A room. On the doorsill snores a drunken, unshaven, miserable man. Who it is cannot be told; his face is half covered with his hand, and the rest is discolored and bruised. A bed. On the bed a woman; yes, it is Marya Alekséyevna; but how kind, but how pale she is! how feeble, though she is only forty-five years old! how exhausted! By the bedside is a young girl of eighteen. “It is I myself, Viérotchka; but how ragged I seem! What does this mean? my complexion is so yellow, and my features are so rough! and what a miserable chamber! Scarcely any furniture!”
“Viérotchka, my dear, my angel,” says Marya Alekséyevna, “just lie down and take a rest, my treasure. Why do you watch with me? I can attend to myself. This is the third night that you have not slept.”
“Never mind; I am not tired,” says Viérotchka.
“I am not any better, Viérotchka. How will you get along without me? Your father’s pittance is as small as it can be, and he himself is a poor support to you. You are a pretty girl. There are many bad people in this world. There will be no one to watch over you. I tremble for you.” Viérotchka weeps.
“My dear, don’t be grieved; I am telling you this, not to blame you, but to warn you. What made you leave home on Friday, the day before I fell sick?” Viérotchka weeps.
“He will deceive you, Viérotchka. Give him up.”
“No, mámenka.”
Two months pass. How is it that two months pass in one minute? An army officer is sitting. On the table before the officer is a bottle. On the officer’s knees is she, Viérotchka.
Again two months more have passed in one minute.
A lady is sitting. Before the lady she, Viérotchka, is standing.
“Can you iron, dear?”
“I can.”
“To what class do you belong? Are you a serf or free?”
“My father was a tchinovnik.”31
“So you belong to the nobility, my dear? Then I can’t take you. What kind of a servant would you make? Go away, my dear; I can’t take you.”
Viérotchka is on the street.
“Mademoiselle! ho, mademoiselle!” says some young drunken fellow, accosting her. “Where are you going? Let me escort you.”
Viérotchka runs to the Neva.
“Well, my dear, have you seen all these things that my magic art has conjured up? How do you like being with your kind mother?” asks the real Marya Alekséyevna, again appearing. “Am I not a good enchantress? Hain’t I hit it off well? Why don’t you speak? You have a tongue in your mouth, hain’t you? I’ll squeeze a word out of you! It’s so hard to make you speak. Have you been shopping?”
“Yes,” says Viérotchka; and she trembles.
“Have you seen, have you heard, what’s going on?”
“Yes.”
“Do they live well, them learned folks? Do they read books, and think as you do about your new plan for folks getting along better? Do they? Tell me!”
Viérotchka says nothing, but she trembles.
“Ek! there ain’t nothing to be got out of you. Do they live well? Hear my question!”
Viérotchka says nothing, but she is in a cold sweat.
“One can’t git a word out of you! Do they live well? I ask you. Are they good? I ask you. Would you like to be like them? You don’t speak! You turn away your phiz! Just listen, Viérotchka, to what I am going to say! You are educated; you are educated on money that I stole. You are thinking about the good; but if I had not been bad, you would not have even known what good is. Do you understand? You owe all to me. You are my daughter. Do you understand? I am your mother!”
Viérotchka weeps and trembles, and is in a cold sweat. “Mámenka, what do you want of me? I cannot love you.”
“Do I ask you to love me?”
“I should like at least to respect you; but I cannot do that, either.”
“Do I need your respect?”
“What do you want, then, mámenka? Why have you come to me, and why do you speak so harshly to me? What do you want of me?”
“Be grateful, you selfish girl! Do not love, do not respect me? I am a vixen; why should you love me? I am bad; why should you respect me? But you understand, Viérka, that if I were not what I am, you would not be what you are. You are good because I am bad. You are sweet-tempered because I am a vixen. Understand that, Viérka, and be grateful.”
“Leave me, Marya Alekséyevna; I want to speak with my sister.”
Marya Alekséyevna vanishes.
The bride of her bridegrooms, the sister of her sisters, takes Viérotchka by the hand. “Viérotchka, I always wanted to be kind to you because I am kind and I am just as the person is with whom I speak. But now you are melancholy, so you see
