Chapter 16 "My Life - A Mainlander's Story" XVI

sixteen In the evening she was going to the city. Lately she has often driven into town and spent the night there.I can't work without her, and I'm so discouraged that I can't exert myself.Our big yard just seemed dull and repulsively empty.The garden was full of angry noises.Without her, the house, the country, the horses, are no longer "ours" to me. I was always out of the house, and I was always sitting at her desk, next to the bookcase full of agricultural books, those books that were once favored and no longer needed, and looked at me with such embarrassment.For hours on end I looked at her old gloves, her usual pen, or her little pair of scissors, listening to the clock strike seven, eight, nine, and the dark autumn night appeared outside the window.I didn't want to do anything, and it was clear that if I had done anything earlier, if I had plowed the fields, mowed the grass, chopped wood, it was only because she wanted me to.Even if she sent me to clean a deep well, and I had to stand waist-deep in the well, I'd crawl into it, whether it was necessary or not.Now that she is not there, Dubechnya, this ruin, this clutter, those shutters slammed by the wind, those thieves who appear day and night, seem to me a chaos, here In a state of chaos, it is useless to do any work.Moreover, since I feel that my position is already precarious, that here I am, I have played my role in Dubechnya, and since, in short, the same fate awaits me as those agricultural books, why should I If you work here again, why worry about the future?How troubled I am at night, in my solitary hours, when I listen every moment with apprehension, as if waiting for some one to cry out at once, that it is time for me to go!It's not that I hate Dubechnya, but I regret my love, and obviously, the autumn of love has come.What a great happiness it is to love and be loved; but how dreadful it is to feel yourself falling headfirst from this tower!

Masha came back from the city the next evening.She didn't know why she was upset, but she kept it from me and just said, why put all the outer windows for the winter, it'd be suffocating.I will take down two windows.We didn't feel hungry, but we sat down to dinner anyway. "Don't worry, you wash your hands first," said the wife. "You smell of putty on your hands." She brought some new magazines from the city, and we read them together after dinner.There are supplementary pages with fashion pictures and clothing styles in the pictorial.Masha glanced over them briefly, and then put them aside so that they could be looked at carefully again later.But one dress, with its large sleeves and wide, unruffled skirt, resembling a bell, interested her, and she looked at it for a moment with serious attention.

"It's a nice look," she said. "Yes, this dress suits you perfectly," I said. "A perfect match!" I looked at the dress with tenderness, admiring the gray dots, just because she liked it.Then I said softly, "What a beautiful dress! Beautiful, radiant Masha! My dear Masha!" Tears dripped onto the picture. "Brilliant Masha . . . " I murmured. "Dear, precious Masha. . . . " She went to bed, and I sat there and read the illustrated magazine for an hour. "You shouldn't have taken down the window," she said in the bedroom. "I'm afraid it's going to be cold this way. Listen, there's a strong wind!"

I read a few paragraphs of "Zazu Column", which talked about how to make cheap ink and the largest diamond in the world.I saw the fashion picture of the dress she liked again, and I imagined her fanning at the ball, with bare shoulders, gorgeous and sparkling all over, and she was good at music, painting, and literature. Omniscient, so how small and fleeting the part I played seemed to me! Our meeting, our union, was only an episode, and such episodes would not be rare in the life of this gifted and active woman.As I have already said, the best things in the world are for her enjoyment, she can get them at no cost at all, and even ideas and modern trends become a kind of entertainment for her, giving her Life puts a few tricks on it; and I, for my part, are nothing more than a coachman, taking her from one infatuation to another.But now she doesn't need me, she is going to fly high, and I will be left alone.

As if answering my thoughts, a desperate cry came from the yard: "Help-life-ah!" It was a woman's high-pitched voice.As if to imitate it, the wind also made a shrill whistling in the chimney.Half a minute later, there was another scream amidst the wind, but this time it seemed to be coming from the other side of the yard: "Help-life-ah!" "Missel, do you hear?" the wife asked softly. "Did you hear that?" She came out of the bedroom and walked towards me, wearing only her shirt and her hair loose.She looked at the dark window and listened. "I don't know who was strangled!" she said. "It's such a bad thing."

I walk out with the gun.It was dark outside and the wind was blowing so hard that people couldn't stand still.I went to the gate and listened: the trees were rustling, the wind was howling, and that fool farmer's dog in the garden was probably barking lazily.It was pitch black outside the gate, and there was no light at all.Near the wing that was used as an office last year, a low-pitched voice suddenly came: "Help-life-ah!" "Who is it?" I called out. There are two people fighting.One pushed the other, the other refused to budge, and they were both panting. "Let me go!" said the other, and I recognized Ivan Cheprakov's voice, and it was he who was shouting in a woman's shrill voice. "Let go of me, damn it, or I'll bite your hand!"

I recognized the other as Moise.I took them apart and couldn't resist slapping Moise twice.He fell, then got up, and I hit him again. "He's going to kill me," he muttered. "He secretly went to open the fucking locker. . . . For safety reasons, I'm going to lock him up in the wing room. . . . " Cheprakov was drunk and didn't recognize me, panting heavily, It seemed as if he was going to take a deep breath before calling for help. I left them and went back to the room.The wife is lying on the bed, she is already dressed.I told her what happened, not even when I beat Moisey.

"Living in the country is scary," she said. "What a long night, my God." "Help-life-ah!" There was another shout after a while. "I'm going to pull them apart," I said. "No, let them bite each other's throats," she said with disgust. She looked at the ceiling and listened, and I sat next to her, afraid to speak to her, with a feeling that it was my fault for calling "Help" outside and for the night being so long. We were silent, and I anxiously waited for the dawn to appear outside the window.Masha always looked like she was just waking up from a big dream, and now she was secretly amazed: how could such a smart and well-educated woman, such a decent woman, come to this dilapidated inland desert? How could she be so confused that she fell in love with one of these small and boring people and became his wife for more than half a year.It seemed to her that I, Moisey, and Tcheprakov all looked the same to her.For her, me, our marriage, our farm work, the muddy autumn roads, all merged into that boozy, brutish cry of "Help."Whenever she sighed, or moved to lie down more comfortably, I saw this expression on her face: "Oh, let's make it day!"

She left after daybreak. I stayed in Dubechnya for three days longer to wait for her, then packed up our things, put us in a room, locked the door, and went into town.By the time I rang the doorbell at the engineer's house, it was already dusk, and the street lights in our Grand Noble Street were already on.Pavel told me that there was no one at home, that Viktor Ivanitch had gone to Petersburg, and that Marya Viktorovna was probably rehearsing a play at Azhodin's. I still remember how excited I was when I walked to A Ruojing's house, how my heart beat and contracted, I walked up the stairs and stood on the steps for a long time, not daring to enter the palace of art!Candles were lit on a small table in the hall, on the piano, and on the stage. Three candles were lit in each place. The first performance was scheduled for the thirteenth, and the first rehearsal was scheduled for today, Monday, an inauspicious day. .This is a fight against superstition!All the theater art lovers have gathered, the eldest girl, the second girl, and the younger girl are walking up and down on the stage, reading lines with their script books.Radish left everyone and stood by alone, motionless, with his temples leaning against the wall, looking at the stage with adoring eyes, waiting for the rehearsal to start.Everything is the same as before!

I went up to the hostess, and I had to say hello.But suddenly everyone booed me, waved their hands, and asked me not to step on the floor.The hall was silent.The piano cover was opened, and a lady sat down next to the piano, squinting her short-sighted eyes to look at the music score, and my Masha walked towards the piano, with gorgeous clothes and a beautiful appearance, but she was a little special, a little novel, not at all like That Masha who came to see me at the mill in the spring.She sings: Why do I love you, bright night? ①This is the first time I have heard her sing since we met.Her voice is beautiful, loud and powerful.When she sang, I felt as if I was eating a ripe and fragrant sweet melon.After she finished singing, everyone applauded her. She smiled contentedly, looked left and right, flipped through the music score, and straightened her dress, like a bird finally breaking out of the cage and flapping its wings in freedom.Her hair was combed over her ears, and she had an ugly cocky look on her face, as if she was going to challenge us all, or call us like horses, "Hey, my little darling!"

At this moment, she probably looked a lot like her grandfather who drove the cart. "Are you here too?" she asked, holding out her hand to me. "Did you hear me sing? How do you think I sing?" she went on, without waiting for my answer. Shall I go?" I took her to the train station in the middle of the night.She hugged me tenderly, probably out of gratitude that I didn't ask unnecessary questions.She promised to write to me.I held her hand for a long time, kissed her for a long time, tried to hold back my tears, and said nothing to her. She left, and I stood there looking at the farther and farther lights, caressing her in my imagination, and whispered: "My dear Masha, radiant Masha..." I went to Masha that night. Go to Kaliha and spend the night with Karpovna.The next morning I went with Radish to cover the furniture in the house of a rich merchant who had betrothed his daughter to a physician. "Notes" ①Quoted from a poem by the Russian poet Polonsky, this poem is composed by Tchaikovsky.