And so the whole winter passed in some sort of expectation of something. I liked to steal looks at her, when she happened to be sitting at her little table. She would be busy with her needlework, with the linen, and in the evenings she would sometimes read books which she would take from my bookcase. The choice of books in the bookcase should also have spoken in my favour. She hardly ever went out. Every day after dinner, before dusk, I would take her for a walk and we would go for our constitutional, but not completely in silence, as before. I precisely tried to make it look as though we weren’t being silent and were speaking harmoniously, but as I’ve already said we both avoided getting carried away talking. I was doing this on purpose, while she, I thought, needed to be ‘given time’. Of course, it’s strange that it did not once occur to me until almost the very end of the winter that though I liked to look at her on the sly, I never once caught her looking at me that whole winter! I thought that it was timidity on her part. Moreover, she had an air about her of such timid meekness, such weakness after her illness. No, better to bide one’s time and – ‘and she will suddenly come to you on her own …’
That thought delighted me irresistibly. I will add one thing: sometimes it was as if I had deliberately inflamed myself and really brought my heart and mind to the point that I would feel that I had been wronged by her. And so it continued for some time. But my hatred could never ripen and take root in my soul. And I even felt that it was only some sort of game. And even then, although I had dissolved our marriage by buying the bed and screen, never, never could I see her as a criminal. And not because I judged her crime lightly, but because it made sense to forgive her completely, from the very first day, even before I bought the bed. In a word, this was a strange move on my part, for I am morally stern. On the contrary, in my eyes she was so defeated, so humiliated, so crushed that I sometimes felt tormenting pity for her, even though at the same time I sometimes definitely found the idea of her humiliation pleasing. The idea of our inequality pleased me …
That winter it so happened that I deliberately performed several good deeds. I forgave two debts, I gave money to one poor woman without any pledge. And I didn’t tell my wife about this, and I hadn’t done this so that she would find out; but the woman came to thank me herself, she was practically on her knees. And that was how it became known; it seemed to me that she was truly pleased to find out about the woman.
But spring was approaching, it was already the middle of April, the storm windows had been taken down, and the sun began to light up our silent rooms with its bright pencils of light. But scales hung before my eyes and blinded my reason. Fateful, terrible scales! How did it come about that they suddenly fell from my eyes and that I suddenly could see clearly and understand everything! Was it chance, was it that the appointed day had come, was it a ray of sunshine that had kindled the thought and conjecture in my benumbed mind? No, it wasn’t a matter of a thought but rather a nerve began to play up, a nerve that had grown numb began to quiver and came to life and illuminated my entire benumbed soul and my demonic pride. It was as if I had suddenly jumped up from my seat then. And it happened suddenly and unexpectedly. It happened towards evening, at about five o’clock, after dinner …
II. The Scales Suddenly Fall
A couple of words first. A month earlier I had noticed a strange pensiveness in her, not just silence, but pensiveness. I had also noticed this suddenly. She was sitting at her work at the time, her head bent over her sewing, and she didn’t see that I was looking at her. And suddenly I was struck by how delicate and thin she had become, that her face was pale, her lips were drained of colour – all this as a whole, taken together with her pensiveness, shocked me all at once in the extreme. I had already heard earlier a little dry cough, particularly at night. I got up at once and set off to ask Schroeder to pay us a visit, without saying anything to her.
Schroeder came the following day. She was very surprised and looked first at Schroeder and then at me.
‘But I’m fine,’ she said with an uncertain smile.
Schroeder didn’t examine her very thoroughly (these medical men sometimes are condescendingly offhand), and merely told me in the other room that it was the remnants of her illness and that come spring it wouldn’t be a bad idea to take a trip somewhere to the sea or if that were not possible, then simply to find a place in the country. In a word, he didn’t say anything other than that there was some weakness or something of the sort. When Schroeder had gone, she suddenly said to me again, looking at me terribly seriously:
‘I’m really, really fine.’
But after saying this, she then and there suddenly flushed, apparently from shame. Apparently, it was shame. Oh, now I understand: She was ashamed that I was still her husband, that I was taking care of her as if I were still her real husband. But I didn’t understand then and ascribed her blush to humility. (The scales!)
And then, a month later, between five and six o’clock, in April, on a bright sunny day I was sitting in the shop and doing the accounts. Suddenly I heard her in our room, at her table, over her work, singing ever so softly … This new development made a tremendous impression on me, and to this day I don’t understand it. Until then I had almost never heard her sing, except perhaps in the very first days when I brought her into my house and we could still have some fun, target shooting with the revolver. Then her voice was still rather strong, ringing, though a bit off-key, but terribly pleasant and healthy. But now her little song sounded so feeble – oh, not that it was doleful (it was some romance), but it was as if there was something cracked, broken, in her voice, as if the little voice couldn’t cope, as if the song itself were ailing. She was singing under her breath, and suddenly, after rising, the voice broke – such a poor little voice, it broke so pitifully; she cleared her throat and started singing again, ever so softly, you could barely hear her …
My agitation may be laughable, but no one will ever understand why I had become so agitated! No, I didn’t feel sorry for her yet; it was still something altogether different. At the beginning, for the first moments at least, I suddenly felt bewilderment and terrible surprise, terrible and strange, painful and almost vindictive: ‘She is singing and in my presence! Has she forgotten about me, is that it?’
Completely shaken, I stayed where I was, then I suddenly rose, took my hat and left, without thinking it through, as it were. At least I didn’t know why or where I was going. Lukerya started helping me on with my coat.
‘She sings?’ I said to Lukerya unintentionally. She didn’t understand and looked at me, still not understanding; but I really had been incomprehensible.
‘Is this the first time that she’s been singing?’
‘No, she sometimes sings when you’re not here,’ Lukerya replied.
I remember everything. I walked down the stairs, went out into the street and set off for nowhere in particular. I walked as far as the corner and began to stare off into the distance. People passed by me, jostled me, but I didn’t feel it. I hailed a cab and told him to take me to the Police Bridge,18 I don’t know why. But then I suddenly changed my mind and gave him a twenty-kopeck piece.
‘That’s for your trouble,’ I said, laughing senselessly, but some sort of rapture had suddenly begun to fill my heart.
I turned around and went home, quickening my step. The cracked, poor, broken little note suddenly rang out in my heart again. It took my breath away. The scales were falling, falling from my eyes! If she’d started singing in my presence, then she had forgotten about me – that’s what was clear and terrible. My heart sensed this. But rapture shone in my soul and overcame my fear.
Oh, the irony of fate! You see, there had been nothing else and there could not have been anything else in my soul all winter except this very rapture, but where had I myself been all winter long? Had I been there with my soul? I ran up the stairs in a great hurry, I don’t know whether I walked in timidly or not. I remember only that the entire floor seemed to be rippling and it was as if I were
floating down a river. I walked into the room, she was sitting in the same place, sewing, with her head bent, but no longer singing. She threw me a fleeting and incurious glance, but it wasn’t even a glance, merely the usual, indifferent gesture one makes when somebody enters a room.
I walked straight up to her and sat down on a chair right beside her, like a madman. She gave me a quick look, as though she were frightened: I took her by the hand and I don’t remember what I said to her, that is, what I wanted to say, because I couldn’t even speak properly. My voice kept breaking and wouldn’t obey me. And I didn’t know what to say, I just kept gasping for breath.
‘Let’s talk … you know … say something!’ I suddenly babbled something stupid – oh, but was I capable of making sense? She flinched again and recoiled, badly frightened, looking at my face, but suddenly – stern surprise appeared in her eyes. Yes, surprise, and stern. She was looking at me wide-eyed. This sternness, this stern surprise came crashing down on me all at once: ‘So you still want love? Love?’ that surprise seemed to ask suddenly, although she was silent as well. But I could read it all, all of it. My whole being was shaken and I simply fell to the ground at her feet. Yes, I collapsed at her feet. She quickly jumped up, but I restrained her by taking hold of both her hands with extraordinary force.
And I fully understood my despair, oh, I understood! But would you believe it, rapture was seething in my heart so irrepressibly that I thought I would die. I kissed her feet in ecstasy and happiness. Yes, in happiness, immeasurable and infinite, yet understanding nonetheless all my hopeless despair! I wept, said something, but couldn’t speak. Her fright and surprise suddenly gave way to some anxious thought, some extreme question, and she looked at me strangely, wildly even – she wanted to understand something quickly, and she smiled. She was terribly ashamed that I was kissing her feet, and she kept moving back, but I would at once kiss the spot on the floor where she had been standing. She saw this and suddenly began to laugh from shame (you know how people laugh from shame). Hysterics weren’t far off, I saw that, her hands quivered – I didn’t give it a thought and kept muttering that I loved her, that I wouldn’t get up, ‘… let me kiss your dress … I’ll worship you like this for as long as you live …’ I don’t know, I don’t remember – and suddenly she burst out into sobs and started trembling; a terrible fit of hysteria had set in. I had frightened her.
I carried her over to the bed. When the fit had passed, she sat up on the bed and with a terribly distraught look, seized me by the hands and pleaded with me to calm myself: ‘Enough, don’t torment yourself, calm yourself!’ and she began to weep again. I didn’t leave her side all that evening. I kept telling her that I’d take her to Boulogne19 to bathe in the sea, now, right away, in two weeks, that she had such a cracked little voice, I had heard it earlier that day, that I would close the pawnshop, sell it to Dobronravov, that everything would begin afresh, and the main thing, to Boulogne, to Boulogne! She listened and was still afraid. She was more and more afraid. But that wasn’t the main thing for me, but rather that I more and more irrepressibly wanted to lie down again at her feet, and once again, to kiss, to kiss the ground on which her feet stood, and to idolize her and – ‘I’ll ask nothing more of you, nothing,’ I kept repeating every minute. ‘Don’t answer me anything, don’t take any notice of me at all, and only let me look at you from the corner, turn me into your thing, into your little dog …’ She wept.
‘But I thought that you were going to leave me like that,’ suddenly burst forth from her involuntarily, so involuntarily that perhaps she didn’t notice at all how she had said it, and yet – oh, it was the most important, her most fateful word and the most comprehensible for me that evening, and it was as if it had slashed my heart like a knife. It explained everything to me, everything, but as long as she was there beside me, before my eyes, I went on hoping irrepressibly and was terribly happy. Oh, I wore her out terribly that evening and I understood that, but I kept thinking that I would change everything at once. Finally, towards nightfall, she broke down completely; I persuaded her to go to sleep, and she immediately fell sound asleep. I expected delirium, and there was delirium, but it was very mild. I got up during the night every few minutes, and would quietly go in my slippers to look at her. I wrung my hands over her, as I looked at this sick being lying on that pathetic little cot, the iron bedstead that I had bought for her then for three roubles. I got down on my knees but I didn’t dare kiss her feet while she was sleeping (against her wishes!). I would start praying to God, and then jump up again. Lukerya watched me closely and kept coming out of the kitchen. I went to her and told her to go to bed and that tomorrow ‘something quite different’ would begin.
And I believed that blindly, madly, terribly. Oh, I was surging with rapture, rapture. I couldn’t wait for tomorrow. The main thing, I didn’t believe in any misfortune, despite the symptoms. My powers of understanding had not yet fully returned, even though the scales had fallen, and for a long, long time would not return – oh, not until today, not until this very day! And how, how could my understanding have returned then: you see, she was still alive then, you see, she was right there before me, and I before her. ‘She’ll wake up tomorrow, and I’ll tell her all this, and she’ll see it all.’ That was my reasoning then, clear and simple, hence the rapture! The main thing was this trip to Boulogne. For some reason I thought that Boulogne was everything, that there was something final about Boulogne. ‘To Boulogne, to Boulogne! …’ I waited for morning in a state of madness.
III. I Understand All Too Well
But this was only a few days ago, you see, five days, only five days ago, just last Tuesday! No, no, if only there had been a little more time, if only she had waited just a little bit longer and – and I would have dispelled the darkness! And hadn’t she calmed down? The very next day she listened to me with a smile even, despite her confusion. The main thing was that during all this time, all five days, she was either confused or ashamed … She was also afraid, very afraid. I don’t dispute it, I won’t deny it, like some madman: there was fear, but then how could she not be afraid? You see, we’d been strangers to each other for so long, we had grown so far apart from one another, and suddenly all this … But I didn’t pay attention to her fear – something new was shining! … Yes, it’s undoubtedly true that I’d made a mistake. And perhaps even many mistakes. And as soon as we woke up the next day, when it was still morning (this was on Wednesday), I suddenly made a mistake right away: I suddenly made her my friend. I was in a hurry, much too much of a hurry, but a confession was necessary, essential – and much more than a confession! I didn’t even conceal that which I had concealed from myself all my life. I told her straight out that I had done nothing all winter long but be certain of her love. I explained to her that the pawnshop had been merely the degradation of my will and mind, my personal idea of self-flagellation and self-exaltation. I explained to her that I had indeed turned coward that time at the bar, and that it was owing to my character, my touchiness: I was struck by the surroundings, I was struck by the bar; I was struck by how I would end up looking in all this and wouldn’t it end up looking stupid? I didn’t turn coward on account of the duel, but because it would end up looking stupid … And then later I didn’t want to admit it, and tormented everyone, and tormented her for it as well, and then I married her so that I could torment her on account of it. In general, for the most part I spoke as though I were in a fever. She herself took me by the hands and begged me to stop: ‘You’re exaggerating … you’re tormenting yourself’, and the tears would begin again, and again there’d almost be a fit of hysteria. She kept pleading with me not to say or remember any of this.
I paid little or no attention to her pleas: spring, Boulogne! There was the sun, there was our new sun, that was all I talked about! I locked up the shop, handed over the business to Dobronravov. I suddenly suggested to her that we give away everything to the poor, except for the initial 3,000 I had received from my godmother, which we w
ould use to travel to Boulogne, and then we’d come back and begin our new working life. And so it was decided, because she didn’t say anything … she merely smiled. And I believe she smiled more out of a sense of delicacy, so as not to upset me. Of course, I saw that I was a burden to her, don’t think that I was so stupid or such an egoist that I didn’t see that. I saw everything, everything, right down to the last detail, I saw and knew better than anyone else; my despair was there for all to see!
The Gambler and Other Stories (Penguin ed.) Page 41