The rising sun shone into his room; but the light
of day did not drive away the shadows of the night
that lay upon him, and did not change his resolution.
Platosha almost had a fit when he informed her of
his intention. She positively sat down on the
ground ... her legs gave way beneath her. ’To
Kazan? why to Kazan?’ she murmured, her dim eyes
round with astonishment. She would not have been
more surprised if she had been told that her Yasha
was going to marry the baker woman next door, or was
starting for America. ‘Will you be long
in Kazan?’ ‘I shall be back in a week,’
answered Aratov, standing with his back half-turned
to his aunt, who was still sitting on the floor.
Platonida Ivanovna tried to protest more, but Aratov
answered her in an utterly unexpected and unheard-of
way: ‘I’m not a child,’ he shouted,
and he turned pale all over, his lips trembled, and
his eyes glittered wrathfully. ’I’m
twenty-six, I know what I’m about, I’m
free to do what I like! I suffer no one ...
Give me the money for the journey, pack my box with
my clothes and linen ... and don’t torture me!
I’ll be back in a week, Platosha,’ he
added, in a somewhat softer tone.
Platosha got up, sighing and groaning, and, without
further protest, crawled to her room. Yasha had
alarmed her. ‘I’ve no head on my shoulders,’
she told the cook, who was helping her to pack Yasha’s
things; ’no head at all, but a hive full of
bees all a-buzz and a-hum! He’s going off
to Kazan, my good soul, to Ka-a-zan!’ The cook,
who had observed their dvornik the previous evening
talking for a long time with a police officer, would
have liked to inform her mistress of this circumstance,
but did not dare, and only reflected, ‘To Kazan!
if only it’s nowhere farther still!’ Platonida
Ivanovna was so upset that she did not even utter her
usual prayer. ’In such a calamity the Lord
God Himself cannot aid us!’
The same day Aratov set off for Kazan.
He had no sooner reached that town and taken a room
in a hotel than he rushed off to find out the house
of the widow Milovidov. During the whole journey
he had been in a sort of benumbed condition, which
had not, however, prevented him from taking all the
necessary steps, changing at Nizhni-Novgorod from
the railway to the steamer, getting his meals at the
stations etc., etc. He was convinced
as before that there everything would be solved;
and therefore he drove away every sort of memory and
reflection, confining himself to one thing, the mental
rehearsal of the speech, in which he would
lay before the family of Clara Militch the real cause
of his visit. And now at last he reached the goal
of his efforts, and sent up his name. He was
admitted ... with perplexity and alarm—still
he was admitted.
