LITMIR.BIZ

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my life is not mine but another’s… and my freedom is bound! Take me for a sister and be a brother to me and take me to your heart when misery, when cruel weakness falls upon me; only do so that I have no shame to come to you and sit through the long night with you as now.

      Do you hear me? Is your heart opened to me? Do you understand what I have been saying to you?…”

      She tried to say something more, glanced at him, laid her hand on his shoulder and at last sank helpless on his bosom. Her voice died away in convulsive, passionate sobbing, her bosom heaved, and her face flushed like an evening sunset.

      “My life,” whispered Ordynov; everything was dark before his eyes and he could hardly breathe. “My joy,” he said, not knowing what he was saying, not understanding himself, trembling lest a breath should break the spell, should destroy everything that was happening, which he took rather for a vision than reality: so misty was everything around him! “I don’t know, I don’t understand you, I don’t remember what you have just said to me, my mind is darkened, my heart aches, my queen!”

      At this point his voice broke with emotion. She clung more tightly, more warmly, more fervently to him. He got up, no longer able to restrain himself; shattered, exhausted by ecstasy, he fell on his knees. Convulsive sobs broke agonisingly from his breast at last, and the voice that came straight from his heart quivered like a harp-string, from the fulness of unfathomable ecstasy and bliss.

      “Who are you, who are you, my own? Where do you come from, my darling?” he said, trying to stifle his sobs. “From what heaven did you fly into my sphere? It’s like a dream about me, I cannot believe in you. Don’t check me, let me speak, let me tell you all, all! I have long wanted to speak… Who are you, who are you, my joy? How did you find my heart? Tell me; have you long been my sister?… Tell me everything about yourself, where you have been till now. Tell me what the place was called where you lived; what did you love there at first? what rejoiced you? what grieved you?

      …. Was the air warm? was the sky clear?… Who were dear to you? who loved you before me? to whom did your soul yearn first?… Had you a mother? did she pet you as a child, or did you look round upon life as solitary as I did? Tell me, were you always like this? What were your dreams? what were your visions of the future? what was fulfilled and what was unfulfilled with you? — tell me everything…. For whom did your maiden heart yearn first, and for what did you give it? Tell me, what must I give you for it? what must I give you for yourself?… Tell me, my darling, my light, my sister; tell me, how am I to win your heart?..

      Then his voice broke again, and he bowed his head. But when he raised his eyes, dumb horror froze his heart and the hair stood up on his head.

      Katerina was sitting pale as a sheet. She was looking with a fixed stare into the air, her lips were blue as a corpse’s and her eyes were dimmed by a mute, agonising woe. She stood up slowly, took two steps forward and, with a piercing wail, flung herself down before the ikon…. Jerky, incoherent words’ broke from her throat. She lost consciousness. Shaken with horror Ordynov lifted her up and carried her to his bed; he stood over her, frantic. A minute later she opened her eyes, sat up in the bed, looked about her and seized his hand. She drew him towards her, tried to whisper something with her lips that were still pale, but her voice would not obey her. At last she burst into a flood of tears; the hot drops scalded Ordynov’s chilly hand.

      “It’s hard for me, it’s hard for me now; my last hour is at hand!” she said at last in desperate anguish.

      She tried to say something else, but her faltering tongue could not utter a word. She looked in despair at Ordynov, who did not understand her. He bent closer to her and listened…. At last he heard her whisper distinctly:

      “I am corrupted — they have corrupted me, they have ruined me!”

      Ordynov lifted his head and looked at her in wild amazement. Some hideous thought flashed across his mind. Katerina saw the convulsive workings of his face.

      “Yes! Corrupted,” she went on; “a wicked man corrupted me. It is he who has ruined me!… I have sold my soul to him. Why, why did you speak of my mother? Why did you want to torture me? God, God be your judge!…”

      A minute later she was softly weeping; Ordynov’s heart was beating and aching in mortal anguish.

      “He says,” she whispered in a restrained, mysterious voice, “that when he dies he will come and fetch my sinful soul….

      I am his, I have sold my soul to him. He tortures me, he reads to me in his books. Here, look at his book! here is his book, He says I have committed the unpardonable sin. Look, look…” —

      And she showed him a book. Ordynov did not notice where it had come from. He took it mechanically — it was all in manuscript like the old heretical books which he had happened to see before, but now he was incapable of looking or concentrating his attention on anything else. The book fell out of his hands. He softly embraced Katerina, trying to bring her to reason. “Hush, hush,” he said; “they have frightened you. I am with you; rest with me, my own, my love, my light.”

      “You know nothing, nothing,” she said, warmly pressing his hand. “I am always like this! I am always afraid…. I’ve tortured you enough, enough!…”

      “I go to him then,” she began a minute later, taking a breath; “sometimes he simply comforts me with his words, sometimes he takes his book, the biggest, and reads it over me — he always reads such grim, threatening things! I don’t know what, and don’t understand every word; but fear comes upon me; and when I listen to his voice, it is as though it were not he speaking, but someone else, someone evil, someone you could not soften anyhow, could not entreat, and one’s heart grows so heavy and burns…. Heavier than when this misery comes upon me!”

      “Don’t go to him. Why do you go to him?” said Ordynov, hardly conscious of his own words.

      “Why have I come to you? If you ask — I don’t know either…. But he keeps saying to me, ‘Pray, pray!’ Sometimes I get up in the dark night and for a long time, for hours together, I pray; sometimes sleep overtakes me, but fear always wakes me, always wakes me and then I always fancy that a storm is gathering round me, that harm is coming to me, that evil things will tear me to pieces and torment me, that my prayers will not reach the saints, and that they will not save me from cruel grief. My soul is being tom, my whole body seems breaking to pieces through crying…. Then I begin praying again, and pray and pray until the Holy Mother looks down on me from the ikon, more lovingly. Then I get up and go away to sleep, utterly shattered; sometimes I wake up on the floor, on my knees before the ikon. Then sometimes he wakes, calls me, begins to soothe me, caress me, comfort me, and then I feel better, and if any trouble comes I am not afraid with him. He is powerful! His word is mighty!”

      “But what trouble, what sort of trouble have you?”… And Ordynov wrung his hands in despair.

      Katerina turned fearfully pale. She looked at him like one condemned to death, without hope of pardon.

      “Me? I am under a curse, I’m a murderess; my mother cursed me! I was the ruin of my own mother!…” Ordynov embraced her without a word. She nestled tremulously to him. He felt a convulsive shiver pass all over her, and it seemed as though her soul were parting from her body.

      “I hid her in the damp earth,” she said, overwhelmed by the horror of her recollections, and lost in visions of her irrevocable past. “I have long wanted to tell it; he always forbade me with supplications, upbraidings, and angry words, and at times he himself will arouse all my anguish at though he were my enemy and adversary. At night, even as now — it all comes into my mind. Listen, listen! It was long ago, very long ago.

      I don’t remember when, but it is all before me as though it had been yesterday, like a dream of yesterday, devouring my heart all night. Misery makes the time twice as long. Sit here, sit here beside me; I will tell you all my sorrow; may I be struck” down, accursed as I am, by a mother’s curse…. I am putting my life into your hands…”

      Ordynov tried to stop her,

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