The family council finally decided to engage a singing teacher for me. B. recommended the best and most famous one, and the following day D., an Italian, appeared. After listening to me, he agreed with his friend B. and insisted that I would gain the best benefit by going to him for lessons where I could study with his other pupils and where the competition, the chance to emulate, and the wealth of resources at my disposal would be advantageous to the development of my voice. Alexandra Mikhailovna gave her consent, and thereafter, at eight in the morning, three days a week, I would set off for the conservatoire, escorted by one of the servants.
I shall now relate a strange happening which had a decisive effect on me and which marked a quick transition in my development. I had just reached sixteen when I was overcome with an unbearable, depressing lethargy which I could not understand. All my fantasies and enthusiasms subsided, my daydreaming waned from lack of energy, and my former youthful fervour was replaced by cold indifference. Even my talent, about which all those dearest to me had been so enthusiastic, lost its interest for me, and I ignored it listlessly. Nothing seemed to divert me; my impassivity extended even to Alexandra Mikhailovna, and for this I reproached myself, since I was actually conscious of it. My apathy was interrupted now and then by unpredictable sorrow and tears. Once again I sought solitude. At that strange period, one particular event shook me to the depth of my being and transformed the dead calm into a real tempest. My heart was bitterly wounded. This is what happened.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I went into the library (it is a moment that I shall always remember) and took a novel of Sir Walter Scott’s, St Ronan’s Well the only one of his works I had not already read. I remember that a bitter, indefinite misery made my heart ache, as if in foreboding. I wanted to cry. There was a bright light in the room from the slanting rays of the setting sun, which was streaming through the high windows, falling across the parquet floor. It was still; there was not a soul in the adjoining rooms. Pyotr Alexandrovitch was not at home, while Alexandra Mikhailovna was lying ill in bed. I was actually crying and, opening the second part of the book, I flicked aimlessly through the pages, trying to discover some meaning in the disconnected phrases that flitted before my eyes. I was trying my fortune, as people do, by opening a book at random. There are moments when all the intellectual and spiritual faculties, painfully overstrained, seem suddenly to blaze with the bright flame of consciousness. At these times the troubled soul, languishing with a presentiment, a foretaste of the future, has something akin to a prophetic vision. And the whole being longs to live, it cries out for life, and the heart, alight with blind, desperate hope, will invoke the future, with all its mystery and incertitude, its storms and tempests, if only it will bring life. This was one such moment.
I remember closing the book and opening it again at random to tell my future. But when I opened it I saw a sheet of paper folded in four and covered with handwriting. The paper had become so flat and dry that it must have slipped between the pages of the book years ago and then been forgotten. With great curiosity, I examined my discovery: it was not addressed to anyone, and was signed with the initials ‘S.O.’ My interest was redoubled. I unfolded the paper, which was stuck together and had discoloured the page of the book in the course of time. The folds in the paper were worn and cracked, and it was obvious that at one time it must have been read and reread, before it was preserved as something precious. The ink was faded and bluish; this letter had been written many years before. Several words that leapt up to my eye made my heart race in expectation. Confused, I turned the letter over in my hands, as if I had some reason to postpone the moment of reading it. I happened to hold it up to the light. Yes! Tears had fallen on some of the lines, drying and staining the paper; here and there whole words were erased by teardrops. Whose tears were they? At last, faint with expectation, I read half of the first page. I gasped in astonishment. Then I locked the bookcase, returned the key to its place, hid the letter under my shawl and ran to my room. I locked the door and read it from beginning to end. My heart pounded so much that the words and letters flitted and danced before my eyes. It was some time before I could make anything out at all The letter was a revelation, the unlocking of a secret; it struck me like a flash of lightning, because I knew the person to whom it was written. I knew that I had done wrong to read the letter, but the excitement was overwhelming! It was addressed to Alexandra Mikhailovna. I shall quote it here. The realization of what it contained dawned on me slowly, and for a long time afterwards I was haunted by conjectures and painful surmises. From that moment my life was shattered. My heart was agitated and disturbed for a very long time, in fact right up to the present, because the letter aroused so much within me. I had, truly, guessed the future.
It was a farewell letter, one of terrible finality. As I read it I felt my heart contracting painfully, as though I had myself lost everything, as though it had all been taken from me for ever, even my dreams and my hopes, as though nothing more was left to me than a futile existence. Who was he, the writer of the letter? What was her life like afterwards? There were so many allusions in the letter, so many facts, that there could be no mistake; and yet at the same time there were so many riddles that one became lost in conjecture. But I was hardly mistaken: the whole tone of the letter, with all its implications, revealed the nature of the relationship through which two hearts had been broken. The feelings, the writer’s thoughts, were laid bare; they were so intense and, as I have already said, they implied so much. Here is the letter; I reproduce it word for word.
You said you would never forget me. I believe it, and henceforth all my life rests in those words of yours. We must part, our hour has struck! I have known this for a long time, my gentle, my sorrowful beauty, but only now do I understand it. Through all our time, throughout all the time that you loved me, my heart has yearned and ached on account of our love, and, believe it or not, I feel relieved now. I knew long ago that it would be like this, that we were destined to this from the beginning! It is fate! Let me tell you, Alexandra Mikhailovna, we are not EQUALS; I have always felt that, always! I was not worthy of you and I alone should suffer the penalty for my lost happiness. Tell me, what was I before I met you? Goodness, two years have passed, and I seem to have been unconscious of it until now; to this day I cannot grasp that YOU have loved ME. I do not understand how it all happened, how it began. Do you remember what I was compared to you? Was I worthy of you? In what did I excel, in what way was I remarkable? Until I knew you, I was coarse and common, my expression sullen and dejected. I had no desire for any other sort of life – I never thought about it, I never looked for it or even wanted to look for it. Everything in me was somehow crushed, and nothing in the world seemed more important to me than my daily work. My only concern was the morrow, and I was indifferent to that too. In the past – long, long ago – I had a dream of something like this and, like a fool, I gave way to my daydreaming. But a very long time has passed since then; I had taken to living in solitude, calmly and drearily, and I actually could not feel the cold that froze my heart; and it withered. I believed that the sun would not shine again, and resolved that it would be so; I believed it and did not complain of anything, because I knew it was incontrovertible. When you crossed my path I dared not raise my eyes to yours; I was a servant before you. There was no tremor or pain in my heart when I was near you; it told me nothing, it was unmoved. My soul failed to recognize yours although it found new light beside its beautiful sister soul. I know that, I felt it dimly. That I was able to feel, since the light of God’s day shines on the lowest blade of grass and warms and cherishes it, even though it grows beside a lovely flower. When I found out – do you remember? – after that evening, after those words which shook me to the depth of my soul, I was stunned, shattered, brimming over and – do you know this? – I was so overwhelmed, and had so little faith in myself, that I failed to understand you! I have never told you this. You know nothing of it. I was not the same in the past as I was when
you found me. If I could have spoken and had dared to speak I would have confessed everything to you a long time ago. But I kept silent, and I am telling you all now so that you may know the man you are leaving. Do you know how I understood you at first? Passion consumed me like fire, flowing like poison through my blood, stirring up my thoughts and feelings. It was as if I was intoxicated, possessed, and I responded to your pure, compassionate love not as your equal, not as one worthy of that love, but senselessly and heartlessly. I did not recognize what you were. I responded to you as to one who in my eyes had LOWERED HERSELF TO MY LEVEL, not one who wanted to raise me to hers. Do you know of what I suspected you, what is meant by those words ‘LOWERED TO MY LEVEL’? But no, I will not insult you with my confession; only one thing I will tell you: you were bitterly mistaken in me! Never, never could I have risen to your level. I could only contemplate you in boundless love, without ever approaching you. My passion, aroused by you, was not love; I was afraid of love; I dared not love you; love implies reciprocity, equality, and I was not worthy of them… I do not know how it was with me! Ah! How can I tell you this, how can I make myself understood?… I did not believe it at first… Oh! Do you remember when my first excitement had subsided, when I could see things more clearly, when nothing was left but pure feeling cleansed of all that was gross? My first emotion was one of surprise, confusion, fright and – do you remember? – all at once I fell sobbing at your feet. Do you remember how, confused and frightened, you kept asking, with tears in your eyes: what was I feeling? I said nothing, I could not answer you, but my heart was torn apart; my happiness weighed me down, it was unbearable, and my sobs seemed to whisper inside me: ‘Why is this happening? How have I deserved it? What have I done to be granted such bliss? My sister, my sister!’ Oh! How many times – you never knew it – how many times I secretly kissed your dress, secretly because I knew I was not worthy of you; and I could hardly breathe at such times; my heart beat slowly, as if about to stop once and for all. When I took your hand I was pale and trembling all over; you confounded me with the purity of your soul. Ah, I cannot tell you all that has been accumulating in my heart, longing to be expressed! Did you realize how your constant and compassionate tenderness was a burden and torture to me? When you kissed me (it happened once and I will never forget it), there was a mist before my eyes and my heart stood still. Why did I not die at your feet in that moment? I am using the familiar form with you for the first time, although you asked me to do so a long time ago. Can you understand what it is I am trying to say? I want to tell you EVERYTHING, and I will tell you this: yes, you loved me very much, you loved me as a sister loves a brother; you loved me as your own creation, because it was you who resurrected my heart; you awakened my slumbering mind and filled my heart with sweet hope. But I could not and dared not call you my sister, because I could not be your brother; because we were not equal; because you are mistaken in me!
But, you see, I am writing all this while about myself; even now, at this fearful moment of misery, I can only think of myself, although I am sure you are worrying about me. Oh, do not worry, dear one! If you only knew how humiliated I am in my own eyes! Everything has come out – oh, what a scandal there has been! You will be an outcast on account of me. You will be scorned and jeered at because I am so low in their eyes! Oh, it’s all my fault for being unworthy of you! If only I was somebody, if only I was of some worth in their eyes and could inspire them with more respect, then they might have forgiven you! But I am low, I am insignificant, I am absurd, and nothing is worse than being absurd. WHO are they to make a fuss? Because of THEM I have lost heart; I have always been weak. Do you know the state I am in now? I am laughing at myself, and it seems to me that they are right, because I am absurd and hateful even to myself. That is what I feel; I hate even my face, my figure, all my habits, all my ignoble ways. I have always hated them. Oh, forgive me my crude despair! It is you who taught me to tell everything. I have been your ruin; I have brought anger and contempt upon you because I was beneath you.
And it is this thought that troubles me, that hammers incessantly through my head and poisons my wounded heart: it still seems to me that you loved the man you thought you found in me, that you were deceived by me. That is what hurts, that is what tortures me and will torment me to death, if I do not lose my mind.
Farewell, farewell! Now, when everything is discovered; when the hue and cry begin, and the gossips (for I have heard them); when I have been humiliated, degraded in my own mind, made to feel ashamed of myself, ashamed for your choice; when I have cursed myself – now I must run away and disappear for your sake. They demand it, so you will never see me again, never! It must be so, it is fated! I was given too much; fortune erred and now she must correct the mistake and take everything back. We came together, we got to know each other and now we must part until we meet again. When will that be? Where will it be? Oh, tell me, darling, where shall we meet again? Where shall I find you? How shall I know you, and will you know me then? My whole soul is full of you. Oh, why is it, why should this happen to us? Why are we parting? Teach me, I do not understand. Teach me how to wrench my life in two, how to tear my heart out of my breast, how to live without it. Ah, to think that I shall never see you again, never, never!…
My God! What a commotion they have raised. I am terrified for you now! I have only just met your husband; we are both unworthy of him, though neither of us has sinned against him. He knows everything; he sees us and understands all. It was crystal clear to him from the start. He has stood up for you heroically; he will save you; he will defend you against their gossip, against the uproar; he has boundless respect and love for you. He is your saviour, while I ran away! I rushed to him, I wanted to kiss his hand. He told me to leave without delay. It is settled! They say that he has quarrelled with all of them on your account; they are all against you! They reproach him for indulgence and weakness! My God! What do they not say about you? They do not know, THEY CANNOT UNDERSTAND, THEY ARE INCAPABLE OF IT. My poor darling, please forgive them as I am forgiving them. They have taken more from me than from you!
I am beside myself, I do not know what I am writing. What did I say to you yesterday when we parted? You see, I have forgotten everything. I was distracted and you were crying… Forgive me for those tears, I am so weak and cowardly!
There was another thing I wanted to say to you… Oh, if only my tears could fall on your hands again as they now fall on this letter! To be at your feet once more! If THEY only knew how noble your feelings are! But they are blind; their hearts are proud and arrogant; they do not see it and will never see it. Their eyes see NOTHING! They will not believe that you are innocent, even according to their own standards – not even if everything on this earth testified to it. As if they could understand this! How can they throw stones at you? Whose hand will throw the first? Oh, they have no qualms, they will cast a thousand stones. They will fling them boldly, for they know how to do it. They will throw them at once and then say they are without sin, and will take the sin on themselves. If only it were possible to tell them everything, quite openly and clearly so that they might see, hear, understand and believe!… But no, they are not that wicked… In despair now, I am perhaps unfair to them. Nor do I wish to frighten you – do not be afraid of them, my darling. They will understand you; after all one of them already understands you; take heart: he is your husband.
Farewell, farewell! I WILL NOT THANK YOU.
Farewell for ever! S.O.
I was so confused that it took me a while to realize what was happening to me. I was shocked and frightened. In the midst of a simple life of dreams, on which I had lived for three years, reality had caught me by surprise. I was frightened to think that I was holding a great mystery in my hands, and that this mystery was now linked with my whole existence… But how? I did not know the answer to that. At the time I felt as if a new life were beginning for me. I had become an involuntary participant in the lives and personal relations of those who up until that time h
ad comprised my whole world, and I was now becoming afraid for myself. How should I, an outsider, enter uninvited into this life? What could I bring to them? How would these fetters, that had so suddenly fastened me to another’s secret, be loosened? Who could tell, perhaps my new role would be distressing both to me and to others. Yet I could not remain silent, I could not refuse to accept this role and seal up what I knew in my heart for ever. What might come of it? What ought I to do? And what, after all, had I discovered? Thousands of still vague and confused questions arose in my mind and already weighed heavily on my heart. I felt lost.
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