Chapter 6 Chapter 4 White Clothes

November comes and with it comes the first snow.The sky is full of swamp birds flying south. He moved to Pavel's room and within a few days became part of the life of the house.The children no longer interrupted their play as he passed, but stared at him wide-eyed, though still lowering their voices.They know who he is now.Who is he?He is unlucky, he is unlucky's father. He told himself every day that he must go to Elagin Island again to see his son's grave.But did not go. He wrote to his wife in Dresden.The letters were words of comfort, without emotion. He spent the mornings in his room, doing nothing, taking a dark, deathly pleasure of his own.In the afternoon he wandered the streets, avoiding Mesyarskaya Street and Voznesensky Avenue, where he might be known, and always sat for an hour in the same teahouse.

While in Dresden, he often read Russian newspapers.Now he has lost interest in the outside world.His world shrinks; his world is only in his chest. For Anna Sergeyevna's sake he never came home until after dark.Before calling him to supper, he always sat quietly in the room that was both his and not his. He sat on the bed with the white suit on his lap.No one saw him.Business as usual, no changes.He felt that the bond of love connected him and his son's heart like real cords.He felt the ropes twisting his heart.He groaned loudly. "Okay!" he whispered, welcoming the pain; he reached out and twisted the rope again.

The door behind him opened.He was taken aback, with tears in his eyes, a stooped and wimpy look, and he held the clothes in a bundle in his hand. "Would you like to eat now?" the child asked. "Thank you, but I want to be alone tonight." After a while, she came back again. "Would you like some tea? I can bring it to you." She brought a teapot, sugar bowl, and cups, solemnly, on a tray. "Is that Pavel Alexandrovitch's dress?" He put the clothes aside and nodded. She waited nearby while he drank his tea.Once again he was impressed by the graceful lines of her forehead and cheekbones, her watery black eyes, her black eyebrows, and her corn-blond hair, and suddenly two conflicting feelings struck him: one was the desire to protect her. Her impulse was to beat her hard because she was alive.

It's a good thing I'm isolated like this, he thought.In my current situation, it is not appropriate to get along with people. He waited for her to say something.He wants her to talk.It was outrageous to make that kind of demand on a child, but he did it anyway.He looked up at her.There is no cover.He stared straight at her. She met his gaze.After a while, she lost her eyes, took a hesitant step back, made a strange and awkward curtsy, and ran out of the room quickly. He realized that this detail, if developed, he would never forget, might even be rewritten and included in his book someday.He has a little shame, but only superficial and temporary.First in his work, and now in his life, shame seems to have lost its force, replaced by a dazed passivity that does not belong to the category of morality, does not shy away from any extreme.It was as if, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the thunderclouds coming at him with terrifying speed.Anything that gets in their way is swept away.Mixed with fear and excitement, he waited for the storm to strike.

When his watch hit eleven o'clock, he came out of his room without saying hello.The alcove where Matrona and her mother slept was drawn, but Anna Sergeyevna was not lying down, she was sitting at the table, sewing by the light.He crossed the room and sat down across from her. Her fingers are nimble and her movements are decisive.When he was exiled in Siberia, he had learned to sew out of necessity, but his movements were not as smooth and graceful as hers.In his hands, the needle is a strange thing, the arrow of the Lilliputian. "There's too little light in the room for such delicate work," he murmured.

She lowered her head, as if to say: I heard it, as if to say again: What do you expect me to do? "Have you only one child, Matrona?" She was looking at him.He likes the straightforward look.He liked her eyes that were not soft at all. "She had an older brother in front of her, but he died when she was very young." "So, you understand." "No, I don't understand." What does she mean by that?Does it mean that the death of a young child is easier to bear?She didn't explain further. "With your permission, I'd like to buy you a better lamp. It's a shame you ruined your eyes at such a young age."

She bowed her head as if to say: Thank you for your kindness; I won't ask you to keep your word. So early: what is his intention? He had already expected that the next words would come out, and he was not going to stop them. "I want to talk about my son," he said, "and I want to hear other people talk about him." "He's a nice lad," she began. "It's a pity we haven't known him for so long." She seemed to feel that these few words were not enough, and then added: "He often reads to Matrona before she goes to bed. She looks forward to this all day long." time. They got along really well."

"What books are they reading?" "I remember The Little Golden Cock and Krylov's fables. He also taught her some French poetry. She can still recite a poem or two." "It's great that you have books at home." He waved his hand towards a bookshelf, and there were at least twenty or thirty books on it. "I mean good for a growing kid." "My husband used to work in a printing house as a printer. He reads a lot, and reading is his hobby. These are only part of his book collection. When he was alive, the house couldn't fit them all. The place is too small."

She paused. "We have a book by you. The Poor. One of my husband's favorites." There was a moment of silence.The lights start to flicker.She twisted the wick down, and put aside her work.The far corners of the room fell into shadow. "I had to ask Pavel Alexandrovitch not to invite friends to his room at night," she said. "Now that I think about it, I'm a bit regretful. It was because they were talking and drinking in the room, and it was very late, so we couldn't sleep. Some of his friends were quite rude." "Yeah, he made friends very democratically. He could talk to ordinary people about their concerns. The common people were hungry for new ideas. He never spoke to them in a condescending manner."

"Nor did he speak condescendingly to Matryosha." The lights dimmed and the wicks began to smoke black.Speech ointment is smeared where it hurts, he thought, but do I want a cure? "He's young, but he's old," he insisted. "He's thinking about Russia, about our existence in this country. He's thinking about things that concern ordinary people." There was a silence.Praise, he thought: I was praising, though clumsily, too late, and I tried to force her to join me in praising.Why not! "I've been thinking about what you said to me last time," she said thoughtfully. "Why did you tell me about Pavel oversleeping?"

"Why? Because that incident, though seemingly insignificant now, ruined his life. Because he was sleeping in, I had to make him change schools, kept changing schools. So he couldn't enroll. So he ended up in In Petersburg, on the fringes of student society, he wasn't a student, he didn't really belong to the student society. The problem wasn't just laziness. There was simply no way to wake him up—shouting, shaking, threatening, pleading. As if to Wake up a hibernating bear!" "I can understand. Some kids just can't make it to school. But I mean something else. Forgive me for saying that, but when you told me that, it struck me that you seemed to be still there." Get mad at him." "Of course I am! You must remember that he was only fifteen when his mother died. It was not easy to bring him up. I had better things to do than to wake up such an old child all the time. If Pavel finished his studies like everyone else, and this kind of thing wouldn't happen." "This kind of thing?" He waved his arms impatiently, as if to drive away the apartment, the city of Petersburg, and even the great night over their heads. She gazed at him quietly; in that gaze he began to understand what he had said.Starting with his right hand, he trembled all over.He stood up, hands clasped behind his back, and paced up and down the room.Something was going to happen, and he tried not to name it.He tried to speak, but his voice was choked.I act like a character in a book, he thought.But even self-mockery doesn't work.His shoulders went up and down.He began to cry silently. In the book, the woman responds to his grief with a pang of pity, and this woman doesn't.She sat at the table in the flickering light, her head turned, her sewing on her lap.It was late, no one was there, and the child was asleep. He thought to himself: Damn heart!Damn sentimental!The point is not the heart and the feeling of the heart, but the feeling of death and the dead child! At this moment, a very clear vision appeared before his eyes: Pavel was smiling at him, laughing at his complaints, his affectations, and what was hidden behind them.That kind of laughter is not sarcasm, but friendly and tolerant.He thought: Pavel knows!He knows and doesn't care!A surge of gratitude, joy, and love surged through him.It's definitely going to happen now!He wanted to, but couldn't care less.He could no longer hold back his tears, groped his way back to the table, buried his head in his arms, and began to cry. No one stroked his hair, and no one whispered a word of comfort in his ear.At last, when he was groping for his handkerchief, he looked up and saw the little girl Matrona standing in front of him, watching him intently.She was wearing a white nightgown; her hair was brushed loose over her shoulders.He couldn't help noticing the two slightly raised breasts.He smiled at her, but her expression did not change.He thought: She knows too.She knew what was false and what was true; she knew it by looking at him so intently. He collected himself.His eyes, through the remaining tears, locked on her face.At that moment, something happened between them, he shrank suddenly as if pierced by a red-hot wire.Meanwhile her mother put her arms around her and whispered something; she went back to bed and slept.