“There is no need to touch him,” said Anna, indifferently. She did not move, and Old Sergei, clutching her arm, leaned forward, listening to the stillness that frightened him, glaring with his useless eyes. They stood for a long time, as though in a dream. Anna had strayed into a mood of peace. She almost didn’t care, now. Here was one unhappy boy’s unhappiness quieted, and her own happy boy left alive to enjoy his strong, hopeful life—undisturbed by such a destructive thing as the love of women. God was not dead. If the two boys had changed places—the happy one cut off in his happiness, the despairing one preserved in his despair—she would have thought, “This is typical of the contrariness—the nonsense of divine decrees.” Often Anna felt obliged to suspect the divine wisdom, but now she gladly admitted a kind of profound sense—even in omniscience. That bloodsucking woman—whatever her name was—had missed one splendid and indispensable victim, and drained this poor drooping boy of his life. Seryozha was the more valuable, and he was safe. For Seryozha, thought Anna, a mother and a dog were enough. Neither she nor any other boy’s mother would ever find Seryozha sitting on a stone, glaring as if in a trance at a swift river, talking—talking of a cruel woman, as though his tongue had forgotten all other words, as though his thoughts’ grooves were worn too deep for change, as though his heart were bound to a ghost—like a story she had read somewhere about a prisoner bound to a corpse. Well, something like justice had been done. Seryozha was safe from love, and this desperate boy at peace at last—dead of that same love.
Now, now no longer sealed
In a thin pent body,
Mine are the windy fields
And the long halls of the wood;
I, who was loved and held,
Am now as cold as God.The lover and his bride
Burn in a narrow flame.
We who have died
Keep no such tryst with worms.
Our sleep is wide,
Being in no man’s arms.
One of the women of the house touched Anna’s arm and gave her a letter. Anna’s name was written on a rather bulging envelope.
The letter said, in rather a stilted manner,
Esteemed Anna Semionovna, I have decided to finish a life which is no more interesting to me. I am twenty-four years old and I am convinced that life has nothing more to offer me. I have always held the philosophical opinion that a man of experience has a perfect right to take his own life when, in his mature opinion, he has had his fill of experience. I don’t know whether I may have mentioned to you that I have been very badly treated by a woman (if woman she can be called), by name Tatiana Pavlovna Ostapenko, and you may perhaps think that I have been weak enough to let her heartless behavior prey upon my mind, and that this is the cause of my death. It is not so, I assure you. Her repudiation of my honorable affection, though unreasonable, could not, of course, affect very seriously a man of my philosophical temperament. On the contrary I am glad to think that my death will relieve her of remorse for her conduct—for she has a tender conscience, though she has no heart. She will think, “Well, poor Sasha is safely dead, now. I need worry about his sorrows no more.” For she did worry—with a cold uneasiness. Perhaps when she is a lonely old woman she will worry again, but for the present she is welcome to get what satisfaction she can out of my death. In reality, my life and my death are my own affair, and women have had no influence on either. I should like to leave her my little gold compass which I have wrapped in a sealed packet in my pack, though it may seem ironical that I should leave her the thing I valued most in life, since she valued me not at all. Nor I her very much, really. I leave to my mother Maria Nicholaievna Weber, my money, seventeen yen fifty, and the rest of my possessions. Except my watch, which I leave to my younger brother, Konstantin Petrovitch Weber, with the advice that when he grows up he confine his love affairs to the caresses of Korean singing girls—they are safer than the kindness of virtuous women.
I should be grateful, Anna Semionovna, if you would kindly send the enclosed letter to my mother, as above, at 2 Takezoecho Ichome, Seoul, and apportion the belongings found on my person and in my pack as above directed. I hope you realize that I did appreciate your kindness to me, though I may have seemed at the time rather absentminded, owing to some business affairs that were engrossing me. In reality I enjoyed the various amusing and interesting chats we had together.
“Well,” thought Anna, biting her lips defiantly as she read this letter. “It couldn’t have been my Seryozha. It couldn’t. It’s ridiculous to compare the two boys. One was half a man and the other is a whole boy. No woman could suck the blood out of my Seryozha, especially a woman whom all her lovers call death. Besides, he is most unlikely to meet her—twelve hours out of his way. Why should he meet her? There must be hundreds of Russians in Korea?” She looked at Alexander’s stiff suspense-filled face, and some inward dismissing finger in her heart pointed him away—away—to be hurried into the earth—to be buried with his dangerous secret of love—to have that mouth stopped that talked so constantly
