the shore, and sounded
so monotonous and hopeless, just as if they were telling something
unbearably dull and heavy, which was boring them into utter disgust,
something from which they wanted to run away and yet were obliged to
talk about all the same. The sound of the rain blended with their
splashing, and a long-drawn sigh seemed to be floating above the
overturned skiff--the endless, labouring sigh of the earth, injured
and exhausted by the eternal changes from the bright and warm summer
to the cold misty and damp autumn. The wind blew continually over the
desolate shore and the foaming river--blew and sang its melancholy
songs...

Our position beneath the shelter of the skiff was utterly devoid of
comfort; it was narrow and damp, tiny cold drops of rain dribbled
through the damaged bottom; gusts of wind penetrated it. We sat in
silence and shivered with cold. I remembered that I wanted to go to
sleep. Natasha leaned her back against the hull of the boat and curled
herself up into a tiny ball. Embracing her knees with her hands, and
resting her chin upon them, she stared doggedly at the river with
wide-open eyes; on the pale patch of her face they seemed immense,
because of the blue marks below them. She never moved, and this
immobility and silence--I felt it--gradually produced within me a
terror of my neighbour. I wanted to talk to her, but I knew not how to
begin.

It was she herself who spoke.

"What a cursed thing life is!" she exclaimed plainly, abstractedly,
and in a tone of deep conviction.

But this was no complaint. In these words there was too much of
indifference for a complaint. This simple soul thought according to
her understanding--thought and proceeded to form a certain conclusion
which she expressed aloud, and which I could not confute for fear of
contradicting myself. Therefore I was silent, and she, as if she had
not noticed me, continued to sit there immovable.

"Even if we croaked ... what then...?" Natasha began again, this time
quietly and reflectively, and still there was not one note of
complaint in her words. It was plain that this person, in the course
of her reflections on life, was regarding her own case, and had
arrived at the conviction that in order to preserve herself from the
mockeries of life, she was not in a position to do anything else but
simply "croak"--to use her own expression.

The clearness of this line of thought was inexpressibly sad and
painful to me, and I fe