services and the holy scriptures! The girl, however grim and solemn her father’s face, listened to him willingly. She yawned repeating prayers after him, but on the other hand, when he began telling her stories, stammering and adding flowery embellishments, she turned all ears. At Esau’s mess of pottage, the punishment of Sodom, and the ordeals of the little boy Joseph, 8 she grew pale and opened her blue eyes wide.
Later, when he quit being a servant and opened a village shop with the money he had saved, Mashutka left for Moscow with the master’s family.
Three years before her death, she came to see her father. He barely recognized her. She was a slender young woman with the manners of a lady and dressed like gentlefolk. She spoke cleverly, as if from a book, smoked tobacco, slept till noon. When Andrei Andreich asked her what she was, she boldly looked him straight in the eye and said: “I am an actress!” Such frankness seemed to the former servant the height of cynicism. Mashutka began boasting of her successes and of her artistic life, but seeing that her father only turned purple and spread his arms, she fell silent. And thus silently, without looking at each other, they spent some two weeks, until she left. Before leaving, she persuaded her father to go for a stroll with her along the embankment. Terrified though he was of going for a stroll with his actress daughter in broad daylight, in front of all honest people, he yielded to her entreaties …
“What wonderful places you have here!” she admired as they strolled. “Such dells and marshes! God, how beautiful my birthplace is!”
And she wept.
“These places only take up room …” thought Andrei Andreich, gazing stupidly at the dells and failing to understand his daughter’s admiration. “They’re about as useful as teats on a bull.”
But she wept, wept and breathed greedily with her whole breast, as if sensing that she did not have long to breathe …
Andrei Andreich tosses his head like a stung horse and, to stifle the painful memories, starts crossing himself rapidly …
“Remember, O Lord,” he murmurs, “the departed servant of God, the harlot Maria, and forgive her transgressions both voluntary and involuntary …”
The indecent word again escapes his mouth, but he does not notice it: what is stuck fast in his consciousness will not be dug out of it even by a nail, still less by Father Grigory’s admonitions! Makaryevna sighs and whispers something, sucking in air. Mitka with the paralyzed arm ponders something …
“… where there is no sickness, sorrow or sighing …” drones the beadle, putting his hand to his right cheek.
Bluish smoke streams from the censer and bathes in a wide,slanting ray of sunlight that crosses the gloomy, lifeless emptiness of the church. And it seems that, together with the smoke, the soul of the departed woman herself hovers in the ray of sunlight. The streams of smoke, looking like a child’s curls, twist, rush upwards to the window and seem to shun the dejection and grief that fill this poor soul.
F EBRUARY 1886
A NYUTA
I n the cheapest furnished rooms of the Hotel Lisbon, the third- year medical student, Stepan Klochkov, paced up and down and diligently ground away at his medicine. The relentless, strenuous grinding made his mouth dry, and sweat stood out on his forehead. By the window, coated at the edges with icy designs, his roommate Anyuta sat on a stool. She was a small, thin brunette of about twenty-five, very pale, with meek gray eyes. Her back bent, she was embroidering the collar of a man’s shirt with red thread. It was an urgent job … The clock in the corridor hoarsely struck two, but the room hadnot yet been tidied. A crumpled blanket, scattered pillows, books, clothes, a large, dirty basin filled with soapy swill, in which cigarette butts floated, litter on the floor—it all looked as if it had been piled in a heap, purposely confused, crumpled …
“The right lung
Later, when he quit being a servant and opened a village shop with the money he had saved, Mashutka left for Moscow with the master’s family.
Three years before her death, she came to see her father. He barely recognized her. She was a slender young woman with the manners of a lady and dressed like gentlefolk. She spoke cleverly, as if from a book, smoked tobacco, slept till noon. When Andrei Andreich asked her what she was, she boldly looked him straight in the eye and said: “I am an actress!” Such frankness seemed to the former servant the height of cynicism. Mashutka began boasting of her successes and of her artistic life, but seeing that her father only turned purple and spread his arms, she fell silent. And thus silently, without looking at each other, they spent some two weeks, until she left. Before leaving, she persuaded her father to go for a stroll with her along the embankment. Terrified though he was of going for a stroll with his actress daughter in broad daylight, in front of all honest people, he yielded to her entreaties …
“What wonderful places you have here!” she admired as they strolled. “Such dells and marshes! God, how beautiful my birthplace is!”
And she wept.
“These places only take up room …” thought Andrei Andreich, gazing stupidly at the dells and failing to understand his daughter’s admiration. “They’re about as useful as teats on a bull.”
But she wept, wept and breathed greedily with her whole breast, as if sensing that she did not have long to breathe …
Andrei Andreich tosses his head like a stung horse and, to stifle the painful memories, starts crossing himself rapidly …
“Remember, O Lord,” he murmurs, “the departed servant of God, the harlot Maria, and forgive her transgressions both voluntary and involuntary …”
The indecent word again escapes his mouth, but he does not notice it: what is stuck fast in his consciousness will not be dug out of it even by a nail, still less by Father Grigory’s admonitions! Makaryevna sighs and whispers something, sucking in air. Mitka with the paralyzed arm ponders something …
“… where there is no sickness, sorrow or sighing …” drones the beadle, putting his hand to his right cheek.
Bluish smoke streams from the censer and bathes in a wide,slanting ray of sunlight that crosses the gloomy, lifeless emptiness of the church. And it seems that, together with the smoke, the soul of the departed woman herself hovers in the ray of sunlight. The streams of smoke, looking like a child’s curls, twist, rush upwards to the window and seem to shun the dejection and grief that fill this poor soul.
F EBRUARY 1886
A NYUTA
I n the cheapest furnished rooms of the Hotel Lisbon, the third- year medical student, Stepan Klochkov, paced up and down and diligently ground away at his medicine. The relentless, strenuous grinding made his mouth dry, and sweat stood out on his forehead. By the window, coated at the edges with icy designs, his roommate Anyuta sat on a stool. She was a small, thin brunette of about twenty-five, very pale, with meek gray eyes. Her back bent, she was embroidering the collar of a man’s shirt with red thread. It was an urgent job … The clock in the corridor hoarsely struck two, but the room hadnot yet been tidied. A crumpled blanket, scattered pillows, books, clothes, a large, dirty basin filled with soapy swill, in which cigarette butts floated, litter on the floor—it all looked as if it had been piled in a heap, purposely confused, crumpled …
“The right lung
Similar Books
