The Eternal Husband and Other Stories

kept begging me not to say any of it, not to remember.

I paid little or no regard to her begging: spring, Boulogne! The sun was there, our new sun was there, that was all I kept saying! I locked the shop, handed the business over to Dobronravov. I suddenly suggested to her that we give everything away to the poor, except for the capital of three thousand inherited from my godmother, which we’d spend on going to Boulogne, then come back and start a new life of labor. So it was decided, because she didn’t say anything… she only smiled. And, it seems, she smiled more out of delicacy, so as not to upset me. I did see that I was burdening her, don’t think I was so stupid or such an egoist that I didn’t see it. I saw everything, everything to the last little feature, I saw and knew it better than anyone else; all my despair stood in full view!

I told her all about me and about her. And about Lukerya. I told her I had wept… Oh, yes, I also changed the subject, I also tried by all means not to remind her of certain things. And she even became animated a couple of times, I remember, I remember! Why do you say that I looked and saw nothing? And if only this hadn’t happened, everything would have been resurrected. She even told me just two days ago, when the conversation turned to reading and what she’d read that winter—she even told me, laughing as she recalled it, about the scene between Gil Blas and the archbishop of Granada.¹¹ And what childlike laughter, so dear, just as before, when she was my fiancee (one instant! one instant!); how glad I was! I was terribly struck, however, about this archbishop: so she had after all found peace of mind and happiness enough to laugh over the masterpiece as she sat there this winter. So she had already begun to be fully at peace, to believe fully that I would just let her stay like that. “I thought you’d just let me stay like that”—that’s what she had said then on Tuesday! Oh, a ten-year-old girl’s thought! And she believed, she did believe that everything would in fact stay like that: she at her table, I at mine, and both of us like that till we’re sixty years old. And suddenly—here I come, a husband, and a husband in need of love! Oh, incomprehension, oh, my blindness!

It was also a mistake that I looked at her with rapture; I should have restrained myself, because rapture is frightening. But, after all, I did restrain myself, I didn’t kiss her feet anymore. I never once showed that… well, that I was a husband—oh, it never even entered my mind, I only worshipped! But it was impossible to be quite silent, it was impossible not to speak at all! I suddenly said to her that I delighted in her conversation and that I considered her incomparably, incomparably better educated and developed than myself. She turned bright red and said abashedly that I was exaggerating. Here, like a fool, unable to help myself, I told her how enraptured I had been when, standing behind the door, I had listened to her combat, the combat of innocence with that creature, and how I had delighted in her intelligence, her sparkling wit, together with such childlike simple-heartedness. She shuddered all over, as it were, tried to murmur again that I was exaggerating, but suddenly her whole face darkened, she covered it with her hands and began to sob… Here I, too, couldn’t stand it: I fell down before her again, again started kissing her feet, and again it ended with a fit, the same as on Tuesday. That was last evening, but in the morning …

In the morning?! Madman, that morning was today, just now, only just now!

Listen and try to fathom: when we came together over the samovar just now (this after yesterday’s fit), I was even struck by her calm, that’s how it was! And I’d spent the whole night shaking with fear over yesterday. But suddenly she comes up to me, stands in front of me, and, clasping her hands (just now, just now!), began saying to me that she was a criminal, that she knew it, that her crime had tormented her all winter, torments her still… that she values my magnanimity only too highly… “I’ll be your faithful wife, I’ll respect you…” Here I jumped up like a crazy man and embraced her! I was kissing her, kissing her face, her lips, like a husband, for the first time after a long separation. And why did I ever leave just now, for only two hours… our passports… Oh, God! Five minutes, if only I’d come back five minutes earlier?… And here this crowd in our gateway, those looks at me… oh, Lord!

Lukerya says (oh, now I’ll never let Lukerya go, she knows everything, she was here all winter, she’ll tell me everything), she says that when I left the house, and only something like twenty minutes before I came back—she suddenly went into our room to ask the lady something or other, I don’t remember, and saw that her icon (that same icon of the Mother of God) had been taken down and was standing in front of her on the table, as if the lady had just been praying before it. “What’s the matter, ma’am?” “Nothing, Lukerya, go now… Wait, Lukerya,” she went up to her and kissed her. “Are you happy, ma’am?” “Yes, Lukerya.” “You should have come to the master long ago, ma’am, to ask forgiveness… Thank God you’ve made things up.” “All right, Lukerya,” she says, “you may go, Lukerya,” and she smiled, and so strangely. So strangely that Lukerya suddenly went back ten minutes later to look at her: “She was standing by the wall, right by the window, her hand leaning on the wall and her head pressed to it, she was standing like that, thinking. And she was so deep in thought that she didn’t hear how I stood and looked at her from the other room. I saw that she was as if smiling—standing, thinking, and smiling. I looked at her, turned quietly, walked out, also thinking to myself, only suddenly I heard the window being opened. I went at once to tell her, ‘It’s chilly, ma’am, you might catch cold,’ and suddenly I see her standing on the windowsill, already standing up straight in the open window, her back to me, holding the icon in her hands. My heart just sank, I shouted: ‘My lady, my lady!’ She heard me, made as if to turn toward me, then didn’t, but took a step, pressed the icon to her breast, and threw herself out the window!”

I only remember that when I came in the gate, she was still warm. Above all, they were all staring at me. First they shouted, but then they suddenly fell silent and everyone makes way for me and… and she’s lying there with the icon. I remember, as if through darkness, that I went up silently and looked for a long time, and everyone surrounded me, saying something to me. Lukerya was there, but I didn’t see her. She says she spoke to me. I remember only that tradesman: he kept shouting to me that “a handful of blood came out of her mouth, a handful, a handful!” and showing me the blood right there on the stone. It seems I touched the blood with my finger, got it on my finger, looked at it (I remember that), while he kept telling me: “A handful, a handful!”

“And what of this handful?” I screamed, so they say, at the top of my lungs, raised my arms, and hurled myself at him …

Oh, wild, wild! Incomprehension! Implausibility! Impossibility!

IV

I WAS ONLY FIVE MINUTES LATE

Or not so? Is it plausible? Can you say it’s possible? Why, for what reason, did this woman die?

Oh, believe me, I understand; but what she died for—is still a question. She got frightened of my love, asked herself seriously: to accept or not to accept, and couldn’t bear the question, and preferred to die. I know, I know, there’s no point racking one’s brain: she made too many promises, got frightened that she couldn’t keep them—it’s clear. Here there are several quite terrible circumstances.

Because what did she die for? The question still stands. The question throbs, it’s throbbing in my brain. I would even have let her stay like that, if she’d wanted it to stay like that. She didn’t believe it, that’s what! No—no, I’m lying, that’s not it at all. Simply because with me it had to be honest; if it’s love, it must be total love, and not like the love of some merchant. And since she was too chaste, too pure to consent to the kind of love a merchant needs, she didn’t want to deceive me. Didn’t want to deceive me with half love, under the guise of love, or with quarter love. Too honest she was, that’s what, sirs! I wanted to implant breadth of heart in her, remember? A strange thought.

I’m terribly curious: did she respect me? I don’t know, did she despise me or not? I don’t think she did. It’s terribly strange: why did it never occur to me, during the whole winter, that she despised me? I was in the highest degree certain of the opposite, until that very moment when she looked at me with stern astonishment. Stern, precisely. Then I understood at once that she despised me. Understood