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Updated: June 13, 2025
Upon this afternoon when I went to pay my call on Vera Michailovna, the real snow began to fall. We had had the false preliminary attempt a fortnight before; now in the quiet persistent determination, the solid soft resilience beneath one's feet, and the patient aquiescence of roofs and bridges and cobbles one knew that the real winter had come.
Vera Michailovna had a strength and a security in her protection of souls weaker than her own that had about it nothing forced or pretentious or self-conscious it was simply the natural woman acting as she was made to act.
I saw that, apart from Rasputin, he was a new man something had happened to him. It was not long before I discovered that what had happened was that Vera Michailovna had been kind to him. Vera's most beautiful quality was her motherliness. I do not intend that much-abused word in any sentimental fashion.
So serious were they that they scarcely looked up when I came in. Vera Michailovna said my name and they smiled and some of them bowed, but their eyes never left the numbered cards. "Dvar... Peedecat... Cheteeriy... Zurock Tree... Semdecet Voisim"... came from a stout and good-natured lady reading the numbers as she took them from the box.
The fortunes and adventures of the soul on its journey towards its own country, its hopes and fears, struggles and despairs, its rejections and joy and rewards its death and destruction all this in terms of human life and the silly blundering conditions of this splendid glorious earth.... Here was Vera Michailovna and her husband, Nina and Boris Grogoff, Bohun and Lawrence, myself and Semyonov a jumbled lot with all our pitiful self-important little histories, our crimes and virtues so insignificant and so quickly over, and behind them the fine stuff of the human and divine soul, pushing on through all raillery and incongruity to its goal.
"Why, you're duller than you used to be," I thought to myself, and wondered how I could have suspected, in those days, subtle depths and mysterious comprehensions. Vera Michailovna asked him questions about France and London but, quite obviously, did not listen to his answers. After ten minutes he pulled himself up slowly from his chair: "Well, I must be going," he said.
How many souls must have asked themselves that day "Why, if this is so easy, do we not proceed further? A man dies more simply than you thought only resolution... only resolution." I know that that evening I found it impossible to remain in my lonely rooms; I went round to the Markovitch flat. I found Vera Michailovna and Bohun preparing to go out; they were alone in the flat.
"No other country could have been responsible for them." Poor boy, I had not the heart to tell him that they had been made in Germany. However, as I have said, in spite of his painted toys and his operas he was, at the end of three weeks, a miserable man. Anybody could see that he was miserable, and Vera Michailovna saw it. She took him in hand, and at once his life was changed.
I waited for Lawrence to sit down, but he turned round to me. "I say, Durward you sit next to Nina Michailovna this time. She'll be bored having me all the while." "No, no!" I began to protest, but Nina, her voice shaking, cried: "Yes, Durdles, you sit down next to me please." I don't think that Lawrence perceived anything.
Very far these from the Lizas and Natachas of his literary imagination and yet not so far either, had he only known. He pinned all his faith, as I could see, to Vera Michailovna, who did gloriously fulfil his self-instituted standards. And yet he did not know her at all! He was to suffer pain there too.
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