Forty Stories - Anton Chekhov [90]
Late at night when Dyudya and the old woman and the watchman were all asleep, Sophia came out to the gate and sat down on a bench. The heat was stifling, and her head ached from crying. The street was wide and long; it stretched for nearly two miles to the right, and two miles to the left, and there was no end to it. The moon no longer shone over the courtyard, but from behind the church. One side of the street was flooded with moonlight, the other lay in deep darkness; and the long shadows of the poplars and the starling cotes stretched across the whole street, while the black and menacing shadows of the church spread far and wide, embracing Dyudya’s gate and half his house. No one was about; only silence. From time to time there came faint strains of music from the end of the street. It was Alyoshka playing on his concertina.
Something moved in the shadows near the walls of the church: impossible to tell whether it was a man or a cow, or only a big bird rustling in the trees. And then a figure emerged out of the shadows, paused, said something in a man’s voice, and disappeared down the church lane. A moment later another figure emerged about six feet away from the church gate, and this figure went straight from the church to the gate, and when it saw Sophia sitting on the bench, it stood still.
“Is that you, Varvara?” Sophia said.
“What if it is?”
It was Varvara. She stood perfectly still for a few moments, and then she went to the bench and sat down.
“Where have you been?” Sophia asked.
Varvara said nothing.
“You’ll get into trouble if you play around, you young bride!” Sophia said. “Did you hear what happened to Mashenka, how she was kicked and beaten with the reins? Look out, or the same thing will happen to you!”
“I don’t care!” Varvara laughed into her handkerchief and whispered: “I’ve been having fun with the priest’s son.”
“You’re making it up!”
“I swear to God …”
“It’s a sin,” whispered Sophia.
“I don’t care! What should I be sorry for? If it’s a sin, then it’s a sin, and it’s better to be struck dead by lightning than to live as I am doing. I’m young and healthy. I’m saddled with a horrible, hunchbacked husband, and he’s worse than that damned Dyudya! Before I was married I never had enough to eat, I went barefoot, I had to get away from all that misery, and there was Alyoshka’s wealth tempting me, and so I became a slave, or a fish caught in a net, and I would sooner sleep with a serpent than with that scab-covered Alyoshka! And what about your life? It’s terrible to think about it! Your Fedor threw you out of the factory and sent you home to his father, and now he has taken another woman: they took your boy away and sold him into slavery. You work like a horse, and never hear a kind word! I’d rather spend my days an old maid and get half a ruble from the priest’s son, I’d rather beg for a pittance, I’d rather throw myself down a well.…”
“It’s a sin,” Sophia whispered again.
“I don’t care.”
From somewhere behind the church came the mournful song of three voices: two tenors and a bass. And again it was impossible to distinguish the words.
“They’re nightbirds all right,” Varvara said, laughing.
And she began to whisper about her nightly escapades with the priest’s son, and what he said to her, and what his friends were like, and how she carried on with the officials and merchants who came to the house. The mournful songs awoke in Sophia a longing for life and freedom, and she began to laugh. For her, it was all sinful and terrible and sweet to hear about, and she envied Varvara and was sorry that she too had not been a sinner when she was young and beautiful.
From the church cemetery came the twelve strokes of the watchman’s rattle, announcing midnight.
“It’s time to sleep,” Sophia said, getting up. “Dyudya will catch us if we don’t!”
They both went quietly into the courtyard.
“I went away and never heard what happened to Mashenka afterwards,” Varvara