“We shall never see each other again, I suppose,” said Katya.
“Never, Katya,” answered Natasha.
“Well, then, let us say good-bye!
They embraced each other.
“Do not curse me,” Katya whispered hurriedly, I’ll . . . always ... you may trust me ... he shall be happy . . . Come, Alyosha, take me down!” she articulated rapidly, taking his arm.
“Vanya,” Natasha said to me in agitation and distress when they had gone, “you follow them . . . and don’t come back. Alyosha will be with me till the evening, till eight o’clock. But he can’t stay after. He’s going away. I shall be left alone come at nine o’clock, please!”
When at nine o’clock, leaving Nellie with Alexandra Semyonovna (after the incident with the broken cup), I reached Natasha’s, she was alone and impatiently expecting me. Mavra set the samovar for us. Natasha poured me out tea, sat down on the sofa, and motioned me to come near her. “So everything is over,” she said, looking intently at me. Never shall I forget that look.
“Now our love, too, is over. Half a year of life! And it’s my whole life,” she added, gripping my hands.
Her hand was burning. I began persuading her to wrap herself up and go to bed.
“Presently, Vanya, presently, dear friend. Let me talk and recall things a little. I feel as though I were broken to pieces now ... tomorrow I shall see him for the last time at ten o’clock, for the last time!”
“Natasha, you’re in a fever. You’ll be shivering directly. ... Do think of yourself.”
“Well, I’ve been waiting for you now, Vanya, for this half-hour, since he went away. And what do you think I’ve been thinking about? What do you think I’ve been wondering? I’ve been wondering, did I love him? Or didn’t I? And what sort of thing our love was? What, do you think it’s absurd, Vanya, that I should only ask myself that now?”
“Don’t agitate yourself, Natasha.”
“You see, Vanya, I decided that I didn’t love him as an equal, as a woman usually loves a man. I loved him like . . . almost like a mother.... I even fancy that there’s no love in the world in which two love each other like equals. What do you think?”
I looked at her with anxiety, and was afraid that it might be the beginning of brain-fever. Something seemed to carry her away. She seemed to be impelled to speech. Some of her words were quite incoherent, and at times she even pronounced them indistinctly. I was very much alarmed.
“He was mine,” she went on. “Almost from the first time I met him I had an overwhelming desire that he should be mine, mine at once, and that he should not look at anyone, should not know anyone but me. . . . Katya expressed it very well this morning. I loved him, too, as though I were always sorry for him . . . I always had an intense longing, a perfect agony of longing when I was alone that he should be always happy, awfully happy. His face (you know the expression of his face, Vanya), I can’t look at it without being moved; no one else has such an expression, and when he laughs it makes me turn cold and shudder... Really!...”
“Natasha, listen...”
“People say about him . . . and you’ve said it, that he has no will and that he’s ... not very clever, like a child. And that’s what I loved in him more than anything.... would you believe it? I don’t know, though, whether I loved that one thing; I just simply loved him altogether, and if he’d been different in some way, if he’d had will or been cleverer, perhaps I shouldn’t have loved him so. Do you know, Vanya, I’ll confess one thing to you. Do you remember we had a quarrel three months ago when he’d been to see that — what’s her name — that Minna ... I knew of it, I found it out, and would you believe it, it hurt me horribly, and yet at the same time I was somehow pleased at it.... I don’t know why ... the very thought that he was amusing himself — or no, it’s not that — that, like a grown-up man together with other men he was running after pretty girls, that he too went to Minnas! I ... what bliss I got out of that quarrel; and then forgiving him . . . oh, my dear one!”
She looked into my face and laughed strangely. Then she sank into thought as though recalling everything. And for a long time she sat like that with a smile on her face, dreaming of the past.
“I loved forgiving him, Vanya,” she went on. Do you know when he left me alone I used to walk about the room, fretting and crying, and then I would think that the worse he treated me the better ... yes! And do you know, I always picture him as a little boy. I sit and he lays his head on my knees and falls asleep, and I stroke his head softly and caress him ... I always imagined him like that when he was not with me ... Listen, Vanya,” she added suddenly, “what a charming creature Katya is!”
It seemed to me that she was lacerating her own wounds on purpose, impelled to this by a sort of yearning, the yearning of despair and suffering.... and how often that is so with a heart that has suffered great loss.
“Katya, I believe, can make him happy,” she went on.
She has character and speaks as though she had such conviction, and with him she’s so grave and serious — and always talks to him about such clever things, as though she were grown up. And all the while she’s a perfect child herself! The little dear, the little dear! Oh, I hope they’ll be happy! I hope so, I hope so!”
And her tears and sobs burst out in a perfect torrent. It was quite half an hour before she came to herself and recovered some degree of self-control.
My sweet angel, Natasha! Even that evening in spite of her own grief she could sympathize with my anxieties, when, seeing that she was a little calmer, or, rather, wearied out, thinking to distract her mind I told her about Nellie. We parted that evening late. I stayed till she fell asleep, and as I went out I begged Mavra not to leave her suffering mistress all night.
“Oh ... for the end of this misery,” I cried as I walked home. “To have it over quickly, quickly! Any end, anyhow, if only it can be quick!”
Next morning at nine o’clock precisely I was with her again. Alyosha arrived at the same time ... to say good-bye. I will not describe this scene, I don’t want to recall it. Natasha seemed to have resolved to control herself, to appear cheerful and unconcerned, but she could not. She embraced Alyosha passionately, convulsively. She did not say much to him, but for a long while she looked intently at him with an agonizing and almost frantic gaze. She hung greedily on every word he uttered, and yet seemed to take in nothing that he said. I remember he begged her to forgive him, to forgive him for his love, and for all the injury he had done her, to forgive his infidelities, his love for Katya, his going away . . . he spoke incoherently, his tears choked him. He sometimes began suddenly trying to comfort her, saying that he was only going away for a month, or at the most five weeks; that he would be back in the summer, when they would be married, and that his father would consent, and above all that the day after tomorrow he would come back from Moscow, and then they would have four whole days together again, so now they were only being parted for one day....
It was strange! He fully believed in what he said, and that he would certainly return from Moscow in two days.... My then was he so miserable and crying?
At last eleven o’clock struck. It was with difficulty I persuaded him to go. The Moscow train left exactly at midday. There was only an hour left. Natasha said afterwards that she did not remember how she had looked at him for the last time. I remember that she made the sign of the cross over him, kissed him, and hiding her face in her hands rushed back into the room. I had to see Alyosha all the way downstairs to his carriage, or he would certainly have returned and never have reached the bottom.
“You are our only hope,” he said, as we went downstairs.
“Dear Vanya! I have injured you, and can never deserve your love; but always be a brother to me; love her, do not abandon her, write to me about everything as fully, as minutely as possible, write as much as you can. The day after tomorrow I shall be here again for certain; for certain; for certain! But afterwards, when I go away, write to me!”
I helped him into his carriage.
“Till the day after tomorrow,” he shouted to me as he drove off. “For certain!”
With a sinking heart I went upstairs, back to Natasha. She was standing in the middle of the room with her arms folded, gazing at me with a bewildered look, as though she didn’t recognize me. Her coil of hair had fallen to one side; her eyes looked vacant and wandering. Mavra stood in the doorway gazing at her, panic-stricken.