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276
SÖNYA KOVALÉVSKY
Meanwhile Sönya and I had each many personal
cares, and now that Christmas was approaching we
had to consider where we should spend that holiday.
Neither of us had the heart to spend it at home.
Stockholm was hateful to us both, but for different reasons.
So we finally decided to try and realize our old plan
of traveling together, as we had never yet managed to
do. After many suggestions of places, we decided on
going to Paris. There, we thought, we could, more
easily than anywhere, come into contact with literary
and theatrical people. And we hoped to divert our
thoughts from our own personal worries. We left
Stockholm in the beginning of December.
But how different was this journey from what we
had been used to plan ! We neither of us expected to
enjoy this journey. It was only intended as a kind of
morphine—to deaden our thoughts. We sat silent and
sad, staring at each other, and feeling that our
individual melancholy was increased by that which each
saw in the face of the other. We spent a couple of
days at Copenhagen, and called on some friends and
acquaintances. They were all astonished at the change
in Sönya. She had grown much thinner. Her face
was much wrinkled, her cheeks were hollow, and she
had, besides, a bad cough, caught during the influenza
epidemic which had raged in Stockholm. She took no
care of herself, and it was a wonder that she recovered
at all. One day, when she had received a letter which
excited her, she got out of bed, when she lay in a high
fever, and, half dressed and in thin shoes, went out into
the cold, wet snow. She came back drenched to the
skin, and sat without changing her clothes till
nightfall. "You see," she said to me when I entreated her
to take more care, "I am not even lucky enough to
take a serious illness. Do not be frightened. Life will
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