Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Friday, 17 September 1880

I hope he has properly left this time. The packet boat departs Saturday from Marseille. But let us bury Soutzo and talk of myself, to record the charming new things that are happening to me.
First — yesterday I went back to the doctor for my ears. He admitted to me that he had not expected to find things so serious: there is perforation of the eardrum in both ears, and I shall never hear as before. There will always be, as it were, a veil. I was left as if stunned. It is horrible. I am certainly not deaf, but I hear as one sees through a thin veil. Thus I can no longer hear the ticking of my alarm clock, and I shall never hear it again without approaching very close. This is, in truth, a misfortune. In conversation, brief things escape me... Well — let us thank heaven for not having become blind or mute as well. Once, in Russia, I wanted to kill myself, but a horrible fear of Hell held me back; yesterday the fear was less, and it was no longer Hell but the unknown that frightened me. Let us hope that on the third occasion I shall fear nothing at all.
I write all hunched over, and if I try to straighten up I have atrocious pain — with me it is the effect of tears. At the death of the Prince Imperial I was in pain like this. I have wept a great deal since this morning.
My uncle Woldemar has arrived. He says that being in Berlin on business he pushed on to Paris to see the city. This does not seem plausible to me, and my aunt has a sombre air. Something must have happened, but I shall know nothing — these idiots treat me as a madwoman and are afraid of upsetting me by giving me cause for anxiety. So I ask quite naturally whether he has seen Maman lately. Five days ago. And when is she returning?
"Oh! At the beginning of October at the latest."
Whereupon I send a telegram in which I call her a criminal mother, then cowardly, lying, infamous — I never want to see you again, you have lost your daughter, I despise you as I despise my father, etc.
This will do nothing to that virtuous wooden mother of mine — but at the telegraph office in Poltava they will read these outrages, which heaven, so good to me, will perhaps forgive in view of the fact that I am the only one they harm. The world does not know, and in its eyes I am certainly guilty of insulting my mother.
I recount what happened here during Georges's time — the horrors endured — and the attitude of my virtuous mother who condemned me for wanting to throw that man out... And I dissolve in tears at the table, before this uncle who has not seen me for fifteen years.
Just think — they are stealing my life, stealing my youth. Everything else can be compensated for, but not that. They are destroying me; they have destroyed me!
A trifle like Biarritz — they could not manage that for me, and I have always been sacrificed, dirtied — everything has been sacrificed to this brother. If at least he were her lover, one might understand it, without excusing it — but this horrible...
Well, what would you have! They think themselves quit of everything by pestering me with potions and doctors.
This evening I came home like a wounded animal, raging and calling them monsters, infamous, thieves, brigands! Ah! The cowards!
No — you do not know, you will never know. One would have had to recount all this calmly, a little at a time, long since. Instead I have complained — if I had only told it simply, you would have cried out on my behalf. But I must believe that I cannot even do harm properly. This telegram will cover me in shame and do nothing to that woman whom I lump in the same bag as my father. If you knew! If it had been a matter of some debt of that vile brother's, or some quarrel with his mistress, my dear mother would have rushed from the ends of the earth to bring the lady back to that hideous creature and patch things up between them...
But here it was simply a matter of taking me to a fashionable spa town — and at a spa, our wretched position would show less; one might, who knows, perhaps... But they have buried me until now — what is the use of changing... I am in atrocious pain, I can write no more.
My uncle and my aunt have been talking of Grandfather's estate and will. Oh! How disgusting everyone is! I heard my aunt blacken the name of the dead father... That is dreadful. All my family has done me great harm, and I tell them so — but if they were to die, I would say no more.