Fifty-Two Stories

Olga Mikhailovna raised her head and saw Varvara, who was kneeling by the chest of drawers, pulling open the lowest drawer. The upper ones were already open. Finishing with the drawers, Varvara stood up and, red from the strain, her face cold and solemn, set about opening a little box.

“Marya, I can’t open it!” she said in a whisper. “Maybe you can try.”

The maid Marya, who was poking in a candlestick with scissors so as to put in a new candle, came over to Varvara and helped her to open the little box.

“There should be nothing closed…,” Varvara whispered. “Open this box, too, old girl. Master,” she turned to Pyotr Dmitrich, “send word to Father Mikhail, tell him to open the Royal Doors!¹⁶ You must!”

“Do whatever you like,” said Pyotr Dmitrich, gasping for breath, “only, for God’s sake, quickly bring a doctor or a midwife! Has Vassily gone? Send someone else. Send your husband!”

“I’m giving birth,” Olga Mikhailovna realized. “Varvara,” she moaned, “but he won’t be born alive.”

“It’s all right, it’s all right, ma’am…,” Varvara whispered. “God willing, he’ll be borned alive!” (That was how she said it.) “Borned alive.”

The next time Olga Mikhailovna recovered from pain, she no longer sobbed and thrashed, but only moaned. She could not keep from moaning even in the intervals when there was no pain. The candles were still burning, but morning light was already breaking through the blinds. It was probably about five o’clock in the morning. In the bedroom, at a round table, sat an unknown woman in a white apron and with a very modest physiognomy. By the way she was sitting, one could see that she had been there for a while. Olga Mikhailovna guessed that she was the midwife.

“Will it be over soon?” she asked, and in her voice she heard a sort of special, unfamiliar note, such as had never been there before. “I must be dying in childbirth,” she thought.

Pyotr Dmitrich, dressed for daytime, warily came into the bedroom and stood by the window, his back to his wife. He raised the blind and looked out the window.

“Heavy rain!” he said.

“What time is it?” Olga Mikhailovna asked, in order to hear the unfamiliar note in her voice again.

“A quarter to six,” the midwife answered.

“What if I really am dying?” Olga Mikhailovna thought, looking at her husband’s head and at the window panes, against which the rain was beating. “How will he live without me? With whom will he drink tea, have dinner, talk in the evening, sleep?”

And he looked small to her, orphaned; she felt sorry for him and wanted to say something nice, gentle, comforting. She remembered that in the spring he had intended to buy some hounds, and that she, considering hunting a cruel and dangerous pastime, had prevented him from doing it.

“Pyotr, buy yourself those hounds!” she moaned.

He lowered the blind and went to the bed, was about to say something, but just then Olga Mikhailovna felt pain and cried out in an indecent, rending voice.

The pain, the frequent cries and moans, stupefied her. She could hear, see, she sometimes spoke, but she understood little, and only knew that she was in pain, or was about to be in pain. It seemed to her that the name-day party was long, long past, not yesterday, but maybe a year ago, and that her new life of pain had lasted longer than her childhood, boarding school, studies, marriage, and would still go on for a long, long time, endlessly. She saw how the midwife was served tea, how she was invited to have lunch at noon, and then to have dinner; she saw how Pyotr Dmitrich got accustomed to coming in, standing by the window for a long time, then going out; saw how some unknown men, the maid, Varvara got accustomed to coming in…Varvara just repeated “borned alive,” and got angry when somebody closed the drawers. Olga Mikhailovna saw how the light changed in the room and in the windows: it would be twilight, then murky, like fog, then bright daylight, as it had been the day before at dinner, then twilight again…And each of these changes lasted a long time, like childhood, studies at boarding school, the institute…

In the evening two doctors—one bony, bald, with a broad red beard, the other with a Jewish face, swarthy and in cheap spectacles—performed some sort of surgery on Olga Mikhailovna. She remained totally indifferent to the fact that strange men were touching her body. She no longer had any shame, any will, and people could do whatever they wanted with her. If at that time someone had attacked her with a knife, or insulted Pyotr Dmitrich, or taken away her right to the little person, she would not have said a word.

During the operation she was given chloroform. When she woke up later, the pain still went on and was unbearable. It was night. And Olga Mikhailovna remembered that there had already been exactly such a night, with silence, with an icon lamp, with a midwife sitting motionless by her bed, with open drawers, with Pyotr Dmitrich standing by the window, but sometime very, very long ago…

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