Even if he did forgive me he’d meet quite a different person now.
I’m not the same; I’m not a child now.
I have gone through a great deal Even if he were satisfied with me he still would sigh for his past happiness, and grieve that I am not the same as I used to be when he loved me as a child. The past always seems best!
It’s remembered with anguish!
Oh, how good the past was, Vanya!” she cried, carried away by her own words, and interrupting herself with this exclamation which broke painfully from her heart.
“That’s all true that you say, Natasha,” I said.
“So he will have to learn to know and love you afresh.
To know you especially.
He will love you, of course.
Surely you can’t think that he’s incapable of knowing and understanding you, he, with his heart?”
“Oh, Vanya, don’t be unfair!
What is there to understand in me?
I didn’t mean that.
You see, there’s something else: father’s love is jealous, too; he’s hurt that all began and was settled with Alyosha without his knowledge, that he didn’t know it and failed to see it.
He knows that he did not foresee it, and he puts down the unhappy consequences of our love and my flight to my ‘ungrateful’ secretiveness.
I did not come to him at the beginning. I did not afterwards confess every impulse of my heart to him; on the contrary I hid it in myself. I concealed it from him and I assure you, Vanya, this is secretly a worse injury, a worse insult to him than the facts themselves – that I left them and have abandoned myself to my lover.
Supposing he did meet me now like a father, warmly and affectionately, yet the seed of discord would remain.
The next day, or the day after, there would be disappointments, misunderstandings, reproaches.
What’s more, he won’t forgive without conditions, even if I say – and say it truly from the bottom of my heart – that I understand how I have wounded him and how badly I’ve behaved to him.
And though it will hurt me if he won’t understand how much all this happiness with Alyosha has cost me myself, what miseries I have been through, I will stifle my feelings, I will put up with anything – but that won’t be enough for him.
He will insist on an impossible atonement; he will insist on my cursing my past, cursing Alyosha and repenting of my love for him.
He wants what’s impossible, to bring back the past and to erase the last six months from our life.
But I won’t curse anyone, and I can’t repent. It’s no one’s doing; it just happened so.... No, Vanya, it can’t be now.
The time has not come.”
“When will the time come?”
“I don’t know. . . . We shall have to work out our future happiness by suffering; pay for it somehow by fresh miseries.
Everything is purified by suffering ... Oh, Vanya, how much pain there is in the world!”
I was silent and looked at her thoughtfully.
“Why do you look at me like that, Alyosha – I mean Vanya!” she said, smiling at her own mistake.
“I am looking at your smile, Natasha.
Where did you get it?
You used not to smile like that.”
“Why, what is there in my smile ?
“The old childish simplicity is still there, it’s true. . . . But when you smile it seems as though your heart were aching dreadfully.
You’ve grown thinner, Natasha, and your hair seems thicker.... What dress have you got on?
You used to wear that at home, didn’t you?”
“How you love me, Vanya,” she said, looking at me affectionately.
“And what about you? What are you doing?
How are things going with you?”
“Just the same, I’m still writing my novel. But it’s difficult, I can’t get on.
The inspiration’s dried up.
I dare say I could knock it off somehow, and it might turn out interesting. But it’s a pity to spoil a good idea.
It’s a favourite idea of mine.
But it must be ready in time for the magazine.
I’ve even thought of throwing up the novel, and knocking off a short story, something light and graceful, and without a trace of pessimism. Quite without a trace.... Everyone ought to be cheerful and happy.”
“You’re such a hard worker, you poor boy!
And how about Smith?”
“But Smith’s dead.”
“And he hasn’t haunted you?
I tell you seriously, Vanya, you’re ill and your nerves are out of order; you’re always lost in such dreams.