The Best Short Stories of Fyodor Dostoevsky Page 6

“I have an old grandmother. I’ve lived with her ever since I was a little girl, for my mother and father are dead. I suppose my grandmother must have been rich once, for she likes to talk of the good old days. It was she who taught me French and afterwards engaged a teacher for me. When I was fifteen (I’m seventeen now) my lessons stopped. It was at that time that I misbehaved rather badly. I shan’t tell you what I did. It’s sufficient to say that my offence was not very great. Only Granny called me in one morning and saying that she couldn’t look after me properly because she was blind, she took a safety-pin and pinned my dress to hers. She told me that if I didn’t mend my ways, we should remain pinned to each other for the rest of our lives. In short, at first, I found it quite impossible to get away from her: my work, my reading, and my lessons had all to be done beside my grandmother. I did try to trick her once by persuading Fyokla to sit in my place. Fyokla is our maid. She is very deaf. Well, so Fyokla took my place. Granny happened to fall asleep in her armchair at the time, and I ran off to see a friend of mine who lives close by. But, I’m afraid, it all ended most disastrously. Granny woke up while I was out and asked for something, thinking that I was still sitting quietly in my place. Fyokla saw of course that Granny wanted something, but could not tell what it was. She wondered and wondered what to do and in the end undid the pin and ran out of the room.…”

  Here Nastenka stopped and began laughing. I, too, burst out laughing with her, which made her stop at once.

  “Look, you mustn’t laugh at Granny. I’m laughing because it was so funny.… Well, anyway. I’m afraid it can’t be helped. Granny is like that, but I do love the poor old dear a little for all that. Well, I did catch it properly that time. I was at once told to sit down in my old place, and after that I couldn’t make a move without her noticing it.

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you that we live in our own house, I mean, of course, in Granny’s house. It’s a little wooden house, with only three windows, and it’s as old as Granny herself. It has an attic, and one day a new lodger came to live in the attic.…”

  “There was an old lodger then?” I remarked, by the way.

  “Yes, of course, there was an old lodger,” replied Nastenka, “and let me tell you, he knew how to hold his tongue better than you. As a matter of fact, he hardly ever used it at all. He was a very dried up old man, dumb, blind and lame, so that in the end he just could not go on living and died. Well, of course, we had to get a new lodger, for we can’t live without one: the rent we get from our attic together with Granny’s pension is almost all the income we have. Our new lodger, as it happened, was a young man, a stranger who had some business in Petersburg. As he did not haggle over the rent, Granny let the attic to him, and then asked me, ‘Tell me, Nastenka, what is our lodger like—is he young or old?’ I didn’t want to tell her a lie, so I said, ‘He isn’t very young, Granny, but he isn’t very old, either.’

  “ ‘Is he good-looking?’ Granny asked.

  “Again I didn’t want to tell her a lie. ‘He isn’t bad-looking, Granny,’ I said. Well, so Granny said, ‘Oh dear, that’s bad, that’s very bad! I tell you this because I don’t want you to make a fool of yourself over him. Oh, what terrible times we’re living in! A poor lodger and he would be good-looking too! Not like the old days!’

  “Granny would have liked everything to be like the old days! She was younger in the old days, the sun was much warmer in the old days, the milk didn’t turn so quickly in the old days—everything was so much better in the old days! Well, I just sat there and said nothing, but all the time I was thinking, Why is Granny warning me? Why did she ask whether our lodger was young and good-looking? Well, anyway, the thought only crossed my mind, and soon I was counting my stitches again (I was knitting a stocking at the time), and forgot all about it.

  “Well, one morning our lodger came down to remind us that we had promised to paper his room for him. One thing led to another, for Granny likes talking to people and then she told me to go to her bedroom and fetch her accounts. I jumped up, blushed all over—I don’t know why—and forgot that I was pinned to Granny. I never thought of undoing the pin quietly, so that our lodger shouldn’t notice, but dashed off so quickly that I pulled Granny’s armchair after me. When I saw that our lodger knew all about me now, I got red in the face, stopped dead as though rooted to the floor, and suddenly burst into tears. I felt so ashamed and miserable at that moment that I wished I was dead! Granny shouted at me, ‘What are you standing there like that for?’ But that made me cry worse than ever. When our lodger saw that I was ashamed on account of him, he took his leave and went away at once!

  “Ever since that morning I’ve nearly fainted every time I’ve heard a noise in the passage. It must be the lodger, I’d think, and I’d undo the pin very quietly just in case it was he. But it never was our lodger. He never came. After a fortnight our lodger sent word with Fyokla that he had a lot of French books, and that they were all good books which he knew we would enjoy reading, and that he would be glad to know whether Granny would like me to choose a book to read to her because he was sure she must be bored. Granny accepted our lodger’s kind offer gratefully, but she kept asking me whether the books were good books, for if the books were bad, she wouldn’t let me read them because she didn’t want me to get wrong ideas into my head.”

  “ ‘What wrong ideas, Granny? What’s wrong with those books?’

  “ ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘it’s all about how young men seduce decent girls, and how on the excuse that they want to marry them, they elope with them and then leave them to their own fate, and how the poor creatures all come to a bad end. I’ve read a great many such books,’ said Granny, ‘and everything is described so beautifully in them that I used to keep awake all night, reading them on the quiet. So mind you don’t read them, Nastenka,’ she said. ‘What books has he sent?’

  “ ‘They’re all novels by Walter Scott, Granny.’

  “ ‘Walter Scott’s novels? Are you certain, Nastenka, there isn’t some trickery there? Make sure, dear, he hasn’t put a love letter in one of them.’

  “ ‘No, Granny,’ I said, ‘there’s no love letter.’

  “ ‘Oh, dear,’ said Granny, ‘look in the binding, there’s a good girl. Sometimes they stuff it in the binding, the scoundrels.’

  “ ‘No, Granny, there’s nothing in the binding.’

  “ ‘Well, that’s all right then!’

  “So we started reading Walter Scott, and in a month or so we had read through almost half of his novels. Then he sent us some more books. He sent us Pushkin. And in the end I didn’t know what to do if I had no book to read, and I gave up dreaming of marrying a prince of royal blood.

  “So it went on till one day I happened to meet our lodger on the stairs. Granny had sent me to fetch something. He stopped. I blushed and he blushed. However, he laughed, said good morning to me, asked me how Granny was, and then said, ‘Well, have you read the books?’ I said, ‘Yes, we have.’ ‘Which did you like best?’ I said, ‘I liked Ivanhoe and Pushkin best of all.’ That was all that happened that time.

  “A week later I again happened to meet him on the stairs. That time Granny had not sent me for anything, but I had gone up to fetch something myself. It was past two in the afternoon, when our lodger usually came home. ‘Good afternoon,’ he said. ‘Good afternoon,’ I said.

  “ ‘Don’t you feel awfully bored sitting with your Granny all day?’ he said.

  “The moment he asked me that, I blushed—I don’t know why. I felt awfully ashamed, and hurt, too, because I suppose it was clear that even strangers were beginning to wonder how I could sit all day long pinned to my Granny. I wanted to go away without answering, but I just couldn’t summon enough strength to do that.

  “ ‘Look here,’ he said, ‘you’re a nice girl, and I hope you don’t mind my telling you that I’m more anxious even than your Granny that you should be happy. Have you no girl friends at all whom you’d like to visit?’

  “I told him I hadn’t an
y. I had only one, Mashenka, but she had gone away to Pskov.

  “ ‘Would you like to go to the theatre with me?’ he asked.

  “ ‘To the theatre? But what about Granny?’

  “ ‘Couldn’t you come without her knowing anything about it?’

  “ ‘No, sir,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to deceive my Granny. Goodbye.’

  “ ‘Goodbye,’ he said, and went upstairs without another word.

  “After dinner, however, he came down to see us. He sat down and had a long talk with Granny. He asked her whether she ever went out, whether she had any friends, and then suddenly he said, ‘I’ve taken a box for the opera for this evening. They’re giving The Barber of Seville. Some friends of mine wanted to come, but they couldn’t manage it, and now the tickets are left on my hands.’

  “ ‘The Barber of Seville!’ cried my Granny. ‘Why, is it the same barber they used to act in the old days?’

  “ ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘it’s the same barber,’ and he glanced at me.

  “Of course I understood everything. I blushed and my heart began thumping in anticipation.

  “ ‘Oh,’ said Granny, ‘I know all about him! I used to play Rosina myself in the old days at private theatricals.’

  “ ‘Would you like to go today?’ said the lodger. ‘My ticket will be wasted if nobody comes.’

  “ ‘Yes, I suppose we could go,’ said Granny. ‘Why shouldn’t we? My Nastenka has never been to a theatre before.’

  “My goodness, wasn’t I glad! We started getting ready at once, put on our best clothes, and went off. Granny couldn’t see anything, of course, because she is blind, but she wanted to hear the music, and, besides, she’s really very kind-hearted, the old dear. She wanted me to go and enjoy myself, for we would never have gone by ourselves. Well, I won’t tell you what my impression of The Barber of Seville was. I’ll merely mention that our lodger looked at me so nicely the whole evening, and he spoke so nicely to me that I guessed at once that he had only meant to try me out in the afternoon, to see whether I would have gone with him alone. Oh, I was so happy! I went to bed feeling so proud, so gay, and my heart was beating so fast that I felt a little feverish and raved all night about The Barber of Seville.

  “I thought he’d come and see us more and more often after that, but it turned out quite differently. He almost stopped coming altogether. He’d come down once a month, perhaps, and even then only to invite us to the theatre. We went twice to the theatre with him. Only I wasn’t a bit happy about it. I could see that he was simply sorry for me because I was treated so abominably by my grandmother, and that otherwise he wasn’t interested in me at all. So it went on till I couldn’t bear it any longer: I couldn’t sit still for a minute, I couldn’t read anything, I couldn’t work. Sometimes I’d burst out laughing and do something just to annoy Granny, and sometimes I’d just burst into tears. In the end I got terribly thin and was nearly ill. The opera season was over, and our lodger stopped coming down to see us altogether, and when we did meet—always on the stairs, of course—he’d just bow to me silently, and look very serious as though he did not want to talk to me, and he’d be out on the front steps while I’d still be standing half way up the stairs, red as a cherry, for every time I met him all my blood rushed to my head.

  “Well, I’ve almost finished. Just a year ago, in May, our lodger came down to our drawing-room and told Granny that he had finished his business in Petersburg and was leaving for Moscow where he would have to stay a whole year. When I heard that I went pale and sank back in my chair as though in a faint. Granny did not notice anything, and he, having told us that he was giving up his room, took his leave and went away.

  “What was I to do? I thought and thought, worried and worried, and at last I made up my mind. As he was leaving tomorrow, I decided to make an end to it all after Granny had gone to bed. I tied up all my clothes in a bundle and, more dead than alive, went upstairs with my bundle to see our lodger. I suppose it must have taken me a whole hour to walk up the stairs to the attic. When I opened the door of his room, he cried out as he looked at me. He thought I was a ghost. He quickly fetched a glass of water for me, for I could hardly stand on my feet. My heart was beating very fast, my head ached terribly, and I felt all in a daze. When I recovered a little, I just put my bundle on his bed, sat down beside it, buried my face in my hands, and burst into a flood of tears. He seemed to have understood everything at once, and he stood before me looking so pale and gazing at me so sadly that my heart nearly broke.

  “ ‘Listen, Nastenka,’ he said, ‘I can’t do anything now. I’m a poor man. I haven’t got anything at present, not even a decent job. How would we live, if I were to marry you?’

  “We talked for a long time, and in the end I worked myself up into a real frenzy and told him that I couldn’t go on living with my grandmother any more, that I’d run away from her, that I didn’t want to be fastened by a pin all my life, and that, if he liked, I’d go to Moscow with him because I couldn’t live without him. Shame, love, pride seemed to speak in me all at once, and I fell on the bed almost in convulsions. I was so afraid that he might refuse to take me!

  “He sat in silence for a few minutes, then he got up, went to me, and took me by the hand.

  “ ‘Listen to me, darling Nastenka,’ he began, also speaking through his tears, ‘I promise you solemnly that if at any time I am in a position to marry, you are the only girl in the world I would marry. I assure you that now you are the only one who could make me happy. Now, listen. I’m leaving for Moscow and I shall be away exactly one year. I hope to settle my affairs by that time. When I come back, and if you still love me, I swear to you that we shall be married. I can’t possibly marry you now. It is out of the question. And I have no right to make any promises to you. But I repeat that if I can’t marry you after one year, I shall certainly marry you sometime. Provided of course you still want to marry me and don’t prefer someone else, for I cannot and I dare not bind you by any sort of promise.’

  “That was what he told me, and the next day he left. We agreed not to say anything about it to Granny. He insisted on that. Well, that’s almost the end of my story. A year has now passed, exactly one year. He is in Petersburg now, he’s been here three days, and—and—”

  “And what?” I cried, impatient to hear the end.

  “And he hasn’t turned up so far,” said Nastenka, making a great effort to keep calm. “I haven’t heard a word from him.”

  Here she stopped, paused a little, lowered her pretty head, and, burying her face in her hands, suddenly burst out sobbing so bitterly that my heart bled to hear it.

  I had never expected such an ending.

  “Nastenka,” I began timidly, in an imploring voice, “for goodness sake, Nastenka, don’t cry! How can you tell? Perhaps he hasn’t arrived yet.…”

  “He has, he has!” Nastenka exclaimed. “I know he’s here. We made an arrangement the night before he left. After our talk we went for a walk here on the embankment. It was ten o’clock. We sat on this seat. I was no longer crying then. I felt so happy listening to him! He said that immediately on his return he would come to see us, and if I still wanted to marry him, we’d tell Granny everything. Well he’s back now, I know he is, but he hasn’t come, he hasn’t come!”

  And once more she burst into tears.

  “Good heavens, isn’t there anything we can do?” I cried, jumping up from the seat in utter despair. “Tell me, Nastenka, couldn’t I go and see him?”

  “You think you could?” she said, raising her head.

  “No, of course not,” I replied, checking myself. “But, look here, why not write him a letter?”

  “No, no, that’s impossible!” she replied firmly, but lowering her head and not looking at me.

  “Why is it impossible? What’s wrong with it?” I went on pleading with her, the idea having rather appealed to me. “It all depends what sort of a letter it is, Nastenka. There are letters and letters, and—oh, Nastenka, belie
ve me it’s true. Trust me, Nastenka, please! I wouldn’t give you bad advice. It can all be arranged. It was you who took the first step, wasn’t it? Well, why not now—?”

  “No; it’s quite impossible! It would look as if I was thrusting myself on him.…”

  “But, darling Nastenka,” I interrupted her, and I couldn’t help smiling, “believe me, you’re wrong, quite wrong. You’re absolutely justified in writing to him, for he made a promise to you. Besides, I can see from what you’ve told me that he is a nice man, that he has behaved decently,” I went on, carried away by the logic of my own reasoning and my own convictions. “For what did he do? He bound himself by a promise. He said that he wouldn’t marry anyone but you, if, that is, he ever married at all. But he left you free to decide whether or not you want to marry him, to refuse him at any moment. This being so, there’s no reason on earth why you shouldn’t make the first move. You’re entitled to do so, and you have an advantage over him, if, for instance, you should choose to release him from his promise.…”

  “Look, how would you have written—?”

  “What?”

  “Such a letter.”

  “Well, I’d have started, ‘Dear Sir …’ ”

  “Must it begin with ‘Dear Sir’?”

  “Of course! I mean, not necessarily.… You could …”

  “Never mind. How would you go on?”

  “ ‘Dear Sir, you will pardon me for …’ No, I don’t think you should apologise for writing to him. The circumstances themselves fully justify your letter. Write simply: ‘I am writing to you. Forgive me for my impatience, but all the year I have lived in such happy anticipation of your return that it is hardly surprising that I cannot bear the suspense even one day longer. Now that you are back, I cannot help wondering whether you have not after all changed your mind. If that is so, then my letter will tell you that I quite understand and that I am not blaming you for anything. I do not blame you that I have no power over your heart: such seems to be my fate. You are an honourable man. I know you will not be angry with me or smile at my impatience. Remember that it is a poor girl who is writing to you, that she is all alone in the world, that she has no one to tell her what to do or give her any advice, and that she herself never did know how to control her heart. But forgive me that doubt should have stolen even for one moment into my heart. I know that even in your thoughts you are quite incapable of hurting her who loved you so much and who still loves you.’ ”