She sat down at the window in the kitchen, and once more the question
came to her:
"What now? What am I to do now?"
Recollecting that she had not yet said her prayers, she walked up
to the images, and after standing before them for a few seconds,
she sat down again. Her heart was empty.
The pendulum, which always beat with an energy seeming to say: "I
must get to the goal! I must get to the goal!" slackened its hasty
ticking. The flies buzzed irresolutely, as if pondering a certain
plan of action.
Suddenly she recalled a picture she had once seen in the days of
her youth. In the old park of the Zansaylovs, there was a large
pond densely overgrown with water lilies. One gray day in the fall,
while walking along the pond, she had seen a boat in the middle of
it. The pond was dark and calm, and the boat seemed glued to the
black water, thickly strewn with yellow leaves. Profound sadness
and a vague sense of misfortune were wafted from that boat without a
rower and without oars, standing alone and motionless out there on
the dull water amid the dead leaves. The mother had stood a long
time at the edge of the pond meditating as to who had pushed the
boat from the shore and why.
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