‘ “Why did it all happen? Why?”
‘ “Forgive me,” I said.
98‘ “Forgive! That’s all rubbish!… Only not to die!…” she cried, raising herself, and her glittering eyes were bent on me. “Yes, you have had your way!… I hate you! Ah! Ah!” she cried, evidently already in delirium and frightened at something. “Shoot! I’m not afraid!… Only kill everyone …! He has gone …! Gone …!”
‘After that the delirium continued all the time. She did not recognize99 anyone. She died towards noon that same day. Before that they had taken me to the police-station and from there to prison. There, during the eleven months I remained awaiting trial, I examined myself and my past, and understood it. I began to understand it on the third day: on the third day they took me there …’
He was going on but, unable to repress his sobs, he stopped. When he recovered himself he continued:
‘I only began to understand when I saw her in her coffin …’
He gave a sob, but immediately continued hurriedly:
‘Only when I saw her dead face did I understand all that I had done. I realized that I, I, had killed her; that it was my doing that she, living, moving, warm, had now become motionless, waxen, and cold, and that this could never, anywhere, or by any means, be remedied. He who has not lived through it cannot understand.… Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!…’ he cried several times and then was silent.
We sat in silence a long while. He kept sobbing and trembling as he sat opposite me without speaking. His face had grown narrow and elongated and his mouth seemed to stretch right across it.
‘Yes,’ he suddenly said. ‘Had I then known what I know now, everything would have been different. Nothing would have induced me to marry her.… I should not have married at all.’
Again we remained silent for a long time.
100‘Well, forgive me.…’14 He turned away from me and lay down on the seat, covering himself up with his plaid. At the station where I had to get out (it was at eight o’clock in the morning) I went up to him to say good-bye. Whether he was asleep or only pretended to be, at any rate he did not move. I touched him with my hand. He uncovered his face, and I could see he had not been asleep.
‘Good-bye,’ I said, holding out my hand. He gave me his and smiled slightly, but so piteously that I felt ready to weep.
‘Yes, forgive me …’ he said, repeating the same words with which he had concluded his story.
1 It was customary in Russia for a first, second and third bell to ring before a train left a station.
2 Literally ‘in the terem’, the terem being the woman’s quarter where in older times the women of a Russian family used to be secluded in oriental fashion.
3 The Housebuilder, a sixteenth-century manual, by the monk Silvester, on religion and household management.
4 One Russian edition adds: ‘First women’s rights, the civil marriage, and then divorce, come as unsettled questions.’
5 Tea in Russia is usually drank out of tumblers.
6 In Russia, as in other continental countries and formerly in England, the maisons de tolérance were under the supervision of the government; doctors were employed to examine the women, and, as far as possible, see that they did not continue their trade when diseased.
7 A notorious Parisian cancanière.
8 Streets in Moscow in which brothels were numerous.
9 In the printed and censored Russian edition the word ‘Court’ was changed to ‘most refined’.
10 In Russia wet-nurses were usually provided with an elaborate national costume by their employers.
11 The practice of employing wet-nurses was very much more general in Russia than in the English-speaking countries.
12 The card-game named in the original, and then much played in Russia, was vint, which resembles bridge.
13 Vánka the Steward is the subject and name of some old Russian poems. Vánka seduces his master’s wife, boasts of having done so, and is hanged.
14 In Russian the word for ‘forgive me’ is very similar to that for ‘good-bye’, and is sometimes used in place of the latter.
APPENDIX
The following are the readings of the lithograph:
1 Add: with remarkable glittering eyes of an indefinite colour, which attracted attention. Some of the description that follows is omitted.
2 Read: At first the clerk said that the place opposite was engaged; to which the old man replied that he was only going as far as the next station.
3 Read: considering probably that this did not at all infringe the dignity his figure and manner denoted, …
4 For the above paragraph read: ‘And then come discord, financial troubles, mutual recrimination, and the married couple separate,’ said the lawyer.
5 In place of the two preceding lines, read: said the lady, evidently encouraged by the general attention and approval.
6 The old man here replies: ‘Men are a different matter.’ And the lady says: ‘Then to a man, in your opinion, everything is permitted.’
7 Add: ‘Or if some stupid man cannot control his wife – it serves him right. But all the same one must not create a scandal about it. Love or don’t love, but don’t break up the home. Every husband can keep his wife in order, he has the right to do it. Only a fool can’t manage it.’
8 In place of this paragraph read: ‘But you yourself may go on the spree with the girls at Kunávin,’ said the lawyer with a smile.
9 Add: a vein on his forehead stood out,
10 The lithograph here reads differently, and the words that follow are: ‘How do you mean “what kind of love”?’ said the lady. ‘The ordinary love of married couples.’
‘But how can ordinary love sanctify marriage?’ continued the nervous gentleman. He was as agitated as though he were angry and wished to speak unpleasantly to the lady. She felt this and was also agitated.
‘How? Very simply,’ said she. The nervous gentleman at once seized on the word.
‘No, not simply!’
11 Add: and least of all for his wife. That is what the proverb says, and it is a true one. “Another’s wife is a swan, but one’s own is bitter wormwood.”
12 Read: Even if one admits that Menelaus might prefer Helen for his whole lifetime, Helen would prefer Paris.
13 Add: … of Helen with Menelaus or vice versa. The only difference is that with one it comes sooner and with another later. It is only written in stupid novels that they loved one another all their lives, and only children can believe that.
14 Add: ‘This identity of ideals does not occur among old people, but always between handsome and young ones. And I assert that love, real love, does not sanctify marriage as we are accustomed to suppose for one’s whole life, but on the contrary destroys it.’
15 Add: And we feel this, and to avoid it we preach “love”. In reality the preaching of free love is only a call to return to the mingling of the sexes – excuse me,’ said he, turning to the lady, ‘to fornication. The old basis has worn out, and we must find a new one, but not preach depravity!’ He had become so excited that we all remained silent and looked at him.