Chapter 14 Chapter 7 Matriona (1)

He did not accompany them home, but dined at an inn by himself.There was a game of cards in the back room of the inn.He watched for a while, drank, but did not join the game.It was late when he returned to the empty room of the dark apartment. Alone, bored, he began to miss, painfully but not unpleasantly, Dresden and the comfort and regularity of life there, where his wife carefully guarded his tranquility and followed his The habit of arranging family life. He was uncomfortable at number sixty-three and probably never would be.Not only was he the briefest of passers-by, he continued to live with excuses he couldn't explain to himself, and even harder to understand for others, living in such intimate surroundings with a woman of erratic temperament and a child who might soon hate him It's starting to make him nervous.With Matrona, he was acutely aware that his clothes smelled, that his skin was dry and flakes, that his dentures rattled when he spoke.His hemorrhoids made him feel sick endlessly.His constitution, strong as iron, which had carried him through his exile in Siberia, was beginning to crumble; his old appearance must have been particularly repulsive to a tidy child, for in her eyes he had replaced a worthy A man of godlike strength and beauty.How would she respond to questions from her playmates about this gloomy guest who would not pack up and leave?

You are begging: he flinched when he remembered Anna Sergeyevna's words.Always an object of pity!He knelt down, pressed his forehead against the edge of the bed, and wanted to find Pavel on Elagin Island and the cold cemetery.At least Pavel wouldn't ignore him.He could count on Pavel, on Pavel, for his cold love. Faded copy of Father—Son.How could he expect a woman who had seen a son in his prime to favor him? He remembered the words of a fellow sufferer in Siberia: "Why do we grow old, buddies? To make us small again, small enough to fit through the eye of a needle." Peasant wisdom.

He remained on his knees, but Pavel did not appear.Finally, with a long sigh, he climbed onto the bed with difficulty. He awoke full of wonder.Although the room was still dark, he felt as if he had slept for seven nights.He was full of energy and invincible; the tissue of his brain seemed to be cleansed.He can barely contain himself.He was like a child at Easter, so excited that he wished the whole family would wake up so that he could share the joy with them.He wants the woman to wake up, he wants the two of them to dance around the apartment: "Christ is risen!" He's going to shout and hear her respond "Christ is risen!" and smash him with the egg in her hand Eggs in hand.The two of them danced in circles with eggs in their hands, and Matrona, in her pajamas, stumbling sleepily under their knees, happily joined in the fun; They passed among them: it was like a gathering of children, some just born and some from the grave.It was just dawn over the city, and the rooster in the yard began to crow to welcome the new day.

Joy breaks like the sky!But only for a moment.It was not only like clouds moving across a new brilliant sky, but like the moment a brilliant sun appeared there was another sun, a shadow sun, an anti-sun moving across the surface of the sun.The word omen passed through his mind with all its ominous weight.The dawning sun is not idle, but ready to go through the whole process of eclipse; the reason why the joy is brilliant is to show what it looks like when the joy is gone. He jumped out of bed in a hurry, and the next few minutes seemed like a dark passage that had to be rushed through.He had to get dressed and get out of the apartment before his disgraceful seizure; he had to find a place where respectable people couldn't see him, couldn't hear him, and let him get through it as peacefully as possible.

He is out of the room.The passage was pitch black.Like a blind man, he stretched out his hands forward, groped to the top of the stairs, held on to the railing, and went down step by step.On the second-floor landing, he felt an inexplicable panic.He sat in the corner, holding his head.His hands touched something, and the smell was very unpleasant, but he didn't bother to wipe it off.Let it happen, he thought desperately; I've done my best. A cry came down the stairs, so loud and terrible that it woke all the sleepers.As for himself, he heard nothing, he was out of his mind; time was running out.

When he woke up, the darkness around him was so thick that he almost felt his eyeballs being oppressed.Where he is, who he is, he has no idea at all.Others are awake, fully conscious, that's all.He seemed to have been born just a minute ago, into a world of long nights. Calm down, as if his consciousness wanted to eliminate his panic, he told him: You have been here before --- don't panic, something is coming back soon. An object fell vertically through space and entered his body.He is that object.The air was rushing: he was the one who felt it.There was a throat choked with fear: that was his throat.

Let it die, he thought, let it die! He tried to move his arm, but it was pinned under his body and he couldn't move it.He foolishly tried to pull it out.There was a bad smell and his clothes were damp.Like ice cubes formed in water, the memories finally solidified: who was he?where is heThe urgent hope that came with the memory was to get out of here quickly, before others saw him in such a mess. He carries the baggage of seizures all over the world.He never revealed to others how much time he spent listening to their warnings, trying to read their signs.Why am I cursed?He cried out from the bottom of his heart, struck the ground with his staff, and asked the rock to answer.But he was not Moses, and the rock was not cleft.That trance state is not enlightenment in itself.They are by no means apparitions.They were nothing—just the life that seemed to be sucked out of his body by a whirlwind one by one, and after the life was sucked out, only dark memories were left.

He stood up and groped his way up the last flight of stairs.He was shaking and cold.It was already dawn when he reached the clearing outside.It snowed at night.There was a misty, pulsating crimson on top of the snow.The color was not on the snow but from his eyes; he could not shake it off.His eyelids twitched uncomfortably, and he covered them with cold hands.His head hurts, as if a fist inside is clenched and let go.His hat had fallen somewhere on the stairs. Bareheaded and in soiled clothes, he trudged through the snow to the chapel of the Saviour, near the stone bridge, and hid until he was sure Matrona and her mother had left the house.Then I went back to the apartment, boiled hot water, took off my clothes, and washed my body.He also washed his underwear and hung them to dry in the bathroom.He thought: Pavel is lucky, he is not my own, so he will not suffer from epilepsy.He suddenly realized the irony of these words, and gritted his teeth.He had a splitting headache, and everything he saw was still covered with a layer of red mist.He lay down in his dressing gown and rocked to sleep.

An hour later, he woke up, irritable and sullen.The throbbing pain of the eyeballs seemed to come back to the head.His skin was as fragile as paper, and it hurt to the touch. In his dressing gown, naked, he walked softly about Anna Sergeyevna's room, opening cupboards and rummaging in drawers.All items are neatly arranged and tidy. In the drawer he found a frame of photographs wrapped in a big red velvet cloth, in which Anna Sergeyevna was younger than now, and the man next to him was probably the painter Korenkin.Korenkin was dressed in his best clothes for Sunday church, but looked haggard, old, and tired.What could their marriage be like for this passionate young, darkly pretty woman?Why is this picture stuffed in the corner of a drawer?He purposely soiled the glass when he put the photo back, leaving his thumbprint on the face of the deceased man.