A. Chekhov -
Betrothed
I II
III IV
V VI
II When Nadya woke up it must have been two o'clock, it was
beginning to get light. A watchman was tapping somewhere far
away. She was not sleepy, and her bed felt very soft and
uncomfortable. Nadya sat up in her bed and fell to thinking as
she had done every night in May. Her thoughts were the same as
they had been the night before, useless, persistent thoughts,
always alike, of how Andrey Andreitch had begun courting her and
had made her an offer, how she had accepted him and then little
by little had come to appreciate the kindly, intelligent man.
But for some reason now when there was hardly a month left
before the wedding, she began to feel dread and uneasiness as
though something vague and oppressive were before her.
"Tick-tock, tick-tock . . ." the watchman tapped lazily. ". . .
Tick-tock."
Through the big old-fashioned window she could see the garden
and at a little distance bushes of lilac in full flower, drowsy
and lifeless from the cold; and the thick white mist was
floating softly up to the lilac, trying to cover it. Drowsy
rooks were cawing in the far-away trees.
"My God, why is my heart so heavy?"
Perhaps every girl felt the same before her wedding. There was
no knowing! Or was it Sasha's influence? But for several years
past Sasha had been repeating the same thing, like a copybook,
and when he talked he seemed nave and queer. But why was it she
could not get Sasha out of her head? Why was it?
The watchman left off tapping for a long while. The birds were
twittering under the windows and the mist had disappeared from
the garden. Everything was lighted up by the spring sunshine as
by a smile. Soon the whole garden, warm and caressed by the sun,
returned to life, and dewdrops like diamonds glittered on the
leaves and the old neglected garden on that morning looked young
and gaily decked.
Granny was already awake. Sasha's husky cough began. Nadya could
hear them below, setting the samovar and moving the chairs. The
hours passed slowly, Nadya had been up and walking about the
garden for a long while and still the morning dragged on.
At last Nina Ivanovna appeared with a tear-stained face,
carrying a glass of mineral water. She was interested in
spiritualism and homeopathy, read a great deal, was fond of
talking of the doubts to which she was subject, and to Nadya it
seemed as though there were a deep mysterious significance in
all that.
Now Nadya kissed her mother and walked beside her.
"What have you been crying about, mother?" she asked.
"Last night I was reading a story in which there is an old man
and his daughter. The old man is in some office and his chief
falls in love with his daughter. I have not finished it, but
there was a passage which made it hard to keep from tears," said
Nina Ivanovna and she sipped at her glass. "I thought of it this
morning and shed tears again."
"I have been so depressed all these days," said Nadya after a
pause. "Why is it I don't sleep at night!"
"I don't know, dear. When I can't sleep I shut my eyes very
tightly, like this, and picture to myself Anna Karenin moving
about and talking, or something historical from the ancient
world. . . ."
Nadya felt that her mother did not understand her and was
incapable of understanding. She felt this for the first time in
her life, and it positively frightened her and made her want to
hide herself; and she went away to her own room.
At two o'clock they sat down to dinner. It was Wednesday, a fast
day, and so vegetable soup and bream with boiled grain were set
before Granny.
To tease Granny Sasha ate his meat soup as well as the vegetable
soup. He was making jokes all through dinner-time, but his jests
were laboured and invariably with a moral bearing, and the
effect was not at all amusing when before making some witty
remark he raised his very long, thin, deathly-looking fingers;
and when one remembered that he was very ill and would probably
not be much longer in this world, one felt sorry for him and
ready to weep.
After dinner Granny went off to her own room to lie down. Nina
Ivanovna played on the piano for a little, and then she too went
away.
"Oh, dear Nadya!" Sasha began his usual afternoon conversation,
"if only you would listen to me! If only you would!"
She was sitting far back in an old-fashioned armchair, with her
eyes shut, while he paced slowly about the room from corner to
corner.
"If only you would go to the university," he said. "Only
enlightened and holy people are interesting, it's only they who
are wanted. The more of such people there are, the sooner the
Kingdom of God will come on earth. Of your town then not one
stone will be left, everything will he blown up from the
foundations, everything will be changed as though by magic. And
then there will be immense, magnificent houses here, wonderful
gardens, marvellous fountains, remarkable people. . . . But
that's not what matters most. What matters most is that the
crowd, in our sense of the word, in the sense in which it exists
now -- that evil will not exist then, because every man will
believe and every man will know what he is living for and no one
will seek moral support in the crowd. Dear Nadya, darling girl,
go away! Show them all that you are sick of this stagnant, grey,
sinful life. Prove it to yourself at least!"
"I can't, Sasha, I'm going to be married."
"Oh nonsense! What's it for!"
They went out into the garden and walked up and down a little.
"And however that may be, my dear girl, you must think, you must
realize how unclean, how immoral this idle life of yours is,"
Sasha went on. "Do understand that if, for instance, you and
your mother and your grandmother do nothing, it means that
someone else is working for you, you are eating up someone
else's life, and is that clean, isn't it filthy?"
Nadya wanted to say "Yes, that is true"; she wanted to say that
she understood, but tears came into her eyes, her spirits
drooped, and shrinking into herself she went off to her room.
Towards evening Andrey Andreitch arrived and as usual played the
fiddle for a long time. He was not given to much talk as a rule,
and was fond of the fiddle, perhaps because one could be silent
while playing. At eleven o'clock when he was about to go home
and had put on his greatcoat, he embraced Nadya and began
greedily kissing her face, her shoulders, and her hands.
"My dear, my sweet, my charmer," he muttered. "Oh how happy I
am! I am beside myself with rapture!"
And it seemed to her as though she had heard that long, long
ago, or had read it somewhere . . . in some old tattered novel
thrown away long ago. In the dining-room Sasha was sitting at
the table drinking tea with the saucer poised on his five long
fingers; Granny was laying out patience; Nina Ivanovna was
reading. The flame crackled in the ikon lamp and everything, it
seemed, was quiet and going well. Nadya said good-night, went
upstairs to her room, got into bed and fell asleep at once. But
just as on the night before, almost before it was light, she
woke up. She was not sleepy, there was an uneasy, oppressive
feeling in her heart. She sat up with her head on her knees and
thought of her fianc and her marriage. . . . She for some
reason remembered that her mother had not loved her father and
now had nothing and lived in complete dependence on her
mother-in-law, Granny. And however much Nadya pondered she could
not imagine why she had hitherto seen in her mother something
special and exceptional, how it was she had not noticed that she
was a simple, ordinary, unhappy woman.
And Sasha downstairs was not asleep, she could hear him
coughing. He is a queer, nave man, thought Nadya, and in all
his dreams, in all those marvellous gardens and wonderful
fountains one felt there was something absurd. But for some
reason in his navet, in this very absurdity there was
something so beautiful that as soon as she thought of the
possibility of going to the university, it sent a cold thrill
through her heart and her bosom and flooded them with joy and
rapture.
"But better not think, better not think . . ." she whispered. "I
must not think of it."
"Tick-tock," tapped the watchman somewhere far away. "Tick-tock
. . . tick-tock. . . ."
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