Fifty-Two Stories

“But to ask her forgiveness means to make it look as if we acted badly. I’m ready to lie for the sake of Mama’s peace, but that wouldn’t lead to anything. I know Mama. Well, what will be, will be!” Zina said, cheering up because what was most unpleasant had already been said. “We’ll wait five, ten years, bear with it, and then it’s as God wills.”

She took her brother under the arm and, when they went through the dark front hall, she pressed herself to his shoulder.

They came out to the porch. Pyotr Mikhailych said goodbye, mounted his horse, and rode at a walk; Zina and Vlasich went a little of the way to see him off. It was quiet, warm, and there was a wonderful smell of hay; stars shone brightly between the clouds in the sky. Vlasich’s old garden, which had witnessed so many unhappy stories in its time, slept, wrapped in darkness, and for some reason it was sad to ride through it.

“After dinner today Zina and I spent several truly bright moments!” Vlasich said. “I read aloud to her an excellent article on the question of resettlement. Read it, brother! It’s necessary for you! The article is remarkable in its honesty. I couldn’t help myself and wrote the publisher a letter to be forwarded to the author. I wrote just one line: ‘I thank you and firmly press your honest hand!’ ”

Pyotr Mikhailych wanted to say: “Please don’t meddle in what’s none of your business!”—but he kept silent.

Vlasich walked by the right stirrup, Zina by the left; they both seemed to forget that they had to go back home, and it was damp and they were already not far from Koltovich’s grove. Pyotr Mikhailych felt that they were waiting for something from him, though they themselves did not know what, and he felt an unbearable pity for them. Now, as they walked beside the horse, with a submissive look and lost in thought, he was deeply convinced that they were unhappy and could not be happy, and their love seemed to him a sad, irreparable mistake. From pity and the awareness that he could not help them in any way, he was overcome by that state of inner laxity in which, to rid himself of the painful feeling of compassion, he was ready for any sacrifice.

“I’ll come to stay the night with you,” he said.

But that sounded as if he was making a concession, and it did not satisfy him. When they stopped at Koltovich’s grove to say goodbye, he bent down to Zina, touched her shoulder, and said:

“You’re right, Zina! You did well!”

And, so as not to say more and not to burst into tears, he whipped up his horse and galloped into the grove. Going into the darkness, he turned and saw Vlasich and Zina walking home down the road—he with big strides, and she beside him with a hurrying, skipping gait—and talking animatedly about something.

“I’m just an old woman,” Pyotr Mikhailych thought. “I went to resolve the question, but I’ve confused it even more. Well, God be with it all!”

His heart was heavy. When the grove ended, he rode on at a walk and then stopped the horse by the pond. He wanted to sit motionless and think. The moon was rising, and was reflected in a red column on the other side of the pond. There was a muted rumbling of thunder somewhere. Pyotr Mikhailych looked at the water without blinking and imagined his sister’s despair, the suffering paleness and dry eyes with which she would hide her humiliation from people. He imagined her pregnancy, their mother’s death, her funeral, Zina’s horror…The proud, superstitious old woman could not end otherwise than in death. Terrible pictures of the future loomed before him on the dark, smooth water, and among pale women’s figures he saw himself, fainthearted, weak, with a guilty face…

A hundred paces away, on the right bank of the pond, something dark stood motionless: was it a man or a tall stump? Pyotr Mikhailych remembered about the seminarian who had been killed and thrown into this pond.

“Olivier behaved inhumanly, but in any case he resolved the question, and I haven’t resolved anything, but only confused it,” he thought, peering at the dark figure, which looked like a phantom. “He said and did what he thought, while I say and do what I do not think; and I don’t even know for certain what I actually think…”

He rode up to the dark figure: it was a rotten old post left from some construction.

A strong scent of lily-of-the-valley and honeyed herbs came from the grove and Koltovich’s estate. Pyotr Mikhailych rode along the bank of the pond and gazed sorrowfully at the water, and, looking back on his life, was becoming convinced that up to then he had always said and done what he did not think, and people had repaid him in kind, and therefore the whole of life now looked to him as dark as this water in which the night sky was reflected and waterweeds were entangled. And it seemed to him that it could not be set right.

1892

FEAR

My Friend’s Story