The Best Short Stories of Fyodor Dostoevsky (Modern Library Classics)

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  “Yes, yes, that’s exactly what I was thinking!” Nastenka cried, her eyes beaming with joy. “Oh, you’ve put an end to all my doubts. I’m sure God must have sent you to me. Thank you, thank you!”

  “What are you thanking me for? Because God has sent me to you?” I replied, gazing delighted at her sweet, happy face.

  “Yes, for that too.”

  “Oh, Nastenka, aren’t we sometimes grateful to people only because they live with us? Well, I’m grateful to you for having met you. I’m grateful to you because I shall remember you all my life!”

  “All right, all right! Now listen to me carefully: I arranged with him that he’d let me know as soon as he came back by leaving a letter for me at the house of some people I know—they are very nice, simple people who know nothing about the whole thing; and that if he couldn’t write me a letter because one can’t say all one wants in a letter, he’d come here, where we had arranged to meet, at exactly ten o’clock on the very first day of his arrival. Now, I know he has arrived, but for two days he hasn’t turned up, nor have I had a letter from him. I can’t possibly get away from Granny in the morning. So please take my letter tomorrow to the kind people I told you of, and they’ll see that it reaches him. And if there is a reply, you could bring it yourself tomorrow evening at ten o’clock.”

  “But the letter! What about the letter? You must write the letter first, which means that I couldn’t take it before the day after tomorrow.”

  “The letter …?” said Nastenka, looking a little confused. “Oh, the letter!… Well—”

  But she didn’t finish. At first she turned her pretty face away from me, then she blushed like a rose, and then all of a sudden I felt that the letter which she must have written long before was in my hand. It was in a sealed envelope. A strangely familiar, sweet, lovely memory flashed through my mind.

  “Ro-o-si-i-na-a!” I began.

  “Rosina!” both of us burst out singing. I almost embraced her with delight, and she blushed as only she could blush and laughed through the tears which trembled on her dark eyelashes like pearls.

  “Well, that’s enough,” she said, speaking rapidly. “Goodbye now. Here’s the letter and here’s the address where you have to take it. Goodbye! Till tomorrow!”

  She pressed both my hands warmly, nodded her head, and darted away down her side-street. I remained standing in the same place for a long time, following her with my eyes.

  “Till tomorrow! Till tomorrow!” flashed through my mind as she disappeared from sight.

  THIRD NIGHT

  It was a sad and dismal day today, rainy, without a ray of hope, just like the long days of my old age which I know will be as sad and dismal. Strange thoughts are crowding into my head, my heart is full of gloomy forebodings, questions too vague to be grasped clearly fill my mind, and somehow I’ve neither the power nor the will to resolve them. No, I shall never be able to solve it all!

  We are not going to meet today. Last night, when we said goodbye, the sky was beginning to be overcast, and a mist was rising. I observed that the weather did not look too promising for tomorrow, but she made no answer. She did not wish to say anything to cloud her own happy expectations. For her this day is bright and full of sunshine, and not one cloud will obscure her happiness.

  “If it rains,” she said, “we shan’t meet! I shan’t come!”

  I thought she would not pay any attention to the rain today, but she never came.

  Yesterday we had met for the third time. It was our third white night.…

  But how beautiful people are when they are gay and happy! How brimful of love their hearts are! It is as though they wanted to pour their hearts into the heart of another human being, as though they wanted the whole world to be gay and laugh with them. And how infectious that gaiety is! There was so much joy in her words yesterday, so much goodness in her heart towards me. How sweet she was to me, how hard she tried to be nice to me, how she comforted and soothed my heart! Oh, how sweet a woman can be to you when she is happy! And I? Why, I was completely taken in. I thought she—

  But how on earth could I have thought it? How could I have been so blind, when everything had already been taken by another, when nothing belonged to me? Why, even that tenderness of hers, that anxiety, that love—yes, that love for me was nothing more than the outward manifestation of her happiness at the thought of her meeting with someone else, her desire to force her happiness upon me too. When he did not turn up, when we waited in vain, she frowned, she lost heart, she was filled with alarm. All her movements, all her words, seemed to have lost their liveliness, their playfulness, their gaiety. And the strange thing was that she seemed doubly anxious to please me, as though out of an instinctive desire to lavish upon me what she so dearly desired for herself, but what she feared would never be hers. My Nastenka was so nervous and in such an agonising dread that at last she seemed to have realised that I loved her and took pity upon my unhappy love. It is always so: when we are unhappy we feel more strongly the unhappiness of others; our feeling is not shattered, but becomes concentrated.…

  I came to her with a full heart; I could scarcely wait for our meeting. I had no presentiment of how I would be feeling now. I little dreamt that it would all end quite differently. She was beaming with happiness. She was expecting an answer to her letter. The answer was he himself. He was bound to come; he had to come running in answer to her call. She arrived a whole hour before me. At first she kept on laughing at everything; every word of mine provoked a peal of laughter from her. I began talking, but lapsed into silence.

  “Do you know why I’m so happy?” she said. “Do you know why I’m so glad when I look at you? Do you know why I love you so today?”

  “Well?” I asked, and my heart trembled.

  “I love you so, because you haven’t fallen in love with me. Another man in your place would, I’m sure, have begun to pester me, to worry me. He would have been sighing, he would have looked so pathetic, but you’re so sweet!”

  Here she clasped my hand with such force that I almost cried out. She laughed.

  “Oh, what a good friend you are!” she began a minute later, speaking very seriously. “You’re a real godsend to me. What would I have done if you’d not been with me now? How unselfish you are! How truly you love me! When I am married, we shall be such good friends. You’ll be more than a brother to me. I shall love you almost as I love him!…”

  Somehow I couldn’t help feeling terribly sad at that moment. However, something resembling laughter stirred in my soul.

  “Your nerves are on edge,” I said. “You’re afraid. You don’t think he’ll come.”

  “Goodness, what nonsense you talk!” she said. “If I hadn’t been so happy, I do believe I’d have burst out crying to hear you express such doubts, to hear you reproaching me like that. You’ve given me an idea, though. And I admit you’ve given me a lot to think about, but I shall think about it later. I don’t mind telling you frankly that you’re quite right. Yes, I’m not quite myself tonight. I’m in awful suspense, and every little thing jars on me, excites me, but please don’t let us discuss my feelings!…”

  At that moment we heard footsteps, and a man loomed out of the darkness. He was coming in our direction. She almost cried out. I released her hand and made a movement as though I were beginning to back away. But we were both wrong: it was not he.

  “What are you so afraid of? Why did you let go of my hand?” she said, giving me her hand again. “What does it matter? We’ll meet him together. I want him to see how we love one another.”

  “How we love one another?” I cried.

  “Oh, Nastenka, Nastenka,” I thought, “how much you’ve said in that word! Such love, Nastenka, at certain moments makes one’s heart ache and plunges one’s spirit into gloom. Your hand is cold, but mine burns like fire. How blind you are, Nastenka! How unbearable a happy person sometimes is! But I’m afraid I could not be angry with you, Nastenka!”

  At last my heart overflow
ed.

  “Do you know, Nastenka,” I cried, “do you know what I’ve gone through all day?”

  “Why? What is it? Tell me quickly! Why haven’t you said anything about it before?”

  “Well, first of all, Nastenka, after I had carried out all your commissions, taken the letter, seen your good friends, I—I went home and—and went to bed.”

  “Is that all?” she interrupted, laughing.

  “Yes, almost all,” I replied, making an effort to keep calm, for I already felt foolish tears starting to my eyes. “I woke an hour before we were due to meet. But I don’t seem to have really slept at all. I don’t know how to describe the curious sensation I had. I seemed to be on my way here. I was going to tell you everything. I had an odd feeling as though time had suddenly stopped, as though one feeling, one sensation, would from that moment go on and on for all eternity, as though my whole life had come to a standstill.… When I woke up it seemed to me that some snatch of a tune I had known for a long time, I had heard somewhere before but had forgotten, a melody of great sweetness, was coming back to me now. It seemed to me that it had been trying to emerge from my soul all my life, and only now—”

  “Goodness,” Nastenka interrupted, “what’s all this about? I don’t understand a word of it.”

  “Oh, Nastenka, I wanted somehow to convey that strange sensation to you,” I began in a plaintive voice, in which there still lurked some hope, though I’m afraid a very faint one.

  “Don’t, please don’t!” she said, and in a trice she guessed everything, the little rogue.

  She became on a sudden somehow extraordinarily talkative, gay, playful. She took my arm, laughed, insisted that I should laugh too, and every halting word I uttered evoked a long loud peal of laughter from her. I was beginning to feel angry; she suddenly began flirting.

  “Listen,” she said, “I’m really beginning to be a little annoyed with you for not being in love with me. What am I to think of you after that? But, sir, if you insist on being so strong-minded, you should at least show your appreciation of me for being such a simple girl. I tell you everything, absolutely everything. Any silly old thing that comes into my head.”

  “Listen, I think it’s striking eleven!” I said, as the clock from some distant city tower began slowly to strike the hour.

  She stopped suddenly, left off laughing, and began to count.

  “Yes,” she said at last in a hesitating, unsteady voice, “it’s eleven.”

  I regretted at once that I had frightened her. It was brutal of me to make her count the strokes. I cursed myself for my uncontrolled fit of malice. I felt sorry for her, and I did not know how to atone for my inexcusable behaviour. I did my best to comfort her. I tried hard to think of some excuse for his failure to come. I argued. I reasoned with her. It was the easiest thing in the world to deceive her at that moment! Indeed, who would not be glad of any word of comfort at such a moment? Who would not be overjoyed at the faintest glimmer of an excuse?

  “The whole thing’s absurd!” I began, feeling more and more carried away by my own enthusiasm and full of admiration for the extraordinary clarity of my own arguments. “He couldn’t possibly have come today. You’ve got me so muddled and confused, Nastenka, that I’ve lost count of the time. Why, don’t you see? He’s scarcely had time to receive your letter. Now, suppose that for some reason he can’t come today. Suppose he’s going to write to you. Well, in that case you couldn’t possibly get his letter till tomorrow. I’ll go and fetch it for you early tomorrow morning and let you know at once. Don’t you see? A thousand things may have happened: he may have been out when your letter arrived, and for all we know he may not have read it even yet. Anything may have happened.”

  “Yes, yes!” said Nastenka. “I never thought of that. Of course anything may have happened,” she went on in a most acquiescent voice, but in which, like some jarring note, another faintly perceptible thought was hidden away. “Yes, please do that. Go there as soon as possible tomorrow morning, and if you get anything let me know at once. You know where I live, don’t you?”

  And she began repeating her address to me.

  Then she became suddenly so sweet, so shy with me. She seemed to listen attentively to what I was saying to her; but when I asked her some question, she made no reply, grew confused, and turned her head away. I peered into her eyes. Why, of course! She was crying.

  “How can you? How can you? Oh, what a child you are! What childishness! There, there, stop crying please!”

  She tried to smile, to compose herself, but her chin was still trembling, and her bosom still rising and falling.

  “I’m thinking of you,” she said to me after a minute’s silence. “You’re so good that I’d have to have a heart of stone not to feel it. Do you know what has just occurred to me? I was comparing the two of you in my mind. Why isn’t he you? Why isn’t he like you? He’s not as good as you, though I love him more than you.”

  I said nothing in reply. She seemed to be waiting for me to say something.

  “Of course it’s probably quite true that I don’t know him very well. No, I don’t understand him very well. You see, I seemed always a little afraid of him. He was always so serious, and I couldn’t help thinking proud as well. I realise of course that he merely looked like that. I know there’s more tenderness in his heart than in mine. I can’t forget the way he looked at me when—you remember?—I came to him with my bundle. But all the same I seem to look up to him a little too much, and that doesn’t seem as if we were quite equals, does it?”

  “No, Nastenka, no,” I replied. “It does not mean that you are not equals. It merely means that you love him more than anything in the world, far more than yourself even.”

  “Yes, I suppose that is so,” said Nastenka. “But do you know what I think? Only I’m not speaking of him now, but just in general. I’ve been thinking for a long time, why aren’t we all just like brothers to one another. Why does even the best of us seem to hide something from other people and keep something back from them? Why don’t we say straight out what’s in our hearts, if we know that our words will not be spoken in vain? As it is, everyone seems to look as though he were much harder than he really is. It is as though we were all afraid that our feelings would be hurt if we revealed them too soon.”

  “Oh, Nastenka, you’re quite right, but there are many reasons for that,” I interrupted, for I knew that I myself was suppressing my feelings at that moment more than ever before.

  “No, no!” she replied with great feeling. “You, for instance, are not like that. I really don’t know how to tell you what I feel. But it seems to me, for instance—I mean I can’t help feeling that you—that just at this moment you’re making some sacrifice for me,” she added shyly, with a quick glance at me. “Please forgive me for telling you that. You know I am such a simple girl. I haven’t had much experience of the world and I really don’t know sometimes how to express myself,” she added in a voice that trembled from some hidden emotion, trying to smile at the same time. “But I just wanted to tell you that I’m grateful, that I’m aware of it too.… Oh, may God grant you happiness for that! I feel that what you told me about your dreamer is not true, I mean it has nothing to do with you. You are recovering, you’re quite different from the man you described yourself to be. If you ever fall in love, may you be happy with her. I don’t need to wish her anything, for she’ll be happy with you. I know because I’m a woman myself, so you must believe me when I tell you so.”

  She fell silent and pressed my hand warmly. I was too moved to say anything. A few minutes passed.

  “Yes, it seems he won’t come tonight,” she said at last, raising her head. “It’s late.”

  “He’ll come tomorrow,” I said in a very firm, confident voice.

  “Yes,” she added, looking cheerful again, “I realise myself now that he couldn’t possibly come till tomorrow. Well, goodbye! Till tomorrow! I may not come, if it rains. But the day after tomorrow I shall come whatever ha
ppens. You’ll be here for certain, won’t you? I want to see you. I’ll tell you everything.”

  And later, when we said goodbye to each other, she gave me her hand and said, looking serenely at me—

  “Now we shall always be together, shan’t we?”

  Oh, Nastenka, Nastenka, if only you knew how terribly lonely I am now!

  When the clock struck nine, I could remain in my room no longer. I dressed and went out in spite of the bad weather. I was there. I sat on our seat. I went to her street, but I felt ashamed and went back when I was only a few yards from her house without even looking at her windows. What a day! Damp and dreary. If it had been fine, I should have walked about all night.

  But—till tomorrow, till tomorrow! Tomorrow she’ll tell me everything.

  There was no letter for her today, though. However, there’s nothing surprising in that. They must be together by now.…

  FOURTH NIGHT

  Good Lord, how strangely the whole thing has ended! What a frightful ending!

  I arrived at nine o’clock. She was already there. I noticed her a long way off. She was standing, leaning with her elbows on the railing of the embankment, just as she had been standing the first time I saw her, and she did not hear me when I came up to her.

  “Nastenka!” I called her, restraining my agitation with difficulty.

  She turned round to me quickly.

  “Well?” she said. “Well? Tell me quickly!”

  I looked at her utterly bewildered.

  “Well, where’s the letter? Haven’t you brought the letter?” she repeated, gripping the railing with her hand.