The poor old woman! At that moment she was thinking neither of the great moment ahead of her, nor of her soul, nor of her future life; she was thinking only of her poor companion with whom she had spent her life and whom she was leaving orphaned and unprotected. With extraordinary efficiency, she arranged everything in such a way that afterwards Afanasy Ivanovich would not notice her absence. Her certainty of imminent death was so strong and her state of mind was so set on it that, in fact, a few days later she lay down and could no longer take any food. Afanasy
Ivanovich turned all attention and never left her bedside. "Maybe you'll eat something, Pulkheria Ivanovna?" he would say, looking anxiously in her eyes. But Pulkheria Ivanovna would not say anything. Finally, after a long silence, she made as if to say something, moved her lips-and her breath flew away.
Afanasy Ivanovich was completely amazed. The thing seemed so wild to him that he did not even weep. With dull eyes he gazed at her as if not understanding what this corpse could mean.
The dead woman was laid on the table, dressed in the dress she herself had appointed, with her hands crossed and a candle placed in them-he looked at it all insensibly. Many people of various ranks filled the yard, many guests came to the funeral, long tables were set up in the yard; kutya, 11 liqueurs, pies covered them in heaps; the guests talked, wept, gazed at the deceased, discussed her qualities, looked at him-but he viewed it all strangely. The deceased was finally taken up and borne away, people flocked behind, and he, too, followed her. The priests were in full vestments, the sun shone, nursing infants wept in their mothers' arms, larks sang, children in smocks ran and frolicked on the road. Finally the coffin was placed over the hole, he was told to go up and kiss the dead woman for the last time; he went up, kissed her, tears came to his eyes, but some sort of insensible tears. The coffin was lowered down, the priest took the spade and threw in the first handful of earth, in a deep, drawn-out chorus the reader and two sextons sang "Memory Eternal" 12 under the clear, cloudless sky, the workmen took up their spades, and earth now covered the hole smoothly-at that moment he made his way to the front; everyone parted, allowing him to pass, wishing to know his intentions. He raised his eyes, looked around dully, and said: "Well, so you've buried her already! What for?!" He stopped and did not finish his speech.
But when he returned home, when he saw that his room was empty, that even the chair on which Pulkheria Ivanovna used to sit had been taken away-he wept, wept hard, wept inconsolably, and tears poured in streams from his lusterless eyes.
That was five years ago. What grief is not taken away by time? What passion will survive an unequal battle with it? I knew a man in the bloom of his still youthful powers, filled with true nobility and virtue, I knew him when he was in love, tenderly, passionately, furiously, boldly, modestly, and before me, almost before my eyes, the object of his passion-tender, beautiful as an angel-was struck down by insatiable death. I never saw such terrible fits of inner suffering, such furious, scorching anguish, such devouring despair as shook the unfortunate lover. I never thought a man could create such a hell for himself, in which there would be no shadow, no image, nothing in the least resembling hope… They tried to keep an eye on him; they hid all instruments he might have used to take his own life. Two weeks later he suddenly mastered himself: he began to laugh, to joke; freedom was granted him, and the first thing he did with it was buy a pistol. One day his family was terribly frightened by the sudden sound of a shot. They ran into the room and saw him lying with his brains blown out. A doctor who happened to be there, whose skill was on everyone's lips, saw signs of life in him, found that the wound was not quite mortal, and the man, to everybody's amazement, was healed. The watch on him was increased still more. Even at table they did not give him a knife and tried to take away from him anything that he might strike himself with; but a short while later he found a new occasion and threw himself under the wheels of a passing carriage. His arm and leg were crushed; but again they saved him. A year later I saw him in a crowded room; he sat at the card table gaily saying "Petite ouverte," 13 keeping one card turned down, and behind him, leaning on the back of his chair, stood his young wife, who was sorting through his chips.
As I said, five years had passed since Pulkheria Ivanovna's death when I visited those parts and stopped at Afanasy Ivanovich's farmstead to call on my old neighbor, with whom I once used to spend the days pleasantly and always ate too much of the excellent food prepared by the cordial hostess. As I drove up to the place, the house seemed twice as old to me, the peasant cottages lay completely on their sides-no doubt just like their owners; the paling and wattle fence were completely destroyed, and I myself saw the cook pulling sticks out of it for kindling the stove, when she had only to go two extra steps to get to the brushwood piled right there. With sadness I drove up to the porch; the same Rustys and Rovers, blind now or with lame legs, began barking, raising their wavy tails stuck with burrs. An old man came out to meet me. It was he! I recognized him at once; but he was now twice as hunched as before. He recognized me and greeted me with the same familiar smile. I followed him inside; everything there seemed as before, but I noticed a strange disorder in it all, some tangible absence of something or other; in short, I sensed in myself those strange feelings that come over us when for the first time we enter the dwelling of a widower whom we had known before inseparable from his lifelong companion. These feelings are like seeing before us a man we had always known in good health, now lacking a leg. The absence of the solicitous Pulkheria Ivanovna could be seen in everything: at the table one of the knives was lacking a handle; the dishes were no longer prepared with the same artfulness. I did not want to ask about the management and was even afraid to look at the farm works.
When we sat down to eat, a serf girl covered Afanasy Ivanovich with a napkin-and it was very well she did, because otherwise he would have spilled sauce all over his dressing gown. I tried to entertain him by telling him various bits of news; he listened with the same smile, but at times his look was completely insensible, and thoughts did not wander but vanished into it. Often he would raise a spoonful of kasha and, instead of putting it into his mouth, put it to his nose; instead of stabbing a piece of chicken with his fork, he stabbed the decanter, and then the serf girl would take his hand and guide it to the chicken. Sometimes we had to wait several minutes for the next dish. Afanasy Ivanovich would notice it himself and say, "Why are they so long in bringing the food?" But I could see through the chink of the door that the boy who served the food gave no thought to it at all and was asleep with his head on the bench.
"This is the dish," Afanasy Ivanovich said when we were served mnishki 14 with sour cream, "this is the dish," he went on, and I noticed that his voice was beginning to tremble and a tear was about to come from his leaden eyes, while he made every effort to hold it back, "this is the dish that the la-, the la-, the late…" and all at once the tears poured down. His hand fell on the plate, the plate overturned, fell off and broke, sauce got all over him; he sat insensibly, insensibly holding his spoon, and like a stream, like a ceaselessly flowing fountain, the tears poured down in torrents onto the napkin covering him.
"God!" I thought, looking at him, "five years of all-destroying time-already an insensible old man, an old man whose life seems never to have been disturbed by a single strong feeling of the soul, whose whole life seems to have consisted entirely of sitting on a high-backed chair, of eating little dried fish and pears, and of good-natured storytelling-and such a long, burning sorrow! And which is stronger in us-passion or habit? Or do all our strong impulses, all the whirlwind of our desires and boiling passions, come merely from our bright youth and seem deep and devastating only because of that?" Be it as it may, just then all our passions seemed childish to me compared with this long, slow, almost insensible habit. Several times he attempted to pronounce the dead woman's name, but halfway through it his calm and ordinary face became convulsively disfigured, and I was struck to the heart by his childlike weeping. No, these were not the tears usually shed so generously by old folk describing their pitiful situation and misfortunes to you; neither were they the tears they weep over a glass of punch-no! these were tears that flowed without the asking, of themselves, stored up in the bitter pain of an already cold heart.