Chapter 40 Part One - Thirty Seven

That night, Maslova could not sleep for a long time.She lay on the bunk with her eyes wide open, looking at the door that was sometimes covered by the body of the chanting daughter who was pacing back and forth, listening to the snoring of the red-haired woman, thinking about something. She thought that when she arrived in Sakhalin Island, she would never be able to marry a convict, she must find another home, or marry an officer, marry a clerk, or at least marry a guard or deputy guard.They are all perverts. "It's just that one can't lose weight, or else it's over." She remembered how the defender stared at her, how the judge stared at her, how the man who met her in court and walked past her on purpose stared at her.She recalled Berta's visit to see her in prison and how the student she had fallen in love with in Kitayeva's brothel asked about her and expressed sympathy for what had happened to her.She remembered the fight with the red-haired woman, and she felt sorry for the red-haired woman.She remembered how the baker had given her an extra white loaf.She thought of many people, but not Nekhludoff.She never recalled her childhood, her girlhood, and especially her love for Nekhludoff, because it was too painful to recall.These past events were buried deep in her heart intact.She never dreamed of Nekhludoff even once.It wasn't that she didn't recognize him in court today, not because the last time she saw him he was a soldier, with no beard but a mustache and short, thick curly hair that he now wore Bearded and old-fashioned, mainly because she never thought of him.On that terrible night when he came back from the army and did not go to his aunt's house, she buried in her heart all that had happened to her with him.

-------- ① That is Sakhalin Island. Before that night, she hoped that he would come back with all her heart, so not only did she not hate the baby in her heart, but she often felt kind to the little life in her belly that was sometimes tender and sometimes violently wriggling.But everything changed after that night.The future child becomes a mere liability. Both aunts were looking forward to Nekhludoff and asked him to drop by, but he telegraphed back that he could not come because he had to return to Petersburg on schedule.Knowing this, Katyusha decided to meet him at the railway station.The train will pass the local station at two o'clock at night.Katyusha put the two old girls to bed, and urged the cook's daughter Masha to accompany her.She put on a pair of old half-boots, put on a scarf, packed her clothes, and ran with Masha to the station.

It was a dark, stormy autumn night.Big warm raindrops come and go.In the field, I can't see the road under my feet; in the woods, it's as dark as a kang.Although Katyusha knew the road well, she lost her way in the woods.The train stopped at that little station for only three minutes.She had hoped to get to the station early, but when she arrived the bell rang a second time.As soon as Katyusha ran onto the platform, she saw him at once from the window of the first-class carriage.The lights in this carriage are particularly bright.Two officers sat facing each other on velvet seats, without jackets, playing cards.On a small table by the window were a few thick candles dripping with oil.Nekhludoff, in tight breeches and a white shirt, was sitting on the arm of an ottoman, leaning his elbows on the back of the chair, laughing at something.As soon as Katyusha recognized him, she tapped on the window with her frozen hands.But just then, the bell rang for the third time, and the train moved slowly.It backed up first, and then the carriages moved forward one after the other.One officer stood up with a card in his hand and looked out of the window.Katyusha knocked on the window again, and pressed her face to the pane.At this time, the carriage in front of her also shook violently and started to move.She followed the car, looking in the window.The officer wanted to lower the window, but couldn't.Nekhludoff got up, pushed the officer away, and began to lower the window.The train picked up speed.Katyusha also quickened her pace to follow the train, but the train went faster and faster.The moment the window was lowered, a conductor came over and pushed her away, and jumped onto the train by himself.Katyusha lagged behind, but she kept running on the wet platform.She ran to the end of the platform, stopped with difficulty so as not to fall, and ran down the steps to the ground.She was still running, but the first-class car was far away.Then the second-class cars passed her one by one, and then the third-class cars passed by at an even faster speed, but she kept running.By the time the last car with wind lanterns on the rear passed by, she had already crossed the water tower, and there was no obstacle around.The wind was blowing head-on, lifting the turban from her head and pulling the clothes around her legs.Her turban was blown off by the wind, but she kept on running.

"Auntie! Auntie Katyusha!" Masha called, and with difficulty caught up with her. "Your hood fell off!" "He was sitting on a soft velvet chair in the brightly lit carriage, talking and laughing, drinking and having fun, but I, here, in the dark mud, drenched in the rain, blowing in the wind, standing and crying! Katyusha stopped thinking about it, leaned back, put her head in her hands, and burst into tears. "He's gone!" cried Katyusha. Masha was frightened and hugged Katyusha's wet dress. "Auntie, let's go home." "When a train comes, get under the wheels, and that's all," thought Katyusha, without answering the little girl's words.

She made up her mind to do so.But just at that moment, as it usually does when agitation calms down suddenly, the child in her stomach, his child, suddenly trembled, bumped hard, slowly stretched out its limbs, and then with a kind of delicate Something soft and pointy pushed it up.Suddenly, the torment which a minute before had been tormenting her so much that she had found it almost impossible to live, her rage against Nekhludoff, the thought of revenge on him by sacrificing her life—all this suddenly It all evaporated.She calmed down, straightened her clothes, tied up her kerchief, and hurried home.

Drenched and splashed with mud, she returned home exhausted.Since that day, a great change has taken place in her heart, and the result has become what she is now.Since that dreadful night she had ceased to believe in goodness.She used to believe in goodness herself, and thought that others also believed in goodness, but since that night, she concluded that no one believes in goodness, and everyone talks about God and goodness, just to deceive people.She knew that he loved her, and she loved him, but he desecrated her feelings, played with her enough, and abandoned her again.And he was one of the nicest people she knew.Others were worse.All her encounters confirmed this.His two aunts, two pious old women, drove her out of the house when they saw that she could not serve them as she had done before.All the women she met saw her as a cash cow; all the men, from the aging police chief to the prison guards, thought of her as a plaything.No matter who you are, there is nothing else to do in this world except pleasure-seeking and carnal pleasures.In the second year of her free life she lived with an old writer who also confirmed this.He told her bluntly that this kind of joy was poetic, full of beauty, and the whole happiness of life.

Everyone lives for himself, for his own pleasure, and all the words about God's kindness are deceitful.If the question arises in her mind why the world is so badly organized, why people bully each other and suffer; well, it's best not to think about it.If she is bored, she smokes, drinks, makes love to a man, and then forgets the boredom too.