Читать книгу The Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District - Nikolai Leskov - Страница 5

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A warm milky twilight hung over the town. Zinovey Borisych had not yet returned from the work at the dam. The father-in-law Boris Timofeich was not at home either; he had gone to the celebration of an old friend's name-day, and had said he would not be home for supper. Katerina Lvovna, having nothing to do, had retired early to her room, and opening the little window of her attic, sat leaning against the window-post, cracking sunflower seeds. The servants had finished their supper in the kitchen and had gone to bed, some in the barn, some in the warehouse, and others in the high sweet-scented hay loft. Sergei was the last to leave the kitchen. He walked about the yard, unchained the watch-dogs, and passed whistling under Katerina Lvovna's window. He looked up at her and bowed low.

"How do you do?" Katerina Lvovna said to him quietly from her attic, and the yard became silent as if it were a desert.

"Madam!" said somebody, five minutes later at Katerina Lvovna's locked door.

"Who's there?" asked Katerina Lvovna, frightened.

"Don't be afraid! It's I, Sergei," answered the clerk.

"Sergei? What do you want?"

"I have a little business with you, Katerina Lvovna; I want to ask your gracious self about a small matter. Allow me to come in for a moment."

Katerina Lvovna turned the key and let Sergei in.

"What do you want?" she said, going to the window.

"I have come to you, Katerina Lvovna, to ask if you have some book you could give me to read. It helps to drive away boredom."

"No, Sergei, I have no books. I do not read them," answered Katerina Lvovna.

"It's so dull!" Sergei complained.

"Why should you feel dull?"

"Good gracious, how can I help feeling dull? I'm a young man; we live here like in a monastery, and the only future to be seen is that we shall go on stagnating in this solitude till we are under the coffin-lid. It makes one sometimes despair."

"Why don't you get married?"

"It's easy, madam, to say get married. Whom can one marry here? I'm only an unimportant man. A master's daughter won't marry me, and owing to poverty, as you yourself know, Katerina Lvovna, I have not much education. How could such a girl know anything about real love? Surely you have noticed how rich merchants understand it. Now you, one may say, would be a comfort to any man who has any feelings, but they keep you in a cage like a canary-bird."

"Yes, I am dull," exclaimed Katerina Lvovna involuntarily.

"How can one help being dull, madam, in such a life? Even if you had another, as others have, it would be impossible to see him."

"Why, what do you mean? It's not that at all. If only I had had a child, I think I should be merry with it."

"Yes, but allow me to say madam, even a child comes from somewhere and not out of the clouds. Do you think, that now having lived so many years with masters, and having seen the sort of life the women have among merchants, we also don't understand? The song says: 'Without a dear friend, sadness and grief possess thee.' And this sadness, I must inform you, Katerina Lvovna, has made my heart feel so tender, that I could take a steel knife to cut it out of my breast and throw it at your little feet. It would be easier, a hundred times easier for me then . . . ."

Sergei's voice shook.

"Why are you telling me about your heart? I have nothing to do with it. Go away . . . ."

"No, allow me, madam," said Sergei, trembling all over and taking a step towards Katerina Lvovna. "I know, I see, I feel and understand quite well that your lot is no better than mine in this world; but now," said he, drawing a long breath, "now at this moment, all this is in your hands, and in your power."

"What do you mean?—Why have you come to me?—I shall throw myself out of the window," said Katerina Lvovna, feeling herself under the intolerable power of an indescribable terror, and she caught hold of the window sill.

"My life! My incomparable one, why should you throw yourself out of the window?" whispered Sergei boldly, and tearing the young mistress away from the window he pressed her in a close embrace.

"Oh, oh, let me go," Katerina Lvovna sighed gently, becoming weak under Sergei's hot kisses, and she pressed, contrary to her own wish, closer to his strong body.

Sergei lifted the mistress up in his arms like a child and carried her to a dark corner.

A silence fell upon the room, which was only broken by the soft regular ticking of a watch, belonging to Katerina Lvovna's husband, which hung over the head of the bed; but this did not disturb them.

"Go," said Katerina Lvovna half an hour later, without looking at Sergei, as she arranged her disordered hair before a small mirror.

"Why should I go away from here now," answered Sergei in a joyful voice.

"My father-in-law will lock the door."

"Eh, my dear, my dear! What sort of people have you known, that you think the only road to a woman is through a door? To come to you, or to go from you there are doors everywhere for me," said the young fellow, pointing to the columns that supported the gallery.