hears a great deal about Alyosha’s father, too.”
“Natasha,” I said timidly, “let us go to them.”
“When?” she asked, turning pale and almost getting up from her chair.
She thought I was urging her to go at once.
“No, Vanya,” she added, putting her two hands on my shoulders, and smiling sadly; “no, dear, that’s what you’re always saying, but ... we’d better not talk about it.”
“Will this horrible estrangement never be ended?” I cried mournfully. “Can you be so proud that you won’t take the first step? It’s for you to do it; you must make the first advance. Perhaps your father’s only waiting for that to forgive you.... He’s your father; he has been injured by you! Respect his pride — it’s justifiable, it’s natural! You ought to do it. Only try, and he will forgive you unconditionally.”
“Unconditionally! That’s impossible. And don’t reproach me, Vanya, for nothing. I’m thinking of it day and night, and I think of it now. There’s not been a day perhaps since I left them that I haven’t thought of it. And how often we have talked about it! You know yourself it’s impossible.”
“Try!”
“No, my dear, it’s impossible. If I were to try I should only make him more bitter against me. There’s no bringing back what’s beyond recall. And you know what it is one can never bring back? One can never bring back those happy, childish days I spent with them. If my father forgave me he would hardly know me now. He loved me as a little girl; a grown-up child. He admired my childish simplicity. He used to pat me on the head just as when I was a child of seven and used to sit upon his knee and sing him my little childish songs. From my earliest childhood up to the last day he used to come to my bed and bless me for the night. A month before our troubles he bought me some ear-rings as a secret (but I knew all about it), and was as pleased as a child, imagining how delighted I should be with the present, and was awfully angry with everyone, and with me especially, when he found out that I had known all about him buying the ear-rings for a long time. Three days before I went away he noticed that I was depressed, and he became so depressed himself that it made him ill, and — would you believe it — to divert my mind he proposed taking tickets for the theatre! ... Yes, indeed, he thought that would set me right. I tell you he knew and loved me as a little girl, and refused even to think that I should one day be a woman... It’s never entered his head. If I were to go home now he would not know me. Even if he did forgive me he’d meet quite a different person now. I’m not the same; I’m not a child now. I have gone through a great deal Even if he were satisfied with me he still would sigh for his past happiness, and grieve that I am not the same as I used to be when he loved me as a child. The past always seems best! It’s remembered with anguish! Oh, how good the past was, Vanya!” she cried, carried away by her own words, and interrupting herself with this exclamation which broke painfully from her heart.
“That’s all true that you say, Natasha,” I said. “So he will have to learn to know and love you afresh. To know you especially. He will love you, of course. Surely you can’t think that he’s incapable of knowing and understanding you, he, with his heart?”
“Oh, Vanya, don’t be unfair! What is there to understand in me? I didn’t mean that. You see, there’s something else: father’s love is jealous, too; he’s hurt that all began and was settled with Alyosha without his knowledge, that he didn’t know it and failed to see it. He knows that he did not foresee it, and he puts down the unhappy consequences of our love and my flight to my ‘ungrateful’ secretiveness. I did not come to him at the beginning. I did not afterwards confess every impulse of my heart to him; on the contrary I hid it in myself. I concealed it from him and I assure you, Vanya, this is secretly a worse injury, a worse insult to him than the facts themselves — that I left them and have abandoned myself to my lover. Supposing he did meet me now like a father, warmly and affectionately, yet the seed of discord would remain. The next day, or the day after, there would be disappointments, misunderstandings, reproaches. What’s more, he won’t forgive without conditions, even if I say — and say it truly from the bottom of my heart — that I understand how I have wounded him and how badly I’ve behaved to him. And though it will hurt me if he won’t understand how much all this happiness with Alyosha has cost me myself, what miseries I have been through, I will stifle my feelings, I will put up with anything — but that won’t be enough for him. He will insist on an impossible atonement; he will insist on my cursing my past, cursing Alyosha and repenting of my love for him. He wants what’s impossible, to bring back the past and to erase the last six months from our life. But I won’t curse anyone, and I can’t repent. It’s no one’s doing; it just happened so.... No, Vanya, it can’t be now. The time has not come.”
“When will the time come?”
“I don’t know. . . . We shall have to work out our future happiness by suffering; pay for it somehow by fresh miseries. Everything is purified by suffering ... Oh, Vanya, how much pain there is in the world!”
I was silent and looked at her thoughtfully.
“Why do you look at me like that, Alyosha — I mean Vanya!” she said, smiling at her own mistake.
“I am looking at your smile, Natasha. Where did you get it? You used not to smile like that.”
“Why, what is there in my smile ?
“The old childish simplicity is still there, it’s true. . . . But when you smile it seems as though your heart were aching dreadfully. You’ve grown thinner, Natasha, and your hair seems thicker.... What dress have you got on? You used to wear that at home, didn’t you?”
“How you love me, Vanya,” she said, looking at me affectionately. “And what about you? What are you doing? How are things going with you?”
“Just the same, I’m still writing my novel. But it’s difficult, I can’t get on. The inspiration’s dried up. I dare say I could knock it off somehow, and it might turn out interesting. But it’s a pity to spoil a good idea. It’s a favourite idea of mine. But it must be ready in time for the magazine. I’ve even thought of throwing up the novel, and knocking off a short story, something light and graceful, and without a trace of pessimism. Quite without a trace.... Everyone ought to be cheerful and happy.”
“You’re such a hard worker, you poor boy! And how about Smith?”
“But Smith’s dead.”
“And he hasn’t haunted you? I tell you seriously, Vanya, you’re ill and your nerves are out of order; you’re always lost in such dreams. When you told me about taking that room I noticed it in you. So the room’s damp, not nice?”
“Yes, I had an adventure there this evening.... But I’ll tell you about it afterwards.”
She had left off listening and was sitting plunged in deep thought.
“I don’t know how I could have left them then. I was in a fever,” she added at last, looking at me with an expression that did not seem to expect an answer.
If I had spoken to her at that moment she would not have heard me.
“Vanya,” she said in a voice hardly audible, “I asked you to come for a reason.”
“What is it?”
“I am parting from him.”
“You have parted, or you’re going to part?”
“I must put an end to this life. I asked you to come that I might tell you everything, all, all that has been accumulating, and that I’ve hidden from you till now.”
This was always how she began, confiding to me her secret intentions, and it almost always turned out that I had learnt the whole secret from her long before.
“Ach, Natasha, I’ve heard that from you a thousand times, Of course it’s impossible for you to go on living together. Your relation is such a strange one. You have nothing in common. But will you have the strength ? ”
“It’s only been an idea before, Vanya, but now I have quite made up my mind. I love him beyond everything, and yet it seems I am his worst enemy. I shall ruin his future. I must set him free. He can’t marry me; he hasn’t the strength to go against his father. I don’t want to bind him either. And so I’m really glad he has fallen in love with the girl they are betrothing him to. It will make the parting easier for him. I ought to do it! It’s my duty. . . If I love him I ought to sacrifice everything for him. I ought to prove my love for him; it’s my duty! Isn’t it?”
“But you won’t persuade him, you know”
“I’m not going to persuade him. I shall be just the same with him if he comes in this minute. But I must find some means to make it easier for him to leave me without a conscience-prick. That’s what worries me, Vanya. Help me. Can’t you advise something?”
“There is only one way,” I said: “to leave off loving him altogether and fall in love with someone else. But I doubt whether even that will do it; surely you know his character. Here he’s not been to see you for five days.
