and only God and the starry heavens would observe her tears of suffering. In the church the evening service was still going on. The Princess paused and listened to the singing. How perfect the sound of their singing in the dark and motionless air! How sweet to weep and suffer to the sound of their singing!
Returning to the hostel, she gazed in a mirror at her tear-stained face, and then she powdered her face and sat down to supper. The monks knew she liked pickled sturgeon, little mushrooms, and simple gingerbread cakes which left a taste of cypress in her mouth, and each time she came they served the things she liked. Eating the mushrooms and drinking their Malaga wine, the Princess dreamed of how in the end she would be abandoned and forsaken, and all her stewards, bailiffs, clerks, and maid-servants, for whom she had done so much, would betray her and say coarse things about her, and how everyone all over the world would attack her and speak evil of her and jeer at her. She would renounce her title of Princess, she would renounce luxury and society, and she would enter a monastery without a word of reproach to anyone; and she would pray for her enemies, and then they would all suddenly come to understand her, and seek her forgiveness, but by then it would be too late.…
After supper she fell on her knees in a corner of the room in front of the icon and read two chapters of the Gospels. Then her maidservant made her bed and she lay down to sleep. Stretching herself under a white blanket, she uttered a sweet and prolonged sigh, such as one utters after weeping, and she closed her eyes and fell asleep.…
In the morning she woke and glanced at her little clock: it was half past nine. On the carpet near her bed there lay a clear, thin streak of light made by a sunbeam which came from the window and vaguely lit the room. From behind the black window curtain came the buzzing of flies.
“It’s still early,” the Princess thought, and she shut her eyes.
Stretching herself out, lying comfortably in bed, she remembered her meeting with the doctor the previous day and all the thoughts with which she had fallen asleep; and she remembered she was unhappy. Then the memory of her husband, living in St. Petersburg, came back to her, and her stewards, and the doctor, and neighbors, and officials she knew … a long procession of familiar masculine faces marched through her imagination. She smiled, and it occurred to her that if only these people could peer into her soul and understand her, they would be at her feet.…
At a quarter past eleven she called her maid. “Let me get dressed now,” she said languidly. “But first, tell them to harness the horses. I must go and visit Claudia Nikolayevna.”
When she left the hostel and was about to get into her carriage, she had to screw up her eyes against the strong sun, and she laughed with joy: it was such a wonderfully fine day! And looking through half-closed eyes at the monks who had gathered by the steps to bid her farewell, she nodded pleasantly and said: “Good-by, my friends! Until the day after tomorrow!”
She was pleasantly surprised to find the doctor standing on the steps with the monks. His face was pale and stern.
“Princess,” he said, removing his hat, “I’ve been waiting for you a long time. Forgive me, for God’s sake! A bad, vindictive feeling came over me yesterday. I said terrible things to you … stupid things. I beg your forgiveness!”
The Princess smiled graciously and held out her hand to his lips. He kissed it and his face reddened.
Trying to resemble a little bird, the Princess fluttered into the carriage, nodding in all directions. Her heart was warm and bright and gay, and she thought her smile was unusually sweet and friendly. As the carriage rolled up to the gates and then along the dusty road past peasant huts and gardens, past long trains of carts and processions of pilgrims making their way to the monastery, she was still screwing up her eyes and smiling softly. She was thinking there was no greater delight than to bring joy, warmth, and light to those she met, to forgive wrongs, and to smile kindly at her enemies. The peasants bowed to her as she passed, the carriage rustled softly, clouds of dust rose from under the wheels and the wind carried them across the fields of golden rye, and it seemed to the Princess that her body was swaying not on the cushions in the carriage but on clouds, and she herself was like a light transparent little cloud.…
“How happy I am!” she murmured, closing her eyes. “How happy I am!”
G
I
IT was already dark, and would soon be night.
Gusev, a discharged soldier, sat up in his hammock and said softly: “Pavel Ivanich, are you listening to me? At Suchan there was a soldier who said a big fish came smack against his ship and tore a hole in the bottom.”
He was addressing a rather nondescript individual known to everyone in sick bay as Pavel Ivanich, but there was no answer: the man seemed not to have heard.
Once more there was silence. The wind wandered over the rigging, the propeller throbbed, waves dashed against the ship, hammocks creaked, but the ear had long since grown accustomed to these sounds, and everything seemed to sleep, caught up in a trance of silence. It was boring. The three sick men—two soldiers and a sailor—had spent the day playing cards; now they slept and uttered all kinds of nonsense in their dreams.
Apparently the ship was beginning to roll. The hammock slowly rose and fell under Gusev, as though it were sighing: this happened once, twice, three times.… Something crashed down on the floor with a ringing sound: probably a jug had fallen.
“The wind must have slipped its chains,” Gusev said, straining his ears.
This time Pavel Ivanich cleared his throat and said irritably: “First you say a fish has smacked into the side of a ship, then you say the wind has slipped its chains.… Is the wind, then, an animal that it breaks loose from its chains?”
“That’s what the Christians say.”
“Then the Christians are know-nothings just like you. They say whatever they want to say. You should have a head on your shoulders and try to reason things out. You don’t have any brains!”
Pavel Ivanich suffered from seasickness. When the sea was rough he was usually bad-tempered, and the merest trifle would reduce him to a state of complete exasperation. In Gusev’s opinion there was nothing at all to be angry about. What was strange or astonishing in the story about the fish or the wind slipping its chains? Suppose the fish were as big as a mountain, suppose its backbone was as strong as a sturgeon’s, and then suppose that far
