Chapter 12 Chapter Twelve

Princess Marya sat for a long time that night by the open window of her bedroom, listening attentively to the voices of the peasants from the village, but she did not think about them.She felt that no matter how much she thought about them, she could not understand them.She was always thinking about one thing—that was her own misfortune, which was a thing of the past for her after a period of concern for real life.She can remember now, and she can cry, and she can pray.After sunset, the wind died down, and the night seemed peaceful and fresh.At twelve o'clock, the sound of people gradually disappeared, roosters crowed, and a full moon rose from behind the linden tree. A cool, milky white fog filled the air, and silence enveloped the village and the house.

The images of the not so long ago - her father's illness and dying moments - flashed in her mind one after another.Now she pondered the images of these pictures with joyful melancholy, dismissing only with terror the sight of her father's death at last.It was a sight, she felt, that she would not have the courage to even imagine it in the silent, mysterious night.These pictures are so clear in her mind, even the smallest details are vivid in her mind, she feels that these pictures are suddenly real, sometimes past, and sometimes future. From time to time, she vividly remembered the scene of his stroke, people helped him out of the garden in Bald Hills, he muttered something with his feeble tongue, writhed his white eyebrows, and looked at her uneasily and timidly.

"He wanted to say what he said to me the day he died," she thought. "He often thought about what he said to me." Then she recalled all the details of the night before his stroke in Bald Mountain, when Maria The princess had a premonition of disaster, and therefore stayed with him against his will.She did not go to bed against Cartesian rationalism and innate idealism.Claiming that feeling is the only thing she knows, she crept down the stairs at night, came to the door of the conservatory where her father stayed overnight, and listened to his voice.What he was talking to Tikhon, his voice tired and aching.It seemed he was eager to have a conversation. "Why didn't he call me? Why didn't he change places with Tikhon?" Princess Marya thought then and now. "He will never be able to speak his mind to anyone. He could have said what he wanted to say, and I, not Tikhon, should have heard and understood him, but such an opportunity, regardless of It was gone to him and to me. Why didn't I go in the house then?" She thought, "Maybe he would have told me then what he was going to say the day he died. And he In the conversation with Tikhon, I was asked twice. He wanted to see me, but I was standing outside the door. It was very sad and uncomfortable for him to talk to Tikhon who didn’t know him. I remember they mentioned Lisa, as if she were still alive, he forgot that she was dead, and Tikhon reminded him that Lisa was dead, and he shouted: 'Fool!' 'He is in pain. Through the door I I heard him moaning on the bed and shouting loudly: "God!" Speak that to me." And Princess Marya cried out that dear word that he had spoken to her on the day of his death. "D-darling!" she repeated the word, and burst into tears, tears that lightened her heart.His face was before her eyes now.But that was no longer the face she had known since she could remember, and she had often seen from a distance, but a timid and cowardly face, the one she had bent down to listen to his words on the last day, the first time A face with lines and fine lines seen so closely.

"Honey," she repeated. "What was he thinking when he said that? What is he thinking now?" This question suddenly appeared in her mind, and then, as a response, flashed before her eyes were he wrapped in a white towel in the coffin. head down facial expression.And then a terror came over her, the very fear that, the first day she came into contact with him, was not only not him, but something mysterious and repulsive.She tried to think about something else, tried to pray, but couldn't do anything.She watched the moonlight and shadows with wide eyes, waiting to see his dead face any moment.She felt that the silence that hung over the house inside and outside held her tightly.

"Dunyasha!" she murmured, "Dunyasha!" she screamed, breaking the silence, and ran to the maids' quarters, meeting the nurses and maids running towards her.