Fifty-Two Stories

“You’re my true friend, I trust you and I deeply respect you. Friendship is sent to us by heaven so that we can speak ourselves out and be saved from the secrets that oppress us. Allow me to take advantage of your friendly disposition and tell you the whole truth. My family life, which seems so delightful to you, is my main misfortune and my main fear. I married strangely and stupidly. I must tell you that before the wedding I loved Masha madly, and I courted her for two years. I proposed to her five times and she rejected me, because she was totally indifferent to me. The sixth time, when I crawled on my knees before her, stupefied by love, begging for her hand as if for alms, she accepted…This is what she said to me: ‘I don’t love you, but I will be faithful to you…’ I accepted that condition rapturously. I understood then what it meant, but now, I swear to God, I don’t. ‘I don’t love you, but I will be faithful to you’—what does that mean? It’s fog, darkness…I love her now just as deeply as on the first day of our marriage, and she, it seems to me, is as indifferent as before and must be glad when I leave the house. I don’t know for certain whether she loves me or not, I don’t know, I don’t know, but we live under the same roof, we talk intimately, we sleep together, we have children, our property is held in common…What does it mean? What for? Do you understand any of it, my dear friend? A cruel torture! Because I understand nothing in our relationship, I hate now her, now myself, now both of us, everything is mixed up in my head, I torment myself and turn stupid, and she, as if on purpose, gets prettier every day, she becomes astonishing…I think she has wonderful hair, and she smiles like no other woman. I love her and I know that I love her hopelessly. A hopeless love for a woman with whom you already have two children! Can that be understood and not be frightening? Isn’t it more frightening than ghosts?”

He got into such a state that he could have gone on talking for a very long time, but fortunately we heard the coachman’s voice. Our horses came. We got into the carriage, and Forty Martyrs, taking off his hat, helped us both in with such a look as if he had long been waiting for a chance to touch our precious bodies.

“Dmitri Petrovich, allow me to come to you,” he said, blinking hard and tilting his head to the side. “Show me divine mercy! I’m perishing from hunger!”

“Oh, all right,” Silin said. “Come, stay for three days, and then we’ll see.”

“Yes, sir!” Forty Martyrs was overjoyed. “I’ll come today, sir.”

It was four miles to the house. Dmitri Petrovich, pleased that he had finally spoken everything out to a friend, held me by the waist all the way and, now without bitterness and without fright, but cheerfully, said to me that, if everything had been well with him in his family, he would have gone back to Petersburg and taken up science. The trend, he said, which had driven so many gifted young people to the countryside, was a deplorable trend. There was a great deal of rye and wheat in Russia, but there was a dearth of cultivated people. Gifted, healthy youths should take up science, the arts, and politics; to do otherwise was even wasteful. He philosophized with pleasure and expressed regret that he must part from me early the next morning, because he had to go to a woodlot auction.

But I felt awkward and sad, and it seemed to me that I was deceiving the man. And at the same time I was pleased. I looked at the enormous crimson moon, which was rising, and pictured to myself a tall, slender blonde, pale, always smartly dressed, fragrant with some special perfume like musk, and for some reason I was cheered by the thought that she did not love her husband.

We came home and sat down to supper. Maria Sergeevna, laughing, served us our purchases, and I found that she did in fact have wonderful hair and that she smiled like no other woman. I watched her, and I wanted to see in her every movement and glance that she did not love her husband, and it seemed to me that I did see it.

Dmitri Petrovich soon began fighting off drowsiness. After supper he sat with us for some ten minutes, then said:

“Do as you like, my friends, but I have to get up tomorrow at three in the morning. Allow me to leave you.”

He tenderly kissed his wife, shook my hand firmly, with gratitude, and made me promise that I would come next week without fail. So as not to oversleep the next morning, he went to spend the night in the cottage.

Maria Sergeevna stayed up late, Petersburg fashion, and now for some reason I was glad of it.

“And so?” I began, when we were left alone. “And so, you’re going to be kind and play something for me.”

I didn’t want any music, but I didn’t know how to begin the conversation. She sat down at the piano and played, I don’t remember what. I sat near her, looked at her plump white hands, and tried to read something in her cold, indifferent face. But then she smiled for some reason and looked at me.