III
I UNDERSTAND ALL TOO WELL
And this was only a few days ago, five days, only five days, last Tuesday! No, no, if she’d only waited a little longer, only a little bit longer, I—I would have dispelled the darkness! And, anyway, didn’t she calm down? The very next day she listened to me with a smile now, despite her bewilderment… Above all, throughout this time, all five days, there was bewilderment or shame in her. She was also afraid, very afraid. I won’t argue, I’m not going to contradict like some insane person: there was fear, but how could she not be afraid? We’d been strangers to each other for so long, had grown so unused to each other, and suddenly all this… But I didn’t consider her fear, the new thing was shining!… True, unquestionably true, I had made a mistake. And maybe even many mistakes. And when we woke up the next day, still that morning (it was Wednesday), I right away suddenly made a mistake: I suddenly made her my friend. I hurried too much, too much, but a confession was needed, was necessary—yes, and much more than a confession! I didn’t conceal from her even what I’d been concealing from myself all my life. I said straight out that all I’d done that whole winter was feel certain of her love. I explained to her that the pawnshop was nothing but the degradation of my will and intelligence, a personal idea of self-castigation and self-exaltation. I explained to her that I had actually turned coward in the buffet that time, owing to my character, to insecurity: I was struck by the surroundings, by the buffet; struck by how I was going to come out in this, and wouldn’t it come out stupid? I turned coward not at the duel, but that it would come out stupid… And afterward I didn’t want to admit it and tormented everyone, and tormented her for it, and that was why I had married her, so as to torment her for it. Generally, I spoke for the most part as if in a fever. She herself took me by the hands and begged me to stop: “You’re exaggerating… you’re tormenting yourself”—and again the tears would start, again all but fits! She kept begging me not to say any of it, not to remember.
I paid little or no regard to her begging: spring, Boulogne! The sun was there, our new sun was there, that was all I kept saying! I locked the shop, handed the business over to Dobronravov. I suddenly suggested to her that we give everything away to the poor, except for the capital of three thousand inherited from my godmother, which we’d spend on going to Boulogne, then come back and start a new life of labor. So it was decided, because she didn’t say anything… she only smiled. And, it seems, she smiled more out of delicacy, so as not to upset me. I did see that I was burdening her, don’t think I was so stupid or such an egoist that I didn’t see it. I saw everything, everything to the last little feature, I saw and knew it better than anyone else; all my despair stood in full view!
I told her all about me and about her. And about Lukerya. I told her I had wept… Oh, yes, I also changed the subject, I also tried by all means not to remind her of certain things. And she even became animated a couple of times, I remember, I remember! Why do you say that I looked and saw nothing? And if only this hadn’t happened, everything would have been resurrected. She even told me just two days ago, when the conversation turned to reading and what she’d read that winter—she even told me, laughing as she recalled it, about the scene between Gil Blas and the archbishop of Granada.11 And what childlike laughter, so dear, just as before, when she was my fiancée (one instant! one instant!); how glad I was! I was terribly struck, however, about this archbishop: so she had after all found peace of mind and happiness enough to laugh over the masterpiece as she sat there this winter. So she had already begun to be fully at peace, to believe fully that I would just let her stay like that. “I thought you’d just let me stay like that”—that’s what she had said then on Tuesday! Oh, a ten-year-old girl’s thought! And she believed, she did believe that everything would in fact stay like that: she at her table, I at mine, and both of us like that till we’re sixty years old. And suddenly—here I come, a husband, and a husband in need of love! Oh, incomprehension, oh, my blindness!
It was also a mistake that I looked at her with rapture; I should have restrained myself, because rapture is frightening. But, after all, I did restrain myself, I didn’t kiss her feet anymore. I never once showed that… well, that I was a husband—oh, it never even entered my mind, I only worshipped! But it was impossible to be quite silent, it was impossible not to speak at all! I suddenly said to her that I delighted in her conversation and that I considered her incomparably, incomparably better educated and developed than myself. She turned bright red and said abashedly that I was exaggerating. Here, like a fool, unable to help myself, I told her how enraptured I had been when, standing behind the door, I had listened to her combat, the combat of innocence with that creature, and how I had delighted in her intelligence, her sparkling wit, together with such childlike simple-heartedness. She shuddered all over, as it were, tried to murmur again that I was exaggerating, but suddenly her whole face darkened, she covered it with her hands and began to sob… Here I, too, couldn’t stand it: I fell down before her again, again started kissing her feet, and again it ended with a fit, the same as on Tuesday. That was last evening, but in the morning …
In the morning?! Madman, that morning was today, just now, only just now!
Listen and try to fathom: when we came together over the samovar just now (this after yesterday’s fit), I was even struck by her calm, that’s how it was! And I’d spent the whole night shaking with fear over yesterday. But suddenly she comes up to me, stands in front of me, and, clasping her hands (just now, just now!), began saying to me that she was a criminal, that she knew it, that her crime had tormented her all winter, torments her still… that she values my magnanimity only too highly… “I’ll be your faithful wife, I’ll respect you…” Here I jumped up like a crazy man and embraced her! I was kissing her, kissing her face, her lips, like a husband, for the first time after a long separation. And why did I ever leave just now, for only two hours… our passports… Oh, God! Five minutes, if only I’d come back five minutes earlier?… And here this crowd in our gateway, those looks at me… oh, Lord!
Lukerya says (oh, now I’ll never let Lukerya go, she knows everything, she was here all winter, she’ll tell me everything), she says that when I left the house, and only something like twenty minutes before I came back—she suddenly went into our room to ask the lady something or other, I don’t remember, and saw that her icon (that same icon of the Mother of God) had been taken down and was standing in front of her on the table, as if the lady had just been praying before it. “What’s the matter, ma’am?” “Nothing, Lukerya, go now… Wait, Lukerya,” she went up to her and kissed her. “Are you happy, ma’am?” “Yes, Lukerya.” “You should have come to the master long ago, ma’am, to ask forgiveness… Thank God you’ve made things up.” “All right, Lukerya,” she says, “you may go, Lukerya,” and she smiled, and so strangely. So strangely that Lukerya suddenly went back ten minutes later to look at her: “She was standing by the wall, right by the window, her hand leaning on the wall and her head pressed to it, she was standing like that, thinking. And she was so deep in thought that she didn’t hear how I stood and looked at her from the other room. I saw that she was as if smiling—standing, thinking, and smiling. I looked at her, turned quietly, walked out, also thinking to myself, only suddenly I heard the window being opened. I went at once to tell her, ‘It’s chilly, ma’am, you might catch cold,’ and suddenly I see her standing on the windowsill, already standing up straight in the open window, her back to me, holding the icon in her hands. My heart just sank, I shouted: ‘My lady, my lady!’ She heard me, made as if to turn toward me, then didn’t, but took a step, pressed the icon to her breast, and threw herself out the window!”