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

Whether she slept, or tended the business, or prayed to God, in her mind there was one and the same thing: “How can it be? Why should I be deprived of capital because of him? I’ve suffered so much, I’ve taken so much sin upon my soul,” thought Katerina Lvovna, “and he comes and takes it from me without any trouble… Well and good if he was a man, but he’s a child, a little boy…”

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.

“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.