In the evening two doctors—one bony, bald, with a big red beard, the other swarthy with a Jewish face and cheap spectacles—performed some sort of operation on Olga Mihailovna. To these unknown men touching her body she felt utterly indifferent. By now she had no feeling of shame, no will, and anyone might do what he would with her. If anyone had rushed at her with a knife, or had insulted Pyotr Dmitrich, or had robbed her of her right to the little creature, she would not have said a word.
They gave her chloroform during the operation. When she came to again, the pain was still there and in- sufferable. It was night. And Olga Mihailovna remem- bered that there had been just such a night with the stillness, the lamp, with the midwife sitting motionless by the bed, with the drawers of the chest pulled out, with Pyotr Dmitrich standing by the window, but some time very, very long ago. . . .
v
"I am not dead . . ." thought Olga Mihailovna when she began to understand her surroundings again, and when the pain was over.
A bright summer day looked in at the widely open windows; in the garden below the windows, sparrows and magpies never ceased chattering for one instant.
The drawers were shut now, her husband's bed had been made. There was no sign of the midwife or of the maid or of Varvara in the room, only Pyotr Dmitrich was standing, as before, motionless by the window look- ing into the garden. There was no sound of a child's crying, no one was congratulating her or rejoicing, it was evident that the little creature had not been born alive.
"Pyotr!" Olga Mihailovna called to her husband.
Pyotr Dmitrich looked round. It seemed as though a long time must have passed since the last guest had departed and Olga Mihailovna had insulted her hus- band, for Pyotr Dmitrich was perceptibly thinner and hollow-eyed.
'What is it?" he asked, coming up to the bed.
He looked away, moved his lips and smiled childlike helplessness.
"Is it all over?" asked Olga Mihailovna.
Pyotr Dmitrich tried to make some answer,. but his lips quivered and his mouth worked like a toothless old man's, like Uncle Nikolay Nikolaich's.
"Olya," he said, wringing his hands; big tears sud- denly dropping from his eyes. "Olya, I don't care about your property qualification, nor the Circuit Courts" (he gave a sob) "nor dissenting opinions, nor those visitors, nor your dowry. ... I don't care about anythingl Why didn't we take thought for our child? Oh, it's no good talking!"
With a despairing wave of the hand he went out oЈ the bedroom.
But nothing mattered to Olga Mihailovna now. There was a mistiness in her brain from the chloroform, an emptiness in her soul. . . • The dull indifference to life which possessed her when the two doctors were performing the operation was still with her.
1888
An Attack of Nerves
A
MEDICAL student called Meier, and a pupil of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture called Rybnikov, went one evening to see their friend Vasilyev, a law student, and suggested that
he should go with them to S Street. For a long
time Vasilyev would not consent to go, but in the end he put on his overcoat and went with them.
He knew nothing of fallen women except by hearsay and from books, and he had never in his life been to the houses in which they live. He knew that there are im- moral women who, under the pressure of fatal circum- stances—environment, bad education, poverty, and so on—are forced to sell their honor for money. They know nothing of pure love, have no children, have no civil rights; their mothers and sisters wee_p over them as though they were dead, science treats of them as an evil, men address them with contemptuous familiarity. But in spite of all that, they do not lose the image and likeness of God. They all acknowledge their sin and hope for salvation. Of the means that lead to salvation they can avail themselves to the fullest extent. Society, it is true, will not forgive people their past, but in the sight of God St. Mary of Egypt is no lower than the other saints, When it had happened to Vasilyev in the street to recognize a fallen woman by her dress or her manners, or to see a picture of one in a comic paper, he always remembered a story he had once read: a young man, pure and self-sacrificing, loves a fallen woman and asks her to become his wife; she, considering herself unworthy of such happiness, takes poison.
Vasilyev lived in one of the side streets leading into Tverskoy Boulevard. When he came out of the house with his two friends it was about eleven o'clock. The first snow had recently fallen, and all nature was un- der its spell. There was the smell of snow in the air, the snow crunched softly under the feet; the earth, the roofs, the trees, the seats in the boulevards, everything was soft, white, young, and this made the houses look quite different from the way they did the day before; the street lamps burned more brightly, the air was more transparent, the carriages rumbled with a deeper note, and with the fresh, light, frosty air a feeling stirred in the soul akin to the white, youthful, fluffy snow.
"Against my will an unkno^ force," hummed the medical student in his agreeable tenor, "has led me to these mournful shores."
"Behold the mill . . ." the artist seconded him, "in ruins now. . . ."
"Behold the mill . . . in ruins now," the medical student repeated, raising his eyebrows and shaking his head mournfully.
He paused, rubbed his forehead, trying to remember the words, and then sang aloud, so well that passers-by looked round:
Here in old days when I was free, Love, free, unfettered, greeted me.
The three of them went into a restaurant and, with- out taking off their overcoats, drank a couple of glasses of vodka each. Before drinking the second glass, Vasilyev noticed a bit of cork in his vodka, raised the glass to his eyes, and gazed into it for a long time, frowning, screw- ing up his shortsighted eyes. The medical student mis- understood his expression, and said:
"Come, why look at it? No philosophizing, please. Vodka is given us to be drunk, sturgeon to be eaten, women to be visited, snow to be walked upon. For one evening anyway live like a human being!"
"But I haven't said anything . . ." Vasilyev protested, laughing. "Am I refusing to?"
There was a warmth inside him from the vodka. He looked with emotion at his friends, admired and envied them. In these strong, healthy, cheerful people how wonderfully balanced everything is, how finished and smooth is everything in their minds and souls! They sing, and have a passion for the theater, and draw, and talk a great deal, and drink, and they don't have head- aches the day after; they are both poetical and de- bauched, both soft and hard; they can work, too, and be indignant, and laugh without reason, and talk nonsense; they are warm, honest, self-sacrificing, and as human beings are in no way inferior to himself, who watches over every step. he takes and every word he utters, who is fastidious and cautious, and ready to raise every trifle to the level of a problem. And he longed for one eve- ning to live as his friends did, to open out, to free him- self from his own control. If vodka had to be drunk, he would drink it, though his head would be splitting next morning. If he were taken to the women he would go. He would laugh, play the fool, gaily respond to the passing advances of strangers in the street. . . .