A Gentle Creature by Fyodor Dostoevsky

LUKERIYA has just announced that she won't be staying with me and that after the mistress has been buried she will be leaving. I have knelt in prayer for five minutes; I wanted to pray for an hour, but I couldn't keep from thinking and thinking, sick thoughts and a sick head-what's the use of praying now? It would be sinful! It's odd, too, I don't feel any inclination to sleep: in grief, overwhelming grief, after the first intense outbursts, one always feels like sleep. Condemned men always sleep very soundly on their last night, so they say. That's how it should be, it's the way of nature, otherwise one couldn't stand the strain … I lay down on the sofa, but didn't fall asleep …

… During the six weeks of her illness, we tended her day and night-I, Lukeriya, and a qualified nurse from the hospital, whom I had hired. I didn't grudge the money, I positively felt like spending for her sake. I called in Doctor Schroeder and paid him ten roubles a visit. When she had recovered consciousness, I began keeping out of her sight. Why mention that, though? When she was up and about, she would quietly sit in my room, saying nothing, at a special table I had also bought for her … Yes, it's true, we never exchanged a word; I mean we did start after a while, but it was always just the usual things. Of course, I deliberately refrained from broadening the conversation, but I became keenly conscious that she too was glad not to say anything beyond what was strictly necessary. I regarded that as perfectly natural on her part: ‘She's too shaken and crushed', I thought, ‘and of course she needs time to forget and get used to things.' So it was that we remained silent about it, but at every moment I was preparing myself for the future. I imagined she was doing the same, and I found it terribly exciting to guess: what exactly is she thinking now?