The Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Novels, Short Stories and Autobiographical Writings. Федор Достоевский
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Название: The Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Novels, Short Stories and Autobiographical Writings
Автор: Федор Достоевский
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Языкознание
isbn: 9788026837138
isbn:
“Nellie, what’s the matter, are you ill?” I asked, bending down and putting my arm round her.
She nestled up to me tremulously as though she were afraid of something, said something, rapidly and impetuously, as though she had only been waiting for me to come to tell me it. But her words were strange and incoherent; I could understand nothing. She was in delirium.
I led her quickly to bed. But she kept starting up and clinging to me as though in terror, as though begging me to protect her from someone, and even when she was lying in bed she kept seizing my hand and holding it tightly as though afraid that I might go away again. I was so upset and my nerves were so shaken that I actually began to cry as I looked at her. I was ill myself. Seeing my tears she looked fixedly at me for some time with strained, concentrated attention, as though trying to grasp and understand something. It was evident that this cost her great effort. At last something like a thought was apparent in her face. After a violent epileptic fit she was usually for some time unable to collect her thoughts or to articulate distinctly. And so it was now. After making an immense effort to say something to me and realizing that I did not understand, she held out her little hand and began to wipe away my tears, then put her arm round my neck, drew me down to her and kissed me. It was clear that she had had a fit in my absence, and it had taken place at the moment when she had been standing at the door. Probably on recovery she had been for a long time unable come to herself. At such times reality is mixed up with delirium and she had certainly imagined something awful, some horror. At the same time she must have been dimly aware that I was to come back and should knock at the door, and so, lying right in the doorway on the floor, she had been on the alert for my coming and had stood up at my first tap.
“But why was she just at the door,” I wondered, and suddenly I noticed with amazement that she was wearing her little wadded coat. (I had just got it for her from an old pedlar woman I knew who sometimes came to my room to offer me goods in repayment of money I had lent her.) So she must have been meaning to go out, and had probably been already unlocking the door when she was suddenly struck down by the fit. Where could she have been meaning to go? Was she already in delirium?
Meanwhile the fever did not leave her, and she soon sank into delirium and unconsciousness. She had twice already had a fit in my flat, but it had always passed off harmlessly; now, however, she seemed in a high fever. After sitting beside her for half an hour I pushed a chair up to the sofa and lay down, as I was, without undressing, close beside her that I might wake the more readily if she called me. I did not even put the candle out. I looked at her many times again before I fell asleep myself. She was pale; her lips were parched with fever and stained with blood, probably from the fall. Her face still retained the look of terror and a sort of poignant anguish which seemed to be still haunting her in her sleep, I made up my mind to go as early as possible next morning for the doctor, if she were worse. I was afraid that it might end in actual brain fever.
“It must have been the prince frightened her!” I thought, with a shudder, and I thought of his story of the woman who had thrown the money in his face.
CHAPTER II
A fortnight passed by. Nellie was recovering. She did not develop brain fever but she was seriously ill. She began to get up again on a bright sunny day at the end of April. It was Passion Week.
Poor little creature. I cannot go on with my story in the same consecutive way. Now that I am describing all this it is long past, but to this very minute I recall with an oppressive heart, rending anguish that pale, thin little face, the searching, intent gaze of her black eyes when we were sometimes left alone together and she fixed upon me from her bed a prolonged gaze as though challenging me to guess what was in her mind; but seeing that I did not guess and was still puzzled she would smile gently, as it were, to herself, and would suddenly hold out to me her hot little hand, with its thin, wasted little fingers. Now it is all over, and everything is understood, but to this day I do not know the secrets of that sick, tortured and outraged little heart.
I feel that I am digressing, but at this moment I want to think only of Nellie. Strange to say, now that I am lying alone on a hospital bed, abandoned by all whom I loved so fondly and intensely, some trivial incident of that past, often unnoticed at the time and soon forgotten, comes back all at once to my mind and suddenly takes quite a new significance, completing and explaining to me what I had failed to understand till now.
For the first four days of her illness, we, the doctor and I, were in great alarm about her, but on the fifth day the doctor took me aside and told me that there was no reason for anxiety and she would certainly recover. This doctor was the one I had known so long, a goodnatured and eccentric old bachelor whom I had called in in Nellie’s first illness, and who had so impressed her by the huge Stanislav Cross on his breast.
“So there’s no reason for anxiety,” I said, greatly relieved.
“No, she’ll get well this time, but afterwards she will soon die.”
“Die! But why?” I cried, overwhelmed at this death sentence.
“Yes, she is certain to die very soon. The patient has an organic defect of the heart, and at the slightest unfavourable circumstance she’ll be laid up again. She will perhaps get better, but then she’ll be ill again and at last she’ll die.”
“Do you mean nothing can be done to save her? Surely that’s impossible.”
“But it’s inevitable. However, with the removal of unfavourable circumstances, with a quiet and easy life with more pleasure in it, the patient might yet be kept from death and there even are cases…unexpected…strange and exceptional… in fact the patient may be saved by a concatenation of favourable conditions, but radically cured — never.”
“But, good heavens, what’s to be done now?”
“Follow my advice, lead a quiet life, and take the powders regularly. I have noticed this girl’s capricious, of a nervous temperament, and fond of laughing. She much dislikes taking her powders regularly and she has just refused them absolutely.”
“Yes, doctor. She certainly is strange, but I put it all down to her invalid state. Yesterday she was very obedient; to-day, when I gave her her medicine she pushed the spoon as though by accident and it was all spilt over. When I wanted to mix another powder she snatched the box away from me, threw it on the ground and then burst into tears. Only I don’t think it was because I was making her take the powders,” I added, after a moment’s thought.
“Hm! Irritation! Her past great misfortunes.” (I had told the doctor fully and frankly much of Nellie’s history and my story had struck him very much.) “All that in conjunction, and from it this illness. For the time the only remedy is to take the powders, and she must take the powders. I will go and try once more to impress on her the duty to obey medical instructions, and…that is, speaking generally…take the powders.”
We both came out of the kitchen (in which our interview had taken place) and the doctor went up to the sick child’s bedside again. But I think Nellie must have overheard. Anyway she had raised her head from the pillow and turned her ear in our direction, listening keenly all the time. I noticed this through the crack of the half-opened door. When we went up to her the rogue ducked under the quilt, and peeped out at us with a mocking smile. The poor child had grown much thinner during the four days of her illness. Her eyes were sunken and she was still feverish, so that the mischievous expression and glittering, defiant СКАЧАТЬ