Nastenka

Who She Is

Nastenka, a diminutive of Anastasia, is a seventeen-year-old young woman, orphaned of father and mother, who lives with her grandmother in a little wooden house in St. Petersburg, pinned to her grandmother's dress by a pin (The pin). On the First Night she still has no name: she is the young woman crying against the railing of the embankment (The embankment and the bench), whom the Dreamer rescues from a drunk. She says her name only on the Second Night, before hearing his story. She has spent a year waiting for the return of the lodger, the young man who used to lend her books, took her to the opera and promised, when he left for Moscow, to come back and marry her if he could, and it is this wait that brings her to the embankment. What she wants is to get out of her grandmother's watch and be chosen by the man she chose; what she fears most, as she herself says, is refusal. Everything known about her comes through the voice of the Dreamer, who loves her, and through her own voice, when he hands her the word.

Trajectory

On the First Night, she accepts the arm of a stranger while still trembling, laughs at his confession that he has loved only ideals, and soon defends him against himself, calling him his own worst enemy. She agrees to return the next day for reasons she keeps to herself, and sets the condition that will organize the rest of the book:

She also says that she trusts him as if they were friends of twenty years, because she has no one to ask for advice either.

On the Second Night, she arrives laughing, says she spent the whole day thinking about him, and asks him to tell his story. She listens to the whole speech without laughing, squeezes his hand and asks, with shy compassion, whether he has always lived like that; when he says yes, she replies that it cannot be, because that way she too will live her whole life beside her grandmother. She proposes a pact, to stay together whatever happens, and asks in return for heartfelt advice, as from a brother.

In Nastenka's story, Second Night, she tells how her grandmother, after a prank she does not reveal, pinned her to her dress:

She recounts the exchange with Fyokla, the deaf maid, who unfastened the pin and ran off; the arrival of the lodger; the shame before him on the morning she dragged her grandmother's armchair when she stood up; the books by Walter Scott and Pushkin, which made her stop dreaming of the Chinese prince; the opera (The Barber of Seville) and the time she thought he only pitied her. On the eve of his departure for Moscow, she climbs to his room with a bundle:

The lodger answers with a promise that leaves her free:

The year has passed, he has been in the city for three days and has not appeared. She says that writing to the lodger would be offering herself; she listens to the Dreamer dictate the letter she should write, then hands him a letter already written and sealed, like Rosina in the opera (The letter):

On the Third Night, she arrives an hour early, certain that the lodger will come, and her joy makes her tender toward the Dreamer. She explains why she likes him so much:

She becomes chatty and flirtatious, says she is even a little annoyed that he did not fall in love, counts the chimes when he asks her the time, repeats her address so that he will bring her news, and cries. She compares the two men:

And she comes close to what the Dreamer hides, without naming it:

She also says that the dreamer described the day before is not him, that he is getting better, and she takes her leave by asking whether they are now together forever.

On the Fourth Night, she waits in the same position as on the first night:

On learning that there is no letter, she turns pale and weeps; she rebels against three days without a single line, remembers that she was the one who climbed to his room, and soon looks for excuses for him. She listens to the Dreamer's declaration, says she already knew he loved her, wipes his tears, admits she still loves the other man and does not want to deceive him. She examines her own love:

She offers her hand, makes plans with him, laughingly refuses the trip to The Barber of Seville, and ignores the yellow cloud he points out to her. When the lodger passes and calls her by name, she runs to him and comes back once:

On the Morning, she writes to the Dreamer. She begs his forgiveness on her knees, says she deceived him and herself, that it was a dream, that she has not changed toward him:

She announces that she marries the following week, that the lodger came back in love and never forgot her, and asks the Dreamer to remain her friend and brother forever.

Themes Embodied

Nastenka is the other half of the book's solitude. The Dreamer lives with no one; she lives attached to someone, pinned to a blind woman with a pin, and she reaches daydream by the opposite path: she too dreams, of a Chinese prince, until the lodger's books give her a dream with a face. When she says, on the Second Night, that she understood everything he told because she has lived the same, pinned to her grandmother's dress, the book places her as a mirror for him, and the difference decides the end: she has a dream that can arrive from the street, and he does not.

In Nastenka's story, Second Night, she herself joins, in a single speech, the love for the lodger and the refusal of the pin, and the text does not let one be separated from the other. The question she asks herself on the Fourth Night, whether all love began because she was under her grandmother's watch, is the same one the reader has asked since the bundle, and she asks it on the only night when she needs an answer in order to change. That she runs to the lodger minutes later does not disavow the question: it shows that, for her, love that began in flight remained love.

Divergent Readings

Her relationship with the Dreamer can be read in two ways. In one, she is sincere from beginning to end: she warns on the first night that he must not fall in love, says on the third that she loves the other man more than him, and in the letter of the Morning refuses to pretend she does not love him. In the other, she needs him without measuring the cost: she needed someone to carry the letter, to console her during the wait, and to offer her a place if the other man did not come, and she accepts his hand on the Fourth Night, on the same night she loses hope.

The text supports both, and the remark of the Third Night about sacrifice shows that she knew enough to choose not to know more. What neither reading explains alone is the kiss of the Fourth Night, given after the choice and without a word, which is gratitude and farewell at once, and which the narrator recounts without interpreting.

Relationships

• The Dreamer: the stranger who frees her from the drunk on the First Night, to whom she tells her story in Nastenka's story, Second Night, and whose love she accepts and then leaves on the Fourth Night.
• The lodger: the young man who lends her books, takes her to The Barber of Seville and promises to return in a year (Nastenka's story, Second Night); she runs to him on the Fourth Night and announces the marriage on the Morning.
• The grandmother: the blind woman who pins her to her dress with a pin (Nastenka's story, Second Night) and whom she intends to take with her in the plans of the Fourth Night.