you!”
“Now listen, Seryozha! How it was with those others I don’t know and don’t want to know; only since you cajoled me into this present love of ours, and you know yourself that I agreed to it as much by my own will as by your cunning, if you deceive me, Seryozha, if you exchange me for anybody else, no matter who, then – forgive me, friend of my heart – I won’t part with you alive.”
Sergei gave a start.
“But Katerina Lvovna, my bright light!” he began. “Look at how things are with us. You noticed just now that I’m pensive today, but you don’t consider how I could help being pensive. It’s like my whole heart’s drowned in clotted blood!”
“Tell me, Sergei, tell me your grief.”
“What’s there to tell? Right now, first off, with God’s blessing, your husband comes back, and you, Sergei Filippych, off with you, take yourself to the garden yard with the musicians, and watch from under the shed how the candle burns in Katerina Lvovna’s bedroom, while she plumps up the featherbed and goes to sleep with her lawful Zinovy Borisych.”
“That will never be!” Katerina Lvovna drawled gaily and waved her hand.
“How will it never be? It’s my understanding that anything else is even quite impossible for you. But I, too, have a heart in me, Katerina Lvovna, and I can see my suffering.”
“Ah, well, enough about all that.”
Katerina Lvovna was pleased with this expression of Sergei’s jealousy, and she laughed and again started kissing him.
“And to repeat,” Sergei went on, gently freeing his head from Katerina Lvovna’s arms, bare to the shoulders, “and to repeat, I must say that my most insignificant position has made me consider this way and that way more than once and maybe more than a dozen times. If I were, so to speak, your equal, a gentleman or a merchant, never in my life would I part with you, Katerina Lvovna. But as it is, consider for yourself, what sort of man am I next to you? Seeing now how you’re taken by your lily-white hands and led to the bedroom, I’ll have to endure it all in my heart, and maybe I’ll turn into a man who despises himself forever. Katerina Lvovna! I’m not like those others who find it all the same, so long as they get enjoyment from a woman. I feel what a thing love is and how it sucks at my heart like a black serpent.”
“Why do you keep talking to me about all this?” Katerina Lvovna interrupted him.
She felt sorry for Sergei.
“Katerina Lvovna! How can I not talk about it? How? When maybe it’s all been explained to him and written to him already, and maybe in no great space of time, but even by tomorrow there’ll be no trace of Sergei left on the premises?”
“No, no, don’t speak of it, Seryozha! Never in the world will it happen that I’m left without you,” Katerina Lvovna comforted him with the same caresses. “If things start going that way… either he or I won’t live, but you’ll stay with me.”
“There’s no way that can follow, Katerina Lvovna,” Sergei replied, shaking his head mournfully and sadly. “I’m not glad of my own life on account of this love. I should have loved what’s worth no more than me and been content with it. Can there be any permanent love between us? Is it any great honor for you having me as a lover? I’d like to be your husband before the pre-eternal holy altar: then, even considering myself as always lesser than you, I could still show everybody publicly how I deserve my wife by my honoring her…”
Katerina Lvovna was bemused by these words of Sergei, by this jealousy of his, by this wish of his to marry her – a wish that always pleases a woman, however brief her connection with the man before marriage. Katerina Lvovna was now ready, for the sake of Sergei, to go through fire, through water, to prison, to the cross. He made her fall so in love with him that her devotion to him knew no measure. She was out of her mind with happiness; her blood boiled, and she could no longer listen to anything. She quickly stopped Sergei’s lips with her palm and, pressing his head to her breast, said:
“Well, now I know that I’m going to make a merchant of you and live with you in the most proper fashion. Only don’t upset me for nothing, while things still haven’t gotten there.”
And again there were kisses and caresses.
The old clerk, asleep in the shed, began to hear through his sound sleep, in the stillness of the night, now whispering and quiet laughter, as if mischievous children were discussing some wicked way to mock a feeble old man; now ringing and merry guffaws, as if lake mermaids were tickling somebody. It was all Katerina Lvovna frolicking and playing with her husband’s young clerk, basking in the moonlight and rolling on the soft rug. White young blossoms from the leafy apple tree poured down on them, poured down, and then stopped pouring down. Meanwhile, the short summer night was passing; the moon hid behind the steep roofs of the tall storehouses and looked askance at the earth, growing dimmer and dimmer; a piercing cat duet came from the kitchen roof, then spitting, angry snarling, after which two or three cats, losing hold, tumbled noisily down a bunch of boards leaning against the roof.
“Let’s go to sleep,” Katerina Lvovna said slowly, as if worn out, getting up from the rug and, just as she had lain there, in nothing but her shift and white petticoat, she went off across the quiet, the deathly quiet merchant’s yard, and Sergei came behind her carrying the rug and her blouse, which she had thrown off during their mischief-making.
Chapter Seven
As soon as Katerina Lvovna blew out the candle and lay down, completely undressed, on the soft featherbed, sleep drew its cloak over her head. Having had her fill of play and pleasure, Katerina Lvovna fell asleep so soundly that her leg sleeps and her arm sleeps; but again she hears through her sleep how the door seems to open again and last night’s cat drops like a heavy lump onto the bed.
“What, really, is this punishment with the cat?” the tired Katerina Lvovna reasoned. “I just now locked the door on purpose, with my own hands, the window is shut, and he’s here again. I’ll throw him out right now.” Katerina Lvovna went to get up, but her sleepy arms and legs refuse to serve her; and the cat walks all over her, and purrs in such a peculiar way, as if he were speaking human words. Katerina Lvovna even got gooseflesh all over.
“No,” she thinks, “the only thing to do is make sure to bring some holy water to bed tomorrow, because this peculiar cat has taken to me.”
But the cat purrs in her ear, buries his snout, and then speaks clearly: “What sort of cat am I! As if I’m a cat! It’s very clever of you, Katerina Lvovna, to reason that I’m not a cat at all, but the distinguished merchant Boris Timofeich. Only I’m feeling bad now, because my guts are all burst inside me from my daughter-in-law’s little treat. That’s why I’ve been reduced down like this,” he purrs, “and now seem like a cat to those with little understanding of who I really am. Well, how’s life going for you, Katerina Lvovna? Are you keeping faithfully to your law? I’ve come from the cemetery on purpose to see how you and Sergei Filippych warm your husband’s bed. Purr-purr, but I can’t see anything. Don’t be afraid of me: you see, my eyes rotted out from your little treat. Look into my eyes, my friend, don’t be afraid!”
Katerina Lvovna looked and screamed to high heaven. Again the cat is lying between her and Sergei Filippych, and the head of this cat Boris Timofeich is as big as the dead man’s, and in place of eyes there are two fiery circles spinning, spinning in opposite directions!
Sergei woke up, calmed Katerina Lvovna, and fell asleep again; but sleep had totally deserted her – luckily.
She lies
