beds and armchairs, nauseated by the painting of the naked woman. Already it had become transparently clear to her that she no longer loved Andrey Andreyich, and perhaps had never loved him; but she did not—and could not— understand how to say this and to whom to say it and why she should say it, even though she thought about it all day and all night.… He had put his arm round her waist, and was talking so courteously and modestly, and was so happy as he walked around his house, but in all this she saw only vulgarity, stupid, naive, intolerable vulgarity, and his arm round her waist felt rough and cold like an iron hoop. Every moment she was on the point of running away, bursting into sobs, throwing herself out of the window. Andrey Andreyich led her into the bathroom, and there he touched a tap set in the wall, and at once water flowed out.
“Just look at that!” he said, and burst out laughing. “I had them put up a cistern in the loft with a hundred gallons of water. So you see, we now have running water!”
They walked across a yard and out into the street, and hailed a cab. The dust rose in thick clouds, and it looked as though it would rain.
“You’re not cold?” Andrey Andreyich asked, screwing up his eyes against the dust.
She did not answer.
“Remember how yesterday Sasha reproached me for not doing anything?” he said after a brief silence. “Well, he’s right! He’s absolutely right! I do nothing, and don’t know how to do anything! And why is that, my dear? Why is it that I hate the thought of one day putting a cockade in my cap and going into government service? Why is it that I can’t stand the sight of a lawyer, or a teacher of Latin, or a town councilor? O Mother Russia! O Mother Russia! What a burden of idle and useless people you carry along with you! O long-suffering Mother Russia, how many there are like me!”
And he continued to make generalizations about his own idleness, seeing it as a sign of the times.
“When we are married, my darling,” he went on, “we’ll go and live in the country, and we’ll get down to work! We’ll buy a small plot of land with a garden and a stream, and we’ll work and observe life.… How splendid it will be!”
He removed his hat, and his hair waved in the wind, while she listened and thought: “Oh God, I want to go home! Oh God!” They were near the house when they caught up with Father Andrey.
“Look, there’s Father!” Andrey said joyfully, and he waved his hat. “I love my old man, I really do,” he said, paying off the cab driver. “He is a splendid old fellow. Really splendid.”
Nadya went into the house, feeling ill and out of humor, remembering that visitors would be arriving in the evening and she would have to entertain them, smile, listen to the violin, listen to all kinds of idiocies, and talk only about the wedding. There would be her grandmother sitting by the samovar, stiff and magnificent in silk, looking very proud, as she always seemed to be in the presence of guests. Father Andrey came into the room with a sly smile.
“I have the pleasure and blessed consolation of seeing you in excellent health,” he said to Grandmother, and it was hard to say whether he spoke in earnest or in jest.
IV
The wind was knocking on the windowpanes and on the roof; whistling sounds were heard; and you could hear the hobgoblin in the chimney singing his melancholy, plaintive song. It was after midnight, everyone was in bed, but no one could sleep. Nadya thought someone was still playing on the violin downstairs. A minute later Nina Ivanovna entered the room in her nightgown, holding a candle.
“What was that knocking sound, Nadya?” she asked.
Her mother, her hair in a single plait, a timid smile on her face, looked older, uglier, and shorter than ever on this stormy night. Nadya remembered how, quite recently, she had regarded her mother as a remarkable woman and listened with pride to the things she said, but now she could no longer remember those words she had spoken—the only ones that came back to her seemed feeble and affected.
She thought she could hear deep-throated voices singing in the chimney, even thought she could distinguish the words “Oh, my Go-o-o-d!” She sat up in bed, suddenly clutched fiercely at her hair, and burst into sobs.
“Mama, Mama!” she exclaimed. “My own dear mother, if only you knew what was happening to me! I beg you, I implore you—let me go away from here!”
“Where to?” Nina Ivanovna asked in surprise, and she sat down on the bed. “Where to?”
Nadya cried for a long time and could not utter a word.
“Let me leave town,” she said at last. “The wedding mustn’t—won’t happen! Please understand that! I don’t love him!… I can’t bear to talk about him!”
“No, my darling, no!” Nina Ivanovna said quickly, frightened out of her wits. “Calm yourself. You’re in low spirits, but it will pass. It often happens. Probably you’ve been quarreling with Andrey, but then lovers’ quarrels always end in smiles!”
“Go away, Mama, go away!” Nadya sobbed.
“Yes,” said Nina Ivanovna after a pause. “Only a little while ago you were a baby, a little girl, and now you are almost a bride. In nature there are always these transformations. Before you know where you are, you will be a mother and then an old woman, with a stubborn daughter like mine on your hands!”
“My dear sweet mother, you are clever and unhappy,” said Nadya. “You are so very unhappy—why do you say such vulgar, commonplace things? For God’s sake why?”
Nina Ivanovna tried to say something but could not utter a word, and went sobbing back to her own room. Once again deep-throated voices droned in the chimney, and Nadya suddenly felt frightened. She jumped out of bed and ran to her mother. Nina Ivanovna’s eyes were red with weeping. She lay on the bed wrapped in a blue blanket, a book in her hands.
“Mama, listen to me!” Nadya cried. “I implore you—try to understand! If you only understood how petty and degrading our life is! My eyes have been opened and I see it all now. And what about your Andrey Andreyich? He’s not a bit clever, Mama! Oh God, he’s nothing more than a fool!”
Nina Ivanovna sat up with a jerk.
“You and your grandmother keep torturing me,” she sobbed. “I want to live—to live!” she repeated, and she struck her breast twice with her little fist. “Let me free! I’m still young and I want to live, and you’re making an old woman out of me!”
