Netochka Nezvanova (Penguin ed.) Page 8

  ‘Quiet now.’ He spoke in a whisper, urging me to be quick. The picture was hanging high on the wall. The two of us fetched a chair, put a stool on it, clambered up and, after prolonged effort, took it down. At last everything was ready for our journey. He took me by the hand and again we were about to depart when father suddenly stopped me. He scratched his forehead for a long time as though there were something he had forgotten to do. Finally he seemed to find what it was, and searched for the key which was under mother’s pillow, then rummaged hurriedly through the chest of drawers. At last he came back to me, holding some money which he had found in the box.

  ‘Here, take this,’ he whispered to me. ‘Don’t lose it, remember, you must remember!’ At first he put the money in my hand, then took it back and thrust it in the top of my dress. I remember shuddering when I felt the silver against my body, and I think it was then that I first understood the meaning of money. We were ready once more, but again he suddenly stopped me.

  ‘Netochka,’ he said, as if gathering strength. ‘My little child, I have forgotten… What is it?… What do we need?… I can’t remember… Yes, yes, I’ve got it, I remember!… Come here Netochka!’

  He took me over to the corner where the icon stood and told me to kneel down.

  ‘Pray, my child, pray! You’ll feel better!… Yes, really, it’ll make you better,’ he whispered, pointing to the icon and looking at me rather strangely. ‘Say your prayers,’ he said in an imploring voice.

  I went down on my knees and clasped my hands. I was once more filled with horror and despair, which completely overwhelmed me. I sank to the floor where I lay for some minutes like a dying person. I concentrated all my thoughts and feelings in prayer, but was overcome with fear. I got up exhausted with anguish. I no longer wished to go with him; I was afraid of him and I wanted to stay where I was. At last the thought that was tormenting and torturing me burst forth: ‘Papa,’ I said, breaking into tears, ‘what about Mama?… What’s the matter with Mama? Where is she? Where is my Mama?’

  I could not go on – my face was flooded with tears.

  He, too, was in tears as he looked at me. Taking me by the hand, he led me over to the corner of the bed, threw aside the heap of clothing and pulled back the blankets. My God! There she was, lying there dead, already cold and blue. I flung myself frantically on top of her and embraced her corpse. Father pushed me on to my knees.

  ‘Bow down to her, child!’ he said. ‘Say goodbye to her…’ I bowed down. My father knelt beside me. He was horribly pale, his lips quivered and he was whispering something: ‘It wasn’t me, Netochka, it wasn’t me.’ He pointed at the dead body with a trembling finger. ‘Do you hear? It wasn’t me, I’m not guilty of this. Remember, Netochka.’

  ‘Papa, let’s go,’ I whispered in terror. ‘It’s time!’

  ‘Yes, it is time now, we should have left long ago,’ he said, gripping me tightly by the hand and making to leave the room. ‘Now, let’s be off. Thank God, thank God it’s all over now!’ We went downstairs. The sleepy porter looked at us with suspicion as he unlocked the gate. Father, perhaps afraid of him, ran ahead through the gate, leaving me to catch up with him. We went down our street and came out on the bank of the canal. Snow had fallen on the pavements during the night and was now coming down in tiny flakes. It was cold; I was chilled to the bone and ran along beside father, clutching his coat-tails fitfully. His violin was under his arm, and he was continually stopping to hitch it up.

  We had been walking for a quarter of an hour when at last he turned along a sloping pavement which led down to the edge of the canal and sat down at the end of the kerbstone. Two steps away from us was a hole cut in the ice. There was not a soul in sight. Oh, God! How well I still remember the terrible feeling that overpowered me! At last everything that I had been dreaming of for a whole year had come true. We had left our miserable lodgings. But was this what I was expecting, was it this I had dreamt of, was this what I had created in my childish fantasy when I conjured up the happiness of the man whom I loved in such an unchildish way? At that moment it was, above all, the thought of my mother that tortured me the most. Why, I wondered, had we left her alone? Why had we abandoned her body like some useless object? I remember it was this that particularly troubled me.

  ‘Papa,’ I began, unable to bear the strain of my worry for her, ‘Papa!’

  ‘What is it?’ he said sullenly.

  ‘Why have we left Mama there, Papa? Why have we abandoned her?’ I asked, bursting into tears. ‘Papa, let’s go home again. Let’s fetch someone for her.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he exclaimed, and with a start he sprang up from the kerbstone as if suddenly struck by a solution to all his problems. ‘Yes, Netochka, it’s no use. You must go back to mother, she’s getting cold there! Go back to her, Netochka, go! It isn’t dark, there’s a candle there, don’t be afraid. Fetch someone for her and then come back to me. You go alone and I’ll be waiting here… I won’t go away.’

  I set off at once, but had scarcely reached the pavement when something suddenly seemed to stab me in the heart… I looked round and saw that he was already running in the opposite direction… he was running away from me, leaving me alone, abandoned in a moment! I screamed as loud as I could and, panic-stricken, I rushed to catch up with him. I was gasping for breath, but still he ran faster and faster… and he disappeared from sight. I stumbled on his hat on the road; it must have been lost in his flight. I picked it up and started running again. I was out of breath and my legs were giving way beneath me. I felt something indescribable was happening to me. I kept thinking it was a dream, and experienced sensations similar to those of my dreams: running away from someone, my legs failing me, and falling unconscious as the pursuer caught up with me. My heart was torn by an agonizing sensation. I felt sorry for him, and it made my heart bleed to think of him running away without an overcoat or a hat – and running away from me, his beloved child… I wanted to catch up with him, simply to kiss him warmly once more and to tell him not to be afraid of me; to calm him and reassure him that I would not run after him if he did not want me to, but would return to mother alone. At last, I caught sight of him disappearing down a side-street. Running in that direction, I turned down another, and could still make him out in front of me. Then my strength. gave out; I began crying and screaming. I remember that during my pursuit I bumped into a couple of passers-by, who had stopped in the middle of the road and were looking at us in amazement.

  ‘Papa, Papa!’ I cried for the last time, as I slipped on the pavement and fell at the gates of a house. I could feel my face bathed in blood. A moment later I lost consciousness.

  I woke up in a warm, soft bed, greeted by the kind, welcoming faces of people who seemed overjoyed at my recovery. I glimpsed an old lady with spectacles on her nose, a tall man looking at me with sincere compassion, a beautiful young woman and, lastly, a grey-haired old man who was holding my head and looking at his watch. I had woken to another existence. One of the people I had bumped into during my flight was Prince X., and it was at the gate to his house that I had fallen. When, after long investigations, they discovered who I was, the Prince (who had sent my father the ticket to S.’s concert) was struck by the unusual coincidence and decided to take me into his house and bring me up with his own children. They tried to find out what had happened to my father, and learnt that he had been spotted in a fit of raving madness somewhere on the outskirts of the town and had been taken to a hospital, where he had died two days later.

  He died because such a death was necessary to him, it was a natural sequel to his life. He was bound to die like that, once all the things that had supported him in his life had begun to crumble, fading like a ghost, like an incorporeal and empty dream. He died when his last hope had vanished, when in one instant everything with which he had deluded himself and which had sustained his entire existence disintegrated before his eyes. The unbearable glow of truth blinded him, and he recognized falsities for what they were. In his last hou
r he had heard an exceptional genius, forcing him to acknowledge his own worth and thus condemning him for ever. As the last note soared from the master’s violin, the whole mystery of art was revealed to him and real genius, eternally young, powerful and true, crushed him. It seemed as if all that had weighed on him during his life in mysterious, intangible torments; all that had deluded and tortured him in dreams from which he had fled in horror, protecting himself with a lie; all that he had had presentiments of, but had been too scared to face – all suddenly became crystal clear to him, naked to his sight which had, until then, refused to recognize light for light, darkness for darkness. The truth was more than his eyes could bear and, seeing for the first time what had been, what was and what awaited him, he was blinded as by a lightning stroke. The event he had been waiting for all his life, with fear and trembling, had suddenly arrived. There had always been an axe hanging over his head. All his life he had been tortured by the fear that at any moment it might fall and strike him… At last it fell! The blow was fatal. He tried to escape the sentence passed on him, but there was nowhere for him to escape; his last hope had vanished, his last pretext had disappeared. The woman who had hampered him for so many years, the woman who had stopped him from living, and with whose death he sought his own resurrection, was now dead. At last he was alone with no one to impede him; he was finally freed! For the last time, in convulsive anguish, he tried to judge himself, to judge himself severely and relentlessly like an impartial critic, but his weakened bow could only feebly repeat the last musical phrase of the genius… At that instant madness, which had been watching over him for ten years, struck him down once and for all.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I slowly regained my health; but even when I was no longer confined to my bed, my brain was still in a sort of stupor, and for a long time I could not understand what exactly had happened to me. There were moments when I thought I was dreaming, and I remember longing to find out that all that had taken place might really turn out to be a dream! Falling asleep at night, I used to hope that I would suddenly wake up and find myself once again in our miserable attic with father and mother… Eventually my position grew clearer to me, and I gradually understood that I was completely alone and living with strangers. Then, for the first time, I felt an orphan.

  I started to look about eagerly at all the new things that were surrounding me. At first everything seemed strange and wonderful; it all confused me: the new faces, new customs, the rooms of the old princely mansion… I can picture them now: large, high-ceilinged and luxurious, but so grim and gloomy that I remember being afraid of making my way across the long drawing-room, in which I used to feel totally lost. I had not yet completely recovered from my illness, and my thoughts were sombre and gloomy, in perfect harmony with this majestically lugubrious dwelling. Moreover, a melancholy that I did not myself understand was growing stronger and stronger in my young heart. I would stop in wonder before a picture, a mirror, an elaborately carved fireplace, or a statue that seemed to be deliberately hiding in some secluded niche in order to spy on me and frighten me. I would stop and then forget why I had stopped, what I wanted, what I had been thinking about and, recollecting myself, I felt afraid and agitated, my heart beating furiously.

  Among those who occasionally came to see how I was when I was lying ill in bed, there was one who, besides the old doctor impressed me the most. He was quite an elderly man, rather grave, but very kindly in his expression, and he used to look down at me with deep compassion. I liked his face more than any of the others. I longed to speak to him, but was too afraid; he always looked so despondent, spoke so little and so abruptly, and there was never so much as a trace of a smile on his lips. This was Prince X., the man who had found me and in whose house I was being looked after. As I began to get better, his visits became less frequent. On the last visit, he brought me some sweets and a children’s picture-book. Then he kissed me, made the sign of the cross over me and begged me to be more cheerful. He comforted me by saying that I should soon have a friend, his daughter Katya, a little girl like myself, who was now in Moscow. He said something to the governess, an elderly Frenchwoman, and to the nanny who was taking care of me, giving them instructions concerning me, and then he left. I did not see him again for three weeks.

  The Prince lived in complete solitude in his house. The Princess lived in the larger part of the house, and sometimes she, too, did not see him for weeks on end. Later on, I noticed that none of the members of the household spoke about him much, and they behaved as if he were not there. They all respected him, and one could see that they loved him too, and yet they regarded him as a strange man. It appeared that he himself realized that he was very odd, not quite like other people. He therefore avoided coming into contact with others. Later I will speak of him at greater length and in detail.

  One morning they dressed me in fine white linen, put me into a black woollen dress with white collars (on which I gazed with disconsolate wonder), brushed my hair and took me downstairs to the Princess’s apartments. I stood petrified when I entered her room; I had never before seen such wealth and grandeur. But it was a fleeting impression, and I went pale when I heard the Princess order that I should be brought closer. Even while they had been dressing me, I had had the feeling that I was being prepared for some ordeal, though God knows what suggested this to me. In truth, I entered into my new life with a strange mistrust of everything around me. But the Princess was very polite to me, and she kissed me. I looked at her a little less nervously. It was the same lovely lady whom I had seen when I first regained consciousness. But I trembled all over when I kissed her and could not summon the strength to answer her questions. She told me to sit down next to her on a low stool, a position I felt had been assigned to me beforehand. I could see that the Princess evidently wanted nothing more than to embrace me heart and soul; to pet me and to take the place of my mother. But I was incapable of appreciating my good fortune and did nothing to impress her. I was given a beautiful picture-book and told to look at it. The Princess was writing a letter, and every now and then she put aside her pen to speak to me again; but I was embarrassed and perplexed, and said nothing sensible. I admit that, although my life had been unusual – and fate, moving in mysterious ways, undoubtedly played an important role – and although there had been much in my life that was interesting, unaccountable and even fantastic, I myself turned out, as if in spite of this melodramatic background, to be a very ordinary child, scared, as it were, crushed, and rather silly. It was this last quality which particularly displeased the Princess, and I think she grew thoroughly tired of me after a short time, for which I had only myself to blame. Between two and three o’clock the visitors began to arrive, and the Princess at once became more attentive and affectionate towards me. In answer to the questions put to her about me, she said it was an extremely interesting story, and began telling it in French. As she recounted it, her visitors looked at me, nodding their heads and exclaiming. One young man eyed me through his lorgnette, another grey-haired and perfumed gentleman wanted to kiss me, while in the meantime I sat there with my eyes to the floor, shaking, frightened to move and alternately paling and flushing crimson. My heart ached. My mind turned to the past, to our attic, to father and our long evenings together, and to mother. When I thought of mother tears welled up in my eyes, there was a lump in my throat and I longed to run away, to disappear, to be alone… Then, when the visitors had left, the Princess’s face became visibly colder. She looked at me crossly, spoke abruptly and frightened me with her piercing black eyes, which she sometimes fixed on me for as long as a quarter of an hour, compressing her narrow lips. I was taken back upstairs in the evening. I fell asleep in a fever, and woke up during the night miserable and crying over my bad dreams. In the morning the whole procedure was repeated, and I was taken to see the Princess again.

  Eventually she grew bored of relating my adventures to her visitors, and they were weary of commiserating. Besides, I was such an ordinary child, ‘l
acking in any naïveté’, as I recall the Princess saying during a tête-à-tête with a middle-aged lady who asked her if she were not bored with me. And then one evening I was taken away, not to be brought back again. I was no longer shown any favouritism. However, I was allowed to wander around the house freely, wherever I liked. I felt too painfully and miserably morbid to be able to sit still for long, and was very glad to be able to escape from everyone into the large rooms downstairs. I remember that I had a special longing to talk to the servants, but was so afraid of annoying them that I remained alone. My favourite way of passing the time was to retreat to some corner, out of sight, where, hidden behind some piece of furniture, I would start remembering and visualizing all that had happened. But the strange thing was that I seemed to have forgotten what had happened at the very end of the ghastly episode with my parents. There remained only the mental picture to suggest the facts. I did remember it all really: the night, the violin, father. I remembered how I got the money for him, but somehow I could not interpret or explain all that had happened… Only my heart grew heavier, and when in my memories I came to the episode in which I was praying beside my dead mother, a cold shiver ran down my spine; I trembled, gave a faint cry and with stifled breath and a thumping heart rushed out of my corner in a panic. I was wrong, however, in saying that they left me alone, for I was watched closely and diligently. The Prince’s orders were performed with exactitude: he had given instructions that I was to be allowed complete freedom, was not to be restricted in any way, but that I was not to be let out of sight for a moment. I noticed that every so often one of the household would glance into whatever room I was in and then go away again without saying anything to me. I was very surprised and slightly perturbed by this attention; I could not understand why they were doing this. It seemed to me that I was being taken care of for some purpose, and that they wanted to do something to me later on. I remember that I was always trying to get further away, looking for a hiding-place in case of need. Once I found myself on the main staircase. It was wide, made of marble and covered with a carpet decorated with flowers and beautiful vases. Two tall men, brightly dressed, wearing gloves and very white cravats, sat in silence on each landing. I looked at them in amazement and failed to grasp why they sat there silently, doing nothing except staring at each other.