Likharev jumped up and began to pace the room.
“Noble, sublime slavery!” he said, clasping his hands. “The lofty meaning of a woman’s life consists precisely in that! Of the terrible muddle that has accumulated in my head during all the time of my dealings with women, my memory, like a filter, has retained not the ideas, not the big words, not the philosophy, but this extraordinary obedience to fate, this extraordinary, all-forgiving mercy…”
Likharev clenched his fists, fixed his gaze on one point, and with a sort of passionate tension, as if sucking on each word, said through clenched teeth:
“This…this magnanimous endurance, faithfulness to the grave, poetry of the heart…The meaning of life is precisely in this uncomplaining martyrdom, in tears that can soften stone, in boundless, all-forgiving love, which brings light and warmth into the chaos of life…”
Miss Ilovaiskaya slowly got up, took a step towards Likharev, and fixed her eyes on his face. From the tears that glistened on his eyelashes, from his trembling, passionate voice, from his flushed cheeks, it was clear to her that women were not a chance or simple topic of conversation. They were the subject of his new passion or, as he said himself, his new belief! For the first time in her life, Ilovaiskaya saw before her a passionately, ardently believing man. Gesticulating, flashing his eyes, he seemed insane, frenzied to her, but in the fire of his eyes, in his talk, in the movements of his whole big body there was so much beauty, that she, not noticing it herself, stood before him as if rooted to the spot, and looked him rapturously in the face.
“Take my mother!” he said, stretching his arms towards her and making a pleading face. “I poisoned her existence, to her mind I disgraced the Likharev family, I caused her as much harm as only the worst enemy can cause, and—what then? My brothers give her small change for holy bread and prayer services, and she, violating her religious feelings, saves this money and secretly sends it to her wayward Grigory! This one little thing educates and ennobles the soul far more than any theories, big words, or thirty-five thousand species! I can give you a thousand examples. Take you, for instance! Outside a blizzard, night, and you’re going to your brother and father to give them tender warmth on the holiday, though maybe they don’t think of you, have even forgotten about you. But just wait, you’ll fall in love with a man, and then you’ll go to the North Pole with him. You will, won’t you?”
“Yes, if…I fall in love.”
“There, you see!” Likharev rejoiced and even stamped his foot. “Oh, God, I’m so glad we’ve become acquainted! My fate is so good to me, I keep meeting such splendid people. Every day brings such an acquaintance as a man would simply give his soul for. In this world there are many more good people than evil. Just imagine, you and I have talked as candidly and openheartedly as if we’ve known each other for a hundred years. Sometimes, I must tell you, for ten years you restrain yourself, say nothing, conceal things from your friends and wife, but you meet a cadet on the train and pour your whole life out to him. I’ve had the honor of seeing you for the first time, and I’ve confessed to you as I’ve never confessed before. Why is that?”
Rubbing his hands and smiling cheerfully, Likharev took a turn around the room and again began talking about women. Meanwhile the bell rang for matins.
“Lord!” Sasha wept. “He won’t let me sleep with all his talk!”
“Ah, yes!” Likharev caught himself. “I’m sorry, sweetie. Sleep, sleep…Besides her, I also have two boys,” he whispered. “They live with their uncle, madam, but this one can’t survive a day without her father. She suffers, complains, yet she clings to me like a fly to honey. I’m talking away, madam, but it wouldn’t hurt if you got some rest. Wouldn’t you like me to make a bed for you?”
Without waiting for permission, he shook the wet overcoat and spread it on the bench fur-side up, gathered the scattered kerchiefs and shawls, put the rolled-up coat at the head, and all that silently, with an expression of obsequious reverence on his face, as if he were fussing not with a woman’s rags, but with the broken pieces of sacred vessels. In his whole figure there was something guilty, embarrassed, as if he were ashamed of his height and strength in the presence of a weak being…
When Miss Ilovaiskaya lay down, he put out the candle and sat on a stool by the stove.
“So it is, madam,” he whispered, lighting a fat cigarette and blowing the smoke into the stove. “Nature has endowed the Russian man with an extraordinary capacity for belief, an inquisitive mind, and a gift for thinking, but it is all reduced to dust by carelessness, laziness, and dreamy light-mindedness…Yes, ma’am…”
Miss Ilovaiskaya peered into the darkness in astonishment and could see only the red patch on the icon and the flickering of light from the stove on Likharev’s face. The darkness, the bell-ringing, the howl of the blizzard, the lame boy, the complaining Sasha, the unhappy Likharev and his talk—all of it was mingling, growing into one enormous impression, and God’s world seemed to her fantastic, filled with wonders and enchanting powers. Everything she had just heard resounded in her ears, and human life appeared to her as a beautiful, poetic fairy tale, which had no end.
The enormous impression grew and grew, it clouded her consciousness and turned into a sweet sleep. Miss Ilovaiskaya slept, but she saw the icon lamp and the fat nose with the red light playing on it. She heard crying.
“Dear Papa,” a child’s voice pleaded tenderly, “let’s go back to Uncle! There’s a Christmas tree! There’s Styopa and Kolya!”
“What can I do, sweetie?” a man’s soft bass persuaded. “Understand me! Do understand!”
And the child’s crying was joined by a man’s.
This voice of human grief amid the howling of the storm touched the girl’s hearing with such sweet, human music that she could not bear the sweetness and also started crying. She heard later how the big, dark shadow quietly came over to her, picked up a fallen shawl from the floor, and wrapped it around her feet.
Miss Ilovaiskaya was awakened by a strange roar. She jumped up and looked around in surprise. A bluish dawn was looking through the windows half covered with snow. There was a gray twilight in the room, through which the stove, the sleeping girl, and Nasr-Eddin were clearly outlined. The stove and the lamp had already gone out. Through the wide-open door, the main room of the inn could be seen, with its counter and tables. Some man with a dull, Gypsy face and astonished eyes stood in the middle of the room, in a puddle of melted snow, holding a big red star on a stick. He was surrounded by a group of boys immobile as statues and all plastered with snow. The light of the star, passing through the red paper, reddened their wet faces. The crowd roared confusedly, and in their roar Miss Ilovaiskaya made out one quatrain:
Hey, you, ragged little kid,
Take your knife and go,
We’ll kill, we’ll kill ourselves a Yid,
He is the son of woe…
Likharev was standing by the counter, gazing tenderly at the singers and beating time with his foot. Seeing Miss Ilovaiskaya, he smiled broadly and went up to her. She also smiled.
“Merry Christmas!” he said. “I noticed you slept well.”
Miss Ilovaiskaya looked at him, said nothing, and went on smiling. After the night’s conversation, he now seemed to her not tall, not broad-shouldered, but small, just as the biggest steamship seems small to us once we are told that it has crossed the ocean.
“Well, it’s time for me to go,” she said. “I must get dressed. Tell me, where are you headed for now?”