Works of Ivan Turgenev (Illustrated) (212 page)

VI

And this is what happened. A messenger brought him a note, written in a large irregular woman’s hand, and containing the following lines:

‘If you guess who it is writes to you, and if it is not a bore to you, come to - morrow after dinner to the Tversky boulevard — about five o’clock — and wait. You shall not be kept long. But it is very important. Do come.’

There was no signature. Aratov at once guessed who was his correspondent, and this was just what disturbed him. ‘What folly,’ he said, almost aloud; ‘this is too much. Of course I shan’t go.’ He sent, however, for the messenger, and from him learnt nothing but that the note had been handed him by a maid - servant in the street. Dismissing him, Aratov read the letter through and flung it on the ground…. But, after a little while, he picked it up and read it again: a second time he cried, ‘Folly!’ — he did not, however, throw the note on the floor again, but put it in a drawer. Aratov took up his ordinary occupations, first one and then another; but nothing he did was successful or satisfactory. He suddenly realised that he was eagerly expecting Kupfer! Did he want to question him, or perhaps even to confide in him?… But Kupfer did not make his appearance. Then Aratov took down Pushkin, read Tatiana’s letter, and convinced himself again that the ‘gipsy girl’ had not in the least understood the real force of the letter. And that donkey Kupfer shouts: Rachel! Viardot! Then he went to his piano, as it seemed, unconsciously opened it, and tried to pick out by ear the melody of Tchaykovsky’s song; but he slammed it to again directly in vexation, and went up to his aunt to her special room, which was for ever baking hot, smelled of mint, sage, and other medicinal herbs, and was littered up with such a multitude of rugs, side - tables, stools, cushions, and padded furniture of all sorts, that any one unused to it would have found it difficult to turn round and oppressive to breathe in it. Platonida Ivanovna was sitting at the window, her knitting in her hands (she was knitting her darling Yasha a comforter, the thirty - eighth she had made him in the course of his life!), and was much astonished to see him. Aratov rarely went up to her, and if he wanted anything, used always to call, in his delicate voice, from his study: ‘Aunt Platosha!’ However, she made him sit down, and sat all alert, in expectation of his first words, watching him through her spectacles with one eye, over them with the other. She did not inquire after his health nor offer him tea, as she saw he had not come for that. Aratov was a little disconcerted … then he began to talk … talked of his mother, of how she had lived with his father and how his father had got to know her. All this he knew very well … but it was just what he wanted to talk about. Unluckily for him, Platosha did not know how to keep up a conversation at all; she gave him very brief replies, as though she suspected that was not what Yasha had come for.

‘Eh!’ she repeated, hurriedly, almost irritably plying her knitting - needles. ‘We all know: your mother was a darling … a darling that she was…. And your father loved her as a husband should, truly and faithfully even in her grave; and he never loved any other woman’: she added, raising her voice and taking off her spectacles.

‘And was she of a retiring disposition?’ Aratov inquired, after a short silence.

‘Retiring! to be sure she was. As a woman should be. Bold ones have sprung up nowadays.’

‘And were there no bold ones in your time?’

‘There were in our time too … to be sure there were! But who were they? A pack of strumpets, shameless hussies. Draggle - tails — for ever gadding about after no good…. What do they care? It’s little they take to heart. If some poor fool comes in their way, they pounce on him. But sensible folk looked down on them. Did you ever see, pray, the like of such in our house?’

Aratov made no reply, and went back to his study. Platonida Ivanovna looked after him, shook her head, put on her spectacles again, and again took up her comforter … but more than once sank into thought, and let her knitting - needles fall on her knees.

Aratov up till very night kept telling himself, no! no! but with the same irritation, the same exasperation, he fell again into musing on the note, on the ‘gipsy girl,’ on the appointed meeting, to which he would certainly not go! And at night she gave him no rest. He was continually haunted by her eyes — at one time half - closed, at another wide open — and their persistent gaze fixed straight upon him, and those motionless features with their dominating expression….

The next morning he again, for some reason, kept expecting Kupfer; he was on the point of writing a note to him … but did nothing, however,… and spent most of the time walking up and down his room. He never for one instant admitted to himself even the idea of going to this idiotic rendezvous … and at half - past three, after a hastily swallowed dinner, suddenly throwing on his cloak and thrusting his cap on his head, he dashed out into the street, unseen by his aunt, and turned towards the Tversky boulevard.

VII

Aratov found few people walking in it. The weather was damp and rather cold. He tried not to reflect on what he was doing, to force himself to turn his attention to every object that presented itself, and, as it were, persuaded himself that he had simply come out for a walk like the other people passing to and fro…. The letter of the day before was in his breast - pocket, and he was conscious all the while of its presence there. He walked twice up and down the boulevard, scrutinised sharply every feminine figure that came near him — and his heart throbbed…. He felt tired and sat down on a bench. And suddenly the thought struck him: ‘What if that letter was not written by her, but to some one else by some other woman?’ In reality this should have been a matter of indifference to him … and yet he had to admit to himself that he did not want this to be so. ‘That would be too silly,’ he thought, ‘even sillier than
this
!’ A nervous unrest began to gain possession of him; he began to shiver — not outwardly, but inwardly. He several times took his watch out of his waistcoat pocket, looked at the face, put it back, and each time forgot how many minutes it was to five. He fancied that every passer - by looked at him in a peculiar way, with a sort of sarcastic astonishment and curiosity. A wretched little dog ran up, sniffed at his legs, and began wagging its tail. He threatened it angrily. He was particularly annoyed by a factory lad in a greasy smock, who seated himself on a seat on the other side of the boulevard, and by turns whistling, scratching himself, and swinging his feet in enormous tattered boots, persistently stared at him. ‘And his master,’ thought Aratov, ‘is waiting for him, no doubt, while he, lazy scamp, is kicking up his heels here….’

But at that very instant he felt that some one had come up and was standing close behind him … there was a breath of something warm from behind….

He looked round…. She!

He knew her at once, though a thick, dark blue veil hid her features. He instantaneously leapt up from the seat, but stopped short, and could not utter a word. She too was silent. He felt great embarrassment; but her embarrassment was no less. Aratov, even through the veil, could not help noticing how deadly pale she had turned. Yet she was the first to speak.

‘Thanks,’ she began in an unsteady voice, ‘thanks for coming. I did not expect …’ She turned a little away and walked along the boulevard. Aratov walked after her.

‘You have, perhaps, thought ill of me,’ she went on, without turning her head; ‘indeed, my conduct is very strange…. But I had heard so much about you … but no! I … that was not the reason…. If only you knew…. There was so much I wanted to tell you, my God!… But how to do it … how to do it!’

Aratov was walking by her side, a little behind her; he could not see her face; he saw only her hat and part of her veil … and her long black shabby cape. All his irritation, both with her and with himself, suddenly came back to him; all the absurdity, the awkwardness of this interview, these explanations between perfect strangers in a public promenade, suddenly struck him.

‘I have come on your invitation,’ he began in his turn. ‘I have come, my dear madam’ (her shoulders gave a faint twitch, she turned off into a side passage, he followed her), ‘simply to clear up, to discover to what strange misunderstanding it is due that you are pleased to address me, a stranger to you … who … only
guessed
, to use your expression in your letter, that it was you writing to him … guessed it because during that literary matinée, you saw fit to pay him such … such obvious attention.’

All this little speech was delivered by Aratov in that ringing but unsteady voice in which very young people answer at examinations on a subject in which they are well prepared…. He was angry; he was furious…. It was just this fury which loosened his ordinarily not very ready tongue.

She still went on along the walk with rather slower steps…. Aratov, as before, walked after her, and as before saw only the old cape and the hat, also not a very new one. His vanity suffered at the idea that she must now be thinking: ‘I had only to make a sign — and he rushed at once!’

Aratov was silent … he expected her to answer him; but she did not utter a word.

‘I am ready to listen to you,’ he began again, ‘and shall be very glad if I can be of use to you in any way … though I am, I confess, surprised … considering the retired life I lead….’

At these last words of his, Clara suddenly turned to him, and he beheld such a terrified, such a deeply - wounded face, with such large bright tears in the eyes, such a pained expression about the parted lips, and this face was so lovely, that he involuntarily faltered, and himself felt something akin to terror and pity and softening.

‘Ah, why … why are you like that?’ she said, with an irresistibly genuine and truthful force, and how movingly her voice rang out! ‘Could my turning to you be offensive to you?… is it possible you have understood nothing?… Ah, yes! you have understood nothing, you did not understand what I said to you, God knows what you have been imagining about me, you have not even dreamed what it cost me — to write to you!… You thought of nothing but yourself, your own dignity, your peace of mind!… But is it likely I’ … (she squeezed her hands raised to her lips so hard, that the fingers gave a distinct crack)…. ‘As though I made any sort of demands of you, as though explanations were necessary first….

“My dear madam,… I am, I confess, surprised,… if I can be of any use” … Ah! I am mad! — I was mistaken in you — in your face!… when I saw you the first time …! Here … you stand…. If only one word. What, not one word?’

She ceased…. Her face suddenly flushed, and as suddenly took a wrathful and insolent expression. ‘Mercy! how idiotic this is!’ she cried suddenly, with a shrill laugh. ‘How idiotic our meeting is! What a fool I am!… and you too…. Ugh!’

She gave a contemptuous wave of her hand, as though motioning him out of her road, and passing him, ran quickly out of the boulevard, and vanished.

The gesture of her hand, the insulting laugh, and the last exclamation, at once carried Aratov back to his first frame of mind, and stifled the feeling that had sprung up in his heart when she turned to him with tears in her eyes. He was angry again, and almost shouted after the retreating girl: ‘You may make a good actress, but why did you think fit to play off this farce on me?’

He returned home with long strides, and though he still felt anger and indignation all the way, yet across these evil, malignant feelings, unconsciously, the memory forced itself of the exquisite face he had seen for a single moment only…. He even put himself the question, ‘Why did I not answer her when she asked of me only a word? I had not time,’ he thought. ‘She did not let me utter the word … and what word could I have uttered?’

But he shook his head at once, and murmured reproachfully, ‘Actress!’

And again, at the same time, the vanity of the inexperienced nervous youth, at first wounded, was now, as it were, flattered at having any way inspired such a passion….

‘Though by now,’ he pursued his reflections, ‘it’s all over, of course….

I must have seemed absurd to her.’…

This idea was disagreeable to him, and again he was angry … both with her … and with himself. On reaching home, he shut himself up in his study. He did not want to see Platosha. The good old lady came twice to his locked door, put her ear to the keyhole, and only sighed and murmured her prayer.

‘It has begun!’ she thought…. ‘And he only five - and - twenty! Ah, it’s early, it’s early!’

VIII

All the following day Aratov was in very low spirits. ‘What is it, Yasha?’ Platonida Ivanovna said to him: ‘you seem somehow all loose ends to - day!’… In her own peculiar idiom the old lady’s expression described fairly accurately Aratov’s mental condition. He could not work and he did not know himself what he wanted. At one time he was eagerly on the watch for Kupfer, again he suspected that it was from Kupfer that Clara had got his address … and from where else could she ‘have heard so much about him’? Then he wondered: was it possible his acquaintance with her was to end like this? Then he fancied she would write to him again; then he asked himself whether he ought not to write her a letter, explaining everything, since he did not at all like leaving an unfavourable impression of himself…. But exactly what to explain? Then he stirred up in himself almost a feeling of repulsion for her, for her insistence, her impertinence; and then again he saw that unutterably touching face and heard an irresistible voice; then he recalled her singing, her recitation — and could not be sure whether he had been right in his wholesale condemnation of it. In fact, he was all loose ends! At last he was heartily sick of it, and resolved to keep a firm hand over himself, as it is called, and to obliterate the whole incident, as it was unmistakably hindering his studies and destroying his peace of mind. It turned out not so easy to carry out this resolution … more than a week passed by before he got back into his old accustomed groove. Luckily Kupfer did not turn up at all; he was in fact out of Moscow. Not long before the incident, Aratov had begun to work at painting in connection with his photographic plans; he set to work upon it now with redoubled zest.

So, imperceptibly, with a few (to use the doctors’ expression) ‘symptoms of relapse,’ manifested, for instance, in his once almost deciding to call upon the princess, two months passed … then three months … and Aratov was the old Aratov again. Only somewhere down below, under the surface of his life, something like a dark and burdensome secret dogged him wherever he went. So a great fish just caught on the hook, but not yet drawn up, will swim at the bottom of a deep stream under the very boat where the angler sits with a stout rod in his hand.

And one day, skimming through a not quite new number of the
Moscow

Gazette
, Aratov lighted upon the following paragraph:

‘With the greatest regret,’ wrote some local contributor from Kazan, ‘we must add to our dramatic record the news of the sudden death of our gifted actress Clara Militch, who had succeeded during the brief period of her engagement in becoming a favourite of our discriminating public. Our regret is the more poignant from the fact that Miss Militch by her own act cut short her young life, so full of promise, by means of poison. And this dreadful deed was the more awful through the talented actress taking the fatal drug in the theatre itself. She had scarcely been taken home when to the universal grief, she expired. There is a rumour in the town that an unfortunate love affair drove her to this terrible act.’

Aratov slowly laid the paper on the table. In outward appearance he remained perfectly calm … but at once something seemed to strike him a blow in the chest and the head — and slowly the shock passed on through all his limbs. He got up, stood still on the spot, and sat down again, again read through the paragraph. Then he got up again, lay down on the bed, and clasping his hands behind, stared a long while at the wall, as though dazed. By degrees the wall seemed to fade away … vanished … and he saw facing him the boulevard under the grey sky, and
her
in her black cape … then her on the platform … saw himself even close by her. That something which had given him such a violent blow in the chest at the first instant, began mounting now … mounting into his throat…. He tried to clear his throat; tried to call some one — but his voice failed him — and, to his own astonishment, tears rushed in torrents from his eyes … what called forth these tears? Pity? Remorse? Or was it simply his nerves could not stand the sudden shock?

Why, she was nothing to him? was she?

‘But, perhaps, it’s not true after all,’ the thought came as a sudden relief to him. ‘I must find out! But from whom? From the princess? No, from Kupfer … from Kupfer? But they say he’s not in Moscow — no matter, I must try him first!’

With these reflections in his head, Aratov dressed himself in haste, called a cab and drove to Kupfer’s.