The Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Novels, Short Stories and Autobiographical Writings. Федор Достоевский
her hot little hand, with its thin, wasted little fingers. Now it is all over, and everything is understood, but to this day I do not know the secrets of that sick, tortured and outraged little heart.
I feel that I am digressing, but at this moment I want to think only of Nellie. Strange to say, now that I am lying alone on a hospital bed, abandoned by all whom I loved so fondly and intensely, some trivial incident of that past, often unnoticed at the time and soon forgotten, comes back all at once to my mind and suddenly takes quite a new significance, completing and explaining to me what I had failed to understand till now.
For the first four days of her illness, we, the doctor and I, were in great alarm about her, but on the fifth day the doctor took me aside and told me that there was no reason for anxiety and she would certainly recover. This doctor was the one I had known so long, a goodnatured and eccentric old bachelor whom I had called in in Nellie’s first illness, and who had so impressed her by the huge Stanislav Cross on his breast.
“So there’s no reason for anxiety,” I said, greatly relieved.
“No, she’ll get well this time, but afterwards she will soon die.”
“Die! But why?” I cried, overwhelmed at this death sentence.
“Yes, she is certain to die very soon. The patient has an organic defect of the heart, and at the slightest unfavourable circumstance she’ll be laid up again. She will perhaps get better, but then she’ll be ill again and at last she’ll die.”
“Do you mean nothing can be done to save her? Surely that’s impossible.”
“But it’s inevitable. However, with the removal of unfavourable circumstances, with a quiet and easy life with more pleasure in it, the patient might yet be kept from death and there even are cases…unexpected…strange and exceptional… in fact the patient may be saved by a concatenation of favourable conditions, but radically cured — never.”
“But, good heavens, what’s to be done now?”
“Follow my advice, lead a quiet life, and take the powders regularly. I have noticed this girl’s capricious, of a nervous temperament, and fond of laughing. She much dislikes taking her powders regularly and she has just refused them absolutely.”
“Yes, doctor. She certainly is strange, but I put it all down to her invalid state. Yesterday she was very obedient; to-day, when I gave her her medicine she pushed the spoon as though by accident and it was all spilt over. When I wanted to mix another powder she snatched the box away from me, threw it on the ground and then burst into tears. Only I don’t think it was because I was making her take the powders,” I added, after a moment’s thought.
“Hm! Irritation! Her past great misfortunes.” (I had told the doctor fully and frankly much of Nellie’s history and my story had struck him very much.) “All that in conjunction, and from it this illness. For the time the only remedy is to take the powders, and she must take the powders. I will go and try once more to impress on her the duty to obey medical instructions, and…that is, speaking generally…take the powders.”
We both came out of the kitchen (in which our interview had taken place) and the doctor went up to the sick child’s bedside again. But I think Nellie must have overheard. Anyway she had raised her head from the pillow and turned her ear in our direction, listening keenly all the time. I noticed this through the crack of the half-opened door. When we went up to her the rogue ducked under the quilt, and peeped out at us with a mocking smile. The poor child had grown much thinner during the four days of her illness. Her eyes were sunken and she was still feverish, so that the mischievous expression and glittering, defiant glances so surprising to the doctor, who was one of the most goodnatured Germans in Petersburg, looked all the more incongruous on her face.
Gravely, though trying to soften his voice as far as he could, he began in a kind and caressing voice to explain how essential and efficacious the powders were, and consequently how incumbent it was on every invalid to take them. Nellie was raising her head, but suddenly, with an apparently quite accidental movement of her arm, she jerked the spoon, and all the medicine was spilt on the floor again. No doubt she did it on purpose.
“That’s very unpleasant carelessness,” said the old man quietly, “and I suspect that you did it on purpose; that’s very reprehensible. But…we can set that right and prepare another powder.”
Nellie laughed straight in his face. The doctor shook his head methodically. “That’s very wrong,” he said, opening another powder, “very, very reprehensible.”
“Don’t be angry with me,” answered Nellie, and vainly tried not to laugh again. “I’ll certainly take it…. But do you like me?”
“If you will behave yourself becomingly I shall like you very much.”
“Very much?”
“Very much.”
“But now, don’t you like me?”
“Yes, I like you even now.”
“And will you kiss me if I want to kiss you?”
“Yes, if you desire it.”
At this Nellie could not control herself and laughed again.
“The patient has a merry disposition, but now this is nerves and caprice,” the doctor whispered to me with a most serious air.
“All right, I’ll take the powder,” Nellie cried suddenly, in her weak little voice. “But when I am big and grown up will you marry me?”
Apparently the invention of this new fancy greatly delighted her; her eyes positively shone and her lips twitched with laughter as she waited for a reply from the somewhat astonished doctor.
“Very well,” he answered, smiling in spite of himself at this new whim, “very well, if you turn out a good, well-brought-up young lady, and will be obedient and will…”
“Take my powders?” put in Nellie.
“0-ho! To he sure, take your powders. A good girl,” he whispered to me again; “there’s a great deal, a great deal in her … that’s good and clever but … to get married … what a strange caprice….”
And he took her the medicine again. But this time she made no pretence about it but simply jerked the spoon up from below with her hand and all the medicine was splashed on the poor doctor’s shirtfront and in his face. Nellie laughed aloud, but not with the same merry, goodhumoured laugh as before. There was a look of something cruel and malicious in her face. All this time she seemed to avoid my eyes, only looked at the doctor, and with mockery, through which some uneasiness was discernible, waited to see what the “funny” old man would do next.
“Oh! You’ve done it again! …What a misfortune! But…I can mix you another powder! “ said the old man, wiping his face and his shirtfront with his handkerchief. This made a tremendous impression on Nellie. She had been prepared for our anger, thought that we should begin to scold and reprove her, and perhaps she was unconsciously longing at that moment for some excuse to cry, to sob hysterically, to upset some more powders as she had just now and even to break something in her vexation, and with all this to relieve her capricious and aching little heart. Such capricious humours are to be found not only in the sick and not only in Nellie. How often I have walked up and down the room with the unconscious desire for someone to insult me or to utter some word that I could interpret as an insult in order to vent my anger upon someone. Women, venting their anger in that way, begin to cry, shedding the most genuine tears, and the more emotional of them even go into hysterics. It’s a very simple and everyday experience, and happens most often when there is some other, often a secret, grief in the heart, to which one longs to give utterance but cannot.
But, struck by the angelic kindness of the old doctor and the patience with which he set to work to mix her another powder without uttering one word of reproach, Nellie suddenly subsided. The look of mockery vanished from her lips, the colour rushed to her face, her eyes grew moist. She stole a look at me and turned away at once. The doctor brought her the medicine.