Futility Read Free Page A

furs. The men had turned up the collars of their
shubas
against the biting frost. There was snow on the platform. We walked up and down quickly in order to warm our feet. Nikolai Vasilievich presented a pitiable sight with his pince-nez all blinded with snow, his moustache frozen, and his nose, reddened by the cold, protruding from his turned-up collar.
    “Nina,” he said.
    “Yes?” She turned round.
    “Don’t go.”
    “I must.”
    “You won’t come back. She will keep you.”
    She shook her head.
    “Don’t go, Nina.”
    “Don’t go,” I said.
    She stood thoughtful, in indecision.
    “Don’t, Nina,” cut in Nikolai Vasilievich.
    She did not answer.
    “Nina,” he said again.
    “No, she must,” intervened Fanny Ivanovna. “This is all nonsense! She will go and come back quickly. Won’t you, Nina?”
    “Yes,” said Nina.
    She turned to me and slipped her hand under my arm. “I won’t let you go,” she said petulantly. “You’ll have to come with me.”
    “You know I can’t.”
    “I won’t let you go.”
    “Nina,” I said.
    “Yes?”
    “Come here.”
    I took her aside.
    “Nina, will you marry me?”
    She looked flippant and humorous and yet there was just a trace of seriousness in her look.
    “Yes.”
    I felt relieved—oddly as I might feel if I had just concluded a satisfactory business transaction.
    The second whistle went, and with the other passengers they boarded the train. Nikolai Vasilievich came up to her to say good-bye and probably thought he might chance it once again.
    “Don’t go, Nina. Nina!”
    “I shall come back,” said Nina.
    Then they all said good-bye to Vera, and no excess of emotion was displayed on either side.
    “Good-bye!” was said again. Then the train moved, and they waved handkerchiefs.
V
    I CALLED ON THEM ONE EVENING IN NINA’S absence and chanced to find Fanny Ivanovna alone. Nikolai Vasilievich, as ever, was out. Sonia had gone to see a friend.
    “Sit down, Andrei Andreiech,” she said. “I am always doing needlework, as you see.…”
    I took a chair.
    “I do it.… It is extraordinary, Andrei Andreiech. I thought I would do it so as not to think, but it’s just the very work to make you think. And so I gave it up and began reading in order to forget, in order not to think, and I found, Andrei Andreiech, that I could not read because I
had
to think. I think all day and night.
Ach!
Andrei Andreiech.”
    And I knew that she was going to confide in me.
    “
Ach!
Andrei Andreiech! Andrei Andreiech! If you only knew.…”
    She glanced behind her at the door to make sure that nobody could hear her.
    “
Ach!
Andrei Andreiech!”
    I waited patiently for her to begin.
    She said “
Ach!
Andrei Andreiech!” several times more and then began. She spoke in marks of exclamation.
    “I suppose you know, Andrei Andreiech, that I am not Nikolai Vasilievich’s … legal wife?”
    “I know,” I said.
    “How did you know?” she turned on me.
    “I suspected it.”
    She paused.
    “Well, now that you actually know so much, I feel that I must tell you everything, if only in fairness to myself. But don’t tell the children. They would be shocked if they knew that I had told you.”
    “No,” said I.
    “
Ach!
Andrei Andreiech, you know.… You know.…” She suddenly plunged into her native German, the foreign Russian tongue being inadequate to express her overflowing feelings, but now and then, quite unintentionally, she would employ some Russian word that came handy to her, that in her excitement she could not be bothered to translate as she proceeded to unload her feelings—an urgency too long deferred.
    “Andrei Andreiech!” she said again and again in a kind of appeal to my sense of justice. “
Sie sollen wissen
that I met Nikolai Vasilievich in Switzerland, in Basel, when he was there on a cure, after he had separated from his wife. He was very handsome. He is still very handsome,
ach!
much too handsome. You would not think that he was