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Betrothed by
Chekhov
I II
III IV
V VI
VI Autumn had passed and winter, too, had gone. Nadya had begun to
be very homesick and thought every day of her mother and her
grandmother; she thought of Sasha too. The letters that came
from home were kind and gentle, and it seemed as though
everything by now were forgiven and forgotten. In May after the
examinations she set off for home in good health and high
spirits, and stopped on the way at Moscow to see Sasha. He was
just the same as the year before, with the same beard and
unkempt hair, with the same large beautiful eyes, and he still
wore the same coat and canvas trousers; but he looked unwell and
worried, he seemed both older and thinner, and kept coughing,
and for some reason he struck Nadya as grey and provincial.
"My God, Nadya has come!" he said, and laughed gaily. "My
darling girl!"
They sat in the printing room, which was full of tobacco smoke,
and smelt strongly, stiflingly of Indian ink and paint; then
they went to his room, which also smelt of tobacco and was full
of the traces of spitting; near a cold samovar stood a broken
plate with dark paper on it, and there were masses of dead flies
on the table and on the floor. And everything showed that Sasha
ordered his personal life in a slovenly way and lived anyhow,
with utter contempt for comfort, and if anyone began talking to
him of his personal happiness, of his personal life, of
affection for him, he would not have understood and would have
only laughed.
"It is all right, everything has gone well," said Nadya
hurriedly. "Mother came to see me in Petersburg in the autumn;
she said that Granny is not angry, and only keeps going into my
room and making the sign of the cross over the walls."
Sasha looked cheerful, but he kept coughing, and talked in a
cracked voice, and Nadya kept looking at him, unable to decide
whether he really were seriously ill or whether it were only her
fancy.
"Dear Sasha," she said, "you are ill."
"No, it's nothing, I am ill, but not very . . ."
"Oh, dear!" cried Nadya, in agitation. "Why don't you go to a
doctor? Why don't you take care of your health? My dear, darling
Sasha," she said, and tears gushed from her eyes and for some
reason there rose before her imagination Andrey Andreitch and
the naked lady with the vase, and all her past which seemed now
as far away as her childhood; and she began crying because Sasha
no longer seemed to her so novel, so cultured, and so
interesting as the year before. "Dear Sasha, you are very, very
ill . . . I would do anything to make you not so pale and thin.
I am so indebted to you! You can't imagine how much you have
done for me, my good Sasha! In reality you are now the person
nearest and dearest to me."
They sat on and talked, and now, after Nadya had spent a winter
in Petersburg, Sasha, his works, his smile, his whole figure had
for her a suggestion of something out of date, old-fashioned,
done with long ago and perhaps already dead and buried.
"I am going down the Volga the day after tomorrow," said Sasha,
"and then to drink koumiss. I mean to drink koumiss. A friend
and his wife are going with me. His wife is a wonderful woman; I
am always at her, trying to persuade her to go to the
university. I want her to turn her life upside down."
After having talked they drove to the station. Sasha got her tea
and apples; and when the train began moving and he waved his
handkerchief at her, smiling, it could be seen even from his
legs that he was very ill and would not live long.
Nadya reached her native town at midday. As she drove home from
the station the streets struck her as very wide and the houses
very small and squat; there were no people about, she met no one
but the German piano-tuner in a rusty greatcoat. And all the
houses looked as though they were covered with dust. Granny, who
seemed to have grown quite old, but was as fat and plain as
ever, flung her arms round Nadya and cried for a long time with
her face on Nadya's shoulder, unable to tear herself away. Nina
Ivanovna looked much older and plainer and seemed shrivelled up,
but was still tightly laced, and still had diamonds flashing on
her fingers.
"My darling," she said, trembling all over, "my darling!"
Then they sat down and cried without speaking. It was evident
that both mother and grandmother realized that the past was lost
and gone, never to return; they had now no position in society,
no prestige as before, no right to invite visitors; so it is
when in the midst of an easy careless life the police suddenly
burst in at night and made a search, and it turns out that the
head of the family has embezzled money or committed forgery --
and goodbye then to the easy careless life for ever!
Nadya went upstairs and saw the same bed, the same windows with
nave white curtains, and outside the windows the same garden,
gay and noisy, bathed in sunshine. She touched the table, sat
down and sank into thought. And she had a good dinner and drank
tea with delicious rich cream; but something was missing, there
was a sense of emptiness in the rooms and the ceilings were so
low. In the evening she went to bed, covered herself up and for
some reason it seemed to her to be funny lying in this snug,
very soft bed.
Nina Ivanovna came in for a minute; she sat down as people who
feel guilty sit down, timidly, and looking about her.
"Well, tell me, Nadya," she enquired after a brief pause, "are
you contented? Quite contented?"
"Yes, mother."
Nina Ivanovna got up, made the sign of the cross over Nadya and
the windows.
"I have become religious, as you see," she said. "You know I am
studying philosophy now, and I am always thinking and thinking.
. . . And many things have become as clear as daylight to me. It
seems to me that what is above all necessary is that life should
pass as it were through a prism."
"Tell me, mother, how is Granny in health?"
"She seems all right. When you went away that time with Sasha
and the telegram came from you, Granny fell on the floor as she
read it; for three days she lay without moving. After that she
was always praying and crying. But now she is all right again."
She got up and walked about the room.
"Tick-tock," tapped the watchman. "Tick-tock, tick-tock. . . ."
"What is above all necessary is that life should pass as it were
through a prism," she said; "in other words, that life in
consciousness should be analyzed into its simplest elements as
into the seven primary colours, and each element must be studied
separately."
What Nina Ivanovna said further and when she went away, Nadya
did not hear, as she quickly fell asleep.
May passed; June came. Nadya had grown used to being at home.
Granny busied herself about the samovar, heaving deep sighs.
Nina Ivanovna talked in the evenings about her philosophy; she
still lived in the house like a poor relation, and had to go to
Granny for every farthing. There were lots of flies in the
house, and the ceilings seemed to become lower and lower. Granny
and Nina Ivanovna did not go out in the streets for fear of
meeting Father Andrey and Andrey Andreitch. Nadya walked about
the garden and the streets, looked at the grey fences, and it
seemed to her that everything in the town had grown old, was out
of date and was only waiting either for the end, or for the
beginning of something young and fresh. Oh, if only that new,
bright life would come more quickly -- that life in which one
will be able to face one's fate boldly and directly, to know
that one is right, to be light-hearted and free! And sooner or
later such a life will come. The time will come when of Granny's
house, where things are so arranged that the four servants can
only live in one room in filth in the basement -- the time will
come when of that house not a trace will remain, and it will be
forgotten, no one will remember it. And Nadya's only
entertainment was from the boys next door; when she walked about
the garden they knocked on the fence and shouted in mockery:
"Betrothed! Betrothed!"
A letter from Sasha arrived from Saratov. In his gay dancing
handwriting he told them that his journey on the Volga had been
a complete success, but that he had been taken rather ill in
Saratov, had lost his voice, and had been for the last fortnight
in the hospital. She knew what that meant, and she was
overwhelmed with a foreboding that was like a conviction. And it
vexed her that this foreboding and the thought of Sasha did not
distress her so much as before. She had a passionate desire for
life, longed to be in Petersburg, and her friendship with Sasha
seemed now sweet but something far, far away! She did not sleep
all night, and in the morning sat at the window, listening. And
she did in fact hear voices below; Granny, greatly agitated, was
asking questions rapidly. Then some one began crying. . . . When
Nadya went downstairs Granny was standing in the corner, praying
before the ikon and her face was tearful. A telegram lay on the
table.
For some time Nadya walked up and down the room, listening to
Granny's weeping; then she picked up the telegram and read it.
It announced that the previous morning Alexandr Timofeitch, or
more simply, Sasha, had died at Saratov of consumption.
Granny and Nina Ivanovna went to the church to order a memorial
service, while Nadya went on walking about the rooms and
thinking. She recognized clearly that her life had been turned
upside down as Sasha wished; that here she was, alien, isolated,
useless and that everything here was useless to her; that all
the past had been torn away from her and vanished as though it
had been burnt up and the ashes scattered to the winds. She went
into Sasha's room and stood there for a while.
"Good-bye, dear Sasha," she thought, and before her mind rose
the vista of a new, wide, spacious life, and that life, still
obscure and full of mysteries, beckoned her and attracted her.
She went upstairs to her own room to pack, and next morning said
good-bye to her family, and full of life and high spirits left
the town -- as she supposed for ever.
NOTES
title: a better translation is "The Bride"
Komissarovsky school: a private school
watchman was tapping: watchmen in Russia tapped as they
patrolled the grounds to let theives know that a watchman was
actively on duty
homeopathy: homeopathy is a pseudoscience that treats disease by
administering minute doses of drugs that in massive amounts
produce symptoms in healthy individuals similar to the disease
itself
Anna Karenin: the heroine of the novel by Tolstoy
vegetable soup: meatless borsch; a believer would not eat meat
along with dairy products
patience: a card game
St. Peter's Day: June 29 (Julian Calendar)
Shismatchevsky: no such painter existed
cockade on my cap: worn by civil servants in Russia
passport: Russians were required to have passports to travel
within Russia
free Cossack: around the 16th century, before the Cossacks were
brought under Russian control, some dissatisfied Russian
peasants ran off to join the Cossacks
koumiss: kymis, fermented mare's milk, often prescribed for
victims of tuberculosis
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