Katerina was sitting pale as a sheet. She was looking with a fixed stare into the air, her lips were blue as a corpse’s and her eyes were dimmed by a mute, agonising woe. She stood up slowly, took two steps forward and, with a piercing wail, flung herself down before the ikon…. Jerky, incoherent words’ broke from her throat. She lost consciousness. Shaken with horror Ordynov lifted her up and carried her to his bed; he stood over her, frantic.
A minute later she opened her eyes, sat up in the bed, looked about her and seized his hand. She drew him towards her, tried to whisper something with her lips that were still pale, but her voice would not obey her. At last she burst into a flood of tears; the hot drops scalded Ordynov’s chilly hand.
“It’s hard for me, it’s hard for me now; my last hour is at hand!” she said at last in desperate anguish.
She tried to say something else, but her faltering tongue could not utter a word. She looked in despair at Ordynov, who did not understand her. He bent closer to her and listened….
At last he heard her whisper distinctly:
“I am corrupted — they have corrupted me, they have ruined me!”
Ordynov lifted his head and looked at her in wild amazement. Some hideous thought flashed across his mind. Katerina saw the convulsive workings of his face.
“Yes! Corrupted,” she went on; “a wicked man corrupted me. It is he who has ruined me!… I have sold my soul to him. Why, why did you speak of my mother? Why did you want to torture me? God, God be your judge!…”
A minute later she was softly weeping; Ordynov’s heart was beating and aching in mortal anguish.
“He says,” she whispered in a restrained, mysterious voice, “that when he dies he will come and fetch my sinful soul….
I am his, I have sold my soul to him. He tortures me, he reads to me in his books. Here, look at his book! here is his book, He says I have committed the unpardonable sin. Look, look…” —
And she showed him a book. Ordynov did not notice where it had come from. He took it mechanically — it was all in manuscript like the old heretical books which he had happened to see before, but now he was incapable of looking or concentrating his attention on anything else. The book fell out of his hands. He softly embraced Katerina, trying to bring her to reason. “Hush, hush,” he said; “they have frightened you. I am with you; rest with me, my own, my love, my light.”
“You know nothing, nothing,” she said, warmly pressing his hand. “I am always like this! I am always afraid…. I’ve tortured you enough, enough!…”
“I go to him then,” she began a minute later, taking a breath; “sometimes he simply comforts me with his words, sometimes he takes his book, the biggest, and reads it over me — he always reads such grim, threatening things! I don’t know what, and don’t understand every word; but fear comes upon me; and when I listen to his voice, it is as though it were not he speaking, but someone else, someone evil, someone you could not soften anyhow, could not entreat, and one’s heart grows so heavy and burns…. Heavier than when this misery comes upon me!”
“Don’t go to him. Why do you go to him?” said Ordynov, hardly conscious of his own words.
“Why have I come to you? If you ask — I don’t know either…. But he keeps saying to me, ‘Pray, pray!’ Sometimes I get up in the dark night and for a long time, for hours together, I pray; sometimes sleep overtakes me, but fear always wakes me, always wakes me and then I always fancy that a storm is gathering round me, that harm is coming to me, that evil things will tear me to pieces and torment me, that my prayers will not reach the saints, and that they will not save me from cruel grief.
My soul is being tom, my whole body seems breaking to pieces through crying…. Then I begin praying again, and pray and pray until the Holy Mother looks down on me from the ikon, more lovingly. Then I get up and go away to sleep, utterly shattered; sometimes I wake up on the floor, on my knees before the ikon. Then sometimes he wakes, calls me, begins to soothe me, caress me, comfort me, and then I feel better, and if any trouble comes I am not afraid with him. He is powerful! His word is mighty!”
“But what trouble, what sort of trouble have you?”… And Ordynov wrung his hands in despair.
Katerina turned fearfully pale. She looked at him like one condemned to death, without hope of pardon.
“Me? I am under a curse, I’m a murderess; my mother cursed me! I was the ruin of my own mother!…” Ordynov embraced her without a word. She nestled tremulously to him. He felt a convulsive shiver pass all over her, and it seemed as though her soul were Parting from her body.
“I hid her in the damp earth,” she said, overwhelmed by the horror of her recollections, and lost in visions of her irrevocable past. “I have long wanted to tell it; he always forbade me with supplications, upbraidings, and angry words, and at times he himself will arouse all my anguish at though he were my enemy and adversary. At night, even as now — it all comes into my mind. Listen, listen! It was long ago, very long ago.
I don’t remember when, but it is all before me as though it had been yesterday, like a dream of yesterday, devouring my heart all night. Misery makes the time twice as long. Sit here, sit here beside me; I will tell you all my sorrow; may I be struck” down, accursed as I am, by a mother’s curse…. I am putting my life into your hands…”
Ordynov tried to stop her, but she folded her hands, beseeching his love to attend, and then, with even greater agitation began to speak. Her story was incoherent, the turmoil of her spirit could be felt in her words, but Ordynov understood it all, because her life had become his life, her grief his grief, and because her foe stood visible before him, taking shape and growing up before him with every word she uttered and, as it were, with inexhaustible strength crushing his heart and cursing him malignantly. His blood was in a turmoil, it flooded his heart and obscured his reason. The wicked old man of his dream (Ordynov believed this) was living before him.
“Well, it was a night like this,” Katerina began, “only stormier, and the wind in our forest howled as I had never heard it before… it was in that night that my ruin began! An oak was broken before our window, and an old grey-headed beggar came to our door, and he said that he remembered that oak as a little child, and that it was the same then as when the wind blew it down…. That night — as I remember now — my father’s barge was wrecked on the river by a storm, and though he was afflicted with illness, he drove to the place as soon as the fishermen ran to us at the factory. Mother and I were sitting alone. I was asleep. She was sad about something and weeping bitterly… and I knew what about! She had just been ill, she was still pale and kept telling me to get ready her shroud.
… Suddenly, at midnight, we heard a knock at the gate; I jumped up, the blood rushed to my heart; mother cried out…. I did not look at her, I was afraid. I took a lantern and went myself to open the gate…. It was he! I felt frightened, because I was always frightened when he came, and it was so with me from childhood ever since I remembered anything! At that time he had not white hair; his beard was black as pitch, his eyes burnt like coals; until that time he had never once looked at me kindly. He asked me, ‘Is your mother at home?’ Shutting the little gate, I answered that ‘Father was not at home.’ He said, ‘I know,’ and suddenly looked at me, looked at me in such a way… it was the first time he had looked at me like that. I went on, but he still stood. ‘Why don’t you come in?’
‘I am thinking.’ By then we were going up to the room. ‘Why did you say that father was not at home when I asked you whether mother was at home?’ I said nothing…. Mother was terror-stricken — she rushed to him…. He scarcely glanced at her. I saw it all. He was all wet and shivering; the storm had driven him fifteen miles, but whence he came and where he lived neither mother nor I ever knew; we had not seen him for nine weeks…. He threw down his cap, pulled off his gloves — did not pray to the ikon, nor bow to his hostess — he sat down by the fire…”
Katerina passed her hand over her face, as though something were weighing upon her and oppressing her, but a minute later she raised her head and began again:
“He began talking in Tatar to mother. Mother knew it, I don’t understand a word. Other times when he
