Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and Other Stories / Леди Макбет Мценского уезда и другие повести. Книга для чтения на английском языке

She lies with open eyes and suddenly hears a noise as if someone has climbed the gate in the yard. Now the dogs come rushing, then quiet down – must have started fawning. Now another minute passes, and the iron latch clicks, and the door opens. “Either I’m imagining it all, or it’s my Zinovy Borisych come home, because the door’s been opened with the spare key,” thought Katerina Lvovna, and she hurriedly gave Sergei a shove.

“Listen, Seryozha,” she said, and she propped herself on her elbow and pricked up her ears.

Someone was indeed coming up the stairs, stepping carefully on one foot after the other, approaching the locked door of the bedroom.

Katerina Lvovna quickly leaped out of bed in nothing but her shift and opened the window. At the same moment, barefoot Sergei jumped out onto the gallery and twined his legs around the post, which he had more than once used to climb down from his mistress’s bedroom.

“No, don’t, don’t! Lie down here… don’t go far,” Katerina Lvovna whispered and threw his shoes and clothes out to him, and herself darted back under the blanket and lay waiting.

Sergei obeyed Katerina Lvovna: he did not slide down the post, but huddled on the gallery under a bast mat.

Meanwhile, Katerina Lvovna hears her husband come to the door and listen, holding his breath. She even hears the quickened beating of his jealous heart; but it is not pity but wicked laughter that is bursting from Katerina Lvovna.

“Go searching for yesteryear,” she thinks to herself, smiling and breathing like an innocent babe.

This lasted for some ten minutes; but Zinovy Borisych finally got tired of standing outside the door and listening to his wife sleeping: he knocked.

“Who’s there?” Katerina Lvovna called out, not at once and as if in a sleepy voice.

“It’s me.”

“Is that you, Zinovy Borisych?”

“It’s me,” replied Zinovy Borisych. “As if you don’t hear!”

Katerina Lvovna jumped up just as she was, in her shift, let her husband into the room, and dove back into the warm bed.

“It’s getting cold before dawn,” she said, wrapping the blanket around her.

Zinovy Borisych came in looking around, said a prayer, lit a candle, and glanced around again.

“How’s your life going?” he asked his spouse.

“Not bad,” answered Katerina Lvovna and, getting up, she began to put on a calico bed jacket.

“Shall I set up the samovar?” she asked.

“Never mind, call Aksinya, let her do it.”

Katerina Lvovna quickly slipped her bare feet into her shoes and ran out. She was gone for about half an hour. During that time she started the samovar herself and quietly fluttered out to Sergei on the gallery.

“Stay here,” she whispered.

“How long?” Sergei asked, also in a whisper.

“Oh, what a dimwit you are! Stay till I tell you.”

And Katerina Lvovna herself put him back in his former place.

From out there on the gallery, Sergei could hear everything that went on in the bedroom. He hears the door open again and Katerina Lvovna return to her husband. He hears every word.

“What were you doing there so long?” Zinovy Borisych asked his wife.

“Setting up the samovar,” she replied calmly.

There was a pause. Sergei hears Zinovy Borisych hang up his coat on the coat rack. Now he is washing, snorting and splashing water all over; now he asks for a towel; the talk begins again.

“Well, so how is it you buried papa?” the husband inquires.

“Just so,” says the wife, “he died, we buried him.”

“And what an astonishing thing it was!”

“God knows,” Katerina Lvovna replied and rattled the cups.

Zinovy Borisych walked mournfully about the room.

“Well, and how have you passed your time here?” Zinovy Borisych again began asking his wife.

“Our joys here, I expect, are known to everybody: we don’t go to balls, nor to theaters likewise.”

“And it seems you take little joy in your husband,” Zinovy Borisych hazarded, glancing out of the corner of his eye.

“We’re not so young as to lose our minds when we meet. How do you want me to rejoice? Look how I’m bustling, running around for your pleasure.”

Katerina Lvovna ran out again to fetch the samovar and again sprang over to Sergei, pulled at him, and said: “Look sharp, Seryozha!”

Sergei did not quite know what it was all about, but he got ready anyhow.

Katerina Lvovna came back, and Zinovy Borisych was kneeling on the bed, hanging his silver watch with a beaded chain on the wall above the headboard.

“Why is it, Katerina Lvovna, that you, in your solitary situation, made the bed up for two?” he suddenly asked his wife somehow peculiarly.

“I kept expecting you,” replied Katerina Lvovna, looking at him calmly.

“I humbly thank you for that… And this little object now, how does it come to be lying on your bed?”

Zinovy Borisych picked up Sergei’s narrow woolen sash from the sheet and held it by one end before his wife’s eyes.

Katerina Lvovna did not stop to think for a moment.

“Found it in the garden,” she said, “tied up my skirt with it.”

“Ah, yes!” Zinovy Borisych pronounced with particular emphasis. “We’ve also heard a thing or two about your skirts.”

“What is it you’ve heard?”

“All about your nice doings.”