Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and Other Stories / Леди Макбет Мценского уезда и другие повести. Книга для чтения на английском языке

Now another minute passes, and the iron latch clicks, and the door opens. “Either I’m imagining it all, or it’s my Zinovy Borisych come home, because the door’s been opened with the spare key,” thought Katerina Lvovna, and she hurriedly gave Sergei a shove.

“Listen, Seryozha,” she said, and she propped herself on her elbow and pricked up her ears.

Someone was indeed coming up the stairs, stepping carefully on one foot after the other, approaching the locked door of the bedroom.

Katerina Lvovna quickly leaped out of bed in nothing but her shift and opened the window.

“No, don’t, don’t! Lie down here… don’t go far,” Katerina Lvovna whispered and threw his shoes and clothes out to him, and herself darted back under the blanket and lay waiting.

Sergei obeyed Katerina Lvovna: he did not slide down the post, but huddled on the gallery under a bast mat.

Meanwhile, Katerina Lvovna hears her husband come to the door and listen, holding his breath. She even hears the quickened beating of his jealous heart; but it is not pity but wicked laughter that is bursting from Katerina Lvovna.

“Go searching for yesteryear,” she thinks to herself, smiling and breathing like an innocent babe.

This lasted for some ten minutes; but Zinovy Borisych finally got tired of standing outside the door and listening to his wife sleeping: he knocked.

“Who’s there?” Katerina Lvovna called out, not at once and as if in a sleepy voice.

“It’s me.”

“Is that you, Zinovy Borisych?”

“It’s me,” replied Zinovy Borisych. “As if you don’t hear!”

Katerina Lvovna jumped up just as she was, in her shift, let her husband into the room, and dove back into the warm bed.

“It’s getting cold before dawn,” she said, wrapping the blanket around her.

Zinovy Borisych came in looking around, said a prayer, lit a candle, and glanced around again.

“How’s your life going?” he asked his spouse.

“Not bad,” answered Katerina Lvovna and, getting up, she began to put on a calico bed jacket.

“Shall I set up the samovar?” she asked.

“Never mind, call Aksinya, let her do it.”

Katerina Lvovna quickly slipped her bare feet into her shoes and ran out. She was gone for about half an hour.