XI
And thus a year passes; and another year will pass, and still another since her marriage to Kirsánof; and thus all of Viéra Pavlovna’s days will pass as they pass now, a year after the wedding, as they have passed since the wedding: and a good many years will pass; and they will all pass in this way unless something extraordinary happens. Who knows what the future will bring forth? But till the time that I am writing these lines nothing extraordinary has happened; and Viéra Pavlovna’s days are passing just as they passed a year or two years after her marriage to Kirsánof.
After this terrible compromising circumstance that Viéra Pavlovna made up her mind to study medicine, and found herself capable of doing so, I can speak without fear of everything else; all that remains cannot injure her so much in the estimation of the public. And I must say that now, on Syérgievskaïa Street as before on Vasilyevsky Island, Viéra Pavlovna’s meals were constituted as follows: tea in the morning, dinner, and tea in the evening. Yes; she has preserved the unpoetical peculiarities of dining every day, and taking tea twice a day, and finds it agreeable; and, generally speaking, she preserves all her unpoetical and ungraceful and far from high-toned peculiarities.
And many other details remain in this new time of contentment just as they were in the former time of contentment; they kept the rule for the division of the rooms into neutral and private; the rule also remained in force that they should not enter each other’s private rooms without permission; and another, that a question should not be repeated if the first time it was met by the words, “Do not ask me.” It was agreed between them, that such an answer best allows no thinking about the question propounded, and that thus it is more speedily forgotten; this agreement was made because they were sure that if it deserved an answer, there would be need of repeating; everything would be explained without the need of asking, and what one keeps silent is surely nothing interesting. All this was left during this new peaceful time, as it used to be in the old peaceful time, only at this peaceful time everything has changed to a certain degree, or rather it has not changed, but yet it is not as it used to be in the former time; and their life is different.
For example, there is a strict distinction made between the neutral and the private rooms, but the permission for admittance into the private rooms has been decided for good and all once at a certain hour in the day. This was arranged because two out of three of their meals were taken each day in the private rooms. A custom has been made of drinking morning tea in her room, and evening tea in his room. The evening tea is conducted without any ceremony; the old servant, Stepan, brings into Aleksandr’s room the samovar and the tea service, and that is all. But at morning tea they arrange it differently. Stepan puts the samovar and the tea service on the table in that neutral room, which is nearest Viéra Pavlovna’s room, and tells Aleksandr Matvéitch that the samovar is ready; that is, he tells Aleksandr Matvéitch in his room. But supposing he does not find him? Then Stepan takes no trouble about finding him; they must know for themselves that it is teatime. And, in accordance with this custom they made a rule, that in the morning Viéra Pavlovna expects her husband without asking permission.
After she wakes up she lies comfortably in her warm little bed; she is too lazy to rise. She thinks and she does not think, and she half dreams and she does not dream at all; to think means for her to plan something about the day or the days to come, something about the household, about the shop, about her acquaintances, about her plans for spending the day; this, of course, is not dreaming; but besides all this, there are two other objects, and three years after their marriage still a third appears, which she holds in her arms; that is Mítya; the name Mítya is of course in honor of their friend Dmitri; but the two other objects—one was a sweet thought about her occupation, which is going to give her full independence of life, and the second thought is Sasha! This thought it is impossible to call a special thought, because it forms the basis of all that she thinks, because he takes part in all her life, and this thought which is not a special thought but a constant thought remains alone in her heart. Now you yourselves see that often the moments pass without Viéra Pavlovna having time to take a bath. (This was very conveniently arranged; it cost them a great deal of trouble; it was necessary to introduce a faucet into her room, with water from the kitchen boiler, and to take a great deal of wood for this luxury; but, however, they could afford it, and so they allowed it.) Yes, very often Viéra Pavlovna has time to take a bath and to lie down again comfortably until Sasha should come and take upon himself the duty of attending to the morning tea.
Yes, it could not be otherwise; Sasha is perfectly right when he declared that this must be arranged so because to drink morning tea, that is, tea mostly made of cream warmed with a very small dose of very strong tea, and to drink it in her bed, is wonderfully agreeable. Sasha goes for the tea service: yes, this happens oftener than his coming in directly with the tea service, and he makes himself busy, and she still takes her ease, and after she drinks the tea she still reclines, not in her little bed, but on her little sofa. She reclines till ten or eleven o’clock, till Sasha has to leave for the hospital or the clinic or to his medical lecture, and with his last cup Sasha takes a cigar, and either one of them reminds the other, “Now let us go to work”; or, “That’s enough; now let us go to work.” What work? Whatever happens—lessons or reviews, in Viéra Pavlovna’s course of study. Sasha is her instructor in the study of medicine, but his aid is still more essential for the preparation of those subjects in the gymnasium course in which it was necessary for her to pass the examination, the study of which would be too tedious by herself; the most terrible thing of all was mathematics; yes, the Latin was if anything more tedious; but it can’t be helped, she must endure the tediousness of it; not very long, however. In the examination which serves in place of the gymnasium certificate there is very little required in the medical school; for instance, I cannot guarantee that Viéra Pavlovna will ever reach such a perfection in the Latin language as to translate two lines of Cornelius Nepos, but she is already able to explain such phrases as she finds in medical books, because this knowledge is indispensable, though it is not very deep. No—but we have said enough about this. I see already that I am irreconcilably compromising Viéra Pavlovna; probably, the sapi—.