“We walk, walk, walk.”
The old man looked like a sorcerer in the opera, and they were both indeed singing, as if in the theater:
“We walk, walk, walk… You live in warmth, in brightness, in softness, and we walk through the freezing cold, through the blizzard, over the deep snow … We know no rest, we know no joy … We bear the whole burden of this life, both ours and yours, on ourselves … Hoo-o-o! We walk, walk, walk …”
Lyzhin awoke and sat up in bed. What a disturbing, unpleasant dream! And why were the agent and the beadle together in his dream? What nonsense! And now, when Lyzhin’s heart was pounding hard, and he sat in bed holding his head in his hands, it seemed to him this insurance agent and the beadle really had something in common in life. Had they not gone side by side in life, too, holding on to each other? Some invisible but significant and necessary connection existed between the two men, even between them and Taunitz, and between everyone, everyone; in this life, even in the most desolate backwater, nothing was accidental, everything was filled with one common thought, everything had one soul, one purpose, and to understand it, it was not enough to think, not enough to reason, one probably had to have the gift of penetrating into life, a gift which apparently was not given to everyone. And the unfortunate, overstrained “neurasthenic,” as the doctor called him, who had killed himself, and the old peasant, who every day of his life had been going from one man to another, were accidents, scraps of life, for someone who considered his own existence accidental, but were parts of one wonderful and reasonable organism for someone who considered his own life, too, a part of this common thing and was aware of it. So thought Lyzhin, and this had long been his secret thought, and only now did it unfold broadly and clearly in his mind.
He lay down and began to fall asleep; and suddenly they were walking together and singing again:
“We walk, walk, walk … We take what’s hardest and bitterest from life, and leave you what’s easy and joyful, and you, sitting over your supper, can reason coolly and soberly about why we suffer and perish, and why we’re not as healthy and contented as you.”
What they sang had occurred to him before, but this thought had somehow sat behind other thoughts in his head and flashed timidly, like a distant lantern in misty weather. And he felt that this suicide and the peasant’s grievances lay on his conscience, too; to be reconciled with the fact that these people, submissive to their lot, heaped on themselves what was heaviest and darkest in life—how terrible it was! To be reconciled with that, and to wish for oneself a bright, boisterous life among happy, contented people, and to dream constantly of such a life, meant to dream of new suicides by overworked, careworn people, or by weak, neglected people, whom one sometimes talked about with vexation or mockery over dinner, but whom one did not go to help … And again:
“We walk, walk, walk …”
As if someone were beating on his temples with a hammer.
In the morning he woke up early, with a headache, roused by noise; in the neighboring room von Taunitz was saying loudly to the doctor:
“You can’t go now. Look what it’s doing outside. Don’t argue, just ask the driver: he won’t take you in such weather even for a million roubles.”
“But it’s only two miles,” the doctor said in a pleading voice.
“Even if it was half a mile. When you can’t, you can’t. The moment you go out the gate, it will be sheer hell, you’ll instantly lose your way. Say what you like, I won’t let you go for anything.”
“It’s sure to quiet down towards evening,” said the peasant who was lighting the stove.
And the doctor in the neighboring room started talking about the influence of the harshness of nature on the Russian character, about the long winters which, by restricting freedom of movement, hampered people’s mental growth, and Lyzhin listened vexedly to these arguments, looked out the windows at the snowdrifts heaped up by the fence, looked at the white dust that filled all visible space, at the trees bending desperately to the right, then to the left, listened to the howling and banging, and thought gloomily:
“Well, what sort of moral can be drawn here? It’s a blizzard, that’s all …”
At noon they had lunch, then wandered aimlessly about the house, going up to the windows.
“And Lesnitsky’s lying there,” thought Lyzhin, gazing at the whirls of snow spinning furiously over the drifts. “Lesnitsky’s lying there, the witnesses are waiting …”
They talked of the weather, saying that a blizzard usually lasts two days, rarely longer. At six o’clock they had dinner, then played cards, sang, danced, ended with supper. The day was over, they went to bed.
Between night and morning everything quieted down. When they got up and looked out the windows, the bare willows with their weakly hanging branches stood perfectly motionless, it was gray, still, as if nature were now ashamed of her rioting, of the insane nights and the free rein she had given to her passions. The horses, harnessed in a line, had been waiting by the porch since five o’clock in the morning. When it was fully light, the doctor and the coroner put on their coats and boots, and, after taking leave of their host, went out.
At the porch, beside the driver, stood their acquaintance, the biddle Ilya Loshadin, hatless, with an old leather bag over his shoulder, all covered with snow; and his face was red, wet with sweat. The servant who came out to help the guests into the sleigh and cover their legs gave him a stern look and said:
“What are you standing here for, you old devil? Away with you!”
“Your Honor, folks are worried…” Loshadin began, with a naïve smile all over his face, obviously pleased to see the ones he had been waiting for so long. “Folks are very worried, the kids are crying … We thought you’d gone back to town, Your Honor. For God’s sake, take pity on us, dear benefactors …”
The doctor and the coroner said nothing, got into the sleigh, and drove to Syrnya.
JANUARY 1899
THE LADY WITH THE LITTLE DOG
I
The talk was that a new face had appeared on the embankment: a lady with a little dog. Dmitri Dmitrich Gurov, who had already spent two weeks in Yalta and was used to it, also began to take an interest in new faces. Sitting in a pavilion at Vernet’s, he saw a young woman, not very tall, blond, in a beret, walking along the embankment; behind her ran a white spitz.
And after that he met her several times a day in the town garden or in the square. She went strolling alone, in the same beret, with the white spitz; nobody knew who she was, and they called her simply “the lady with the little dog.”
“If she’s here with no husband or friends,” Gurov reflected, “it wouldn’t be a bad idea to make her acquaintance.”
He was not yet forty, but he had a twelve-year-old daughter and two sons in school. He had married young, while still a second-year student, and now his wife seemed half again his age. She was a tall woman with dark eyebrows, erect, imposing, dignified, and a thinking person, as she called herself. She read a great deal, used the new orthography, called her husband not Dmitri but Dimitri, but he secretly considered her none too bright, narrow-minded, graceless, was afraid of her, and disliked being at home. He had begun to be unfaithful to her long ago, was unfaithful often, and, probably for that reason, almost always spoke ill of women, and when they were discussed in his presence, he would say of them:
“An inferior race!”
It seemed to him that he had been taught enough by bitter experience to call them anything he liked, and yet he could not have lived without the “inferior race” even for two days. In the company of men he was bored, ill at ease, with them he was taciturn and cold, but when he was among women, he felt himself free and knew what to talk about with them and how to behave; and he was at ease even being silent with them. In his appearance, in his character, in his whole nature there was something attractive and elusive that disposed women towards him and enticed them; he knew that, and he himself was attracted to them by some force.