’ quarters, and no one slept. The old prince paced up and down his study, banging down on his heels, and sent Tikhon to Marya Bogdanovna to ask for any news.
‘Just say the prince has sent you to ask for any news, and come back and tell me what she says.’
‘You may inform the prince that the princess has gone into labour,’ said Marya Bogdanovna, with a knowing look at the messenger. Tikhon came back with the report.
‘That’s good,’ said the prince, closing the door behind him, and from then on Tikhon heard not the slightest sound from the study. After a short interval Tikhon went in again on the pretext of checking the candles and saw the prince lying on the sofa. Tikhon looked at him, shook his head at the sight of the prince’s worried face, went silently over and kissed him on the shoulder, and then left the room without touching the candles or saying why he had come. The world’s most solemn mystery was now being slowly enacted. Evening passed, night came on, and the feeling of suspense and the melting of hearts before the great unknown, far from fading away, grew stronger and stronger. No one slept.
It was one of those March nights when winter, desperate for one last fling, hurls down its snows and slings its squalls with a special fury. A relay of horses had been sent out to the main road to meet the German doctor, who was expected at any moment, and several men had ridden out with lanterns to wait at the turn-off and guide him in past the deep ruts and watery hollows hidden by the snow.
Princess Marya, her book long since abandoned, sat in silence staring with her luminous eyes at the wrinkled face of her old nurse, which she knew in its every last detail, at the lock of grey hair that had dropped down from the headscarf and the baggy folds of skin under her chin.
Nurse Savishna held on to her knitting and rambled on in a soft voice without hearing her own words or following their meaning. For the hundredth time she described how the late princess had given birth to Princess Marya at Kishinyov with only a Moldavian peasant woman to assist instead of a midwife.
‘God will provide. Don’t need no doctors,’ she said.
