Николай Лесков
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and Other Stories / Леди Макбет Мценского уезда и другие повести. Книга для чтения на английском языке
Chapter Six
In the yard after lunch it was scorching hot, and the darting flies were unbearably annoying. Katerina Lvovna closed the bedroom shutters, covered the window from inside with a woolen shawl, and lay down to rest with Sergei on the merchant’s high bed. Katerina Lvovna sleeps and does not sleep, she is in some sort of daze, her face is bathed in sweat, and her breathing is hot and heavy. Katerina Lvovna feels it is time for her to wake up, time to go to the garden and have tea, but she simply cannot get up. At last the cook came and knocked on the door: “The samovar’s getting cold under the apple tree,” she said. Katerina Lvovna turned over with effort and began to caress the cat. And the cat goes rubbing himself between her and Sergei, and he’s so fine, gray, big, and fat as can be… and he has whiskers like a village headman. Katerina Lvovna feels his fluffy fur, and he nuzzles her with his nose: he thrusts his blunt snout into her resilient breast and sings a soft song, as if telling her of love. “How did this tomcat get here?” Katerina Lvovna thinks. “I’ve set cream on the windowsill: the vile thing’s sure to lap it up. He should be chased out,” she decided and was going to grab him and throw him out, but her fingers went through him like mist. “Where did this cat come from anyway?” Katerina Lvovna reasons in her nightmare. “We’ve never had any cat in our bedroom, and look what a one has got in!” She again went to take hold of him, and again he was not there. “Oh, what on earth is this? Can it really be a cat?” thought Katerina Lvovna. She was suddenly dumbstruck, and her drowsiness and dreaming were completely driven away. Katerina Lvovna looked around the room – there is no cat, there is only handsome Sergei lying there, pressing her breast to his hot face with his powerful hand.
Katerina Lvovna got up, sat on the bed, kissed Sergei, kissed and caressed him, straightened the rumpled featherbed, and went to the garden to have tea; and the sun had already dropped down quite low, and a wonderful, magical evening was descending upon the thoroughly heated earth.
“I slept too long,” Katerina Lvovna said to Aksinya as she seated herself on the rug under the blossoming apple tree to have tea. “What could it mean, Aksinyushka?” she asked the cook, wiping the saucer with a napkin herself.
“What’s that, my dear?”
“It wasn’t like in a dream, but a cat kept somehow nudging into me wide awake.”
“Oh, what are you saying?”
“Really, a cat nudging.”
Katerina Lvovna told how the cat was nudging into her.
“And why were you caressing him?”
“Well, that’s just it! I myself don’t know why I caressed him.”
“A wonder, really!” the cook exclaimed.
“I can’t stop marveling myself.”
“It’s most certainly about somebody sidling up to you, or something else like that.”
“But what exactly?”
“Well, what exactly – that’s something nobody can explain to you, my dear, what exactly, only there will be something.”
“I kept seeing a crescent moon in my dream and then there was this cat,” Katerina Lvovna went on.
“A crescent moon means a baby.”
Katerina Lvovna blushed.
“Shouldn’t I send Sergei here to your honor?” Aksinya hazarded, offering herself as a confidante.
“Well, after all,” replied Katerina Lvovna, “you’re right, go and send him: I’ll have tea with him here.”
“Just what I say, send him here,” Aksinya concluded, and she waddled duck-like to the garden gate.
Katerina Lvovna also told Sergei about the cat.
“Sheer fantasy,” replied Sergei.
“Then why is it, Seryozha, that I’ve never had this fantasy before?”
“There’s a lot that never was before! Before I used just to look at you and pine away, but now – ho-ho! – I have your whole white body.”
Sergei embraced Katerina Lvovna, spun her in the air, and playfully landed her on the fluffy rug.
“Oh, my head is spinning!” said Katerina Lvovna. “Seryozha, come here; sit beside me,” she called, lying back and stretching herself out in a luxurious pose.
The young fellow, bending down, went under the low apple tree, all bathed in white flowers, and sat on the rug at Katerina Lvovna’s feet.
“So you pined for me, Seryozha?”
“How I pined!”
“How did you pine? Tell me about it.”
“How can I tell about it? Is it possible to describe how you pine? I was heartsick.”
“Why is it, Seryozha, that I didn’t feel you were suffering over me? They say you can feel it.”
Sergei was silent.
“And why did you sing songs, if you were longing for me? Eh? Didn’t I hear you singing in the gallery?” Katerina Lvovna went on asking tenderly.
“So what if I sang songs? A mosquito also sings all his life, but it’s not for joy,” Sergei answered drily.
There was a pause. Katerina Lvovna was filled with the highest rapture from these confessions of Sergei.
She wanted to talk, but Sergei sulked and kept silent.
“Look, Seryozha, what paradise, what paradise!” Katerina Lvovna exclaimed, looking through the dense branches of the blossoming apple tree that covered her at the clear blue sky in which there hung a fine full moon.
The moonlight coming through the leaves and flowers of the apple tree scattered the most whimsical bright spots over Katerina Lvovna’s face and whole recumbent body; the air was still; only a light, warm breeze faintly stirred the sleepy leaves and spread the subtle fragrance of blossoming herbs and trees. There was a breath of something languorous, conducive to laziness, sweetness, and obscure desires.
Receiving no answer, Katerina Lvovna fell silent again and went on looking at the sky through the pale pink apple blossoms. Sergei, too, was silent; only he was not interested in the sky. His arms around his knees, he stared fixedly at his boots.
A golden night! Silence, light, fragrance, and beneficent, vivifying warmth. Far across the ravine, beyond the garden, someone struck up a resounding song; by the fence, in the bird-cherry thicket, a nightingale trilled and loudly throbbed; in a cage on a tall pole a sleepy quail began to rave, and a fat horse sighed languidly behind the stable wall, and outside the garden fence a merry pack of dogs raced noiselessly across the green and disappeared into the dense black shadow of the half-ruined old salt depots.
Katerina Lvovna propped herself on her elbow and looked at the tall garden grass; and the grass played with the moonbeams, broken up by the flowers and leaves of the trees. It was all gilded by these intricate bright spots, which flashed and trembled on it like live, fiery butterflies, or as if all the grass under the trees had been caught in a lunar net and were swaying from side to side.
“Ah, Seryozhechka, how lovely!” Katerina Lvovna exclaimed, looking around.
Sergei looked around indifferently.
“Why are you so joyless, Seryozha? Or are you already tired of my love?”
“Why this empty talk!” Sergei answered drily, and, bending down, he lazily kissed Katerina Lvovna.
“You’re a deceiver, Seryozha,” Katerina Lvovna said jealously, “you’re insubstantial.”
“Such words don’t even apply to me,” Sergei replied in a calm tone.
“Then why did you kiss me that way?”
Sergei said nothing at all.
“It’s only husbands and wives,” Katerina Lvovna went on, playing with his curls, “who shake the dust off each other’s lips like that. Kiss me so that these young apple blossoms over us fall to the ground. Like this, like this,” Katerina Lvovna whispered, twining around her lover and kissing him with passionate abandon.
“Listen to what I tell you, Seryozha,” Katerina Lvovna began a little later. “Why is it that the one and only word they say about you is that you’re a deceiver?”
“Who’s been yapping about me like that?”
“Well, people talk.”
“Maybe I deceived the unworthy ones.”
“And why were you fool enough to deal with unworthy ones? With unworthy ones there shouldn’t be any love.”
“Go on, talk! Is that sort of thing done by reasoning? It’s all temptation. You break the commandment with her quite simply, without any of these intentions, and then she’s there hanging on your neck. That’s love for you!”
“Now listen, Seryozha! How it was with those others I don’t know and don’t want to know; only since you cajoled me into this present love of ours, and you know yourself that I agreed to it as much by my own will as by your cunning, if you deceive me, Seryozha, if you exchange me for anybody else, no matter who, then – forgive me, friend of my heart – I won’t part with you alive.”
Sergei gave a start.
“But Katerina Lvovna, my bright light!” he began. “Look at how things are with us. You noticed just now that I’m pensive today, but you don’t consider how I could help being pensive. It’s like my whole heart’s drowned in clotted blood!”
“Tell me, Sergei, tell me your grief.”
“What’s there to tell? Right now, first off, with God’s blessing, your husband comes back, and you, Sergei Filippych, off with you, take yourself to the garden yard with the musicians, and watch from under the shed how the candle burns in Katerina Lvovna’s bedroom, while she plumps up the featherbed and goes to sleep with her lawful Zinovy Borisych.”
“That will never be!” Katerina Lvovna drawled gaily and waved her hand.
“How will it never be? It’s my understanding that anything else is even quite impossible for you. But I, too, have a heart in me, Katerina Lvovna, and I can see my suffering.”
“Ah, well, enough about all that.”
Katerina Lvovna was pleased with this expression of Sergei’s jealousy, and she laughed and again started kissing him.
“And to repeat,” Sergei went on, gently freeing his head from Katerina Lvovna’s arms, bare to the shoulders, “and to repeat, I must say that my most insignificant position has made me consider this way and that way more than once and maybe more than a dozen times. If I were, so to speak, your equal, a gentleman or a merchant, never in my life would I part with you, Katerina Lvovna. But as it is, consider for yourself, what sort of man am I next to you? Seeing now how you’re taken by your lily-white hands and led to the bedroom, I’ll have to endure it all in my heart, and maybe I’ll turn into a man who despises himself forever. Katerina Lvovna! I’m not like those others who find it all the same, so long as they get enjoyment from a woman. I feel what a thing love is and how it sucks at my heart like a black serpent.”
“Why do you keep talking to me about all this?” Katerina Lvovna interrupted him.
She felt sorry for Sergei.
“Katerina Lvovna! How can I not talk about it? How? When maybe it’s all been explained to him and written to him already, and maybe in no great space of time, but even by tomorrow there’ll be no trace of Sergei left on the premises?”
“No, no, don’t speak of it, Seryozha! Never in the world will it happen that I’m left without you,” Katerina Lvovna comforted him with the same caresses. “If things start going that way… either he or I won’t live, but you’ll stay with me.”
“There’s no way that can follow, Katerina Lvovna,” Sergei replied, shaking his head mournfully and sadly. “I’m not glad of my own life on account of this love. I should have loved what’s worth no more than me and been content with it. Can there be any permanent love between us? Is it any great honor for you having me as a lover? I’d like to be your husband before the pre-eternal holy altar: then, even considering myself as always lesser than you, I could still show everybody publicly how I deserve my wife by my honoring her…”
Katerina Lvovna was bemused by these words of Sergei, by this jealousy of his, by this wish of his to marry her – a wish that always pleases a woman, however brief her connection with the man before marriage. Katerina Lvovna was now ready, for the sake of Sergei, to go through fire, through water, to prison, to the cross. He made her fall so in love with him that her devotion to him knew no measure. She was out of her mind with happiness; her blood boiled, and she could no longer listen to anything. She quickly stopped Sergei’s lips with her palm and, pressing his head to her breast, said:
“Well, now I know that I’m going to make a merchant of you and live with you in the most proper fashion. Only don’t upset me for nothing, while things still haven’t gotten there.”
And again there were kisses and caresses.
The old clerk, asleep in the shed, began to hear through his sound sleep, in the stillness of the night, now whispering and quiet laughter, as if mischievous children were discussing some wicked way to mock a feeble old man; now ringing and merry guffaws, as if lake mermaids were tickling somebody. It was all Katerina Lvovna frolicking and playing with her husband’s young clerk, basking in the moonlight and rolling on the soft rug. White young blossoms from the leafy apple tree poured down on them, poured down, and then stopped pouring down. Meanwhile, the short summer night was passing; the moon hid behind the steep roofs of the tall storehouses and looked askance at the earth, growing dimmer and dimmer; a piercing cat duet came from the kitchen roof, then spitting, angry snarling, after which two or three cats, losing hold, tumbled noisily down a bunch of boards leaning against the roof.
“Let’s go to sleep,” Katerina Lvovna said slowly, as if worn out, getting up from the rug and, just as she had lain there, in nothing but her shift and white petticoat, she went off across the quiet, the deathly quiet merchant’s yard, and Sergei came behind her carrying the rug and her blouse, which she had thrown off during their mischief-making.
Chapter Seven
As soon as Katerina Lvovna blew out the candle and lay down, completely undressed, on the soft featherbed, sleep drew its cloak over her head. Having had her fill of play and pleasure, Katerina Lvovna fell asleep so soundly that her leg sleeps and her arm sleeps; but again she hears through her sleep how the door seems to open again and last night’s cat drops like a heavy lump onto the bed.
“What, really, is this punishment with the cat?” the tired Katerina Lvovna reasoned. “I just now locked the door on purpose, with my own hands, the window is shut, and he’s here again. I’ll throw him out right now.” Katerina Lvovna went to get up, but her sleepy arms and legs refuse to serve her; and the cat walks all over her, and purrs in such a peculiar way, as if he were speaking human words. Katerina Lvovna even got gooseflesh all over.
“No,” she thinks, “the only thing to do is make sure to bring some holy water to bed tomorrow, because this peculiar cat has taken to me.”
But the cat purrs in her ear, buries his snout, and then speaks clearly: “What sort of cat am I! As if I’m a cat! It’s very clever of you, Katerina Lvovna, to reason that I’m not a cat at all, but the distinguished merchant Boris Timofeich. Only I’m feeling bad now, because my guts are all burst inside me from my daughter-in-law’s little treat. That’s why I’ve been reduced down like this,” he purrs, “and now seem like a cat to those with little understanding of who I really am. Well, how’s life going for you, Katerina Lvovna? Are you keeping faithfully to your law? I’ve come from the cemetery on purpose to see how you and Sergei Filippych warm your husband’s bed. Purr-purr, but I can’t see anything. Don’t be afraid of me: you see, my eyes rotted out from your little treat. Look into my eyes, my friend, don’t be afraid!”
Katerina Lvovna looked and screamed to high heaven. Again the cat is lying between her and Sergei Filippych, and the head of this cat Boris Timofeich is as big as the dead man’s, and in place of eyes there are two fiery circles spinning, spinning in opposite directions!
Sergei woke up, calmed Katerina Lvovna, and fell asleep again; but sleep had totally deserted her – luckily.
She lies with open eyes and suddenly hears a noise as if someone has climbed the gate in the yard. Now the dogs come rushing, then quiet down – must have started fawning. Now another minute passes, and the iron latch clicks, and the door opens. “Either I’m imagining it all, or it’s my Zinovy Borisych come home, because the door’s been opened with the spare key,” thought Katerina Lvovna, and she hurriedly gave Sergei a shove.
“Listen, Seryozha,” she said, and she propped herself on her elbow and pricked up her ears.
Someone was indeed coming up the stairs, stepping carefully on one foot after the other, approaching the locked door of the bedroom.
Katerina Lvovna quickly leaped out of bed in nothing but her shift and opened the window. At the same moment, barefoot Sergei jumped out onto the gallery and twined his legs around the post, which he had more than once used to climb down from his mistress’s bedroom.
“No, don’t, don’t! Lie down here… don’t go far,” Katerina Lvovna whispered and threw his shoes and clothes out to him, and herself darted back under the blanket and lay waiting.
Sergei obeyed Katerina Lvovna: he did not slide down the post, but huddled on the gallery under a bast mat.
Meanwhile, Katerina Lvovna hears her husband come to the door and listen, holding his breath. She even hears the quickened beating of his jealous heart; but it is not pity but wicked laughter that is bursting from Katerina Lvovna.
“Go searching for yesteryear,” she thinks to herself, smiling and breathing like an innocent babe.
This lasted for some ten minutes; but Zinovy Borisych finally got tired of standing outside the door and listening to his wife sleeping: he knocked.
“Who’s there?” Katerina Lvovna called out, not at once and as if in a sleepy voice.
“It’s me.”
“Is that you, Zinovy Borisych?”
“It’s me,” replied Zinovy Borisych. “As if you don’t hear!”
Katerina Lvovna jumped up just as she was, in her shift, let her husband into the room, and dove back into the warm bed.
“It’s getting cold before dawn,” she said, wrapping the blanket around her.
Zinovy Borisych came in looking around, said a prayer, lit a candle, and glanced around again.
“How’s your life going?” he asked his spouse.
“Not bad,” answered Katerina Lvovna and, getting up, she began to put on a calico bed jacket.
“Shall I set up the samovar?” she asked.
“Never mind, call Aksinya, let her do it.”
Katerina Lvovna quickly slipped her bare feet into her shoes and ran out. She was gone for about half an hour. During that time she started the samovar herself and quietly fluttered out to Sergei on the gallery.
“Stay here,” she whispered.
“How long?” Sergei asked, also in a whisper.
“Oh, what a dimwit you are! Stay till I tell you.”
And Katerina Lvovna herself put him back in his former place.
From out there on the gallery, Sergei could hear everything that went on in the bedroom. He hears the door open again and Katerina Lvovna return to her husband. He hears every word.
“What were you doing there so long?” Zinovy Borisych asked his wife.
“Setting up the samovar,” she replied calmly.
There was a pause. Sergei hears Zinovy Borisych hang up his coat on the coat rack. Now he is washing, snorting and splashing water all over; now he asks for a towel; the talk begins again.
“Well, so how is it you buried papa?” the husband inquires.
“Just so,” says the wife, “he died, we buried him.”
“And what an astonishing thing it was!”
“God knows,” Katerina Lvovna replied and rattled the cups.
Zinovy Borisych walked mournfully about the room.
“Well, and how have you passed your time here?” Zinovy Borisych again began asking his wife.
“Our joys here, I expect, are known to everybody: we don’t go to balls, nor to theaters likewise.”
“And it seems you take little joy in your husband,” Zinovy Borisych hazarded, glancing out of the corner of his eye.
“We’re not so young as to lose our minds when we meet. How do you want me to rejoice? Look how I’m bustling, running around for your pleasure.”
Katerina Lvovna ran out again to fetch the samovar and again sprang over to Sergei, pulled at him, and said: “Look sharp, Seryozha!”
Sergei did not quite know what it was all about, but he got ready anyhow.
Katerina Lvovna came back, and Zinovy Borisych was kneeling on the bed, hanging his silver watch with a beaded chain on the wall above the headboard.
“Why is it, Katerina Lvovna, that you, in your solitary situation, made the bed up for two?” he suddenly asked his wife somehow peculiarly.
“I kept expecting you,” replied Katerina Lvovna, looking at him calmly.
“I humbly thank you for that… And this little object now, how does it come to be lying on your bed?”
Zinovy Borisych picked up Sergei’s narrow woolen sash from the sheet and held it by one end before his wife’s eyes.
Katerina Lvovna did not stop to think for a moment.
“Found it in the garden,” she said, “tied up my skirt with it.”
“Ah, yes!” Zinovy Borisych pronounced with particular emphasis. “We’ve also heard a thing or two about your skirts.”
“What is it you’ve heard?”
“All about your nice doings.”
“There are no such doings of mine.”
“Well, we’ll look into that, we’ll look into everything,” Zinovy Borisych replied, moving his empty cup towards his wife.
Katerina Lvovna was silent.
“We’ll bring all these doings of yours to light, Katerina Lvovna,” Zinovy Borisych went on after a long pause, scowling at his wife.
“Your Katerina Lvovna is not so terribly frightened. She’s not much afraid of that,” she replied.
“What? What?” cried Zinovy Borisych, raising his voice.
“Never mind – drop it,” replied his wife.
“Well, you’d better look out! You’re getting a bit too talkative!”
“Why shouldn’t I be talkative?” Katerina Lvovna retorted.
“You’d better watch yourself.”
“There’s no reason for me to watch myself. Wagging tongues wag something to you, and I have to take all kinds of insults on myself! That’s a new one!”
“Not wagging tongues, but certain knowledge about your amours.”
“About what amours?” cried Katerina Lvovna, blushing unfeignedly.
“I know what.”
“If you know, then speak more clearly!”
Zinovy Borisych was silent and again moved the empty cup towards his wife.
“Clearly there’s nothing to talk about,” Katerina Lvovna answered with disdain, defiantly throwing a teaspoon onto her husband’s saucer. “Well, tell me, who have they denounced to you? Who is my lover according to you?”
“You’ll find out, don’t be in such a hurry.”
“Is it Sergei they’ve been yapping about?”
“We’ll find out, we’ll find out, Katerina Lvovna. My power over you no one has taken away and no one can take away… You’ll talk yourself…”
“Ohh, I can’t bear that!” Katerina Lvovna gnashed her teeth and, turning white as a sheet, unexpectedly rushed out the door.
“Well, here he is,” she said a few seconds later, leading Sergei into the room by the sleeve. “Question him and me about what you know. Maybe you’ll find out a lot more than you’d like!”
Zinovy Borisych was at a loss. He glanced now at Sergei, who was standing in the doorway, now at his wife, who calmly sat on the edge of the bed with her arms crossed, and understood nothing of what was approaching.
“What are you doing, you serpent?” he barely brought himself to utter, not getting up from his armchair.
“Question us about what you know so well,” Katerina Lvovna replied insolently. “You thought you’d scare me with a beating,” she went on, winking significantly. “That will never be; but what I knew I would do to you, even before these threats of yours, that I am going to do.”
“What’s that? Get out!” Zinovy Borisych shouted at Sergei.
“Oh, yes!” Katerina Lvovna mocked.
She nimbly locked the door, put the key in her pocket, and again sprawled on the bed in her little jacket.
“Now, Seryozhechka, come here, come, darling,” she beckoned the clerk to her.
Sergei shook his curls and boldly sat down by his mistress.
“Oh, Lord! My God! What is this? What are you doing, you barbarians!?” cried Zinovy Borisych, turning all purple and getting up from his chair.
“What? You don’t like it? Look, look, my bright falcon, how beautiful!”
Katerina Lvovna laughed and passionately kissed Sergei in front of her husband.
At the same moment, a deafening slap burned on her cheek, and Zinovy Borisych rushed for the open window.