Women's happiness: Izvestia publishes a fragment of the novel by Edith Wharton
The first woman to win a Pulitzer for literature is how the outstanding American Edith Wharton is most often presented to the reader. She is known to the moviegoer from her film adaptations: "The Age of Innocence" is named among the best films of the mature Martin Scorsese, in "Ethan Frome" Liam Neeson played one of his best roles. In 1903, long before her worldwide fame and two years before her first successful novel, The Abode of Joy, Wharton wrote the novella Shelter. There, in a little over a hundred pages, oddly enough, contains everything that will later be reflected in the main works of the writer. The story will be published in Russian as part of a joint series of translations by Yandex Books and Subscription Editions. Izvestia publishes a fragment of the book and an audio version of this fragment. The actress Anastasia Velikorodnaya is reading.
Edith Wharton's "Asylum" (fragment)
Kate was awakened from her reverie by the housekeeper, who reminded her that Mr. Orme would be back for dinner the next day, and asked if, in Kate's opinion, he preferred venison with claret sauce or jelly. My father will be back tomorrow; he will give the venison a share of attention, which, in his opinion, obviously deserved any detail of his convenience or comfort. If not venison, then something else; if not the housekeeper, then Mr. Orme himself, bursting with impressions from a conversation with the manager, a committee meeting at the club, or any other incident that, since it happened to Mr. Orme, became an event. Kate saw that she was trapped in the inexorable routine of life, and realized that those around her were serenely moving along the beaten track past the ruins of her life, like the calm gaze of nature contemplating the area through which a hurricane had swept.
Life went on as usual, dragging Kate with it, tied to her chariot. Kate couldn't stop her running, or break free of her bonds and fall—oh, what bliss that would be! — into darkness and nothingness. She must trudge on, broken on the rack, but alive with every fiber of her body. The most she could hope for was a few hours of rest: not from her own horrors, but from the pressure of external obligations claiming her. A midday respite while the executioners rest, too lazy to chain the victim again. Until her father returns, Kate is alone in the house and, having solved the venison issue, she can pace empty rooms alone and trust the fading tremors of the earthquake with a pillow.
When the fog in her brain cleared, Kate's first impulse was to habitually reach for a relationship on the verge of the possible. She wanted to know the worst; and, like a flash of lightning, the realization dawned on her that the worst of all was the grain of inevitability in what had happened. When Kate formulated this, she shuddered herself: such an image implied that there was doubt under her faith in Denis from the very beginning, and this was not true even in a metaphorical sense. However, that was only because her imagination had never really experienced a fiance. Kate liked to put herself through hypothetical trials, but for some reason she never took Denis with her on these adventures. Now she saw that in an alien world, he was still the most familiar object to her. Her story did not resemble the sad parable of a girl who suddenly saw her lover without a mask. Denis's mask was not torn off; they simply removed the pink lampshades from the lamps, and for the first time the bride saw him in a mercilessly bright light.
Such exposure does not change a person's appearance, but it hideously exaggerates even the sweetest features, turning a smile into a grin, a good—natured curve of the mouth into weak-willed flabbiness. And it was into the sagging lines of extreme lack of will that Kate's elegant fiance's face turned. In the terrible conversation that followed Denis's confession, when every word shone a spotlight on the course of his mental movements, Kate was most shocked not even by the groom's act itself; she was shocked that his consciousness had already become a passive surface for the sewage of consequences. It's like a child holding a match to the curtains and standing with his mouth agape, contemplating the fire. Of course, he is a terribly bad boy who played with matches, but the responsibility of the child does not extend beyond that. In the story of Arthur, where everything was a mistake from the very beginning—where you can casually cite the lack of an absolute standard of virtue in your defense—it was easy to slip once and fall a little lower with each fight. This woman was... oh, this woman was... well, the kind that parasitizes men like that. Arthur, in the depths of his downfall, came to cohabitation with her, as one comes to drunkenness or opium smoking. He knew what she was... knew her background. But he got sick, and she took care of him.… She walked faithfully, of course. She got a chance, and she didn't miss it. Before Arthur could recover, she had already tightened the noose — he regained consciousness and found himself married. This happens quite often. If a man recovers, he buys off the woman and gets a divorce. The usual order of things is marriage, compensation, divorce. Some of these women make their fortune by getting married and getting divorced every year. If only Arthur would get well… But instead, he got worse and died. And the woman was left a widow by an unfortunate accident, with a child in her arms (whose child?) and a crook, a crook, working in her interests. Her claims were formulated briefly and clearly — the widow's part, a third of Arthur's estate. But what if he never intended to marry her? What if a clever trap had been set for him, like a sharpie for a village idiot in a gambling den? In his dying hour, Arthur recognized this marriage, but he also recognized the madness of this marriage. And when Arthur died, when Denis came to look around and make inquiries, it turned out that the witnesses, if there were any, had scattered and it was impossible to find them. The whole thing was based on Arthur's confession to his brother. To say that there was no recognition, and the claim is destroyed, and with it the scandal, the shame, the lifelong burden of a woman and child dragging the name of Payton through God knows what abysses. Denis swore that he was thinking about that first, not about the money. Money, of course, also played a role—his conscience did not allow him to deny it—but only in the second place, he was ready to swear. He would have sworn on his honor, but he choked on the word and his forehead turned purple.
So, in fragments of phrases, he brought down his defense on Kate: an improvised defense, assembled from scraps on the move to disguise a rudely instinctive act. Because as Kate listened, she saw more and more clearly that there was no moral struggle going on in Denis' soul. If it weren't for the grim logic of chance, perhaps he would never have felt the need for excuses. If this woman, in the manner of all predators like her, had wandered on in search of fresh prey, Denis could quite sincerely congratulate himself on having saved an honest family name and an honest fortune from her clutches. Only the price she paid to prove her case shocked and stunned him for the first time, making him think about justice. His conscience responded only to the pressure of concrete facts.
It was this painful discovery that made Kate Orme close her soul at the end of the conversation. How the conversation ended, how she finally forced Denis to leave the room and the house — Kate remembered all this, but very vaguely. The tragic death of a woman and the role played by Denis were nothing compared to the catastrophe of his cheerful rejection of responsibility. At one point, when Kate exclaimed: "You would have married me and never said anything!" and he groaned in response, "But I told you," she felt like a trainer raising a whip over an incomprehensible animal.
But she insisted fiercely.:
"You told me because you couldn't help but tell me; because you lost your nerve; because you knew it wouldn't hurt you..." She almost fell silent from the confused pleading in his gaze. —You told me because it made you feel better, but you won't get relief, real relief, until you tell someone else... someone who can really hurt you."
—Hurt me?"..
"Until you tell the truth, as openly as you lied before."
He shuddered with a monstrous fear on his face.:
"I don't understand."
"You have to confess... publicly, openly... you have to go to the judge. I do not know how to do this.
"To the judge?" When are they both already dead? When did it all end? What could be the use of that? "What is it?" he groaned.
— And for you, nothing is over yet... everything is just beginning. You have to get rid of this guilt; and the only way is to confess. And refund the money.
At these words, he seemed to decide: She doesn't know what she's talking about.
"I wish I'd never known about this money!" But who should I return them to? I'm telling you, she was born under a fence. No one seemed to know her real name. Maybe she didn't have one.
"She must have parents."
"And now I'm going to spend my life searching for them in the slums of California?" And how will I know them when I find them? You persistently don't understand. I did the wrong thing. I made a terrible mistake. But it cannot be fixed in this way.
"How can I?"
He paused, slightly confused by this question, and with a sudden surge of firmness said:
"It's better to live... to live as virtuously as I can." Learn from your terrible…
—Oh, shut up! "Stop it!" she cried, covering her face. The groom just looked at her with resignation.
Finally he said:
— There will be no benefit in continuing this conversation. I just want to add one thing. Of course, you know that you are free from obligations.
He spoke simply, suddenly regaining his former voice and intonation, and Kate felt weak from them, as if from a caress. She raised her head and stared at him.
"Free?" — She said thoughtfully.
—Kate! Denis blurted out, but she stopped him with a gesture.:
— It seems to me that I am in prison with you, in the prison of this terrible story. I have to help you get out first. After that, I'll have plenty of time to think about myself.
His face fell, and he muttered:
"I don't understand you."
"I can't tell you what I'm going to do... or how I'm going to feel... until I know what you're going to do and feel."
"You can't help but see how I feel."… That I'm half dead from all this.
"Yes... but that's only half the story.
He turned her words over in his mind for a long time, and then slowly asked:
"Are you saying you're going to leave me if I don't do the crazy thing you want?"
She paused too.:
- no. I don't want to bribe you. You have to feel the need yourself.
— The need to repent publicly?
- yes.
He sat motionless, staring in front of him. And finally he said:
— Of course, do you understand what that would mean?
"For you?" — She replied.
"Let's leave that for now. For others... for you. They'll put me in jail.
—I suppose so,— she replied artlessly.
— You seem to take this opportunity very lightly. My mother will take it differently.
"Your mother?" — His words gave the desired result.
"I don't suppose you've thought about her?" It would probably kill her.
—It would kill her to think that you would do such a thing!"
"That would make her very unhappy; but there's a big difference between the one and the other.
Yes, there was a difference; a difference that no amount of rhetoric could disguise. The secret knowledge of her son's sin would have made Mrs. Peyton very unhappy, but it would not have killed her. In addition, the mother held exactly the same views as her son: she believed that atonement for sin was an extensible concept, and she would consider inner mental anguish to be the mitigated equivalent of open repentance. Kate did not even rule out the possibility that this woman would learn a "moral lesson" from the providential fact that her son had not been exposed.
"As you can see, it's not that simple," he blurted out with a note of grim triumph.
—No, it's not that simple,— she conceded.
"We have to think about others,— he continued, gaining confidence as Kate retreated.
She didn't answer, and he waited a moment, then got up to leave. So far, in hindsight, she could follow the course of their conversation; but when the near parting turned arguments into pleas, and renunciations into a passionate request to listen to his arguments at least once more, the memory was lost in a storm of pain. Kate only remembered one thing: when he left, he extorted from her a promise to see him again.
Translated by Tatiana Borovikova
The recording is provided by the Yandex Books book service, read by Anastasia Velikorodnaya, an actress of the Brusnikin Workshop.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
