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A Gentle Spirit
A Fantastic Story
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Translated by Constance Garnett
Chapter I
: Who I was and who she was ">
Part I
Chapter I
: Who I was and who she was
Oh, while she is still here, it is still all right; I go up and look at her every minute; but tomorrow they will take her away - and how shall I be left alone? Now she is on the table in the drawing-room, they put two card tables together, the coffin will be here tomorrow - white, pure white "gros de Naples" - but that's not it...
I keep walking about, trying to explain it to myself. I have been trying for the last six hours to get it clear, but still I can't think of it all as a whole.
The fact is I walk to and fro, and to and fro.
This is how it was. I will simply tell it in order. (Order!)
Gentlemen, I am far from being a literary man and you will see that; but no matter, I'll tell it as I understand it myself. The horror of it for me is that I understand it all!
It was, if you care to know, that is to take it from the beginning, that she used to come to me simply to pawn things, to pay for advertising in the VOICE to the effect that a governess was quite willing to travel, to give lessons at home, and so on, and so on. That was at the very beginning, and I, of course, made no difference between her and the others: "She comes," I thought, "like any one else," and so on.
But afterwards I began to see a difference