“Well, really! The man’s asking for the sake of art, not for some trifle. Why not help if you can?”
Anyuta began to dress.
“And what are you painting?” asked Klochkov.
“Psyche. A nice subject, but it somehow won’t come out right. I have to use different models all the time. Yesterday there was one with blue feet. Why are your feet blue? I ask. My stockings ran, she says. And you keep grinding away! Lucky man, you’ve got patience.”
“Medicine’s that sort of thing, you have to grind away at it.”
“Hm … I beg your pardon, Klochkov, but you live like an awful swine. Devil knows how you can live this way!”
“How do you mean? I can’t live any other way … I get only twelve roubles a month from the old man, and it’s a real trick to live decently on that.”
“So it is …” said the artist, wincing squeamishly, “but all the same you could live better … A developed man absolutely must be an aesthete. Isn’t that true? And here you’ve got devil knows what! The bed isn’t made, there’s swill, litter … yesterday’s kasha on a plate … pah!”
“That’s true,” said the medical student, and he became embarrassed, “but Anyuta didn’t manage to tidy up today. She’s busy all the time.”
When the artist and Anyuta left, Klochkov lay down on the sofa and began to study lying down, then accidentally fell asleep, woke up an hour later, propped his head on his fists and pondered gloomily. He remembered the artist’s words, that a developed man absolutely must be an aesthete, and his room indeed seemed disgusting, repulsive to him now. It was as if he foresaw the future with his mental eye, when he would receive patients in his office, have tea in a spacious dining room in company with his wife, a respectable woman—and now this basin of swill with cigarette butts floating in it looked unbelievably vile. Anyuta, too, seemed homely, slovenly, pitiful … And he decided to separate from her, at once, whatever the cost.
When she came back from the artist’s and began taking off her coat, he stood up and said to her seriously:
“The thing is this, my dear … Sit down and listen to me. We have to separate! In short, I don’t wish to live with you anymore.”
Anyuta had come back from the artist’s so tired, so worn out. She had posed for so long that her face had become pinched, thin, and her chin had grown sharper. She said nothing in reply to the medical student’s words, only her lips began to tremble.
“You must agree that we’ll have to separate sooner or later anyway,” said the medical student. “You’re good, kind, and not stupid—you’ll understand …”
Anyuta put her coat back on, silently wrapped her embroidery in paper, gathered up her needles and thread; she found the little packet with four pieces of sugar in it on the windowsill and put it on the table near the books.
“It’s yours … some sugar …” she said softly and turned away to hide her tears.
“Well, what are you crying for?” asked Klochkov.
He walked across the room in embarrassment and said:
“You’re strange, really … You know yourself that we have to separate. We can’t be together forever.”
She had already picked up all her bundles and turned to him to say good-bye, but he felt sorry for her.
“Why not let her stay another week?” he thought. “Yes, indeed, let her stay, and in a week I’ll tell her to leave.”
And, annoyed at his own lack of character, he shouted at her sternly:
“Well, why are you standing there! If you’re going, go, and if you don’t want to, take your coat off and stay! Stay!”
Silently, quietly, Anyuta took off her coat, then blew her nose, also quietly, gave a sigh, and noiselessly went to her permanent post—the stool by the window.
The student drew the textbook towards him and again began pacing up and down.
“The right lung consists of three sections …” he ground away. “The upper section reaches the fourth or fifth rib on the front wall of the chest …”
And someone in the corridor shouted at the top of his voice:
“Gr-r-rigory, the samovar!”
FEBRUARY 1886
EASTER NIGHT
I was standing on the bank of the Goltva and waiting for the ferry from the other side. Ordinarily the Goltva is a middling sort of stream, silent and pensive, sparkling meekly through the thick bulrushes, but now a whole lake was spread before me. The spring waters had broken loose, overflowed both banks and flooded far out on both sides, covering kitchen gardens, hayfields and marshes, so that you often came upon poplars and bushes sticking up solitarily above the surface of the water, looking like grim rocks in the darkness.
The weather seemed magnificent to me. It was dark, but I could still see trees, water, people … The world was lit by the stars, which were strewn massively across the sky. I do not recall ever having seen so many stars. You literally could not put a finger between them. There were some as big as goose eggs, some as tiny as hempseed … For the sake of the festive parade, all of them, from small to large, had come out in the sky, washed, renewed, joyful, and all of them to the last one quietly moved their rays. The sky was reflected in the water; the stars bathed in the dark depths and trembled with their light rippling. The air was warm and still … Far away on the other side, in the impenetrable darkness, a few scattered fires burned bright red …
Two steps away from me darkened the silhouette of a peasant in a tall hat and with a stout, knotty stick.
“There’s been no ferry for a long while now,” I said.
“It’s time it came,” the silhouette replied.
“Are you also waiting for the ferry?”
“No, I’m just …” the peasant yawned, “waiting for the lumination. I’d have gone, but, to tell the truth, I haven’t got the five kopecks for the ferry”
“I’ll give you five kopecks.”
“No, thank you kindly … You use those five kopecks to light a candle for me in the monastery … That’ll be curiouser, and I’ll just stay here. Mercy me, no ferry! As if it sank!”
The peasant went right down to the water, took hold of the cable, and called out:
“Ieronym! Ierony-y-ym!”
As if in answer to his shout, the drawn-out tolling of a big bell came from the other side. The tolling was dense, low, as from the thickest string of a double bass: it seemed that the darkness itself had groaned. All at once a cannon shot rang out. It rolled through the darkness and ended somewhere far behind my back. The peasant took off his hat and crossed himself.
“Christ is risen!”1 he said.
Before the waves from the first stroke of the bell congealed in the air, a second was heard, and immediately after it a third, and the darkness was filled with an incessant, trembling sound. New lights flared up by the red fires, and they all started moving, flickering restlessly.
“Ierony-y-ym!” a muted, drawn-out call was heard.
“They’re calling from the other side,” said the peasant. “That means the ferry’s not there either. Our Ieronym’s asleep.”
The lights and the velvety ringing of the bell were enticing … I was beginning to lose patience and become agitated, but then, finally, as I peered into the dark distance, I saw the silhouette of something that looked very much like a gallows. It was the long-awaited ferry. It was moving so slowly that if it had not been for the gradual sharpening of its outline, one might have thought it was standing in place or moving towards the other shore.
“Quick! Ieronym!” my peasant shouted. “A gentleman’s waiting!”
The ferry crept up to the bank, lurched, and creaked to a stop. On it, holding the cable, stood a tall man in a monk’s habit and a conical hat.
“Why so long?” I asked, jumping aboard the ferry.
“Forgive me, for the sake of Christ,” Ieronym said softly. “Is there anybody else?”