Masha. When I approached her, she shrank back, and her look became guilty, entreating; obviously something was happening in her soul that she was afraid or ashamed of. So as not to meet me somehow in the garden or be left alone with me, she stayed close to Masha all the time, and I rarely had a chance to talk with her, only over dinner.
One evening I was walking slowly through the garden, coming back from the construction site. It was beginning to get dark. Not noticing me, not hearing my footsteps, my sister was walking near an old, spreading apple tree, quite noiselessly, like a phantom. She was dressed in black and walked quickly, along the same line, back and forth, looking at the ground. An apple fell from the tree; she gave a start at the noise, stopped, and pressed her hands to her temples. Just then I came up to her.
In an impulse of tender love that suddenly flooded my heart, in tears, for some reason remembering our mother, our childhood, I put my arms around her shoulders and kissed her.
‘‘What’s the matter with you?’’ I asked. ‘‘You’re suffering, I’ve seen it for a long time. Tell me, what’s the matter?’’
‘‘I’m frightened...’ she said, trembling.
‘‘But what’s the matter?’’ I insisted. ‘‘For God’s sake, be open with me!’’
‘‘I will, I will be open with you, I’ll tell you the whole truth. Concealing it from you is so hard, so painful! Misail, I’m in love...’ she went on in a whisper. ‘‘I’m in love, I’m in love... I’m happy, but why am I so frightened?’’
There was the sound of footsteps, Dr. Blagovo appeared among the trees in his silk shirt and high boots. Evidently they had arranged a meeting here by the apple tree. Seeing him, she rushed to him impulsively, with a pained cry, as if he was being taken from her:
‘‘Vladimir! Vladimir!’’
She pressed herself to him and looked greedily into his face, and only now did I notice how thin and pale she had become recently. It was especially noticeable by her lace collar, which I had long known and which now lay more loosely than ever around her long and slender neck. The doctor became embarrassed but recovered at once and said, smoothing her hair:
‘‘Well, come, come...Why so nervous? You see, I’m here.’’
We were silent, glancing shyly at each other. Then the three of us walked on, and I heard the doctor say to me:
‘‘Cultured life has not yet begun with us. The old men comfort themselves that if there’s nothing now, there was something in the forties or the sixties;22 that’s the old men, but you and I are young, our brains have not yet been touched by
But I didn’t enter into these reflections. Strange as it was, I didn’t want to believe that my sister was in love, that she was now walking and holding this stranger’s hand, looking tenderly at him. My sister, this nervous, intimidated, downtrodden, unfree being, loves a man who is already married and has children! I felt sorry about something, precisely what I didn’t know; the doctor’s presence was now unpleasant for some reason, and I simply couldn’t understand what could come of this love of theirs.
XV
MASHA AND I were driving to Kurilovka for the blessing of the school. 24
‘‘Autumn, autumn, autumn...’ Masha was saying softly, looking around. ‘‘Summer’s over. There are no birds, and only the pussywillows are still green.’’
Yes, summer was over. The days are clear, warm, but the mornings are chilly, the shepherds now go out in sheepskin coats, and in our garden the dew on the asters doesn’t dry the whole day. You hear plaintive noises, and there’s no telling whether it’s a shutter whining on its rusty hinges or the cranes flying—and you feel so good and want so much to live!
‘‘Summer’s over...’ Masha was saying. ‘‘Now you and I can sum things up. We’ve worked a lot, thought a lot, we’re the better for it—honor and glory to us—we’ve succeeded at personal improvement; but did these successes of ours have any noticeable influence on the life around us, were they of any use to anyone? No. The ignorance, the physical filth, the drunkenness, the shockingly high infant mortality—it all remains as it was, and the fact that you plowed and sowed, and I spent money and read books, hasn’t made things better for anyone. Obviously we worked only for ourselves and had broad minds only for ourselves.’’
Such reasoning disconcerted me, and I didn’t know what to think.
‘‘We were sincere from beginning to end,’’ I said, ‘‘and whoever is sincere is right.’’
‘‘Who disputes that? We were right, but we did not rightly accomplish what we were right about. First of all, our external methods themselves—aren’t they mistaken? You want to be useful to people, but the very fact of your buying an estate precludes from the start all possibility of doing anything useful for them. Then, if you work, dress, and eat like a muzhik, by your own authority you legitimize, as it were, these heavy, clumsy clothes of theirs, their terrible cottages, their stupid beards... On the other hand, suppose you work a long time, very long, all your life, and in the end you get some practical results, but what are they, these results of yours, what can they do against such elemental forces as wholesale ignorance, hunger, cold, degeneracy? A drop in the ocean! Other methods of fighting are needed here, strong, bold, quick! If you really want to be useful, leave the narrow circle of ordinary activity and try to act upon the masses as a whole! What’s needed first of all is loud, energetic preaching. Why is art—music, for instance—so vital, so popular, and in fact so strong? Because a musician or a singer acts upon thousands at once. Dear, dear art!’’ she went on, looking dreamily at the sky. ‘‘Art gives wings and carries you far, far away! Whoever is sick of filth, of petty pennyworth interests, whoever is outraged, insulted, and indignant, can find peace and satisfaction only in the beautiful.’’
As we drove up to Kurilovka, the weather was clear, joyful. In some yards the threshing was under way, there was a smell of rye straw. Bright red rowanberries showed behind the wattle fences, and the trees all around, wherever you looked, were all gold or red. Bells were ringing in the bell towers, icons were being carried to the school, and they were singing ‘‘The Fervent Intercessor.’’ And how transparent the air, how high the pigeons flew!
A prayer service was held in the schoolroom. Then the Kurilovka peasants presented Masha with an icon, and the Dubechnya peasants with a big plaited bread and a gilded salt cellar. And Masha broke into sobs.
‘‘And if anything unnecessary was said, or there was any displeasure, forgive us,’’ said one old man, and he bowed to her and to me.
