What It Is
The embankment of a deserted canal in St. Petersburg, with the railing on which Nastenka leans to look at the water, and the bench where she and the Dreamer sit. It is the only fixed place in the book outside the Dreamer's room: all the encounters take place there, at the same hour, and it is leaving there that the lodger appears. Before becoming the Dreamer's place, the bench was the place of Nastenka and the lodger, on the night of their farewell, a year before.
Where It Appears
On the First Night, the Dreamer walks home along the canal embankment, after ten, and sees a young woman leaning on the railing, looking at the water; he hears her weeping and does not know what to say. As he takes his leave, he asks to return to the same place:
Я мечтатель; у меня так мало действительной жизни, что я такие минуты, как эту, как теперь, считаю так редко, что не могу не повторять этих минут в мечтаньях, I am a dreamer; I have so little real life that moments like this one, like this very moment, are so rare that I cannot help repeating them in my daydreams.
On the Second Night, Nastenka suggests they sit on a bench. In Nastenka's story, Second Night, we learn why she used to come there: on the eve of the lodger's departure, at ten, the two sat on this same bench, and he said he would come to see her when he returned. The arrangement for the reply to the letter is the same: either a letter through acquaintances, or the bench at ten.
On the Third Night, she arrives an hour early, certain that the other man will come, and the footsteps in the dark make the two tremble. The next day, at nine, even in the rain, the Dreamer goes alone to their bench.
On the Fourth Night, she is again in the position of the first night:
она стояла, как тогда, в первый раз, облокотясь на перила набережной, she stood as she had then, the first time, leaning on the railing of the embankment.
After the plans, the two try to reach her house and keep returning to the bench, and it is when they finally set off toward her house that the lodger passes, stops and calls Nastenka by name.
What It Means
The embankment is the place of a wait whose owner changes. For Nastenka it is the lodger's place, the bench of the promise; for the Dreamer, who asks on the first night to return and remember, it is the place of memory before it is ever the place of an encounter. The two sit on the same bench waiting for different things.
The book repeats the setting so that the change can be seen: on the Fourth Night Nastenka returns to the railing as on the First Night, weeping for the same man, and the Dreamer again becomes the one who comes to console her. When the plans for life together lead them to wander aimlessly and they keep coming back to the bench, the place has already decided for them: it is the lodger's bench, and it is on leaving it that he appears. The place the Dreamer wanted to keep as a memory was, from the beginning, someone else's memory.
Relationships
- Standard themes: Memory and the past, Love.
- Themes of the work: Memory and the past, Love.
- Characters: the Dreamer, Nastenka, the lodger.
- Neighboring symbols: the white night, the time of the encounters, and the letter, the other form of the bench arrangement.