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11.17.2004
8 Tverskoi
11.10.2004
South/West
11.08.2004
Polaroid and the 6 by 7
and everything looks worse in black and white
11.05.2004
Re: Apostasy
- During the years of his provincial seclusion, he became so well read that even Lara no longer seemed to him well-informed. He towered high above his fellow teachers and complained that he felt stifled among them. Now in wartime, their standard, commonplace, and somewhat stale patriotism was out of tune with his own, more complicated feelings about his country.
...
His relations with his wife were good but lacked simplicity. Her kindness and her fussing over him oppressed him, but he would not criticize her for fear that she might take some quite innocent word of his for a reproach--a hint, perhaps, that her blood was bluer than his, or that she had once belonged to someone else. His anxiety lest she suspect him of having some absurdly unfair idea about her introduced an element of artificiality into their life. Each tried to behave more nobly than the other, and this complicated everything.
...
This can't go on, he thought. He could have forseen it long ago, before they were married. He had caught on late. Even as a child he had been fascinated by her, and she could make him do whatever she liked. Why hadn't he had the sense to renounce her in time, that winter before their marriage, when she herself had insisted on it? Wasn't it clear that it was not he whom she loved, but the noble task she had set herself in relation to him, and that for her he was the embodiment of her own heroism? But what had her mission, however meritorious or inspired, to do with real family life? The worst of it was that he loved her as much as ever. She was stunningly beautiful. And yet--was he sure that it was love even on his side? Or was it a bewildered gratitide for her beauty and magnanimity? Who could possibly sort it all out! The devil himself would be stumped.
So was was he to do? He must set his wife and daughter free from this counterfeit life. This was even more important than to liberate himself. Yes, but how? Divorce? Drown himself? What disgusting rubbish! He rebelled against the very thought. "As if I'd ever do anything of the sort! So why rehearse this melodrama even in my mind?"
He looked up at the stars as if asking them for advice. They flickered on, small or large, quick or slow, some blue and some in all the hues or the rainbow. Suddenly they were blotted out, and the house, the yard, and Antipov sitting on his boat were thrown into relief by a harsh, darting light, as though someone were running from the field toward the gate waving a torch. An army train, puffing clouds of yellow, flame-shot smoke into the sky, rolled over the grade crossing going westard, as countless others had rolled by, night and day, for the past year.
Pavel Pavlovich smiled, got up, and went to bed. He had found a way out of his dilemma.
