There was an early frost outside. Of Zinovy Borisych, naturally, no word came from anywhere. Katerina Lvovna was getting bigger and went about deep in thought; in town there was much beating of drums to do with her, figuring out how and why the young Izmailov woman, who had always been barren, thin as a pin, had suddenly started swelling out in front. And the young co-heir, Fedya Lyamin, walked about the yard in a light squirrel-skin coat, breaking the ice on the potholes.
“Hey, Fyodor Ignatych! Hey, you merchant’s son!” the cook Aksinya would shout at him, running across the yard. “Is it fitting for you, a merchant’s son, to go poking in puddles?”
But the co-heir, who troubled Katerina Lvovna and her beloved object, kicked up his feet serenely like a little goat and slept still more serenely opposite his doting old aunt, never thinking or imagining that he had crossed anyone’s path or diminished anyone’s happiness.
Fedya finally ran himself into the chicken pox, with a cold and chest pains attached, and the boy took to his bed. First they treated him with herbs and balms, and then they sent for the doctor.
The doctor came calling, prescribed medications, the old aunt herself gave them to the boy by the clock, and then sometimes asked Katerina Lvovna.
“Take the trouble, Katerinushka,” she would say, “you’re big with child yourself, you’re awaiting God’s judgment – take the trouble.”
Katerina Lvovna never refused her. When the old woman went to the evening vigil to pray for “the child Fyodor who is lying in sickbed” or to the early liturgy so as to include him in the communion, Katerina Lvovna sat with the sick boy and gave him water and his medications at the proper time.
So the old woman went to the all-night vigil on the eve of the feast of the Entrance and asked Katerinushka to look after Fedyushka. By then the boy was already getting better.
Katerina Lvovna went into Fedya’s room, and he was sitting on his bed in his squirrel-skin coat, reading the lives of the saints.
“What are you reading, Fedya?” Katerina Lvovna asked, sitting down in the armchair.
“I’m reading the Lives, auntie.”
“Interesting?”
“Very interesting, auntie.”
Katerina Lvovna propped her head on her hand and began watching Fedya’s moving lips, and suddenly it was as if demons came unleashed, and all her former thoughts descended on her of how much evil this boy had caused her and how good it would be if he were not there.
“But then again,” thought Katerina Lvovna, “he’s sick; he’s being given medications… anything can happen in illness… All you have to say is that the doctor prescribed the wrong medicine.”
“Is it time for your medicine, Fedya?”
“If you please, auntie,” the boy replied and, having swallowed the spoonful, added: “It’s very interesting, auntie, what’s written about the saints.”
“Read, then,” Katerina Lvovna let fall and, passing her cold gaze around the room, rested it on the frost-patterned windows.
“I must tell them to close the shutters,” she said and went out to the drawing room, and from there to the reception room, and from there to her room upstairs, and sat down.
Some five minutes later Sergei silently came to her upstairs, wearing a fleece jacket trimmed with fluffy sealskin.
“Have they closed the shutters?” Katerina Lvovna asked him.
“Yes,” Sergei replied curtly, removed the snuff from the candle with a pair of snuffers, and stood by the stove.
Silence ensued.
“Tonight’s vigil won’t be ending soon?” asked Katerina Lvovna.
“It’s the eve of a great feast; they’ll make a long service of it,” replied Sergei.
Again there was a pause.
“I must go to Fedya: he’s there alone,” Katerina Lvovna said, getting up.
“Alone?” asked Sergei, glancing sidelong at her.
“Alone,” she replied in a whisper, “what of it?”
And between their eyes flashed something like a web of lightning, but they did not say a word more to each other.
Katerina Lvovna went downstairs, walked through the empty rooms: there was total silence everywhere; the icon lamps burned quietly; her own shadow flitted over the walls; the windows behind their closed shutters began to thaw out and weep. Fedya sits and reads. Seeing Katerina Lvovna, he only says:
“Auntie, please take this book, and give me, please, that one from the icon shelf.”
Katerina Lvovna did as her nephew asked and handed him the book.
“Won’t you go to sleep, Fedya?”
“No, auntie, I’ll wait for my old aunt.”
“Why wait for her?”
“She promised to bring me some blessed bread from the vigil.”
Katerina Lvovna suddenly went pale, her own child turned for the first time under her heart, and she felt a chill in her breast. She stood for a while in the middle of the room and then went out, rubbing her cold hands.
“Well!” she whispered, quietly going into her bedroom and finding Sergei again in the same position by the stove.
“What?” Sergei asked barely audibly and choked.
“He’s alone.”
Sergei scowled and started breathing heavily.
“Let’s go,” said Katerina Lvovna, abruptly turning to the door.
Sergei quickly took off his boots and asked:
“What shall I take?”
“Nothing,” Katerina Lvovna replied under her breath and quietly led him after her by the hand.
Chapter Eleven
The sick boy gave a start and lowered the book to his knees when Katerina Lvovna came into his room for the third time.
“What’s wrong, Fedya?”
“Oh, auntie, I got frightened of something,” he said, smiling anxiously and pressing himself to the corner of the bed.
“What are you frightened of?”
“Who is it that came with you, auntie?”
“Where? Nobody came, dearest.”
“Nobody?”
The boy leaned towards the foot of the bed and, narrowing his eyes, looked in the direction of the door through which his aunt had come, and was reassured.
“I probably imagined it,” he said.
Katerina Lvovna stood leaning her elbow on the headboard of her nephew’s bed.
Fedya looked at his aunt and remarked that for some reason she was very pale.
In reply to this remark, Katerina Lvovna coughed deliberately and glanced expectantly at the door to the drawing room. A floorboard creaked softly there.
“I’m reading the life of my guardian angel, St. Feodor Stratilatos, auntie. There was a man pleasing to God.”
Katerina Lvovna stood silently.
“Sit down if you like,