Chapter 13 "Wife" 5

Fives My wife has already collected 8,000, plus my 5,000, the total is 13,000. As a start, this is already very good.This work, which had interested me and at the same time troubled me, was now at last in my hands.I am doing a job that others will not and will not do, I am doing my duty, I am planning a correct and serious solution to the hungry. Everything seemed to be going according to my intentions and desires, but why did my restless mood never leave me?For four hours I went through my wife's papers, understood their meaning, corrected their mistakes, and instead of feeling comforted, I felt as if someone was standing behind me and rubbing my back with a rough hand.What else am I missing?The organization of the relief is in the hands of trustworthy men, and the hungry are fed, so what more is needed?

Four hours of easy work has somehow got me too tired to sit here with my head down and write any more.Occasionally there was a muffled moan from downstairs, it was my wife crying.Alexei, always docile, sleepy, hypocritical, came up to my table now and then, arranged the candles, and looked at me curiously. "No, I have to get out of here!" I finally decided to myself, and by this time I was exhausted. "Get away from these troubles and go away. I'm leaving tomorrow." I packed up my papers and exercise books and went to my wife.I was walking across my dormitory, feeling very tired and weak, with both hands pressed to my chest, papers and exercise books, and saw my suitcase, when the sound of weeping came to me across the floor. . ... "Are you a squire?" someone asked next to my ear. "It's been a while. But you're still a badass."

"It's all nonsense, nonsense, nonsense . . . " I muttered as I descended the stairs. "Nonsense....As for my face-saving and vanity, that is also nonsense....This is all nonsense! Could it be that if I do my best for the hungry people, they will give me a star or promote me to be a minister? Nonsense, Nonsense! Besides, in the country, to whom should I boast of such a vain reputation?" I am tired, very tired, and there is a sentence that always rings softly in my ears: "I have been waiting for a long time. But you are still a villain." For some reason, I remembered an ancient poem I read when I was a child. One line: "What a pleasure it is to be a good man!"

My wife was lying on the couch in the same position as before, with her face down and her head in her hands.she is crying.Beside her stands a maidservant with a frightened and bewildered expression.I dismissed the maid, put the papers on the table, thought for a moment, and said, "Here are your papers, Natalie. Everything is in order, everything is fine, and I am very satisfied. I will be leaving tomorrow. " She was still crying.I went into the living room and sat down there in the dark. My wife's weeping and her sighing are a reproach to me.In order to excuse myself, I recalled our quarrel, from the unlucky idea in my head to invite my wife upstairs to discuss together, to these exercise books and crying.It was a relapse of our old conjugal animosity, ugly and pointless, which we see so often in our married lives.

But now why are the hungry people involved?How could they be the cause of our quarrels?It's as if we were chasing each other, accidentally ran to the altar, and quarreled there. "Natalie," I whispered in the living room, "don't cry, don't cry!" In order to stop her crying and end this painful situation, I should go to my wife, comfort her, get close to her, or make amends to her.But what can I do to make her believe me?How can I convince a wild duckling who lives without freedom and hates me to believe that I like him and sympathize with his pain?I never knew my wife well, so I never knew what or how to talk to her.I know her appearance very well, and I give it a correct evaluation, but her inner workings or spiritual world, her intelligence, world view, changing emotions, eyes full of hatred, arrogance, sometimes surprise me. Enthusiasm for reading, or, for example, a cultivating demeanor like yesterday, is not familiar to me and I don't understand.Whenever we have conflicts, I want to determine what kind of person she is, and my psychology is always limited to ascertaining that she is headstrong, not serious, with an unfortunate character, acting according to a woman's logic, and it seems that this is completely enough for me. up.But now when she cries, I feel a desire to get to know her better.

The crying stopped.I went over to my wife.She was sitting on the reclining chair, resting her head on her hands, staring at the candle light thoughtfully. "I'm leaving tomorrow morning," I said. She is silent.I walked up and down the room, sighed, and said, "Natalie, when you asked me to get out of here earlier, you always said that you would forgive me everything, everything.  … You see that you think I'm sorry for you. I beg you Calm down, and summarize in a few words what I am sorry for you." "I'm tired. Let's talk later, ..." my wife said.

"What's my fault?" I went on. "What wrong have I done? If, say, you are young, beautiful, and want to live, and I am almost twice your age, and you hate me, is it my fault?I didn't force you to marry me.But anyway, if you want to live a free life and want to go, then I will give you freedom.It's up to you to love whoever you want. ... I can even divorce you. " "I don't need any of that," she said. "You know, I used to love you and always thought I was older than you. It doesn't matter. . . . It's not your fault that you're old and I'm young, or that I've been free You can fall in love with someone else in your life, but because you are a difficult person, an egoist, a person full of hatred."

"I don't know. Maybe so," I said. "Go away, please. You're going to tell me to leave me till tomorrow morning, but I warn you that I'm too tired to answer you. You promised to leave, and I'm grateful to you, and I don't What do you need?" My wife told me to go, but it was not easy for me to do this.I felt powerless and afraid of my large uncomfortable and annoying room.When I was a child, whenever I had pain somewhere, I would always cuddle up to my mother or nurse, and hide my face in the warm folds of their clothes, as if avoiding the pain.Now, for some reason, I feel that way too, and the only way I can get rid of my restless mood is in this small room, next to my wife.I sat down and put my hands over my eyes to block the light.It was very quiet all around.

"What's your fault?" my wife asked after a long silence, then looked up at me with red eyes glistening with tears. "You are well-educated, well-bred, very upright, fair, and principled, but all this has the effect on you that wherever you go, you bring a stuffiness and depression with you, which makes you It is very humiliating and embarrassing. You are pure in your way of thinking, so you hate the whole world. You hate people who have faith, because faith is a sign of undeveloped thinking and ignorance, and at the same time you hate people who lack faith, because They have no beliefs, no ideals. You hate the old, because they are backward and conservative; you hate the young, because they are free-thinking. The interests of the people and the interests of Russia are precious to you, so you hate the people, because you doubt every All men are thieves and robbers. You hate everyone. You are fair, you stand on the ground of the law, and that is why you are constantly in court with the peasants and neighbors. You stole twenty sacks of rye, you Sue the peasants to the governor and all the magistrates for love of order, and sue the local magistrates to Petersburg. What a legal foothold!" said my wife, laughing. "By the law, and in the interests of morality, you do not give me an identity card. How can there be such a morality, such a law, that a young, healthy, self-respecting woman is in idleness, in pain, in constant fear She spends her days in the middle of nowhere and gets nothing more than food and shelter from someone she doesn't love. You know the law, you're upright, you're fair, you respect the foundations of marriage and family, and yet it all leads to such a result : You have never done a good thing in your life, everyone hates you, and you are not on good terms with everyone. You have been married for seven years, and you have not lived with your wife for seven months. You I have no wife, and I have no husband. It is impossible to live with a man like you, no one can bear it. I was afraid of you in the first years, but now I am only ashamed.  … The best years It was so wasted. All those years I only quarreled with you, and I made myself very bad-tempered, sharp, rude, timid, and mistrustful.... Oh, what's the use of talking about it! Don't you really want to Understand this? Go away, and God bless you!"

My wife lay down on the recliner, lost in thought. "But what a wonderful, what an enviable life we ​​could have had!" she whispered, looking thoughtfully at the lamp. "What a life that would be! Now it's irretrievable." If anyone has lived in the countryside in winter, and has experienced those long, dull, quiet evenings, when even the dogs are too bored to bark, and it seems that the clock is too lazy to tick, if anyone wakes up in such an evening If the coming conscience is disturbed and disturbed, and the mind is wandering from place to place, now trying to suppress his conscience, now trying to find out what it is, then he must understand in that cozy little room. What joy, what joy, to hear a woman's voice say that I am a villain.I didn't know what my conscience wanted, but my wife, like a translator, explained to me the meaning of my restlessness in a woman's way.As was often the case when I was very disturbed, I guessed that the whole point was not with the starving people, but with me not being what I should have been.

My wife struggled to her feet and walked over to me. "Pavel Andreitch," she said, smiling sadly. "I beg your pardon, I don't believe you, you're not leaving here. But I ask again. These things," she said, pointing to her papers, "call them self-deception, women's logic , It’s a mistake, it’s up to you, but please don’t meddle in my business anymore. This is the only thing left for me in life.” She turned her face away and was silent for a while. "Before, I had nothing. I spent my youth arguing with you. Now I finally got this job. I'm alive. I'm happy. I feel that I found this job as if I found me Justification for living." "Natalie, you are a good thinking woman," I said, looking at my wife with enthusiasm, "what you do and what you say is beautiful and wise." To hide my excitement, I walked up and down the room. "Natalie," I continued after a minute, "before I leave, I would like to ask you: as a special favor, help me do something for those hungry people!" "How can I help?" my wife said, shrugging her shoulders. "Perhaps only the pledge will help you?" She rummaged through the papers and found the pledge. "Donate some money," she said, and it was evident from her tone that she did not take her pledge very seriously. "It is impossible for you to join the work in any other way." I took the piece of paper and wrote: "Anonymous, five thousand." The word "Anonymous" has a bad, fake, and vain connotation, but I didn't realize it until I found my wife flushed and hurriedly stuffed this piece of paper into the pile of papers. arrived.We were both ashamed.I felt that at any rate I had to make up for the inadequacy at once, otherwise I would still be ashamed on the train and in Petersburg.But how to make up for it?What should I say? "I approve of your work, Natalie," I said sincerely, "and I wish you all the best. But allow me to give you a piece of advice at parting. Natalie, you are right about Sobol in general." Be careful, my assistants, and don't trust them easily. I don't mean they are dishonest, but they are not nobles, they are all thoughtless people, they have no ideals and beliefs, no goals in life, no clear goals. In principle, the whole meaning of their lives is rubles. Rubles, rubles, rubles!" I said, sighing. "They love the easy and free bread, and the more educated they are in this respect, the more dangerous they are to work." My wife went to the chair and lay down. "Thoughts, thoughts and principles," she said listlessly, reluctantly, "principles, ideals, goals of life, principles... Whenever you want to spoil people, insult people, or say unpleasant things, you Always use those words. That's who you are! If you're allowed to go to work with that kind of insight, with that kind of attitude towards people, it's like screwing up your job the first day. It's time to see that .” She sighed and was silent for a while. "It is rude, Pavel Andreitch," she said. "You're educated and well-bred, but you're really... a Scythian! That's because you live a closed, hateful life, you can't see anyone, and you don't have any books except engineering books. Neither. But there are good people and good books! Yes. . . . But I'm tired, and it's hard to talk. I must go to bed." "I'm off then, Natalie," I said. "Okay, okay.... Merci..." I stood there for a moment, then went upstairs to my room.An hour later, it was half-past one, I went downstairs again, holding a candle, intending to talk to my wife. I didn't know what I was going to say to her, but I felt that I had something important and necessary to say to her.She is not in the studio.The door to her bedroom was closed. "Natalie, are you asleep?" I asked softly. No answer.I stood by the door for a while, sighed, and went into the living room. There I sat down on the couch, blew out the candles, and sat in the dark until dawn. "Notes" ①The grassland nomads on the northern shore of the Black Sea from the seventh century BC to the third century AD are used here as a metaphor for barbarians.