When the princess was upset, not understood, offended, and when she did not know what to say or do, she usually began to weep. And now she finally covered her face and began to weep in a thin, childish voice. The doctor suddenly fell silent and looked at her. His face darkened and became stern.
“Forgive me, Princess,” he said hollowly. “I yielded to a spiteful feeling and forgot myself. That’s not good.”
And, with an embarrassed cough, forgetting to put his hat on, he quickly walked away from the princess.
Stars were already twinkling in the sky. On the other side of the monastery, the moon was probably rising, because the sky was clear, transparent, and tender. Bats raced noiselessly along the white monastery wall.
The clock slowly struck three-quarters of some hour, probably past eight. The princess stood up and slowly went to the gate. She felt hurt and was weeping, and it seemed to her that the trees, and the stars, and the bats were sorry for her; and the clock struck melodiously only in order to sympathize with her. She was weeping and thinking how good it would be to go into the monastery for the rest of her life. On quiet summer evenings she would stroll in solitude down the footpaths, hurt, insulted, misunderstood, and only God and the starry sky would see the suffering woman’s tears. In the church the vigil was still going on. The princess stopped and listened to the singing; how good this singing sounded in the still, dark air! How sweet it was to weep and suffer to this singing!
Coming to her rooms, she looked at her tear-stained face in the mirror and powdered it, then sat down to supper. The monks knew that she liked pickled sterlet, tiny mushrooms, Malaga, and simple honey-cakes that leave a taste of cypress in the mouth, and each time she came they served her all that. Eating the mushrooms and following them with Malaga, the princess dreamed of how she would be utterly ruined and abandoned, how all these stewards, agents, clerks, and maids, for whom she had done so much, would betray her and start saying rude things; how all the people on earth would attack her, revile her, laugh at her; she would renounce her title of princess, renounce luxury and society, and go into the monastery without a word of reproach; she would pray for her enemies, and then everyone would suddenly understand her, would come to ask her forgiveness, but it would be too late…
After supper she knelt in the corner before an icon and read two chapters from the Gospel. Then the maid prepared her bed and she lay down. Stretching out under the white coverlet, she sighed sweetly and deeply, as one sighs after weeping, closed her eyes, and began to drift off into sleep…
In the morning she woke up and looked at her watch: it was half past nine. On the rug beside the bed stretched a narrow, bright strip of light from a ray that came through the window and just barely lit up the room. Behind the black window curtain flies were buzzing.
“It’s early!” the princess thought and closed her eyes.
Stretching and luxuriating in the bed, she recalled yesterday’s encounter with the doctor and all the thoughts she had fallen asleep with last night; she recalled that she had been unhappy. Then came the memory of her husband, who lived in Petersburg, then of her stewards, doctors, neighbors, official acquaintances…A long line of familiar men’s faces passed by in her imagination. She smiled and thought that, if these people had been able to penetrate her soul and understand her, they would all be at her feet…
At a quarter past eleven she summoned the maid.
“Get me dressed, Dasha,” she said languorously. “But first go and tell them to hitch up the horses. I must go to see Klavdia Nikolaevna.”
Coming out of her rooms to get into the carriage, she squinted from the brightness of the daylight and laughed with pleasure: it was a wonderful day! Looking with her narrowed eyes at the monks who had gathered by the porch to see her off, she nodded affably and said:
“Goodbye, my friends! See you in two days.”
She was pleasantly surprised to see the doctor among the monks by the porch. His face was pale and stern.
“Princess,” he said, taking off his hat and smiling guiltily, “I’ve already been waiting here a long time for you. Forgive me, for God’s sake…I was carried away yesterday by a mean, vengeful feeling, and I said a lot of…stupid things. In short, I ask your forgiveness.”
The princess smiled affably and offered him her hand. He kissed it and blushed.
Trying to resemble a little bird, the princess fluttered into the carriage and nodded her head on all sides. Her heart was cheerful, serene, and warm, and she herself felt that her smile was unusually affectionate and gentle. As the carriage drove to the gate, then down the dusty road past the sheds and gardens, past long trains of Ukrainian carts and pilgrims walking in files to the monastery, she kept squinting and smiling gently. She thought there was no higher delight than to bring warmth, light, and joy everywhere, to forgive offenses, and to smile affably at one’s enemies. The passing peasants bowed to her, the carriage softly whished by, the wheels raised clouds of dust which the wind carried over to the golden rye, and it seemed to the princess that her body was rocking, not on the cushions of the carriage, but on those clouds, and that she herself resembled a light, transparent cloud…
“I’m so happy!” she whispered, closing her eyes. “So happy!”
1889
AFTER THE THEATER
NADYA ZELENINA CAME BACK with her mama from the theater, where there had been a performance of Evgeny Onegin, and, going to her room, quickly took off her dress, loosened her braid, and, wearing only a petticoat and a white bed jacket, hurriedly sat down at the table to write the sort of letter Tatiana wrote.1
“I love you,” she wrote, “but you do not love me, you do not love me!”
She wrote it and laughed.
She was only sixteen and had never loved anyone yet. She knew that the officer Gorny and the student Gruzdev loved her, but now, after the opera, she felt like doubting their love. To be unloved and unhappy—how interesting! When the one loves much and the other is indifferent, there is something beautiful, touching, and poetic about it. Onegin is interesting in that he does not love at all, and Tatiana is enchanting because she loves so much, and if they loved each other equally and were happy, they might seem dull.
“So stop assuring me that you love me,” Nadya went on writing, thinking about the officer Gorny. “I cannot believe you. You are very intelligent, cultivated, serious, you have great talents, and it may be that a brilliant future awaits you, while I am an uninteresting, worthless girl, and you know perfectly well that I will only be a hindrance in your life. True, you took a fancy to me, and you thought that in me you had met your ideal, but that was a mistake, and now you are already asking yourself in despair: why did I meet this girl? And only your kindness keeps you from admitting it!…”
Nadya felt sorry for herself, started to cry, and went on:
“It is painful for me to leave Mama and my brother, otherwise I would put on a nun’s habit and go wherever my feet took me. And you would be free and would fall in love with someone else. Ah, if only I could die!”
Through her tears she could not make out what she was writing; brief rainbows trembled on the table, the floor, the ceiling, as if Nadya were looking through a prism. She could not write, so she leaned back in her armchair and started thinking about Gorny.
My God, how interesting, how charming men are! Nadya recalled what a wonderful expression—ingratiating, guilty, and gentle—the officer had when someone argued with him about music, and how he tried at the same time to keep his voice from sounding passionate. In society, where cool haughtiness and indifference are considered signs of good upbringing and noble character, one must hide one’s passion. And so he does, but he doesn’t succeed, and everybody knows perfectly well that he loves music passionately. Endless arguments about music, the bold opinions of uncomprehending people, keep him under constant strain; he becomes frightened, shy, taciturn. He plays the piano magnificently, like a true pianist, and if he were not an officer, he would probably be a famous musician.