Forty Stories - Anton Chekhov [87]
“It’s the priest’s sons and the schoolmaster,” she said.
Once again all three voices sang together.
Matvey Savvich sighed and went on: “Well, grandfather, that’s how it was. Two years later we got a letter from Vasya in Warsaw. He wrote that the authorities were invaliding him home. He was ill. By that time I had put all foolishness out of my head, and I had a fine match arranged for me, but I didn’t know how to get rid of my sweetheart. Every day I made up my mind to speak to Mashenka, but I didn’t know how to approach her without her screaming her head off. The letter freed my hands. We read it together, and then she turned white as snow, and I said: ‘Thank God, now you will be an honest woman again,’ and then she said: ‘I’m not going to live with him!’ ‘Well, he’s your husband, isn’t he?’ I said. ‘Is it an easy thing?’ she went on. ‘I never loved him, and married him against my will. My mother made me do it.’ ‘Don’t try to get out of it, you little fool,’ I said. ‘Tell me this: were you married to him in church, or not?’ ‘I was married to him,’ she answered, ‘but I love you and want to live with you till I die. Let people laugh! I don’t care!…’ ‘You’re a God-fearing woman,’ I said, ‘and you have read the holy books. What does it say there?’ ”
“Once married, she must cleave unto her husband.” Dyudya said.
“Husband and wife are one flesh,” Matvey Savvich went on. “ ‘We have sinned, you and I,’ I said, ‘and we must listen to our consciences and fear God. We must ask forgiveness of Vasya—he’s a quiet soft sort of fellow, and he won’t kill you! And it’s better,’ I said, ‘to suffer tortures in this world at the hands of a lawful husband than to gnash your teeth on Judgment Day!’ But the silly woman would not listen to me, and she kept on with her ‘I love you,’ and that was all she could do. Vasya came back on the Saturday before Trinity early in the morning. I saw everything from my fence. He ran into the house and a moment later emerged with Kuzka in his arms, laughing and crying at the same time, kissing Kuzka while looking up at the hayloft—he wanted to go to his pigeons, but he had no heart to put the boy down. He was a timid fellow, sentimental too. The day passed happily, quiet and decent. They were ringing the bells for the evening service when the thought came to me: ‘Tomorrow is Trinity Sunday, and why haven’t they decorated the gate and the fences with green boughs? Something must be wrong,’ I thought. So I went over to their house. I looked in, and there he was sitting on the floor in the middle of the room, his eyes staring as though he were drunk, tears streaming down his cheeks and his hands shaking. He was pulling cracknels, necklaces, gingerbread, and all kinds of sweetmeats out of his bundle and hurling them on the floor. Three-year-old Kuzka was crawling about and chewing gingerbread, while Mashenka stood by the stove, pale and trembling, muttering to herself: ‘I’m not your wife, I don’t want to live with you!’ and more nonsense like that. I bowed down at Vasya’s feet and said: ‘We have sinned grievously against you, Vasily Maximich—forgive us for Christ’s sake!’ Then I got up and said these words to Mashenka: ‘It is your solemn duty, Maria Semyonovna, to wash Vasily’s feet and drink the dirty water. Be an obedient wife to him, and pray to God’s mercy that my transgressions may be forgiven unto me.’ All this came to me as though inspired by an angel from heaven, and then I gave her some wise counsels, speaking with such feeling that tears came to my eyes. And two days later Vasya comes up to me. ‘Matvey, I forgive you, you and my wife,’ he says. God be with you! She is a soldier’s wife,