Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, page 7
As Katerina Lvovna walked down a corridor lit only by one dim oil lamp, she stumbled over two or three couples whom it was quite impossible to make out except from close up. As she approached the men’s section, she heard muffled laughter coming through the peephole cut in the door.
“A grand time those pigs are having!” muttered the guard. Taking Katerina Lvovna by the shoulders, he pushed her into a corner and made off.
Katerina Lvovna groped about her. One hand touched a coat and a beard; the other—the hot face of a woman.
“Who is it?” Sergey asked under his breath.
“What . . . Who . . . Who’s that?”
In the dark Katerina Lvovna snatched the scarf from her rival’s head. The latter slipped to one side, took to her heels, tripped over someone in the corridor, and fell.
There was a burst of hearty laughter from the other men.
“Bastard!” whispered Katerina Lvovna, whipping Sergey on the face with the ends of the scarf she had pulled off his new girlfriend’s head.
Sergey would have hit back, but Katerina Lvovna shot off down the corridor and returned to her section. The laughter following her from the men’s section, however, was so loud that the guard in the corridor, who had been standing apathetically by the oil lamp and spitting onto the toe cap of one boot, raised his head and bellowed, “Quiet!”
Katerina Lvovna lay down without a word and hardly moved all night. Wanting to say to herself, “I don’t love him,” she felt she loved him more ardently than ever. And before her eyes she kept seeing the palm of his hand trembling beneath that woman’s head, and his other arm embracing her hot shoulders.
Poor Katerina Lvovna burst into tears, involuntarily praying for that palm to be lying beneath her own head and that other arm to be embracing her own violently trembling shoulders.
“Come on now, give me back my head scarf,” said Fiona in the morning, waking Katerina Lvovna from her sleep.
“So it was you, was it?”
“Give it back, please!”
“Why are you trying to come between us?”
“I’m not coming between you—he means nothing to me. It’s nothing to get worked up about.”
Katerina Lvovna thought for a moment, took from under her pillow the head scarf she had snatched during the night, threw it at Fiona, and turned her face to the wall.
She felt calmer now.
“Pah!” she said to herself. “Why should I feel jealous? To hell with the painted bitch. She’s no equal of mine—it makes me sick even to think of her.”
“Listen, Katerina Lvovna,” said Sergey, after they had set off the following morning. “I’d like you to get it into your head, first, that I’m no Zinovy Borisovich and, second, that you’re no longer the wife of an important merchant. It’s no use being pigheaded—beggars can’t be choosers!”
Katerina Lvovna said nothing, and for an entire week she walked beside Sergey without the two of them exchanging so much as a word or a look. Being the injured party in this first quarrel she had ever had with Sergey, she stood on her dignity; she had no wish to make the first move herself.
In the meantime Sergey began courting little blond Sonetka. He would bow to her with his “most respectful greetings”; he would smile at her; if she passed by, he would try to put his arms around her and hug her. Katerina Lvovna saw all this, and it enraged her.
“Perhaps I really should try and make up with Sergey,” she would wonder, staggering along, not seeing the ground beneath her feet.
But pride now made it harder than ever for her to make a move. And Sergey was chasing more and more determinedly after Sonetka, and everyone was beginning to see that the inaccessible blonde, whom no one could get their hands on even when she danced about beside them, had all of a sudden grown tamer.
“You were mad at me,” Fiona said to Katerina Lvovna one day, “but what harm did I ever do you? I had my chance, and it’s gone now. But if I were in your shoes, I’d keep an eye on that Sonetka.”
“To hell with my pride,” Katerina Lvovna admonished herself, “I really must make up with him.” All she could think of now was how best to achieve this.
It was Sergey himself who helped her out of her difficulty.
“Lvovna!” he called out to her during one of their halts. “Come and see me for a moment tonight. I’ve got something to say to you.”
Katerina Lvovna said nothing.
“Not still cross with me, are you? Won’t you come?”
Once again Katerina Lvovna made no answer.
But Sergey, like everyone else watching Katerina Lvovna, noticed that, as they approached the transit prison, she edged closer and closer to the senior guard in order to slip him the seventeen kopecks she had collected in alms on the way.
“I’ll give you another ten as soon as I’ve got them,” she said pleadingly.
The guard tucked the money away in the cuff of his coat sleeve and said, “All right then.”
When the negotiations were over, Sergey cleared his throat and winked at Sonetka.
“Oh, Katerina Lvovna!” he said, embracing Katerina on the steps of the transit prison. “Yes, boys, this one’s in a class of her own. There’s not a woman in the world can outshine her.”
Katerina Lvovna blushed, choking with happiness.
Hardly had night fallen when the door gently opened and she went rushing out; trembling all over, she groped her way down the dark corridor in search of Sergey.
“My Katya!” said Sergey, embracing her.
“Oh, my wicked man!” Katerina Lvovna replied through her tears, putting her lips to his.
A sentry came down the corridor, stopped for a moment, spat on his boots, then walked on; from the other side of a door came the snores of weary convicts; a mouse gnawed at a feather; crickets beneath the stove tried their best to out-chirp one another—and Katerina Lvovna was in seventh heaven.
But ecstasies tire, and prose always follows.
“I’m fairly dying of pain,” Sergey lamented, sitting with Katerina Lvovna on the floor, in a corner of the corridor. “Yes, my bones are aching from my ankles all the way up to my knees.”
“But what can we do about it, my darling?” she asked, trying to make herself comfortable under the skirts of his coat.
“Should I try and get myself into a hospital in Kazan?”
“Seryozha—how can you say such a thing?”
“But this pain will be the death of me.”
“Staying behind while I go on—how could you?”
“But what can I do?” Sergey continued a moment later. “The chains grind and grind. Soon they’ll be eating right into the bone. Maybe if I had a pair of woolen stockings . . .”
“Stockings? But Seryozha, I’ve got a pair of new stockings myself!”
“Oh no, I couldn’t . . .”
Without saying another word, Katerina Lvovna darted away, scattered everything from her bag onto the bed boards, and came rushing back to Sergey with a pair of thick blue Bolkhov woolen stockings with brightly colored arrows on the sides.6
“Now I’ll be fine,” said Sergey, as he said good night to Katerina Lvovna and took her last pair of stockings.
Happy now, Katerina Lvovna went back to her place on the bed boards and fell fast asleep.
She did not hear Sonetka go out into the corridor, nor did she hear her return only shortly before dawn.
All this happened when they were just two days from Kazan.
15
As they left the stuffy transit prison, the convicts were greeted by a cold, miserable day, with a gusty wind and rain that was turning to snow. Katerina Lvovna was in good spirits; the moment she took her place in the column, however, she went green and started to tremble all over. Her eyes saw only darkness; every joint in her body was weak and aching. In front of her stood Sonetka—wearing a familiar pair of blue woolen stockings with bright arrows.
As they set off, Katerina Lvovna seemed more dead than alive; her eyes, however, followed Sergey with a terrible and unblinking stare.
At the first halt, she walked calmly up to him, whispered “You bastard!” and spat into his eyes. Sergey would have attacked her, but he was held back.
“Just you wait!” he said, as he wiped his face.
“Aha!” laughed the other convicts. “That one’s not frightened of you, is she?” Sonetka’s laughter was especially merry; this kind of affair was right up her alley.
“You’ll pay for this!” Sergey warned Katerina Lvovna.
Lying in troubled sleep that night on the bed boards of yet another transit prison, worn out and broken in spirit by the long distance and the bad weather, Katerina Lvovna did not hear two men slip into the women’s section. As they came in, Sonetka sat up and silently pointed to Katerina Lvovna; then she lay down again and wrapped herself in her coat.
Katerina Lvovna’s own coat suddenly went flying over her head; and her back, covered only by a coarse shirt, felt the lash of the thick end of a double-plaited rope being swung with all the might of a peasant’s arm.
Katerina Lvovna shrieked, but her voice was stifled by the coat over her head. She struggled to break free, but to no avail: a burly convict was sitting on her shoulders and pinning down her arms.
“Fifty,” a voice said at last; it was easy enough to recognize this voice as Sergey’s. The nocturnal visitors disappeared straightaway.
Katerina Lvovna freed her head and jumped up. No one was there; all she could hear was a woman giggling beneath her coat. Katerina Lvovna recognized Sonetka’s laugh.
The hurt she had suffered was beyond all measure; nor was there any measure to the fury now seething in her heart. She rushed blindly forward—and she collapsed blindly onto the breast of Fiona; Fiona supported her as she fell.
On this full bosom, which had so recently gratified her depraved and faithless lover, she now sobbed out her unbearable grief, pressing herself against her plump, stupid rival as a child presses itself against its mother. They were equal now: both valued at the same price, both discarded.
They were equal: Fiona, who accepted whatever chance brought her, and Katerina Lvovna, acting her role in the drama of love.
Nothing, however, could hurt Katerina Lvovna now. Having shed all her tears, she stood stock-still and waited for the roll call with wooden calm.
The drum was beating—tat-tararat-tat. Fettered and unfettered, the convicts poured out into the yard: Sergey, Fiona, Sonetka, Katerina Lvovna, an Old Believer shackled to a Jew, a Pole on the same chain as a Tatar.
They all crowded together, got themselves into some kind of order and set off.
•
A joyless picture: a handful of people, torn from the world and deprived of any last shadow of hope, sinking into the cold black mud of a dirt road. Everything all around is ugly and terrible: infinite mud, a gray sky, wet leafless willows with sullen crows perched on their spreading branches. The wind howls and gusts, moans and rages.
These hellish, heartrending sounds complete the horror of the scene; in them echoes the advice given to Job by his wife: “Curse the day that thou wast born, and die.”
Those who do not wish to hear the meaning of these words, those who, even amid such sorrow, are frightened rather than charmed by the thought of death, must do what they can to drown out these howling voices with something still more hideous. The simple man understands this only too well; giving free rein to all his brutish simplicity, he plays the fool; he jeers at himself, he jeers at others, he jeers at every emotion. Never noted for tenderness, at moments like this he becomes especially evil.
•
“Hello, Madam Merchant, is Your Honor in good health?” Sergey said mockingly to Katerina Lvovna. The village where they had spent the night had just disappeared behind a wet hillock.
With these words he turned to Sonetka, made room for her under his coat, and began to sing in a high falsetto:
In the dark inside the window I glimpse a fair head.
My troublemaker’s awake, my tormentor’s not sleeping.
Let me throw my coat over you so no one can see.
Sergey embraced Sonetka in front of everyone and gave her a smacking kiss.
Katerina Lvovna saw everything and saw nothing; she might have been no longer alive. People nudged her, remarking on the way Sergey was carrying on with Sonetka. Katerina Lvovna had become a laughingstock.
“Leave her alone,” Fiona kept saying, doing her best to defend the stumbling Katerina Lvovna whenever one of the convicts poked fun at her. “The woman’s ill. Can’t you see, you devils?”
“Must have got her tootsies wet,” joked a young convict.
“She had a delicate upbringing,” said Sergey. “She’s from a merchant family. Now, if only she had a pair of warm stockings,” he went on, “she’d be all right.”
Katerina Lvovna appeared to wake up.
“Bastard!” she said, suddenly cracking. “Go on, you bastard, jeer all you like!”
“Oh no, Madam Merchant, I’m not jeering. It’s just that Sonetka here has some mighty fine stockings to sell and I thought they might be what a merchant’s wife fancies.”
A number of people laughed. Katerina Lvovna marched on, like an automaton.
The weather got worse and worse. Wet flakes of snow fell from the gray clouds covering the sky; melting as they touched the ground, they made the mud still deeper and more impassable. At last a dark leaden band came into view; beyond it nothing could be made out at all. This was the Volga. A stiff wind was blowing across the river; dark gaping waves slowly rose and fell; the wind drove them this way and that way.
Soaked to the bone and shivering, the convicts went slowly up to the pier and stopped to wait for the ferry.
The ferry drew in, all dark and wet; the crew settled the convicts on board.
“I’ve heard there’s vodka for sale here on this boat,” said one convict. Wet flakes of snow were still falling on the ferry, which had put off from the pier and was now tossing about on the river’s ever-choppier waves.
“Yes, a drop or two wouldn’t go down badly,” said Sergey. To amuse Sonetka, he went on tormenting Katerina Lvovna. “I say, Madam Merchant, won’t you treat us to a drop of vodka for old time’s sake? Don’t be mean! O my dear one, remember our former love! Remember, O my joy, what good times we had together! Remember how you and I delighted in the long autumn nights, how we dispatched your family to eternal rest without benefit of clergy.”
Katerina Lvovna was shivering with cold. As well as this cold, which had penetrated through her clothes and to the very marrow of her bones, other forces were at work within her. Her head was burning as if from a fever; her pupils were dilated, animated by a sharp wandering brilliance, yet fixed on the rolling waves.
“I could do with some vodka too—this cold’s more than I can bear!” Sonetka chimed in.
“Please, Madam Merchant! Go on, stand us a drink!”
“Have you no conscience?” said Fiona, shaking her head reproachfully.
“You should show some shame,” said Gordyushka, another of the convicts.
“At least in front of other people!” said Fiona.
“Shut up, you old slut!” Sergey shouted back. “Shame? What have I got to be ashamed of? I don’t believe I ever did love her . . . Her ugly old mug means less to me now than one of Sonetka’s old shoes. And that’s all there is to it. Filthy bitch! She can go love Gordyushka—mean-mouthed Gordyushka.” He looked around and happened to see a puny guard wearing a felt cloak and a military cap with a cockade. He went on, “Or maybe she should try her charms on this here officer. At least she’ll be out of the rain under his felt cloak.”
“And then we could call her Madam Officer,” said Sonetka.
“Yes! And she wouldn’t be short of money for stockings.”
Katerina Lvovna made no attempt to defend herself; she just kept moving her lips and staring more and more intently at the waves. In between Sergey’s vile jokes she could hear some kind of groan or rumble coming from the heaving, crashing waves. Out of one breaking wave appeared the blue head of Boris Timofeyevich, and out of another, her husband, swaying from side to side. In his arms he held Fedya, whose head was hanging down against his chest. Katerina Lvovna tried to remember a prayer; she moved her lips, but all they could whisper was “What good times we had together, and how we delighted in the long autumn nights. And how, through terrible death, we robbed people of the light of day.”
Katerina Lvovna trembled. Now wilder than ever, her wandering eyes were focused on a single point. Once, twice, her arms stretched out toward somewhere in space, then dropped back again. Suddenly she began to rock and sway; without taking her eyes off the dark waves, she seized Sonetka by the legs and, in a single movement, leaped overboard, taking Sonetka with her.
Everyone froze in astonishment.
Katerina Lvovna appeared on the crest of a wave, then disappeared; another wave revealed Sonetka.
“A boat hook! Throw them a boat hook!” people shouted.
A heavy boat hook flew out on a long rope and fell into the water. Sonetka had disappeared. A few seconds later, as the current swept her away from the ferry, she flung her arms up in the air again, but just then Katerina Lvovna appeared from another wave, rose almost waist-high above the water, and flung herself at Sonetka like a powerful pike attacking a roach. Neither of them was seen again.
1864
Translated by Robert Chandler
THE SEALED ANGEL
A Christmas Story
1
IT ALL happened around Christmas, on New Year’s Eve. The weather could not have been worse. There was a furious blizzard, the kind that has made the trans-Volgan steppes notorious: it raged everywhere, driving a lot of people for shelter into an isolated posting inn that stood out, miserable and alone, on the featureless, boundless steppe. Gentry, merchants, and peasants, Russians, Mordvinians, and Chuvash, found themselves all lumped together. In an overnight shelter like this there was no question of respecting rank or title: wherever you turned, there was no room to move; some people tried to get dry, some to get warm, others searched for a cranny to take refuge in. The dark, low-ceilinged peasant house was packed to the rafters with people; their wet clothes filled the place with dense steam and made it airless. Not an inch of free space could be seen: people were lying on the garret boards, the stove, the bunks, even the dirty earthen floor. The host, a sullen peasant, was not pleased by the crowd of guests nor by the prospect of profit. He angrily slammed the gates after the last sleigh, carrying two merchants, came into the yard, then bolted the premises, hung the key over the icon shelf, and announced firmly, “Anyone who wants to come now can bang his head on the gates, but I won’t open up.”
