Текст книги "The Insulted and the Injured"

Автор книги: Федор Достоевский

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The Insulted and the Injured, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Chapter XIII

THE old man came in. He looked at us with curiosity and as though ashamed of something, frowned and went up to the table.

“Where’s the samovar?” he asked. “Do you mean to say she couldn’t bring it till now?”

“It’s coming, my dear, it’s coming. Here, she’s brought it!” said Anna Andreyevna fussily.

Matryona appeared with the samovar as soon as she saw Nikolay Serge, as though she had been waiting to bring it till he came in. She was an old, tried and devoted servant, but the most self-willed and grumbling creature in the world, with an obstinate and stubborn character. She was afraid of Nikolay Sergeyitch and always curbed her tongue in his presence. But she made-up for it with Anna Andreyevna, was rude to her at every turn, and openly attempted to govern her mistress , though at the same time she had a warm and genuine affection for her and for Natasha. I had known Matryona in the old days at Ichmenyevka.

“Hm! ... It’s not pleasant when one’s wet through and they won’t even get one tea,” the old man muttered.

Anna Andreyevna at once made a sign to me. He could not endure these mysterious signals; and though at the minute he tried not to look at us, one could see from his face that Anna Andreyevna had just signalled to me about him, and that he was fully aware of it.

“I have been to see about my case, Vanya,” he began suddenly. “It’s a wretched business. Did I tell you? It’s going against me altogether. It appears I’ve no proofs; none of the papers I ought to have. My facts cannot be authenticated it seems. Hm!...”

He was speaking of his lawsuit with the prince, which was still dragging on, but had taken a very bad turn for Nikolay Sergevitch. I was silent, not knowing what to answer. He looked suspiciously at me.

“Well!” he brought out suddenly, as though irritated by our silence, “the quicker the better! They won’t make a scoundrel of me, even if they do decide I must pay. I have my conscience, so let them decide. Anyway, the case will be over; it will be settled. I shall be ruined ... I’ll give up everything and go to Siberia.”

“Good heavens! What a place to go to! And why so far?” Anna Andreyevna could not resist saying.

“And here what are we near?” he asked gruffly, as though glad of the objection.

“Why, near people . . . anyway,” began Anna Andreyevna, and she glanced at me in distress.

“What sort of people?” he cried, turning his feverish eyes from me to her and back again. “What people? Robbers, slanderers, traitors? There are plenty such everywhere; don’t be uneasy, we shall find them in Siberia too. If you don’t want to come with me you can stay here. I won’t take you against your will.”

“Nikolay Sergeyitch, my dear! With whom should I stay without you? Why, I’ve no one but you in the whole ...”

She faltered, broke off, and turned to me with a look of alarm, as though begging for help and support. The old man was irritated and was ready to take offence at anything; it was impossible to contradict him.

“Come now, Anna Andreyevna,” said I. “It’s not half as bad in Siberia as you think. If the worst comes to the worst and you have to sell Ichmenyevka, Nikolay Sergeyitch’s plan is very good in fact. In Siberia you might get a good private job, and then...”

“Well, you’re talking sense, Ivan, anyway. That’s just what I thought. I’ll give up everything and go away.”

“Well, that I never did expect,” cried Anna Andreyevna, flinging up her hands. “And you too, Vanya! I didn’t expect it of you! ... Why, you’ve never known anything but kindness from us and now ...”

“Ha, ha, ha! What else did you expect? Why, what are we to live upon, consider that! Our money spent, we’ve come to our last farthing. Perhaps you’d like me to go to Prince Pyotr Alexandrovitch and beg his pardon, eh?”

Hearing the prince’s name, Anna Andreyevna trembled with alarm. The teaspoon in her hand tinkled against the saucer.

“Yes, speaking seriously,” the old man went on, working himself up with malicious, obstinate pleasure, “what do you think, Vanya? Shouldn’t I really go to him? Why go to Siberia? I’d much better comb my hair, put on my best clothes, and brush myself tomorrow; Anna Andreyevna will get me a new shirt-front (one can’t go to see a person like that without!), buy me gloves, to be the correct thing; and then I’ll go to his excellency: ‘Your excellency, little father, benefactor! Forgive me and have pity on me! Give me a crust of bread! I’ve a wife and little children! . . .‘Is that right, Anna Andreyevna? Is that what you want?”

“My dear; I want nothing! I spoke without thinking. Forgive me if I vexed you, only don’t shout,” she brought out, trembling more and more violently in her terror.

I am convinced that everything was topsy-turvy and aching in his heart at that moment, as he looked at his poor wife’s tears and alarm. I am sure that he was suffering far more than she was, but he could not control himself. So it is sometimes with the most good-natured people of weak nerves, who in spite of their kindliness are carried away till they find enjoyment in their own grief and anger, and try to express themselves at any cost, even that of wounding some other innocent creature, always by preference the one nearest and dearest. A woman sometimes has a craving to feel unhappy and aggrieved, though she has no misfortune or grievance. There are many men like women in this respect, and men, indeed, by no means feeble, and who have very little that is feminine about them. The old man had a compelling impulse to quarrel, though he was made miserable by it himself.

I remember that the thought dawned on me at the time: hadn’t he perhaps really before this gone out on some project such as Anna Andreyevna suspected? What if God had softened his heart, and he had really been going to Natasha, and had changed his mind on the way, or something had gone wrong and made him give up his intentions, as was sure to happen; and so he had returned home angry and humiliated, ashamed of his recent feelings and wishes, looking out for someone on whom to vent his anger for his weakness, and pitching on the very ones whom he suspected of sharing the same feeling and wishes. Perhaps when he wanted to forgive his daughter, he pictured the joy and rapture of his poor Anna Andreyevna, and when it came to nothing she was of course the first to suffer for it.

But her look of hopelessness, as she trembled with fear before him, touched him. He seemed ashamed of his wrath, and for a minute controlled himself. We were all silent. I was trying not to look at him. But the good moment did not last long. At all costs he must express himself by some outburst, or a curse if need be.

“You see, Vanya,” he said suddenly, “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to speak, but the time has come when I must speak out openly without evasion, as every straightforward man ought ... do you understand, Vanya? I’m glad you have come, and so I want to say aloud in your presence so that others may hear that I am sick of all this nonsense, all these tears, and sighs, an misery. What I have torn out of my heart, which bleeds and aches perhaps, will never be back in my heart again. Yes! I’ve said so and I’ll act on it. I’m speaking of what happened six months ago – you understand, Vanya? And I speak of this so openly, so directly, that you may make no mistake about my words,” he added, looking at me with blazing eyes and obviously avoiding his wife’s frightened glances. “I repeat: this is nonsense; I won’t have it!... It simply maddens me that everyone looks upon me as capable of having such a low, weak feeling, as though I were a fool, as though I were the most abject scoundrel ... they imagine I am going mad with grief... Nonsense! I have castaway, I have forgotten my old feelings! I have no memory of it! No! no! no! and no!...”

He jumped up from his chair, and struck the table so that the cups tinkled.

“Nicholay Sergeyitch! Have you no feeling for Anna Andreyevna! Look what you are doing to her!” I said, unable to restrain myself and looking at him almost with indignation. But it was only pouring oil on the flames.

“No, I haven’t!” he shouted, trembling and turning white. “I haven’t, for no one feels for me! For in my own house they’re all plotting against me in my dishonour and on the side of my depraved daughter, who deserves my curse, and an punishment! . . .”

“Nikolay Sergeyitch, don’t curse her! ... Anything you like only don’t curse our daughter!” screamed Anna Andreyevna.

“I will curse her!” shouted the old man, twice as loud as before; “because, insulted and dishonoured as I am, I am expected to go to the accursed girl and ask her forgiveness. Yes, yes, that’s it! I’m tormented in this way in my own house day and night, day and night, with tears and sighs and stupid hints! They try to soften me.... Look, Vanya, look,” he added, with trembling hands hastily taking papers out of his side-pocket, “here are the notes of our case. It’s made out that I’m a thief, that I’m a cheat, that I have robbed my benefactor!... I am discredited, disgraced, because of her! There, there, look, look! . . .”

And he began polling out of the side-pocket of his coat various papers, and throwing them on the table one after another, hunting impatiently amongst them for the one he wanted to show me; but, as luck would have it, the one he sought was not forthcoming. Impatiently he pulled out of his pocket all he had clutched in his hand, and suddenly something fell heavily on the table with a clink. Anna Andreyevna uttered a shriek. It was the lost locket.

I could scarcely believe my eyes. The blood rushed to the old man’s head and flooded his cheeks; he started. Anna Andreyevna stood with clasped hands looking at him imploringly. Her face beamed with joyful hope. The old man’s flush, his shame before us.... Yes, she was not mistaken, she knew now how her locket had been lost!

She saw that he had picked it up, had been delighted at his find, and, perhaps, quivering with joy, had jealously hidden it from all eyes; that in solitude, unseen by all, he had gazed at the face of his adored child with infinite love, had gazed and could not gaze enough; that perhaps like the poor mother he had shut himself away from everyone to talk to his precious Natasha, imagining her replies and answering them himself; and at night with agonizing grief, with suppressed sobs, he had caressed and kissed the dear image, and instead of curses invoked forgiveness and blessings on her whom he would not see and cursed before others.

“My dear, so you love her still!” cried Anna Andreyevna, unable to restrain herself further in the presence of the stern father who had just cursed her Natasha.

But no sooner had he heard her exclamation than an insane fury flashed in his eyes. He snatched up the locket, threw it violently on the ground, and began furiously stamping on it.

“I curse you, I curse you, for ever and ever!” he shouted hoarsely, gasping for breath. “For ever! For ever!”

“Good God!” cried the mother. “Her! My Natasha! Her little face! . . . trampling on it! Trampling on it! Tyrant cruel, unfeeling, proud man!”

Hearing his wife’s wail the frantic old man stopped short, horrified at what he was doing. All at once he snatched up the locket from the floor and rushed towards the door, but he had not taken two steps when he fell on his knees, and dropping his arms on the sofa before him let his head fall helplessly.

He sobbed like a child, like a woman. Sobs wrung his breast as though they would rend it. The threatening old man became all in a minute weaker than a child. Oh, now he could not have cursed her; now he felt no shame before either of us, and in a sudden rush of love covered with kisses the portrait he had just been trampling underfoot. It seemed as though all his tenderness, all his love for his daughter so long restrained, burst out now with irresistible force and shattered his whole being.

“Forgive, forgive her!” Anna Andreyevna exclaimed, sobbing, bending over him and embracing him, “Bring her back to her home, my dear, and at the dread day of judgement God will reward you for your mercy and humility! ...”

“No, no! Not for anything! Never!” he exclaimed in a husky choking voice, “never! never!”

Last updated on Wed Jan 12 09:26:21 2011 for eBooks@Adelaide.

The Insulted and the Injured, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Chapter XIV

IT was late, ten o’clock, when I got to Natasha’s. She was living at that time in Fontanka, near the Semyonov bridge, on the fourth floor, in the dirty block of buildings belonging to the merchant Kolotushkin. When first she left home she had lived for a time with Alyosha in a very nice flat, small, but pretty and convenient, on the third storey of a house in Liteyny. But the young prince’s resources were soon exhausted. He did not become a music teacher, but borrowed money and was soon very heavily in debt. He spent his money on decorating the flat and on making presents to Natasha, who tried to check his extravagance, scolded him, and sometimes even cried about it. Alyosha, with his emotional and impressionable nature, revelled sometimes for a whole week in dreams of how he would make her a present and how she would receive it, making of this a real treat for himself, and rapturously telling me beforehand of his dreams and anticipations. Then he was so downcast at her tears and reproofs that one felt sorry for him, and as time went on these presents became the occasion of reproaches, bitterness, and quarrels. Moreover, Alyosha spent a great deal of money without telling Natasha, was led away by his companions and was unfaithful to her. He visited all sorts of Josephines and Minnas; though at the same time he loved her dearly. His love for her was a torment to him. He often came to see me depressed and melancholy, declaring that he was not worth Natasha’s little finger, that he was coarse and wicked, incapable of understanding her and unworthy of her love. He was to some extent right. There was no sort of equality between them; he felt like a child compared with her, and she always looked upon him as a child. He repented with tears of his relations with Josephine, while he besought me not to speak of them to Natasha. And when, timid and trembling after these open confessions, he went back to her with me (insisting on my coming, declaring that he was afraid to look at her after what he had done, and that I was the one person who could help him through), Natasha knew from the first glance at him what was the matter. She was terribly jealous, and I don’t know how it was she always forgave him all his lapses. This was how it usually happened: Alyosha would go in with me, timidly address her, and look with timid tenderness into her eyes. She guessed at once that he had been doing wrong, but showed no sign of it, was never the first to begin on the subject, on the contrary, always redoubled her caresses and became tenderer and more lively – and this was not acting or premeditated strategy on her part. No; for her fine nature there was a sort of infinite bliss in forgiving and being merciful; as though in the very process of forgiving Alyosha she found a peculiar, subtle charm. It is true that so far it was only the question of Josephines. Seeing her kind and forgiving, Alyosha could not restrain himself and at once confessed the whole story without being asked any questions – to relieve his heart and “to be the same as before,” as she said. When he had received her forgiveness he grew ecstatic at once, sometimes even cried with joy and emotion kissed and embraced her. Then at once his spirits rose, and he would begin with childlike openness giving her a full account of his adventures with Josephine; he smiled and laughed, blessed Natasha, and praised her to the skies, and the evening ended happily and merrily. When all his money was spent he began selling things. As Natasha insisted upon it, a cheap little flat in Fontanka was found for her. Their things went on being sold; Natasha now even sold her clothes and began looking for work. When Alyosha heard of it his despair knew no bounds, he cursed himself, cried out that he despised himself, but meantime did nothing to improve the position. By now this last resource was exhausted; nothing was left for Natasha but work, and that was very poorly paid!

At first when they lived together, there had been a violent quarrel between Alyosha and his father. Prince Valkovsky’s designs at the time to marry his son to Katerina Fyodorovna Filimonov, the countess’s stepdaughter, were so far only a project. But the project was a cherished one. He took Alyosha to see the young lady, coaxed him to try and please her, and attempted to persuade him by arguments and severity. But the plan fell through owing to the countess. Then Alyosha’s father began to shut his eyes to his son’s affair with Natasha, leaving it to time. Knowing Alyosha’s fickleness and frivolity he hoped that the love affair would soon be over. As for the possibility of his marrying Natasha, the prince had till lately ceased to trouble his mind about it. As for the lovers they put off the question till a formal reconciliation with his father was possible, or vaguely till some change of circumstances. And Natasha was evidently unwilling to discuss the subject. Alyosha told me in secret that his father was in a way rather pleased at the whole business. He was pleased at the humiliation of Ichmenyev. For form’s sake, he kept up a show of displeasure with his son, decreased his by no means liberal allowance (he was exceedingly stingy with him), and threatened to stop even that. But he soon went away to Poland in pursuit of the countess, who had business there. He was still as actively set on his project of the match. For though Alyosha was, it is true, rather young to be married, the girl was very wealthy, and it was too good a chance to let slip. The prince at last attained his object. The rumour reached us that the match was at last agreed upon. At the time I am describing, the prince had only just returned to Petersburg. He met his son affectionately, but the persistence of Alyosha’s connexion with Natasha was an unpleasant surprise to him. He began to have doubts, to feel nervous. He sternly and emphatically insisted on his son’s breaking it off, but soon hit upon a much more effectual mode of attack, and carried off Alyosha to the countess. Her step-daughter, though she was scarcely more than a child, was almost a beauty, gay, clever, and sweet, with a heart of rare goodness and a candid, uncorrupted soul. The prince calculated that the lapse of six months must have had some effect, that Natasha could no longer have the charm of novelty, and that his son would not now look at his proposed fiancee with the same eyes as he had six months before. He was only partly right in his reckoning ... Alyosha certainly was attracted. I must add that the father became all at once extraordinarily affectionate to him (though he still refused to give him money). Alyosha felt that his father’s greater warmth covered an unchanged, inflexible determination, and he was unhappy-but not so unhappy as he would have been if he had not seen Katerina Fyodorovna every day. I knew that he had not shown himself to Natasha for five days. On my way to her from the Ichmenyevs I guessed uneasily what she wanted to discuss with me. I could see a light in her window a long way off. It had long been arranged between us that she should put a candle in the window if she were in great and urgent need of me, so that if I happened to pass by (and this did happen nearly every evening) I might guess from the light in the window that I was expected and she needed me. Of late she had often put the candle in the window. . .

Last updated on Wed Jan 12 09:26:21 2011 for eBooks@Adelaide.

The Insulted and the Injured, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Chapter XV

I FOUND Natasha alone. She was slowly walking up and down the room, with her hands clasped on her bosom, lost in thought. A samovar stood on the table almost burnt out. It had been got ready for me long before. With a smile she held out her hand to me without speaking. Her face was pale and had an expression of suffering. There was a look of martyrdom, tenderness, patience, in her smile. Her clear blue eyes seemed to have grown bigger, her hair looked thicker from the wanness and thinness of her face.

“I began to think you weren’t coming,” she said, giving me her hand. “I was meaning to send Mavra to inquire; I was afraid you might be ill again.”

“No, I’m not ill. I was detained. I’ll tell you directly. But what’s the matter, Natasha, what’s happened?”

“Nothing’s happened,” she answered, surprised. “Why?”

“Why, you wrote . . . you wrote yesterday for me to come, and fixed the hour that I might not come before or after; and that’s not what you usually do.”

“Oh, yes! I was expecting him yesterday.”

“Why, hasn’t be been here yet?”

“No. I thought if he didn’t come I must talk things over with you,” she added, after a pause

“And this evening, did you expect him?”

“No, this evening he’s there.”

“What do you think, Natasha, won’t he come back at all?”

“Of course he’ll come,” she answered, looking at me with peculiar earnestness. She did not like the abruptness of my question. We lapsed into silence, walking up and down the room.

“I’ve been expecting you all this time, Vanya”, she began again with a smile. “And do you know what I was doing? I’ve been walking up and down, reciting poetry. Do you remember the bells, the winter road, ‘My samovar boils on the table of oak’ . . . ? We read it together:

“The snowstorm is spent; there’s a glimmer of light

From the millions of dim watching eyes of the night.

“And then:

“There’s the ring of a passionate voice in my ears

In the song of the bell taking part;

Oh, when will my loved one return from afar

To rest on my suppliant heart?

My life is no life! Rosy beams of the dawn

Are at play on the pane’s icy screen;

My samovar boils on my table of oak,

With the bright crackling fire the dark corner awoke,

And my bed with chintz curtains is seen.

“How fine that is. How tormenting those verses are, Vanya. And what a vivid, fantastic picture! It’s just a canvas with a mere pattern chalked on it. You can embroider what you like! Two sensations: the earliest, and the latest. That samovar, that chintz curtain – how homelike it all is. It’s like some little cottage in our little town at home; I feel as though I could see that cottage: a new one made of logs not yet weather-boarded ... And then another picture:

“Of a sudden I hear the same voice ringing out

With the bell; its sad accents I trace;

Oh, where’s my old friend? And I fear he’ll come in

With eager caress and embrace.

What a life, I endure! But my tears are in vain.

Oh, how dreary my room! Through the chinks the wind blows

And outside the house but one cherry-tree grows,

Perhaps that has perished by now though – who knows?

It’s hid by the frost on the pane.

The flowers on the curtain have lost their gay tone,

And I wander sick; all my kinsfolk I shun,

There’s no one to scold me or love me, not one,

The old woman grumbles alone....

‘I wander sick.’ That sick is so well put in. ‘There’s no one to scold me.’ That tenderness, what softness in that line; and what agonies of memory, agonies one has caused oneself, and one broods over them. Heavens, how fine it is! How true it is! ...”

She ceased speaking, as though struggling with a rising spasm in her throat.

“Dear Vanya!” she said a minute later, and she paused again, as though she had forgotten what she meant to say, or had spoken without thinking, from a sudden feeling.

Meanwhile we still walked up and down the room. A lamp burned before the ikon. Of late Natasha had become more and more devout, and did not like one to speak of it to her.

“Is tomorrow a holiday?” I asked. “Your lamp is lighted.”

“No, it’s not a holiday ... but, Vanya, sit down. You must be tired. Will you have tea? I suppose you’ve not had it yet?”

“Let’s sit down, Natasha. I’ve had tea already.”

“Where have you come from?”

“From them.”

That’s how we always referred to her old home.

“From them? How did you get time? Did you go of your own accord? Or did they ask you?”

She besieged me with questions. Her face grew still paler with emotion. I told her in detail of my meeting with her father, my conversation with her mother, and the scene with the locket. I told her in detail, describing every shade of feeling. I never concealed anything from her, She listened eagerly, catching every word I uttered, the tears glittered in her eyes. The scene with the locket affected her deeply.

“Stay, stay, Vanya,” she said, often interrupting my story. “Tell me more exactly everything, everything as exactly as possible; you don’t tell me exactly enough ......”

I repeated it again and again, replying every moment to her continual questions about the details.

“And you really think he was coming to see me?”

“I don’t know, Natasha, and in fact I can’t make up my mind; that he grieves for you and loves you is clear; but that he was coming to you is ... is . . .”

“And he kissed the locket?” she interrupted. “What did he say when he kissed it?”

“It was incoherent. Nothing but exclamations; he called you by the tenderest names; he called for you.”

“Called for me?”

“Yes.”

She wept quietly.

“Poor things!” she said. “And if he knows everything,” she added after a brief silence, “it’s no wonder.. He hears a great deal about Alyosha’s father, too.”

“Natasha,” I said timidly, “let us go to them.”

“When?” she asked, turning pale and almost getting up from her chair.

She thought I was urging her to go at once.

“No, Vanya,” she added, putting her two hands on my shoulders, and smiling sadly; “no, dear, that’s what you’re always saying, but ... we’d better not talk about it.”

“Will this horrible estrangement never be ended?” I cried mournfully. “Can you be so proud that you won’t take the first step? It’s for you to do it; you must make the first advance. Perhaps your father’s only waiting for that to forgive you.... He’s your father; he has been injured by you! Respect his pride – it’s justifiable, it’s natural! You ought to do it. Only try, and he will forgive you unconditionally.”

“Unconditionally! That’s impossible. And don’t reproach me, Vanya, for nothing. I’m thinking of it day and night, and I think of it now. There’s not been a day perhaps since I left them that I haven’t thought of it. And how often we have talked about it! You know yourself it’s impossible.”

“Try!”

“No, my dear, it’s impossible. If I were to try I should only make him more bitter against me. There’s no bringing back what’s beyond recall. And you know what it is one can never bring back? One can never bring back those happy, childish days I spent with them. If my father forgave me he would hardly know me now. He loved me as a little girl; a grown-up child. He admired my childish simplicity. He used to pat me on the head just as when I was a child of seven and used to sit upon his knee and sing him my little childish songs. From my earliest childhood up to the last day he used to come to my bed and bless me for the night. A month before our troubles he bought me some ear-rings as a secret (but I knew all about it), and was as pleased as a child, imagining how delighted I should be with the present, and was awfully angry with everyone, and with me especially, when he found out that I had known all about him buying the ear-rings for a long time. Three days before I went away he noticed that I was depressed, and he became so depressed himself that it made him ill, and – would you believe it – to divert my mind he proposed taking tickets for the theatre! ... Yes, indeed, he thought that would set me right. I tell you he knew and loved me as a little girl, and refused even to think that I should one day be a woman... It’s never entered his head. If I were to go home now he would not know me. Even if he did forgive me he’d meet quite a different person now. I’m not the same; I’m not a child now. I have gone through a great deal Even if he were satisfied with me he still would sigh for his past happiness, and grieve that I am not the same as I used to be when he loved me as a child. The past always seems best! It’s remembered with anguish! Oh, how good the past was, Vanya!” she cried, carried away by her own words, and interrupting herself with this exclamation which broke painfully from her heart.

“That’s all true that you say, Natasha,” I said. “So he will have to learn to know and love you afresh. To know you especially. He will love you, of course. Surely you can’t think that he’s incapable of knowing and understanding you, he, with his heart?”

“Oh, Vanya, don’t be unfair! What is there to understand in me? I didn’t mean that. You see, there’s something else: father’s love is jealous, too; he’s hurt that all began and was settled with Alyosha without his knowledge, that he didn’t know it and failed to see it. He knows that he did not foresee it, and he puts down the unhappy consequences of our love and my flight to my ‘ungrateful’ secretiveness. I did not come to him at the beginning. I did not afterwards confess every impulse of my heart to him; on the contrary I hid it in myself. I concealed it from him and I assure you, Vanya, this is secretly a worse injury, a worse insult to him than the facts themselves – that I left them and have abandoned myself to my lover. Supposing he did meet me now like a father, warmly and affectionately, yet the seed of discord would remain. The next day, or the day after, there would be disappointments, misunderstandings, reproaches. What’s more, he won’t forgive without conditions, even if I say – and say it truly from the bottom of my heart – that I understand how I have wounded him and how badly I’ve behaved to him. And though it will hurt me if he won’t understand how much all this happiness with Alyosha has cost me myself, what miseries I have been through, I will stifle my feelings, I will put up with anything – but that won’t be enough for him. He will insist on an impossible atonement; he will insist on my cursing my past, cursing Alyosha and repenting of my love for him. He wants what’s impossible, to bring back the past and to erase the last six months from our life. But I won’t curse anyone, and I can’t repent. It’s no one’s doing; it just happened so.... No, Vanya, it can’t be now. The time has not come.”