Fifty-Two Stories

Soon Nadenka gets used to this phrase, as to wine or morphine. She can’t live without it. True, to go flying down the hill is as frightening as before, but now fear and danger lend a special allure to the words of love, words that constitute as much of a riddle as before and torment her soul. The suspects are the same two: myself and the wind…Which of the two has declared his love for her she doesn’t know, but apparently it makes no difference to her; whichever vessel she drinks from makes no difference to her, so long as she gets drunk.

Once at noon I went to the sliding hill alone; mixing with the crowd, I saw Nadenka going to the hill, saw her searching for me with her eyes…Then she timidly goes up the steps…It’s scary to go alone, oh, how scary! She’s pale as the snow, trembling, as if she were going to her execution, but she’s going, going resolutely, without looking back. She has obviously decided, finally, to try it: will she hear those amazing, sweet words when I’m not there? I see how, pale, mouth open in terror, she climbs into the sled, closes her eyes, and, bidding farewell to this world forever, sets off…“Swish-sh-sh…” swish the runners. Whether Nadenka hears those words, I don’t know…I only see how she gets out of the sled, exhausted, weak. And it’s clear from her face that she herself doesn’t know whether she heard anything or not. Fear, as she was sliding down, robbed her of the ability to hear, to distinguish sounds, to understand…

But now comes the spring month of March…The sun turns gentler. Our ice hill grows darker, loses its sheen, and finally melts. We stop sledding. Poor Nadenka can’t hear those words anywhere now, nor is there anyone to speak them, for there’s no wind to be heard, and I am preparing to go to Petersburg—for a long time, probably forever.

Once, a day or two before my departure, in the evening, I’m sitting in the garden, which is separated from the yard where Nadenka lives by a high, nail-studded fence…It is still rather cold, there is still snow under the dung heap, the trees are dead, but there is already the smell of spring, and the rooks make a big racket settling for the night. I go up to the fence and look through a crack for a long time. I see Nadenka come out to the porch and fix a sad, anguished gaze on the sky…The spring wind blows directly into her pale, mournful face…It reminds her of the wind that roared for us then on the hill, when she heard those four words, and her face turns sad, sad, a tear trickles down her cheek…And the poor girl raises her hands up to that wind, as if asking it to bring her those words one more time. And I, having waited for the wind, say in a low voice:

“I love you, Nadya!”

My God, what happens to Nadenka! She cries out, her whole face bursts into a smile, and she reaches her hands up to meet the wind, joyful, happy, so beautiful.

And I go to pack…

That was already long ago. Now Nadenka is married; she married, or was married to—it makes no difference—the secretary of the nobility trusteeship,¹ and now has three children. She has not forgotten how we went to the sliding hill and how the wind brought her the words “I love you, Nadenka.” For her it is now the happiest, the most touching and beautiful memory of her life…

As for me, now that I’m older, I no longer understand why I said those words, why I was joking…

1886

AGAFYA