But, my goodness! How could I have thought that? How could I have been so blind, when everything had already been taken by another, when everything was not mine, when, in the end, even this very tenderness of hers, her attentions, her love … yes, her love for me – was nothing more than joy at the impending meeting with someone else, the desire to thrust her happiness on me? … When he didn’t come, when we waited in vain, she frowned, lost heart and became frightened. All her movements, all her words were no longer so light, playful and gay. And, strangely enough, she doubled her attentions to me as if instinctively wishing to lavish upon me all that she wished for herself, and that she feared might not come to pass. My Nastenka was so timid, so afraid, that it seems she understood at last that I loved her, and she took pity on my poor love. And so it is that when we are unhappy we more strongly feel the unhappiness of others; feeling is not shattered, but becomes concentrated …
I had come to her with a full heart, scarcely able to wait for our meeting. I had no presentiment of how I would feel now, no presentiment it would all end differently. She was beaming with joy, she was waiting for her answer. He himself was the answer. He was supposed to come, to come running at her summons. She came a whole hour earlier than I. At first she shrieked with laughter at everything, laughed at my every word. I was just about to speak and fell silent.
‘Do you know why I’m so happy?’ she said, ‘so happy to look at you? Why I love you so today?’
‘Well?’ I asked, and my heart began to tremble.
‘I love you because you didn’t fall in love with me. Why, someone else in your place would have started bothering me, pestering me, sighing, falling ill, but you’re such a dear!’
And then she squeezed my hand so that I almost cried out. She laughed.
‘My goodness! What a friend you are!’ she began a minute later very seriously. ‘Yes, God himself sent you to me! Well, what would have happened to me if you had not been with me now? You’re so unselfish! You love me so! When I’m married, we will be great friends, more than if we had been brothers. I will love you almost as much as I love him …’
I began to feel somehow terribly sad at that moment; however, something very much like laughter was beginning to stir in my soul.
‘You’re nervous,’ I said, ‘you’re afraid; you think that he won’t come.’
‘Good heavens!’ she answered, ‘if I were any less happy, I should probably burst into tears on account of your lack of faith, your reproaches. However, you’ve given me an idea and a lot to think about; but I’ll think about it later, and now I’ll confess to you that you spoke the truth! Yes, I’m somehow not myself; I’m somehow all wrapped up in expectations and somehow feel everything too lightly. But enough, let’s not talk about feelings! …’
At that moment steps could be heard, and in the darkness appeared a passer-by who was walking in our direction. We both began to tremble; she almost cried out. I let go of her hand and made a gesture as though I wanted to walk away. But we were both mistaken: it was not he.
‘What are you afraid of? Why did you stop holding my hand?’ she said as she gave it to me again. ‘Well, what’s the matter? We’ll meet him together. I want him to see that we love each other.’
‘That we love each other!’ I cried.
‘Oh, Nastenka, Nastenka!’ I thought to myself, ‘How much you’ve said with that one word. Such a love, Nastenka, at certain moments can make the heart grow cold and make one miserable. Your hand is cold, mine is as hot as fire. How blind you are, Nastenka! … Oh, how unbearable is the happy person at certain moments! But I couldn’t be angry with you! …’
Finally, my heart was overflowing.
‘Listen, Nastenka!’ I cried, ‘do you know what I’ve been through today?’
‘Well, what, what is it? Tell me quickly! Why have you been silent all this time!’
‘First of all, Nastenka, when I had carried out all your commissions, delivered the letter, visited your good people, then … then I returned home and went to bed.’
‘Is that all?’ she interrupted, laughing.
‘Yes, almost all,’ I answered reluctantly, because foolish tears were already welling up in my eyes. ‘I woke up an hour before our meeting, but it was as if I hadn’t slept. I don’t know what was wrong with me. I was coming, so that I could tell you all this, as if time had stopped for me, as if a certain sensation, a certain feeling were going to remain with me forever from this time forward, as if a single minute would continue for a whole eternity and all life would come to a halt for me … When I woke up, it seemed to me that some sort of musical melody, long familiar, heard somewhere before, forgotten and sweet, was coming back to me. It seemed to me that all my life it had been begging to be released from my soul, and only now …’
‘Ah, my goodness, my goodness!’ Nastenka interrupted, ‘What is all this about? I don’t understand a single word.’
‘Ah, Nastenka! I wanted somehow to convey this strange impression to you …’ I began in a plaintive voice, which still harboured hope, albeit a very remote one.
‘Enough, stop, enough!’ she said, and in a single instant she figured out everything, the imp!
Suddenly she became somehow unusually talkative, gay and mischievous. She took me by the hand, laughing, she wanted me to laugh as well and each word of mine uttered in embarrassment was met with such ringing, such prolonged laughter … I began to get angry, she had suddenly started playing the coquette.
‘Listen,’ she began, ‘I’m a bit disappointed, you know, that you didn’t fall in love with me. Just try and understand human nature after that! But still and all, Mr Inflexible, you cannot but praise me for being such a simple girl. I tell you everything, everything, no matter what sort of foolishness comes into my head.’
‘Listen! That’s eleven o’clock, isn’t it?’ I said, when the measured sound of the bell began to ring in the distant city tower. She suddenly stopped, left off laughing and began to count.
‘Yes, eleven,’ she said at last in a timid, hesitant voice.
I at once regretted that I had frightened her, that I had made her count the hours, and I cursed myself for the fit of spite. I felt sorry for her and I didn’t know how to atone for my transgression. I began to comfort her, to seek out reasons for his absence, to advance various arguments, proofs. Nobody could have been easier to deceive than she was at that moment, and indeed at such a time anyone would be happy to hear any sort of consolation whatsoever and is made ever so happy by even the shadow of an excuse.
‘And the whole thing’s ridiculous,’ I began, becoming more and more excited, and admiring the unusual clarity of my own arguments, ‘and he couldn’t have come; you’ve misled me and bewitched me, Nastenka, so that I’ve lost track of the time … Now just think: he’s only just got the letter; let’s suppose that he can’t come, let’s suppose that he’ll send an answer, then the letter couldn’t come before tomorrow. I’ll go as soon as it’s light tomorrow and let you know at once. Consider, finally, that there are a thousand possibilities: well, he wasn’t home when the letter arrived, and perhaps he still hasn’t read it. You know, anything might have happened.’
‘Yes, yes!’ Nastenka answered, ‘I didn’t think of that; of course, anything might have happened,’ she continued in her most compliant voice, in which, however, one could hear some other remote thought, like an annoying dissonance. ‘Here’s what you’ll do,’ she continued, ‘you go as early as possible tomorrow and if you get anything, you’ll let me know at once. You do know where I live, don’t you?’ And she began to repeat her address for me.
Then she suddenly became so tender, so timid with me … She seemed to be listening attentively to what I was saying to her; but when I addressed a question to her, she remained silent, got confused and turned her head away from me. I looked her in the eyes – I was right: she was crying.
‘Now, how can you, how can you? Ah, you’re such a child! What childishness! … Enough!’
She
made an attempt to laugh, to calm herself, but her chin was trembling and her chest was still heaving.
‘I was thinking about you,’ she said to me after a minute’s silence, ‘you’re so kind that I would have to be made of stone not to feel it. Do you know what just occurred to me? I was comparing the two of you. Why isn’t he – you? Why isn’t he like you? He’s not as good as you, even though I love him more than you.’
I didn’t say anything in reply. She seemed to be waiting for me to say something.
‘Of course, perhaps I don’t fully understand him yet, don’t fully know him yet. You know, I was always a bit afraid of him; he was always so serious, he seemed so proud. Of course, I know that he only looks like that, that there is more tenderness in his heart than there is in mine … I remember how he looked at me then, when I, you remember, came to him with my bundle; but all the same I respect him too much, and doesn’t that mean that we’re not equals?’
‘No, Nastenka, no,’ I answered, ‘that means that you love him more than anything in the world, and a good deal more than you love yourself.’
‘Yes, I suppose that’s so,’ answered naive little Nastenka, ‘but do you know what just occurred to me? Only I’m not going to talk about him now, but just in general; all of this occurred to me long ago. Listen, why is it that we aren’t all like brothers to one another? Why is it that the very best person is always hiding something from other people and is quiet about it? Why not say frankly and immediately what’s in your heart, if you know that you’re not speaking idly? As it is, everyone looks more severe than they actually are, as though they’re all afraid their feelings will be hurt if they reveal them too soon …’
‘Ah, Nastenka! What you say is true; and, you see, there are many reasons for it,’ I interrupted, reining in my feelings at that moment more than I had ever done before.
‘No, no!’ she answered with deep feeling. ‘Now you, for example, aren’t like other people! I really don’t know how to tell you what I’m feeling; but it seems to me that you, for example … even now … it seems that you’re sacrificing something for me,’ she added timidly, with a fleeting glance at me. ‘You’ll forgive me for putting it like that: you see, I’m a simple girl; you see, I’ve seen very little of the world so far, and really at times I don’t know how to talk,’ she added in a voice that was trembling with some sort of hidden feeling, and meanwhile trying to smile, ‘but I only wanted to tell you that I am grateful, that I feel all this as well … O, may God grant you happiness for this! Now then, everything that you told me then about your dreamer is absolutely untrue, that is, I wish to say that it doesn’t have anything to do with you. You’re getting better, you really are a completely different person from the one you described. If you ever fall in love, then may God grant you happiness with her! But I won’t wish her anything, because she will be happy with you. I know, I’m a woman myself, and you must believe me, when I tell you …’
She fell silent and firmly squeezed my hand. I couldn’t say anything either because of the emotion. Several minutes passed.
‘Yes, clearly he won’t come today!’ she said finally, raising her head. ‘It’s late! …’
‘He’ll come tomorrow,’ I said in a most convincing and firm voice.
‘Yes,’ she added, having cheered up some, ‘I now see myself that he won’t come until tomorrow. Well then, goodbye! Until tomorrow! If it rains, then I might not come. But the day after tomorrow I’ll come, I’ll come without fail, no matter what; you be here without fail; I want to see you, I’ll tell you everything.’
And later, as we were saying goodbye, she gave me her hand and said, looking at me brightly:
‘You see, now we’ll always be together, isn’t that so?’
Oh, Nastenka, Nastenka! If only you knew how lonely I am now!
When it struck nine o’clock, I couldn’t stay put in my room, I got dressed and went out, despite the foul weather. I was there, sitting on our bench. I started to walk down their lane, but I felt ashamed, and I turned back without having a look at their windows, when I was just a few steps away from their house. I came home more depressed than I had ever been. What a damp, boring time! If the weather had been fine, I would have walked about there all night long …
But until tomorrow! Until tomorrow! Tomorrow she will tell me everything.
However, there was no letter today. But that was to be expected. They’re together by now …
THE FOURTH NIGHT
My God! How it has all come to an end! What an ending to all of this!
I arrived at nine o’clock. She was already there. I caught sight of her when I was still quite a distance away; she was standing like she had been then, that first time, with her elbows leaning on the railing of the embankment, and didn’t hear me approach.
‘Nastenka!’ I called out to her, making a tremendous effort to suppress my agitation.
She quickly turned around towards me.
‘Well!’ she said, ‘well, quickly now!’
I looked at her in bewilderment.
‘Well, where’s the letter? Did you bring the letter?’ she repeated, clutching the railing with her hand.
‘No, I don’t have a letter,’ I said finally, ‘has he really not come to see you yet?’
She turned terribly pale and for a long time looked at me without moving. I had shattered her last hope.
‘Well, good luck to him!’ she uttered finally in a breaking voice. ‘Good luck to him – if he’s going to leave me like that.’
She lowered her eyes, then wanted to look at me, but she couldn’t. For several more minutes she kept her agitation in check, but suddenly she turned away, leaned her elbows on the balustrade of the embankment and burst into tears.
‘Enough, enough!’ I began, but as I looked at her I didn’t have the strength to continue, and what could I have said?
‘Don’t try to comfort me,’ she said, weeping, ‘don’t talk about him, don’t say that he will come, that he wouldn’t abandon me so cruelly, so inhumanly, as he has done. What for, what for? Can it really be that there was something in my letter, in that wretched letter? …’
Here her voice was broken by sobs; my heart was breaking as I looked at her.
‘Oh, how cruelly inhuman it is!’ she began again. ‘And not a line, not a line! He could at least have answered that he didn’t need me, that he was rejecting me; but not a single line in three whole days! How easy it is for him to wound, to insult a poor defenceless girl, whose only fault is that she loves him! Oh, what I’ve endured these three days! My God! My God! When I recall that I went to him the first time myself, that I humbled myself before him, wept, that I begged him for just the tiniest smidgen of love … And after that! … Listen,’ she began, as she turned to me, and her black eyes began to flash, ‘this cannot be! It simply cannot be like this; it’s unnatural! Either you or I have been deceived; maybe he didn’t get the letter? Perhaps he still doesn’t know anything? How is it possible, judge for yourself, how is it possible to behave so barbarously and so coarsely as he has towards me! Not a single word! But the lowliest man on earth is treated with more compassion. Perhaps he heard something, perhaps somebody said something about me?’ she cried out, turning to me with a question. ‘What, what do you think?’
‘Listen, Nastenka, tomorrow I’ll go and see him in your name.’
‘Yes?’
‘I’ll ask him about everything, I’ll tell him everything.’
‘Yes, yes?’
‘You write a letter. Don’t say no, Nastenka, don’t say no! I’ll make him respect your action, he’ll learn everything, and if …’
‘No, my friend, no,’ she interrupted. ‘Enough! Not another word, not another word from me, not a line, enough! I don’t know him, I don’t love him any more, I will for … get him …’
She didn’t finish.
‘Calm yourself, calm yourself! Sit here, Nastenka,’ I said, as I seated her on the bench.
‘But I am calm. Enough!
It’s nothing. Just tears, they’ll dry! Do you think that I’ll do away with myself, that I’ll drown myself? …’
My heart was full; I wanted to say something, but couldn’t.
‘Listen!’ she continued, taking me by the hand, ‘Tell me, would you have acted like this? Would you have abandoned a girl who came to you on her own, would you have thrown in her face a shameless jeer at her weak, foolish heart? Would you have looked after her? Would you have understood that she was all alone, that she didn’t know how to take care of herself, that she didn’t know how to protect herself from loving you, that it wasn’t her fault, that, finally, it wasn’t her fault … that she had done nothing! … Oh, my God, my God! …’
‘Nastenka,’ I cried out finally, unable to control my agitation. ‘Nastenka! You’re tearing me apart! You’re breaking my heart, you’re killing me, Nastenka! I cannot be silent! I must finally speak, and tell you what has been welling up here, in my heart …’
As I said this, I got up from the bench. She took me by the hand and looked at me in surprise.
‘What is it?’ she uttered finally.
‘Listen!’ I said resolutely. ‘Listen to me, Nastenka! What I am about to say is all nonsense, all impossible, all silly! I know that it can never happen, but I cannot remain silent. In the name of all that you are suffering now, I beg of you beforehand to forgive me! …’
‘Well, what, what is it?’ she said, having stopped crying and looking at me intently, while a strange curiosity shone in her astonished eyes. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s impossible, but I love you, Nastenka! That’s what it is! Well, now everything has been said!’ I said with a wave of my hand. ‘Now you will see whether you can talk with me as you were just talking, whether, finally, you can listen to what I’m going to say …’
The Gambler and Other Stories (Penguin ed.) Page 9
