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Updated: May 25, 2025
"What shall I tell you ?" "Something about love," Lizotchka says languidly. "Or some anecdote about Jews. . . ." Vassily Stepanovitch, ready for anything if only his wife will be cheerful and not talk about death, combs locks of hair over his ears, makes an absurd face, and goes up to Lizotchka. "Does your vatch vant mending?" he asks.
"You might, perhaps, but . . . you had better lie in bed another day." "She is awfully depressed," Vassya whispers in his ear, "such gloomy thoughts, such pessimism. I am dreadfully uneasy about her." The doctor sits down to the little table, and rubbing his forehead, prescribes bromide of potassium for Lizotchka, then makes his bow, and promising to look in again in the evening, departs.
He does not sleep all night. At ten o'clock the doctor comes. "Well, how are we feeling?" he asks as he takes her pulse. "Have you slept?" "Badly," Lizotchka's husband answers for her, "very badly." The doctor walks away to the window and stares at a passing chimney-sweep. "Doctor, may I have coffee to-day?" asks Lizotchka. "You may." "And may I get up?"
"I don't feel the spasms now, but there is no sleeping. . . . I can't get to sleep!" "Isn't it time to change the compress, my angel?" Lizotchka sits up slowly with the expression of a martyr and gracefully turns her head on one side. Vassily Stepanovitch with reverent awe, scarcely touching her hot body with his fingers, changes the compress.
He sat down beside her, and took her hand. "Are you dull, Lizotchka?" he said, after a brief silence. "Are you depressed? Why shouldn't we go away somewhere? Why is it we always stay at home? We want to go about, to enjoy ourselves, to make acquaintances. . . . Don't we?" "I want nothing," said Liza, and turned her pale, thin face towards the path by which Bugrov used to come to her.
The race ends in Vassya's catching his wife by her nightgown and eagerly showering kisses upon her. After one particularly passionate embrace Lizotchka suddenly remembers that she is seriously ill. . . . "What silliness!" she says, making a serious face and covering herself with the quilt. "I suppose you have forgotten that I am ill! Clever, I must say!"
"Shall we have Misha to stay with us?" "Yes, we will. . . . It will be awkward meeting him. . . . Why, what can I say to him? What can I talk of? It will be awkward for him and awkward for me. . . . We ought not to meet. We will carry on communications, if necessary, through the servants. . . . My head does ache so, Lizotchka. My arms and legs too, I ache all over. Is my head feverish?"
"Well, what people!" thought the country gentleman as he went out into the street, and he stopped and mopped his brow with his handkerchief. LIZOTCHKA KUDRINSKY, a young married lady who had many admirers, was suddenly taken ill, and so seriously that her husband did not go to his office, and a telegram was sent to her mamma at Tver.
"It does, it does," giggles Lizotchka, and hands him her gold watch from the little table. "Mend it." Vassya takes the watch, examines the mechanism for a long time, and wriggling and shrugging, says: "She can not be mended . . . in vun veel two cogs are vanting. . . ." This is the whole performance. Lizotchka laughs and claps her hands. "Capital," she exclaims. "Wonderful.
The spasms began at midday, before three o'clock the doctor came, and at six Lizotchka fell asleep and slept soundly till two o'clock in the morning. It strikes two. . . . The light of the little night lamp filters scantily through the pale blue shade. Lizotchka is lying in bed, her white lace cap stands out sharply against the dark background of the red cushion.
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