“You mean out of her mind,” Ikhmenev observed harshly.
“Even if she was!” Nelly interjected, turning on him sharply. “Even if she was out of her mind, that’s what she told me to do and I’ll do it all my life. And when she told me, she even fainted.”
“Good God!” Anna Andreyevna exclaimed. “On the street, in her condition, in winter?…”
“They wanted to take us to the police station, but there was this gentleman who came and asked me where we lived. He gave me ten roubles and took us back home in his carriage. After that Mummy never got up, and three weeks later she died…”
“And what about her father? Did he never forgive her?” Anna Andreyevna cried out.
“No, he didn’t!” Nelly replied, desperately trying to control herself. “A week before she died, Mummy called me and said, “Nelly, go and see Granddad once more, for the last time, and ask him to come and forgive me. Tell him I’m going to die in a few days and will leave you on your own in the world. And tell him also that I don’t want to die…” I went, knocked at Granddad’s door, he opened it, and as soon as he saw me, he straight away wanted to close the door, but I grabbed hold of it with both hands and shouted, ‘Mummy’s dying, she wants to see you, go to her!…’ But he pushed me away and slammed the door shut. I returned to Mummy, lay down beside her and put my arms around her and didn’t say anything… Mummy put her arms around me too and didn’t ask any questions…”
At this point Nikolai Sergeich leant heavily on the table with one hand and got up, surveying us through strange, bleary eyes before slumping helplessly back in his chair. Anna Andreyevna was no longer looking at him; she was sobbing and hugging Nelly…
“On the last day before she died late in the afternoon, Mummy called me over and took my hand and said, ‘I shall die today, Nelly.’ She wanted to say something else but couldn’t any more. I was still looking at her, but she wasn’t seeing me I thought, just held my hand tightly in hers. I took my hand out gently and ran out of the house, and I ran all the way to Granddad’s place. The moment he saw me, he jumped up from his chair and stared, and was so frightened he went completely pale and began to shake all over. I grabbed his hand and just said, ‘She’s dying.’ He suddenly became terribly flustered, grabbed his stick, and ran after me. He even forgot his hat, though it was cold. I grabbed it and put it on for him, and we ran out together. I was hurrying him and asking him to take a cab, because Mummy was going to die any moment, but he only had seven kopecks on him. He hailed several cabs and haggled with them, but they only laughed, and they laughed at Azorka too who was running with us, but we kept running on and on. Granddad got very tired and he could hardly breathe, but he still kept going. Suddenly he stumbled and his hat fell off. I helped him to his feet, put his hat on for him and began to lead him by the hand, and we got home just before nightfall… But Mummy was already lying dead. As soon as Granddad saw her, he threw up his hands and stood over her shaking, but not saying anything. Then I went up to my mummy, grabbed Granddad’s hand and shouted at him, ‘Here, you cruel, evil man, here, look!… Take a good look!’ Granddad cried out and fell on the floor as if dead…”
Nelly jumped to her feet, shook herself free of Anna Andreyevna’s embrace and stood in our midst, pale, worn out and frightened. But Anna Andreyevna rushed towards her and, flinging her arms around her again, cried out as if under a spell.
“I, I shall be Mother to you, Nelly, and you’ll be my child! Yes, Nelly, let’s go away, let’s leave them, all these cruel, evil people! Let them gloat over others; God, God will be their judge… Let’s go, Nelly, let’s go from here, come along …!”
Never before nor since have I seen her in such a state, nor did it ever occur to me that she could get so agitated. Nikolai Sergeich drew himself into an upright position in his chair, and spoke in a faltering voice.
“Where are you going, Anna Andreyevna?”
“To see her, my daughter, Natasha!” she cried, pulling Nelly after her towards the door.
“Hold on, hold on, wait!…”
“What’s the point waiting, you hard-hearted, cruel man! I’ve waited long enough, and so has she, goodbye now!…”
Having said this, the good lady turned around, looked at her husband and was thunderstruck. Nikolai Sergeich stood in front of her; he had his hat on, and with weak fumbling hands was hurriedly pulling on his coat.
“You too… you’re coming too!” she exclaimed, her hands clasped pleadingly and looking at him in disbelief, as though unable to believe her good fortune.
“Natasha, where is my Natasha! Where is she! Where is my daughter!” the words surged out of the old man’s chest at last. “Let me have my Natasha back! Where, where is she!” and, grabbing his walking stick, which I handed to him, he rushed for the door.
“He has forgiven her! Forgiven!” Anna Andreyevna cried.
But Ikhmenev had to stop before he reached the door. It flew open, and Natasha ran into the room, pale, her eyes glinting, as though in fever. Her dress was crumpled and soaked with rain. Her kerchief had slipped down onto her neck, and large drops of rainwater glistened on her thick, loose locks. She ran in, saw her father and, stretching out her hands towards him, fell on her knees.
9
But he had already clasped her in his arms!…
He picked her up and, lifting her as though she were a child, carried her to his chair, sat her down and fell to his knees in front of her. He kissed her hands, her feet; he could not stop, could not stop feasting his eyes on her as if to confirm that she really was back with him, for him to gaze at and listen to – his daughter, his Natasha! Anna Andreyevna, tears streaming down her face, flung her arms round Natasha and, pressing her daughter’s head against her bosom, remained perfectly still in this embrace, incapable of uttering a single word.
“My darling!… My love!… My joy!…” Ikhmenev rambled with excitement as he held Natasha’s hand and, like a lover, gazed into her pale, thin, but delightful face and into her eyes, which were glistening with tears. “My joy, my child!” he repeated at intervals, gazing at her in unrestrained rapture. “What, what is it I heard about her having gone thin?” he said turning to us with a fleeting, almost childlike smile, still kneeling before her. “She’s thin all right, pale too, but just look how pretty! Even better than she was before, yes, better!” he added, coming to an involuntary halt under the weight of his emotions – joyful and sad, enough to rend the heart.
“Stand up, father! Please stand up,” Natasha said, “I too want to kiss you…”
“Oh my darling! Did you hear that, did you, Anna? How well she put it,” and he put an arm around her convulsively.
“No, Natasha, I have to lie at your feet now till my heart tells me you’ve forgiven me, because I no longer deserve your forgiveness! I rejected and damned you, did you hear that, Natasha, I damned you – and that I could have done it!… And you, you, Natasha – how could you believe that I cursed you? You did, didn’t you? You shouldn’t have! You simply shouldn’t have believed it! You cruel thing! Why didn’t you come to me? You knew you’d be welcome!… Oh, Natasha, don’t you remember how I loved you before – and now, all this time I have loved you twice, a thousand times as much! I loved you with all my heart and soul! I’d have sacrificed my heart for you, I’d have torn it out bleeding and laid it at your feet!… Oh my joy.”
“Why don’t you kiss me then, you cruel man, on my lips, on my face, like Mother kisses me?” Natasha exclaimed in an unsteady, weak voice suffused with tears of joy.
“And on your dear eyes too! Your dear eyes! Remember, like in days gone by,” Ikhmenev went on, releasing his daughter from a long and ardent embrace. “Oh, Natasha! Did you ever dream of us! I dreamt of you nearly every night, and you came to me every night, and I cried over you, and once, when you were still small, remember, you came to me – you were only ten at the time and just starting to learn the piano – y
ou came in a short dress, with your pretty little shoes and rosy arms – she had such rosy little arms then, do you remember, Anna, dear? – she came, sat on my knees and put her arms around me… And you, you, you wicked little girl! You could imagine that I had cursed you, that I wouldn’t have you back if you came to me?… You know, I… listen, Natasha – I often used to go to you – Mother didn’t know about it, no one knew. Sometimes I’d stand under your windows, or wait for hours on end somewhere on the pavement at your house gate in the hope of catching a glimpse of you from the distance when you came out! And in the evening you often had a candle burning in the window. Natasha, the number of times I came just to look at that candle of yours, just to see your shadow in the window and to bless you for the night. And did you give me your blessing for the night? Did you spare me a thought? Did your little heart tell you I was there at your window? And in the winter nights the number of times I used to mount your stairs and stand on the dark landing, listening at your door for the sound of your voice, your laughter! Me, curse you? Do you realize, I went to you the other evening to tell you I forgave you, and only turned back at your door… Oh, Natasha!”
He stood up, lifted her out of the chair a little and hugged her to his chest with all his strength.
“She is here again, next to my heart!” he exclaimed. “I thank you, oh God, for everything, everything, for your wrath and for your mercy!… For your sun too, which has now cast its light on us after the storm! I thank you for this moment of joy! No matter that we are humiliated, no matter that we are insulted, but we are together again – and let, let the proud and the arrogant people who have humiliated and insulted us gloat over their triumph! Let them cast stones at us! Have no fear, Natasha… We shall go hand in hand, and I shall say to them, ‘This is my dearly beloved daughter, my daughter without sin whom you have humiliated and insulted, but whom I love and bless for ever and ever!…’”
“Vanya! Vanya!…” Natasha said in a weak voice, reaching out towards me from her father’s embrace.
Oh! Never shall I forget that she thought of me and called out to me at that moment.
“But where’s Nelly?” Ikhmenev asked, looking around.
“Oh my, where is she indeed?” Anna Andreyevna exclaimed. “My poppet! That we should have just left her!”
But she was not in the room; she had slipped into the bedroom unnoticed. Everyone went there. Nelly was standing in the corner, behind the door, hiding from us in alarm.
“Nelly, what’s wrong, my dear child!” Ikhmenev exclaimed, wishing to put his arm around her. But she only gave him an odd, sidelong glance.
“Mummy, where’s Mummy?” she mouthed inconsolably. “Where, where’s my mummy?” she called out once more, stretching out her trembling arms towards us, and suddenly a terrifying cry broke from her breast; her features distorted convulsively and she fell to the floor in a terrible fit…
Epilogue
Final Reminiscences
The middle of june. The day is hot and sweltering; it is unbearable in the city – dust, lime, building sites, baking-hot stonework, fetid air… And suddenly, joy of joys! There is a distant rumble of thunder; little by little the sky becomes overcast; a wind picks up, driving ahead of it clouds of city dust. A few large raindrops fall heavily on the ground and then the heavens seem to open and a veritable torrent of water gushes down upon the city. When a quarter of an hour later the sun looks out again, I fling open the window of my little room and greedily fill my exhausted lungs with the refreshed air. In a state of exhilaration I am ready to throw down my pen and turn my back on all and sundry, including my publisher, and dash to the Vasìlevsky Island to see them. But though the temptation is great, I manage to overcome it and again make a furious onslaught on the paper in front of me – come what may, I must finish my writing! My publisher must have it or he will not pay. They are waiting for me there now, but I should be free come the evening, completely free, free as air and will get my due recompense for the two days and nights of toil during which I wrote a hundred and sixty pages.
And so the work is finished at last; I throw down my pen and rise with an aching back and chest, and my head is spinning. I feel my nerves are on edge at this instant, and I can almost hear the recent words of my old doctor: “Look here, there is no constitution that can withstand such a strain, it is simply not possible!” However, so far it has been possible! My head is spinning; I can hardly stay on my feet, but joy, ineffable joy fills my heart. My novel is finished, and my publisher, although I am still up to my neck in debt, is nevertheless bound to advance me at least something when he sees the prize in his hands – fifty roubles say, a sum of money that I have not held in my hands for a very long time. Freedom and money!… Joyfully I grab my hat and, with the manuscript tucked firmly under my arm, I run hell for leather to catch our most esteemed Alexander Petrovich at home.
I barely manage to catch him on his way out. He in his turn has just concluded a non-literary but for all that very profitable deal, and having seen a swarthy-featured gentleman to the door with whom he had been ensconced in his study for the past two hours without a break, welcomes me with a hearty handshake and in his mellifluous bass voice enquires after my health. He is the kindest of men and, in truth, I am much beholden to him. No one can blame him of course that in literature he has all his life managed to be only a businessman! He was canny enough to realize that literature needs its businessmen and realized it in excellent good time, and of course I take my hat off to him for that. May he bloom and prosper – business-wise, it goes without saying.
On hearing that the novel is finished, and realizing that the next issue of his journal is therefore in the bag – as regards the main feature anyway – he dissolves in a pleasant smile, genuinely amazed that I have managed to finish anything at all, while at the same time he does not refrain from a most charming pleasantry at my expense. Then he approaches his strongbox to give me the promised fifty roubles, along the way handing me a copy of a literary magazine belonging to the opposition, and draws my attention to a few lines in the review section, where my latest novel is mentioned in passing.
I glance at it – it is signed “The Contributor”. I’m not exactly being slated, neither am I being praised, and this is fine by me. Inter alia, “The Contributor” observes that my compositions on the whole “reek of perspiration”, that is I pore over them so much in the way of mending and amending that as a result it all becomes too much of a good thing.
The publisher and I laugh heartily. I inform him that my previous story was written in the space of two nights, and that just now I had dashed off a hundred and sixty pages in two days and two nights flat – “would that ‘The Contributor’, who accuses me of excessive fastidiousness and dull deliberation, had known this!”
“Nevertheless, it is your own fault, Ivan Petrovich. Why are you so behind with your work that you have to burn the midnight oil?”
Alexander Petrovich is of course a most charming man, even though he suffers from a peculiar foible of wishing to show off his literary opinions most particularly to those who, as he himself suspects, can see right through him. But I have no wish to discuss literature with him; I take the money and reach for my hat. Alexander Petrovich is himself off to the Islands to his dacha, and on hearing that I’m bound for Vasìlevsky, kindly offers to drop me off in his carriage.
“I’ve a new carriage. You’ve not seen it, have you? A real beauty.”
We walk along the drive. The carriage is indeed a beauty, and Alexander Petrovich in the first flush of ownership is beaming with pleasure and experiencing even a certain moral obligation to offer to share his equipage with his acquaintances.
In the carriage Alexander Petrovich once more makes several attempts to launch forth into a discussion of contemporary literature. He is uninhibited in my presence and, without batting an eyelid, repeats various unoriginal thoughts that he recently heard from some author or other wh
om he trusts and whose opinion he respects. Not infrequently he ends up espousing the most bizarre notions. In the process he often distorts other people’s ideas or totally misapplies them, such that the end result is complete nonsense. I sit and listen in silent wonder at the variety and unpredictability of human passions. “Here is a man,” I say to myself, “with the knack for making money. But no, he also hankers after glory, literary glory, he wants to be remembered as a publisher of quality, as a critic!”
By and by he begins to expound in detail a literary theory which he heard about three days ago, incidentally from myself, and had tried to refute at the time, but is now propounding as his very own. Still, Alexander Petrovich is all too prone to such lapses of memory, and has a reputation amongst his acquaintances for this innocuous weakness. How happy he now is to be holding forth in his carriage, how content he is with his lot, how amiable! He is conducting a learned literary conversation and even the soft purr of his genteel bass seems to resonate with erudition. Little by little he throws all caution to the wind and embraces the cynical standpoint that in our literature, as in any other, there never has been nor can be room for any fairness or propriety, and that in the end one just has to accept that it is an out-and-out cutthroat business, especially at the subscription stage. I cannot help feeling that Alexander Petrovich is inclined to consider every author who is honest and fair-minded if not a fool then at least a simpleton, on account of his very honesty and fair-mindedness. It goes without saying that this appraisal is the direct consequence of Alexander Petrovich’s extraordinary ingenuousness.
But I’m no longer listening to him. On Vasìlevsky Island I alight from his carriage and hurry to my dear ones. There is Thirteenth Lane, there is their little house! On seeing me, Anna Andreyevna wags her finger and shushes me not to make a noise.
Humiliated and Insulted Page 42
