Леди Макбет Мценского уезда и другие повести

NIKOLAI LESKOV

LADY MACBETH 
OF MTSENSK

AND OTHER STORIES

УДК 372.8
ББК  81.2 Англ 
Л50

ISBN 978-5-9925-1374-5

Лесков, Николай Семёнович.
Л50  
Леди Макбет Мценского уезда и другие повести : 
книга для чтения на английском языке / Н. С. Лесков — Санкт-Петербург : КАРО, 2019. — 288 с. — 
(Русская классическая литература на иностранных 
языках).

ISBN 978-5-9925-1374-5.

В сборник вошли повести и рассказы Н. С. Лескова, русского 
классика XIX века, подарившего мировой литературе «Очарованного странника» и «Леди Макбет...», «Тупейного художника» и «Левшу».

УДК 372.8 
ББК 81.2 Англ

© КАРО, 2019 
Все права защищены

Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk

Chapter One

In our parts such characters sometimes turn up that, 
however many years ago you met them, you can never 
recall them without an inner trembling. To the number 
of such characters belongs the merchant’s wife Katerina 
Lvovna Izmailova, who once played out a terrible drama, 
after which our gentlefolk, in someone’s lucky phrase, 
started calling her the Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.
Katerina Lvovna was not born a beauty, but she was 
a woman of very pleasing appearance. She was only 
twenty-three years old; not tall, but shapely, with a neck 
as if carved from marble, rounded shoulders, a firm bosom, a fine, straight little nose, lively black eyes, a high 
and white brow, and very black, almost blue-black hair. 
She was from Tuskar in Kursk province and was given 
in marriage to our merchant Izmailov, not out of love 
or any sort of attraction, but just so, because Izmailov 

sent a matchmaker to propose, and she was a poor girl 
and could not choose her suitors. The house of Izmailov 
was not the least in our town: they traded in white flour, 
kept a big rented mill in the district, had orchards outside town, and in town had a fine house. Generally, they 
were well-to-do merchants. Besides, the family was 
very small: the father-in-law, Boris Timofeich Izmailov, 
was already nearly eighty, a long-time widower; his 
son, Zinovy Borisych, Katerina Lvovna’s husband, was 
a little over fifty; then there was Katerina Lvovna, and 
that was all. In the five years of Katerina Lvovna’s marriage to Zinovy Borisych, she had had no children. Nor 
did Zinovy Borisych have children from his first wife, 
with whom he had lived for some twenty years before 
becoming a widower and marrying Katerina Lvovna. He 
thought and hoped that God might grant an heir to his 
merchant name and capital from his second marriage; 
but in that he was again unlucky with Katerina Lvovna.
This childlessness greatly distressed Zinovy Borisych, and not only Zinovy Borisych, but also old Boris 
Timofeich, and even Katerina Lvovna herself was much 
grieved by it. For one thing, exceeding boredom in the 
merchant’s locked-up tower, with its high walls and 
watchdogs running loose, had more than once filled the 
merchant’s young wife with pining, to the point of stupefaction, and she would have been glad, God knows 

how glad, to nurse a little child; and for another thing, 
she was also sick of reproaches: “Why marry, what’s 
the point of marrying; why bind a man’s fate, barren 
woman?” — as if she really had committed some crime 
against her husband, and against her father-in-law, and 
against their whole honorable merchant family.
For all its ease and plenty, Katerina Lvovna’s life 
in her father-in-law’s house was most boring. She went 
visiting very little, and if she did go with her husband 
to call on his merchant friends, that was also no joy. 
They were all strict people: they watched how she sat, 
and how she walked, and how she stood. But Katerina 
Lvovna had an ardent nature, and when she had lived 
in poverty as a young girl, she had been accustomed 
to simplicity and freedom, running to the river with 
buckets, swimming under the pier in nothing but a shift, 
or throwing sunflower husks over the garden gate 
at some young fellow passing by. Here it was all different. 
Her father-in-law and husband got up as early as could 
be, had their tea at six o’clock, and went about their business, while she dilly-dallied from room to room alone. 
It was clean everywhere, it was quiet and empty everywhere, icon lamps shone before the icons, and nowhere 
in the house was there a living sound, a human voice.
Katerina Lvovna would wander and wander about 
the empty rooms, start yawning with boredom, and 

climb the stairs to her marital bedroom in the small, 
high mezzanine. There, too, she sat, looked at how 
they hung up hemp or poured out flour by the storehouse — again she would start to yawn, and she was 
glad of it: she would doze off for an hour or two, then 
wake up — again the same Russian boredom, the boredom of a merchant’s house, from which they say you 
could even happily hang yourself. Katerina Lvovna was 
not a lover of reading, and besides there were no books 
in their house except for the lives of the Kievan saints.
Katerina Lvovna lived a boring life in the rich 
house of her father-in-law during the five years of her 
marriage to her unaffectionate husband; but, as often 
happens, no one paid the slightest attention to this 
boredom of hers.

Chapter Two

In the sixth spring of Katerina Lvovna’s marriage, the Izmailovs’ mill dam burst. At that time, 
as if on purpose, a lot of work had been brought 
to the mill, and the breach proved enormous: water 
went under the lower sill, and to stop it up slapdash was impossible. Zinovy Borisych drove people 
to the mill from all around and sat there constantly 
himself; the business in town was managed by the 

old man alone, and Katerina Lvovna languished 
at home for whole days as alone as could be. At first 
she was still more bored without her husband, but 
then it came to seem even better to her: she felt 
freer by herself. Her heart had never really gone 
out to him, and without him there was at least one 
less commander over her.
Once Katerina Lvovna was sitting at the window 
on her upper floor, yawning, yawning, thinking of nothing in particular, and she finally felt ashamed to be yawning. And the weather outside was so wonderful: warm, 
bright, cheerful, and through the green wooden lattice 
of the garden various birds could be seen flitting from 
branch to branch in the trees.
“What in fact am I yawning for?” thought Katerina Lvovna. “I might at least get up and go for a walk 
in the yard or a stroll in the garden.”
Katerina Lvovna threw on an old damask jacket 
and went out.
Outside it was so bright and the air was so invigorating, and in the gallery by the storehouses 
there was such merry laughter.
“What are you so glad about?” Katerina Lvovna 
asked her father-in-law’s clerks.
“You see, dearest Katerina Lvovna, we’ve been 
weighing a live sow,” an old clerk replied.

“What sow?”
“This sow Aksinya here, who gave birth to a son 
Vassily and didn’t invite us to the christening,” 
a fine fellow with a handsome, impudent face 
framed in jet-black curls and a barely sprouting 
beard told her boldly and merrily.
At that moment the fat mug of the ruddy cook 
Aksinya peeked out of a flour tub hung on a balance 
beam.
“Fiends, sleek-sided devils,” the cook swore, trying to catch hold of the iron beam and climb out 
of the swinging tub.
“Weighs two hundred and fifty pounds before dinner, and once she’s eaten a load of hay, there won’t 
be weights enough,” the handsome young fellow again 
explained, and, overturning the tub, he dumped the 
cook out onto the sacking piled in the corner.
The woman, cursing playfully, began putting 
herself to rights.
“Well, and how much might I weigh?” Katerina 
Lvovna joked, and, taking hold of the ropes, she 
stepped onto the plank.
“A hundred and fifteen pounds,” the same handsome young Sergei said, throwing weights onto the 
balance. “Amazing!”
“What’s amazing?”

“That you weigh over a hundred pounds, Katerina Lvovna. I reckoned a man could carry you 
around in his arms the whole day and not get tired 
out, but only feel the pleasure it gave him.”
“What, you mean I’m not a human being 
or something? You’d get tired for sure,” Katerina 
Lvovna replied, blushing slightly, not used to such 
talk and feeling a sudden surge of desire to loosen 
up and speak her fill of merry and playful words.
“God, no! I’d carry you all the way to happy Araby,” Sergei replied to her remark.
“Your reckoning’s off, young fellow,” said the little 
peasant doing the pouring. “What is it makes us heavy? 
Is it our body gives us weight? Our body, my dear man, 
means nothing in the scales: our strength, it’s our 
strength gives us weight — not the body!”
“In my girlhood I was awfully strong,” Katerina 
Lvovna said, again not restraining herself. “It wasn’t 
every man who could beat me.”
“Well, then, your hand please, ma’am, if that’s 
really true,” the handsome fellow asked.
Katerina Lvovna became embarrassed but held 
out her hand.
“Aie, the ring, it hurts, let go!” Katerina Lvovna 
cried, when Sergei pressed her hand in his, and she 
shoved him in the chest with her free hand.

The young man let go of his mistress’s hand, 
and her shove sent him flying two steps back.
“Mm-yes, and you reckoned she’s just a woman,” 
the little peasant said in surprise.
“Then suppose we try wrestling,” Sergei retorted, tossing back his curls.
“Well, go on,” replied Katerina Lvovna, brightening up, and she cocked her elbows.
Sergei embraced the young mistress and 
pressed her firm breasts to his red shirt. Katerina 
Lvovna was just trying to move her shoulders, but 
Sergei lifted her off the floor, held her in his arms, 
squeezed her, and gently sat her down on the overturned measuring tub.
Katerina Lvovna did not even have time to show 
her vaunted strength. Getting up from the tub, red 
as could be, she straightened the jacket that had 
fallen from her shoulders and quietly started out 
of the storehouse, but Sergei coughed dashingly 
and shouted:
“Come on, you blessed blockheads! Pour, look sharp, 
get a move on; if there’s a plus, the better for us.”
It was as if he had paid no attention to what had 
just happened.
“He’s a skirt-chaser, that cursed Seryozhka,” the 
cook Aksinya was saying as she trudged after Ka