‘‘I’m deluded!’’ she laughed. ‘‘Anyone can say that, but not you, my sir. Let me seem indelicate to you, cruel, but so it goes: you’re in love with me, aren’t you? Well, aren’t you?’’
I shrugged my shoulders.
‘‘Yes, shrug your shoulders!’’ she went on mockingly. ‘‘When you were ill, I heard you raving, then there were those constantly adoring eyes, the sighs, the well-intentioned conversations about closeness, spiritual affinity . . . But above all, why have you been insincere up to now? Why did you hide what was there, and talk about what wasn’t? You should have told me from the very beginning what, in fact, the ideas were that forced you to drag me away from Petersburg. Then I would have known. I would have poisoned myself, as I wanted to, and there would not have been this tedious comedy now... Eh, what’s there to talk about!’’ She waved her hand at me and sat down.
‘‘You speak in such a tone as if you suspect me of dishonorable intentions.’’ I was offended.
‘‘Well, all right now. What’s the point. It’s not that I suspect your intentions, but that you never had any intentions. If you’d had any, I’d know them. Besides ideas and love, you had nothing. Ideas and love now, and down the road—me as your mistress. Such is the order of things both in life and in novels . . . You denounced him,’’ she said and slapped the table with her palm, ‘‘but, willy-nilly, one must agree with him. It’s not for nothing he despises all these ideas.’’
‘‘He doesn’t despise ideas, he’s afraid of them,’’ I cried. ‘‘He’s a coward and a liar.’’
‘‘Well, all right now! He’s a coward, a liar, and he deceived me—and you? Forgive my frankness, but who are you? He deceived me and abandoned me to my fate in Petersburg, and you deceived me and abandoned me here. But he at least didn’t drag ideas into his deceit, while you . . .’’
‘‘For God’s sake, why do you say that?’’ I was horrified and, wringing my hands, quickly went over to her. ‘‘No, Zinaida Fyodorovna, no, that’s cynicism, you shouldn’t be in such despair, hear me out,’’ I went on, seizing upon a thought that had suddenly glimmered vaguely in my head and, it seemed, might still save us both. ‘‘Listen to me. I’ve experienced much in my time, so much that my head is spinning with memories now, and I have now firmly understood with my brain, with my pain-weary soul, that man’s purpose is either in nothing or in only one thing—the selfless love of one’s neighbor. That’s where we should go and what our purpose is! That is my faith!’’
I meant to speak further about mercy, about all-forgiveness, but my voice suddenly rang false, and I got embarrassed.
‘‘I want to live!’’ I said sincerely. ‘‘To live, to live! I want peace, quiet, I want warmth, this sea here, your closeness. Oh, how I’d like to inspire this passionate love of life in you as well! You were just talking about love, but for me your closeness alone, your voice, the expression of your face would be enough . . .’’
She blushed and said quickly, so as to keep me from talking:
‘‘You love life, but I hate it. Therefore our paths are different.’’
She poured herself tea but didn’t touch it, went to the bedroom, and lay down.
‘‘I suppose it will be better if we stop this conversation,’’ she said to me from there. ‘‘For me everything’s already over, and I don’t need anything . . . Why go on talking about it!’’
‘‘No, everything’s not over!’’
‘‘Well, all right! . . . I know! I’m sick of it . . . Enough.’’
I stood there for a while, paced from corner to corner, and went out to the corridor. Afterwards, late at night, when I came to her door and listened, I clearly heard weeping.
The next morning the servant, giving me my clothes, told me with a smile that the lady in number thirteen was giving birth. I dressed haphazardly and, sinking with terror, hurried to Zinaida Fyodorovna. In her room were a doctor, a midwife, and an elderly Russian lady from Kharkov by the name of Darya Mikhailovna. There was a smell of ether drops. I had barely stepped over the threshold when a soft, plaintive moan came from the room where she lay, and it was as if the wind had brought it to me from Russia, I remembered Orlov, his irony, Polya, the Neva, big snowflakes, then the cab with no flap, the prophecy I had read in the cold morning sky, and the desperate cry: ‘‘Nina! Nina!’’
‘‘Go to her,’’ said the lady.
I went into Zinaida Fyodorovna’s room feeling as if I was the father of the child. She lay with her eyes closed, thin, pale, in a white cap trimmed with lace. I remember there were two expressions on her face: one indifferent, cold, listless; the other childlike and helpless, given her by the white cap. She didn’t hear me come in, or maybe she did, but paid no attention to me. I stood, looked at her, and waited.
But then her face twisted with pain, she opened her eyes and started looking at the ceiling, as if trying to figure out what was the matter with her... On her face there was a look of disgust.
‘‘Vile,’’ she whispered.
‘‘Zinaida Fyodorovna,’’ I called weakly.
She gave me an indifferent, listless look and closed her eyes. I stood there for a while and then left.
During the night, Darya Mikhailovna told me that the baby was a girl, but the mother was in a dangerous state; then there was running in the corridor, a commotion. Darya Mikhailovna came to me again and, with a desperate look, wringing her hands, said:
‘‘Oh, it’s terrible! The doctor suspects she’s taken poison! Oh, how badly the Russians behave themselves here!’’
And the next day at noon, Zinaida Fyodorovna passed away.
XVIII
TWO YEARS WENT by. My circumstances changed, I went back to Petersburg and could live there without hiding. I was no longer afraid to be and to seem sentimental, and gave myself entirely to the fatherly or, more precisely, the idolatrous feeling aroused in me by Sonya, Zinaida Fyodorovna’s daughter. I fed her with my own hands, bathed her, put her to bed, spent whole nights looking at her, and cried out when I thought the nurse was going to drop her. My thirst for ordinary, humdrum life grew stronger and more exasperating as time went on, but my vast dreams settled around Sonya, as if they had finally found in her precisely what I needed. I loved that little girl madly. I saw in her the continuation of my life, and it was not that it seemed so to me, but I felt, and almost believed, that when I had finally cast off this long, bony, bearded body, I would live in those light blue eyes, in that blond silky hair and those plump pink arms that so lovingly stroked my face and embraced my neck.
