Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, page 45
“What do you think it’s like for a mother to hear this?” exclaimed the widow Euphrosyne.
“It’s horrible to hear, even if you’re not a mother,” replied Marema, who was thoroughly upset. The two women left in opposite directions: Euphrosyne went to the fish market; Marema went to Melita’s house.
XII
The widow Euphrosyne soon turned up, as she had promised, at Melita’s. She’d brought a delicious dish of fish, and as soon as she arrived, she began a conversation that aimed to make Melita agree to marry Prudentius. She wanted to get it over with as soon as possible, thinking that Melita would not resist. But Euphrosyne had miscalculated.
It was no use, the widow Euphrosyne arguing that they only had one man, the young and innocent Prudentius, left in two houses linked by a long-standing friendship; that they, the two women, had to look after him, because they both needed him; and that the best thing was for everyone to unite and live in one common household. Prudentius could hire himself a helmsman for a share of the profits and venture out to sea. The two women would wait for him to return and make his homecoming joyful and happy.
“And there’s no need to fear poverty,” Euphrosyne went on. “Prudentius now knows what Hyphas and Alcaeus bought and sold, and where, and he’ll carry on the business as before. I’m old now, and I don’t need bracelets or rings or necklaces, I’ll happily give them all to you, so you can add them to your own and put them on whenever you want. And in any case . . . in any case,” Euphrosyne lowered her voice, “I don’t know if it’s true, but there was a rumor that Hyphas and Alcaeus sometimes actually did smash other people’s boats and take their property by force. And everything they took, they shipped off to a little island, but that island is kept safe behind sharp rocks and turbulent currents and they were the only ones who knew about it. I hear it’s very hard to get through the sharp rocks to that island, but the island is actually habitable: it’s covered with vegetation, it’s got a source of fresh water that runs down from a rock, and in the middle there are two caves, one above the other: one cave has an entrance at ground level, but climbing into the other one is very difficult . . . A long time ago they made themselves somewhere to live in the top cave, and that’s where Alcaeus and Hyphas used to stay and hide when they were on the lookout for loot. They would sail out from there, attack and rob, and then vanish with their loot. They didn’t dig the caves out; they’re natural, and the one on top, on the edge of a high cliff, was so carefully hidden that no outsider had a hope of spotting it. The only way to get into it is to press against it with a pole that’s hidden in a very secret place at the bottom of a dark ravine. All you have to do is pick up the pole and put it away, and the top cave is impenetrable. But it’s small, compared with the lower cave, where, thanks to Alcaeus’s and Hyphas’s efforts, over the years a lot of goods have accumulated—a big store of wheat, dried fruit, dried fish, and barrels of various wines and olive oil and walnut oil. But there are also bales and whole trunks full of clothing and utensils, there are animal skins, purple dye, and everything you could imagine.”
“Yes, and it all belongs to other people . . . and it’s all wet with the tears and blood of the people they took it from,” Melita interrupted.
“Well, yes, of course, the people it was taken from . . . perhaps they . . . did weep . . . but all that was long ago . . .”
“But it still happened.”
“Well, it did, of course.”
“And they were shown no pity; they were robbed . . . and they were killed, too . . .”
“Perhaps.”
“There’s no ‘perhaps’ about it: it definitely happened! And their mothers and wives and children were waiting for them, of course . . . they gathered, they sobbed, and they cursed the crime . . . our husbands . . . Alcaeus and Hyphas.”
“You’re twisting it all again, Melita!”
“I don’t know how you can ignore it. It’s not my fault if my spirit keeps looking at what you refuse to see. To my mind, three years have passed since Hyphas died, and all that time Alcaeus was going to sea with your son. Poor Prudentius! Poor, innocent Prudentius! He’s saying nothing, he’s hiding it, but of course he did everything that Alcaeus used to do, he helped him raid people at sea, rob them of their wine, fruit, grain, and other goods, and drown the people themselves in the sea . . . and hit them with an oar if they surfaced.”
“Oh, Melita, life is just the same on earth as at sea: one man hits, the other drowns!”
“True! And that’s what you call ‘living.’ Never taking your eyes off each other, dashing about, grabbing and acquiring whatever you can steal from one another, then hiding it all where nobody can get at it . . . What for? What for? No, I agree with you that our whole life, on water or on dry land, is like that, but I can’t go along with it: I don’t want it . . . I’m not going to fight for a bigger share of anything in life. And now I’m free to act, because Alcaeus’s death has released me from all my vows.”
The widow Euphrosyne then embraced her and told her straight out why she’d come: in order to get Melita to agree to marry again, to marry Prudentius who was so passionately in love with her. But Melita exclaimed, “What! Marry again! Another set of vows and more worries about keeping them? Never, not for anything in the world!”
“But what don’t you like about my son, Prudentius?”
“I don’t dislike him at all, but I dislike the obligations that come with remarriage.”
“But why?”
“I don’t consider that constantly thinking about how to please a husband is the best way to live.”
“But what could be better?”
“What’s better? Living for the common good, especially for the good of those who have a hard life in this world. That’s what the Father of our God wants.”
“The gods want people to live and multiply.”
Melita said nothing.
“Actually, what’s more important than bringing up children to be decent citizens?”
“Helping all children, including other people’s, to grow up with the least amount of suffering.”
“What you say makes no sense, and it’s unpleasant, Melita.”
“I’m expressing the simplest ideas.”
“Do you want to be on your own?”
“Why would I be? I’ll be with people whom I can serve or help.”
“Well, make a start then. Do a service: let yourself pity the anguish and sufferings of my son who’s passionately in love with you! Let yourself be moved by the innocent Prudentius’s moans. He’s enduring so much, because all womanhood is for him incarnated only in Melita . . .”
“Oh, do stop, widow Euphrosyne. Anyone who has the same thirsts as your son will never die of thirst.”
“Yes,” the widow went on, “see how cruel Melita is. She is deaf to him and can’t even pity the tears pouring down the wrinkled cheeks of the poor widow Euphrosyne, her aunt and Prudentius’s mother.”
Melita looked at the widow and saw that her face really was wet with tears, which were flowing down her cheeks in torrents.
“You’re both being cruel,” said Melita.
But Euphrosyne shook her head, saying, “You’ve no right to talk of cruelty!”
“Yes I do: I mean your cruelty. I’m not reproaching you, I just want you to understand me. I’ll tell you now why you are cruel: I believe people have been given an opportunity to live for all eternity and it depends on a human being whether he enters that eternal life or whether he fades to nothing within the short time that our candle burns on earth. I have been granted an awakening of my spirit from its natural sleep and, now it has awoken, it can hear a voice calling loudly to it and telling it to cast off all its shackles. My spirit wants to run somewhere where it can hear the call, while you want to shackle my feet with bonds of passion and to force vows on me that I cannot make, because . . . I can’t promise myself to anybody . . .”
“You must surely feel that you’re being very inconstant.”
“Why do you go on at me about constancy? What do I have to stick to . . . what sort of constancy? Today I am what I am; tomorrow perhaps my spirit will see something even wider, and when my spirit is fully fledged, it will soar somewhere higher and farther . . . to eternity!”
“What’s so good about that?” Euphrosyne interrupted her. “If you want to sacrifice yourself, then make Prudentius happy: he’s so desperately in love with you and suffering so terribly that he can’t tell the difference anymore between what he sees and what he dreams of in his agonizing nightmares. Poor child! His imagination never gives him a moment free of you, his lips are constantly whispering, ‘Melita.’ Poor Prudentius! He’s burning with youthful desires; his lips kiss the air where he can sense you through the walls and rocks. Oh, have some pity! Pity him! Pity us both, Melita!”
The widow Euphrosyne ended their conversation with this passionate plea; weeping copiously, her arms outstretched, she threw herself on the ground at Melita’s feet.
Melita was in a very difficult position, but she resisted the widow Euphrosyne’s pleas and, although trying to show regret and sympathy, she gave no hope of agreeing to marry.
“What!” Euphrosyne exclaimed. “Do you really want to be so adamant even if Prudentius dies or loses his reason?”
“Why talk about something that hasn’t happened yet?” Melita replied, suppressing her impatience.
“You can’t think it impossible, can you, for a man to lose his reason because of agonizing love? It happens, after all.”
“Oh, of course it does!” Melita replied. “But it happens because people let themselves fall victim to their coarse desires and refuse to resist them.”
“Do you think those desires can be resisted?”
“It goes without saying . . . Of course . . .”
Then the two women heard Marema shouting loudly: she was running to the house, shouting from afar, “Euphrosyne, madam! Euphrosyne, madam! Get to the house as fast as you can. Something terrible has happened. Prudentius began washing and suddenly collapsed to the floor; now he’s rolling about, foaming at the mouth, and roaring like a lion cub. It took five of us to hold him down, and Agabus, the potter, has covered his head in wet clay, but hurry, madam: it’s not likely to do any good. Poor Prudentius! Poor Prudentius! I don’t think he’ll recover.”
XIII
When she heard that her son was in such cruel torments, the widow Euphrosyne could only give Melita a silent look full of reproach; then, forgetting how old she was, she ran home, to attend to Prudentius’s agonies. Meanwhile, Marema told Melita what had happened in greater detail. She added quietly to what we now know.
“There’s no point hiding the fact that he’s going through all this because the cruel feelings for you that obsess him have worn him down. You have as much power over his entire being as nature does. Six of us, if you count Agabus, couldn’t cope with the demon that tensed the young man’s muscles and made his blood seethe so much that his whole mouth was covered with pink foam. I covered his glazed eyes with your shawl, which I had on my shoulders and was going to wash at the spring, and then Prudentius suddenly calmed down and whispered, ‘Melita! Melita is nearby . . . Gods! Let me die before she goes away!’
“And forgive me, mistress,” Marema concluded, “he was suffering so badly that I couldn’t take your shawl off him. It will make him feel a little better, so let him . . . He wrapped it around his hands and pressed it to his heart, and the convulsions gradually died down. Maybe he’ll even . . . go to sleep or . . .”
“Or what?”
“He’ll go to the kingdom of the shades without further suffering.”
Melita rose to her feet and said, “Let’s go together.”
“What! You mean go . . . to Euphrosyne’s house where the wretched Prudentius is lying, with his head on fire and covered in wet clay?”
“Of course I do.”
“Why would you go there?”
“Why? Someone is suffering, so I want to go there.”
“Of course, but not to make him suffer worse? You’re not going to take your shawl off him? You’re not angry with me for leaving the cloth there?”
Melita replied that she wasn’t in the least angry with Marema: on the contrary, she was even glad that Marema had left the shawl and that it had relieved Prudentius’s capricious illness. She added that she did not care what people in the village said or thought, that none of that was worth a single minute of human suffering if there was any way to help.
“Oh, mistress!” Marema exclaimed joyfully. “Let’s go quickly; let’s hurry to that house of tears! You have power over the dear youth’s entire nature, and just the sound of your voice, your arrival, will be enough to summon Prudentius back to life, as long as we manage to reach Euphrosyne’s house before her son’s heart stops beating in his chest.”
“Let’s hurry!”
“Let’s hurry, let’s hurry!”
They grabbed each other’s hands and ran briskly and steadily, one as clear as the daylight, the other as dark as a southern night. Their hair flew in the wind, and the breath of life quietly spread in their wake.
“Oh, you’ll save him! You will!” Marema whispered as she squeezed Melita’s hand and both of them ran on.
“Perhaps . . .” Melita responded with a gentle squeeze of the hand.
What had happened?
Before Melita and Marema, so fleet of foot, had reached the widow Euphrosyne’s house, Prudentius’s awful attack had left him. He sighed calmly, sat up on the floor on which he had been lying, smiled a happy smile, and exclaimed, his arms outstretched, “Gods! Praise to you forever and ever. Melita’s heart is filled with pity. Melita has arisen. Melita is rushing here to drop her sympathy like dew on my burned-out heart. Here she is, here she is! Quickly, draw the curtain!”
As Prudentius’s voice rang out with confidence and strength, his wish was immediately fulfilled, and when the curtain was drawn, everyone could see revealed the beautiful Melita, all flushed after her rushed journey on foot, followed by Marema, no less beautiful in her way.
“Instead of one provider of relief, two have hurried here to see you,” the women standing around Prudentius whispered.
He himself was more like a child whose severe torments had just lifted, remembering them with both delight and pain.
Prudentius sat looking the new arrivals in the face, smiling and repeating, like a child, “Here she is . . . Melita! Marema!”
XIV
The widow Euphrosyne was glad beyond words that Melita had come and could see for herself how badly Prudentius was suffering and that any relief of his agony directly depended on her.
Melita saw all this without arguing. The proof was only too obvious, and it became clear to Melita that she no longer had any chance of living in her house in the same community as the widow Euphrosyne’s house. She would constantly be coming across Prudentius here, and that would aggravate his agonizing passion, which she had no wish to reciprocate. Everyone in this community would be bound to reproach her for cruelty, would talk about her stupid stubbornness, for people have since time immemorial preferred to consider any concern for preserving one’s spirit totally untrammeled as “stubbornness.” Moreover, Prudentius’s passion would turn into madness and she would have to fear his making an attempt on his own life in another similar attack. Then the widow Euphrosyne’s grief would know no limits, and the softhearted Melita would be unable to bear the sight of all these miseries that everyone would inevitably blame on her. She had, perhaps, only one alternative: to leave her house and community secretly, and hide for the rest of her life. Melita was prepared to do so; she would arrange to live with her childhood friend, the Christian Erminia, a woman of the same mind; but Prudentius was capable of pursuing her everywhere, disturbing her peace, and ruining his own life still more. She had to seek another way out of this situation, a way better suited to everyone. She decided that she must devise a more ingenious plan and, once she had thought it out, implement her decision, whatever the obstacles.
This was her mood when the ecstatic Prudentius’s infatuated eyes saw her; when she was sure he had calmed down and could understand her, she offered him her hand and calmly said, “Don’t give in to despair, kind Prudentius. You are not going to languish, as you have been languishing, forever. From now on I shan’t avoid you, and I shall think how to make you happy. But I beg you, show me trust and a little patience. I’m very much in anguish too, and my spirit needs rest and calm. Let me have just three days in peace, alone, and on the fourth day, before evening, come to the seashore where our boat is beached, and I’ll tell you the decision I’ve made, and it will be firm enough for you to rely on. And now, for three days, do me a favor and stay calm.”
“Oh, I’m ready to wait for your answer not just three days but three years,” Prudentius replied, revived. “As long as you don’t reject me . . . as long as I have something to wait for.”
“Well, three years would be too long. In three years’ time you may reject me, because I’m older than you . . . No, just wait for three days; that will be enough.”
“Me reject you? O gods! Strike me down, just gods, if it’s possible for anyone to replace Melita in my heart!”
“Don’t swear any oaths, Prudentius, and don’t call on the gods as witnesses: you know nothing about their nature. Instead, let time itself show us what we are and what we merit.”
“I agree, I agree!” exclaimed Prudentius. “All eternity will convince you that you are the most precious thing in the world to me and that there’s nothing that I could prefer to you even for a minute.”
“Well, just wait!”
Melita parted amicably from Prudentius and his mother, the widow Euphrosyne. She went back home with Marema, leaving the widow and Prudentius reassured and ready to wait three days for her decision.
Everyone else in the village now awaited this decision with curiosity, for they were all inquisitive. Was Melita being underhanded, pretending that she was refusing to have as a husband a youth of incomparable beauty who was passionately in love with her and three years younger?
