And she replies:
“No, Ivan Severyanych, no, my gentle one, dear friend of my heart, accept from me, an orphan, my eternal respect for your words, but it’s impossible for me, a bitter Gypsy, to live any longer, because I might destroy an innocent soul.”
“Who are you talking about?” I ask. “Whose soul do you pity so?”
And she replies:
“It’s her, my villain’s young wife, that I pity, because she’s a young soul, not guilty of anything, but even so my jealous heart can’t bear it, and I’ll destroy her and myself.”
“What are you saying? Cross yourself,” I say. “You’re baptized: what will become of your soul?”
“No-o-o,” she says, “I won’t be sorry for my soul, let it go to hell. The hell here is worse!”
I could see that the woman was all upset and in a frenzied state of mind: I took her hands and held them, and I looked closely and marveled at how awfully changed she was. Where had all her beauty gone? There was even no flesh on her, only eyes burning in a dark face, like a wolf’s eyes at night, and they seemed to have grown twice bigger than before, and her womb had swollen, because her term had almost come; her little face was clenched like a fist, and strands of black hair hung on her cheeks. I looked at the dress she was wearing—it was a dark cotton dress, all in tatters, and her feet were bare in her shoes.
“Tell me,” I say, “where have you come here from? Where have you been, and how is it you’re so unsightly?”
And she suddenly smiled and said:
“What? … So I’m not beautiful? … Beautiful! The dear friend of my heart adorned me like this because of my faithful love for him: because I forgot for his sake the one I loved more than him and gave him my all, without mind or reason. For that he hid me away in a sure place and set guards to keep strict watch on my beauty …”
And at that she suddenly burst out laughing and said wrathfully:
“Ah, you fool of a little prince: is a Gypsy girl a young lady to be kept under lock and key? If I like, I’ll throw myself at your young wife right now and bite through her throat.”
I could see she was shaking all over from the torments of jealousy, and I thought: “Let me distract her from it, not by the fear of hell, but by a sweet memory,” and I said:
“But how he loved you! Oh, how he loved you! How he kissed your feet … He used to kneel by the sofa while you sang and kiss your red slipper all over, even on the sole …”
She listened to that, and her black eyelashes moved on her dry cheeks, and, looking into the water, she began in a hollow, quiet voice:
“He loved me, he loved me, the villain, he loved me, he spared nothing, as long as my heart wasn’t his, but when I came to love him—he abandoned me. And for what? … Is she, my interloper, better than I am, or is she going to love him more? … Foolish, foolish man! Winter’s sun gives no heat compared to summer’s, and he’ll never ever see a love to compare with my love for him; you tell him that: So Grusha, dying, foretold for you, and as your fate it will hold true.”
I was glad she had started talking, and I joined in, asking:
“What was it that went on between you and what brought it all about?”
And she clasped her hands and said:
“Ah, nothing brought it about, it all came from betrayal alone … I ceased to please him, that’s the whole reason”—and as she said it, she became tearful. “He had dresses made for me that were to his own taste, but that a pregnant woman has no need of: narrow in the waist. I’d put them on, show him, and he’d get angry and say: ‘Take it off, it doesn’t suit you.’ If I didn’t wear them and showed myself in a loose dress, he’d get twice as upset and say: ‘What a sight you are!’ I understood then that I couldn’t win him back, that I disgusted him …”
And with that she burst into sobs and, looking straight ahead, whispered to herself:
“I’d long been feeling that I was no longer dear to him, but I wanted to try his conscience. I thought: I won’t vex him in anything, I’ll see if he feels pity. And here’s how he pitied me …”
And she told me that her last break with the prince had occurred on account of such a trifle that I didn’t even understand, and don’t understand to this day, why the perfidious man parted with this woman forever.
XVIII
Grusha told me how, “when you,” she says, “went and disappeared,” that is, when I went off to the fair, “the prince stayed away from home for a long time, and rumors reached me that he was getting married … These rumors made me cry terribly, and my face got all pinched … My heart ached and the child turned over in me … I thought: it’s going to die in my womb. Then suddenly I hear them say: ‘He’s coming!’ … Everything inside me trembled … I rushed to my rooms in the wing to dress up the best I could for him, put on my emerald earrings, and pulled from under a sheet on the wall his favorite blue moiré dress, trimmed with lace, with an open neck … I was in a hurry, I put it on, but couldn’t get it buttoned in the back … so I didn’t button it, but quickly threw a red shawl over it so that you couldn’t see it was unbuttoned, and ran out to meet him on the porch … Trembling all over and forgetting myself, I cried out:
“ ‘My golden one, my ruby-jewel!’—threw my arms around his neck, and went numb …”
She had fainted.
“When I came to in my room,” she says, “I lay on the sofa and tried to remember: was it in a dream or awake that I embraced him? Only,” she says, “there was a terrible weakness in me”—and she didn’t see him for a long time … She kept sending for him, but he didn’t come.
At last he shows up, and she says:
“Why have you abandoned me and forgotten me so completely?”
And he says:
“I have things to do.”
“What things?” she replies. “Why didn’t you have any before? Oh, my ruby-diamond!”—and she held out her arms again to embrace him, but he frowned and pulled the string of the cross on her neck with all his might …
“Luckily for me,” she says, “the silk string on my neck wasn’t strong, it was worn out and broke, because I’d been wearing an amulet on it for a long time, otherwise he’d have strangled me; and I suppose that’s precisely what he wanted to do, because he went all white and hissed:
“ ‘Why do you wear such a dirty string?’
“And I say:
“ ‘What’s my string to you? It used to be clean, but it has turned black on me from the heavy sweat of grief.’
“And he spat—‘Pah, pah, pah’—spat and left, but before evening he came back angry and said:
“ ‘Let’s go for a carriage ride!’ And he pretended to be tender and kissed my head, and, fearing nothing, I got in with him and went. We drove for a long time and changed horses twice, yet I couldn’t get out of him where we were going, but I saw we’d come to a place in the forest—swampy, unlovely, wild. And we arrived at some beehives, and beyond the beehives—a yard, and there we were met by three strapping young peasant wenches in red linen skirts, and they called me ‘lady.’ As soon as I got out of the carriage, they took me under the arms and hustled me straight to a room that was all prepared.
“Something about all this, and especially about these wenches, made me sick at once, and my heart was wrung.
“ ‘What kind of stopping place is this?’ I asked him.
“And he replied:
“ ‘You’re going to live here now.’
“I began to weep, to kiss his hands, so that he wouldn’t abandon me there, but he had no pity: he pushed me away and left …”
Here Grushenka fell silent and looked down, then sighed and said:
“I wanted to escape, tried a hundred times—impossible: those peasant wenches were on guard and never took their eyes off me … I languished, then I finally got the notion to pretend I was carefree, merry, as if I wanted to go for a walk. They took me for a walk in the forest, watched me all the time, and I watched the trees, noticing by the treetops and the
bark which way was south, and I planned how I’d escape from these wenches, and yesterday I did it. Yesterday after lunch I went to a clearing with them, and I said:
“ ‘Come, my sweet ones, let’s play blind man’s buff in the clearing.’
“They agreed.
“ ‘But instead of our eyes,’ I say, ‘let’s tie each other’s hands behind our backs and play catch from behind.’
“They agreed to that, too.
“And so we did. I tied the first one’s hands very tightly behind her back, and with the second one I ran behind a bush, and that one I hobbled there, and the third one came running at her cries, and I trussed her up by force before the eyes of the other two. They shouted, but I, heavy with child as I am, started running faster than a frisky horse through the forest, right through the forest, and I ran all night and in the morning I fell down by some old beehives in the dense second growth. There a little old man came up to me and mumbled something I couldn’t understand, and he was all covered with wax and smelled of honey, and bees were crawling in his yellow eyebrows. I told him that I wanted to see you, Ivan Severyanych, and he says:
“ ‘Call to him, young one, first with the wind, and then against the wind: he’ll start pining and come looking for you—and you’ll meet.’ He gave me water to drink and a cucumber with honey to fortify myself. I drank the water and ate the cucumber and went on again, and I kept calling you, as he told me to, now with the wind, now against the wind—and so we met. Thank heaven!” And she embraced me, and kissed me, and said:
“You’re the same as a dear brother to me.”
I say:
“And you’re the same as a dear sister to me”—and I’m so moved that tears come to my eyes.
And she weeps and says:
“I know, Ivan Severyanych, I know and understand it all; you’re the only one who loved me, dear friend of my heart, my gentle one. Prove to me now your final love, do what I ask of you in this terrible hour.”
“Tell me what you want,” I say.
“No,” she says, “first swear by the most dread thing in the world that you’ll do what I’m going to ask.”
I swore by the salvation of my soul, but she says:
“That’s not enough: you’ll break it for my sake. No,” she says, “swear by something more dreadful.”
“Well,” I say, “I can’t think of anything more dreadful than that.”
“Well,” she says, “I’ve thought of it for you. Quickly repeat after me, and don’t hesitate.”
I promised, fool that I was, and she says:
“Damn my soul the same as you’ve damned your own if you don’t obey me.”
“Very well,” I say—and I damned her soul.
“Well, now listen,” she says. “You must quickly become the savior of my soul. I have no strength left to live like this and suffer, seeing his betrayal and his outrages against me. If I live a day longer, I’ll settle it for him and for her, but if I take pity on them and settle it for myself, I’ll destroy my poor soul forever … Take pity on me, my own, my darling brother: strike me once through the heart with a knife.”
I turned aside, made a cross over her, and backed away, but she embraced my knees, weeping, bowing at my feet, and pleading:
“You’ll live, you’ll pray to God for my soul and for your own, don’t be the ruin of me, don’t make me raise my hand against myself … W—w—well? …”
Ivan Severyanych frowned dreadfully and, chewing his mustaches, breathed out as if from the depths of his heaving breast.
She took the knife from my pocket … opened it … straightened out the blade … and put it into my hand … And she … began pouring out such talk, I couldn’t stand it …
“If you don’t kill me,” she says, “I’ll become a shameful woman, and that will be my revenge on all of you.”
I started trembling all over, and told her to pray, and didn’t stab her, but just pushed her over the steep riverbank …
All of us, on hearing this latest confession from Ivan Severyanych, began for the first time to doubt the truthfulness of his story and kept silent for a rather long while, but, finally, someone cleared his throat and said:
“Did she drown?”
“She went under,” replied Ivan Severyanych.
“And how was it for you after that?”
“What do you mean?”
“You must have suffered?”
“Of course, sir.”
XIX
I ran away from that place, beside myself, and only remember that somebody seemed to be pursuing me, somebody terribly big and tall, and shameless, naked, and his body was all black, and his head was small, and he was all overgrown with hair, and I figured that if it wasn’t Cain, it was the demon of destruction himself, and I kept trying to run from him and called out to my guardian angel. I came to my senses somewhere on a high road under a bush of broom. And the day was autumnal, dry, the sun was shining, but it was cold, and there was dust in the wind, and yellow leaves were whirling; and I didn’t know what time it was, or what place it was, or where the road led, and there was nothing in my soul, no feeling, no notion of what I should do; and I could think of only one thing, that Grusha’s soul is lost now, and it’s my duty to suffer for her and deliver her from hell. But how to do it—I don’t know and I’m in anguish over it, and then something touches my shoulder: I look—a twig has fallen from the broom and goes swirling, swirling into the distance, and suddenly it’s Grusha walking, only small, no more than six or seven years old, and with little wings on her shoulders. But as soon as I notice her, she flies away from me like a shot, and only dust and dry leaves billow up behind her.
I thought: that must surely be her soul following me; she’s probably beckoning to me and showing me the way. And I set off. All day I walked, not knowing where myself, and I became unbearably tired, and suddenly people overtook me, an old man and woman in a cart and pair, and they say:
“Get in, poor man, you can ride with us.”
I get in. They drive, and they grieve:
“Woe to us,” they say, “our son’s being taken as a soldier, and we have no money, we can’t pay to replace him.”
I felt sorry for the old people and said:
“I’d go for you just like that, without pay, but I have no papers.”
They say:
“That’s a trifle: leave it to us; you only have to give our son’s name, Pyotr Serdyukov.”
“Well,” I reply, “it’s all the same to me: I’ll pray to my saint, John the Baptist, and call myself anything you like.”
That was the end of it, and they took me to another town and handed me over as a recruit instead of their son, and gave me twenty-five roubles in cash for the road, and promised their help as long as they lived. The money I took from them, the twenty-five roubles, I placed with a poor monastery, as a contribution for Grusha’s soul, and I started asking my superiors to send me to the Caucasus, where I could die quickly for the faith. So they did, and I spent more than fifteen years in the Caucasus and never revealed my real name or condition to anyone, and was always called Pyotr Serdyukov, and only on St. John’s day I prayed for myself through my saint, the Baptist. And I forgot about my former existence and condition, and was serving out my last year that way, when suddenly, right on St. John’s day, we were pursuing the Tartars, who had done some nastiness and withdrawn across the Koysa River. There were several Koysas in those parts: the one that flows through Andia, and is called the Andian Koysa, another through Avaria, called the Avarian Koysa, and there’s also the Korikumuiskian and the Kuzikumuiskian, and they all flow together, and at the confluence the Sulak River begins. But each of them is swift and cold, especially the Andian, which the Tartars had crossed. We killed countless numbers of those Tartars, but the ones who crossed the Koysa sat behind the rocks on the other bank and kept firing at us the moment we showed ourselves. But they fired so skillfully that they never wasted a shot, but saved their powder for doing sure harm, because
they knew we had much more ammunition than they had, and so they caused us real harm, because though we all stood in full view of them, the rogues never just popped off at us. Our colonel was a man of valiant soul and liked to imitate Suvorov,36 saying “Merciful God” all the time and giving us courage by his example. So here, too, he sat down on the bank, took his boots off, put his legs up to the knees into that terribly cold water, and boasted:
“Merciful God, how warm the water is: just like your fresh-drawn milk in the bucket. Which of you, my benefactors, is willing to swim to the other side with a cable, so we can throw a bridge across?”
The colonel sat and gibble-gabbled with us like that, and on the other shore the Tartars put two gun barrels through a crack, but didn’t shoot. But as soon as two willing soldiers volunteered and started swimming, flames flashed, and both soldiers sank into the Koysa. We pulled out the cable, sent two more, and started showering bullets on the stones where the Tartars were hiding, but couldn’t do them any harm, because our bullets hit the stones, but they, the cursed ones, spat fire at the swimmers, the water clouded with blood, and again the two soldiers plunged down. A third pair went after them, but before they reached the middle of the Koysa, the Tartars sank them, too. After the third pair, there was a lack of volunteers, because it was obvious that this wasn’t war, but simple murder. Yet it was necessary to punish the villains. The colonel says:
“Listen, my benefactors. Isn’t there someone among you who has a mortal sin on his soul? Merciful God, how good it would be for him now to wash his iniquity away with his own blood.”
And I think:
“Why wait for a better occasion than this to end my life? Lord, bless my hour!”—and I stepped forward, undressed, recited the “Our Father,” bowed in all directions before my superior and my comrades, and said to myself: “Well, Grusha, my adopted sister, accept the blood I give for you!”—and with that I took a thin string in my mouth, the other end of which was tied to the cable, made a run to the bank, and dove into the water.
The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories Page 29