regretfully before concluding: “It would have been better if he hadn’t let him go in his misguided generosity. Manuila would be in the lockup now, and still alive.”
“A sad story,” said Pelagia, when she had heard it all. “And the saddest thing of all is that the Orthodox religion, supposedly our natural faith, fails to give many Russian people spiritual comfort. There is something lacking in it for the simple heart. Or perhaps just the opposite, there is some kind of impurity in it, something untruthful—otherwise people would not abandon our church for all sorts of absurd heresies.”
“There is nothing lacking. Our faith has everything,” Dolinin snapped with an unshakable certainty that Pelagia had not expected from this skeptic. For some reason the nun’s words had agitated the investigator. He hesitated for a moment and then blushed as he said, “Let me tell you … a little story about a certain man …” He pulled off his pince-nez and rubbed the bridge of his nose agitatedly. “Well, never mind ‘a certain man’—the story is about me. You’re intelligent, you will guess in any case. You, Sister, are only the second individual in the entire world to whom I have told it… I don’t know why … No, that’s not true, I do know. But I won’t say, it’s not important. I feel I want to, that’s all.”
Something was happening to Sergei Sergeevich, he was growing more and more agitated. Pelagia was familiar with this condition in people: someone carries inside himself something that is burning his very soul, he bears it for as long as he can, sometimes for years, and then all of a sudden he simply pours out his great pain to a person he just happens to meet, some chance traveling companion. It has to be a chance acquaintance, that is the whole point.
“It’s an ordinary story, banal in fact,” Dolinin began with a crooked grin. “There are plenty of stories like it all around. It’s not really a tragedy, more a brief scenario for a dirty joke about a cuckolded husband and an unfaithful wife … A certain man (whom you see here before you, but I’d better use the third person, it’s more proper that way) had a young and lovely wife. Of course, he adored her, he was happy and he assumed that she was happy too, that they would live together until the end of their lives and, as they say, die on the same day. No, I won’t make a meal of it, it’s well-worn material… And then suddenly—a bolt from the blue. He looked in her handbag for some unimportant trifle … No, I’d better be precise, because that will emphasize the banal and comical nature of the event … The poor fool wanted her powder compact, to conceal a pimple, since he had an important court appearance coming up and he had this pimple on his nose, you understand, it was embarrassing. In other words, in those days I used to think that a statement at a trial was a very important thing,” said Sergei Sergeevich, abandoning his third-person narrative after all. “Until the moment when I found the note in that handbag. A note of the most explicit character imaginable.”
Pelagia gasped. “I told you, this is an extremely banal story,” Dolinin said, smiling fiercely.
“No, no, it’s not banal!” the nun exclaimed. “It is the very worst of misfortunes! And as for its happening frequently, death itself is no rarity but no one calls it banal. When the one person who means the whole world betrays you, it is even worse than if he had died … No. I have said something sinful. It is not worse—it is not.”
Pelagia turned pale and shook her head sharply twice, as if driving away some memory or vision, but Sergei Sergeevich was not looking at her and seemed not even to have heard her objection. He continued his interrupted story. “I went dashing to her to demand an explanation, but instead of asking my forgiveness or at least lying, she said: ‘I love him, I have for a long time, I love him more than life itself. I
“A sad story,” said Pelagia, when she had heard it all. “And the saddest thing of all is that the Orthodox religion, supposedly our natural faith, fails to give many Russian people spiritual comfort. There is something lacking in it for the simple heart. Or perhaps just the opposite, there is some kind of impurity in it, something untruthful—otherwise people would not abandon our church for all sorts of absurd heresies.”
“There is nothing lacking. Our faith has everything,” Dolinin snapped with an unshakable certainty that Pelagia had not expected from this skeptic. For some reason the nun’s words had agitated the investigator. He hesitated for a moment and then blushed as he said, “Let me tell you … a little story about a certain man …” He pulled off his pince-nez and rubbed the bridge of his nose agitatedly. “Well, never mind ‘a certain man’—the story is about me. You’re intelligent, you will guess in any case. You, Sister, are only the second individual in the entire world to whom I have told it… I don’t know why … No, that’s not true, I do know. But I won’t say, it’s not important. I feel I want to, that’s all.”
Something was happening to Sergei Sergeevich, he was growing more and more agitated. Pelagia was familiar with this condition in people: someone carries inside himself something that is burning his very soul, he bears it for as long as he can, sometimes for years, and then all of a sudden he simply pours out his great pain to a person he just happens to meet, some chance traveling companion. It has to be a chance acquaintance, that is the whole point.
“It’s an ordinary story, banal in fact,” Dolinin began with a crooked grin. “There are plenty of stories like it all around. It’s not really a tragedy, more a brief scenario for a dirty joke about a cuckolded husband and an unfaithful wife … A certain man (whom you see here before you, but I’d better use the third person, it’s more proper that way) had a young and lovely wife. Of course, he adored her, he was happy and he assumed that she was happy too, that they would live together until the end of their lives and, as they say, die on the same day. No, I won’t make a meal of it, it’s well-worn material… And then suddenly—a bolt from the blue. He looked in her handbag for some unimportant trifle … No, I’d better be precise, because that will emphasize the banal and comical nature of the event … The poor fool wanted her powder compact, to conceal a pimple, since he had an important court appearance coming up and he had this pimple on his nose, you understand, it was embarrassing. In other words, in those days I used to think that a statement at a trial was a very important thing,” said Sergei Sergeevich, abandoning his third-person narrative after all. “Until the moment when I found the note in that handbag. A note of the most explicit character imaginable.”
Pelagia gasped. “I told you, this is an extremely banal story,” Dolinin said, smiling fiercely.
“No, no, it’s not banal!” the nun exclaimed. “It is the very worst of misfortunes! And as for its happening frequently, death itself is no rarity but no one calls it banal. When the one person who means the whole world betrays you, it is even worse than if he had died … No. I have said something sinful. It is not worse—it is not.”
Pelagia turned pale and shook her head sharply twice, as if driving away some memory or vision, but Sergei Sergeevich was not looking at her and seemed not even to have heard her objection. He continued his interrupted story. “I went dashing to her to demand an explanation, but instead of asking my forgiveness or at least lying, she said: ‘I love him, I have for a long time, I love him more than life itself. I
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