Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (59 page)

“What for?”

“Oh, because I was cross with you. I don’t know what for! And then I saw that you couldn’t live without me, and I thought, ‘I’ll torment her, the horrid thing!’”

“Oh, Katya!”

“My darling!” said Katya, kissing my hand. “Then I wouldn’t speak to you, I wouldn’t for anything. But do you remember how I stroked Falstaff?”

“Ah, you fearless girl!”

“Wasn’t I fri-ight-ened!” Katya drawled. “Do you know why I went up to him?”

“Why?”

“Why, you were looking at me. When I saw that you were looking... Ah, come what may, I would go up to him. I gave you a fright, didn’t I? Were you afraid for me?”

“Horribly!”

“I saw. And how glad I was that Falstaff went away! Goodness, how frightened I was afterwards when he had gone, the mo-on-ster!’’

And the little princess broke into an hysterical laugh; then she raised her feverish head and looked intently at me. Tears glistened like little pearls on her long eyelashes.

“Why, what is there in you that I should have grown so fond of you? Ah, you poor little thing with your flaxen hair; you silly little thing, such a cry-baby, with your little blue eyes; my little orphan girl!”

And Katya bent down to give me countless kisses again. A few drops of her tears fell on my cheeks. She was deeply moved.

“How I loved you, but still I kept thinking, ‘No, no! I won’t tell her.’ And you know how obstinate I was! What was I afraid of, why was I ashamed of you? See how happy we are now!”

“Katya! How it hurt me!” I said in a frenzy of joy. “It broke my heart!”

“Yes, Nyetochka, listen.... Yes, listen: who gave you your name Nyetochka?”

“Mother.”

“You must tell me about your mother.”

“Everything, everything,” I answered rapturously.

“And where have you put those two handkerchiefs of mine with lace on them? And why did you carry off my ribbon? Ah, you shameless girl! I know all about it.”

I laughed and blushed till the tears came.

“‘No,’ I thought, ‘I will torment her, let her wait.’ And at other times I thought, ‘I don’t like her a bit, I can’t bear her.’ And you are always such a meek little thing, my little lamb! And how frightened I was that you would think me stupid. You are clever, Nyetochka, you are very clever, aren’t you?”

“What do you mean, Katya?” I answered, almost offended.

“No, you are clever,” said Katya, gravely and resolutely. “I know that. Only I got up one morning and felt awfully fond of you. I had been dreaming of you all night. I thought I would ask mother to let me live downstairs. ‘I don’t want to like her, I don’t want to!’ And the next night I woke up and thought, ‘If only she would come as she did last night!’ And you did come! Ah, how I pretended to be asleep.... Ah, what shameless creatures we are, Nyetochka?”

“But why did you want not to like me?”

“I don’t know. But what nonsense I am talking, I liked you all the time, I always liked you. It was only afterwards I could not bear you; I thought, ‘I will kiss her one day, or else I will pinch her to death.’ There’s one for you, you silly!”

And the little princess pinched me.

“And do you remember my tying up your shoe?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“I remember. Were you pleased? I looked at you. ‘What a sweet darling,’ I thought. ‘If I tie up her shoe, what will she think?’ But I was happy too. And do you know, really I wanted to kiss you... but I didn’t kiss you. And then it seemed so funny, so funny! And when we were out on our walk together, all the way I kept wanting to laugh. I couldn’t look at you it was so funny. And how glad I was that you went into the black hole for me.”

The empty room was called the “black hole”.

“And were you frightened?”

“Horribly frightened.”

“I wasn’t so glad at your saying you did it, but I was glad that you were ready to be punished for me! I thought, ‘She is crying now, but how I love her! To-morrow how I will kiss her, how I will kiss her!’ And I wasn’t sorry, I really wasn’t sorry for you, though I did cry.”

“But I didn’t cry, I was glad!”

“You didn’t cry? Ah, you wicked girl!” cried Katya, fastening her little lips upon me.

“Katya, Katya! Oh, dear! how lovely you are!”

“Yes, am I not? Well, now you can do what you like to me. My tyrant, pinch me. Please pinch me! My darling, pinch me!”

“You silly!”

“Well, what next?”

“Idiot!”

“And what next?”

“Why, kiss me.”

And we kissed each other, cried, laughed, and our lips were swollen with kissing.

“Nyetochka! To begin with, you are always to sleep with me. Are you fond of kissing? And we will kiss each other. Then I won’t have you be so depressed. Why were you so depressed? You’ll tell me, won’t you?”

“I will tell you everything, but I am not sad now, but happy!’’

“No, you are to have rosy cheeks like mine. Oh, if tomorrow would only come quickly! Are you sleepy, Nyetochka?”

“No.”

“Well, then let’s talk.”

And we chattered away for another two hours. Goodness knows what we didn’t talk about. To begin with, the little princess unfolded all her plans for the future, and explained the present position of affairs; and so I learned that she loved her father more than anyone, almost more than me. Then we both decided that Madame Leotard was a splendid woman, and that she was not at all strict. Then we settled what we would do the next day, and the day after, and, in fact, planned out our lives for the next twenty years. Katya decided that we should live in this way: one day she would give me orders and I should obey, and the next day it should be the other way round, I should command and she would obey unquestioningly, and so we should both give orders equally; and that if either disobeyed on purpose we would first quarrel just for appearances and then make haste to be reconciled. In short, an infinity of happiness lay before us. At last we were tired out with prattling, I could not keep my eyes open. Katya laughed at me and called me sleepy-head, but she fell asleep before I did. In the morning we woke up at the same moment, hurriedly kissed because someone was coming in, and I only just had time to scurry into my bed.

All day we did not know what to do for joy. We were continually hiding and running away from everyone, dreading other people’s eyes more than anything. At last I began telling her my story. Katya was distressed to tears by what I told her.

“You wicked, wicked girl! Why didn’t you tell me all this before? I should have loved you so. And did the boys in the street hurt you when they hit you?”

“Yes, I was so afraid of them.”

“Oh, the wretches! Do you know, Nyetochka, I saw a boy beating another in the street. To-morrow I’ll steal Falstaff’s whip, and if I meet one like that, I’ll give him such a beating!”

Her eyes were flashing with indignation.

We were frightened when anyone came in. We were afraid of being caught kissing each other. And we kissed each other that day at least a hundred times. So that day passed and the next. I was afraid that I should die of rapture, I was breathless with joy. But our happiness did not last long.

Madame Leotard had to report all the little princess’s doings. She watched us for three days, and during those three days she gathered a great deal to relate. At last she went down to Katya’s mother and told her all that she had observed — that we both seemed in a sort of frenzy; that for the last three days we had been inseparable; that we were continually kissing, crying and laughing like lunatics, and that like lunatics we babbled incessantly; that there had been nothing like this before, that she did not know to what to attribute it, but she fancied that the little princess was passing through some nervous crisis; and finally that she believed that it would be better for us to see each other more seldom.

“I have thought so for a long time,” answered the princess. “I knew that queer little orphan would give us trouble. The things I have been told about her, about her life in the past! Awful, really awful! She has an unmistakable influence over Katya. You say that Katya is very fond of her?”

“Absolutely devoted.”

The princess crimsoned with annoyance. She was already jealous of her daughter’s feeling for me.

“It’s not natural,” she said. “At first they seemed to avoid each other, and I must confess I was glad of it. Though she is only a little girl, I would not answer for anything. You understand me? She has absorbed her bringing up, her habits and perhaps principles from infancy, and I don’t understand what the prince sees in her. A thousand times I have suggested sending her to a boarding-school.”

Madame Leotard attempted to defend me, but the princess had already determined to separate us. Katya was sent for at once, and on arriving downstairs was informed that she would not see me again till the following Sunday — that is, for just a week.

I learned all this late in the evening and was horror-stricken; I thought of Katya, and it seemed to me that she would not be able to bear our separation. I was frantic with misery and grief and was taken ill in the night; in the morning the prince came to see me and whispered to me words of hope. The prince did his utmost, but all was in vain, the princess would not alter her intention. Little by little I was reduced to despair, I could hardly breathe for misery.

On the morning of the third day Nastya brought me a note from Katya. Katya wrote a fearful scrawl in pencil:

“I love you. I am sitting with mamma and thinking all the time how I can escape to you. But I shall escape, I have said so, and so I don’t cry. Write and tell me how you love me. And I was hugging you in my dreams all night, and was very miserable, Nyetochka. I am sending you some sweets. Farewell.”

I answered in the same style. I spent the day crying over Katya’s letter. Madame Leotard worried me with her caresses. In the evening she went to the prince and told him I should certainly be ill for the third time if I did not see Katya, and that she regretted having told the princess. I questioned Nastya about Katya. She told me that Katya was not crying but was very pale.

In the morning Nastya whispered to me:

“Go down to his Excellency’s study. Go down by the staircase on the right.”

My whole being revived with a presentiment. Breathless with expectation, I ran down and opened the study door. She was not there. Suddenly Katya clutched me from behind and kissed me warmly. Laughter, tears.... In a flash Katya tore herself from my arms, clambered on her father, leapt on his shoulders like a squirrel, but losing her balance, sprang off on to the sofa. The prince fell on the sofa after her. Katya was shedding tears of joy.

“Father, what a good man you are!”

“You madcaps! What has happened to you? What’s this friendship? What’s this love?”

“Be quiet, father, you know nothing about it.”

And we rushed into each other’s arms again.

I began looking at her more closely. She had grown thinner in three days. The red had begun to fade from her little face, and pallor was stealing into its place. I shed tears of grief.

At last Nastya knocked, a signal that Katya had been missed and was being asked for. Katya turned deathly pale.

“That’s enough, children. We’ll meet every day. Good-bye, and may God bless you,” said the prince.

He was touched as he looked at us; but his words did not come true. In the evening the news came from Moscow that little Sasha had fallen ill and was almost on the point of death. The princess decided to set off next day. This happened so suddenly that I knew nothing about it till the moment of saying good-bye to Katya. The prince himself had insisted on our being allowed to say good-bye, and the princess had only reluctantly consented. Katya looked shattered. I ran downstairs hardly knowing what I was doing, and threw myself on her neck. The travelling coach was already at the door. Katya uttered a shriek when she saw me, and sank unconscious. I flew to kiss her. The princess began trying to restore her. At last she came to herself and hugged me again.

“Good-bye, Nyetochka,” she said to me suddenly, laughing, with an indescribable expression on her face. “Don’t mind me; it’s nothing; I am not ill. I shall come back in a month, then we will not part again.”

“That’s enough,” said the princess calmly. “Let us start.”

But Katya came back once more. She squeezed me convulsively in her arms.

“My life,” she succeeded in whispering, hugging me. “Good-bye till we meet again.”

We kissed each other for the last time and Katya vanished — for a long, long time. Eight years passed before we met again.

* * *

I have purposely described so minutely this episode of my childhood, Katya’s first appearance in my life. But our story is inseparable. Her romance was my romance. It was as though it were fated that I should meet her; that she should find me. And I could not deny myself the pleasure of going back once more in memory into my childhood.... Now my story will go more quickly. My life passed all at once into a dead calm, and I seemed only to wake up again when I had reached my sixteenth year....

But a few words of what became of me on the departure of the prince’s family to Moscow.

I was left with Madame Leotard.

A fortnight later a messenger arrived with the news that their return to Petersburg was postponed indefinitely. As for family reasons Madame Leotard could not go to Moscow, her duties in the prince’s household were at an end; but she remained in the same family and entered the house of Alexandra Mihalovna, the princess’s elder daughter.

I have said nothing yet about Alexandra Mihalovna, and indeed I had only seen her once. She was the daughter of the princess by her first husband. The origin and family of the princess was somewhat obscure. Her first husband was a contractor. When the princess married a second time she did not know what to do with her elder daughter. She could not hope that she would make a brilliant marriage. Her dowry was only a moderate one; at last, four years before, they had succeeded in marrying her to a wealthy man of a very decent grade in the service. Alexandra Mihalovna passed into a different circle and saw a different world around her. The princess used to visit her twice a year; the prince, her stepfather, visited her once a week with Katya. But of late the princess had not liked letting Katya go to see her sister, and the prince took her on the sly. Katya adored her sister, but they were a great contrast in character. Alexandra Mihalovna was a woman of twenty-two, quiet, soft and loving; it was as though some secret sorrow, some hidden heartache had cast a shade of austerity on her lovely features. Gravity and austerity seemed out of keeping with the angelic candour of her face, it was like mourning on a child. One could not look at her without feeling greatly attracted. She was pale and was said to be inclined to be consumptive when I saw her for the first time. She led a very solitary life, and did not like receiving many guests or paying visits; she was like a nun. She had no children. I remember she came to see Madame Leotard, and coming up to me, kissed me with much feeling. She was accompanied by a lean, rather elderly man. Tears came into his eyes as he looked at me. This was the violinist B. Alexandra Mihalovna put her arms round me and asked whether I would like to live with her and be her daughter. Looking into her face, I recognised my Katya’s sister, and hugged her with a dull pain in my heart which set my whole chest aching... as though someone had once more pronounced over me the word “orphan”. Then Alexandra Mihalovna showed me a letter from the prince. In it were a few lines addressed to me, and I read them with smothered sobs. The prince sent his blessing and wished me long life and happiness, and begged me to love his other daughter. Katya wrote me a few lines too. She wrote to me that she would not now leave her mother.