I only remember that when I came in the gate, she was still warm. Above all, they were all staring at me. First they shouted, but then they suddenly fell silent and everyone makes way for me and… and she’s lying there with the icon. I remember, as if through darkness, that I went up silently and looked for a long time, and everyone surrounded me, saying something to me. Lukerya was there, but I didn’t see her. She says she spoke to me. I remember only that tradesman: he kept shouting to me that “a handful of blood came out of her mouth, a handful, a handful!” and showing me the blood right there on the stone. It seems I touched the blood with my finger, got it on my finger, looked at it (I remember that), while he kept telling me: “A handful, a handful!”
“And what of this handful?” I screamed, so they say, at the top of my lungs, raised my arms, and hurled myself at him …
Oh, wild, wild! Incomprehension! Implausibility! Impossibility!
IV
I WAS ONLY FIVE MINUTES LATE
Or not so? Is it plausible? Can you say it’s possible? Why, for what reason, did this woman die?
Oh, believe me, I understand; but what she died for—is still a question. She got frightened of my love, asked herself seriously: to accept or not to accept, and couldn’t bear the question, and preferred to die. I know, I know, there’s no point racking one’s brain: she made too many promises, got frightened that she couldn’t keep them—it’s clear. Here there are several quite terrible circumstances.
Because what did she die for? The question still stands. The question throbs, it’s throbbing in my brain. I would even have let her stay like that, if she’d wanted it to stay like that. She didn’t believe it, that’s what! No—no, I’m lying, that’s not it at all. Simply because with me it had to be honest; if it’s love, it must be total love, and not like the love of some merchant. And since she was too chaste, too pure to consent to the kind of love a merchant needs, she didn’t want to deceive me. Didn’t want to deceive me with half love, under the guise of love, or with quarter love. Too honest she was, that’s what, sirs! I wanted to implant breadth of heart in her, remember? A strange thought.
I’m terribly curious: did she respect me? I don’t know, did she despise me or not? I don’t think she did. It’s terribly strange: why did it never occur to me, during the whole winter, that she despised me? I was in the highest degree certain of the opposite, until that very moment when she looked at me with stern astonishment. Stern, precisely. Then I understood at once that she despised me. Understood irrevocably, for all eternity! Ah, let her, let her despise me, even all her life, but—let her live, live! Just now she still walked, talked. I don’t understand at all how she could throw herself out the window! And how could I have supposed it even five minutes before? I’ve called Lukerya. I won’t let Lukerya go now for anything, not for anything!
Oh, we could still have come to some agreement. We only got terribly unused to each other over the winter, but couldn’t we have got accustomed again? Why, why couldn’t we have come together and begun a new life again? I’m magnanimous, so is she—there’s the point of connection! A few words more, two days, no longer, and she’d have understood everything.
Above all, the pity is that it was all chance—simple, barbaric, insensate chance. That’s the pity of it! Five minutes is all, I was only five minutes late! If I’d come five minutes earlier—the moment would have flown over like a cloud, and would never have entered her head afterward. And it would have ended with her understanding everything. And now again empty rooms, again I’m alone. There’s the pendulum ticking, it doesn’t care, it’s not sorry for anything. No one’s here—that’s the trouble!
I pace, I keep pacing. I know, I know, don’t prompt me: you find it ridiculous that I complain about chance and about five minutes? But it’s obvious here. Consider one thing: she didn’t even leave a note saying something like “blame no one for my death,” as they all do. Couldn’t she have considered that they might even give Lukerya trouble: “You were the only one with her, so it was you who pushed her.” At the least, they’d be pestering her for no reason, if four people in the courtyard hadn’t seen from windows in the wing and from the courtyard how she stood with the icon in her hands and threw herself down. But this, too, is chance, that people were standing there and saw it. No, all this is a moment, just one unaccountable moment. Suddenness and fantasy! So what if she prayed before the icon? That doesn’t mean it was before death. The whole moment lasted maybe only some ten minutes, the whole decision—precisely as she was standing by the wall, her head leaning on her hand, and smiling. The thought flew into her head, whirled around, and—and she couldn’t resist it.
There’s an obvious misunderstanding here, like it or not. She still could have lived with me. And what if it was anemia? Simply from anemia, from an exhaustion of vital energy? She got tired over the winter, that’s what…
I was late!!!
How thin she is in the coffin, how sharp her little nose is! Her eyelashes lie like little points. And how she fell—didn’t crush, didn’t break anything! Only this “handful of blood.” A teaspoon, that is. Internal concussion. A strange thought: if only it were possible not to bury her? Because if she’s taken away, then… oh, no, it’s almost impossible that she’ll be taken away! Oh, I know they must take her away, I’m not crazy and not raving at all, on the contrary, never before has my mind shone so—but how can it be that again there’s no one in the house, again two rooms, and again myself alone with the pledges. Raving, raving, there’s where the raving is! I wore her out—that’s what!
What are your laws to me now? What do I need your customs, your morals, your life, your state, your faith for? Let your judge judge me, let them take me to court, to your public court, and I’ll say I recognize nothing. The judge will shout: “Silence, officer!” But I’ll shout back at him: “Where did you get such power now that I should obey you? Why did dark insensateness smash what is dearest of all? Why do I need your laws now? I separate myself.” Oh, it makes no difference to me!
Blind, blind! Dead, she doesn’t hear! You don’t know what paradise I’d have surrounded you with. Paradise was in my soul, I’d have planted it all around you! Well, so you wouldn’t love me—let it be, what of it? Everything would be like that, everything would stay like that. You’d tell me things as you would a friend—and we’d be joyful, and we’d laugh joyfully looking into each other’s eyes. And so we’d live. And even if you came to love someone else—well, let it be, let it be! You’d walk with him and laugh, and I’d watch from the other side of the street… Oh, let it all be, only let her open her eyes at least once! For one moment, only one! she’d look at me as she did just now, when she stood in front of me and swore to be my faithful wife! Oh, in one look she’d understand everything.
Insensateness! Oh, nature! People are alone on the earth—that’s the trouble! “Is there a living man on the field?” the Russian warrior cries. I, too, though not a warrior, cry out, and no one answers. They say the sun gives life to the universe. Let the sun rise and—look at it, isn’t it dead? Everything is dead, and the dead are everywhere. Only people, and around them silence—that’s the earth! “People, love one another”—who said that? whose testament is it? The pendulum ticks insensibly, disgustingly. It’s two o’clock in the morning. Her little boots are standing by her bed, just as if they were waiting for her… No, seriously, when she’s taken away tomorrow, what about me then?