less assurance.
‘‘You mean to say that you despise my past, and you’re right,’’ she said in great agitation. ‘‘You belong to a special category of people who can’t be measured by the usual yardstick; your moral demands are distinguished by an exceptional strictness, and, as I understand, you cannot forgive; I understand you, and if I sometimes contradict you, it doesn’t mean that I look at things differently than you; I say old rubbish simply because I haven’t had time yet to wear out my old dresses and prejudices. I myself hate and despise my past, and Orlov, and my love . . . What kind of love is that? Now it’s all even ridiculous,’’ she said, going over to the window and looking down on the canal. ‘‘All these loves only darken one’s conscience and throw one off. The meaning of life is only in one thing—in struggle. To plant your heel on the vile serpent’s head so that it goes ‘crack!’ The meaning is in that. In that alone, or else there’s no meaning at all.’’
I told her long stories from my past and described for her my indeed amazing adventures. But I never let out a word about the change that had taken place in me. She listened to me with great attention each time and rubbed her hands at the interesting places, as if vexed that she had not yet managed to live through such adventures, fears, and joys, but suddenly she would turn pensive, withdraw into herself, and I could see from her face that she wasn’t listening to me.
I’d close the windows looking out on the canal and ask if I shouldn’t light the fire.
‘‘No, God help it. I’m not cold,’’ she would say, smiling listlessly, ‘‘it’s just that I’m all faint. You know, it seems to me that I’ve become terribly intelligent recently. I have such extraordinary, original thoughts now. When I think about the past, for instance, about my life then . . . well, about people in general, it all merges into one thing in me—the image of my stepmother. Crude, impudent, heartless, false, depraved, and a morphine addict besides. My father, a weak, spineless man, married my mother for money and drove her to consumption, but this second wife, my stepmother, he loved passionately, to distraction . . . The things I suffered! Well, what’s there to talk about! So, as I was saying, it all merges into one image... And that vexes me: why did my stepmother die? I’d like to meet her now! . . .’’
‘‘Why?’’
‘‘Just so, I don’t know . . .’’ she answered with a laugh, shaking her head prettily. ‘‘Good night. Get well. As soon as you recover, we’ll take care of our affairs... It’s time.’’
When I had already taken leave and stood holding the door handle, she would say:
‘‘What do you think? Does Polya still live there?’’
‘‘Probably.’’
And I would go to my room. We lived like that for a whole month. One overcast noontime, when we were both standing by the window in my room and silently looking at the clouds coming in from the sea, and at the canal, which had turned dark blue, and expecting the rain to pour down any minute, and when a narrow, dense strip of rain had already covered the coastline like gauze, we both suddenly felt bored. That same day we left for Florence.
XVI
THIS HAPPENED THAT autumn in Nice. One morning when I came to her room, she was sitting in an armchair, her legs crossed, hunched up, shrunken, her face buried in her hands, and weeping bitterly, sobbing, and her long, undone hair fell over her knees. The impression of the marvelous, astonishing sea, which I had only just seen, which I wanted to tell her about, suddenly left me, and my heart was wrung with pain.
‘‘What is it?’’ I asked. She took one hand away from her face and waved for me to leave. ‘‘Well, what is it?’’ I repeated, and for the first time in our acquaintance, I kissed her hand.
‘‘No, no, it’s nothing!’’ she said quickly. ‘‘Oh, nothing, nothing . . . Go away . . . You can see I’m not dressed.’’
I left in terrible confusion. My peace and the untroubled mood I had been in for so long were poisoned by compassion. I passionately wanted to fall at her feet, to implore her not to weep alone but to share her sorrow with me, and the even sound of the sea now growled in my ears like a dark prophecy, and I saw new tears ahead, new griefs and losses. What, what was she crying about?—I asked, remembering her face and her suffering eyes. I remembered that she was pregnant. She tried to hide her condition both from people and from her own self. At home she went about in a loose blouse or a chemise with exaggeratedly sumptuous pleats in front, and when she went somewhere, she laced her corset so tightly that she fell into a swoon twice during her walks. She never talked with me about her pregnancy, and once, when I tried to mention that it would do no harm to get a doctor’s advice, she turned all red and didn’t say a word.
When I came to her room later, she was already dressed, and her hair was done.
‘‘Come, come!’’ I said, seeing that she was again about to cry. ‘‘Better let’s go to the sea and have a talk.’’
‘‘I can’t speak. Forgive me, I’m in such a mood now that I’d rather be alone. And please, Vladimir Ivanovich, the next time you want to come into my room, give a preliminary knock on the door.’’
That ‘‘preliminary’’ had some special, unfeminine ring to it. I left. The cursed Petersburg mood was coming back, and all my dreams curled up and shriveled like leaves in the heat. I felt that I was alone again, that there was no closeness between us. I was the same for her as the spiderweb for this palm tree, which hung on it accidentally and would be torn off and blown away by the wind. I strolled through the square, where music was playing, and went into a casino; there I looked at the dressed-up, much-perfumed women, and each of them looked at me as if she wanted to say: ‘‘You’re lonely, that’s splendid . . .’’ Then I went out to the terrace and looked at the sea for a long time. Not a single sail on the far horizon; on the shore to the left, hills, gardens, towers, houses in a purple mist; the sun plays on it all, but it’s all alien, indifferent, some sort of tangle...
XVII
SHE CAME TO me as before to have coffee in the mornings, but we no longer dined together; she, so she said, did not feel like eating, and subsisted on nothing but coffee, tea, and various trifles such as oranges and caramels.
Nor did we have conversations in the evenings. I don’t know why that was. After the time I found her in tears, she began to treat me somehow lightly, sometimes carelessly, even with irony, and for some reason called me ‘‘my sir.’’ That which earlier had seemed frightening, astonishing, heroic to her, and which had aroused envy and rapture in her, now didn’t touch her at all, and usually, having heard me out, she would stretch a little and say:
‘‘Yes, there were big doings at Poltava,28 my sir, there were indeed.’’
It even happened that I wouldn’t meet her for whole days. I’d knock timidly and guiltily at her door—no answer; I’d knock again—silence . . . I’d stand by the door and listen; but then a maid goes by and announces coldly: ‘‘
