DUKE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2017 with funding from 
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 https://archive.org/details/mityaslove01buni 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 
 
i t y a' s J^o v e 
 
 by 
 
 IVAN BUNIN 
 
 Translated from the French 
 BY MADELAINE BOYD 
 
 With an Introduction 
 BY ERNEST BOYD 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
/ 
 
 COPYRIGHT, I926, 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 PRINTED IN THE 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
 
“The soul would have no rainbow 
 Had the eyes no tears ” 
 
Madame Madeleine Boyd wants to acknowledge 
 her debt in the preparing of this translation to her 
 collaborator, John O’Neal, and to Miss Helen 
 Smith for her comparison of it with the Russian 
 text. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 By Ernest Boyd 
 
 Ivan Alexeyevich Bunin, whom Gorky 
 has described as the greatest living Rus- 
 sian writer, was born at Voronezh, in 
 1870, the son of an old family of coun- 
 try gentry, distinguished in art and poli- 
 tics. “All my forebears were country 
 gentlemen, closely attached to the soil 
 and the people, and so were my parents, 
 who owned property in central Russia, 
 in those fertile steppes where the former 
 Moscovite Tsars, as a protection against 
 the Tartar invasions from the South, set 
 up a rampart of colonies recruited from 
 every province in the country. Thanks 
 to that fact, this region saw the develop- 
 ment of the richest of all Russian dia- 
 lects and produced almost all our great 
 9 
 
10 INTRODUCTION 
 writers beginning with Turgenev and 
 Leo Tolstoy.” 
 
 Bunin’s childhood and youth were 
 spent almost entirely in the country on 
 his father’s estates, and in the town of 
 Yelets, so frequently the scene of his sto- 
 ries, where he went to school before pro- 
 ceeding to the University of Moscow. 
 “I began to write, in verse and prose, 
 rather early, and my works were printed 
 at an early date. When I published my 
 books they were usually composed of 
 prose and poetry, some original, others 
 translated (from the English). If these 
 writings were divided according to kinds, 
 I should have four volumes of my own 
 verse, two of translations, and six of 
 prose. Criticism was not slow to notice 
 my works, and subsequently they were 
 crowned several times, receiving in par- 
 ticular the Pushkin Prize, the highest 
 
INTRODUCTION 11 
 
 award of the Russian Academy of Sci- 
 ence. In 1909 that institution elected me 
 one of its twelve honorary Academi- 
 cians, a distinction corresponding to that 
 of the forty French ‘Immortals.’” 
 
 He was actually twenty-one when his 
 first book — a volume of verse — was pub- 
 lished at Orel, the capital of his native 
 province and the birthplace of Turgenev. 
 Twelve years later, in 1903, Bunin was 
 awarded the Pushkin Prize for literature, 
 and had taken his place in the front rank 
 of Chekhov’s successors. After the death 
 of Chekhov, in 1904, and the Revolution 
 of 1903, Vladimir Korolenko survived as 
 the representative of the older school of 
 romantic fiction, but he had no followers 
 of importance. The leadership of the 
 new school of Realism fell to Maxim 
 Gorky, about whom were grouped the 
 majority of the rising young novelists, 
 
12 INTRODUCTION 
 some of whom are known, in varying de- 
 grees, to English-speaking readers: Alex- 
 ander Kuprin, Leonid Andreev, Sergey 
 Gusev-Orenburgski, V. Veresayev, and 
 Ivan Bunin. All of these writers, at one 
 time or another, have been translated into 
 English, but only Kuprin and Andreev 
 have achieved any measure of recogni- 
 tion in England or America correspond- 
 ing to their enormous popularity in Rus- 
 sia. Yet, by common consent of compe- 
 tent critics, Bunin is held to be the equal 
 of any other member of the Gorky group, 
 and the superior, in the estimation of 
 some judges, including Gorky himself. 
 
 That group was essentially radical in 
 tendency. It was composed of what a 
 German critic has called “the stormy 
 petrels of the Revolution,” and of that 
 tendency there is little trace in the author 
 of Mityas Love and The Gentlemen 
 
INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 from San Francisco — to mention two of 
 Bunin’s most famous and most dissimi- 
 lar but characteristic works. Although 
 associated with Gorky’s famous Znanie 
 publishing house, where for many years 
 all his books were issued, he had no more 
 in common with the revolutionary school 
 than with their antithesis, the group 
 known, for convenience of distinction, as 
 the Symbolists and Decadents. In fact, 
 he is sometimes classified with the latter: 
 with Merezhkovsky, Bryusov, Kuzmin, 
 and Sologub. These writers, however 
 diverse intrinsically, represented a reac- 
 tion against the Marxian conception of 
 literature, the constant preoccupation 
 with social problems, and the sacrifice of 
 form to content. Unpolitical and unreal- 
 istic, it was inevitable that, towards {he 
 end of the last century, they should be 
 classed as Symbolists or Decadents. 
 
14 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Ivan Bunin was not really identified 
 with either of the movements, for he con- 
 tributed to the Symbolist review, North- 
 ern Flowers, although not a Symbolist 
 poet, just as he was published by Znanie, 
 although not one of the “Podmaximki,” 
 or “Comrades of Maxim,” as Gorky’s au- 
 thors were called in jocular allusion to 
 their revolutionary creed. His aloof, in- 
 dependent position may explain, to some 
 extent, his tardy recognition. Outside 
 Russia, at least, we know more of the 
 Znanie writers than of their other con- 
 temporaries, and in succession to the 
 former we have welcomed Artzybashev, 
 Ropshin, and Alexey N. Tolstoy rather 
 than Andrey Bely or Alexey Remizov. 
 Bunin himself seems to indicate this 
 when he says: “For many reasons I 
 waited a long time before achieving a 
 certain popularity. After my first writ- 
 
INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 ings were published, during a consider- 
 able period, I wrote and published only 
 poetry. I kept out of politics and did 
 not touch in my work upon political 
 questions. I belonged to no literary 
 school, and did not call myself a Decadent 
 or a Symbolist, a Romanticist or a Natu- 
 ralist; I wore no mask and brandished no 
 brightly colored banner. . . 
 
 Even Bunin’s early prose was essen- 
 tially poetic in quality and mood: in 
 Ore the invasion of rural life by industry 
 is symbolised by the fate of an old 
 wooden cross which has stood for years 
 in the fields and has watched the forests 
 gradually disappear from the horizon, 
 has felt the winds blowing drier and hot- 
 ter, and seen the land come less and less 
 under cultivation. In the end there are 
 no more workers plowing and sowing, 
 but men erecting huts and drilling into 
 
16 INTRODUCTION 
 
 the ground. The cross, with its black- 
 ened picture of the Virgin, has fallen into 
 decay. It is no longer appropriate to 
 such a scene and is broken up for fire- 
 wood. 
 
 Gradually his stories became more 
 realistic, and in 1910 he published his 
 first long novel, The Village, which was 
 “the beginning of a series of works de- 
 scribing without flattery the Russian peo- 
 ple, the Russian soul, in its strange com- 
 plexity, its depths of light and shade, its 
 essential tragedy.” These stories, he tells 
 us, “for many reasons peculiar to Rus- 
 sian conditions, and latterly because of 
 pure ignorance or political bias, aroused 
 excited discussion amongst our critics 
 and intellectuals who constantly ideal- 
 ized the people,” but the book, which is 
 assuredly the most ruthless indictment of 
 the so frequently sentimentalized moujik, 
 
INTRODUCTION 17 
 
 definitely established Bunin’s fame. In 
 a later story, Sukhodol, he describes 
 the disintegration of the Khrushchev 
 family, and does for the landowners what 
 he did for the peasantry. In the volume 
 of short stories translated into English 
 under the title of The Dreams of Chang 
 are further examples of the author’s art 
 in depicting the fundamental barbarous- 
 ness of Russian life in various phases: 
 A Goodly Life, A Spring Evening, A 
 Night Conversation. 
 
 The Cup of Life, which gives its title 
 to a second collection of stories published 
 in French, is a counterpart to The Vil- 
 lage in its portrayal of country town life. 
 In English we have had, so far, only The 
 Village and the volume of short stories 
 referred to as The Dreams of Chang, al- 
 though the best story in it is The Gentle- 
 man from San Francisco. Independently 
 
18 INTRODUCTION 
 
 of all his other work this story attained 
 widespread recognition in English, and, 
 until Mitya s Love appeared, it was the 
 most famous, in fact the only famous, 
 piece of writing of Bunin’s outside Rus- 
 sia and the Russian language. In its sar- 
 donic simplicity this description of an 
 American millionaire’s journey alive to 
 Capri and his return to his own country 
 dead is a masterpiece which lingers in 
 the memory with certain of Chekhov’s 
 austere marvels of artistic economy. 
 
 The transition from the skilful terse- 
 ness of The Gentleman from San Fran- 
 cisco to the tender and romantic lyricism 
 of Mitya’s Love is abrupt, but readers of 
 stories so various as Brothers, The 
 Dreams of Chang, Sukhodol and Kazi- 
 mir Stanislavovich do not need to be re- 
 minded of the great versatility of Ivan 
 Bunin. After Turgenev’s First Love 
 
INTRODUCTION 19 
 
 Russian literature has once more given 
 us a superb study of the intensity and the 
 innocence and the tragedy of young love, 
 of youthful passion which is at once a 
 crisis of the mind and of the body. The 
 plot of such a tale must of necessity be 
 simple and elementary to the point of 
 banality. Bunin is too consummate an 
 artist to be deterred by that fact, and too 
 good a psychologist to attempt any vio- 
 lent variation upon this eternal theme. In 
 a brief but densely packed story he suc- 
 ceeds in showing every facet of first love, 
 its sensuality and its idealism, its ecstasies 
 and despair, all that enters into it of in- 
 tellectual exaltation and bodily pain. 
 
 All of Bunin’s sensitiveness to nature 
 is again visible in his descriptive pas- 
 sages, and that curious faculty of his 
 whereby he attains to the psychological 
 and spiritual through the material and 
 
20 INTRODUCTION 
 physical is manifest throughout. Thus 
 the idyll, for all its naïveté and youthful- 
 ness, is profoundly sensual. Without sac- 
 rificing to prurience or to prudery he is 
 able to achieve a complete picture which 
 bears the authentic stamp of reality and 
 beauty, free, in its utter sincerity, from 
 the mawkishness or the furtiveness which 
 have disfigured this type of literature 
 ever since Paul et Virginie consecrated a 
 convention of hypocrisy. Instinctive life 
 becomes spiritualized at his touch, and 
 the material world is illuminated and 
 transfigured by the very concentration 
 upon concrete people and things of those 
 imaginative powers which are the secret 
 of Ivan Bunin’s art. 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 
 
. 
 
 
<JxCitya' , s J^ove 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE ninth of March was Mitya’s last 
 happy day in Moscow, or at least, he 
 thought so later. 
 
 He was walking up the Boulevard 
 Tverskoy with Katya. It was midday. 
 Winter was gradually yielding to spring; 
 it was almost hot in the sun, as if the 
 larks had really come back, bringing with 
 them warmth, light and joy. The ice was 
 melting and everything was damp, drops 
 fell from the roofs, the caretakers were 
 breaking the ice on the pavements and 
 
 shovelling the wet snow from the roofs. 
 
 23 
 
24 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 Everywhere there were crowds of peo- 
 ple. Even the clouds seemed to be melt- 
 ing away into thin white smoke and were 
 disappearing into the soft blue of the sky. 
 
 The boulevard was black with people 
 as far as one could see, Pushkin’s statue 
 rose in the distance, gentle and pensive, 
 the roof of the convent of the Passion 
 shone brightly. But best of all, Katya 
 was lovelier than ever. She walked very 
 close to Mitya, sometimes with childlike 
 confidence; she took hold of his arm and 
 looked up at him, while he, very happy 
 and not a little proud, strode along, like 
 a country boy, so fast that she could 
 hardly keep up with him. 
 
 When they were close to Pushkin’s 
 monument she burst out: “How funny 
 your big mouth looks when you laugh! 
 How charmingly boyish and awkward 
 you are! Don’t get angry. It’s your 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 25 
 
 smile that makes me love you . . . that 
 and your Byzantine eyes. . . 
 
 Trying not to smile and concealing 
 both his pleasure and his slight annoy- 
 ance, Mitya looked up at the statue which 
 rose before them against the sky and an- 
 swered gently: 
 
 “Since you speak of childishness I think 
 you are as childish as I am, though you 
 are eighteen. And I look as much like 
 a Byzantine as you look like the Empress 
 of China! All this talk about Byzantine 
 esthetics and style has simply gone to your 
 head. I can’t understand your mother!” 
 
 “I suppose that if you were in her place 
 you would shut me up in a convent?” 
 asked Katya. 
 
 “No, not in a convent, but I would keep 
 you away from Bohemia, from all those 
 so-called artists and all those future stars, 
 from the studios, conservatories and the- 
 
26 
 
 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 atrical schools,” answered Mitya, trying 
 hard to be calm and detached, “You 
 told me yourself that Boukovesky has in- 
 vited you to supper at Strelna and that 
 Egorov has asked you to pose for a bronze 
 of some dead person or other, — and nat- 
 urally such a very great honour flatters 
 you !” 
 
 “I don’t care, I won’t renounce art 
 even for your sake. It may be that I 
 am as bad as you so often say,” — although 
 Mitya had never said anything of the 
 sort — “I may be depraved, but you must 
 take me as I am. And please, don’t let 
 us quarrel, and stop being jealous, even if 
 only for to-day when it is so beautiful! 
 Don’t you know that, in spite of every- 
 thing, you are the one I love best, the 
 only one?” she asked insistently in a low 
 tone, then, looking straight at him, with 
 her eyes wide open, slowly, thoughtfully, 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 27 
 she recited artificially with a certain co- 
 quetry: 
 
 Between us there is a mystery , 
 
 Our souls are united. . . . 
 
 This completed Mitya’s annoyance. On 
 the whole, that beautiful day was full of 
 sad and unpleasant things. Katya’s joke 
 about his boyishness had been unpleas- 
 ant; it was not the first time she had made 
 such jokes, intentionally too. Very often 
 Katya showed she was older than he; and 
 then involuntarily, therefore quite natu- 
 rally, her superiority became evident and 
 Mitya suffered, seeing in that the indica- 
 tion of a secret perversity. This “in spite 
 of everything,” “in spite of everything 
 you are the best,” pronounced, goodness 
 knows why, in a lowered voice, had been 
 uncalled for; but most unpleasant of all 
 were the lines declaimed in that artificial 
 manner. And yet even the way she re- 
 
28 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 cited those lines, which recalled painfully 
 to his mind the set which was taking her 
 away from him and who excited his 
 hatred and jealousy, was borne easily by 
 Mitya on that lovely ninth of March, the 
 last happy day he was to spend in Mos- 
 cow, as he very often thought afterwards. 
 
 That same day, as they were coming 
 back from the Kuznetzky Bridge, where 
 Katya had bought at Zimmermann’s a 
 number of pieces by Scriabin, she spoke 
 among other things about Mitya’s mother : 
 
 “You have no idea how frightened I 
 am at the thought of her!” 
 
 Not once since they had been in love 
 had they alluded to the future of their 
 love. Now out of a clear sky Katya was 
 speaking to Mitya of his mother and was 
 speaking of her, not casually, but as if 
 it were understood that his mother would 
 be her mother-in-law. . . . 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THEN everything seemed to go on 
 very much as usual. 
 
 Mitya took Katya to the Art Theatre 
 Studio, to concerts, to literary evenings; 
 or else he went to her house and stayed 
 till two in the morning, thanks to the 
 great freedom Katya’s mother gave her. 
 She was a lady with raspberry-colored 
 hair, always smoking, always made-up, 
 a kind and easy-going woman who had 
 for a long time been living apart from 
 her husband, who had meanwhile ac- 
 quired another family. Katya often came 
 to Mitya’s furnished room and as before 
 their meetings were spent in the enchant- 
 ment of passionate kisses. But Mitya felt 
 
 that something terrible had happened, 
 29 
 
30 
 
 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 that there was a change in Katya and in 
 her attitude towards him. 
 
 How quickly the beautiful period had 
 passed since their unforgettable first meet- 
 ing, when, though they hardly knew each 
 other, they had felt that what they wanted 
 most was to be together all the time. They 
 had talked from morning till night, — 
 that lovely time when Mitya had un- 
 expectedly found himself in that won- 
 drous world of love he had secretly 
 longed for as a child. They had met 
 during a cold and dry December which 
 every day covered Moscow with hoary 
 frost, illumined by the reddish globe of 
 a sun very close to the earth. Mitya had 
 been carried through January and Febru- 
 ary in the whirl of the continuous happi- 
 ness which his love brought him, a hap- 
 piness which seemed to be perfect, — or 
 almost perfect. And yet it had soon be- 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 31 
 
 gun to be troubled and embittered. Al- 
 ready it seemed as though there were two 
 Katyas, one whom he had ardently de- 
 sired and claimed from the very first min- 
 ute he had known her, and the other, the 
 real, ordinary one who unluckily did 
 not always coincide with the first. But 
 Mitya had never felt it as strongly as he 
 was feeling it to-day! 
 
 Of course it was easy to explain. The 
 feminine preoccupations which come 
 with the spring had begun, — purchases, 
 orders, interminable remodellings of this 
 or that. Katya was often obliged to ac- 
 company her mother to dressmakers and 
 modistes, and in addition she had to take 
 an examination in the theatrical school 
 she attended. To quiet his mind Mitya 
 told himself every minute of the day that 
 her preoccupation and her abstraction 
 might have perfectly natural causes. But 
 
32 
 
 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 this consolation did not help at all, — the 
 whisperings of his suspicious heart be- 
 came louder and more insistent every day; 
 Katya’s inattentive manner towards him 
 became more marked and increased his 
 jealousy and suspicions. The praises of 
 the Director of the school had turned 
 her head and she could not help repeat- 
 ing them to Mitya. The Director had 
 told her: “You are the star of my school,” 
 and beside the ordinary courses he had 
 given her private lessons during Lent so 
 that she would shine at the examinations. 
 He had the reputation of seducing his 
 pupils ; every year he would take one with 
 him to the Caucasus, to Finland, or to 
 foreign countries. Mitya persuaded him- 
 self that the Director had designs on 
 Katya who, though she had not flirted 
 with him, knew it also quite well, but 
 Mitya concluded that her relations with 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 33 
 
 the man were shameful. This thought tor- 
 mented him greatly, the more so as Kat- 
 ya’s indifference became more marked. 
 
 It seemed as though Katya were slip- 
 ping away from him. He could not 
 think calmly about the Director. And if 
 that had only been all! But Mitya felt 
 that there were also other interests more 
 important to Katya than her love for 
 him. In whom was she interested, in 
 what? Mitya did not know; he was 
 jealous of everybody and of everything, 
 and especially of everything which, in 
 his imagination, enabled Katya to live 
 without him. He thought she was being 
 inevitably carried away from him to- 
 wards a thing the jnere thought of which 
 frightened him. 
 
 Once in the presence of her mother, 
 Katya said half-jokingly : 
 
 “Mitya, on the whole, your opinions 
 
34 
 
 MITYA'S LOVE 
 
 about women are thoroughly old-fash- 
 ioned and domestic. You’ll become a 
 perfect Othello. I wouldn’t like to fall 
 in love with you and marry you!” 
 
 Her mother said: 
 
 “I can’t conceive of love without jeal- 
 ousy. In my opinion people who are not 
 jealous are not in love!” 
 
 “No, mother,” said Katya, who was in- 
 clined to repeat other people’s remarks, 
 “jealousy shows a want of trust in the 
 person one loves. If I am not trusted, I 
 am not loved,” she added, looking away 
 from Mitya. 
 
 “For me,” her mother went on, “love is 
 made of jealousy. I read that somewhere. 
 It was clearly proved with examples from 
 the Bible, where God himself is described 
 as jealous and revengeful.” 
 
 Henceforth, Mitya’s love showed itself 
 almost solely in jealousy. It seemed to 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 35 
 
 him that it was no ordinary jealousy, but 
 a very special kind. Katya and he had 
 not yet achieved the greater intimacy, al- 
 though they had gone very far when they 
 were alone. And now at such times Katya 
 was still more passionate than she had 
 been heretofore. But he began to sus- 
 pect even her passion and sometimes it 
 gave him dreadful thoughts. All the 
 thoughts which formed his jealousy were 
 dreadful, but there was one which was 
 especially terrible, and which Mitya 
 could not define or even understand. It 
 was that the manifestations of passion, the 
 ones which were so delightful, so voluptu- 
 ous, more sublime and more beautiful 
 than anything else in the world when 
 Katya and he were together, appeared in- 
 credibly repulsive and monstrous when 
 Mitya thought of Katya with another 
 man. At those moments he felt a violent 
 
36 
 
 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 hatred for Katya, an almost physical dis- 
 gust. In his eyes all that went on be- 
 tween them was pure, beautiful and 
 charming. But it was quite different as 
 soon as he thought of somebody else in 
 his place. All the beauty was transformed 
 into something lewd and vulgar which 
 aroused in him the desire to strangle 
 Katya — Katya especially, not his imagi- 
 nary rival. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 DURING the last week in Lent the 
 day of the examination came at last. 
 Then Mitya’s grounds for his hidden tor- 
 ments seemed more justified than ever. 
 
 Katya did not see him any more, did not 
 pay any attention to him; she had become 
 a stranger to him, entirely absorbed in 
 her public appearance. 
 
 She made a great success. She was 
 dressed all in white, like a bride, and her 
 excitement increased her loveliness. She 
 was enthusiastically applauded. The Di- 
 rector, a self-sufficient actor with sad and 
 impassible eyes, was seated in the front 
 row, giving her advice to enable her to 
 shine even more. He spoke softly but in 
 
 such a way that the whole room could 
 37 
 
38 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 hear his voice, which exasperated Mitya. 
 
 “More naturally than that!” he said 
 gravely, calmly, with such familiarity 
 and authority that Katya appeared to be 
 his private property. “Don’t act, live!” 
 he added, accentuating each word. 
 
 It was unbearable. The recitation 
 which provoked the applause was as bad. 
 Katya, disconcerted, at times blushed 
 furiously, sometimes her small voice 
 weakened. She was breathless and it was 
 touching and charming. But she was re- 
 citing with the vulgar singsong, with the 
 affectation and silliness which was con- 
 sidered the height of artistry in the set 
 Mitya hated, and which already absorbed 
 all Katya’s thoughts. She did not speak 
 naturally, she declaimed her piece with 
 excessive pathos in her voice, with an ex- 
 aggerated tone of prayer which was en- 
 tirely unjustified. Mitya was so ashamed 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 39 
 for her that he did not know where to 
 look. 
 
 Worst of all was the mixture of angelic 
 purity and perversity in Katya; in her 
 flushed little face, in her white dress 
 which looked very short because the audi- 
 ence, looking up at her, could see her silk- 
 covered legs and her small white shoes. 
 “The young girl was singing in the 
 church,” said, or rather sang, Katya with 
 an exaggerated and affected simplicity, 
 talking about a girl of angelic purity. 
 And Mitya felt just then very close to 
 Katya, — as one always does in a crowd 
 when the person one loves is present, — 
 and also a hostility which was almost 
 hatred; he was proud of her, too, con- 
 scious that after all she belonged to him, 
 and yet his heart was torn with sorrow: 
 “No, everything is over. No, she’ll never 
 be mine any more!” 
 
40 
 
 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 After the examination there were many 
 happy days again. But Mitya was not so 
 trusting as before. Katya, remembering 
 the examination said: 
 
 “How stupid you were! Didn’t you 
 feel that I was reciting so well for you 
 alone!” 
 
 She was upon his knees. Bending over 
 her, he was kissing her bare white knees 
 and her breasts. He remained silent. He 
 was unable to forget how he had felt dur- 
 ing the examination and he could not tell 
 her that he was still thinking those things 
 and that they took hold of him still from 
 time to time with greater or less force. 
 Katya, for her part, could guess his hid- 
 den thoughts and, in one of their quarrels, 
 she said: 
 
 “I don’t understand why you love me, 
 since you find everything about me so ob- 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 41 
 jectionable! Tell me, what do you want 
 of me?” 
 
 But he himself did not understand why 
 he loved her so, although he felt that his 
 love, far from weakening, was growing 
 through this jealous struggle he was fight- 
 ing against some one — wasn’t it first of all 
 a struggle against Katya herself? — be- 
 cause of her, because of his love, because 
 of its increasing force and its ever more 
 exacting demands. 
 
 Katya had once said bitterly: “You 
 don’t love my soul, you only love my 
 body.” 
 
 They were words she had read some- 
 where, theatrical words, but in spite of 
 their foolishness and banality, they 
 touched a distressingly insoluble prob- 
 lem. He did not know why he loved, 
 he could not tell exactly what he 
 
42 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 wanted . . . After all, what is love? It 
 was impossible for him to say, for in all 
 that he had ever heard or read about love 
 he had never found anything which ex- 
 pressed his emotion exactly. In books, as 
 in life, it seemed as if every one had 
 agreed, once for all, to speak only of a 
 certain kind of love, almost immaterial; 
 or else of what is called passion, sen- 
 suality. And his love was like neither, 
 just as Katya was not like Charlotte, Mar- 
 guerite, Pushkin’s Tatyana, Turgenev’s 
 heroines nor the women of Zola or Mau- 
 passant; just as his own feelings in no way 
 resembled those of Werther, Romeo, 
 Onegin, nor any of the innumerable 
 heroes who were Don Juans and nothing 
 else. 
 
 What did he feel for her? What is 
 the difference between love and passion? 
 Was it Katya’s soul or her body which 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 43 
 
 almost made him swoon, which gave him 
 that felicity, verging upon death, that he 
 felt when he opened her blouse and kissed 
 the bloom of her virginal bosom, her 
 bosom which she offered to his lips with 
 poignant docility and the most innocent 
 immodesty? 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 IN April Katya changed even more. 
 She became unrecognisable. 
 
 Her success at the examination was part 
 of it, and yet it was not only that which 
 had transformed her. It was plain that 
 there were other things which had caused 
 the change. Mitya did not understand 
 them, did not know what they were, and 
 was much puzzled. When spring finally 
 came, Katya began to act like a débutante, 
 full of animation and always in a hurry. 
 She wore a new dress almost every day 
 and they were all very plain but very 
 expensive. Now, when in a swish of silk 
 she arrived, — no longer on foot but al- 
 ways in a carriage, — she went quickly 
 through the passage, her face covered by 
 
 her veil. Mitya was ashamed of the dark 
 44 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 45 
 
 passage. She was still tender with him, 
 but she was always late and stayed only a 
 little while, with the excuse that she must 
 accompany her mother to the dressmaker. 
 
 “You see, we are dressed to kill!” she 
 would say and her wide open eyes would 
 shine, gay and wondering. She knew very 
 well that Mitya did not believe her and 
 that she sounded as if she were lying, but 
 she talked all the more, because they had 
 nothing to say to each other any longer. 
 
 Now, she almost never took off her hat, 
 she kept her umbrella in her hand, and 
 sat on the edge of Mitya’s bed, madden- 
 ing him by exposing her silk-clad legs. 
 As she was leaving she would say that 
 she would not be at home that evening 
 either for she must go out with her mother 
 again. Then, with the evident intention 
 of duping him and making up for all his 
 “foolish imaginings” as she called them, 
 
46 
 
 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 she would invariably do the same thing, — 
 she would look furtively towards the door, 
 get up from the bed and, with exagger- 
 ated passion, murmur hurriedly: 
 
 “Do kiss me!” 
 
 She would throw her arms around his 
 neck and tenderly press her graceful body 
 against his. Once in a particularly long 
 kiss, she moved her tongue, pressed her 
 body closer against Mitya’s and, drawing 
 away, whispered quickly: 
 
 “No, you drive me mad!” 
 
 That kiss upset Mitya completely. 
 Where had she learned such kisses? Mit- 
 ya was absolutely inexperienced, even at 
 kissing — his first winter in Moscow had 
 brought him his first love, — but he un- 
 derstood all that was strange and differ- 
 ent in Katya’s kiss. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 AT the end of April, Mitya at last de- 
 cided to go away to the country for a 
 time. Both he and Katya were tired out 
 and their torture was much more intoler- 
 able because it seemed unjustifiable. 
 After all, what had happened, what had 
 Katya done? One day she said to him 
 with the firmness of desperation: 
 
 “Yes, go away, go away, I can’t bear 
 it any more! We must separate for a 
 while so we can be sure of our feelings 
 toward each other. You have become so 
 thin that mother is sure you have tuber- 
 culosis. I am all tired out!” 
 
 So Mitya’s departure was decided 
 upon. But he was greatly astonished to 
 
 find, that although sunk in grief, he was 
 
 47 
 
48 
 
 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 almost happy to go. As soon as he had 
 made up his mind to leave, everything 
 was as it had been when they first met. 
 Because, in spite of everything, he wished 
 passionately not to believe in the phan- 
 toms which haunted him day and night! 
 And any little change in Katya was 
 enough to make all the difference in the 
 world! 
 
 Katya was again truly tender and lov- 
 ing. He felt it with the infallible sensi- 
 tiveness of the jealous nature. Again, he 
 was allowed to remain with her till two 
 in the morning, once more they had a 
 lot to say to each other and the nearer 
 the hour of departure came, the more ab- 
 surd the separation appeared, “the need 
 to be sure of their feelings towards each 
 other.” Once, Katya, who never cried, 
 did so, and her tears brought her closer 
 to Mitya and filled him with acute pity 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 49 
 
 and with the feeling that it was all his 
 fault. 
 
 Katya’s mother was going to the 
 Crimea at the beginning of June for the 
 whole summer and she was taking her 
 daughter with her. They decided that 
 Mitya should go to Mishkor when he had 
 secured some money and that they would 
 meet there. 
 
 He ran about Moscow preparing for 
 his departure like one who, without know- 
 ing it, is already in the throes of a grave 
 illness. He was sick, drunkenly unhappy 
 and at the same time wildly happy, soft- 
 ened by the renewal of his intimacy with 
 Katya and her solicitude for him — she 
 had even gone with him to buy straps 
 for his luggage, as if she were his fiancée 
 or his wife — and generally by the return 
 of almost everything which recalled to 
 him the first weeks of their love. And 
 
50 
 
 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 his surroundings filled him with the same 
 sensation, — the houses, the streets, those 
 who went along on foot, or in carriages, 
 the weather continuously morose as al- 
 ways in the spring, the smell of dust and 
 rain, the church-like smell of flowering 
 poplars behind walls in the small streets; 
 everything spoke of the bitterness of sep- 
 aration, of the delight of the coming sum- 
 mer, of the meeting in the Crimea where 
 nothing would disturb them and where 
 the promise would be fulfilled! — al- 
 though he was ignorant yet of what that 
 promise was exactly. 
 
 Protassov came to see him on the day 
 of his departure. Amongst the more ad- 
 vanced pupils of the High Schools and 
 amongst University students are rather 
 frequently to be found young men who 
 adopt a bantering attitude, both kind and 
 bitter, and the manners of older and more 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 51 
 
 experienced men. Protassov was one of 
 these. He was Mitya’s most intimate 
 comrade, his only real friend, who knew 
 all about his love for Katya, in spite of 
 Mitya’s silent and reserved temperament. 
 As he looked at Mitya tying his trunk and 
 saw his hands tremble he smiled with 
 melancholy wisdom and said: 
 
 “Good God, what children you two 
 are! And yet, my dear young Werther, 
 it is time for you to understand that 
 Katya is the typical woman and even 
 the chief of police can’t do anything 
 about it. You, as a typical man, you hit 
 the ceiling at once, you are at the mercy 
 of your instinct to perpetuate the race, 
 which is, of course, perfectly legitimate 
 and up to a certain point, sacred. Your 
 body is your supreme reason for existing, 
 as Nietzsche pointed out very truly. But 
 it is also legitimate that on that sacred 
 
52 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 road you might break your neck. There 
 are, in the animal world, certain species 
 which must pay with their existence for 
 their first and last act of love. Possibly 
 you may not be destined to such a fate 
 if you keep your eyes open and take care 
 of yourself. ‘On my word of honour, 
 Junker Schmidt, the summer will come 
 back!’ Katya is not the only woman in 
 the world. I see by the efforts you are 
 making to strangle your valise that you 
 do not agree with me, and that she is the 
 only one for you. Well, excuse my in- 
 discreet advice and may Saint Nicolas and 
 all the other Blessed Saints have you in 
 their keeping!” 
 
 When Protassov left, after shaking 
 hands with Mitya, the latter, pulling his 
 straps around his pillow and travelling 
 bag, heard through the window opening 
 on the court a singer who lived opposite 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 53 
 
 and who practised from morning till 
 night. He was singing The Sultans 
 Daughter, who walked about her garden 
 “shining with beauty.” Then, Mitya 
 hastened his straps, took his cap and went 
 to say good-bye to Katya’s mother. The 
 air and the words of song that the musi- 
 cian had been singing pursued him with 
 such insistence that he saw neither the 
 streets nor the passers-by and he walked 
 even more unsteadily than he had done 
 during the last few days. Again his mind 
 dwelt on the song in which the Sultan’s 
 daughter met in the garden a negro slave 
 standing near the fountain “paler than 
 death itself.” She asked him who he was 
 and where he came from, and he began 
 by answering her in a sinister but humble 
 tone with mournful simplicity: 
 
 My name is Mahomet 
 
 and ended in an ecstatic and tragic cry: 
 
5 4 
 
 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 1 belong to the race of the poor Azri 
 If we love we die! 
 
 Katya was dressing to see him off at 
 the station. From her room, — the room 
 where he had spent so many unforgettable 
 hours, — she called that she would be at 
 the station before the first bell of the train 
 had rung. The kind woman with the 
 raspberry-colored hair was sitting alone, 
 smoking; she looked at him sadly, it was 
 quite probable that she had understood 
 and guessed everything long ago. He, 
 blushing and inwardly very nervous, bent 
 his head dutifully and kissed her soft, 
 limp hand, and she with motherly affec- 
 tion gave him several kisses on the temple 
 and made the sign of the cross over him. 
 
 “Well, my dear,” she said with a shy 
 smile, quoting Griboiedov, “learn to 
 laugh! Christ be with you! Go now, 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 55 
 
 He could not remember how he got out, 
 or rather how he escaped. He almost 
 fell over the carpet in the hall, but to 
 make up for that, he went down stairs 
 with a ferociously firm and angry step. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 WHEN he had finished his packing 
 and, with the aid of the porter, had 
 stowed his luggage safely in a cab, he 
 sat back uncomfortably among his belong- 
 ings, disturbed by the strange feeling 
 which seizes one when leaving a familiar 
 place; dismay that a certain phase of life 
 is ended for ever, combined with the hope 
 that perhaps a new life is beginning. He 
 became calmer and looked around him 
 with courage and with new eyes. The 
 end, — he was saying good-bye to Moscow 
 and all his life there! It was drizzling, 
 the weather was dull again, the narrow 
 streets were deserted, the pavement was 
 dark and shone like iron, the houses were 
 dirty and mournful and the coachman 
 
 drove with exasperating slowness! 
 
 56 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 57 
 
 They passed the Kremlin and the Po- 
 krovka ; then they again followed narrow 
 crooked streets. In the gardens the jays 
 with their raucous cries were announcing 
 the rain and the evening, — but it was a 
 spring evening. Howlings and whistlings 
 came from the station. At last they ar- 
 rived and Mitya followed his porter 
 through the swarming and echoing wait- 
 ing-room to the platform, then to track 
 number 3 where the long heavy train for 
 Kursk was already waiting. Among that 
 immense and ugly crowd assaulting the 
 train, among the porters noisily pushing 
 their trucks loaded with baggage and 
 shouting to keep out of the way, he per- 
 ceived immediately the one who, “shining 
 with beauty,” was standing aside, alone 
 and away from the crowd. She seemed 
 then apart, not only from the crowd 
 but from the whole world. The first bell 
 
58 MITYA’S LOVE 
 had sounded, — this time it was he who 
 was late, it was Katya who was waiting 
 for him. She ran to meet him with the 
 eagerness of a fiancée or a wife. 
 
 “Go and get a seat, darling. The sec- 
 ond bell will be ringing in a minute.” 
 
 After the second ring, he stood at the 
 window of a crowded and vile-smelling 
 third class carriage while Katya, more 
 lovely than ever, remained on the plat- 
 form looking up at him. Everything 
 about her was delightful, her pretty and 
 mobile face, her slim figure, her fresh- 
 ness, her youth in which womanly charm 
 wa9 still mixed with childishness, her 
 bright eyes, her simple blue hat, the shape 
 of which alone gave her a certain rakish 
 elegance, and even the dark-grey suit she 
 wore. Mitya loved its material and its 
 silk lining. Standing, he was tall and 
 awkward, terribly thin. For the journey 
 
59 
 
 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 he had put on heavy riding boots and an 
 old coat whose worn white buttons 
 showed the red copper underneath. It 
 had been part of his college uniform. But 
 in spite of that Katya’s sad eyes were full 
 of love as she looked at him. The third 
 signal gave him such an abrupt shock 
 that with the same impulse Mitya jumped 
 from the carriage and Katya ran towards 
 him. He pressed his lips passionately 
 upon her gloved hand and jumped back 
 into the carriage with tears in his eyes. 
 He waved his cap frantically, while she, 
 holding her skirt and still looking up at 
 him, seemed to be retreating from him. 
 She moved faster and faster and the wind 
 made Mitya’s hair wilder and wilder as 
 he bent out of the window. The implaca- 
 ble locomotive gathered speed, with an 
 insolent shriek, until finally Katya and 
 the platform disappeared from sight. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE long spring twilight was dark- 
 ened by rain clouds, the heavy train 
 groaned its way through fresh and bare 
 fields, — spring was just beginning in the 
 country, — the conductors passed through 
 the cars collecting tickets and putting 
 candles in the lanterns. Mitya stood near 
 the vibrating window, still tasting Katya’s 
 glove upon his lips, still aflame with the 
 sharp pain of the last instant of separa- 
 tion. He saw in a new light the long past 
 winter, full of happiness and torture, 
 which had transformed his whole life. 
 Katya also appeared to him in a new light. 
 Yes, who could express what she was to 
 him, what she meant? Love, passion ; soul 
 
 and body? What is all that? That wasn’t 
 60 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 61 
 
 it at all! It was something quite differ- 
 ent! The perfume of her glove? wasn’t 
 that also Katya, love, her body and her 
 soul? And the peasants, the workmen in 
 the carriage, the woman who was taking 
 her disagreeable child to the toilet, the 
 dull candles in their rattling lanterns, the 
 twilight in the deserted spring fields, all 
 that was love, all that was soul — and it 
 was all torture and it was all undefinable 
 joy! 
 
 In the morning they reached Orel, 
 where he had to change and take the local 
 train already waiting on a distant track. 
 Mitya felt how simple, calm, and friendly 
 these people were compared to Moscow 
 people, now so far away, in that far world 
 whose centre was Katya, so touchingly 
 and tenderly beloved! Even the sky, 
 spotted here and there by clouds heavy 
 with rain, even the pure breeze over the 
 
62 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 fields was simpler and calmer here . . . 
 The train left Orel slowly, very slowly, 
 and Mitya, seated in the empty carriage, 
 leisurely ate the cakes he had bought at 
 Tula. Then, when at last Orel was left 
 behind, the train went faster and Mitya, 
 soothed by its motion, fell asleep. 
 
 When he awoke they were at Verk- 
 hovie. The train had stopped and there 
 were a lot of people walking about. It 
 wa9 all very provincial. He could smell 
 the agreeable fumes of cooking in the sta- 
 tion restaurant and felt hungry. He ate 
 a plate of soup with relish and drank a 
 bottle of beer and, feeling more tired than 
 ever, went back to sleep. When he awoke 
 again the train was going full speed 
 through a forest of birches he knew well. 
 The next station was his. Again night 
 was falling, a dull spring night. Through 
 the opened window came a smell of rain 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 63 
 and mushrooms. The trees were still bare 
 of leaves, nevertheless the noise of the 
 train seemed greater than in the fields. 
 In the distance the sad station lights were 
 already appearing. Then the green light 
 of the semaphore above them, exceed- 
 ingly pretty in that twilight among those 
 bare trees, and with a great noise the train 
 switched to another track . . . How de- 
 lightfully rustic and pleasing was the 
 farm hand, waiting on the platform for 
 the young master! And in Mitya’s imagi- 
 nation Katya’s beauty shone brighter 
 still . . . 
 
 As they drove from the station, through 
 a big village, dirty and springlike, the 
 twilight and the clouds became thicker. 
 Everything was submerged in the ex- 
 traordinary softness of the closing day, in 
 the heavy silence of the earth, in the 
 warmish night, which seemed one with 
 
64 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 the darkness of the low moist clouds. 
 Again Mitya wondered and rejoiced: 
 how simple, calm and poor the country- 
 side was, with its smoked thatched cot- 
 tages that had already been asleep for a 
 long time, because on Annunciation day 
 the good country people used no artificial 
 light, and how comfortable one felt in 
 the dark, soft warmth of the steppes! 
 The carriage plunged through muddy 
 holes; in a rich peasant’s yard some oaks 
 stood still bare and very grim, darkly 
 spotted by rooks’ nests. Standing near 
 the house and looking up at the sky, was 
 a strange peasant who seemed to have 
 survived from the Middle Ages; his feet 
 were bare, his smock torn, and he wore 
 a hat of sheepskin over his long straight 
 hair . . . And now a soft rain, lukewarm 
 and perfumed, began to fall. Mitya 
 thought about the girls and the young 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 65 
 
 women asleep in those houses, about the 
 vast feminine world he had approached 
 last winter through Katya, and magically 
 all his thoughts and sensations mingled 
 confusedly: Katya, the girls, the night, 
 the spring, the rain, the odour of the 
 freshly-ploughed fields ready to be sowed, 
 the smell of the horse and the perfume 
 of her kid gloves . . . Mitya curled up 
 in the carriage, his eyes full of tears, and 
 with trembling hands he lighted a ciga- 
 rette . . . 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 IN the country life began with delight- 
 ful and peaceful days. During the drive 
 from the station Katya had paled and had 
 seemed to melt in the surrounding coun- 
 try. It was an illusion which lasted only 
 a few days more, while Mitya was 
 catching up on his sleep, was becoming 
 himself again, and was readjusting him- 
 self to the life he knew from childhood. 
 The house where he was born, the coun- 
 try, the rustic spring, the barrenness and 
 emptiness of the world, now once more 
 youthful and pure, was ready for a new 
 flowering. But even during those days, 
 Katya was everywhere and at the back of 
 everything, just as a long time ago, — when 
 nine years previously Mitya’s father had 
 
 died, also in the spring — there had been, 
 66 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 67 
 for a long time, everywhere and at the 
 back of everything, death. 
 
 The estate was small, the house was old 
 and unpretentious, and this simple way 
 of living did not demand numerous ser- 
 vants. A peaceful life began for Mitya. 
 His sister Anya, in the second year of high 
 school, and his brother Kostya, a young 
 cadet, were still at Orel studying and 
 would not return until the end of May. 
 His mother, Olga Petrovna, was as al- 
 ways absorbed in the management of the 
 farm, having no one to help her but an 
 overseer, — the starost, as he was called by 
 the servants. During the day, she was 
 usually in the fields or off to the town on 
 business and she went to bed at nightfall. 
 
 That first night Mitya slept twelve 
 hours. The next day, after washing and 
 dressing in his sunny room, which faced 
 east and looked out upon the garden, he 
 
68 
 
 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 went all over the house, feeling how 
 keenly he was attached to it and how its 
 peaceful simplicity was calming his soul 
 and body. Everything was as it had been 
 for many years. Everywhere was the 
 same agreeable smell. The house had 
 been carefully cleaned for his homecom- 
 ing, — he came back no longer as a boy, 
 but almost as the young master, — and the 
 floors of all the rooms had been scrubbed. 
 Only the cleaning of the big drawing- 
 room near the hall, used only on state 
 occasions, had not yet been completed. 
 Standing on a window ledge near the door 
 opening upon the terrace, a freckle-faced 
 girl from the village was trying to dry 
 the upper pane, while the lower one re- 
 flected a bluish image of her. Paracha, 
 the maid, pulled a big cloth from her 
 bucket of hot water, and walking across 
 the flooded floor on the small heels of her 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 69 
 
 bare feet, showing her white legs, she 
 said to Mitya with an affectionate famil- 
 iarity, as with her bent arm she wiped 
 her flaming face: 
 
 “Go and have your breakfast. It was 
 not yet daylight when your mother went 
 to the station with the overseer. I don’t 
 suppose you even heard her leaving.” 
 
 And at once Katya imperiously called 
 him back to her in his thoughts. He had 
 caught himself desiring this woman’s 
 arm with its pulled-up sleeve, the femi- 
 nine curves of the girl stretching towards 
 the top of the window, her skirt under 
 which were hidden the firm columns of 
 her bare legs, and joyfully he felt Katya’s 
 power, her domination over him. All 
 morning he felt her invisible presence. 
 
 With each new day as he gained con- 
 trol of himself again, he felt her presence 
 very keenly and more wonderfully. He 
 
70 
 
 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 grew calmer and began to rid himself 
 of that sickly sensitiveness, which had 
 made everything in Moscow hurt him, — 
 and probably without any real cause. As 
 he grew more deeply in communion with 
 the spring and the country he forgot the 
 real Katya in Moscow, who had so often 
 and so painfully failed to coincide with 
 the Katya of his dreams and desires. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 FOR the first time in his life he was 
 living at home like a grown man, abso- 
 lutely independent, — even his mother 
 treated him differently, — but above all he 
 was living in spirit with his first love, 
 realising all the secret longings of his 
 childhood and his adolescence. It was 
 for this love he had grown and matured, 
 it seemed that he had been waiting for 
 it since his first day on earth. When 
 he was still a child, a sensation impos- 
 sible to express in words had fluttered 
 within him, a sensation both mysterious 
 and profound. One day in the spring, in 
 a garden, near a lilac bush, — he still re- 
 membered the strong smell of the blos- 
 soms, — he was standing near a young 
 71 
 
72 
 
 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 woman, perhaps his nurse. Suddenly the 
 world had been illumined by a celestial 
 light, perhaps from her face, perhaps 
 from the apron drawn tight on her full 
 bosom. It seemed as if a warm current 
 had moved through his body, like a child 
 moving in its mother’s womb . . . But 
 that had been like a dream. He had had 
 similar experiences later in his childhood, 
 his early adolescence and during the years 
 he spent at high school. He felt ex- 
 traordinary attractions, quite unlike any- 
 thing else in his world, towards some of 
 the little girls who came, accompanied 
 by their mothers, to children’s parties; a 
 well-hidden but voracious curiosity at all 
 of the movements of those delightful 
 small beings, who were also quite unlike 
 anything else in his world, — their small 
 dresses, their bows of ribbon upon their 
 small heads. Still, later, in the principal 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 73 
 
 town of the province, he had felt a much 
 more conscious attraction, lasting a whole 
 autumn, towards a small high school girl 
 who often, in the evening, climbed a tree 
 behind his garden wall. Her liveliness, 
 her roguishness, the round comb in her 
 hair, her small dirty hands, her laugh, her 
 ringing shouts, all had had such an over- 
 whelming effect upon him that he had 
 thought about her all day long, and was 
 sad and sometimes even cried, powerless 
 to control his insatiable desire. Then this 
 feeling had passed off of itself and was 
 forgotten, and Mitya felt attracted to- 
 wards others, emotions all more or less 
 ephemeral, but all carefully concealed. 
 He had had sharp joys and sharp sorrows 
 caused by secret passions born at dances 
 in the high school. Once, when he was 
 only in his second year, he had almost had 
 a real affair with a girl of sixteen in the 
 
74 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 senior class, a tall, dark-haired girl, with 
 very dark eyebrows. For the first time in 
 his life Mitya touched a girl’s soft cheek 
 once, once only, and he had felt a bliss- 
 ful shiver, like one he had experienced 
 at his first communion and like noth- 
 ing he had felt since, even with Katya. 
 But that was all there had been to that 
 adventure; it also was forgotten. For a 
 long time Mitya felt languid in body and 
 his mind was filled with the images of 
 dreams. He saw very clearly now that 
 the enigmatic but charming spring was 
 entering his soul, that before he had met 
 Katya, all his life, all his passionate at- 
 tractions, his dreams, his hopes, had been 
 only a medley of confused hallucinations 
 and presentiments. 
 
 He was born in the country and had 
 grown up there, but during his high 
 school days he had always spent the spring 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 75 
 
 months in town, except the year before 
 last, when he came home ill during Easter 
 and had spent the whole of March and 
 part of April convalescing in the country. 
 It had been an unforgettable period. For 
 a fortnight he had remained in bed, see- 
 ing through the window only the sky, the 
 snow, the garden, the tree trunks and the 
 branches changing every day as the days 
 grew longer and warmer. He looked out, 
 it was morning and the sun was pouring 
 so much light and heat into the room that 
 the flies had come to life and were crawl- 
 ing about on the window panes . . . The 
 next day in the afternoon the sun was on 
 the other side of the house and he saw 
 through the window the bluish white 
 snow, and the sky streaked like marble. 
 There were big white clouds in the blue 
 between the tree tops. The next day there 
 were such clear spots in the cloudy sky, 
 
76 
 
 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 such a bright moisture on the bark of the 
 trees, so many drops falling from the 
 roof above the window that he was never 
 tired of looking out and rejoicing at the 
 melting snow. Then there were warm 
 fogs and rain, and in a few days the snow 
 had melted and disappeared, a brook was 
 carrying it out of the garden and into 
 the yard, the black earth was showing, 
 new and joyful. Mitya remembered for a 
 long time a day towards the end of March 
 when, for the first time since his illness, 
 he was able to go on horseback through 
 the fields, still stubble-covered, reddish, 
 and uncultivated except where a little 
 ploughing had been done, — they had al- 
 ready started to sow the oats, — and the 
 soil showed dark and fat in its primitive 
 richness. He went straight through the 
 stubble and the ploughed fields to a wood 
 which was spread in the distant valley, 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 77 
 
 and in the clear atmosphere he could see 
 it bare and small, visible in all its expanse. 
 
 Then he went down towards the valley 
 and under his horse’s hoofs the thick car- 
 pet of leaves from the year before rustled, 
 here dry and straw-coloured and there wet 
 and brown. He crossed ditches full of 
 leaves where the water from the melted 
 snow was still running and where birds 
 of dark golden hue flew out from the 
 bushes almost under his horse’s hoofs. 
 The fresh wind came to meet him an a 
 his horse plunged victoriously through 
 the damp stubble and the dark ploughed 
 land, breathing noisily, sniffing and 
 snorting with a splendid wild strength 
 
 What had this spring meant to him— - 
 and especially that day spent in the 
 fields? It seemed at the time that that 
 spring had been his first real love, that 
 spring when he had been constantly in 
 
78 
 
 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 love with some one or something, when 
 he had loved all the high school girls 
 and, indeed, all the girls in the universe. 
 Good Lord! how far away it all seemed 
 now! What a very small innocent boy 
 he had been, so simple of heart, with his 
 sorrows, his joys and his dreams, all of 
 them so modest! And now he felt for 
 that little boy a sad and tender pity. His 
 present aimless and unreal love was then 
 a dream, or rather the memory of a mar- 
 vellous dream. But, now, there was 
 ^atya among all those things, Katya who 
 P°"sessed him wholly. Katya, the soul in 
 which all the world was incarnate. 
 
 / 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 ONLY once during the first weeks of 
 Mitya’s life in the country was Katya re- 
 called to his remembrance in an unpleas- 
 ant manner. Very late one evening, ex- 
 cited by the voluptuous day dreams which 
 thinking of Katya always brought him, 
 Mitya stood for a moment on the terrace 
 at the back of the house. It was quite 
 dark and very peaceful and he br.eathed 
 in the smell of the damp fields. Through 
 the dark clouds, above the uncertain con- 
 tours of the gardens, ''mall stars were 
 shining feebly as if through tears. And 
 suddenly in the distance something 
 howled wildly, diabolically, — and went 
 on barking, howling. Mitya shivered, 
 steeled himself, and went down the steps 
 
 carefully into the dark alley from every 
 79 
 
80 
 
 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 corner of which unseen evil beings seemed 
 to be spying on him, and there, again, he 
 waited and listened: what was it, where 
 was it, that thing that had filled the eve- 
 ning so suddenly, so terribly with its 
 cries? “An owl making love probably, 
 nothing else!” he thought, but he stiffened 
 as if the devil himself were present in the 
 darkness. Suddenly another low-toned 
 howl shook Mitya to the depths of his 
 being; somewhere, quite near him, at the 
 top of the alley, there was a crackling, a 
 rustling, and the devil betook himself si- 
 lently to another corner of the garden. 
 There he barked first, then began a plain- 
 tive moaning, asking pardon like a child, 
 crying, beating his wings and screeching 
 with sorrowful delight, screaming and 
 bursting into sardonic laughter as if he 
 were tickled or tortured. Trembling all 
 over Mitya tried to pierce the darkness 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 81 
 
 and listened intently. But the devil 
 abruptly stopped and after rending the 
 garden with a howl of hopeless despair, 
 disappeared as if the earth had swallowed 
 him. After waiting vainly for the re- 
 newal of that amorous horror, Mitya 
 softly went back to the house. All night 
 long he was tortured in his sleep by the 
 same awful thoughts, the morbid im- 
 aginings that had changed his love in 
 March. And he thought: “Who knows 
 where Katya is now? She may be loving 
 some one else.” 
 
 However, in the morning sunshine, his 
 torments of the night before quickly 
 evaporated. He remembered Katya’s 
 tears when they had at last decided that 
 he should leave Moscow for a time, he 
 recalled with what enthusiasm she had 
 welcomed the idea that he should come 
 to the Crimea at the beginning of June, 
 
82 
 
 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 and in what a charming way she had 
 helped him with his preparations for his 
 departure and how she had seen him off 
 at the station. He took out her photo- 
 graph, looked for a long time at her 
 small coquettish face, and wondered at 
 the purity, the clearness of her eyes, 
 bright, wide open, slightly rounded. He 
 wrote her a rather long and tender letter, 
 full of confidence in their love, and after 
 posting it imagined what it would be like 
 to have Katya’s loving and radiant pres- 
 ence continually among all the things 
 which were life and joy to him. 
 
 He had not forgotten how he had felt 
 when his father had died, nine years pre- 
 viously. It was also in the spring. The 
 day after his death, his father lay 
 stretched out upon a table, dressed in his 
 nobleman’s costume, his big pale hands 
 crossed upon his large chest, his beard 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 83 
 
 dark and thin, his nose quite white. 
 Mitya had crossed the room hesitatingly 
 and fearfully, he had gone out upon the 
 terrace and looked at the enormous cof- 
 fin top, covered with gold brocade, lean- 
 ing against the door. There he had first 
 felt the presence of death in the universe. 
 Death was everywhere, in the sunlight, 
 in the green grass in the yard, in the sky, 
 in the garden . . . He went into the gar- 
 den, along the avenue lined with lime- 
 trees bright with sunlight, then along the 
 side avenues, brighter still; he looked at 
 the trees, at the first white butterflies, and 
 listened to the faint chirruping of the first 
 birds, — and he recognised nothing. Death 
 was everywhere, from the frightful table 
 in the big room, to the coffin top covered 
 with brocade on the terrace! The sun 
 no longer shone as brightly as before, the 
 grass had lost its freshness, the butter- 
 
84 MITYA’S LOVE 
 flies on the lawn, — the top of which only 
 was warm, — nothing was as it had been 
 twenty-four hours earlier, everything had 
 changed as if the end of the world were 
 near, and the beauty of spring, of its 
 eternal youth, had become sad and joy- 
 less. This feeling lasted a long time, it 
 kept recurring all spring whenever he 
 smelled, or thought he smelled in that 
 well-cleaned and well-aired house, that 
 abominable and sweetish odour . . . 
 
 Sometimes now Mitya felt the same 
 haunting fear, but it had a different qual- 
 ity this spring. The spring of his first 
 love was altogether different from all 
 other springs! Again his world had 
 changed and was filled with a strange 
 quality neither hostile nor to be feared, 
 but on the contrary admirably suited to 
 the joy and youth of springtime. The 
 world was filled with Katya, or rather 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 85 
 
 with his desire for her, for that most beau- 
 tiful of all human experiences, which 
 Mitya wanted to secure from her. He 
 wanted her more and more as the spring 
 days went by. And since she was not 
 there, since he had only his image of 
 her to desire, and that altogether ideal- 
 ised, he felt there was nothing wrong in 
 his innocent and beautiful desire. Wher- 
 ever he went, whatever he did, he felt 
 it more and more deeply. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 FROM the first week of his stay at 
 home he suddenly saw with joy that the 
 spring had only begun. Seated with an 
 open book near the drawing-room win- 
 dow, he looked through the trunks of the 
 firs and pines on the plot in front of the 
 house towards the dirty little stream run- 
 ning across the fields and the village on 
 the hills behind it; in the neighbouring 
 gardens, on the bare century-old birches, 
 the rooks tirelessly cawed from morning 
 till night, excited by their happiness, for 
 they caw only in the spring; on the slopes, 
 the village still looked wild and grey as 
 yet, and only the willows were covered 
 with a soft yellow foliage. Mitya went 
 into the garden. The garden was also 
 
 bare and dwarf-like but full of light. 
 
 86 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 87 
 
 Only the lawns were green and strewn 
 with turquoise blue flowers, along the 
 paths the bushes had leaves and in the 
 ravine which crossed the southern and 
 lower part of the garden where there was 
 a cherry orchard, the trees were covered 
 with small white flowers. Mitya went 
 into the fields. They were also empty 
 and grey, the stubbles stood up like the 
 bristles of a hair-brush, the dry pathways 
 were still violet and rough. Everywhere 
 was the bareness of youth at the period 
 of expectancy, — and everywhere was 
 Katya. It was only superficially that 
 his attention was occupied by the girls 
 from the village who worked on the es- 
 tate, by the workmen in the outhouses, 
 by his walks, his reading, the visits he 
 paid to people he knew in the village, 
 his conversations with his mother, the ex- 
 peditions in droschki which he made 
 
88 
 
 MITYA’S LO Y E 
 
 through the fields with the starost, a re- 
 tired soldier, tall and very brusque in 
 his manners. 
 
 Another week passed. After a night 
 of torrential rain, the warm sun suddenly 
 gathered strength and changed every- 
 thing, not day by day, but hour by hour. 
 The ploughing went on, the stubble be- 
 came black velvet, the pathways through 
 the fields green, the grass in the yard 
 thickened, the blue of the sky deepened 
 and grew brighter, the garden was speed- 
 ily covered by verdure fresh and pleas- 
 ing to the eye. The grey lilac bushes 
 turned mauve and perfumed the air, on 
 the dark green of their varnished foliage 
 and in the warm spots of light in the 
 avenues appeared swarms of black flies 
 with wings of a shining metallic blue. 
 The branches of the apple- and pear-trees 
 were still visible, hardly touched by a 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 89 
 
 greyish foliage of a very soft colour, but 
 to take the place of the leaves there were 
 already masses of blossoms. The apple- 
 and pear-trees which spread their gnarled 
 boughs under the other trees were a mass 
 of curly, milky snow. Each day their 
 blossoms became whiter and thicker and 
 smelled sweeter. 
 
 All that marvellous time, while Mitya 
 was watching attentively and joyfully all 
 the changes the spring brought in his sur- 
 roundings, Katya did not fade, did not 
 disappear into the distance. On the con- 
 trary she herself became a part of it, her 
 beauty grew as the spring became more 
 and more wonderful, as the garden be- 
 came more magnificently white and the 
 sky a deeper and deeper blue. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 LATE one afternoon, as he came in for 
 tea to the room full of the bright sun- 
 shine which precedes the evening, Mitya 
 saw near the samovar the mail for which 
 he had waited in vain all morning. He 
 went quickly to the table, — Katya ought 
 to have answered at least one of the letters 
 he had sent her, a long, long time ago, — 
 and his restless eyes saw a smart envelope 
 on which was the familiar small hand- 
 writing. He picked it up and left the 
 house, crossing the garden through its 
 main avenue. He went off into the 
 farthest corner of the garden where it 
 came to an end at a ravine. There he 
 stopped, looked all about him, and hur- 
 riedly tore open the envelope. The let- 
 ter was short, only a few lines, but Mitya 
 was so excited that he had to re-read it 
 
 90 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 91 
 
 half a dozen times before he understood 
 it. His heart was beating very quickly. 
 “My beloved, my only one!” he read 
 again and again, and the effect of those 
 exclamations was such that he felt the 
 earth disappear from under his feet. He 
 looked up. The sky shone above the gar- 
 den triumphant and radiant; all around 
 the snowy whiteness delighted his eyes ; in 
 the fresh foliage of the far-away bushes 
 a nightingale, feeling already the slight 
 chill which is the precursor of night, sang 
 with strength, clearness and all the sweet- 
 ness of renunciation, — and the blood flew 
 again to Mitya’s face and he felt his head 
 tingle . . . 
 
 Slowly he came back to the house — his 
 heart overflowing with love, his cup of 
 happiness filled to the brim. And in the 
 days following, he carried it around care- 
 fully, waiting for another letter, happy 
 and even a little proud. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE days passed, but no other letter 
 came. “It will come, it will come!” 
 Mitya kept saying to himself, but it did 
 not. Little by little, a hidden uneasiness 
 took hold of him, troubled his happiness 
 and his peace not only in the day time but 
 even at night while he slept. 
 
 The garden became more beautiful 
 with varied colors; the flowers were 
 blooming; the giant old maple which 
 dominated the southern part of the gar- 
 den and could be seen from all sides be- 
 came still bigger and more imposing, cov- 
 ered as it was to its highest branch with 
 a marvellously bright and leafy richness. 
 The main avenue that Mitya could see 
 through his windows grew higher and 
 more clearly defined; its old limes were 
 
 92 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 93 
 
 also covered to the top, though they were 
 still transparent in spite of the interlac- 
 ings of young foliage which spread over 
 the garden a light green veil. Beneath 
 the maple, beneath the trees in the ave- 
 nue and driveway and all the other leafy 
 trees, a sea of creamy blossoms perfumed 
 the sunny air. 
 
 The top of the dense and enormous 
 maple, the faint green mist of the lime- 
 trees, the nuptial whiteness of the apples, 
 the pears, and the wild cherries, the sun, 
 the azure of the sky and every plant in 
 blossom in the lower part of the garden 
 near the ravine, along the principal and 
 smaller paths, or at the foot of the house 
 wall, the lilac, acacia or gooseberry 
 bushes, the burdock, the nettles, the 
 wormwood, — everything delighted and 
 surprised him by its freshness, its abun- 
 dance and its newness. 
 
94 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 The vegetation which surrounded the 
 well-arranged green yard made it on all 
 sides seem narrower and made the house 
 seem smaller and prettier. It seemed to 
 be waiting for visitors. For days at a 
 stretch all the doors and windows were 
 open in every room in the white sitting- 
 room, in the old-fashioned blue drawing- 
 room, in the little boudoir, blue also and 
 decorated with miniatures, and in the 
 sunny library, a big empty room in the 
 angle of the house with ancient ikons in 
 the place of honour and low ash book- 
 cases along the walls. The gaily decked 
 trees came close to the house and looked 
 into all the rooms with their foliage of 
 varied hues, sometimes light green, some- 
 times dark, with the bright blue of the 
 sky showing between their branches. 
 
 But the letter did not come, and Mitya 
 felt uneasy. He knew that Katya did not 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 95 
 
 like writing, he knew that it was difficult 
 for her to sit down at her table and to 
 find a pen, paper, an envelope, and it was 
 even more difficult for her to remember 
 to buy a stamp and to stop at a letter- 
 box. He told himself that he had felt 
 perfectly contented for a whole fortnight 
 before he received the first letter but, as 
 in Moscow, these reasonable considera- 
 tions helped him little. The happy and 
 proud assurance with which a few days 
 before he had expected a second letter 
 had left him; he was longing for word 
 and worrying more and more, because a 
 letter like the first ought to have been 
 followed by something more beautiful 
 and more delightful still. But Katya re- 
 mained silent. 
 
 Now he went only rarely to the village 
 and to the fields. For some time he even 
 remained in the library searching the 
 
96 MITYA’S LOVE 
 bookcases, turning over the pages of re- 
 views which had been there drying and 
 yellowing for years. He did not like 
 reading — Protassov had always called 
 him “an illiterate,” but in those old re- 
 views were a lot of beautiful verses from 
 the ancient poets, marvellous poems 
 which, of course, almost always spoke of 
 the same thing, — the thing which has in- 
 spired and filled all the verses and all the 
 songs since the beginning of the world, 
 and on which his soul was feasting. He 
 found that invariably he could apply 
 them to himself, to his love, to Katya. 
 
 It was during a marvellous spring, 
 They sat on the river bank, 
 
 She, in the flower of her youth, 
 
 He, a growing boy . . . 
 
 Often he stayed for whole hours in the 
 sunny calm of the library, sitting quietly 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 97 
 
 in an armchair near the open bookcase, 
 torturing himself delightfully by reading 
 again and again: 
 
 The people sleep ; my friend, let us go 
 into the shady garden; 
 
 The people sleep and only the stars look 
 at us. 
 
 They can see but dimly through the 
 branches, 
 
 They cannot hear us though the night- 
 ingale does. 
 
 No, after all, he doesn't : he sings too loud. 
 Only our hearts hear us, 
 
 They know how many joys, 
 
 How much happiness we have had here. 
 
 All those love poems, all those appeals 
 seemed to have been written by him, ad- 
 dressed to the one whom he, Mitya, could 
 not help seeing everywhere and in every- 
 
98 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 thing, but sometimes he seemed to find a 
 warning in some of them: 
 
 The swans are beating 
 
 The calm waters with their wings 
 
 And the river undulates. 
 
 Come, the stars are shining, 
 
 Gently the leaves are rustling 
 And the clouds gather . . . 
 
 Closing his eyes, trembling, he repeated 
 this appeal several times, this cry from a 
 heart filled with amorous passion, eager 
 for triumph and for a happy ending. 
 Then he looked for a long time at the 
 white garden beneath the window, the 
 green bushes, his grandfather’s maple, 
 king of the whole garden; he listened 
 to the deep silence of the country which 
 surrounded the house and he shook his 
 head bitterly. No, she did not answer, 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 99 
 
 she was shining somewhere, in that 
 strange and far away world of Moscow, 
 deaf to his appeal! Was it her place? 
 Had he not said to her: 
 
 Do you remember , Marie, 
 
 An ancient house 
 
 And the century-old limes 
 
 Above the slumbering pond, 
 
 The silent alleys, 
 
 The old deserted garden 
 And in the high gallery 
 The ancient portraits? 
 
 Inexplicable tears came to his eyes 
 while he read those verses which really 
 fitted his love so little and yet touched 
 him, he did not know why, and made him 
 suffer : 
 
 1 am yours, dear oak-grove! 
 But I do not come alone 
 
 
100 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 To ask your protective shelter 
 Against contrary fate. 
 
 I bring to your sacred shades 
 The companion of my prayers, 
 
 My young wife, 
 
 With a child in her arms . . . 
 
 But more often he was carried away 
 into quite another world: 
 
 The warm midday invites me to rest, 
 Every sound has stopped amongst the 
 leaves. 
 
 In each perfumed and gorgeous rose 
 A brilliant beetle sleeps contentedly. 
 
 As he read he dreamed passionately of 
 his meeting with Katya in the Crimea and 
 of the town of Miskhor which he could 
 easily imagine as he had already been 
 twice in the Crimea. Heavens, could it 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 101 
 be possible that after having waited so 
 long, he would never see that burning 
 midday, the roses, the oleanders, the sea 
 flashing blue between the cypresses? 
 Could God deprive him of the happiness 
 of telling her some day: 
 
 Do you remember the evening when the 
 sea roared 
 
 And in the wild rose-bush the nightingale 
 sang, 
 
 And the perfumed branches of the white 
 acacia 
 
 Bent caressingly over you? 
 
 This insoluble question made him 
 shiver with cold and left him pale; he 
 would look stupidly before him and then 
 slowly he would lower his head. And 
 again, the sadness of his love melted and 
 filled his heart. Something grew within 
 
102 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 him, something sinister and cruel, pas 
 sionate and formidable, like a fatal ad 
 juration: 
 
 The swans are beating 
 
 The calm waters with their wings 
 
 And the river undulates. 
 
 Come, the stars are shining, 
 
 Gently the leaves are rustling 
 And the tlouds gather . . . 
 
0 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 ONE day, after taking a nap in the 
 afternoon, — they dined at twelve — Mitya 
 came out of the house and walked slowly 
 into the garden. Some girls were work- 
 ing there, as they often did, spading the 
 earth under the apple-trees. Mitya went 
 to sit beside them and chat a little as he 
 was in the habit of doing. 
 
 The day was calm and warm. Mitya 
 walked in the sunny shade of the avenue 
 and could see in the distance on his right 
 the white curly branches stretching out 
 under the sun. The blossoming of the 
 pear-trees was particularly vigorous and 
 abundant that year, and all that white- 
 ness against the bright azure of the sky 
 gave a violet reflection. Both the pear- 
 
 trees and apple-trees had shaken off many 
 103 
 
104 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 blossoms, and the ground underneath 
 them was covered with faded petals. He 
 could smell their sweet perfume mixed 
 with the odour of manure fermenting in 
 the cattle-yard. From time to time, a 
 small cloud passed in the sky and 
 changed in color from a violent crude 
 blue to a much lighter shade. The putrid 
 smells became softer and sweeter. And 
 all the warm torpor of that spring para- 
 dise was filled with the solemn and happy 
 buzzing of drones buried in the curly 
 snow of tree-flowers. All the while, in 
 happy boredom, a nightingale piped as 
 by moonlight. 
 
 The avenue ended in the distance at 
 a gate which led to the threshing-ground. 
 Down there, on the left, in the corner 
 of the garden slope, was a dark fir-grove. 
 Near the firs, among the apple-trees, two 
 girls made a vivid spot of color. As al- 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 105 
 
 ways, Mitya went towards them from the 
 centre of the avenue and bending, passed 
 under the low outstretched branches 
 smelling of lemon and honey which 
 touched his face with a feminine caress; 
 and as always, one of the girls, the thin 
 and red-haired Sonka, as soon as she saw 
 him burst into wild laughter: 
 
 “Oh, there is the Master!” she cried, 
 simulating fear. Jumping down from 
 the big branch of a pear-tree on which 
 she had been resting, she rushed to her 
 spade. 
 
 On the contrary, however, Clachka, 
 another girl, acted as if she had not seen 
 Mitya and leaned squarely and leisurely 
 on the iron of her spade, her foot cov- 
 ered with a supple shoe of black felt 
 sewn with white flowers. She put her 
 spade in the ground with force and, turn- 
 ing over the clods, began to sing loudly 
 
106 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 with a strong but agreeable voice: “For 
 whom is my garden flowering?” She was 
 a tall girl with masculine features, al- 
 ways grave. 
 
 Mitya came nearer and sat in Sonka’s 
 place on the old pear-tree branch, on 
 which the handle of the plough was lean- 
 ing. Sonka looked quickly up at him and 
 asked roughly, exaggerating her familiar- 
 ity and gaiety: 
 
 “Have you just got out of bed? You 
 must have been dreaming a beautiful 
 dream? Didn’t you hear the nightingale 
 under your window? Watch out! You’ll 
 miss your chance!” 
 
 Mitya appealed to her and she tried in 
 every way to hide it, but in vain. When 
 he was present she was awkward and 
 spoke nervously, but with constant allu- 
 sions, obscurely guessing that Mitya’s 
 continual air of abstraction was not nat- 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 107 
 
 ural. She suspected him of paying at- 
 tention to Paracha, or, at least, of watch- 
 ing her. She was jealous and she spoke 
 tenderly and roughly to him by turns, 
 and she looked at him, sometimes with 
 a longing which showed her feelings 
 plainly, and sometimes with a hostile 
 coldness. All that gave Mitya a pleas- 
 urable sensation. 
 
 And still the letter did not come. He 
 had stopped living and was simply exist- 
 ing from day to day, and more and more 
 depressed by this perpetual waiting and 
 by the impossibility of finding some one 
 to whom he could confide the secret of 
 his love and of his torment, some one to 
 whom he could talk of Katya and of his 
 hope of going to the Crimea. That was 
 why the allusions Sonka made to his love 
 were pleasing to him. However remote 
 they might be those conversations seemed 
 
108 MITYA’S LOVE 
 to caress the mystery which made him 
 suffer so. He was also moved because 
 Sonka was in love with him, which 
 brought them a little nearer to each other 
 and made her in some way an accomplice 
 in his amorous life. He was filled with 
 the strange hope that Sonka might be- 
 come his confidante or might even re- 
 place Katya up to a certain point. This 
 was only, of course, because Sonka was 
 also a young girl, that mysterious and 
 terrible thing, a woman, the femininity 
 for which he was thirsting so greedily. 
 
 Once again, Sonka had unknowingly 
 touched his secret: “Watch out, don’t 
 miss your chance!” He looked around 
 him. In front, the dark green mass of 
 the fir-grove was almost black in that 
 blinding light, and the sky through the 
 tree tops was of a particularly splendid 
 blue. The young leaves of the lime trees, 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 109 
 
 the maples, the elms, all radiant in the 
 sun which shone through on every side, 
 formed above the garden a light and gay 
 shelter, and made patterns of light and 
 shade on the grass, the paths, and the 
 lawns. Under that shelter the white flow- 
 ers, warm and perfumed, gleaming where 
 the sun penetrated to them, were made of 
 porcelain. Mitya thought: 
 
 There is no better shelter in the world 
 Than sleepy maples with shady foliage; 
 There are no better tresses in the world 
 Than the perfumed tresses of her beloved 
 head . . . 
 
 Smiling in spite of himself he asked 
 Sonka: “What chance could I miss by 
 sleeping? I don’t know what you mean?” 
 
 “Don’t say that!” answered Sonka in a 
 quick, curt tone. Mitya was still more 
 
110 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 pleased by her seeming doubt that he 
 could be without amorous intrigues. Sud- 
 denly she began shouting at a small red 
 calf with a tuft of white and curly hair 
 upon his forehead, which had come 
 slowly out of the fir-grove behind her 
 and had started eating the flounces of 
 her calico dress: 
 
 “Will you leave me alone!” 
 
 “Is it true that some one wants to marry 
 you?” asked Mitya, who did not know 
 what to say and wanted to keep up the 
 conversation. “I hear the family is rich 
 and the man good-looking but that you 
 have refused him, that you won’t obey 
 your father . . 
 
 “He is rich but stupid. Night comes 
 quickly in his head,” answered Sonka at 
 once, secretly pleased. “Perhaps I am 
 thinking of another . . .” 
 
 The serious and silent Clachka shook 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 111 
 
 her head without interrupting her work: 
 
 “You’re talking nonsense,” she said, 
 and added in an undertone, “there will 
 be gossip in the village . . 
 
 “All right, shut up! Don’t preach!” 
 shouted Sonka. “I am not a rook, I know 
 how to take care of myself.” 
 
 “Who is the other you are thinking 
 about?” asked Mitya. 
 
 “Of course, I’ll tell you!” replied 
 Sonka. “Look here, I am in love with 
 your old shepherd. When I see him, I 
 feel warm all over! I am like you, I 
 like them old,” she went on provokingly, 
 doubtless making an allusion to Paracha, 
 who was twenty and was already con- 
 sidered to be an old maid in the village. 
 And suddenly letting her spade go, with 
 an audacity to which her secret love for 
 the young master gave her a sort of right, 
 she sat down on the ground, let her arms 
 
 I 
 
112 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 fall, stretched and spread her legs out. 
 They were covered with beige wool stock- 
 ings and boots halfway to the knee. 
 
 “Well, I have done nothing and I am 
 tired!” she shouted laughingly. “My 
 boots are full of holes,” she sang in a 
 piercing voice: 
 
 My boots are full of holes, 
 
 Their tops are lacquered, 
 
 It's all the same 
 With girls and women! 
 
 She cried laughingly, “Come and rest 
 with me in the hut, I am ready for any- 
 thing!” Her laughter infected Mitya. 
 With a broad shy smile, he slid from the 
 branch and lay down and put his head 
 upon her knees. Sonka pushed him away 
 but he lay down again, thinking in verse 
 — he had read so much verse in the last 
 days: 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 113 
 
 0 Rose, I see you: the strength of happi- 
 
 ness 
 
 Has unwound your shining bonds 
 And has sprinkled them with dew . 
 
 How immense, unconceivable, 
 
 Delightful and marvellous, 
 
 The world of love appears to me! 
 
 “You mustn’t touch me!” cried Sonka, 
 now really frightened, trying to get up 
 and to push away Mitya’s head which 
 rested heavily upon her knees. 
 
 “If you don’t get up,” she said, “I am 
 going to shout loud enough to make the 
 wolves howl in the forest. I have noth- 
 ing for you Î It burned, but it is out now ! 
 
 1 am loud and thin and I don’t suit you 
 at all!” 
 
 Mitya had shut his eyes and was silent. 
 The sun scattered through the foliage and 
 the branches and the flowers of the pear- 
 
114 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 trees was warming his face. Sonka, 
 with a tender wickedness, pulled his 
 straight strong hair, — “like horse-hair,” 
 she cried, — and covered his eyes with his 
 cap. Beneath the nape of his neck he could 
 feel Sonka’s legs, the most terrible thing 
 in the world — a woman’s legs! The top 
 of his head touched the young girl’s 
 belly, he could smell her skirt and her 
 calico blouse. It was all one with the 
 garden in flower and with Katya, with 
 the languorous piping of the nightingales 
 near and far away, the unceasing buzz 
 of innumerable bees, a voluptuous sleep- 
 inducing sound, with the warm air smell- 
 ing of honey and even with the simple 
 feeling of the earth underneath his back. 
 All tormented him and left him thirst- 
 ing for an abstract happiness. Suddenly 
 something moved in the fir-grove, burst 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 115 
 out with a gay and wicked laugh, then a 
 clarion “cuckoo” was heard, so sharp, so 
 near, so frightful, so distinct that one 
 could hear the rattling and the trembling 
 of the little pointed tongue. Then the 
 desire to have Katya, the thirst to ob- 
 tain from her, at all costs, immediately, 
 this superhuman happiness took hold of 
 Mitya so furiously that to Sonka’s ex- 
 treme surprise, he rose suddenly and 
 strode away, shouting back to her with 
 a forced laugh: 
 
 “I think I had better go and have tea. 
 I come very near to misbehaving when I 
 am with you !” 
 
 At the instant when this passion, this 
 thirst for glory had come to him, under 
 the influence of that voice which had sud- 
 denly burst out of the fir-grove with such 
 terrible clearness, burst, as it were, from 
 
116 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 the very core of the spring, Mitya knew 
 that the letter would not come, could not 
 come, that something had happened in 
 Moscow, or that something was going to 
 happen, that all was lost, ended! 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 WHEN he reached the house, he 
 stopped an instant in front of the mirror 
 in the big drawing-room. “Katya is 
 right,” he thought, “if my eyes are not 
 Byzantine, they are mad. And how thin 
 I am, how gawky and lanky! Look at 
 those black crooked eyebrows and that 
 straight black hair! It’s like horse-hair, 
 just as Sonka says!” 
 
 He tried to smile with his big mouth, 
 with that “boyish and charming awk- 
 wardness” for which Katya was supposed 
 to love him. As a matter of fact, though 
 forced, his smile made him look much 
 better. He felt, himself, how boyish, how 
 tender and how defenceless it was. 
 
 Behind him he heard the quick patter- 
 ing of bare feet. He turned uneasily. 
 
 117 
 
118 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 “You are always looking at yourself in. 
 the mirror, you must have fallen in love,” 
 Paracha teased him affectionately, as she 
 passed in front of him with a boiling 
 samovar, hurrying towards the terrace. 
 
 “Your mother was looking for you,” 
 she added, laying the samovar on the 
 tea-table. Turning around, she looked at 
 Mitya keenly and penetratingly. 
 
 “Everybody knows, everybody guesses,” 
 thought Mitya, and he asked with an 
 effort: 
 
 “Where is she?” 
 
 “In her room. She is going to have 
 tea now . . .” 
 
 The sun had gone around to the other 
 side of the house and was already drop- 
 ping in the West. Light shadows were 
 cast by the firs and pines which shaded 
 the terrace. Underneath them the prick- 
 wood bushes shone all over like glass, as 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 119 
 
 if in the heat of midsummer. The par- 
 tially shaded table cloth gleamed white, 
 spotted here and there by glaring sun- 
 light. The wasps were flying over the 
 white bread, the cups, and the cut glass 
 jar full of jam. The whole scene spoke 
 of the beautiful rustic summer and how 
 happy and carefree one could be. He 
 must go to his mother, who naturally un- 
 derstood better than any one what was 
 the matter with him, and show her that 
 he had no great secret. Mitya left the 
 drawing-room and went along the pas- 
 sage on which opened his room, his 
 mother’s room and two others which Anya 
 and Kostya occupied in the summer. The 
 passage was dark and Olga Petrovna’s 
 room all done in blue. Small and very 
 intimate, it was crowded with the oldest 
 pieces of furniture in the house, work 
 tables, highboys, a big bed, ikons in front 
 
120 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 of which burned, always, a night light, 
 although Olga Petrovna was not very re- 
 ligious. In front of the open windows 
 a wide shadow spread over a bed of neg- 
 lected flowers situated just at the begin- 
 ning of the central avenue. Beyond that 
 shade, the garden, radiantly green and 
 white, had no protection from the rays 
 of the sun. 
 
 Unmoved by this scene, which she 
 knew well, Olga Petrovna, a woman forty 
 years old, tall and thin, dark and serious, 
 her eyes retreating behind spectacles, was 
 seated beside the window in an armchair. 
 She was bent over her knitting, moving 
 her needles rapidly. 
 
 “Did you want anything, mother?” said 
 Mitya, stopping on the threshold. 
 
 “No, I simply wanted to see you. I 
 only see you at dinner now,” she an- 
 swered without interrupting her work 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 121 
 
 and with an extraordinary, almost exag- 
 gerated calmness. 
 
 Mitya remembered the ninth of March, 
 when Katya had said that, without know- 
 ing why, she was afraid of his mother; he 
 recalled the adorable meaning which was 
 doubtlessly hidden in those words, and 
 he wanted to rest his head upon his 
 mother’s knee and cry bitter tears. He 
 muttered awkwardly: 
 
 “But perhaps you had something to tell 
 me?” 
 
 “Nothing, except that you seem to be 
 bored lately,” answered Olga Petrovna. 
 “Why don’t you go and see some of our 
 neighbours, the Metcherskys, for ex- 
 ample? . . . A house full of young girls 
 just the right age to get married,” she 
 added smiling. “It is a very nice family, 
 in my opinion, and very hospitable.” 
 
 “I’d like to go one of these days,” Mitya 
 
122 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 said, making a great effort. “But let’s 
 have tea, it is so nice upon the terrace . . . 
 We’ll be able to talk,” he added, know- 
 ing perfectly well that his mother was 
 too tactful and too discreet to come back 
 to such a senseless subject. 
 
 They remained upon the terrace till it 
 was time to go to bed. After tea, Mitya’s 
 mother went on knitting and speaking 
 about her neighbours and about Anya 
 and Kostya, — “Anya must go up for her 
 examination in August,” — and about the 
 house. Mitya listened, sometimes an- 
 swering, and feeling as he had the day 
 before he had left Moscow; again it 
 seemed to him that he was in the throes 
 of a very grave illness, and that he was 
 enduring a new separation. Surely some- 
 thing terrible must have happened in 
 Moscow! The separation this time was 
 so agonising that in comparison, their 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 123 
 
 parting a month ago seemed like a mo- 
 ment of blissful happiness . . . 
 
 After his mother had gone upstairs, he 
 walked ceaselessly back and forth for two 
 hours, he went through the large and 
 small drawing-room, the boudoir and the 
 library, to the open window looking upon 
 the garden, on the south side of the house. 
 Through the branches of the pines and 
 the firs the setting sun reddened the win- 
 dows of the drawing-room. He could 
 hear the voices and the laughter of the 
 labourers who had assembled for their 
 supper near the servants’ quarters. As 
 he walked he could see through the li- 
 brary window the bare and colourless 
 azure of the evening sky, and a motionless 
 pink star; against this azure background 
 were drawn picturesquely the green top 
 of the maple and the wintry whiteness of 
 all the blossoms in the garden. He kept 
 
124 MITYA’S LOVE 
 walking on, without thinking about what 
 would be said in the house. His teeth 
 were clenched so tight that he had a 
 headache. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 ONE day, shortly after, his love passed 
 through a terrible crisis. 
 
 He had stopped observing the changes 
 the spring and approaching summer were 
 bringing all around him. He saw them 
 and even felt them but they had lost their 
 value and only tortured him more. The 
 more beautiful his surroundings grew, 
 the more he suffered. Katya was haunt- 
 ing him day and night, she was in every- 
 thing and at the back of everything to 
 the point of absurdity. As each new day 
 confirmed his always more poignant con- 
 viction that Katya did not exist any more, 
 that she was doing some unspeakable 
 thing, giving herself and the love which 
 ought to be reserved entirely for him, to 
 
 another, — then the whole world seemed 
 125 
 
126 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 to be wrong, useless, painful, the more 
 useless and painful because it was grow- 
 ing more beautiful every day. 
 
 On every side life went on the same 
 as usual, accomplishing as best it could 
 what it had to do. He alone stood aside, 
 doing nothing, but aspiring to an equal 
 necessity, a necessity a hundred times 
 greater than all the rest. But at the same 
 time it became clearer and clearer to him 
 how incommensurable and absolutely un- 
 realisable it was. 
 
 He hardly slept. The charm of those 
 moonlight nights was incomparable. 
 Softly, softly, the garden grew milky 
 white. Prudently, worn out with de- 
 lights, the nightingales sang, their songs 
 vying with each other in purity, fineness, 
 clarity and brilliance. The lovely pale 
 moon hung tenderly just above the gar- 
 den, faithfully accompanied by a soft 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 127 
 
 breeze and bluish clouds. Mitya went 
 to bed with his curtains open and all night 
 long the moon and the garden looked into 
 his room through the windows. Each 
 time he opened his eyes he looked at the 
 moon and said: “Katya!” to himself with 
 such ecstasy and sorrow that it frightened 
 him. Why indeed should the moon bring 
 her name to his lips? Yet it reminded 
 him of her and, astonishingly, looked like 
 Katya! Sometimes he simply saw noth- 
 ing. His desire for Katya, the memory 
 of the bond between them when they 
 were alone in Moscow, possessed him 
 with such violence that he trembled as 
 with fever. His teeth chattered and he 
 asked God, — always in vain, — to let him 
 have Katya with him, on the bed, if only 
 in a dream. Once he had gone with her 
 to the Great Theatre, to hear Faust, with 
 Sobinov and Chaliapin. Without know- 
 
128 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 ing why, that evening had appeared to 
 him particularly wonderful: the wide 
 abyss, already too hot and stuffy, opening 
 under their eyes, the tiers of red velvet 
 and the gold of the boxes overflowing 
 with brilliant dresses, and above the 
 pearly light of a gigantic chandelier; the 
 sounds of the orchestra playing far below 
 beneath the orchestra leader’s baton, 
 sometimes with demonic thunder, some- 
 times with infinite melancholy and ten- 
 derness . . . There was a King of 
 Thule . . . After the performance he 
 had seen Katya home through the very 
 cold moonlight night, and he had re- 
 mained with her later than ever before. 
 He had been more than ever exhausted 
 by her kisses and he had taken away with 
 him the silk ribbon with which she tied 
 her hair for the night. Now all through 
 those torturing May nights he could never 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 129 
 
 think about the ribbon, hidden close by in 
 a drawer in his writing desk, without 
 shuddering. 
 
 He would sleep all day and in the eve- 
 ning go on horseback to the village, where 
 there was a station and a post-office. The 
 days were still beautiful. Occasionally it 
 rained, storms and showers came and 
 went, but the warm sun shone again, ac- 
 complishing ceaselessly its work in the 
 gardens, the fields, and the woods. The 
 garden had finished its blossoming and 
 was losing its flowers but, to make up 
 for that, it became thicker and darker. 
 Already the woods were covered with 
 innumerable flowers and tall grasses and, 
 through the voices of the nightingales 
 and cuckoos, their echoing shadows called 
 a summons to the depths of their green- 
 ery. Long ago, the vast virginal naked- 
 ness of the land had disappeared and now 
 
130 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 it was entirely covered by rich growing 
 wheat. Mitya spent whole days in the 
 woods and in the fields. 
 
 He was ashamed to stay each morning 
 upon the terrace or in the yard, waiting 
 vainly for the starost or some workman 
 coming from the post-office. Moreover, 
 the starost and the workmen did not al- 
 ways have the time to do eight versts for 
 nothing. So he got into the habit of 
 going himself to the post-office, but he 
 also came back with only a newspaper or 
 a letter from Anya or Kostya. His tor- 
 ments had reached the breaking point. 
 The meadows and the groves he went 
 through crushed him with their beauty 
 and their fulfilment and he was begin- 
 ning to feel a continuous physical pain 
 in his chest which would not leave him. 
 It seemed as if it had settled there for 
 ever. Sometimes, in the middle of a pas- 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 131 
 
 ture, he would stop his horse and look 
 north into the distance, towards Mos- 
 cow. Then, blinded with tears, he would 
 bury his head in his horse’s mane. 
 
 One day towards evening, on his way 
 back from the post-office, he crossed an 
 abandoned neighbouring estate, situated 
 in the middle of a large old park scarcely 
 distinguishable from the surrounding for- 
 est of birches. He was going through the 
 Beautiful Perspective, as the peasants 
 called the principal avenue of that prop- 
 erty. It was bordered by two lines 
 of enormous black firs. Magnificently 
 sombre, very wide and covered with a 
 thick russet carpet of slippery needles, it 
 ended at the old mansion where the two 
 lanes of the avenue joined each other. 
 The red light of the dry and peaceful sun 
 which was setting on the left behind the 
 park and the forest lighted the lower 
 
132 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 part of the avenue obliquely, between the 
 tree trunks, illuminating its carpet of 
 golden pine-needles. An enchanted si- 
 lence reigned, — only the nightingales 
 could be heard from one end of the park 
 to the other. The firs and jasmines sur- 
 rounding the house smelt so delightful 
 that Mitya thought that the former occu- 
 pants of that house had been magnifi- 
 cently happy. Suddenly, with heart- 
 breaking clearness, he saw Katya, as his 
 young wife, standing on the old terrace, 
 among the jasmine. He felt his face 
 twist in mortal anguish and he said firmly 
 and in such a loud voice that it echoed 
 from one end of the avenue to the other: 
 
 “If I do not have a letter within a 
 week, I shall kill myself 1” 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 HE rose very late the next day. After 
 dinner he remained upon the terrace, 
 holding a book upon his knees; he looked 
 at the pages covered with words and 
 thought confusedly, “Shall I go to the 
 post or not?” 
 
 It was very hot. Above the warm grass 
 and the shiny glass prickwood bushes 
 pairs of white butterflies were chasing 
 each other. He watched them and drove 
 away the flies which stuck to his cheek, 
 and asked himself again, “To go or not to 
 go? Shall I go, or shall I stop these 
 shameful expeditions once and for all?” 
 
 Mounted on a stallion, the starost ap- 
 peared in the frame of the big gate. He 
 looked towards the terrace and then went 
 
 straight up to it. When he arrived near 
 
 133 
 
134 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 Mitya, he stopped his horse and blinked. 
 
 “Good morning. Always reading?” 
 Smiling, he looked around him. 
 
 “Is your mother asleep?” he asked in 
 an undertone. 
 
 “I think so,” answered Mitya. “What 
 is the matter?” 
 
 The starost was silent for an instant 
 and then said very seriously, “Of course, 
 young master, I don’t say that it is bad 
 to read, but there is a time for everything. 
 Why do you live like a monk? Aren’t 
 there enough women and girls around?” 
 
 Mitya lowered his eyes without an- 
 swering and looked at his book. 
 
 “Where have you been?” he asked the 
 starost without looking up. 
 
 “At the post-office, and of course there 
 was no letter, only a newspaper.” 
 
 “Why ‘of course’?” 
 
 “Why? Because somebody is writing 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 135 
 
 a letter and has not finished it yet,” an- 
 swered the starost mockingly and crudely. 
 He was hurt that Mitya refused to take 
 up the conversation. “Here!” he added, 
 handing Mitya a printed circular, and 
 spurring his horse he went away. 
 
 “I shall kill myself!” thought Mitya 
 firmly, looking at his book without see- 
 ing it. 
 
 But at the same time he felt a pain in 
 his side, as one does when one looks 
 down into an abyss from a great height. 
 It was clear that the starost wanted him 
 to meet some one . . . 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 MITYA could not help seeing how ab- 
 surd his resolve was: to kill himself, to 
 smash his head, to interrupt at one swoop 
 the beatings of his strong young heart, 
 to end all thought and feeling, to become 
 deaf, blind, to disappear from this un- 
 deniably beautiful world, which, for the 
 first time, had revealed itself completely 
 to him, to deprive himself for ever of any 
 part in this life where Katya was, and 
 where there was the approaching sum- 
 mer, the sky, the clouds, the sun, the warm 
 wind, the wheat in the fields, the big vil- 
 lages, the small ones, the girls, the estate, 
 his mother, Anya, Kostya, the verses in 
 the old reviews, and somewhere, in the 
 
 south, Sevastopol, the wonderful lilac 
 136 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 137 
 
 mountains with their forests of pines and 
 beeches, the Tartars, their arabas 
 whitened by a warm dust, the suffocat- 
 ing road, blinding in its whiteness, the 
 gardens of Livadya and Alupka, the hot 
 sand near the brilliant sea, sunburnt chil- 
 dren and bathers, — and again Katya in 
 a white dress, under a white sunshade, 
 seated on the beach quite close to the 
 splashing waves. His thoughts made him 
 smile with a happiness quite ground- 
 less . . . 
 
 He knew how absurd it was to think 
 of death, but what could he do? How 
 could he flee from the enchanted circle, 
 so much more painful and intolerable be- 
 cause he was happy there, in spite of him- 
 self? It was precisely his happiness 
 which was unendurable, this happiness 
 which the world flaunted at him and in 
 which the innermost core was lacking. 
 
138 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 He woke up in the morning and the 
 first thing which attracted his eyes was 
 the happy sun; the first sound he heard 
 was the familiar ringing of the happy 
 bells in the village church, down there 
 beyond the dew-covered garden, full of 
 shade and brightness, of birds and flow- 
 ers. Even the yellow wall-paper, un- 
 changed since before he was born, was 
 full of joy and charm. But at once his 
 soul was torn with a spasm of ecstasy and 
 fear : Katya ! It was Katya’s youth which 
 shone in the morning sun; the freshness 
 of the garden was hers; the gaiety and 
 joyfulness of the pealing bells was her 
 gaiety and joyfulness; the old paper on 
 the walls invited her to share with Mitya 
 the same intimate rural existence which 
 his parents and grandparents had fos- 
 tered on this estate and in this house. 
 
 Then Mitya would throw off his 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 139 
 
 blanket and jump out of bed in his night- 
 shirt, his collar open, with his long young 
 legs, thin and yet strong, still warm from 
 sleep. Quickly he would open the drawer 
 of his desk, take out the beloved photo- 
 graph and fall almost into a trance, star- 
 ing at it with hungry and questioning 
 eyes. The seductiveness, grace, mystery, 
 brightness and charm of all that is vir- 
 ginal and feminine was concentrated for 
 him in that one small rather serpent-like 
 head, in her way of doing her hair, in 
 her faintly provocative and yet innocent 
 eyes. Her face shone, enigmatic and gay, 
 inevitably unanswering. How and where 
 could he find the strength to bear this 
 face, so near to him and yet so far away, 
 and now perhaps for ever a stranger to 
 him, which had promised the inexpressi- 
 ble happiness of life and which had lied 
 so impudently, so horribly? 
 
140 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 This was the way in which Mitya al- 
 most always began his day, and ended it 
 also, a prey to the same tormenting 
 thoughts, to the same heart-rending and 
 contradictory feelings. 
 
 That evening when on his way back 
 from the post-office he had gone through 
 Chakovskoé, the old abandoned estate 
 with the black avenue of firs, the excla- 
 mation which had slipped out so unex- 
 pectedly had expressed very exactly the 
 state of extreme exhaustion which he had 
 reached. While near the window of the 
 post-office, looking down from his saddle 
 at the post-master searching vainly 
 through a heap of letters and newspapers, 
 he had heard behind him the noise of a 
 train approaching the station; that noise 
 and the smell of the engine smoke had up- 
 set him, bringing back to his mind the 
 Kursk Station in Moscow and his life in 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 141 
 town. When he passed through the village, 
 in each passing girl of small stature, and 
 especially in the movement of their hips, 
 he found something of Katya. In the 
 country he met a troika. As it passed 
 rapidly by, he saw two hats, one a young 
 girl’s, and he almost cried: “Katya!” The 
 white flowers on the path he associated 
 in his thoughts with Katya’s white gloves, 
 and the blue flowers with the colour of 
 her veil . . . 
 
 As he reached Chakovskoé at sunset, 
 the dry sweet smell of the pines and the 
 heavy perfume of the jasmine had brought 
 to his mind so keenly thoughts of the 
 summer and of the life that had once been 
 on that rich and beautiful estate that, as 
 he had looked at the red and gold light 
 illuminating the avenue and at the house 
 which rose in the background among the 
 growing shadows, he had seen Katya, in 
 
142 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 all the fullness of her feminine charm, 
 coming from the terrace into the garden, 
 almost as clearly as he saw the house 
 and the jasmine. 
 
 For some time his image of Katya had 
 been growing paler. Each day it ap- 
 peared to him more ethereal, more trans- 
 figured, but that evening the materialisa- 
 tion had been so strong, so triumphantly 
 compelling, that Mitya had been more 
 frightened than on the day when he had 
 heard the cuckoo above him. And he was 
 right when he cried that he could not 
 endure life like that any longer. Yes, 
 he must have a letter, whatever it might 
 contain, or else renounce her completely; 
 he must come back to common ordinary 
 life, to vulgar love; otherwise it would 
 be impossible and beyond his strength to 
 go on living. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 HE stopped going to the post-office, 
 forced himself to give up his expeditions 
 there by a superhuman effort of his will. 
 He even stopped writing to her. He had 
 tried everything in his letters; passionate 
 utterances of such a love as had never 
 been seen in the world before; humili- 
 ating prayers begging for her love or 
 even her friendship; bold inventions rep- 
 resenting himself as sick and writing from 
 his bed, in order to draw her attention, 
 if only in pity. He had hinted threaten- 
 ingly that all he could do now was to 
 free Katya and “his favoured rivals” from 
 his presence upon the earth. 
 
 After he had stopped writing and try- 
 ing to provoke an answer and had forced 
 himself to give up hope, though still hop- 
 
 143 
 
144 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 ing secretly that the letter would arrive 
 just when he had deceived fate by a 
 feigned indifference, he tried in every 
 way to attain a real indifference, to think 
 no more of Katya, to escape from her 
 power. He began to go to the village 
 again, to visit the peasants, to read what- 
 ever came within his reach, to go on busi- 
 ness to the bigger villages with the starost 
 and to repeat all the time: “What do I 
 care! Let fate decide!” 
 
 One day the starost and he were com- 
 ing back from a farm in the droschki and, 
 as always, at a very rapid pace. They 
 were both seated as if on a saddle; the 
 starost was in front driving, and Mitya 
 was behind; the bumps jolted them both, 
 especially Mitya, who clung to the cush- 
 ion looking alternately at the starost’s red 
 neck and at the fields flying past before 
 his eyes. As they approached the house 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 145 
 
 the starost loosened the reins, letting the 
 horse amble along, rolled a cigarette and 
 said, smiling into his open tobacco pouch : 
 
 “You were angry with me the other 
 day, but you were wrong. Did I not tell 
 you the truth? Books are all right and 
 one should read a little. But they won’t 
 run away, and there is time for every- 
 thing.” 
 
 Mitya red 14 '" ’ id was surprised to 
 
 hear himself answer, with a feigned sim- 
 plicity and a wry smile, “But, there is 
 no one to think about . . .” 
 
 “What?” answered the starost. “There 
 are plenty of women and girls. You are 
 laughing at me!” 
 
 “Girls are deceivers,” continued Mitya, 
 trying to speak as the starost did. “One 
 can get nothing out of them . . .” 
 
 “They don’t deceive. You don’t know 
 how to manage them,” said the starost 
 
146 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 sententiously. “And then, you are stingy. 
 You know, a spoon without anything in 
 it grates the mouth.” 
 
 “He is a perfect idiot,” thought Mitya, 
 but still he went on in the same vein. “I 
 wouldn’t be stingy if it were a sure thing 
 and worth my while . . .” 
 
 “All right, in that case, everything can 
 be arranged . . said the starost, light- 
 ing his cigarette, and, as he was slightly 
 hurt, he went on: 
 
 “I am not thinking about your roubles 
 or your present, but I’d like to please you. 
 I said to myself as I looked at you: ‘The 
 young master is bored! I can’t leave him 
 like that.’ I always look after my mas- 
 ters. This is the second year I have been 
 with you, and thanks to God, I never had a 
 word of reproach either from you or from 
 the mistress. There are others who don’t 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 147 
 
 care so much about their master’s cattle! 
 If they are fed, all right! If not, who 
 cares! I am not like that. I think of 
 the cattle first. I say to the men: arrange 
 things any way you like, but the cattle 
 must be fed.” 
 
 Mitya thought that the starost was 
 drunk, but the latter abruptly changed 
 his tone of rough good-fellowship. He 
 looked at Mitya over his shoulder ques- 
 tioningly and said: 
 
 “Is there any one better than Alenka? 
 A lively piece, her husband is at the 
 mines . . . But, of course, you’ll have to 
 make her a little present . . . All right, 
 suppose you spend five roubles altogether, 
 let’s say: one rouble for food, some liquor, 
 sunflower seeds and mints; two roubles 
 for her . . . and something to me for my 
 tobacco . . 
 
148 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 “That’s all right,” answered Mitya, 
 quite involuntarily, “only what Alenka 
 are you talking about?” 
 
 “The forest ranger’s Alenka, of 
 course!” said the starost. “Don’t you 
 know her? The daughter-in-law of the 
 new ranger. You must have seen her the 
 other Sunday at church ... I thought 
 at once: ‘She’s just what our young mas- 
 ter needs.’ She has only been married 
 two years and she is very clean and nice.” 
 
 “All right,” answered Mitya, smiling 
 wryly, “arrange it.” 
 
 “I’ll get busy right away,” said the 
 starost, gathering up the reins. “I’ll 
 sound her. But don’t go to sleep. She 
 is coming with some other women to-mor- 
 row to mend the slope of the garden. 
 Come there. Your books won’t run away 
 and you’ll have plenty of time to read in 
 Moscow . . .” 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 149 
 He touched the horse and the droschki 
 began to tremble and jolt. Mitya clung to 
 the cushion for dear life and tried not to 
 see the starost’s big sunburnt neck. He was 
 looking far away through the trees in the 
 garden and the willows which spread over 
 the village hillside down to the river and 
 the prairies. Something had happened 
 to him, unexpected and quite ridiculous 
 of course, but at the same time it filled 
 his body with a feverish languor. The 
 familiar steeple which rose before him, 
 its cross shining in the setting sun, seemed 
 quite different. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 ALL the girls called Mitya “the grey- 
 hound” because he was so thin. He be- 
 longed to the type of naan whose black 
 eyes always seem big and who, even when 
 mature, has neither moustache nor beard, 
 but only a few stiff and curly hairs. The 
 day after his conversation with the starost, 
 he shaved early in the morning and put 
 on a yellow silk shirt, which brightened 
 his tired face and gave him a strange and 
 rather handsome appearance. 
 
 He went in the garden about eleven 
 
 o’clock slowly, trying to look as if he 
 
 were bored and walking because he had 
 
 nothing better to do. He went down the 
 
 steps on the north side of the house. 
 
 Above the roofs of the stables and sheds 
 
 and that part of the garden over which 
 ISO 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 151 
 
 the steeple of the church towered there 
 was a kind of steely grey fog. All was 
 colourless, the air was like the air of a 
 furnace and the chimney in the servants’ 
 quarter smelt fouly. Mitya turned 
 around the house and started towards the 
 avenue of limes looking up at the top of 
 the garden and at the sky. From under 
 the vague clouds which came down be- 
 hind the garden a southwest wind was 
 blowing, feeble and warm. No birds 
 were singing, even the nightingales were 
 silent. Many bees were noiselessly cross- 
 ing the garden, heavy with honey. 
 
 The women were working on the slope 
 near the fir-grove. They were filling in 
 the depressions and the tracks made by 
 the animals with warm manure and dirt 
 which workmen brought from the stables 
 through the avenue; along the avenue it- 
 self were scattered wet and shining clods 
 
152 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 they had dropped. There were a half- 
 dozen women. Sonka was not there. Her 
 family had at last succeeded in getting 
 her engaged and now she remained at 
 home making ready for her wedding. 
 There were some little girls, still very 
 thin, who nevertheless tried to look 
 grown-up and ready for anything. There 
 was the fat and prepossessing Aniutka; 
 there was Clachka, who appeared more 
 virile and rougher than ever and, of 
 course, Alenka. Mitya saw her imme- 
 diately among the trees and knew her at 
 once, although he had never seen her be- 
 fore. In a flash, he was struck by the 
 resemblance he found or rather thought 
 he found between Alenka and Katya. It 
 was so surprising that for a minute he 
 stopped, quite taken aback. Then reso- 
 lutely he went straight towards her, with- 
 out taking his eyes off her. 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 153 
 
 She, like Katya, was small and viva- 
 cious. She was dressed very inappropri- 
 ately for the disagreeable work she was 
 doing; she wore a pretty white calico 
 blouse, with red polka dots and a patent 
 leather belt, a skirt of the same stuff, a 
 little pink silk kerchief, red wool stock- 
 ings and black felt slippers. Her small 
 feet reminded him of Katya, as in- 
 deed did her whole attitude, sometimes 
 extremely feminine, but mixed with a 
 great deal of childishness. Her head was 
 small and her eyes were of the same shape 
 and almost as bright as Katya’s. When 
 Mitya came near her she was not work- 
 ing. She seemed to be conscious that she 
 was not quite like the others. She was 
 standing beside the starost on the slope, 
 her right foot resting on her pitchfork, 
 chatting brightly. 
 
 The starost, his head propped upon 
 
154 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 one arm, was lying under an apple-tree, 
 smoking, his coat with the torn lining 
 spread beneath him. As Mitya ap- 
 proached, the starost politely sat on the 
 grass and left the coat for Mitya. 
 
 “Sit down, Mitrii Palytch. Have a 
 cigarette,” he said in a friendly and de- 
 tached way. 
 
 From beneath his eyelids Mitya looked 
 furtively at Alenka. Her pink kerchief 
 gave her face a very pretty glow. He 
 sat down and, lowering his eyes, lighted 
 his cigarette. He had stopped smoking 
 many times during the winter and the 
 spring, but now he had begun again. 
 Alenka had not greeted him, she acted as 
 if she had not seen him. The starost went 
 on telling her things Mitya could not un- 
 derstand as he did not know the beginning 
 of the conversation. She was laughing, 
 but neither her mind nor her heart seemed 
 to be in her laugh. Into each phrase, 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 155 
 
 disdainful and mocking, the starost with 
 his rough voice was bringing obscene al- 
 lusions. She answered pleasantly and as 
 mockingly as he, making him understand 
 that in his conduct with some girl or 
 other he had acted stupidly and like a 
 brute, and at the same time like a coward 
 afraid of his wife. 
 
 “One never has the last word with you,” 
 said the starost at last, stopping the dis- 
 cussion as if he were discouraged by its 
 futility. “If I were not married, my girl, 
 I would have broken your spirit a long 
 time ago. Better mares than you have 
 been tamed! Come and sit down beside 
 us. The master has a word to say to you.” 
 
 Alenka looked at them sideways, 
 smoothed her black curls over her tem- 
 ples and did not move. 
 
 “Come on, I say! Idiot!” exclaimed 
 the starost. 
 
 After thinking a second, Alenka sud- 
 
156 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 denly jumped down the slope and 
 crouched two steps away from Mitya 
 lying upon the coat, and looking gaily 
 and curiously straight into his eyes. Then 
 she laughed and asked, “Is it true, young 
 master, that you don’t want women? That 
 you live like a monk?” 
 
 Mitya blushed with an embarrassed 
 and painful smile. He looked at the hem 
 of her skirt and at her knees and was 
 silent, nibbling a leaf of grass. 
 
 “How do you know he does not want 
 women?” asked the starost. 
 
 “I know it,” answered Alenka. “I 
 have heard it. No, he can’t. He has 
 some one in Moscow,” she added, wink- 
 ing suddenly. 
 
 “There is no one here who suits him, 
 that’s why he sees no one,” answered the 
 starost. “As if you could understand any- 
 thing about it.” 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 157 
 
 “What, no one?” said Alenka laughing. 
 “There are plenty of women and girls! 
 There is Aniutka. Who could be better? 
 Come here, Aniutka,” she cried in a very 
 loud voice. 
 
 Aniutka turned around. She had a 
 plump wide back and short arms, a very 
 comely face, an agreeable and very kind 
 smile. She shouted some words in a sing- 
 ing voice and went back with more zest 
 to her work. 
 
 “I told you to come,” Alenka repeated 
 in a still louder tone, pounding the earth 
 with her fist. 
 
 “I don’t want to come. I know nothing 
 about such things,” Aniutka chanted joy- 
 ously. “All his fortune would not be 
 enough for me.” 
 
 “We don’t need Aniutka, we have some- 
 body else in mind, better than she is and 
 much more elegant,” said the starost 
 
158 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 meaningly. “We know exactly what we 
 want.” 
 
 He looked at Alenka very expressly. 
 She seemed somewhat embarrassed and 
 reddened slightly. 
 
 “No, no,” she said, hiding her confu- 
 sion with a smile. “You won’t find any- 
 thing better than Aniutka. If you don’t 
 want her, take Nasta. She is very neat 
 and she has lived in a town.” 
 
 “That’s enough, shut up!” said the 
 starost with unexpected roughness. “Go 
 on with your work. You have talked 
 enough! The mistress is complaining 
 that you are all too lazy.” 
 
 Alenka rose very gracefully, picked up 
 her pitchfork, but the workman who had 
 been unloading his last cart of manure 
 shouted: “Lunch time!” and pulling the 
 reins sent his empty cart rattling down 
 the avenue. 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 159 
 
 “Lunch! Lunch!” the women shouted 
 then in several different keys. They threw 
 down their shovels and pitchforks, 
 climbed the slope, jumped down the other 
 side, in a jumble of bare legs and highly 
 colored stockings and ran towards the fir- 
 grove, each one carrying her lunch. 
 
 The starost looked at Mitya sideways, 
 winked to indicate that the business 
 seemed to be getting along well and then 
 stood up, saying in a commanding tone, 
 “All right, let’s lunch . . .” 
 
 Against the dark background of the 
 firs the women made bright spots of color. 
 They settled gaily and haphazardly on 
 the grass, opened their packages and 
 pulled out their lunches, laying them on 
 their skirts between their outstretched 
 legs. They drank from their bottles, 
 some milk, some kvass, and went on 
 speaking, loudly and desultorily, bursting 
 
160 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 into laughter at each word and looking 
 all the time at Mitya with provocative 
 eyes full of curiosity. 
 
 Alenka leaned towards Aniutka and 
 whispered in her ear. Aniutka could not 
 help smiling, but she pushed Alenka 
 away with force. Alenka, choking with 
 laughter, rolled her head upon her knees 
 and with feigned indignation said to 
 Aniutka in a singing voice that could be 
 heard all over the fir-grove, “What an 
 idiot you are! Why are you laughing 
 like that for nothing? Such fun!” 
 
 “Let us flee from sin, Mitrii Palytch,” 
 said the starost, “the devil is tormenting 
 them!” 
 
 “Young Master,” Alenka shouted to 
 Mitya’s back, “your advances don’t suit 
 Aniutka. She is like a little girl and you 
 are too much like a hermit!” 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 IN the yard an acrid smell of burning 
 fat came from the fire in the servants’ 
 quarters. They were having their lunch. 
 Under the windows, the dogs, wagging 
 their tails, were begging humbly for 
 theirs. Beyond the prairies past the river, 
 one could see the grey drabness of the 
 village. It was a particularly dull day; 
 the air was still heavy, the same floating 
 clouds were in the sky and the same warm 
 and slight wind blew from the south. 
 
 Mitya went to his room and buried his 
 face in his pillow. He could imagine the 
 girls lying down after lunch to sleep un- 
 der the firs, in the suffocating warmth, 
 their heads covered with their skirts, 
 
 tucking their bare feet under them. 
 
 161 
 
162 MITYA’S LOVE 
 Alenka would also lie down ... At 
 the thought that he could have her, now 
 that it seemed no longer doubtful, his 
 heart almost stopped beating. 
 
 “What is the matter? What is it?” 
 Mitya asked himself. “Can I be in love 
 with her already? What about Katya? 
 How stupid of me to think that she re- 
 sembles Katya in any way!” 
 
 Katya lived in a world apart, in a dif- 
 ferent world with nothing prosaic about 
 it, but in spite of that his throat was 
 choked with tears of tenderness and he 
 felt an acute pity for her. He raised his 
 head. Outside the window the wind, still 
 tender and soft, slowly moved the thick 
 foliage of the garden and its trees. The 
 branches were agitated, bending gently. 
 There remained traces of the spring and 
 of Katya everywhere . . . He jumped 
 from his bed and sat down. His yellow 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 163 
 shirt, his fear and his drowsiness made 
 his pale face seem brighter. 
 
 “No, I shall send a telegram and go 
 to Moscow!” he thought, absolutely out 
 of his senses. “What if all my fears are 
 only imaginary? Perhaps my letters 
 have simply been lost. Maybe Katya has 
 fallen ill, caught a cold, gone to bed for 
 a few days? Anything may have hap- 
 pened!” 
 
 But just then Paracha, with bare feet, 
 entered noiselessly, handed him a news- 
 paper and a postcard and said, “Tea is 
 served,” and went out. 
 
 The card was from Protassov: 
 
 My dear Knight of the Mournful 
 Countenance, excuse the piggish silence 
 by which I have answered all your letters. 
 The reason is very simple, exams and 
 total absence of any news worthy of your 
 
164 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 intelligent attention. I have seen K. sev- 
 eral times. She seems in a rather bad 
 humor. One of these days, before going 
 to the ancestral halls, I’ll write less 
 briefly. 
 
 Mitya ground his teeth and, filled with 
 unnatural mirth, threw the card upon his 
 desk and with a resolute step went to have 
 tea. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 THE next day was Sunday and there 
 was no one working in the garden. 
 
 It rained heavily during the night. 
 The thunder made the house shake and 
 the garden was constantly illuminated by 
 pale and fairy-like lightning. 
 
 But in the morning the weather was 
 beautiful again, everything was simple 
 and happy and Mitya was awakened by 
 the gay and singing peals of the church 
 bells. Without hurrying he washed him- 
 self, dressed, drank a glass of tea and 
 started to mass. 
 
 “Your mother has already gone,” said 
 Paracha to him, affectionately reproach- 
 ful, “but you are a real Tartar . . .” 
 
 There were two ways to go to church: 
 
 165 
 
166 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 across the pasture through the gate and 
 turn to the right; or else through the gar- 
 den by the principal avenue, and then by 
 a road between the garden and the thresh- 
 ing-ground. 
 
 Mitya „nt through the garden. 
 
 Everything looked summer-like al- 
 ready. Mitya walked along the avenue, 
 straight towards the sun which shone 
 brightly on the threshing-ground and on 
 the fields. That brightness and the sound 
 of the bells went well together, and made 
 him feel at peace with everything and 
 especially with that beautiful morning. 
 The fact that he had washed and combed 
 his wet black hair and put on his student 
 cap helped to make him feel better, de- 
 spite the fact that he had not slept all 
 night and had turned about in his head 
 a thousand worrying thoughts. He was 
 seized suddenly with the hope that all his 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 167 
 
 troubles would have a happy ending, that 
 he would be saved and delivered. 
 
 The bells were pealing joyously and 
 were calling to him. The threshing- 
 ground shone brilliantly in front of him; 
 a woodpecker, raising his tuft, was hop- 
 ping along the rugged trunk of a lime- 
 tree whose light green top was bathed in 
 sunshine. On the lawns the bumble-bees 
 of black and red velvet disappeared 
 slowly into flowers. The carefree birds 
 were singing melodiously all through the 
 garden. Everything was as it often had 
 been during his childhood and his adoles- 
 cence and recalled to him the happy times 
 that were gone and made him feel cer- 
 tain that God would be merciful and that 
 perhaps he could live in this world, even 
 without Katya. Mitya thought of how 
 he, the young master, the centre of atten- 
 tion, would walk up the steps of the cool 
 
168 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 parvis, of how he would enter the warm 
 and sunny church, packed with a crowd 
 of women and girls in their best clothes, 
 smelling of new calico, and how he would 
 see the gold points of the candles trem- 
 bling in the thick air, and hear the joyful 
 and discordant singing of the choir. 
 
 “Indeed, why should I not go to the 
 Metcherskys?” he thought. He smiled, 
 at the memory of their troika with its best 
 harness stopped in front of the church, 
 its small bells tinkling, and its coachman 
 wearing a sleeveless velvet kaftan and a 
 plumed hat. 
 
 He even thought with all the feeling 
 appropriate to an eligible young man 
 about the eldest of the Metchersky 
 girls. He had been thinking about 
 her for a long time. She always 
 treated him with a certain seriousness 
 combined with a kind of mocking indul- 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 169 
 
 gence, as if she understood him com- 
 pletely. She was supposed to be a beauty, 
 entirely feminine, tall and queenly look- 
 ing, with beautiful hair and with her 
 large but shapely hips covered by a close- 
 fitting modish skirt . . . 
 
 But at this point, Mitya raised his eyes 
 and saw Alenka going by the gate about 
 twenty paces away from him. She still 
 wore her pink silk kerchief and a beau- 
 tiful blue dress with flounces and new 
 high boots with high heels. She was 
 walking quickly and gracefully and she 
 had not seen Mitya. He hid himself 
 quickly behind the trees. 
 
 After letting her pass, he went back 
 precipitately to the house, his heart beat- 
 ing violently. Now he understood that 
 he had wanted to go to church in order 
 to see Alenka and he felt it would not 
 be seemly to see her in church. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 DURING dinner a messenger brought 
 a telegram from the station. Anya and 
 Kostya were arriving on the evening of 
 the next day. The news left Mitya per- 
 fectly indifferent. 
 
 After dinner he stretched out on a 
 reed couch upon the terrace, his eyes shut, 
 feeling the heat of the blazing sun and 
 listening to the flies buzzing. His heart 
 was beating painfully and the same in- 
 soluble question was worrying him. 
 How would things go with Alenka? 
 When would it be definitely settled? Why 
 had the starost not asked her frankly if 
 she consented, and if she did, where and 
 when? Something else also tormented 
 him. Should he break his firm resolve 
 
 170 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 171 
 not to go to the post-office again? If 
 he were to go once more, for the last 
 time? Would it be stupid? Would he 
 lose his dignity? Or would he only tor- 
 ture himself once more with a deplorable 
 hope? On the other hand what did it 
 matter, just à simple walk really, how 
 could it add to his troubles? Wasn’t it 
 plain that everything was over in Mos- 
 cow? What else could he lose? He had 
 only a week more! If he proved able 
 during that week to save himself in some 
 way or other, through sheer strength of 
 will or even through that girl Alenka, 
 all right. If not, well, all the worse for 
 him. 
 
 Suddenly he heard below the terrace a 
 low voice saying, “Young Master? Young 
 Master, are you asleep?” 
 
 He opened his eyes. The starost was 
 standing in front of him, wearing a new 
 calico shirt and on his head a brand new 
 
172 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 cap. He looked contented, drowsy and 
 slightly drunk. 
 
 “Young Master, let us go quickly to 
 the forest,” he murmured. “I told the 
 mistress I had to see Triphonus about the 
 bees. Let us go quickly while she rests, 
 or else she might change her mind when 
 she wakes up. We’ll take something to 
 Triphonus. He’ll soon be drunk. You 
 keep him busy talking and I’ll say a word 
 to Alenka. Why let things go on this 
 way? If it is all right, it is all right; if 
 not, to the devil! We’ll find something 
 better. Come on, the horse is ready . . .” 
 
 Mitya jumped from the couch, crossed 
 the hall, took his cap and went quickly to- 
 wards the shed where there was a 
 droschki to which a very fiery colt had 
 been harnessed. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 THE colt started at a great pace and 
 passed the gate like the wind. Oppo- 
 site the church they stopped a moment 
 at a shop and bought a pound of ham 
 and a bottle of vodka. Then they went on. 
 
 Just as they left the village they passed 
 a house at the door of which stood 
 Aniutka in her Sunday best. The starost 
 shouted an idiotic joke in a brutal tone, 
 then with the stupid and reckless brav- 
 ery of a drunken man, pulled the reins 
 sharply and struck the colt with them. 
 
 The colt leaped ahead. Mitya was al- 
 most thrown out of his seat and he clung 
 to it with all his might. The nape of his 
 neck was smarting agreeably, the heat 
 of the fields, the smell of the rye blos- 
 soming already, the dust of the road, and 
 173 
 
174 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 the smell of the cart-grease were all 
 brought to him by the warm wind in his 
 face. From the silver-grey expanse of 
 the undulating rye the larks were singing 
 and constantly flying a little way and then 
 returning. In the distance he could see 
 the softly blue forest. 
 
 A quarter of an hour later they were 
 already in the forest and flying over roots 
 and stumps. Rapidly they went through 
 the shady road gaily spattered with sun- 
 spots. On each side there were innumer- 
 able flowers in the thick, tall grasses. 
 Alenka, in a blue dress, and still wearing 
 her high boots, was embroidering under 
 some green young oaks near the ranger’s 
 house. 
 
 As he passed in front of her the starost 
 threatened her with his whip and then 
 pulled up at the threshold. Mitya was 
 pleased by the fresh and bitter smell of 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 175 
 the forest and of its young oaks’ foliage 
 and deafened by the loud barking of the 
 puppies which were surrounding the 
 droschki. Their furious clamour filled 
 the forest with echoes, but they were a 
 friendly breed and their tails wagged joy- 
 fully. 
 
 Mitya and the starost jumped out of 
 the droschki, tied the colt under the win- 
 dows to a dry tree which had been struck 
 by lightning, and entered the house slowly 
 through a dark hall. 
 
 It was very clean, very cosy and greatly 
 encumbered by all kinds of furniture. It 
 was very hot because the sun coming from 
 behind the forest shone straight into the 
 two small windows and also because the 
 oven was lighted. They had baked the 
 bread that morning. Theodossia, Alenka’s 
 mother-in-law, a small old woman, neat 
 and respectable, with long teeth, was 
 
176 MITYA’S LOVE 
 seated at the table, her back to the sunny 
 windows covered with gnats, her right 
 elbow in her left hand and her cheek 
 resting in her palm. Seeing the young 
 master she rose and made a deep curtsey. 
 After the usual greetings, they sat down 
 and lighted cigarettes. 
 
 “Where is Triphonus?” asked the 
 starost. 
 
 “He is resting in the cellar,” answered 
 Theodossia. “I’ll go and get him.” 
 
 “We’re getting on all right!” said the 
 starost with a wink, as soon as the old 
 woman was out. 
 
 Mitya had not been able to see any- 
 thing up till now. He was horribly em- 
 barrassed. Theodossia seemed to under- 
 stand perfectly why they had come. He 
 felt ill at ease. Again the thought that 
 had been worrying him for three days 
 came back: “What am I doing? I must 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 177 
 be mad!” He was like a lunatic who, un- 
 der the influence of some strange attrac- 
 tion, walks faster and faster towards the 
 fatal abyss which irresistibly draws him, 
 or like a sick man who, at his wits’ end, 
 has resigned himself to an awful opera- 
 tion said to be absolutely necessary and 
 the only thing possible to save him! 
 However, he tried to look calm and un- 
 concerned and remained seated, smoking 
 and looking all around him. Above all, 
 he was ashamed at the thought that 
 Triphonus, a peasant who was said to be 
 both shrewd and intelligent, would soon 
 come in and that better even than Theo- 
 dossia he would understand everything 
 at once. But at the same time another 
 thought struck him. “Where does she 
 sleep? In that corner or in the cellar? 
 In the cellar, of course. The summer 
 night in the forest, the little windows 
 
178 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 of the cellar without bars or panes, the 
 sleepy murmur of the trees and she, sleep- 
 ing alone, quite alone. Oh, Katya, 
 Katya! What on earth are you doing?” 
 he thought, full of dread. 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
 A FEW minutes later Theodossia came 
 back and announced that Triphonus was 
 coming. Then she said to the starost, 
 “Look here, you are the limit. What 
 have you been saying in the village about 
 our Alenka?” 
 
 The starost looked astonished and tried 
 to defend himself. A very disconnected 
 conversation ensued. Mitya scarcely un- 
 derstood any of it but from what Theo- 
 dossia was saying he could gather that 
 the starost had offered to introduce a trav- 
 elling salesman to Alenka, and that he 
 had told about it in the village and had 
 even hinted that Alenka had already ac- 
 cepted the advances of the salesman. Sud- 
 denly they heard steps behind the door. 
 
 179 
 
180 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 Theodossia and the starost stopped talk- 
 ing immediately. Triphonus entered and 
 made a deep bow to Mitya without saying 
 a word or even looking at him. He sat 
 at a bench near a table and spoke to the 
 starost in a dry and ill-natured tone, ask- 
 ing him what he wanted and why he had 
 come. The starost hastened to explain 
 that he was sent by his mistress, that she 
 begged Triphonus to come to look at the 
 bee-hives, that the man who was look- 
 ing after them was a deaf old imbecile, 
 while Triphonus was the only one in the 
 whole province who really understood 
 bees. He pulled the bottle of vodka out 
 of one of his trousers pockets and a piece 
 of ham in a greasy grey paper from the 
 other. 
 
 Triphonus looked mockingly at him out 
 of the corner of his eye but rose and took 
 a tea-cup from a shelf. The starost 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 181 
 
 offered a drink first to Mitya, then to 
 Triphonus, then to Theodossia, who 
 drained it to the dregs with evident pleas- 
 ure. At last he poured one for himself. 
 After having drunk, he began another 
 round at once, eating some rye bread at 
 the same time with grunts of satisfaction. 
 
 Triphonus grew drunk quickly but he 
 did not change his dry and sarcastic tone. 
 After his second cup the starost became 
 stupefied. The talk of the two men as- 
 sumed an air of cordiality but both of 
 them kept their look of malevolence and 
 suspicion. Theodossia remained silent, 
 looking politely dissatisfied. Alenka did 
 not appear. Mitya had lost all hope of 
 seeing her come and he realised that it 
 was a foolish dream to think that the 
 starost would succeed in “getting a word 
 with her” even if she came. He was 
 absolutely convinced that their journey 
 
182 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 was in vain and that it had only brought 
 shame and disgusting thoughts. The 
 starost had simply become drunk and on 
 his own account had also made Triphonus 
 drunk with Mitya’s money. Mitya rose 
 and said very sharply that it was time 
 to leave. 
 
 “All right, but you have plenty of 
 time,” said the starost sulkily and with 
 impudence. “I want to whisper some- 
 thing in your ear.” 
 
 “You can tell it to me on the way back,” 
 Mitya answered, trying to control him- 
 self and he added more sharply still, 
 “Let us go!” 
 
 But the starost banged upon the table 
 and repeated in the thick tones of a 
 drunken man, “And I tell you it can’t be 
 told on the way back! Come out an in- 
 stant with me . . .” 
 
 “Well, what is it?” 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 183 
 
 “Hush!” muttered the starost, shutting 
 the door behind Mitya. He was totter- 
 ing, his eyes stared vacantly and he smelt 
 strongly of liquor. 
 
 “Hush what?” 
 
 “Hush, I say!” 
 
 “I don’t understand you.” 
 
 “Hush! She will be ours. I am sure!” 
 
 Mitya pushed him away and walked to 
 the threshold, not knowing what to do. 
 Should he wait a little longer, drive away 
 alone, or simply go away on foot? 
 
 Ten paces beyond the thick green for- 
 est was looming, already invaded by the 
 evening shadows which made it still 
 fresher, purer, and more beautiful. A 
 magnificently clear sun was going down 
 behind the trees through which its red 
 gold irradiated. And suddenly from the 
 depths of the forest, coming, it seemed, 
 from the other side of the ravines, he 
 
184 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 heard a tuneful woman’s voice, fetching 
 and delightful, echoing through the trees, 
 a voice such as one hears only in summer 
 evenings. 
 
 “Hou!” the voice was crying, amusing 
 itself with the echoes of the forest. “Hou ! 
 Hou!” 
 
 Mitya left the threshold quickly and 
 ran into the forest through the flowers and 
 the grass. The ground sloped down to a 
 stony ravine. Alenka was there chewing 
 a blade of grass. Mitya ran to the edge 
 of the ravine and stopped short. She 
 looked up at him with astonishment in her 
 eyes. 
 
 “What are you doing there?” Mitya 
 asked softly, out of breath, his heart beat- 
 ing fast. 
 
 “I am looking for our Marussia and 
 the cow. Why do you ask me that?” she 
 said, also softly. 
 
 “Well, will you come?” 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 185 
 
 “And why should I come for nothing? 
 Even if one works by the day, one is 
 paid.” 
 
 “Who said you wouldn’t get anything?” 
 Mitya went on almost in a whisper. 
 “Don’t worry about that?” 
 
 “When?” 
 
 “Well, to-morrow . . . When can you 
 come?” 
 
 Alenka thought a while. “To-morrow 
 I am going to my mother’s to help shear 
 the sheep,” she said, after she had looked 
 carefully around. “In the evening, as 
 soon as it is dark, I’ll come. But where? 
 It is impossible to use the threshing- 
 ground, somebody might go by. Will 
 you come to the hut at the bottom of 
 your garden? Only don’t deceive me. It 
 won’t be for nothing. This is not Mos- 
 cow,” she added, looking up at him with 
 laughing eyes. “They say that in Mos- 
 cow, the women pay . . .” 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 THE journey back was disgusting. 
 
 Triphonus, who did not want to be out- 
 done in politeness, had also produced a 
 bottle and the starost was so drunk that 
 he could scarcely climb into the droschki. 
 Finally he fell heavily into his seat and 
 as the colt was frightened it almost started 
 of itself. Mitya kept silent and looked 
 indifferently at the starost, waiting pa- 
 tiently for the drive to be finished. Again 
 with wild fury the starost made the horse 
 gallop like mad. Mitya, still silent, held 
 on as best he could, looking at the evening 
 sky, at the fields towards the setting sun. 
 The larks were ending their sweet songs. 
 As night approached, the east, already 
 
 turning blue, was lighted by peaceful and 
 186 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 187 
 
 distant lightning, infallible sign of beau- 
 tiful weather. Mitya felt all the charm 
 of the gloaming, but now it was quite out- 
 side of him. In his thoughts, in his soul, 
 there was only one thing that mattered, 
 the next evening! 
 
 At the house, he was told that a letter 
 had come confirming the arrival of Anya 
 and Kostya the next night by the evening 
 train. He felt afraid that they would 
 arrive and would run to the garden in 
 the evening. Perhaps they would go to 
 the hut in the ravine. But then he re- 
 membered that they could not come from 
 the station before nine and that they 
 would be given something to eat and some 
 tea. 
 
 “Will you go to the station to meet 
 them?” asked Olga Petrovna. 
 
 He felt himself grow pale. 
 
 “I don’t think so. I am not very anxious 
 
188 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 to . . . and besides there is no room in 
 the carriage.” 
 
 “You might ride.” 
 
 “Well, I don’t know . . . What’s the 
 use? As I feel now, at any rate, I don’t 
 want to.” 
 
 Olga Petrovna looked at him keenly. 
 
 “You are not ill?” 
 
 “Not at all!” said Mitya almost 
 brusquely. “Only I am very sleepy.” 
 
 He went at once to his room, lay down 
 on the couch in the darkness and went 
 to sleep without undressing. 
 
 In the night he heard slow music in 
 the distance and saw himself standing 
 above an immense, dimly lighted abyss. 
 It became clearer and clearer, deeper and 
 deeper, more and more golden, more and 
 more brilliant, more and more crowded, 
 all the people gaily dressed and happy, 
 and very distinctly, with sad and poig- 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 189 
 
 nant tenderness, he heard a song: There 
 was a King of Thule . . . He shivered 
 with emotion, turned over on his other 
 side and went back to sleep. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 THE day seemed interminable. 
 
 Like an automaton, Mitya went to tea, 
 to dinner, back to his room, back to his 
 sofa, took from his desk a book which 
 had been lying there for a long time, read 
 without understanding a word of what he 
 was reading, looked long at the ceiling, 
 listened to the usual soft summery noises 
 of the sunswept garden outside his win- 
 dow. Once he rose and went to the li- 
 brary for a book. But that calm and 
 charming old room and its windows, one 
 looking out upon the venerable maple- 
 tree, the other upon the clear sky to the 
 west, recalled to him too keenly the spring 
 days already distant, when he had re- 
 mained there happily reading verses in 
 old numbers of reviews. The room ap- 
 
 190 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 191 
 
 peared to him so filled with Katya’s pres- 
 ence that he turned around and walked 
 away very rapidly. “To the devil!” he 
 thought, very irritated. “Byzantine eyes! 
 Knight of the Mournful Countenance! 
 To the devil with all the poetical tragedy 
 of love!” 
 
 With indignation he recalled his inten- 
 tion of committing suicide if he did not 
 receive another letter from Katya. He 
 came back to his room, settled upon his 
 divan and took up his book again. But 
 as before he did not understand a word 
 of what he read. Sometimes, looking at 
 the book, he thought of Alenka, he imag- 
 ined her body and was seized with trem- 
 bling. The nearer the evening came, the 
 oftener this trembling seized him, shook 
 him. The voices and steps in the yard. 
 They were already harnessing the horses 
 to go to the station. All these faint sounds 
 
192 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 echoed ominously, just as during an ill- 
 ness when one is lying alone in bed, all 
 around one ordinary life goes on regard- 
 less of suffering and therefore strange if 
 not actually menacing. At last Paracha 
 shouted: “Madame, the horses are ready!” 
 Mitya heard the dry tinkling of the in- 
 numerable small bells, the stamping of 
 hoofs, the noise of the carriage as it came 
 up to the steps. 
 
 “Good God! When will it all end!” 
 muttered Mitya, not moving but boiling 
 with impatience, as he listened to the 
 voice of Olga Petrovna giving her last 
 orders to the servants. The bells began 
 to jingle again, louder this time; then 
 their tinkling was lost in the noise of the 
 carriage going down the hill. This faded 
 away in the distance and everything was 
 quiet. 
 
 Mitya rose quickly and went to the 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 193 
 
 drawing-room. It was empty and bright- 
 ened by the rays of the clear yellowish 
 setting sun. All the house was empty, 
 strangely empty. With a peculiar feel- 
 ing, as if he were bidding them good-by, 
 Mitya looked at the silent rooms open- 
 ing one into the other, the small drawing- 
 room, the boudoir, the library whose win- 
 dow opened on the south to the dark blue 
 horizon of the evening, towards the pic- 
 turesque top of the green maple above 
 which was shining the rosy point of An- 
 tares. Then he looked into the hall to 
 see if Paracha were there. Being con- 
 vinced that there was no one, he took his 
 cap from the rack, ran back to his room 
 and jumped out of the window, his long 
 legs carrying him far out on the lawn. 
 He stood there a moment, then ran into 
 the garden and crossed it by a small path 
 overgrown with lilac bushes. 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 AS there was no dew the smell of the 
 garden could not have been very strong. 
 Yet it seemed to Mitya, in spite of his 
 insensibility that night, that never in his 
 life, except perhaps when very young, had 
 he smelt such powerful and varied odors. 
 With uncanny keenness he sensed the 
 acacias, the lilac leaves, gooseberry 
 bushes, burdock, wormwood, the flowers, 
 the grass and even the soil. 
 
 After walking a few steps, he thought 
 sadly, “Suppose she should not come, sup- 
 pose she was playing with me!” Now it 
 seemed to him that all his life depended 
 on Alenka’s coming ! Among all the smells 
 of vegetation he recognised the evening 
 smoke from the village hearths. He 
 
 stopped and turned around for an instant. 
 
 194 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 195 
 
 A beetle buzzed somewhere near him, as 
 if it were sowing silence, peace, and twi- 
 light. It was still quite light from the 
 setting sun which filled half the sky with 
 the long uniform rays of the early sum- 
 mer twilight, while above the roof of the 
 house, half hidden among the trees, shone 
 the pointed crescent of the new moon high 
 in the transparent emptiness of the sky. 
 
 Mitya looked about, hurriedly made a 
 small sign of the cross upon his breast 
 and entered an avenue bordered by 
 acacias. The path led to the ravine but 
 not to the hut. To get to it he had to 
 bear more to the left so he broke away 
 from the avenue, over the bushes, among 
 the wide-spread branches of the apple- 
 trees, sometimes bending under them, 
 sometimes parting them. A second later, 
 he was at the trysting place. 
 
 Full of fear, he entered the hut, whose 
 
196 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 darkness smelt of dry and rotten straw. 
 He glanced around keenly and saw, al- 
 most with joy, that she was not yet there. 
 But the crucial moment was approaching 
 and he remained near the hut, all ears 
 and all attention. During the day an 
 extraordinary physical emotion had 
 gripped him. Now it had reached its 
 climax. But now, strangely enough, just 
 as earlier in the day, this emotion seemed 
 a thing entirely apart from himself, to 
 have taken possession only of his body and 
 not of his soul. His heart was beating 
 violently while everything else was so as- 
 tonishingly silent that Mitya heard only 
 the beating of his heart. Silently and 
 tirelessly, delicate colourless butterflies 
 flew lightly among the branches, through 
 the grey foliage of the apple-trees which 
 stood out irregularly against the evening 
 sky. The butterflies made the silence 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 197 
 seem deeper, as if they had charmed and 
 enchanted it. 
 
 Suddenly something crackled behind 
 him, and the noise struck him like a 
 thunderbolt. He whirled around and 
 peered into the trees in the direction of 
 the slope; and he saw something black 
 coming towards him under the apple 
 branches. Before he had time to realise 
 what it was, that dark shadow running 
 towards him waved to him boldly: it 
 was Alenka. 
 
 Her head was covered by her skirt, 
 she pulled it down and he saw her fright- 
 ened face brightened by a smile. She 
 was barefooted, and wore only a skirt 
 with a chemise of unbleached linen, un- 
 der which he could see her young breasts. 
 Everything about her, from her small 
 head covered with a yellow kerchief to 
 her small bare feet, mature yet at the 
 
198 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 same time childlike, was so lovely, so 
 attractive, that Mitya, who heretofore 
 had seen her only when carefully dressed 
 and now saw her for the first time 
 adorned only by the charm of simplicity, 
 was inwardly very much surprised. 
 
 “Quick!” she whispered gaily and fur- 
 tively, and then, after looking all around, 
 she disappeared into the sweet-smelling 
 darkness of the hut. 
 
 There she stopped for a minute while 
 Mitya, his teeth clenched so that they 
 would not chatter, quickly put his hand 
 into his pocket, — his legs were stiff, — 
 and slipped a crumpled five-rouble note 
 into her fingers. She hid it away quickly 
 between her breasts and sat down upon 
 the ground. Mitya sat beside her and 
 put his arms around her neck, not know- 
 ing what to do. Should he kiss her or 
 not? The scent of her kerchief, the 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 199 
 
 aroma of her hair, the intoxicating odor 
 of her body mixed with the smell of the 
 isba and smoke, all was delightfully pleas- 
 ant, Mitya knew, but he knew also that 
 the irresistible force of his physical desire 
 could not be transformed into spiritual 
 desire, into ecstasy, into bliss, into a self- 
 absorbing languor. She stretched and lay 
 down upon her back. He lay beside her, 
 pressed himself against her and reached 
 out his hand. With a deep nervous laugh, 
 she seized it and pushed it aside. 
 
 “That’s forbidden!” she said, and he 
 could not tell whether she spoke seri- 
 ously or jokingly. 
 
 She kept Mitya’s hand tightly closed 
 in her own small hand, her eyes looking 
 through the triangular door frame of the 
 hut at the branches of the apple-trees and 
 at the red point of Antares, still lonely. 
 What did her eyes express? What should 
 
200 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 he do? Kiss her on the neck, upon her 
 lips? Suddenly, she said quickly: 
 
 “All right . . .!” 
 
 When they rose, Mitya was already 
 weary with disillusionment. While she 
 arranged her kerchief and smoothed her 
 hair she asked him in an animated mur- 
 mur, as if he were her lover: 
 
 “I have been told that you have been 
 at Subbotino. I hear that the priest there 
 sells his young pigs quite cheap. Is it 
 true?” 
 
CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 ON Saturday of that same week the 
 rain, which had been continuous since 
 Wednesday night, was still falling hard. 
 
 The downpour that day seemed heavier 
 and the sky blacker than ever. All day 
 long Mitya walked ceaselessly in the gar- 
 den, crying so hard that he himself was 
 astonished at the energy and the abun- 
 dance of his tears. 
 
 Paracha kept looking for him, shout- 
 ing in the yard, in the avenue of lime- 
 trees, calling him for dinner and then for 
 tea, but he did not answer her. 
 
 The cold was damp and penetrating 
 and heavy clouds darkened the sky; 
 against their dark background the green- 
 ness of the garden was by contrast ex- 
 201 
 
202 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 ceedingly fresh and bright. From time 
 to time a sudden gust of wind sent from 
 the trees a new shower, a deluge of drops 
 of rain. But Mitya saw nothing, paid no 
 attention. His white cap became a dirty 
 grey, his student coat became black, his 
 high boots were splashed with mud to his 
 knees. Wet through, cold, without a drop 
 of blood in his face, with mad eyes 
 swollen with tears, he was a sight to be- 
 hold. 
 
 He smoked cigarette after cigarette, 
 walking with long steps in the mud of 
 the avenues, sometimes wandering aim- 
 lessly, without following any path 
 through the tall wet grasses, among the 
 apple- and pear-trees, knocking against 
 the greyish green sponge-like moss on 
 their twisted and rough branches. He 
 sat on the dark benches, soggy with the 
 rain, he went into the ravine and stretched 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 203 
 
 out on the wet straw in the hut, in the 
 same place where he had lain with 
 Alenka. The cold, the icy dampness in 
 the air, had made his big hands blue, his 
 lips and his sunken cheeks were violet, 
 his face deadly pale. He remained lying 
 upon his back, one leg crossed over the 
 other, his hands under his head, looking 
 with haggard eyes at the roof of dark 
 thatch from which fell big rusty drops 
 of rain. Then his jaws tightened, his eye- 
 brows twitched. He rose suddenly and 
 pulled out from his trousers pocket a 
 dirty and crumpled letter, which he had 
 already read a hundred times since he 
 had received it the day before, late in 
 the evening. It had been brought by a 
 land-surveyor who had come on business 
 to the estate. For the hundredth and first 
 time, he devoured it avidly: 
 
 “My dear Mitya, don’t bear a grudge 
 
204 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 against me . Forget , forget everything 
 that has happened! I am a bad and 
 wicked woman, I am corrupt, I am un- 
 worthy of your love, my very dear one, 
 but I love art passionately. I have de- 
 cided, the die is cast, I am going away — 
 you know with whom — you are so sensi- 
 tive, dear, so intelligent, you ll understand 
 me. I beg you, do not torture yourself 
 and do not torture me! Don’t write to 
 me, my dear love, it is useless!” 
 
 When he reached this passage, Mitya 
 crumpled the letter furiously, fell upon 
 his side, his face buried in the wet straw, 
 clenched his teeth with rage and choked 
 with sobs. This unexpected “my dear 
 love” in such a letter recalled to him their 
 intimacy so vividly and even seemed to 
 re-establish it so that it filled his heart 
 with an unbearable tenderness. And just 
 beside that “my dear love,” the firm dec- 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 205 
 laration that it was henceforth useless to 
 write to her, even to write! Yes, yes, he 
 knew it; it was useless! Everything was 
 over! She had fallen, she was soiled for 
 ever, without hope of forgiveness! And 
 his complete impotence was as boundless 
 as was his love, his tenderness, and his 
 disgust at the thought of her! 
 
 Towards evening the rain fell upon the 
 garden with renewed violence and a sud- 
 den peal of thunder drove him at last to 
 the house. Wet through, his teeth chat- 
 tering, his body in the grip of an icy 
 shiver, he looked through the trees to be 
 sure that nobody could see him, then ran 
 to his window, opened it half-way, — it 
 was an old-fashioned window, only the 
 lower part of it could be raised, — and 
 jumping into his room, locked the door 
 and threw himself upon his bed. 
 
 The darkness came quickly. He heard 
 
206 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 the pattering rain everywhere, upon the 
 roof, around the house and in the garden. 
 Indoors the noise was double that in the 
 garden, for near the house the noise of 
 the rain was mixed with the gurgling and 
 the chattering of the gutters as they 
 poured their waters into the puddles. As 
 Mitya fell into a lethargic stupor, the 
 sound of the rain combined with the fever 
 burning in his veins and the throbbing 
 in his head, created in him an inexplica- 
 ble numbness and plunged him into a kind 
 of drowsiness which seemed to create an- 
 other world for him. It was still night- 
 fall but he seemed to be in another house, 
 a strange one, in which something terrible 
 was taking place. 
 
 He knew that he was in his room, dark- 
 ened already by the rain and by the ap- 
 proaching night, that not very far away 
 from him, from the drawing-room, came 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 207 
 
 the voices of Anya, Kostya and the sur- 
 veyor at the tea-table, but at the same 
 time he was walking in an unknown draw- 
 ing-room behind a young serving girl who 
 kept getting away from him. He was 
 seized with a growing fear, mixed, how- 
 ever, with desire and with a presenti- 
 ment of some person’s intimacy with an- 
 other, an intimacy in which there was 
 something monstrous and infamous, but 
 in which he participated up to a certain 
 point. He seemed to understand all this 
 through the intermediary of a child with 
 a large white face (the child was also a 
 painting on the wall), whom the young 
 servant had in her arms and was rocking. 
 Mitya kept trying to pass her. After he 
 had finally passed her he wanted to look 
 at her face. Wasn’t it Alenka? Sud- 
 denly he found himself in his study at 
 college with the panes covered with chalk, 
 
208 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 but the girl standing beside the chest of 
 drawers, near the mirror, could not see 
 him for he had become invisible. She 
 wore a petticoat of yellow silk clinging 
 to her round hips, small shoes with high 
 heels, very transparent black stockings 
 which showed her flesh, and she was 
 voluptuously shy and modest. She knew 
 what was going to happen. She had had 
 time to hide the child in one of the 
 drawers. 
 
 Throwing her hair over her shoulder, 
 she braided it quickly, occasionally 
 glancing sideways at the door, then look- 
 ing at herself in a mirror which reflected 
 her delicate powdered features, her bare 
 shoulders, her small milky breasts with 
 the pink points. The door opened and 
 a gentleman in a smoking jacket with a 
 smoothly-shaven face and curly, short, 
 black hair entered, turned around with 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 209 
 
 an air of assurance, pulled out his flat 
 gold cigarette case and began to smoke 
 with perfect composure. While she fin- 
 ished braiding her hair, she looked at him 
 shyly, knowing his intentions, then threw 
 her braid over her back. He seized her 
 condescendingly around the waist and she 
 nestled against him, hiding her face on 
 his breast. 
 
CHAPTER XXX 
 
 MITYA came back to himself, bathed 
 in sweat, realizing with an awful clear- 
 ness that he was lost, that this world was 
 so dreadful, so sombre, that even hell, on 
 the other side of the tomb, could not be 
 worse. It was very dark in the room. 
 Outside the window, he could hear the 
 water splashing and rippling and that 
 noise was unbearable to his body shaken 
 by tremors. But most unbearable, most 
 horrible of all was the monstrous infamy 
 of that human contact that he had, in some 
 way, shared with the gentleman of the 
 shaven face. From the drawing-room 
 came the sound of voices and laughter. 
 They also were monstrous and horrible, 
 in so far as they were strange to him, in 
 
 so far as they were part of life with its 
 210 
 
MITYA’S LOVE 211 
 
 brutality, indifference and implacabil- 
 ity .. . 
 
 “Katya!” he said, sitting up on the edge 
 of the bed, his legs dangling over the side 
 — ’“Katya, what is the matter?” he said 
 aloud, absolutely sure that she would hear 
 him, that she was there, and that if she 
 were silent, it was because she was her- 
 self crushed and understood the horror 
 of what she had done, even if she did not 
 answer, that she knew her action was ir- 
 reparable and inseparable of herself. 
 “Ah, Katya, what does it matter?” he 
 muttered bitterly and tenderly, meaning 
 that he would forgive her everything as 
 long as she would throw herself in his 
 arms as she used to ; so long as they could 
 be saved together; so long as their beau- 
 tiful love could be kept alive in that mag- 
 nificent spring world, which so recently 
 had been like paradise ! But having mur- 
 mured: “Katya, what does it matter!” he 
 
212 MITYA’S LOVE 
 
 knew at once that he could not say that 
 it did not matter; there was no salvation, 
 no return to the marvellous vision which 
 had been given to him at Chakovskoé on 
 the terrace covered with jasmine, there 
 never could be; and slowly he cried tears 
 of sorrow which tore his heart. 
 
 His pain was so dreadful, so unbear- 
 able that without knowing what he was 
 doing, unconscious of what might come 
 out of that sorrow, he had only one pas- 
 sionate desire, to be rid of his suffering, 
 never to find himself again in the fright- 
 ful world he had lived through that day; 
 in which he had lived the most awful and 
 horrible of all earthly dreams. With a 
 trembling hand he felt for the drawer of 
 the night table, opened it, seized the cool 
 and heavy mass of his revolver, and utter- 
 ing a deep and joyful sigh, he opened his 
 mouth and with all his strength, joy- 
 fully, calmly, he pulled the trigger. 
 


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