My Fate Is Decided. I Am Getting Married…

(From the French)

My fate is decided. I am getting married…

She whom I have loved for a whole two years, who has been the first my eyes sought out everywhere, to meet whom seemed like bliss to me—my God—she’s…nearly mine.

Waiting for the decisive answer was the most painful feeling of my life. Waiting for the last card to be dealt, the pangs of conscience, sleep before a duel—all that means nothing in comparison to it.

The thing was that I was not afraid of refusal alone. One of my friends used to say “I don’t understand how one can propose, if one knows for certain there will be no refusal.”

To marry! It’s easy to say—most people see marriage as shawls bought on credit, a new carriage, and a pink dressing gown.

Others—as a dowry and a settled life…

Still others marry just so, because everybody marries—because they’re thirty years old. Ask them what marriage is, and in reply they’ll repeat to you a banal saying.

I marry, i.e., I sacrifice independence, my carefree, whimsical independence, my luxurious habits, aimless travels, solitude, inconstancy.

I’m ready to double a life which is incomplete even without that. I never bothered about happiness, I could do without it. Now I need enough for two, and where am I to get it?

So long as I’m not married, what is meant by my responsibilities? I have a sick uncle whom I hardly ever see. If I call on him—he’s very glad; if I don’t—he excuses me: “My scapegrace is young, he can do without me.” I don’t correspond with anybody, I pay my bills every month. In the morning I get up whenever I like, I receive whomever I like, if I decide to go for a promenade—they saddle my smart, quiet Jenny, I ride along the lanes, look into the windows of low little houses: here a family is sitting around the samovar, there a servant is sweeping the rooms, further on a girl is having a piano lesson, beside her a hired musician. She turns her absentminded face to me, the teacher scolds her, I slowly ride on…I come home—sort through books, papers, put my toilet table in order, dress casually if I’m going visiting, with all possible care if I’m dining in a restaurant, where I read either a new novel or some journals; if Walter Scott and Cooper haven’t written anything, and there is no criminal trial in the papers, then I order a bottle of champagne on ice, watch the glass turn frosty, drink slowly, happy that the dinner costs me seventeen roubles and that I can allow myself such a caprice. I go to the theater, search the boxes for some remarkable apparel, dark eyes; communication is established between us, I’m occupied till the final curtain. I spend the evening either in a noisy gathering, where the whole city crowds, where I see everyone and everything, and no one notices me, or in a choice and amiable circle, where I talk about myself and they listen to me. I go home late; I fall asleep reading a good book. The next day I again go for a ride along the lanes, past the house where the girl was playing the piano. She is repeating yesterday’s lesson. She glances at me as at an old acquaintance and laughs.—Such is my bachelor life…

If I’m refused, I think, I’ll go abroad—and I already picture myself on a pyroscaphe. They bustle around me, say good-bye, carry trunks, look at their watches. The pyroscaphe sets off: fresh sea air blows in my face; I gaze for a long time at the retreating shore—“My native land, adieu.”1 Beside me a young woman begins to feel sick; this gives her pale face an expression of languid tenderness…She asks me for water. Thank God, I’ll be occupied till Kronstadt…

Just then they bring me a note: the reply to my letter. My fiancée’s father affectionately invites me to visit…There’s no doubt, my proposal has been accepted. Nadenka, my angel, is mine!…All sorrowful doubts vanish before this paradisal thought. I rush to the carriage and gallop off; here is the house; I go into the front hall; I can already see from the hurried reception of the servants that I am a fiancé. I’m embarrassed: these people know my heart; they speak of my love in their lackey language!…

The father and mother were sitting in the drawing room. The former greeted me with open arms. He took a handkerchief from his pocket, wanted to start weeping but couldn’t, and decided to blow his nose. The mother’s eyes were red. They sent for Nadenka; she came in, pale, awkward. The father stepped out and came back with the icons of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker and the Kazan Mother of God. They blessed us. Nadenka gave me her cold, unresponding hand. The mother started talking about a dowry, the father about an estate in Saratov province—I am a fiancé.

And so this is no longer the secret of two hearts. It is today’s news for the household, tomorrow’s for the public square.

Thus a poem, thought up in solitude on moonlit summer nights, is then put on sale in a bookstore and criticized in the journals by fools.

Everyone is glad of my happiness, everyone congratulates me, everyone now loves me. They all offer me their services: one his house, another a loan of money, yet another a Bukhara shawl merchant he knows. Someone is worried about my future numerous family and offers me twelve pairs of gloves with the portrait of Mlle Sontag.2

The young men begin to be formal with me: they respect me now as an enemy. The ladies praise my choice to my face, but behind my back they pity my bride: “Poor thing! She’s so young, so innocent, and he’s so flighty, so immoral…”

I confess, this is beginning to weary me. I like the custom of some ancient people: the groom secretly abducts his bride. The next day he already presents her to the town gossips as his wife. Among us family happiness is prepared for with printed announcements, gifts known to the whole town, formal letters, visits—in short, by all sorts of temptations…