Short Fiction, Fyodor Sologub [most popular novels of all time .txt] 📗

“I must go, there’s nothing else to do. How lonely I shall be! I can’t think anything serious is the matter, but I shall be obliged to go.”

“Why, of course,” said she. “If your mother is ill, how could you stay! Write to me every day; it will be so dull when you are gone.”

She went with him as usual as far as the high road, and then home again along the forest path, sad at his departure, yet certain of his return. And he had never come back.

She had received two or three letters from him, strange letters, confused, full of half-expressed feelings, hints of something she could not understand. Then no more. Nadezhda Alexevna began to realise that he had ceased to love her. And when the summer had come to an end she heard a chance conversation which told her of his marriage.

“Why, haven’t you heard? Last week. They went off to Nice for the honeymoon.”

“Yes, he’s fortunate. He’s married a rich and beautiful girl.”

“She has a large dowry, I suppose.”

“Yes, indeed. Her father⁠ ⁠…”

Nadezhda Alexevna did not stay to hear about the father. She moved away.

She often remembered all that had happened afterwards. Not that she wished to remember⁠—she had striven to stifle recollection and to forget the past. It had all been so grievous and humiliating, and there had seemed no way of escape. It was then, in those first dreadful days after she knew he was married to another, in those sweet places made dear to her by the memory of his kisses, that she had first felt the movements of her child⁠—and linked with the first thoughts of a new life had come the forebodings of death. No child must ever be born to her!

No one at home had ever known⁠—she had thought out some pretext for getting away. Somehow or other, with great difficulty, she had got enough money together and had managed everything⁠—she never wished to remember how⁠—and had returned to her home, weak and ill, with pallid face and tired body, yet with heroic strength of spirit to conceal her pain and terror.

Memory often tried to remind her of all that had taken place, but Nadezhda Alexevna refused to acknowledge its power. When sometimes in a flash she recalled everything, she would shudder with horror and repulsion and resolutely turn her mind away at once from the picture.

But in her heart there was one memory which she treasured; she had a child, though it had never come to birth, and she often saw before her a sweet yet terrible image of the little one.

Whenever she was alone and sitting quietly by herself, if she closed her eyes, the child came to her. She felt that she watched him grow. So vividly did she see him that at times it seemed to her that day after day and year after year she had lived with him as an actual mother with her living child. Her breasts were full of milk for him. At a sudden noise she trembled⁠—perhaps the child had fallen and would be hurt.

Sometimes she put out her hand to stroke his soft, bright, golden curls, to touch his hand, to draw him nearer. But he always escaped her touch, her hand met empty air, and yet she heard his little laughing voice as if he were still near and hiding just behind her chair.

She knew his face⁠—the face of her child who had never been born. It was quite clear to her⁠—that dear yet terrible blending of the features of him who had taken her love and discarded it, who had taken her soul and drained it and forgotten, the blending of the features of him who, in spite of all, was still so dear with her own features.

His grey eyes and wavy golden hair and the soft outline of his lips and chin were all his father’s. The little pinky shell-like ears, the rounded limbs, the rosy dimpled cheeks were her own.

She knew all his little body⁠—all. And his little baby ways⁠—how he would hold his tiny hands, how he would cross one foot over the other⁠—learning from the father he had never seen. His smile was like her own⁠—he had just that same trick of dropping his head on one side in blushing confusion.

Painfully sweet memories. The tender, rosy fingers of her child touched her deep wounds, and were cruel though dear. So painful! But she never wished to drive him away.

“I cannot, cannot do without thee, dear little unborn son of mine. If only thou wert really living! If only I could give thee life!”

For it was only a dream-life! It was for her alone. The unborn can never rejoice or weep for himself. He lives, but not for himself. In the world of the living, in the midst of people and earthly things, he doesn’t exist at all. So full of life, so dear, so bright, and yet he is not.

Nadezhda Alexevna used to say to herself, “And this is my doing. Now he is small and he doesn’t understand. But when he grows up he will know⁠—he will compare himself with living children, he will want to live a real life, and then he will reproach me and I shall want to die.”

She never thought how foolish were such thoughts in the light of reality. She could not imagine that the unborn child renounced by her had never been the habitation of a human soul. No⁠—for Nadezhda Alexevna her unborn child lived, and tortured her heart with an endless grief.

To her he was as a shining one, clad in bright garments, with little white hands and feet, clear innocent eyes and pure smile. When he laughed his laugh was happy and musical. True, when she wanted to caress him he evaded her, but he never went far away, he was always hiding somewhere near. He ran away from her embraces, but all the same he