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

I’ve lived among masters for so many years now, and seen what kind of life women live among merchants, don’t I also understand? As the song goes: �Without my dearie, life’s all sad and dreary,’ and that dreariness, let me explain to you, Katerina Lvovna, wrings my own heart so painfully, I can tell you, that I could just cut it out of my breast with a steel knife and throw it at your little feet. And it would be easier, a hundred times easier for me then…”

Sergei’s voice trembled.

“What are you doing talking to me about your heart? That’s got nothing to do with me.

“No, please, mistress,” said Sergei, trembling all over and taking a step towards Katerina Lvovna. “I know, I see very well and even feel and understand, that it’s no easier for you than for me in this world; except that now,” he said in the same breath, “now, for the moment, all this is in your hands and in your power.”

“What? What’s that? What have you come to me for? I’ll throw myself out the window,” said Katerina Lvovna, feeling herself in the unbearable power of an indescribable fear, and she seized hold of the windowsill.

“Oh, my life incomparable, why throw yourself out?” Sergei whispered flippantly, and, tearing the young mistress from the window, he took her in a firm embrace.

“Oh! Oh! Let go of me,” Katerina Lvovna moaned softly, weakening under Sergei’s hot kisses, and involuntarily pressing herself to his powerful body.

Sergei picked his mistress up in his arms like a child and carried her to a dark corner.

A hush fell over the room, broken only by the measured ticking of her husband’s pocket watch, hanging over the head of Katerina Lvovna’s bed; but it did not interfere with anything.

“Go,” said Katerina Lvovna half an hour later, not looking at Sergei and straightening her disheveled hair before a little mirror.

“Why should I leave here now?” Sergei answered her in a happy voice.

“My father-in-law will lock the door.”

“Ah, my soul, my soul! What sort of people have you known, if a door is their only way to a woman? For me there are doors everywhere – to you or from you,” the young fellow replied, pointing to the posts that supported the gallery.

Chapter Four

Zinovy Borisych did not come home for another week, and all that week, every night till broad daylight, his wife made merry with Sergei.