The Storm

you? Come, wait a bit. Why, what's the good of making yourself miserable?

[Enter the Old Lady with a stick and two footmen in three-cornered hats behind her.

SCENE VIII

The same and the OLD LADY.

OLD LADY. Hey, my pretty charmers? What are you doing here? Waiting for young fellows, waiting for your beaus? Are your hearts merry? Merry are they? Are you pleased and proud of your beauty? That's where beauty leads to. (Points to the Volga) Yes, yes, to the bottomless pit! (Varvara smiles.) What, laughing? Let not your heart rejoice! (Knocks with her stick) You will burn all of you in a fire unquenchable. You will boil in the lake of flaming pitch. (Going) That is whither beauty leads you!

[Goes.

SCENE IX

KATERINA and VARVARA.

KATERINA. Ah, how she frightened me! I'm trembling all over, as if she were foretelling something for me.

VARVARA.

Her curse fall on her own head, the old witch!

KATERINA.

What was it she said, eh? what did she say?

VARVARA. It was all rubbish. It's silly to listen to her raving. She foretells evil like that to everyone. She was a sinner all her life from her youth up. You should hear the stories they tell about her. So now she's afraid of death. And she must try and frighten others with what she dreads herself. Why even the little street boys hide away from her; she shakes her stick at them and growls (mimicking) 'you'll all burn in fire unquenchable!'

KATERINA (shrinking).

Ah, ah, stop! I can't bear it!

VARVARA.

There's nothing to be frightened of! An old fool….

KATERINA. I am afraid, terribly afraid! I seem to see her all the while before us. [Silence.

VARVARA (looking round).

I say, brother doesn't come, and yonder there's a storm coming up.

KATERINA (in terror).

A storm! Let us run home! Make haste!

VARVARA.

Why, are you crazy? How can you show yourself at home without my brother?

KATERINA.

No, let us go home! Never mind him!

VARVARA.

But why are you so awfully frightened? The storm's a long way off yet.

KATERINA. If it's so far off, we'll wait then a little, if you like; but really it would be better to go. Yes, we'd better go home.

VARVARA.

But if anything were to happen, you know, you'd be no safer at home.

KATERINA. No, but still, it's better there, it's quieter; at home one can turn to the holy pictures and pray to God!

VARVARA. I didn't know you were so afraid of a thunderstorm. I'm not afraid, you see.

KATERINA. Don't talk of not being afraid! Everyone must be afraid. What is dreadful is not it's killing you, but that death may overtake you all of a sudden, just as you are, with all your sins, with all your erring thoughts. I have no fear of death, but when I think that I shall be brought all at once before the face of God just as I am here, with you, after this talk,—that's what is awful! What I had in my heart! What wickedness! fearful to think of! (Thunder.) Ah!

[Enter Kabanov.

VARVARA.

Here comes my brother. (To Kabanov) Hurry up!

[Thunder.

KATERINA.

Ah! Make haste! Make haste!

ACT II

SCENE I