“Myself—myself—myself,” thought Tatiana. “Where is myself?” She sought through herself for some essential bone of personality to lay a finger on. “What is it that likes mushrooms? What is it that fears to be alone and yet must be alone? What is it that dies of horror when men come too near? Are my eyes, watching caterpillars and watching Petya’s red face—are my eyes myself? What else? What else?” She tried even to imagine what her outer self looked like, sitting here on a tree-root one cautious yard away from Piotr. She could see the spreading tree, spangled with green light; she could see the red hills under that clear tense light that comes just before sunset, the gullies filling with long smoke-blue shadows. … She looked along the bent perspective of the gully that stretched below the village to a wide purple and gold valley. The crops, in all colors but all tinged with the same rich yellow late light, and in all shapes—uneven squares, stripes, oblongs, rhomboids—grew from a bloodred soil, so that the near barley seemed like pale green armies wading in blood. Here and there were intervals of naked red—acres that had been ploughed for a new sowing. The paths, angling about among the many-angled crops, were deep set, as though stitched firmly into the texture of patched quilted velvet. Villages, of the same dreamlike smoke-blue as the far mountains, were tucked into gullies and tributary gullies, and over each village a thin taut string of smoke—the smoke of evening cooking—was stretched flat on the windless air.
And in the middle of this jewel-like elaboration of shape and color—where was Tatiana? She could not see herself or put herself into words, but in her mind’s eye a pillar of nothingness reared—a white mirror, passively accepting the image of hills and valleys, insects and lovers. …
“Well, have you nothing to say to me—before I say goodbye?”
“I wish you happiness, dear Piotr Gavrilovitch.”
“You really want me to go away and be happy somewhere else and leave you alone?”
“What else is there to do?”
“Do you realize what it is, you foolish girl, for a woman to live and die alone?”
“I realize very well.”
“Well then. … Ah, Tanya, would you let me kiss your eyes—just once—before I go?”
Her heart froze. “Petya—would it make you go more happily?” There was a hissing in her ears, like something boiling over—louder and louder—higher and higher. “Ah, but no—no—no—no!” She burst into tears and jumped giddily to her feet. She began running back toward her father’s house. She reached the washtubs and plunged her arms in among the wet clothes, pounding, crying, gasping, trembling. A terrified glance back toward the tree showed her that Piotr had gone. A puff of dust at the corner of the temple was all that reminded her eyes of him. If her eyes were her only self—he was gone from her sight now, gone from her self. She felt suddenly safe—safe from seeing his poor face—safe from having to pity him—safe from invasion. The blank page of herself was safe from inscription now. She flapped a wet garment with wild joy in the air.
“Oi, what a splashing!” said the servant, Katya, coming out, carrying two cans of hot water. “You have been crying again, Tatiana Pavlovna.”
“Only for a minute,” said Tatiana. With the strength of excitement she emptied out her washtub into the ditch and wrung out the clothes. She poured the fresh hot water into the tub from a foolish height, saying to herself, “The awed traveler stood and watched the stupendous cataract from a neighboring height.” She imagined the awed traveler, about half an inch high, standing on the opposite brim of the washtub—but she drowned him at once, by mistake, for the water, violently poured in, splashed violently over the brim.
“You are wasting half the hot water, you foolish girl!” shouted Katya. “I have been nearly an hour heating that water and now you throw it on the mud. Can’t you be careful?”
“If I like,” said Tatiana. She began swirling the water round and round in the tub, saying below her breath, “The horrors of the maelstrom,” and pretending that a little ship, the size of a peanut shell, full of despairing pinhead sailors, was whirling round and round, nearer and nearer to the fatal dark siren dint in the middle of the whirl.
“Tck tck!” said Katya, and, pushing Tatiana aside, she plunged an armful of soapy linen into the water, instantly calming the cyclone. “Now please, Tatiana Pavlovna, don’t waste time, but help me with the rinsing. It will be dark in half an hour.”
Tatiana began thoughtfully steeping the linen in the water, pulling it, plunging it slowly, letting the white spines of linen hems come to the surface here and there like slow porpoises.
“Where is Piotr Gavrilovitch?” asked Katya.
“He is gone.”
“Gone for good?”
“Going for good.”
“Well, Tatiana Pavlovna, I hope you are properly proud of yourself—emptying this village completely of its young men. Piotr Isaev was the last. Now they are all gone. Seven Russian boys came over in our party from Vladivostok when we all settled here in Mi-san, and now they are all gone, thanks to you. In my young days a pretty girl had all the young men from miles around coming round her like wasps round honey; she didn’t drive them away as though she were a bad smell.”
“Some young woman somewhere’s the better for each of these goings-away of young men,” said Tatiana in a high voice. “Seven pots of honey somewhere have one bad smell in Mi-san to thank for their seven wasps.”
She had no defense against Katya’s talk. Katya could not help vomiting spiteful talk, thought Tatiana. One had to forgive other people with weak stomachs, even if they disgusted one—so why not Katya’s surfeit and indigestion of crude words?
“It’s no good
