Part 11 (1/2)

VI. - Sorrows of a Super Soul: or, The Memoirs of Marie Mushenough (Translated, by Machinery, out of the Original Russian.)

DO you ever look at your face in the gla.s.s?

I do.

Sometimes I stand for hours and peer at my face and wonder at it. At times I turn it upside down and gaze intently at it. I try to think what it means. It seems to look back at me with its great brown eyes as if it knew me and wanted to speak to me.

Why was I born?

I do not know.

I ask my face a thousand times a day and find no answer.

At times when people pa.s.s my room-my maid Nitnitzka, or Jakub, the serving-man-and see me talking to my face, they think I am foolish.

But I am not.

At times I cast myself on the sofa and bury my head in the cus.h.i.+ons.

Even then I cannot find out why I was born.

I am seventeen.

Shall I ever be seventy-seven? Ah!

Shall I ever be even sixty-seven, or sixty-seven even? Oh!

And if I am both of these, shall I ever be eighty-seven?

I cannot tell.

Often I start up in the night with wild eyes and wonder if I shall be eighty-seven.

Next Day.

I pa.s.sed a flower in my walk to-day. It grew in the meadow beside the river bank.

It stood dreaming on a long stem.

I knew its name. It was a Tchupvskja. I love beautiful names.

I leaned over and spoke to it. I asked it if my heart would ever know love. It said it thought so.

On the way home I pa.s.sed an onion.

It lay upon the road.

Someone had stepped upon its stem and crushed it. How it must have suffered. I placed it in my bosom. All night it lay beside my pillow.