First Love

O youth! youth! you go your way heedless, uncaring – as if you owned all the treasures of the world; even grief elates you, even sorrow sits well upon your brow. You are self-confident and insolent and you say, ‘I alone am alive – behold!’ even while your own days fly past and vanish without trace and without number, and everything within you melts away like wax in the sun…like snow…and perhaps the whole secret of your enchantment lies not, indeed, in your power to do whatever you may will, but in your power to think that there is nothing you will not do: it is this that you scatter to the winds – gifts which you could never have used to any other purpose. Each of us feels most deeply convinced that he has been too prodigal of his gifts – that he has a right to cry ‘Oh, what could I not have done, if only I had not wasted my time.’

The past suddenly rose and stood before me. So that was to be the final answer to it all. So that was the final goal towards which this young life, all glitter and ardour and excitement, went hurrying along

The past suddenly rose and stood before me. So that was to be the final answer to it all. So that was the final goal towards which this young life, all glitter and ardour and excitement, went hurrying along

The past suddenly rose and stood before me. So that was to be the final answer to it all. So that was the final goal towards which this young life, all glitter and ardour and excitement, went hurrying along

The past suddenly rose and stood before me. So that was to be the final answer to it all. So that was the final goal towards which this young life, all glitter and ardour and excitement, went hurrying along

The past suddenly rose and stood before me. So that was to be the final answer to it all. So that was the final goal towards which this young life, all glitter and ardour and excitement, went hurrying along.

‘Really, I am not like that. I know that you have a low view of me.’

‘I?’

‘Yes, you, you…’

‘I?’ I repeated painfully, and my heart began to quiver, as it always did under the spell of her irresistible, inexpressible fascination. ‘I? Believe me, Zinaida Alexandrovna, that whatever you did, however much you make me suffer, I shall love you and adore you to the end of my days.’

I didn’t want to know whether I was loved, and I didn’t want to admit to myself that I was not. I avoided my father – but avoid Zinaida I could not. Her presence seared me like a flame…but what did I care what kind of fire this was in which I burned and melted, when it was bliss to burn and to melt? I gave myself freely to my sensations as they came, telling myself lies and hiding from my own memories, and closed my eyes to what I sensed was coming.

‘Mean by it? I should have thought I had made myself clear enough. Day – and night. In the daytime it doesn’t perhaps matter quite so much: it is light and there are lots of people about. But night – that’s when anything may happen. My advice to you is not to sleep at night, but keep watch – watch with all your might: remember the garden – at night – near the fountain – that is where you must watch. You’ll thank me for this yet.’

You, Sirs, you are all noble, clever, rich, you throng round me, every one of my words is precious to you, you are all ready to die at my feet, you are my slaves…But there, by the fountain, by the plashing water, he whose slave I am awaits me. He wears neither gorgeous raiment nor precious stones, no one knows him, but he awaits me, sure that I shall come – and I shall come – and there is no power in the world that can stop me when I want to go to him, to be with him, to lose myself with him there in the darkness of the garden, with the rustling of the trees and the murmur of the fountain