He repeated weakly: “Stay here. Do not go away.”
The Swedish doctor was washing his hands and talking in a low voice to Stahl. He turned to me and said:
“You must try not to agitate him. Do not let him speak or move his head.” Then he went out into the corridor with Stahl.
Mrs. Stahl and Vera sat mute and terror-stricken in a corner. I watched Bozevsky, with a deep, dull ache racking my heart. He seemed to be falling asleep. I felt his hand relax in mine and his short breathing became calmer and more regular.
But Stahl came in again, and Bozevsky opened his eyes.
Stahl approached the bedside and stood for a long while looking down at his friend. Then he turned to me. “A nurse is coming,” he said. “I will take you ladies home and then come back and pass the night with him.”
Take me home! How could I return home? How could I endure to meet Vassili again? At the mere thought of seeing him, who with a treacherous shot from behind had shattered this young existence, hatred and terror flamed up within me. No! I would not return home. Never again would I touch the hand of Vassili Tarnowsky.
While these thoughts traversed my mind, some one knocked at the door. It was the nurse. Vera and Madame Grigorievska, after questioning me with their eyes, got up softly; then, with a glance of pity at Bozevsky, they went on tiptoe out of the room.
At the door Stahl beckoned to me to come. But I shook my head. As if he knew what was passing Bozevsky opened his eyes again.
“Stay here,” he whispered. Then he put his hand to the bandage round his neck. “If you leave me I will tear it all off.” He made a gesture as if he would do so.
“I shall not leave you,” I whispered bending over him. “I shall never leave you again.”
I kept my word.
Later I learned that Vassili had given himself up to the authorities, and that my grief-stricken mother had come to fetch our children and had taken them with her to Otrada. To her and to my father they were the source of much melancholy joy.
Thus did the old garden of my youth open again its shadowy pathways and flowery lawns to the unconscious but already sorrow-touched childhood of little Tioka and Tania—those tragic children whose father was in prison and whose mother, far away from them, watched and suffered by the sinister death-bed of a stranger. To me the two innocent, angelic figures often came in my dreams; and I cried out to them with bitterest tears: “Oh, my own children, my two loved ones, forgive your mother that she does not forsake one who is dying for her sake. This very night, perhaps, or to-morrow—soon, soon, alas!—his life will end. And with a broken heart your mother will return to you.”
But Bozevsky did not die that night. Nor the following day. Nor the day after.
Fate had in store for him and for me a much more appalling doom. He dragged his frightful death-agony through the interminable hours of a hundred days and a hundred nights. He was doomed to trail his torment from town to town, from surgeon to surgeon, from specialist to charlatan. One after another, they would unbandage the white and withered neck, probe the blue-edged wound, and then cover up again with yellow gauze the horrifying cavity; leaving us to return, heart-stricken and silent, to the luxurious hotels that housed our irremediable despair.
About that time I heard that Vassili had been released on bail. Later on he was acquitted by a jury in the distant city of Homel, on the ground of justifiable homicide.
Perhaps it was a just verdict. But for him whom he had struck down—and for me—what anguish, great Heavens! What lingering torture of heart-breaking days and nights.
Ah, those nights, those appalling nights! We dreaded them as one dreads some monstrous wild beast, lurking in wait to devour us. All day long we thought only of the night. As soon as twilight drew near Bozevsky, lying in his bed with his face towards the window, clutched my hand and would not let it go.
“I am afraid,” he would murmur. “I wish it were not night. If only it were not night!”
“Nonsense, dearest,” I would say, cheerfully. “It is quite early. It is still broad daylight. Everybody is moving about. The whole world is awake and out of doors.”
But night, furtive and grim, crouched in the shadowy room, lurked in dark corners, and then suddenly was upon us, black, silent, terrifying. Round us the world lay asleep, and we two were awake and alone with our terror.
Then began the never-ending question, ceaselessly repeated, reiterated throughout the entire night:
“What is the time?”
It was only nine o'clock. It was half-past nine.... Ten… Half-past ten… A quarter to eleven… Eleven o'clock… Five minutes past…
As soon as it was dawn, at about four o'clock, Bozevsky grew calm. Silence fell, and he slept.
The last station of our calvary was at Yalta, in the Crimea. We had gone there with a last up-flaming of hope. There were doctors there whom we had not yet consulted. There was Ivanoff and the world-famed Bobros.
“Continue the same treatment,” said the one.
“You must try never to move your head,” said the other.
That was all.
And to our other tortures was added the martyrdom of complete immobility.
“I want to turn my head,” Bozevsky would say in the night.
“No, dearest, no. I implore you—”
“I must. I must turn it from one side to the other. If I stay like this any longer I shall go mad!”
Then, with infinite precautions, with eyes staring and terror-filled, like one who yields to an overwhelming temptation or performs some deed of insane daring, Bozevsky would turn his sad face slowly round, and let his cheek sink into the pillow.
His fair curls encircled with flaxen gaiety his spent and desolate face.
XVIII
Alone with him during those long terrible hours, my anguish and my terror constantly increased. At last I could endure it no longer and I telegraphed to Stahclass="underline"
“Come immediately.”
At dusk the following day Stahl arrived.
I had hoped to derive courage and consolation from his presence. But as soon as he stepped upon the threshold my heart turned faint within me. Thinner and more spectral than ever, with hair dishevelled and eyes sunken and dull, he looked dreamily at me, while a continual tremor shook his hands.
I greeted him timorously, and the touch of his chill, flaccid fingers made me shudder.
Bozevsky seemed glad to see him. Stretching out his wasted hand to him he said at once:
“Stahl, I want to move my head.”
Stahl seemed not to understand, and Bozevsky repeated: “I want to turn my head from one side to another.”
“Why not?” said Stahl, sitting down beside the bed and lighting a cigarette. “Turn it by all means.”
It was growing late; outside it was already dark. I drew the curtains and turned on the lights. Bozevsky began very slowly to turn his head from side to side; at first very timorously with frightened eyes, then by degrees more daringly, from right to left and from left to right.
“Keep still, keep still, dearest,” I entreated, bending over him.
“Stahl said it would not hurt,” panted Bozevsky. “Did you not, Stahl?” Stahl made no reply. He was smoking, with his heavy eyes half closed. At the sight of him I was filled with loathing and fear.
“Have you dined?” I inquired of him after a long silence. He nodded and went on smoking.
I tried to coax Bozevsky to take an egg beaten up in milk, but he continued to turn his head from side to side and would touch nothing. Little by little the sounds in the hotel died away. The gipsy music which had been audible, faintly in the distance, ceased. Night crept upon us sinister and silent.
Presently Stahl roused himself and opened his eyes. He looked at me and then at Bozevsky, who lay in the circular shadow cast by the lamp shade, dozing with his mouth slightly open; he looked pitiful and grotesque in his collar of yellow gauze.
Stahl made a grimace; then his breath became short and hurried as on that night of the ball when he sat beside me in the sleigh. He was panting with a slight sibilant sound and with a quick nervous movement of his head.