Fifty-Two Stories

“I’ll run to all the judges and defense attorneys…,” Mashenka thought, trembling. “I’ll explain to them, swear an oath…They’ll believe that I couldn’t be a thief!”

Mashenka remembered that in the basket under the linen were some sweets, which, by an old boarding-school habit, she had put in her pocket at dinnertime and brought to her room. The thought that this little secret was now known to the masters threw her into a fever, she felt ashamed, and from all of it together—fear, shame, and offense—her heart began to beat hard, so that she felt it in her temples, her hands, the pit of her stomach.

“Come and eat, please!” they called Mashenka.

“Shall I go or not?”

Mashenka straightened her hair, wiped her face with a wet towel, and went to the dining room. There the dinner had already begun…At one end of the table sat Fedosya Vassilyevna, pompous, with a stupid, serious face; at the other—Nikolai Sergeich. On the sides sat the guests and the children. Dinner was served by two lackeys in tailcoats and white gloves. Everyone knew that there was commotion in the house, that the mistress was in grief, and they kept silent. All that could be heard was chewing and the clink of spoons against plates.

The mistress herself started the conversation.

“What do we have for the third course?” she asked the lackey in a soulful, suffering voice.

“Esturgeon à la Russe!”² the lackey replied.

“I ordered it, Fenya…,” Nikolai Sergeich hastily put in. “I felt like having fish. If you don’t like it, ma chère, let them not serve it. I did it just…by the way…”

Fedosya Vassilyevna disliked food that she did not order herself, and now her eyes filled with tears.

“Well, let’s not get upset,” Mamikov, her personal physician, said in a sweet voice, touching her hand slightly and smiling just as sweetly. “We’re nervous enough without that. Let’s forget about the brooch! Good health is worth more than two thousand!”

“I’m not sorry about the two thousand!” the mistress replied, and a big tear rolled down her cheek. “I’m shocked by the fact itself! I will not suffer thieves in my house. I’m not sorry, not sorry about anything, but to steal from me—it’s such ingratitude! That’s how they repay me for my kindness…”

They all looked down at their plates, but it seemed to Mashenka that, after the mistress’s words, they all glanced at her. She suddenly felt a lump in her throat, burst into tears, and pressed a handkerchief to her face.

“Pardon,” she murmured. “I can’t. I have a headache. I’ll leave.”

And she got up from the table, awkwardly scraping the chair, which embarrassed her still more, and quickly went out.

“God knows what’s going on!” said Nikolai Sergeich, wincing. “As if there was any need to search her room! It’s really so…inappropriate.”

“I’m not saying she took the brooch,” Fedosya Vassilyevna said, “but can you vouch for her? I confess, I have little faith in these educated poor folk.”

“Really, Fenya, it’s inappropriate…Forgive me, Fenya, but by law you have no right to carry out searches.”

“I don’t know your laws. I only know that my brooch has disappeared, that’s all. And I will find that brooch!” She banged her fork on her plate, and her eyes flashed wrathfully. “Eat now and don’t interfere in my affairs.”

Nikolai Sergeich meekly lowered his eyes and sighed. Meanwhile Mashenka came to her room and collapsed on the bed. She was no longer afraid or ashamed, but she was tormented by a strong desire to go and give this callous, this arrogant, stupid, lucky woman a slap in the face.

She lay there, breathing into the pillow and dreaming of how good it would be to go now, buy the most expensive brooch, and throw it in this female tyrant’s face. Or if God should grant that Fedosya Vassilyevna be ruined, go out into the world and learn all the horror of poverty and the servile condition, and the insulted Mashenka should give her alms. Oh, if only she could receive a rich inheritance, buy a carriage, and drive noisily past her windows, making her envious!

But these were all dreams; in reality only one thing remained for her—to leave quickly, not to stay there even an hour longer. True, it was frightening to lose her job, to go back to her parents, who had nothing, but what was she to do? Mashenka could no longer bear the sight of her mistress, nor her little room; it felt stifling there, and spooky. Fedosya Vassilyevna, obsessed with her ailments and her imaginary aristocracy, disgusted her so much that it seemed everything in the world became coarse and unsightly because this woman lived in it. Mashenka jumped up from the bed and started to pack.

“May I come in?” Nikolai Sergeich asked outside the door. He had approached the door inaudibly and spoke in a quiet, gentle voice. “May I?”

“Come in.”

He came in and stopped by the door. His gaze was dull, and his red little nose glistened. He had drunk beer after dinner, and it could be noticed by his gait and his weak, limp hands.

“What’s this?” he said, pointing to the basket.