It is over a fortnight since we have heard any news of Pavel. From his last letter or two we gathered that he was somewhere in Prussia where the Samsonov Corps was so completely smashed up. Sashenka is horribly uneasy, and added to that, her mother comes to us almost every day, and the sight of the poor old lady’s grief upsets the whole household. She is here now, having come straight from Mass. Sashenka is giving her coffee in the dining-room as I write here. Besides Pavel, Sashenka’s mother has another son, Nikolai, who is married and has a family. The old lady lives with them, having no means of her own, but either because Nikolai is unsympathetic, or by the very nature of things, she is drawn more towards her daughter, and gives us the benefit of every little trouble and worry she has. I am not complaining of the harmless old lady, but I must confess I do find her visits rather trying at times. One day it’s tears and complaints about Nikolai, who doesn’t get on very well with his wife, another it’s Pavel. There is always something to upset Sashenka and bring discord into our otherwise happy family.
I am very fond of Pavel myself, and can’t think without a shudder that at this moment, as I write his name, he may be wounded or even killed. I awoke in the middle of last night and could not go to sleep again for two absurd, conflicting sensations that tormented me. I couldn’t think of Pavel as living, yet I had no ground for thinking him dead. I didn’t know whether to pity him exposed to danger in the trenches, or to mourn for him dead.
At the present moment it seems to me that he is alive, but sooner or later he is bound to be killed in this horrible war that is more like some wholesale butchery than the triumph of justice. I never argue with the men in our office when they declare that the war will be over in November. Their view seems to me too optimistic; we can hardly expect peace before Christmas at least. Another four months are before us, and with two hundred thousand killed every month, what earthly chance can Pavel have?
Being a man I can look the inevitable in the face with fortitude, and will bear the blow with dignity should it befall us, but how about mother and Sashenka? The poor old lady is ready to die at the merest breath of misfortune.
When I lay awake last night I wondered how I would break the news to mother in the event of the calamity happening. What could I say to her? My heart began to beat violently at the very thought. To pronounce the word that is to change completely the aspect of the world for another, to make it something different to what it was a moment ago, is not a pleasant task. To be responsible for the first burst of grief was truly terrifying, particularly as I did not know what form it would take. Would it produce a flood of tears, one heartrending cry, or sudden death?
I watched mother in the dining-room before I came away, as she raised a rusk to her mouth. “I wonder what would happen to that rusk if I were to say that Pavel was killed?” I thought. And a vivid picture rose up in my mind of how that unfortunate rusk would roll to the floor; I even saw the very spot where it would lie, and how Annisia would pick it up when she swept the room, and eat it, little witting how it came there.
The autumn climate of Petrograd is evidently having a bad effect on us all. The children are very fractious. Even my darling Lidotchka so far forgot her usually angelic ways and had a fight with Peter.