If she be already dead--and well for her if it were so--may she rest
in peace! And if she be alive ... still I say "Peace to her soul!" And
may the consciousness of her fall never enter her soul ... for that
would be a superfluous and fruitless suffering if life is to be
lived...
HER LOVER
BY MAXIM GORKY
An acquaintance of mine once told me the following story.
When I was a student at Moscow I happened to live alongside one of
those ladies whose repute is questionable. She was a Pole, and they
called her Teresa. She was a tallish, powerfully-built brunette, with
black, bushy eyebrows and a large coarse face as if carved out by a
hatchet--the bestial gleam of her dark eyes, her thick bass voice, her
cabman-like gait and her immense muscular vigour, worthy of a
fishwife, inspired me with horror. I lived on the top flight and her
garret was opposite to mine. I never left my door open when I knew her
to be at home. But this, after all, was a very rare occurrence.
Sometimes I chanced to meet her on the staircase or in the yard, and
she would smile upon me with a smile which seemed to me to be sly and
cynical.
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