III
I have again forgotten and again I am awake. Three weeks of incessant debauchery! How do I stand it? Today my head, bones, every part of my body is aching. Remorse, boredom, fruitless and tormenting arguing! If only someone would come!
As if in answer to my thought a ring at the door sounded. “Is Evgenia at home?” “At home; come in, please,” I heard the voice of the cook reply. Uneven, hurried steps resounded along the corridor, the door flew open, and through it appeared Ivan Ivanovich.
He was not at all like the timid, bashful man who had come to see me two months ago. His hat was on the side of his head, he wore a bright-coloured tie, and a self-assured, insolent expression. His gait was staggering, and he smelt strongly of liquor.
Nadejda Nicolaievna jumped up from her seat.
“How do you do?” he began. “I have come to see you.”
And he sat down on a chair near the door, without taking off his hat or overcoat. She said nothing and he said no more. Had he not been drunk she would have found something to say, but now she lost her presence of mind. Whilst she was thinking what to do, he again spoke.
“Nadia! See, I have come. … I have the right!” he suddenly shouted out, and drew himself up to his full height. His hat fell off, and his black hair fell in disorder on to his face, his eyes blazed. His whole appearance expressed such delirium that for a moment Nadejda Nicolaievna was frightened.
She tried to speak tenderly with him.
“Listen, Ivan Ivanovich, I shall be very pleased if you will come another time, only go home now. You have had too much to drink. Be a good fellow and go home. Come and see me when you are well.”
“She is frightened,” Ivan Ivanovich muttered half to himself, again sitting down on the chair—tamed! “But why are you hunting me away?” he broke out again fiercely. “Why? I began to drink through you; I used to be sober! Why do you draw me to you, tell me?”
He wept. Drunken tears stifled him, trickled down his face, falling into his mouth contorted with sobbing. He could scarcely speak.
“Another woman would consider it a piece of fortune to be taken out of this hell. I would slave for you like a bullock. You would live without care, quietly and honourably. Tell me, what have I done to merit your hatred?”
Nadejda Nicolaievna kept silent.
“Why are you silent?” he yelled. “Speak, say something!—anything you like, only say something. I am drunk—that’s true. … I should not have come here if I were not. Do you know how afraid I am of you when I am sober? You can do what you like with me. Tell me to steal—I’ll steal. Tell me to kill—I’ll kill. Do you know this? Of course you know! You are clever and see everything. If you do not know it … Nadia, Nadia, my heart’s darling, pity me!”
And he threw himself on to his knees before her. But she sat motionless, resting against the wall, with her head thrown back and her hands behind her back. Her eyes were fixed on some faraway point. Did she see anything? Did she hear anything? What were her feelings at the sight of this man who had thrown himself at her feet and was imploring her love? Pity? Contempt? She wanted to pity him, but felt she could not. He only excited her aversion. And could he have excited any other feeling in this pitiful state?—drunk, dirty, abjectly imploring?
He had already for some days past given up going to his work. He drank every day. Finding consolation in drink, he began to follow the object of his passion less, and sat all the time at home drinking and trying to muster up courage to go to her and tell her all. What he would say to her he did not himself know. “I will tell her everything, open my soul,” flashed through his fuddled head. At length he made up his mind, went and began to speak. Even through the mist of his drunkenness he realized that he was saying and doing things not at all calculated to inspire love towards him, but all the same, he went on speaking, feeling that with every word he was falling lower and lower, and drawing the noose tighter and tighter around his neck.
He spoke long and disjointedly. His speech became slower and slower, and finally his drunken, swollen eyelids closed, and with his head thrown back against the chair, he fell asleep.
Nadejda Nicolaievna remained in her former pose, vacantly gazing at the ceiling, drumming with her fingers on the wallpaper.
“Am I sorry for him? No. What can I do for him? Marry him? Dare I? Would it not be the same selling of myself? Yes—no, it would be even worse!”
She did not know why it would be worse, but felt it.
“Now, I am at least frank. Anyone may strike me. Have I not suffered insults? But then, how would I be better? Would it not be the same depravity, only not less frank? There he sits asleep, his head hanging backwards. Mouth open, face pale as death. His clothes are all stained. He must have fallen down somewhere. How heavily he is breathing … sometimes even snoring. … Yes, but this will all pass, and he will become once more a decent, self-respecting man. No, it isn’t that. It seems to me that if I let this man get the upper hand of me he will torment me with recollections … and I could not endure it. No, I’ll stay what I am. … Yes, it won’t be for much longer.”
She threw a shawl around her shoulders and left the room, slamming the door behind her. Ivan Ivanovich woke from the noise, looked around him with unmeaning eyes, and feeling it uncomfortable to sleep on a chair, with difficulty staggered to the bed, fell on to it, and dropped off into a dead sleep. He awoke with his head aching, but sober, late in the evening, and, seeing where he was, fled.
I left the house not knowing where I was going. The weather was bad. The day gloomy and dull. A wet snow was falling on my face and hands. It would have been much better to stay indoors, but could I sit there with him? He is going absolutely to ruin. What can I do to keep him? Can I change my relations towards him? My whole soul, my whole inner being revolts and burns at the thought. I do not myself know why I do not wish to take advantage of this opportunity to have done with this awful life, to rid myself of this nightmare. If I were to marry him? A new life, new hopes. … Surely the feeling of pity which I nevertheless have for him would turn to love?
But no! Now he is ready to lick my hand, but afterwards will trample me underfoot and say: “And you still oppose me, contemptible creature! You despised me!”
Would he say this? I think so.
There is one means of salvation for me, an excellent one, on which I have long made up my mind, and to which I expect I shall eventually have recourse. But I think it is still too soon. I am too young, I feel too much that I am alive. I want to live, to breathe, to feel, hear, see. I want to be able, even if rarely, to see the sky and the Neva.
Here is the Quay. On the one side enormous buildings, and on the other—the blackening, icebound Neva. The ice will soon move, and then the river will be blue. The park on the opposite side is becoming green. The islands, too, are becoming covered with foliage. Although it is a Petersburg spring, still, it is spring.
And suddenly I remembered my last happy spring. I was then a girl of seven years, and lived with my father and mother in the country in the steppe. They paid little heed to what I did, and I ran about where and as much as I chose. I remember in the beginning of March how the rivers rushed along the gullies, roaring with the melted snow, how the steppe became darker, how wonderful the air became, how moist and joyous. First the top of the mounds showed themselves with the short grass on them becoming green. Then afterwards the whole steppe became green, although drift snow still lay in the gullies and ravines. Rapidly, in a few days, literally as if they had sprung already freed from out of the earth, bunches of peonies grew up and on them, their gaudy bright crimson blooms. The larks began to sing.
Oh Lord! What have I done that even in this life I have been thrown into hell? Surely all that I go through is worse than any hell!
The stone steps lead straight down to a prorub. Something impelled me to go down these steps and look at the water. But is it too soon? Of course it is. I will wait a little.
All the same, it would be nice to stand on the slippery wet edge of the prorub. It would be so easy to slip in. It would only be cold. … One second—and I should float under the ice down the river. A mad beating of the ice above with hands, feet, head, face. It would be interesting to know if daylight is visible through the ice.
I stood motionless over the prorub, and so long that I had got to the state when one thinks of nothing.
My feet had long been wet through, yet I did not move from the spot. It was not a cold wind, but it pierced right through me, so that I was shivering all over; but still I stood there. I do not know how long this would have lasted if somebody had not called out from the Quay:
“Heh, Madame! Lady!”
I did not turn round.
“Lady, please come back on to the pavement!”
Somebody behind me began to come down the steps. In addition to the shuffling of feet along the steps sprinkled with sand, I heard a sort of dull noise. I turned round. It was a gorodovoi, who had come down, and it was his sword I had heard. When he saw my face, the respectful expression on his face abruptly changed to one of coarse insolence. He came up to me and seized me by the shoulder.
“Get out of this, you! The likes of you are everywhere. You will be fool enough to throw yourself into the prorub, and then I shall lose my billet through you.”
He knew by my face what I am.