Sanine by Mikhail Artsybashev (ebook pdf reader for pc .TXT) 📕

touched her. She dared not look at her brother, fearing that for very shame they would both expire. But Sanine’s grey eyes wore a calm expression, and his voice was firm and even in tone, as if he were talking of ordinary matters. It was this quiet strength of utterance and the profound truth of his words that removed Lida’s shame and fear. Yet suddenly despair prevailed, as she clasped her forehead, while the flimsy sleeves of her dress fluttered like the wings of a startled bird.

“I cannot, no, I cannot!” she faltered, “I dare say you’re right, but I cannot! It is so awful!”

“Well, well, if you can’t,” said Sanine, as he knelt down, and gently drew away her hands from her face, “we must contrive to hide it, somehow. I will see to it that Sarudine has to leave the town, and you⁠—well, you shall marry Novikoff, and be happy. I know that if you had never met this dashing young officer, you would have accepted Sascha Novikoff. I am certain of it.” At the mention of Novikoff’s name Lida saw light through the gloom. Because Sarudine had made her unhappy, and she was convinced that Novikoff would never have done so, for an instant it seemed to her that all could easily be set right. She would at once get up, go back, say something or other, and life in all its radiant beauty would again lie before her. Again she would live, again she would love, only this time it would be a better life, a deeper, purer love. Yet immediately afterwards she recollected that this was impossible, for she had been soiled and degraded by an ignoble, senseless amour.

A gross word, which she scarcely knew and had never uttered, suddenly came into her mind. She applied it to herself. It was as if she had received a box on the ears.

“Great heavens! Am I really a⁠ ⁠… ? Yes, yes, of course, I am!”

“What did you say?” she murmured, ashamed of her own resonant voice.

“Well, what is it to be?” asked Sanine, as he glanced at her pretty hair falling in disorder about her white neck flecked by sunlight breaking through the network of leaves. A sudden fear seized him that he would not succeed in persuading her, and that this young, beautiful woman, fitted to bestow such joy upon others, might vanish into the dark, senseless void. Lida was silent. She strove to repress her longing to live, which, despite her will, had mastered her whole trembling frame. After all that had occurred, it seemed to her shameful not only to live, but to wish to live. Yet her body, strong and full of vitality, rejected so distorted an idea as if it were poison.

“Why this silence?” asked Sanine.

“Because it is impossible.⁠ ⁠… It would be a vile thing to do!⁠ ⁠… I.⁠ ⁠…”

“Don’t talk such nonsense!” retorted Sanine impatiently.

Lida looked up at him again, and in her tearful eyes there was a glimmer of hope.

Sanine broke off a twig, which he bit and then flung away.

“A vile thing!” he went on, “A vile thing! My words amaze you. Yet why? The question is one that neither you nor I can ever rightly answer. Crime! What is a crime? If a mother’s life is in danger when giving birth to a child, and that living child, to save its mother, is destroyed that is not a crime, but an unfortunate necessity! But to suppress something that does not yet exist, that is called a crime, a horrible deed. Yes, a horrible deed, even though the mother’s life, and, what is more, her happiness, depends upon it! Why must it be so? Nobody knows, but everybody loudly maintains that view, crying, ‘Bravo!’ ” Sanine laughed sarcastically. “Oh! you men, you men! Men create for themselves phantoms, shadows, illusions, and are the first to suffer by them. But they all exclaim, ‘Oh! Man is a masterpiece, noblest of all; man is the crown, the King of creation;’ but a king that has never yet reigned, a suffering king that quakes at his own shadow.”

For a moment, Sanine paused.

“After all, that is not the main point. You say that it is a vile thing. I don’t know; perhaps it is. If Novikoff were to hear of your trouble, it would grieve him terribly; in fact, he might shoot himself, but yet he would love you, just the same. In that case, the blame would be his. But if he were a really intelligent man, he would not attach the slightest importance to the fact that you had already (excuse the expression!) slept with somebody else. Neither your body nor your soul have suffered thereby. Good Lord! Why, he might marry a widow himself, for instance! Therefore it is not that which prevents him, but the confused notions with which his head is filled. And, as regards yourself, if it were only possible for human beings to love once in their lives, then, a second attempt to do so would certainly prove futile and unpleasant. But this is not so. To fall in love, or to be loved, is just as delightful and desirable. You will get to love Novikoff, and, if you don’t, well, we’ll travel together, my Lidotschka; one can live, can’t one, anywhere, after all?”

Lida sighed and strove to overcome her final scruples.

“Perhaps⁠ ⁠… everything will come right again,” she murmured. “Novikoff⁠ ⁠… he’s so good and kind⁠ ⁠… nice-looking, too, isn’t he? Yes⁠ ⁠… no⁠ ⁠… I don’t know what to say.”

“If you had drowned yourself, what then? The powers of good and evil would have neither gained nor lost thereby. Your corpse, bloated, disfigured, and covered with slime, would have been dragged from the river, and buried. That would have been all!”

Lida had a lurid vision of greenish, turbid water with slimy, trailing weeds and gruesome bubbles floating round her.

“No, no, never!” she thought, turning pale. “I would rather bear all the shame of it⁠ ⁠… and Novikoff⁠ ⁠… everything⁠ ⁠… anything but that.”

“Ah! look how scared