XIV + 

Nástenka’s Story + 

On the next day, early in the morning, Nástenka came to Viéra Pavlovna. + 

“I want to tell you about what you saw yesterday, Viéra Pavlovna,” she said; but for some time she was at a loss how to go on. “I would not want you to think ill of him, Viéra Pavlovna.” + 

“What do you mean? You must have a poor opinion of me, Nastasia Borísovna.” + 

“No; if it were someone else besides me, I should not have thought of such a thing; but you know I am not like other girls.” + 

“No, Nastasia Borísovna, you have no right to speak about yourself in such a way. We have known you for a year; and before that a good many of our Union knew you.” + 

“This proves that you do not know anything about me.” + 

“How so? I know a good deal about you. You have been a servant-girl, the last time you were with the actress N.; after she got married, you left her, so as to avoid her father-in-law; you entered Y.’s shop, and from there you came to us. I know all the particulars about it.” + 

“Of course, I know that Maksímova and Shéïna, who knew all about me, would not tell anything to anybody. But, after all, I thought that you and the others might have heard about me. Akh! how glad I am they yonder don’t know anything about it! And I am going to tell you, so that you may know what a good man he is. I have been a very bad girl, Viéra Pavlovna.” + 

“You, Nastasia Borísovna?” + 

“Yes, Viéra Pavlovna, I have. I have been a very bold girl; I had not the slightest shame, and I used to be always drunk. And that’s the reason that I am ill, Viéra Pavlovna, because with my weak lungs I used to drink too much.” + 

This was the third case of the kind that had come under Viéra Pavlovna’s observation. These girls, who had behaved themselves with perfect propriety since their acquaintance with her, told her that hitherto they had been leading bad lives. The first time she was amazed at such a confession; but, after reasoning it over for several days, she asked herself: “How about my own life? The filth in which I grew up was also very bad. However, it did not stick to me; and there are probably thousands of women who have grown up in purity in families worse than mine. Is there anything strange in the fact that those whom a happy chance has brought out from such degradation are not ruined?” + 

She listened to the second confession, and was not surprised, because the girl who made it had kept intact all the noble peculiarities of a human being⁠—generosity, capability for genuine service, and softness of heart⁠—had even preserved a great part of her innocence. + 

“Nastasia Borísovna, I have heard such confessions as you want to make; and it was hard for both of us⁠—for her who spoke and for me who listened. I shall respect you not less, but rather more, than before, when now I know that you have endured a great deal; but I understand the whole story without listening. Let us not speak about it; there is no need for you to confess before me. I myself have spent many years in great sorrows; I am trying not to think about them, and I don’t like others to speak about them; it’s too hard.” + 

“No, Viéra Pavlovna; I have a different feeling about it. I want to tell you what a good man he is; I want someone to know how grateful I am to him; and whom can I tell it to if not to you? What kind of a life I led, of course there is no need of speaking about that⁠—it was of the same stamp as that of all such poor creatures. I only want to tell you how I became acquainted with him. It is so pleasant for me to talk about him; and besides, I am going to live in his house, and you must know why I am going to leave the shop.” + 

“If telling this story will give you any pleasure, Anastasia Borísovna, I will gladly listen. Let me get my work first.” + 

“Yes; but it is impossible for me to work. How kind these girls have been, to let me have such work as agreed with my health. I shall be grateful to them all, to each one. Tell them, Viéra Pavlovna, that I asked you to thank them for me. I was walking on the Nevsky, Viéra Pavlovna; it was rather early when I went out. A student was walking along, and I accosted him. He did not reply, but crosses to the other side of the street. Then he sees that I am following him; I grasped him by the arm. ‘No,’ said I, ‘I am not going to let you go, you are such a handsome little fellow.’ ‘But I beg of you to let go of me,’ he says. ‘No, come along with me.’ ‘I do not care to.’ ‘Well, then, I will go with you. Where are you going? I shall not leave you on any account!’ I was such a shameless girl, much worse than anybody else.” + 

“Perhaps, from the very reason, Anastasia Borísovna, that you were at heart more modest, more conscientious.” + 

“Yes, it may be so. At least, I have seen this in others; not at that time, of course, but afterwards, I understood it. When I told him that I was going with him, at all events, he laughed, and said, ‘If you want to, come along; but it will be useless.’ He wanted to teach me a lesson, as he told me afterwards; it was disagreeable to him to have me clinging to him. And so I went along, and I told him all sorts of absurdities, but he kept silent; and so we went to his rooms. For a student he lived then very comfortably; he used to get from his pupils about twenty rubles a month, and he lived all by himself. I stretched out on his sofa, and said: ‘Nu, where is your wine?’ ‘No,’ says he, ‘I shall give you no wine; but you can have tea, if you want.’ ‘With whiskey,’ I said. ‘No, without whiskey.’ I began to do all sorts of foolish things, to be utterly shameless. He sat down and looked at me; but he did not show any interest, so offensive was it to him. Nowadays you can find such young men, Viéra Pavlovna; since that time young men have been growing morally better, but then it was a very rare thing. I began to get angry, and I scolded him. ‘Since you are such a stick!’ I said, ‘so I am going.’ ‘What is the use of going now? you may as well have some tea; my landlady will bring the samovar right in. But don’t abuse me.’ And all the time he addressed me formally [with vui, you]. He said, ‘You had better tell me who you are, and how you came to do such things.’ I began to tell him everything that came into my mind. We make up stories to suit ourselves, and that’s the reason no one ever believes us; but there are some, in spite of all that, whose stories are not made up; there are among us wellborn and well-educated girls. He listened, and said: ‘No; you have made up your story poorly. I should like to believe it, but it is impossible.’ At this time we were drinking tea. And then he said: ‘Do you know, your constitution makes it bad for you to drink? Your lungs are already very much injured by it. Let me examine you.’ Well, Viéra Pavlovna, you won’t believe me, but I assure you that I felt ashamed⁠—and yet what was my life? and how shamefully I had been behaving just a few minutes before!⁠—and he noticed it. ‘Don’t be disturbed,’ he says; ‘I only want to examine your lungs.’ He was then only in the second class, but he knew a great deal about medicine; he was away ahead in science. + 

“He examined my chest. ‘No,’ says he, ‘you must not drink at all; you have very weak lungs.’ ‘How can we help drinking?’ I asked. ‘We cannot get along without it.’ And it is really impossible, Viéra Pavlovna. ‘Then you must give up the life that you are leading.’ ‘Why should I give it up? It’s such a gay life.’ ‘No,’ says he, ‘there’s very little gayety in it. Nu!’ says he, ‘I am very busy now, and you had better leave me.’ And I left him, feeling very angry because I had wasted my evening; and I felt very much offended because he was such a passionless fellow, because we have our ambition in such matters, you know. + 

“And then in a month it occurred to me to go to the same place again. ‘Come on,’ says I, ‘I’ll go and see that stick again; I’ll see if I can’t wake him up.’ This was just before dinner. I had gone to bed the previous night, and I had not been drinking; he was sitting with a book. ‘Hullo, old stick,’ says I. ‘How do you do? What do you want?’ Then I began again to do ridiculous things. ‘I shall put you out,’ he says; ‘stop, I told you that I did not like it. You are not drunk now, and you can understand; and you had better heed what I say; your face shows that you are sicker than you were before; you must give up wine; just fix your dress and we will have a little talk.’ Well, the fact was that my chest had already begun to pain me; he examined me again; he said that my lungs were in a worse state than before; he had a great deal to say; yes, and my chest did pain me, and so I began to get sentimental, and I burst into tears. I did not want to die, and he was all the time threatening me with consumption. And I say, ‘How can I give up my mode of life? My khozyáïka will not let me go. I owe her seventeen silver rubles.’ We were always kept in debt, you know, so that we could not have any voice in the matter. ‘Nu!’ says he, ‘I have no seventeen silver rubles with me, but you come and see me day after tomorrow.’ That seemed so strange, because I did not mean to give him any hint; and how could I have expected it? I did not believe my ears, and I wept still more violently, for I thought he was making fun of me. ‘It is a sin and a shame to insult a poor girl when you see that she is weeping’; and I did not believe him for a long time, until at last I saw that he was in earnest. And what do you think? he raised the money, and gave it to me two days later; and even then I somehow did not believe it. ‘How is it you do this when you do not want to take any favors from me?’ I said. I paid off my khozyáïka, and rented a separate room; but I had nothing to do, and I had no money. And so I went on living as before, that is, not exactly as before; what an improvement it was, Viéra Pavlovna! I used to receive only my acquaintances, my good friends, those who did not offend me. And I had no wine either. And therefore what an improvement. And do you know how easy it was for me in comparison with what it had been before? no; after all, it was hard; and I want to tell you this. You know me; am I not a modest girl? Who ever hears anything bad of me now? And here in the shop how much care I take of the children! and they all love me; and those old women cannot say that I am teaching them anything bad. And so I lived in this way. Three months or so went by, and during this time I took good care of myself, because my life was peaceful; and though I was ashamed on account of the money, I did not look upon myself as a bad girl. Only at that time Sáshenka used to come to see me, and sometimes I used to go and see him. And now I am coming to speak of the subject that I wanted to tell you about. He did not come to see me as the others did, but he looked after me to see that I did not return to my former weakness, or get to drinking wine. And really the first days he helped me because I had a strong inclination for wine. And I was ashamed on his account; supposing he should come in and see that I was drinking! And possibly if it had not been for that, I should not have resisted, because my friends, very good young fellows, used to say, ‘I am going to send out for wine’; but as I was ashamed on his account, I used to say, ‘No, it must not be.’ But otherwise I should have been tempted; the mere thought that wine was bad for me would not have been enough. And then in three weeks or so I grew stronger; my craving for wine passed, and I got out of the habit of drinking. And I kept laying up money to pay him back, and in two months I paid him up. How glad he was that I returned him the money. The day after he brought me some muslin for a dress, and some other things that he bought with that money. He used to come to see me after that just as a doctor calls to take care of an invalid. And a month after I had paid off my debt, he was sitting in my room, and said, ‘Now, Nástenka, I begin to like your looks.’ And really, it’s true, wine spoils the complexion, and its effects don’t pass off suddenly; but by this time they had passed, and the complexion of my face had become more delicate, and my eyes were clearer; and then again as I had got out of my former habits, I began to speak modestly, for you know my thoughts after I gave up drinking became modest, though I used to get entangled in my speech, and sometimes I used to forget myself on account of my former carelessness; but by this time I had got accustomed to behaving myself and to speaking more modestly. And as soon as he said that I pleased him, I was so happy that I wanted to throw myself on his neck, but I did not dare, and I refrained. And he said, ‘You see, Nástenka, I am not devoid of feelings.’ And he declared that I had become a nice modest young girl, and he caressed me; and how did he caress me? He took my hand and laid it on his, and began to smooth it with his other hand; and he looked at my hand, and indeed at that time my hands were white and delicate. And so when he took my hand⁠—you would not believe it⁠—I blushed, after my life, Viéra Pavlovna, as though I had been an innocent baruishna. This is strange, but it is so. But with all my shame⁠—it is absurd to say, Viéra Pavlovna, with all my shame, it is true⁠—I still said, ‘How is it that you are willing to caress me, Aleksandr Matvéitch?’ And he said, ‘It is because you are a virtuous girl now, Nástenka.’ And the words, ‘virtuous girl,’ that he called me, affected me so much that I burst into tears. And then he said, ‘What is the matter, Nástenka?’ and he kissed me. What do you think? When he kissed me, my head began to swim, and I forgot all about the past; is it possible to believe, Viéra Pavlovna, that such a thing could happen to me after such a life as mine? + 

“Well, on the next morning, I was sitting and weeping, and wondering what would become of me, and how should I live, poor creature that I was. All that was left for me was to throw myself into the Neva. I felt that I could not live such a life as I had been living! I might die; I might starve to death; but I could not live so any more. You see that I had been in love with him long ago; but, as he had not shown any such feelings towards me, I had no hope of ever winning his love, and my love died away within me, and I did not even know that I had it. And now it was all brought to light again; and, of course, when you feel such a love, how can you look upon anybody else with favor, except the man whom you love? You yourself know that this is impossible. There is nothing else in existence except the one man. Here I was sitting and weeping, ‘What can I do now, being as I have nothing to live on?’ And I really made up my mind to go and see him once more, and then go and drown myself. And thus I spent the whole morning weeping. But suddenly I saw him coming in, and he began to kiss me, and he said, ‘Nástenka, do you want to live at my house?’ And I told him how I felt; and so I went to live at his house. That was a happy time, Viéra Pavlovna; I think that few have ever enjoyed such happiness. And he was always so kind to me. How many times it happened that I woke up, and he was sitting with a book; and then he would come and look after me, and he would forget his book, and he would sit and keep watch over me. But what a modest man he was, Viéra Pavlovna; I could understand it afterwards, when I came to read and find out how love is described in novels; I could judge then. But, with all his modesty, how he loved me! And what a feeling you have when a beloved man loves you. It is a happiness such as you can form no idea of. Let us imagine when he kissed me for the first time: my head even turned; I bowed before him. Such a feeling is sweet, indeed; but that was nothing in comparison to the feeling afterwards. Before the blood boils, you know, there is anxiety; and even in the sweet feeling there is more or less torment; so that it is even hard to bear it, although it is hardly worth while to say how blessed it is; because, for such a minute, you are ready to sacrifice your life⁠—and there are some who do sacrifice their lives, Viéra Pavlovna⁠—therefore it must be a great happiness. But still it is not this, not this at all. It is just the same as when you get lost in daydreams sometimes, when you are sitting alone, and merely think, ‘Akh! how I love him!’ and there is no worriment, no anxiety at all, in this pleasantness; and you feel so calm, so easy in mind! So it is the same feeling, only a thousandfold stronger, when this beloved man loves you. And how calm you feel; and the heart does not throb⁠—no, for that would mean disturbance, and you feel nothing of that kind⁠—but it is much smoother, and there is more pleasantness; and it beats so gently and your chest expands and you breathe freer! Akh! this is so, this is true; it is very easy to breathe! akh! how easy! So that when an hour or two passes, like one minute⁠—no, not a minute, not a second⁠—there is no time at all, just as when you fall asleep and get up again. If you fall asleep, you know that much time has passed since you went asleep; but how has the time passed? It did not make up a single minute. And then, again, it is the same thing as after you have been asleep: there is no weariness, but, on the contrary, freshness, courage, as though you had been resting; and so it is: you have been resting. I said that it was very easy to breathe, and that is the very truth. What a strength in the glance, Viéra Pavlovna! No caresses of friends can caress you in such a way, or give you such a sense of luxury, as his glance. All the rest that is in love is not as comforting as this comfort. + 

“And how he loved me! how he loved me! Akh! what a delight it was! No one can imagine it, except the one who has experienced it. You know that, Viéra Pavlovna! + 

“You know, Viéra Pavlovna, that the look of even a woman makes me blush; our girls will tell you how bashful I am. It is for that reason that I live in a separate room; and how strange it is, you would scarcely believe it. But you know all about it, and I need not tell you. But when you think about it, you cannot part from this thought. No; I am going to leave you, Viéra Pavlovna; there is nothing more for me to tell you. I only wanted to tell you how good Sáshenka is.” + 