Fifty-Two Stories

Sofya Lvovna glanced at the other nuns and went on in a low voice:

“We’ve had so many changes…You know, I married Yagich, Vladimir Nikitych. You surely remember him…I’m very happy with him.”

“Well, thank God. And your papa is in good health?”

“Yes. He often speaks of you. Come to see us during the holidays, Olya. You hear?”

“I will,” Olya said and smiled. “I’ll come on the second day.”

Sofya Lvovna began to cry, not knowing why herself, and for a minute she cried silently, then wiped her eyes and said:

“Rita will be very sorry not to have seen you. She’s also with us. And Volodya’s here. They’re by the gate. They’d be so glad to see you! Let’s go to them, the service hasn’t started yet.”

“Let’s go,” Olya agreed.

She crossed herself three times and walked to the door together with Sofya Lvovna.

“So you say you’re happy, Sonechka?” she asked when they were outside the gate.

“Very.”

“Well, thank God.”

Big Volodya and little Volodya, seeing the nun, got out of the sledge and greeted her respectfully. They were both visibly moved by her pale face and black monastic habit, and they were both pleased that she remembered them and came to greet them. To keep her warm, Sofya Lvovna wrapped her in a plaid and put the skirt of her fur coat around her. Her recent tears had eased and brightened her heart, and she was glad that this noisy, restless, and essentially impure night had unexpectedly ended so purely and meekly. In order to keep Olya beside her for longer, she suggested:

“Let’s take her for a ride! Get in, Olya, just for a little.”

The men expected that she would refuse—nuns don’t ride in troikas—but to their surprise she accepted and got into the sledge. And as the troika raced to the gate, they were all silent and only tried to make sure she was comfortable and warm, and each of them thought of how she had been before and how she was now. Her face now was impassive, expressionless, cold and pale, transparent, as if water flowed in her veins instead of blood. Yet two or three years ago she had been plump, red-cheeked, talked about suitors, laughed at the merest trifle…

By the gate the troika turned back; ten minutes later, when it stopped at the convent, Olya got out of the sledge. The bells were already chiming.

“God save you,” said Olya, and she bowed low, in monastic fashion.

“So come to see us, Olya.”

“I will, I will.”

She quickly walked away and soon disappeared through the dark gateway. And after that, for some reason, when the troika drove on, everything became very sad. They were all silent. Sofya Lvovna felt weak all over and lost heart; that she had made the nun get into the sledge and go for a ride, in tipsy company, now seemed stupid to her, tactless, and all but blasphemous; along with intoxication, the wish to deceive herself also went away, and it was clear to her that she did not and could not love her husband, that it was all nonsense and stupidity. She had married out of convenience, because he, as her boarding-school friends put it, was insanely rich, and because she was afraid to be left an old maid, like Rita, and because she was sick of her doctor father and wanted to annoy little Volodya. If she could have foreseen, when she married, that it would be so oppressive, scary, and ugly, she would not have agreed to the marriage for anything in the world. But now the harm could not be set right. She had to reconcile to it.

They came home. Getting into her warm, soft bed and covering herself with a blanket, Sofya Lvovna remembered the dark side chapel, the smell of incense, and the figures by the columns, and it was scary for her to think that those figures would stand motionless all the while she slept. There would be the long, long matins, then the hours, then the liturgy, the prayer service…

“But there is God, surely there is, and I will certainly die, which means that sooner or later I must think about my soul, about eternal life, like Olya. Olya is saved now, she has resolved all the questions for herself…But what if there is no God? Then her life is lost. But how is it lost? Why lost?”

After a moment a thought again came to her head:

“There is God, death will certainly come, one must think of one’s soul. If Olya sees her death now, she won’t be frightened. She’s ready. And above all, she has already resolved the question of life for herself. There is God…yes…But can it be that there’s no other solution than going into a convent? Going into a convent means renouncing life, ruining it…”

Sofya Lvovna felt a little frightened; she hid her head under the pillow.

“I mustn’t think about it,” she whispered. “I mustn’t…”

Yagich was walking on the carpet in the next room, softly jingling his spurs, and thinking about something. It occurred to Sofya Lvovna that this man was near and dear to her only for one thing: he was also named Vladimir. She sat up in bed and called out tenderly:

“Volodya!”

“What is it?” her husband replied.

“Nothing.”