She was both too far and too near. She loved her neighbor as herself because she found herself in her neighbor, but if you were her neighbor, you found that she loved you no better than herself—and therefore not at all.
What a detestable advantage it gave her, to be high on the hill, safe, away from home, yet near enough to hear, with her remote cold senses, your heart beating. How wrong that she should claim to have the key to your lock and yet, herself, present no lock, no door, no house, even, for your unlocking. And yet her face and body were so lovely that you must love them even more than you hated her passionless mind and heart—you could not help calling—Tanya, Tanya—before the empty windows of a deserted house at the foot of the hill, hoping always to lure her home, inside herself, to welcome you in at last.
She had a smile that pulled the corners of her lips up and the corners of her eyes down, but it was never meant for you, except secondarily; when you smiled in reply, hers vanished, was twitched away.
Tatiana did not know that she lived on a hill; she only knew that she had no neighbors; her neighbors all must harbor her, but she had no neighbors. To be approached was entirely unbearable; a desiring or acute glance was in itself an assault; see she must, but to be seen was somehow insult. She loathed touch and always avoided it; the lightest accidental touch rasped her like a cat’s tongue. Love of her neighbor was a thing felt stilly, thinly diffused among pitied lovers—puppies—parents—flowers—insects—even things (she often felt guilty for disappointing things)—even invented things—blank pensioners of her compassionate fancy. She drew no ecstasy except through her eyes. And she felt a little giddy always because she saw so many things and had so little known self—or such a wide, unknown self—out of which to see them. She saw now, as she walked, a collapsing hourglass of blue sky. She watched clouds crushing it in, and a sand of light spill out of it. Then, as she came to the washtub, her attention swooped suddenly to the reason of her return—a woolly-bear caterpillar, swimming in the suds. It had been swimming there for some time—not exactly swimming, for it was too light to break through the soapy skin of the water, and occasionally it found a sodden island of linen to walk across. Its fur was dry, but it looked exhausted. Tatiana, most of whose diversions of the mind were curiously cruel, had dared herself to let it nearly drown so that its relief at ultimate rescue might be the more glorious. Then Piotr’s whistle had made her forget it—made her prolong the poor insect’s ordeal more than she had intended. She put her finger under it now and caught it up to safety. She laid her finger against a blade of grass and, when the caterpillar had found its footing on its own world, she knelt down and watched it. She was imagining its incredulous delight. Piotr, puzzled, knelt down beside her. They looked as if they were about to pray together.
“But what did you come back for, Tanya?”
“For this.”
“For what? This slug?”
“Well … I left it drowning. I forgot it for the moment. Then I remembered—so I had to come back.”
“But—oh, Tanya—a caterpillar! When I told you I had something to tell you! Don’t be so foolish, for God’s sake, Tanya; don’t be so cold. Listen to me—don’t laugh at me.”
He looked at her and could not pretend to himself that she was even paying him the compliment of laughing at him. Nor was he sure that she was listening. She was breathlessly following the caterpillar’s course. It rippled earnestly along like a little machine running on concealed wheels well provided with shock-absorbers.
Piotr uttered a mild curse and then, seizing an empty glass jar that had contained washing soda, he placed it upside down over the caterpillar, involving that unlucky insect in yet another unmerited dilemma.
“Tanya, I believe I’m glad—I’m glad that you are so contrary and unkind. It makes it easier to say these things to you. Listen, I don’t want to stay in Mi-san any more—I don’t want to see your face any more. … I’m tired of your face. There’s something wrong with it; though it is so pretty, there’s no heart behind it. Listen, Tanya—don’t look at that damned bug—listen. I’m going away. There was no reason why you should have treated me so—we were betrothed. There is nothing to keep us apart now, except your own hard heart. That and my feeling of being tired of you, of course. You have lost something by your hardheartedness, I can tell you. Some day you will be sorry. You are kinder to that caterpillar than to a man, Tanya. I can tell you, some girls know a man’s value better. Once lost, I am lost forever. You will be sorry. … What do you expect? No man of flesh and blood can go on forever loving a girl that only smiles at—caterpillars. What is the matter with you, that you hold yourself so much above love? What else is there for you? Do you want to live and die alone?”
“No—no—Petya,” she said at once in tears. The word “alone” had a terrible sound to her. Yet she had no defense against it, because the reality, loneliness, was her right—her unassailable pride. To live and die alone was like living and dying on a throne; she
