And just then she must have resembled her grandfather the coachman.
‘‘You here, too?’’ she asked, giving me her hand. ‘‘Did you hear me sing? Well, how did you find it?’’ And, not waiting for my reply, she went on: ‘‘It’s very opportune that you’re here. Tonight I’m going to Petersburg for a short time. Will you let me go?’’
At midnight I saw her to the station. She embraced me tenderly, probably grateful that I hadn’t asked her any unnecessary questions, and promised to write to me, and I pressed her hands for a long time and kissed them, barely holding back the tears, not saying a word to her.
And when she was gone, I stood watching the receding lights, caressing her in my imagination, and saying softly:
‘‘My dear Masha, splendid Masha...’
I spent the night in Makarikha at Karpovna’s, and the next morning was already back with Radish, upholstering furniture for some wealthy merchant who was marrying his daughter to a doctor.
XVII
ON SUNDAY AFTER dinner my sister came to see me and we had tea.
‘‘I read a lot now,’’ she said, showing me a book she had taken from the town library on the way to see me. ‘‘Thanks to your wife and Vladimir for awakening my self-awareness. They saved me, they made it so that I now feel myself a human being. Before, I used not to sleep at night from various worries: ‘Ah, we’ve used too much sugar this week! Ah, if only I don’t oversalt the pickles!’ And now I also don’t sleep, but I have different thoughts. I suffer that half of my life has been spent so stupidly, so faintheartedly. I despise my past, I’m ashamed of it, and I look at father now as my enemy. Oh, how grateful I am to your wife! And Vladimir? He’s such a wonderful man! They’ve opened my eyes.’’
‘‘It’s not good that you don’t sleep at night,’’ I said.
‘‘You think I’m sick? Not a bit. Vladimir auscultated me and said I’m perfectly healthy. But health is not the point, it’s not so important... Tell me: am I right?’’
She was in need of moral support—that was obvious. Masha was gone, Dr. Blagovo was in Petersburg, and besides me there was no one left in town who could tell her she was right. She peered intently into my face, trying to read my secret thoughts, and if I became pensive in her presence and was silent, she took it to her account and grew sad. I had to be on my guard all the time, and when she asked me if she was right, I hastened to reply that she was right and that I deeply respected her.
‘‘You know? They’ve given me a role at the Azhogins’,’’ she went on. ‘‘I want to act on the stage. I want to live; in short, I want to drink from the full cup. I have no talent at all, and the role’s only ten lines long, but that’s still immeasurably more lofty and noble than pouring tea five times a day and keeping an eye on the cook lest she eat an extra bite. And above all, let father see, finally, that I, too, am capable of protest.’’
After tea she lay down on my bed and went on lying there for some time with her eyes closed, very pale.
‘‘Such weakness!’’ she said, getting up. ‘‘Vladimir said that all town women and girls are anemic from idleness. What an intelligent man Vladimir is! He’s right, infinitely right. One must work!’’
Two days later she came to the rehearsal at the Azhogins’ with a notebook. She was wearing a black dress with a string of corals around her neck, a brooch that, from a distance, looked like a puff pastry, and big earrings in her ears, with a diamond sparkling in each of them. When I looked at her, I felt awkward: the tastelessness struck me. Others, too, noticed that she was wearing earrings and diamonds inappropriately and was strangely dressed; I saw smiling faces and heard someone say laughingly:
‘‘Cleopatra of Egypt.’’
She tried to be worldly, unconstrained, at ease, and that made her look affected and strange. Her simplicity and comeliness abandoned her.
‘‘I just announced to father that I was going to a rehearsal,’’ she began, coming up to me, ‘‘and he shouted that he was depriving me of his blessing and even all but struck me. Imagine, I don’t know my role,’’ she said, looking into her notebook. ‘‘I’m sure to get confused. And so the die is cast,’’ she went on in strong agitation. ‘‘The die is cast...’
It seemed to her that everyone was looking at her and was amazed at the important step she had ventured upon, that everyone expected something special from her, and it was impossible to convince her that nobody paid attention to such small and uninteresting people as she and I.
She had nothing to do till the third act, and her role as a visiting provincial gossip consisted merely in standing by the door as if eavesdropping and then saying a short monologue. Until her appearance, for at least an hour and a half, while there was walking, reading, tea drinking, arguing onstage, she never left my side and kept murmuring her role and clutching her notebook nervously; and, imagining that everyone was looking at her and waiting for her appearance, she kept straightening her hair with a trembling hand and repeating:
‘‘I’m sure to get confused... How heavy my heart is, if you only knew! I’m as frightened as if I was about to be led out to execution.’’
At last her turn came.
‘‘Cleopatra Alexeevna—you’re on!’’ said the director.
She stepped to the middle of the stage with an expression of terror on her face, unattractive, angular, and for half a minute stood there like a post, completely motionless, and only the big earrings swung under her ears.
‘‘You can use the notebook the first time,’’ somebody said.
It was clear to me that she was trembling and, from trembling, could not speak or open her notebook, and that she was past thinking about her role, and I was just about to go to her and say something when she suddenly sank to her knees in the middle of the stage and burst into loud sobs.
There was movement, there was noise all around, I alone stood leaning against the backdrop, struck by what had happened, not understanding, not knowing what I was to do. I saw her being picked up and led away. I saw Anyuta Blagovo come over to me; earlier I hadn’t seen her in the room, and now it was as if she had sprung from the ground. She was wearing a hat with a veil and, as always, had the air of having stopped by only for a minute.
‘‘I told her not to act,’’ she said crossly, pronouncing each word abruptly and blushing. ‘‘This is madness! You should have stopped her!’’
The Azhogin mother, thin and flat, quickly came over to me, in a short jacket with short sleeves, and with cigarette ashes on her chest.
‘‘My friend, it’s terrible,’’ she said, wringing her hands and, as usual, peering intently into my face. ‘‘It’s terrible! Your sister’s condition... she’s pregnant! Take her away, I implore you...’
She was breathing heavily from agitation. And to one side stood her three daughters, as thin and flat as she, and huddled timorously together. They were alarmed, astounded, as if a convict had just been caught in their house. What a disgrace, how frightful! And yet this respectable family spent all their lives fighting prejudice; obviously they assumed that all of mankind’s prejudices and errors consisted only in three candles, the number thirteen, and the black day—Monday!
‘‘I implore you... implore you...’ Mrs. Azhogin repeated, protruding her lips and drawing out the letter O. ‘‘I implo-o-ore you, take her home.’’
XVIII
A LITTLE LATER, my sister and I went down the stairs. I shielded her with the skirt of my coat; we hurried, choosing back lanes where there were no streetlamps, hiding from passersby, and it was like fleeing. She no longer wept but looked at me with dry eyes. To Makarikha, where I was taking her, it was only a twenty-minute walk, and strangely, in so short a time we managed to recall our whole life, we discussed everything, thought over our situation, considered...