IX

From the moment of Seryozha’s departure from Chi-tao-kou, Anna’s world seemed filled with an entirely new air. One would have said that Seryozha must have filled the house as completely as a snail fills its shell⁠—so convoluted, so entire was the emptiness he left, from floor to ceiling, from wall to wall. Out of doors, looking through Anna’s eyes, one would have guessed her son a bright obscuring light⁠—so bleakly new and hard and shadowless was every leaf, every hill, every silly angle of the street, lacking even the possibility of his presence. It was a world lit, as it were, by indirect lighting under low clouds, instead of by the honest bland sun.

Anna’s son, ever since his birth, had always been within a few miles of her, and now those few miles, empty of him⁠—a cube of featureless summer air⁠—boxed her in, a prisoner. She could not spontaneously imagine his return. With a mental effort she could invent elaborate scenes of his homecoming, but she knew them to be artificial, knew them to be constructed with ingenuity rather than with faith and hope. Such scenes were always shattered by her conviction of premonition. “Absurd!⁠ ⁠… He will never come back.⁠ ⁠…” Every inch of the earth is, after all, so dangerous. Here, where we stand, a minute or a million years ago, some heart failed. There, at that point to which our dear love is hurrying, the lightning struck, the germ of plague was born, the tree will fall, the flood will surge, the murderer will stab⁠—a minute or a million years hence⁠—a minute or a million years ago. Living is a matter of missing death by a hair’s-breadth or an aeon⁠—it doesn’t matter which⁠—and dying is a matter of coincidence. If we knew the past and the future of every yard of every path we tread, or of every stone our dear love’s foot turns over as he goes, where should we turn for peace? Once we have realized the billions of deaths and horrors that have been, the billions that will be, every inch of the world seems soaked in blood. Every inch of the world, it seemed to Anna, was haunted by the ghost of a son whose mother had let him go. “Even at this very second, perhaps, his foot is lifted for his last stride.”

“Why should you be so pessimistic, Annitchka?” asked Old Sergei, who had rather relaxed his attitudes during this period of acute domestic discomfort, and lived now in an emotional deshabille, content to be seen as Old Sergei Malinin at last. “Hundreds of young men have made the very journey that he is making and have come back safely. Indeed, our Seryozha is doubly safe, since he has a reliable man with him.” He spoke to reassure himself as well as his wife, since her chronic conviction of a fatal presentiment affected him, too. He kept secretly in his pocket a knotted string, making a new knot for every day that brought no news of his son, in order that he might not have to irritate his wife by asking her to verify his calculations by the calendar. Apart from this tiny effort of ingenuity, Old Sergei had become, in a few days, very much more helpless than ever before. The necessity for posing as a father being now past, he had shrunk and withered into immobility, as flowers, dry and forgotten in the empty vase, hardly respond, except by an unlovely rattle, to the moving air that used to swing their bright heads. Old Sergei expressed by his wistful avoidance of authority his craving to be at last old, to be nursed, to be pitied, to have nothing more expected of him.

“Ah, why did you send him away?” said Anna, turning on the old man. “He was our life⁠—our crutch; we’re nothing but a couple of old bags of bones without him. You know what a dangerous, lawless country this is for a Russian, yet you were so greedy to add money to money.⁠ ⁠… Why, money’s dirt compared with the safety of our Seryozha. The money we had was enough; we lived very well; we were happy enough.”

“Don’t worry yourself so, Annitchka. It’s folly to worry so⁠—besides, it worries me. The boy’s not gone far; he’ll be back again in no time; we shall see him one of these days coming in at that door as usual⁠—or rather, you’ll see him, since I am so afflicted.”

“I shall never see him again,” said Anna, looking at the door, trying to force her imagination to reconstruct the prow of his long shadow, coming in at the door, like a ship into harbor.

“Oh, very well, then, worry⁠—worry. You take pleasure in worrying both yourself and me. Cry yourself sick if you like.”

But Anna was not crying. She never cried. Her eyebrows were hitched up, her forehead strained into wrinkles, there was a little taut pain in the top of her head; these things, with her, took the place of tears. Sometimes she could almost have prayed to her muscles. Let go! Let go! Let go! Her eyes, her brow, and the little sore tiptoe yawning feeling inside the top of her skull seemed to be caught, hooked, seemed to have forgotten how to relax.

Poor Old Sergei was certainly a most uncomfortable old man at that time. His wife could hardly bear him, and yet she was not so cruel to him as she would have liked to be. Kindness was, as it were, at each extremity of her behavior to him; the core of her feeling was kindness and she tossed an exasperated kindness from her finger tips. This surface kindness made her buy him things he liked to eat and serve them with muffled curses, which, being misheard by him, she would change to words of half-ironic gentleness. But between the core and the surface of her mood there was a dark, tortuous area of weariness and hatred of his plaintiveness, his meanness, the contradiction of life that he was. In this intervening confusion of her nature she suffered a sort of contrariness, a doubling back, that made her challenge herself unconsciously to be cruel⁠—to try him a little more⁠—a little more⁠—a little more (will he stand it?)⁠—a little more still (almost like a murderess daring herself to press a trigger)⁠—till he would suddenly feel the prick of her insult, and lose his temper and his dignity. Then she would feel acutely guilty, talk to him gently with elaborate harmlessness, answer his meandering talk for a little while, until the obscurely revengeful impulse came back to hurt him again⁠—a little⁠—a little more⁠—a little more still.⁠ ⁠…

She would wrench his rheumatic fingers with a half-deliberate pinch as she guided his hand to his food, and then, when he cried out, impulsively and genuinely beg his pardon, pretending, even to herself, that it had been a clumsy accident. She would sit and look at him, grinding her teeth because he was not his son, and all the time make wounding or humiliating retorts to his plaintive prattle. He was not very acute and did not often perceive that he was being worse treated than usual; he only thought that Anna seemed clumsier and stupider than usual, more misunderstanding in her talk and more abrupt in her movements. And, seeing his obtuseness, that strange contrary cruelty in the soft Anna would gloat over its opportunity⁠—the tormenting of a creature too silly to recognize the instrument of torment⁠—“how safe⁠ ⁠… no one will ever know of this⁠ ⁠… no one but me⁠ ⁠…” Then, in the night, she would suddenly wake up, frozen with self-disgust, beat her head with her palm, and throw herself upon her husband, crying: “My darling, I’m sorry, I’m sorry! Forgive me. What a beast I am!” To Old Sergei these violent night-scenes of remorse were much more disturbing than the subtle discomfort of his days.

In order partly to be away as much as possible from her lonely house, and partly to save her old husband from herself, Anna pretended that she had a lot of work to do for Mrs. Butters during the first week of Seryozha’s absence. Really the preparations for the Butters baby were finished now, and Anna was only needed at the mission once a week to help with the darning and mending. Yet every morning, after breakfast, she would murmur a vague word or two about Mrs. Butters’s sewing and disappear, leaving bread, cheese, and beer ready on the table for her husband’s noon meal. Old Sergei would sit drooping alone all day in the street doorway. He had charge of the sale of a few packages of cheap Russian and Japanese cigarettes, matches, sweets, biscuits, bottles of lemonade and clay pipes that were arranged on a couple of trestles outside the living-room door⁠—the last rigor mortis of his dead shop. But only two or three customers a day spent a few sen on his goods and all day he would sit, half in and half out of his door, listening to the shouts of Korean and Chinese children playing, listening to the thin whine of the Japanese photographer next door singing over his work, listening to the clop-ker-clop of the senseless facetious gamboling of the mission kid in the yard behind the house, listening to the unfailing accompaniment of wails, cries, and squeals of thwarted and hurt animals that is always in the background of the hearing in every Chinese town. Sometimes the lonely old man would spend hours trying to lure within reach a dog that he could hear panting and snuffling and snapping at flies and ticks across the street. With a bait of crusts or show of imaginary food, he would patiently fish for the animal, only for the pleasure of touching its rough neck and shoulders when at last it trusted him enough to approach him⁠—touching its mangy ribs, its furtive tail, feeling the drip of sweat from its hanging tongue, assuring himself morbidly of the presence of another prisoner like himself, another life within another lean, sad, and elusive body.

The first day of Seryozha’s absence, Anna’s only impulse in leaving her home was to walk a little way along the path that he had trodden. Perhaps she might see the print of his big shoes or find something that he had dropped⁠—the stub of a cigarette or the paper that had wrapped pirozhki. Perhaps she might learn something about him from a Korean peasant or Chinese peddler who had seen him passing by. At any rate, she could see things that he had seen⁠—notice the patched crops upon the hills, the sharp rocks that slit with a short gash of foam the smooth-running surface of the river, the thin shade under which he had perhaps rested, the bloomy dazzle of reeds in the shallows, the fantastic duplication of crags⁠—reared in groups, as nearly alike as the chimneys of one house⁠—halfway round the horizon, the farm dogs that must have barked at him, that great scrawny sow, dragging her unbeautiful dugs through the dust, that must have made him laugh yesterday. Probably he remembered, when he saw that, that his mother had once said that the fat pink mission school on the hill, flanked at right angles by a neat row of little pink mission houses, looked like a sow suckling its young. She felt for a moment as if she were actually sharing a laugh with her Seryozha, and she stood staring hungrily at the sow until the poor beast looked almost embarrassed.

Then she noticed, sitting on a stone near the river, that young Russian who had lately walked up from Seoul⁠—Alexander Petrovitch Weber. This young man, a plain, sad, gawky creature enough, radiated beauty in Anna’s eyes, because she knew that he and Seryozha had met. Seryozha had even brought him to the house the day before yesterday when she had been busy over the washing. Seryozha had, she believed, liked him, and this boy had doubtless been delighted by Seryozha. It seemed as if some scrap of Seryozha’s darling personality had been grafted upon this young man.

She therefore walked towards him, feeling fat and humble and ungainly, as she had felt ever since she had lost sight of Seryozha. She must be tentative and a little self-conscious with everyone now, since there was no one in Chi-tao-kou to justify her existence⁠—no son before whom she could feel, “Well, I mayn’t be beautiful, but this splendid creature calls me Mother.” She approached Alexander Weber, conscious of her waddle and of her splay shoes, one of which was slit over one toe to accommodate a corn.

Alexander Weber was very tall and lanky, black-haired and sallow, with a big nose, abrupt cheekbones and generally prominent features⁠—among which an assertive Adam’s apple seemed to hold its own, almost as though it were a second attempt at a chin. He had a very gentle look in his dark eyes⁠—a look which he withdrew from the river and focused, as though with difficulty, on the approaching Anna. “My son⁠—Sergei Sergeievitch Malinin, you know⁠—started for Seoul yesterday.”

“I know,” said Alexander, rising politely, though indifferently, from his boulder. “I thought of going with him.”

“Going with him? Why, you have only just come from there, surely!” said Anna.

“Yes,” said the young man, dreamily.

“He hasn’t anything like the spirit, the vitality, of my Seryozha,” thought Anna, gladly. She added, aloud, “Had you hoped to find work in Chi-tao-kou. I’m afraid there is little for Russians to do here, especially for a young man like you, that would be worth while. Is that why you thought of leaving so soon? Or are you not well lodged?”

“I am on my way up to Harbin,” he said. “There is always a chance of a job on the railway there. Oh yes, I am well enough lodged. I am with Nikitin, the droshky man. He even let me earn something yesterday, driving an American missionary to Erh-tao-kou in a droshky.”

“On your way to Harbin?” exclaimed Anna. “Why, you have just said you considered going back to Seoul.”

“Yes,” said Alexander, straying into his dream again. “I am not really sure what I want to do.”

“Perhaps you have left someone you are fond of in Seoul, and are worrying about her,” suggested Anna, gently. “Your mother, perhaps.” A mother, it seemed to her at the moment, was the only thing that a young man could reasonably worry about.

“Yes, I have left my mother,” answered Alexander, patiently. “But she has other sons. I have left my betrothed, too. Or rather, she was my betrothed; she is not so now. She is a dreadful creature.”

“A dreadful creature?” exclaimed Anna, surprised.

“Yes, dreadful. Would you believe it, Anna Semionovna?⁠—she⁠—she forgets in a minute⁠—even while you are speaking⁠—what you are speaking about. She will say⁠—‘One moment, Sasha, I must just take this basket to my mother,’ and one waits⁠—waits⁠—waits⁠—half an hour⁠—an hour⁠—and at last one goes to find out what has happened. There she is, whistling, shelling peas in her mother’s kitchen. ‘But, Tanya,’ you say⁠—and then you see that she has forgotten. Forgotten that I was waiting⁠—that I was in the middle of telling her something⁠—I⁠—her betrothed! Sometimes, too, when I meet her unexpectedly, I can see that, for a moment, she doesn’t know who I am⁠ ⁠… even the face of her betrothed she has forgotten. It is not to be borne.”

“How extraordinary!” exclaimed Anna. “What a heartless woman.”

“Heartless! Heartless, you say! She is as heartless as death. She is not alive. Sometimes I think she really hates anything that is alive. And it is not as if she were really very irresistible. She can’t afford this behavior⁠—if she doesn’t look out she’ll never get a husband.”

“Perhaps that would be as well,” said Anna. “Since she couldn’t make a man happy.”

“Happy! Happy, you say! She is death to any man that loves her. Seven men have loved her⁠—and where are they now? She has a pretty face, certainly, but anyone who loves her loves death. One may walk side by side with her and feel that a river runs between her and oneself⁠—like remembering someone who is dead. She has red hair and very thin hands. Once I took hold of her hand⁠—caressingly, as a man does take the hand of his girl⁠—and when she tried to snatch it away, I held it⁠—in fun, you know⁠—surely a man may do that.⁠ ⁠… Anna Semionovna, she bit me⁠—really deeply⁠—in the wrist. I was quite revolted. I walked away. After half an hour she ran after me. She holds her head like this⁠ ⁠… and her hair comes unpinned when she runs. She runs very lightly. When I heard her coming, I thought: ‘Well, at least something is gained. She can be near enough to a man to be angry with him⁠—and then to come and beg his pardon.’ And so she did beg my pardon⁠—but what do you think? In begging my pardon she shook hands, lightly and politely, as one would shake a stranger’s hand⁠ ⁠… then she drew her hand away, and seemed to imagine that no hurt remained.⁠ ⁠…”

“Well, you are well rid of her,” said Anna.

“Yes, indeed,” replied Alexander, instantly far away again, fixing his gentle, black, shortsighted gaze across the river.

There was a pause.

“Of course a moment of passion like that is not live passion, as it would be in a live woman. I’m sure it is not a sign of life. No man has ever seen a sign of life in her, though seven men have loved her⁠—poor devils. Her hair is a bright dark red; that is supposed to be a passionate color for a woman’s hair⁠—but like the rest of her beauty, it lies. She is always polite. She can whistle to bring tears into your eyes⁠—so soft⁠—so strong⁠—though of course whistling is not a suitable gift for a woman. But she’s not a woman⁠—that’s why she’s death to a man. I say, ‘Whistle for me, Tanya,’ and she whistles⁠—for she is most polite and kind in doing whatever little thing you ask of her⁠—but it is not for me she whistles; she whistles for the sky⁠—for something far away. Such a girl, who can do nothing but whistle, and talk about cold fancies, and shake hands, and bite a man who has a right to caress her⁠—well, her beauty is wasted, isn’t it, Anna Semionovna? If you can call it beauty; I am not even sure that one could call her beautiful.”

“She is not worth another thought,” said Anna.

“No, indeed,” said Alexander, looking at her with wet eyes and a guilty half smile. “It is a joy to be away from her, and to be with full-blooded men and women, after knowing such a dangerous ghost of a girl.”

Anna had for several minutes been bored with the subject of Tanya. “What a pity that my son left Chi-tao-kou just as you arrived. He could perhaps have found you work in the timber-yard. There are so few young fellows of his own age in this region for him to have as friends. Though you are a little older. Still, you would have liked him, I am sure, if you had known him better.”

“Yes, it is a pity. It is a terrible pity that I did not think of going down to Seoul with him. I wish I had. I wonder if he will go by Mi-san.”

“I never heard of Mi-san,” said Anna. “Is it one of the towns on his way to Seoul?”

“Almost on his way. Not more than, say, twelve hours out of his way if he goes on foot. If he goes by train, it is about three hours’ walk from the railway.”

“Well, why should he go there? Is the place of any special interest?”

Alexander, feeling that perhaps he had mentioned Tanya two or three times too many, and might have led this old woman to suppose that he was romantically interested in the hated girl, assumed an odd, secretive manner. “I do not think Mi-san is in the least interesting,” he said. “To be sure, there are some mounds which⁠—well, a Russian horse-dealer whose name I do not care to mention⁠—a man who lives there⁠—says are prehistoric and must contain relics of the past. But what live man cares for such dead things? Then there is a magic well which the Koreans say cures a thousand and one ills⁠—but I think every sick man who drinks there must be suffering from the thousand and second ill⁠—for I have never heard of a cure. What is more, Mi-san is a downright ugly village; one large tree, to be sure⁠—but trees are commoner in Korea than here in Manchuria. The houses there are common-looking, the street filthy and dusty. A particularly unattractive village indeed.”

“Then I am sure Seryozha will not go twelve hours out of his way to visit it. He has seen too many ugly dirty villages.”

“No, certainly he will not. He would be much wiser not to. I only mentioned it because, if one starts from Seoul by the late tourists’ train⁠—the Gensan train⁠—one can arrive in the small hours at Choan-san and, by walking quickly, be in Mi-san by breakfast-time, spend two-thirds of the day there, and walk back to the railway in time to catch the tourists’ day train back to Seoul⁠—in this way only missing one day’s work.”

“But Seryozha would not dream of doing such a thing to visit an unattractive village in which he knows no one.” Anna looked at Alexander, her fat face screwed up with pity for this sad, gawky, inferior substitute for a son. “Perhaps, my dear, Mi-san is where your horrid Tanya lives.”

“Tanya? What Tanya? Oh, I had forgotten her,” said Alexander in confusion. “Ah yes, now I come to think of it, she does happen to live at Mi-san⁠—I mean Tanya, this dreadful girl I mentioned to you. What of it? One knows so many girls⁠ ⁠… they all have to live somewhere.⁠ ⁠…”

Anna saw his Adam’s apple moving up and down. His very plainness seemed to her, in her over-sensitized mood, most heartbreaking.

“Alexander Petrovitch,” she said. “Won’t you come and live with my husband and me while our son is away?”

“Good God, no!” said Alexander, shutting his eyes as though he had been struck. “I mean⁠—excuse me, Anna Semionovna⁠—I hardly know what I am saying. I meant to say, thank you very much for your kindness, but” (his voice broke as he realized that he was being pitied)⁠—“but I must stay with the Nikitins. I am not very well just now.⁠ ⁠… I have a touch of dysentery, I think. This pain in the pit of my stomach goes on and on.⁠ ⁠…”

“You could have Seryozha’s room,” said Anna, ardently, hiccuping with anxiety. “I can make a kind of gruel with arrowroot that would⁠—”

“No⁠—no⁠—no!” said Alexander, and swung his clasped hands, as though in an agony of prayer, up from between his knees to his chin and down again. He looked intensely away across the river, and beat himself on his big mouth to steady his lips. After a long moment he said, in a high firm voice, “Have you ever noticed how few young Korean girls wear blue? They wear pink, green, yellow, white, but never blue. They don’t seem to have noticed how pretty a young girl can look in blue.”

“No, they don’t wear blue,” said Anna, sighing gustily. “But Chinese young girls wear nothing but blue.”

“Ah, but they wear trousers. Chinese coolie cloth made into trousers has an ugly effect. Stiff and ugly⁠—not swinging out when they dance or run.⁠ ⁠… Besides, they don’t wash it enough to let it fade to that cloudy⁠ ⁠… cloudy blue.⁠ ⁠…” He sat so long without saying anything more that Anna realized that she might as well leave him.

“Well, Alexander Petrovitch,” she said, feeling nothing but a useless, clumsy old woman again, “remember that I invited you.⁠ ⁠… You may change your mind.⁠ ⁠…”

Alexander did not seem to have heard her. His eyes were fixed upon her stockings, which were of a light gray. Alexander felt that he was haunted by light-gray stockings⁠—since Tatiana always wore them. Every woman seemed to flaunt a cruel parody of Tatiana’s slim dancing gray legs, and every time he saw gray legs he felt as though something emotionally final had happened⁠—whether hopeful or hopeless it was impossible to say. It was as if Tatiana had stepped across his vision. Even the station master at Gensan, by wearing gray socks, had stabbed Alexander Weber’s heart hot and cold. Even the piers of the dock at Gensan, bleached with sun and sea, had made him feel, “Is she coming⁠—has she gone?” though he did not realize why. Anna walked away. The sow was now suckling her ten ridiculous little balloons of babies, but taking no notice of them⁠—not fussing about them with the loving attentiveness other mothers show. The sow’s soul seemed to be lost in that huge mound of a body; her body was an outlying region, only very sparsely colonized with the germs of consciousness, only nominally under the government of some little vital citadel of egoism in the soul of the sow. That great swollen body did what it had to do⁠—conceived young, suckled its young, rooted its jaws drearily in mud, shoveled food in under its snout, moved the stiff, overburdened props of its legs⁠—but all these dull doings were uninspired by spirit. Only the tail, knotting and squirming tautly, seemed to have some more direct communication with the sow’s remote inner life.

Anna laughed delightedly as she imagined herself nursing ten little Seryozhas. “With any other husband I should have had four at least⁠—even though I was thirty-five when I married,” she thought. “Then I could have kept three at home with me all the time, and Seryozha could have traipsed off as far as he liked.”

Then suddenly she began walking home very fast, tearing at the armholes of her dress because they were too tight for such rapid movement. She had remembered that Seryozha had not packed the little phial of castor oil she had filled for him out of the big bottle. She made a wild plan to hire a droshky and get Alexander Weber to drive it. Seryozha and Wilfred would by now be about halfway from Pa-tao-kou to their night’s stop⁠—thirty miles from here, perhaps⁠ ⁠… a droshky with a good horse.⁠ ⁠… “It is most important,” she assured herself. “Castor oil has saved lives before now. I could leave the old man plenty of cheese and bread, and get that Lai woman to come in and heat up the potatoes tonight.⁠ ⁠…”

She hurried into the kitchen. Old Sergei was sitting at the table, running his fingers through the heads of a bunch of zinnias he had picked in the yard.

“I am going to drive after Seryozha,” said Anna, in a hasty, defiant voice. “It is most important. I can get a droshky. I shall only be away till tomorrow noon, I dare say.⁠ ⁠… He left something most important behind⁠ ⁠… that little bottle of castor oil. It might easily be a matter of life and death⁠—eating at these filthy Korean inns.⁠ ⁠…”

“The castor oil?” exclaimed Old Sergei, looking dizzy. “He took the castor oil with him. He was packing his pack in here while you were cooking pirozhki, and he said, ‘Tell mamma I have put the castor oil in, since she makes such a point of it. Look, in here⁠—’ he said, forgetting that I cannot look at castor oil or anything else.”

“He forgot it, I tell you,” shouted Anna, in a wild voice. She rushed to the shelf which had been the rendezvous of Seryozha’s accumulation for the journey. She stood looking at the bare shelf for a moment, in a silence broken only by one loud sad hiccup. “Then, if he didn’t forget it, why didn’t you tell me before, you old fool⁠—you silly old fool⁠—you heartless old fool of a father? But why should you care? You send your only son away into the desert without a qualm⁠—selling him for money⁠—for a paltry two hundred yen.⁠ ⁠… Why should you care if he lives or dies? Or for me, the child’s mother⁠—why should you care if I eat my heart out with worry?” She stood in the middle of the kitchen, quivering, bending toward him as though she would strangle him.

Old Sergei, a little frightened, began to make the low humming noise between his lips that he used to make when they were first married, to soothe her when she became excited and nervous. She had been a slim young woman then, and he, gentle and always a little dense about the causes of her agitation. They used, in those days, to cling together in the dark, after a disquieting day, to the sound of that silly, compassionate humming. It soothed her now, though she seemed rather annoyed to be soothed. With a surrendering quick sigh she went away into the bedroom and, after a long period of silence there which her husband dared not interrupt, returned and cooked the supper, talking only rarely, alternately insulting him and apologizing to him.

But every day she escaped from home in pursuit of torturing reminders of her son. Sometimes she would stand in the gateway of the timber-yard by the river, watching the straining bullocks pulling at logs, watching the tilted trees on trestles being sawed by one man below and one above, watching glistening satin logs being hauled out of the river, watching finished planks being built into bristling wigwams. Sometimes she walked to an orchard that tiptoed on the slope of a hill, to see a little freak of a glimpse of very distant Korean mountains, wedged into the jumbled puzzle of Manchurian ups and downs. Sometimes she went to the mission garden to watch the children of Mrs. Butters’s and to gloat over every pimple of their inferior complexions, every missing tooth in their whining little mouths, every ungraceful angle in their rickety limbs, every detail that flattered her memory of her fine son. She was very kind to the mission children during those days and spent a whole afternoon mending their toy pedal motorcar. “Your children are so very little, Mrs. Butters⁠—perhaps it is healthy to be so little, perhaps my Seryozha was always too big⁠—I dare say he was six inches taller than Dickie, when he was so old. It is pity that Dickie cannot carve woods⁠—my Seryozha did always carve small ships in woods⁠—but you are right⁠—perhaps it is dangerous to do things with knives. Your children can play with motorcar⁠—this is more modern⁠—my Seryozha must always make something.⁠ ⁠… This motorcar see, it is broken⁠—the horn cries no more, it is in two bits⁠—the back side has come undone from the sit-down-upon. When my Seryozha was nine he shall have mended this⁠—but never mind, Dickie, I will mend it for you⁠—because I also have a little boy, I will glue the bulge of this horn to his tootle⁠—I will glue this back side⁠—and so Betti and Dickie shall be as safe⁠—as safe⁠—as safe as in their lovers’ arms.⁠ ⁠…”

“Indeed, much safer, I hope, Mrs. Malinin,” said Mrs. Butters, frostily, drawing her children away toward the house.

Sometimes Anna would seek out young Alexander Weber and make anxiously prosaic and useless suggestions about his problem. “Well, if you love her, my dear boy, marry her.⁠ ⁠… Well, if you feel like that about her, forget her.⁠ ⁠… Occupy your mind with something else.⁠ ⁠… Have you tried fishing in our river? Well, dear Alexander Petrovitch, why not go back and ask her⁠—ah⁠—you are tired of her⁠—well, make up your mind⁠—you can’t have it both ways, you know.⁠ ⁠…” All the time she cursed herself. “How useless I am. Being a mother has taught me nothing about how to comfort a young creature’s sorrow. Any other woman would know what to say to him.” Yet she heard her own reasonable, tiresome voice again, “Well, if you still love her, why not ask her to marry you⁠ ⁠… ?” Indeed, a practical friend can always easily cut the ground from under the feet of sorrow, but sorrow, as Anna knew, remains reared up in the heart that harbors it; without a leg to stand on, there it stands, as tall and terrible as ever⁠—silly sorrow that will not lie down⁠—the ghost that cannot be laid⁠—casting its shadow where no ground is.

A day or two later, when Anna came in from mending socks and boasting of her son at the mission, she found her husband in great agitation, fumbling in his bureau among his threadbare Sunday clothes.

“We must go, Annitchka, and help⁠ ⁠… a terrible thing has happened.⁠ ⁠… Oi-oi! poor boy! poor boy!⁠ ⁠… Yet what a wicked presumption it is to take one’s own life.⁠ ⁠… Oi-oi! what a terrible thing to happen⁠ ⁠… !”

Anna gave a loud, furious cry, instantly imagining Seryozha dead with a stain of blackish blood in his yellow hair. She could not speak; she took Old Sergei by the arm with a cruelly tight grip, and tugged him away from his occupation, feeling impelled to prevent anyone from doing anything⁠—to stop everything in the world happening⁠—if Seryozha was dead.

“Alexander Petrovitch has killed himself.⁠ ⁠… Little Mitya Nikitin came just now to ask us to go over⁠—the boy cut his throat.⁠ ⁠… Little Mitya says there was blood creeping out under the door; Nikitin saw it when he got up this morning, though they heard no sound in the night except a sort of cooing that they thought was owls⁠—Elyena Ivanovna said, ‘Owls! I never heard an owl before in Chi-tao-kou.’ And then, in the morning, blood coming under the crack of the door in the shape of a long spoon, little Mitya says. Of course they tried to rush in, but the door was bolted⁠—they had to break it open so violently that the bolt flew across and broke the window, and Nikitin, falling inward, nearly tumbled over the body, because it was just inside the door. Young Weber was quite dead. Little Mitya says he was lying with his head thrown right back and his throat gaping, looking widely upward, as though at an airplane, his mouth open, one hand thrown up, as though pointing, the other holding his razor.⁠ ⁠…”

Anna sank down on a chair, leaning on the table. She could hear inside her head a loud keen sound as of steam escaping. Her first thought was: “Well, now Seryozha cannot die⁠—now that he has once been dead in my thoughts and has risen again. He is safe now.” She sat breathing heavily, and gradually, as the shock passed, she forgot that ultimate crisis of her fear and began to feel that young Weber’s death was the most terrible thing that could have happened today. She began to remember that the day had been mounting up in a sort of crescendo to disaster; the milk had been sour, a chicken had been killed by a cat, by some freak of absence of mind she had opened the wrong door in the mission compound and found Mr. Butters at prayer with a friend⁠—she imagined now that she had suffered an overwhelming sense of foreboding on hearing the mission children teaching their puppy to die for its country⁠—“Dead⁠—dead⁠—Spot⁠—dead.⁠ ⁠…” Anna was persuaded that the whole day had been climbing up to death, like the note of the rain-bird⁠—higher and higher, sharper and sharper, cracking, straining, higher and higher, till the voice splintered in a wild horrible peal and was still.

Alexander Weber was now promoted in Anna’s mind to the status of a thing truly loved and terribly lost, and this process automatically involved a paroxysm of self-reproach on poor Anna’s part; “I could have said⁠—why didn’t I insist?⁠—if I had been wiser⁠—I might have said⁠—I might have done⁠ ⁠…” and now there he was, his blood running like a messenger out into the world, with a message of tacit reproach to a world full of blunderers.

Anna noticed that her husband had found and put on his old only Homburg hat. This hat, which Old Sergei scarcely ever wore, was his tribute to the solemnity and excitement of death. Like the screw top of an engine out of regular use and seldom assembled, it lidded a creaking, rusty organism, rarely set in motion but now profoundly pulsing and pounding, the reawakened essence of vitality running like a vapor from end to end of the feeble obsolete casing that enclosed it.

“Where are you going?” asked Anna, huskily. “I think you sit here and wait for disasters.”

“Well, we ought both to go and help, I think. The boy was of our race. Besides, he left a letter for you. Elyena Ivanovna has it.”

He clung with both hands to her arm as she led him through the streets. His body hung back, for fear of stumbling, but his spirit urged haste for fear of missing something. He was always in a hurry to be near the dead, forgetting that the dead are the only friends who can be really depended on to wait for us.

The Nikitin tribe, a group of promoted peasants⁠—three or four interrelated families living in a maze of Korean houses that almost amounted to a hamlet⁠—was divided between sentimentality and resentment, in the matter of Alexander Weber’s suicide. They had laid the body of the young man, as though it were in disgrace yet might hope to be forgiven, in a room in an outlying house. The grandmother of the various families, a very aged, crumpled, ivory creature, watched over the body, trimmed the candles, and read⁠—or seemed to read⁠—from the Bible, though much of what she mumbled was a half-remembered rigmarole, for she never had been able to read easily and was, in any case, almost blind now.

Alexander Weber lay on the bed, looking astounded. The bluish lids now covering his large, sunken, meditative eyes did not modify his expression of amazement. His lips were set in a tautness that was not so much a smile as a suggestion of an attempt to whistle through his teeth. “I’m not listening to you,” that mouth seemed to say, provocatively. “You can say what you like⁠—you can’t annoy me now. I’m simply not listening.” His neck was rigidly bandaged with clean cloths, and this gave him a stiff, stuffed, shrugging look, like a skeleton George the Fourth. After so much talk of blood, it seemed to Anna that everything looked very wan⁠—very thoroughly drained of color. The white bandages, the white clothes on the young man’s bleached body, the pale light of the candles competing with the cracks of denied daylight, the scrubbed boards, the wilderness of sheet, the quietness, the featureless old voice mumbling⁠—everything seemed pale, stilled, and suspended.

Anna had snatched up, as she left her own home, a little silver cross that had been left to her by an old aunt long ago. It had little sentimental meaning for her, but she had so few possessions that, if she had thought a little longer, she would perhaps have found that she could not spare it. Now, however, it was in her hand; she had looked at it several times, on her way through the streets, not committing herself to sacrificing it, yet dedicating it to sacrifice⁠ ⁠… teaching her hand to give it away. And now, without saying anything, she laid it on Alexander’s breast above his clasped finger tips. “Easy to do⁠—now,” she thought, self-reproachfully. “Everything I do is always easy and obvious by the time it occurs to me to do it.” But she was glad that she had laid her cross on his breast. That was the right, womanly thing to do, at last. She heard one of the Nikitin nieces making a little clucking sound of approval beside her, and was soberly relieved to have made no mistake in giving her gift. The cross made a little shining, definite meaning to the blank picture; it slipped into place as the moon slips into a blind evening sky, when the sunset has been drained away.

Old Sergei stood at the room door, hungrily craning his face toward the dead youth. “Shut away,” murmured Old Sergei, hoarse with the excitement that death always aroused in him. “Cut off⁠—shut away. How curious it all is!⁠ ⁠… All the little things lost⁠—his tastes in food, the jokes that amused him⁠—how curious! Even perhaps a little plan that he had to buy himself a blue tie in Harbin or to see Charlie Chaplin in the cinema⁠—all lost⁠—nothing could be more lost; if you offered a reward of a million rubles, you could never know those things now. How curious! Perhaps there was something his whole heart was set on, yesterday⁠—and yet, if it happened today, he wouldn’t turn his head to look.”

“No,” said Anna. “If she came now, he wouldn’t turn his head to look.”

“How curious⁠—how curious⁠—how very curious,” whispered Old Sergei, trembling with elemental bewilderment, “that he should make no sound. If he had left this room a thousand years ago, the room couldn’t have lost his voice more completely. I haven’t seen a dead man since I was blind, you know, Annitchka, and I had forgotten that dead men don’t breathe. Come away⁠—come away now, Annitchka. I can’t bear to hear no breathing. It’s so very curious. Where is that breath? Where are the words we should have heard from him today? Oi! how terrible not to see a thing so silent! Death is more explained by eyes than by ears, Annitchka. Listen⁠—I simply couldn’t touch a dead man, now that I can’t see. It would be like⁠ ⁠… cold meat.⁠ ⁠…”

“There is no need to touch him,” said Anna, indifferently. She did not move, and Old Sergei, clutching her arm, leaned forward, listening to the stillness that frightened him, glaring with his useless eyes. They stood for a long time, as though in a dream. Anna had strayed into a mood of peace. She almost didn’t care, now. Here was one unhappy boy’s unhappiness quieted, and her own happy boy left alive to enjoy his strong, hopeful life⁠—undisturbed by such a destructive thing as the love of women. God was not dead. If the two boys had changed places⁠—the happy one cut off in his happiness, the despairing one preserved in his despair⁠—she would have thought, “This is typical of the contrariness⁠—the nonsense of divine decrees.” Often Anna felt obliged to suspect the divine wisdom, but now she gladly admitted a kind of profound sense⁠—even in omniscience. That bloodsucking woman⁠—whatever her name was⁠—had missed one splendid and indispensable victim, and drained this poor drooping boy of his life. Seryozha was the more valuable, and he was safe. For Seryozha, thought Anna, a mother and a dog were enough. Neither she nor any other boy’s mother would ever find Seryozha sitting on a stone, glaring as if in a trance at a swift river, talking⁠—talking of a cruel woman, as though his tongue had forgotten all other words, as though his thoughts’ grooves were worn too deep for change, as though his heart were bound to a ghost⁠—like a story she had read somewhere about a prisoner bound to a corpse. Well, something like justice had been done. Seryozha was safe from love, and this desperate boy at peace at last⁠—dead of that same love.

Now, now no longer sealed
In a thin pent body,
Mine are the windy fields
And the long halls of the wood;
I, who was loved and held,
Am now as cold as God.

The lover and his bride
Burn in a narrow flame.
We who have died
Keep no such tryst with worms.
Our sleep is wide,
Being in no man’s arms.

One of the women of the house touched Anna’s arm and gave her a letter. Anna’s name was written on a rather bulging envelope.

The letter said, in rather a stilted manner,

Esteemed Anna Semionovna, I have decided to finish a life which is no more interesting to me. I am twenty-four years old and I am convinced that life has nothing more to offer me. I have always held the philosophical opinion that a man of experience has a perfect right to take his own life when, in his mature opinion, he has had his fill of experience. I don’t know whether I may have mentioned to you that I have been very badly treated by a woman (if woman she can be called), by name Tatiana Pavlovna Ostapenko, and you may perhaps think that I have been weak enough to let her heartless behavior prey upon my mind, and that this is the cause of my death. It is not so, I assure you. Her repudiation of my honorable affection, though unreasonable, could not, of course, affect very seriously a man of my philosophical temperament. On the contrary I am glad to think that my death will relieve her of remorse for her conduct⁠—for she has a tender conscience, though she has no heart. She will think, “Well, poor Sasha is safely dead, now. I need worry about his sorrows no more.” For she did worry⁠—with a cold uneasiness. Perhaps when she is a lonely old woman she will worry again, but for the present she is welcome to get what satisfaction she can out of my death. In reality, my life and my death are my own affair, and women have had no influence on either. I should like to leave her my little gold compass which I have wrapped in a sealed packet in my pack, though it may seem ironical that I should leave her the thing I valued most in life, since she valued me not at all. Nor I her very much, really. I leave to my mother Maria Nicholaievna Weber, my money, seventeen yen fifty, and the rest of my possessions. Except my watch, which I leave to my younger brother, Konstantin Petrovitch Weber, with the advice that when he grows up he confine his love affairs to the caresses of Korean singing girls⁠—they are safer than the kindness of virtuous women.

I should be grateful, Anna Semionovna, if you would kindly send the enclosed letter to my mother, as above, at 2 Takezoecho Ichome, Seoul, and apportion the belongings found on my person and in my pack as above directed. I hope you realize that I did appreciate your kindness to me, though I may have seemed at the time rather absentminded, owing to some business affairs that were engrossing me. In reality I enjoyed the various amusing and interesting chats we had together.

“Well,” thought Anna, biting her lips defiantly as she read this letter. “It couldn’t have been my Seryozha. It couldn’t. It’s ridiculous to compare the two boys. One was half a man and the other is a whole boy. No woman could suck the blood out of my Seryozha, especially a woman whom all her lovers call death. Besides, he is most unlikely to meet her⁠—twelve hours out of his way. Why should he meet her? There must be hundreds of Russians in Korea?” She looked at Alexander’s stiff suspense-filled face, and some inward dismissing finger in her heart pointed him away⁠—away⁠—to be hurried into the earth⁠—to be buried with his dangerous secret of love⁠—to have that mouth stopped that talked so constantly of his cruel love⁠—to have that wound of love cauterized⁠—to isolate a contagious heart in the cleansing grave.

But as she walked home, with Old Sergei clinging to her arm, tears ran down her face and she sobbed aloud. “Oi! it’s just that all boys are alike,” she said, roughly and brokenly to her husband. “The same number of fingers and toes⁠ ⁠… the same silly hearts⁠ ⁠… the same busy soft bodies⁠ ⁠… all the boys in the world are really like one huge silly young body.⁠ ⁠… Yet Seryozha’s still safe. I can’t care much about this poor Alexander.” As for Alexander⁠—let some other mother worry about him. She, Anna, had given him her aunt’s silver cross⁠—and so⁠—away with him!

“We must help the Nikitins to arrange for a decent funeral, even though he did kill himself,” said Old Sergei, fussily. “There was a nice plot of ground next to Alexei Vassileievitch’s grave, wasn’t there? Shall you leave your aunt’s silver cross on his breast, or did you only lend it to him?”

“My aunt’s cross? How do you know I put my aunt’s silver cross on his breast? You did not go near him.”

“How do I know? How should I not know? I saw it, of course.” He was abruptly silent for an astonished moment and then said, “Anna⁠—I saw it.”

Anna’s thoughts always ran in such a bustling hurry along grooves worn by her own experience that for a moment she did not realize the significance of his emphasis⁠—in spite of her first feeling of disconnection between the remark and her reason. He saw it⁠—well, why was that nonsense? She had seen it herself. Why not? He saw it, yes⁠—he saw it? He⁠—saw it? But he was blind!

“How could you have seen it?” she said, irascibly. “How could you see anything? Tell me, how did you really know it was there? You didn’t touch him⁠—you said you couldn’t bear to and you didn’t. What do you mean, you silly old man? How did you know about the cross? Explain. Don’t make silly mysteries.”

“There is no mystery. I saw it,” said Old Sergei. Then the impression began to dim and he added: “Yet, no⁠—that’s absurd. How could I have seen it? Let me see⁠—how did I know it was there?”

Anna’s mind could only digest everythings or nothings. There was no sometimes in her schedule, only always and never. The suicide of Alexander, and her own sense of failure, had inspired in her that futile, sore irritation left by a happening that cannot be revoked⁠—that craving of the heart to say, “Let’s pretend it hasn’t happened,” when the brain answers, “But it has.⁠ ⁠…” The heart crying, “Come back to yesterday⁠—yesterday he lived,” and the brain insisting, “No. Face today. Today he is dead.⁠ ⁠…”

“Oh, you old nuisance!” said Anna, while even as she spoke she recognized her accusation as false and unfair. “I believe you can see all the time. You have been pretending blindness all these months, just to be tiresome and make us pity you.⁠ ⁠… Look, walk by yourself now, you old hypocrite. You can see perfectly well. Let go of my arm.” She threw his clinging hands away from her arm and walked furiously away.

Old Sergei was left in the middle of the street, flapping his arms like a child. He threw all his tremulous householder’s dignity away and began bellowing: “Anna! Anna! Help! Anna, are you a devil? Annitchka, I am lost⁠—I can’t see. Annitchka darling, help me!⁠ ⁠…” Several Chinese peddlers, shocked and amused at this loud scene between a male and female Big-nose, stood still to watch.

Anna came back to him and snatched at his hand, almost crying with hatred of herself and him: “Tschah! Come along then; come along, you old fool.”

“But, Anna, I swear you are wrong,” twittered the old man, wild with relief at her return, clinging with both hands to her wrist as he stumbled beside her. “Annitchka, I swear I am no hypocrite⁠—I am blind⁠—you can see I’m blind. The doctor said I was blind. I can’t explain about the silver cross, but I am not lying about my blindness⁠—I swear it⁠—Anna⁠—believe it⁠—believe it⁠—believe it!” he cried, shrilly. Her harshness had sent him abruptly back into his childhood again, he shook and pinched her arm, like a naughty child, in a panic of insistence. The Chinese peddlers walked slowly behind them, laughing, fascinated and embarrassed.

“I shall go straight to the hospital,” said Anna, obstinately, “and talk to the Japanese doctor and ask him what really is wrong with your sight⁠ ⁠… whether it is possible that you are simply pretending, all these months, to be helpless. He called it hysterical from the first.⁠ ⁠… I shall ask him what all this means⁠—I see⁠—I can’t see⁠—I see⁠—I can’t see. Tschah! you old baby.⁠ ⁠…”

And she did, after leaving him on his own threshold, walk to the hospital, having nothing else to do, and ask the Japanese doctor to explain this curious intermission in her husband’s blindness⁠—if genuine blindness it was.

The Japanese doctor was a very sparkling young man who had studied medicine and psychology in Chicago. In spite of his American education, he still presented that contradiction or quibble in social convention characteristic of his race, which obliged him continually to hiss inward politely through his teeth for fear of seeming to exhale in the presence of a stranger, yet allowed him to hawk and cough explosively every minute into that stranger’s very eye.

He thought poor fat untidy Anna very uncouth, but he bowed to her neatly and repeatedly and was delighted to talk about his most treasured case⁠—Old Sergei. He was less delighted to hear about him, for, though he spoke beautiful English, he understood very little, unless it was written down. This is a peculiarity of the Japanese as linguists⁠—all have tongues, but few have ears. A Japanese fellow traveler may give you an exhaustive account of the geological history of the Cheddar Gorge, and yet face you with a blank baffled bow when you ask him to pass the cheese, please.

“You say he saw something⁠—a horse, I understand.”

“A cross on a dead man’s breast.”

“Ah, you say he is dead. Well⁠—”

“No. He has seen a cross that I have given to a dead man.”

“Ah, he has seen a dead man. I see by my notes that this interest in funerals is characteristic of the patient. I understand everything now. This glimpse of a dead man is most illuminating, missis.” Even while he was speaking he decided to write an account of Old Sergei’s case to the magazine of the medical school at which he had studied. He saw Anna through a sort of veil of anticipated printed words of flattery.⁠ ⁠… “Doctor K. Morimoto of the Chi-tao-kou hospital, Kanto.⁠ ⁠… Interesting observations by Japanese psychologist.⁠ ⁠… Notes of an illuminating case.⁠ ⁠… Doctor K. Morimoto’s new light on hysterical amblyopia.⁠ ⁠… Doctor K. Morimoto, the rising young psycho-pathologist.⁠ ⁠…” The doctor felt obliged to speak loudly to Anna through this happy fog of hopes and compliments which dazzled his goldrimmed glasses, she seemed to him so pleasantly dimmed. Yet he bowed automatically in her direction, feeling vaguely grateful to her for having an illuminating husband. “This matter bears out my first diagnosis, thus proving it to be perfectly correct. Your husband could, I am convinced, be cured of his pseudo blindness by psychoanalysis, if Chi-tao-kou could produce an analyst who shared some common language with the patient. Nothing, however, could be less helpful than the analysis in Japanese of a Russian patient who had no acquaintance with the Japanese language by an analyst who was unable to speak Russian. Your husband, when attacked by business and other misfortunes, and finding his position as independent merchant and paterfamilias threatened by the police and other dangers, takes refuge, unconsciously, in a reversion to the helplessness of the child, a claim for protection in this case established by blindness. Hysteria, you must remember, missis, is an affliction like any other affliction; it must not excite our contempt or irritation; it must be treated as a real affliction. Your husband is certainly not consciously deceiving us all; his Unconscious is simply tired of the responsibility of being the head of a family in such difficult circumstances, and, by wrapping itself in such a disability as blindness, claims the protection, so to speak, of his family⁠—a protection that cannot be withheld from a blind man. I see, by referring to my notes, that your husband has long had an interest⁠—amounting almost to an obsession⁠—about the duty of honoring the dead of his own race. So, being brought into the presence⁠—I think you said⁠—of a dead Russian today, his Unconscious allowed itself⁠—if I may so speak⁠—a little holiday from its protective business of blindness, and gave him a glimpse⁠—which he did not at once realize was a glimpse⁠—of what so profoundly interested him. This craving to see the dead man being satisfied, the protective armor of pseudo blindness is resumed.”

“The old liar,” blurted Anna.

The doctor’s Unconscious wrapped itself in a protective armor of impenetrable Japaneseness. “Yes indeed, missis. You must simply consider your husband for the present as a genuinely blind man, though his physical sight is unimpaired. His Unconscious is determined not to see until it is safe for it to do so, as it were. It will not allow him to be thrust back into the ranks of well and hearty men who take charge of their own affairs.”

“The old coward,” snorted Anna.

“Indeed yes, a most interesting case,” mused the doctor. “It only needs to be rounded off by a cure.”

“It certainly does,” said Anna, ominously.

But on the way home she resolved to be more patient with her old coward. She heard with horror in her remembering ears her own rough harsh voice and his gentle martyred bleatings. “Did ever any woman commit so many sins as I?” she exclaimed, secretly, stamping and snorting along the street. “Never a minute passes without my having to be sorry for something I did the last minute. I must have been mad to treat my Old Sergei so⁠—even if he had been the worst old husband in the world. And he’s not the worst⁠—he’s only just an old fool⁠—and he’s fond of me.” But her conscience could not let even this description of him stand. She began tenderly to remember him as he was when she married him⁠—a thin, fanciful, conscientious bookkeeper in a Russian firm in London, a member of a high-thinking debating society, and interested in moths. He was always rather like a moth himself, she thought, but a nice, ivory-colored, clean one. He had been devoted to his gay, noisy Anna. He had always been ready to cover up her mistakes and comfort her conscience. She had married him⁠—(Good God! was it possible?)⁠—she had married him because she thought he was so wise. But the fact that he had proved not to be wise seemed to her now endearing. If he had been really wise he would not have remained devoted, she thought with a humble hiccup, to a fat blunderer like herself.

And so she went on thinking in remorseful circles until she got home, and then she heard her own voice saying, “I went to see the doctor and he says your blindness is all hysterical lies⁠—all lies⁠—do you hear? You needn’t trouble to lie to me any more, now that I know. Ah, tschah! I brought you a packet of English cigarettes to smoke, you old liar⁠ ⁠… !” And she threw the packet rudely on the floor at his feet. Old Sergei humbly crouched to grope for it, but Anna squatted down herself to pick it up. Their foreheads collided. “Devil take you, you old fool,” said Anna, and she helped him into a standing position and patted him, a little too hard, on the back, uncertain whether she did it in exasperation or friendliness.

In this precarious way the days went on, piled themselves heavily together to make a week⁠—a fortnight. When Old Sergei had ten knots in his string, he began to say, reasonably, “He really might be back today; it isn’t likely, but he might⁠—”

At the end of a fortnight they received a letter from Seryozha to say that he had married Tatiana Pavlovna Ostapenko.

It was a very bald letter. Seryozha was not a literary boy. Anna found it when she came in from a long walk out into the country⁠—out on to the road by which she hoped to see, far across the valley, two distant figures returning home.

“He has married that woman whom Alexander Weber called death,” said Anna, putting down the letter. Now she knew why the outlines of young Alexander’s body had seemed so empty and expectant to her. Seryozha had been drawn away, like life through the door of a wound, drawn across deserts to love death, drawn by the lure of a ghost⁠—a cruel ghost who sucked life. That was the end of Anna’s son. He had been stolen away, to lie at last dead, far from home, married to death. That blank that was Alexander had been waiting⁠—to be filled by Seryozha’s glowing body. Anna’s eyes, unprompted by her sense, now filled in a him in the place of the it that had lain on Nikitin’s table⁠—that pale death⁠—that wan vision⁠—that thing only casually labeled Alexander Petrovitch, as it might have been labeled with a number⁠—that obscurely anonymous seventh doomed lover of a ghost. Anna knew now what dear color that pallor waited for⁠—the bright dead face of Seryozha⁠—astounded, desolate, haloed with white, alone, and married to death.

“My son is dead. Now I care for nothing⁠—my son⁠—since I have let you go⁠—the light of my eyes.⁠ ⁠…”