I became hysterical, and throwing myself at him like a ferocious animal, I screamed at the top of my voice:
“You villain. You deceived me. You never did love me. You are a scoundrel. May God curse you.”
Vasili tried to calm me. He tried to approach me, but I repulsed him. He cried, he begged, he implored me to believe that he loved me, and that he would marry me. But I would not listen to him. I trembled with rage, seized by a fit of uncontrollable temper. He left me in tears.
I did not see Vasili for two days. Neither did his brother nor sister-in-law. He had disappeared. When he returned, he presented a pitiable sight. His haggard face, the appearance of his clothes, and the odour of vodka told the story of his two-days’ debauch.
“Ah, Marusia, Marusia,” he lamented, gripping my arms. “What have you done, what have you done? I loved you so much. And you would not understand me. You have ruined my life and your own.”
My heart was wrung with pity for Vasili. Life to me then was a labyrinth of blind alleys, tangled, bewildering. It is now clear to me that Vasili did love me genuinely, and that he had indulged in the wild orgy to forget himself and drown the pain I had caused him. But I did not understand it then. Had I loved him truly, it might all have been different. But a single thought dominated my mind. “He had promised to marry me and failed.” Marriage had become to me the symbol of a life of independence and freedom.
The Lazovs left. They gave me money and gifts. But my heart was like a deserted ruin in the winter, echoing with the howls of wild beasts. Instead of a life of freedom, my parents’ basement awaited me. And deep in my bosom lurked a dread of the unknown....
I returned home. My sisters had already noticed a different air about me. Perhaps they had seen me with Vasili at one time or another. Whatever the cause, they had their suspicions, and did not fail to communicate them to my mother. It required little scrutiny for her to observe that from a shy little girl I had blossomed forth into a young woman. And then there began days and nights of torture for me.
My father quickly got wind of what had happened at the Lazovs. He was merciless and threw himself upon me with a whip, nearly lashing me to death, accompanying each blow with epithets that burned into me more than the lashes of the whip. He also beat my mother when she attempted to intervene on my behalf.
My father would come home drunk almost every day, and immediately take to lashing me. Often he would drive me and my mother barefoot out of the house, and sometimes we shivered for hours in the snow, hugging the icy walls.