A Terrible Vengeance

V

“How glad I am you have awakened me!” said Katerina, wiping her eyes with the embroidered sleeve of her nightgown and looking intently at her husband as he stood facing her. “What a terrible dream I have had! I could hardly breathe! Ough…! I thought I was dying….”

“What was your dream? Was it like this?” And Burulbash told his wife all that he had seen.

“How did you know it, husband?” asked Katerina in amazement. “But no, many things you tell me I did not know. No, I did not dream that my father murdered my mother; I did not dream of the dead. No, Danilo, you have not told the dream right. Oh, what a terrible man my father is!”

“And it is no wonder that you have not dreamed of that. You do not know a tenth part of what your soul knows. Do you know your father is the Antichrist? Only last year when I was getting ready to go with the Poles against the Crimean Tartars (I was still allied with that faithless people then), the Father Superior of the Bratsky Monastery (he is a holy man, wife) told me that the Antichrist has the power to call up every man’s soul; for the soul wanders freely when the body is asleep and flies with the archangels about the dwelling of God. I disliked your father’s face from the first. I would not have married you had I known you had such a father; I would have given you up and not have taken upon myself the sin of being allied to the brood of Antichrist.”

“Danilo!” cried Katerina, hiding her face in her hands and bursting into tears. “In what have I been to blame? Have I been false to you, my beloved husband? How have I roused your wrath? Have I not served you truly? Do I say a word to cross you when you come back merry from a drinking bout? Have I not borne you a black-browed son?”

“Do not weep, Katerina; now I know you and nothing would make me abandon you. The sin all lies at your father’s door.”

“No, do not call him my father! He is not my father. God is my witness I disown him, I disown my father! He is Antichrist, a rebel against God! If he were perishing, if he were drowning, I would not hold out a hand to save him; if his throat were parched by some magic herb I would not give him a drop of water. You are my father!”