Works of Ivan Turgenev (Illustrated) (215 page)

XIV

Platonida Ivanovna was unspeakably rejoiced at her nephew’s return. There was no terrible chance she had not imagined during his absence. ‘Siberia at least!’ she muttered, sitting rigidly still in her little room; ‘at least for a year!’ The cook too had terrified her by the most well - authenticated stories of the disappearance of this and that young man of the neighbourhood. The perfect innocence and absence of revolutionary ideas in Yasha did not in the least reassure the old lady. ‘For indeed … if you come to that, he studies photography … and that’s quite enough for them to arrest him!’ ‘And behold, here was her darling Yasha back again, safe and sound. She observed, indeed, that he seemed thinner, and looked hollow in the face; natural enough, with no one to look after him! but she did not venture to question him about his journey. She asked at dinner. ‘And is Kazan a fine town?’ ‘Yes,’ answered Aratov. ‘I suppose they’re all Tartars living there?’ ‘Not only Tartars.’ ‘And did you get a Kazan dressing - gown while you were there?’ ‘No, I didn’t.’ With that the conversation ended.

But as soon as Aratov found himself alone in his own room, he quickly felt as though something were enfolding him about, as though he were once more
in the power
, yes, in the power of another life, another being. Though he had indeed said to Anna in that sudden delirious outburst that he was in love with Clara, that saying struck even him now as senseless and frantic. No, he was not in love; and how could he be in love with a dead woman, whom he had not even liked in her lifetime, whom he had almost forgotten? No, but he was in
her
power … he no longer belonged to himself. He was
captured
. So completely captured, that he did not even attempt to free himself by laughing at his own absurdity, nor by trying to arouse if not a conviction, at least a hope in himself that it would all pass, that it was nothing but nerves, nor by seeking for proofs, nor by anything! ‘If I meet him, I will capture him,’ he recalled those words of Clara’s Anna had repeated to him. Well, he was captured. But was not she dead? Yes, her body was dead … but her soul?… is not that immortal?… does it need corporeal organs to show its power? Magnetism has proved to us the influence of one living human soul over another living human soul…. Why should not this influence last after death, if the soul remains living? But to what end? What can come of it? But can we, as a rule, apprehend what is the object of all that takes place about us? These ideas so absorbed Aratov that he suddenly asked Platosha at tea - time whether she believed in the immortality of the soul. She did not for the first minute understand what his question was, then she crossed herself and answered. ‘She should think so indeed! The soul not immortal!’ ‘And, if so, can it have any influence after death?’ Aratov asked again. The old lady replied that it could … pray for us, that is to say; at least, when it had passed through all its ordeals, awaiting the last dread judgment. But for the first forty days the soul simply hovered about the place where its death had occurred.

‘The first forty days?’

‘Yes; and then the ordeals follow.’

Aratov was astounded at his aunt’s knowledge, and went off to his room. And again he felt the same thing, the same power over him. This power showed itself in Clara’s image being constantly before him to the minutest details, such details as he seemed hardly to have observed in her lifetime; he saw … saw her fingers, her nails, the little hairs on her cheeks near her temples, the little mole under her left eye; he saw the slight movement of her lips, her nostrils, her eyebrows … and her walk, and how she held her head a little on the right side … he saw everything. He did not by any means take a delight in it all, only he could not help thinking of it and seeing it. The first night after his return he did not, however, dream of her … he was very tired, and slept like a log. But directly he waked up, she came back into his room again, and seemed to establish herself in it, as though she were the mistress, as though by her voluntary death she had purchased the right to it, without asking him or needing his permission. He took up her photograph, he began reproducing it, enlarging it. Then he took it into his head to fit it to the stereoscope. He had a great deal of trouble to do it … at last he succeeded. He fairly shuddered when through the glass he looked upon her figure, with the semblance of corporeal solidity given it by the stereoscope. But the figure was grey, as though covered with dust … and moreover the eyes — the eyes looked always to one side, as though turning away. A long, long while he stared at them, as though expecting them to turn to him … he even half - closed his eyelids on purpose … but the eyes remained immovable, and the whole figure had the look of some sort of doll. He moved away, flung himself in an armchair, took out the leaf from her diary, with the words underlined, and thought, ‘Well, lovers, they say, kiss the words traced by the hand of the beloved — but I feel no inclination to do that — and the handwriting I think ugly. But that line contains my sentence.’ Then he recalled the promise he had made Anna about the article. He sat down to the table, and set to work upon it, but everything he wrote struck him as so false, so rhetorical … especially so false … as though he did not believe in what he was writing nor in his own feelings…. And Clara herself seemed so utterly unknown and uncomprehended! She seemed to withhold herself from him. ‘No!’ he thought, throwing down the pen … ‘either authorship’s altogether not my line, or I must wait a little!’ He fell to recalling his visit to the Milovidovs, and all Anna had told him, that sweet, delightful Anna…. A word she had uttered — ’pure’ — suddenly struck him. It was as though something scorched him, and shed light. ‘Yes,’ he said aloud, ‘she was pure, and I am pure…. That’s what gave her this power.’

Thoughts of the immortality of the soul, of the life beyond the grave crowded upon him again. Was it not said in the Bible: ‘Death, where is thy sting?’ And in Schiller: ‘And the dead shall live!’ (Auch die Todten sollen leben!)

And too, he thought, in Mitskevitch: ‘I will love thee to the end of time … and beyond it!’ And an English writer had said: ‘Love is stronger than death.’ The text from Scripture produced particular effect on Aratov…. He tried to find the place where the words occurred…. He had no Bible; he went to ask Platosha for one. She wondered, she brought out, however, a very old book in a warped leather binding, with copper clasps, covered with candle wax, and handed it over to Aratov. He bore it off to his own room, but for a long time he could not find the text … he stumbled, however, on another: ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends’ (S. John xv. 13).

He thought: ‘That’s not right. It ought to be: Greater
power
hath no man.’

‘But if she did not lay down her life for me at all? If she made an end of herself simply because life had become a burden to her? What if, after all, she did not come to that meeting for anything to do with love at all?’

But at that instant he pictured to himself Clara before their parting on the boulevard…. He remembered the look of pain on her face, and the tears and the words, ‘Ah, you understood nothing!’

No! he could have no doubt why and for whom she had laid down her life….

So passed that whole day till night - time.

XV

Aratov went to bed early, without feeling specially sleepy, but he hoped to find repose in bed. The strained condition of his nerves brought about an exhaustion far more unbearable than the bodily fatigue of the journey and the railway. However, exhausted as he was, he could not get to sleep. He tried to read … but the lines danced before his eyes. He put out the candle, and darkness reigned in his room. But still he lay sleepless, with his eyes shut…. And it began to seem to him some one was whispering in his ear…. ‘The beating of the heart, the pulse of the blood,’ he thought…. But the whisper passed into connected speech. Some one was talking in Russian hurriedly, plaintively, and indistinctly. Not one separate word could he catch…. But it was the voice of Clara.

Aratov opened his eyes, raised himself, leaned on his elbow…. The voice grew fainter, but kept up its plaintive, hurried talk, indistinct as before….

It was unmistakably Clara’s voice.

Unseen fingers ran light arpeggios up and down the keys of the piano … then the voice began again. More prolonged sounds were audible … as it were moans … always the same over and over again. Then apart from the rest the words began to stand out … ‘Roses … roses … roses….’

‘Roses,’ repeated Aratov in a whisper. ‘Ah, yes! it’s the roses I saw on that woman’s head in the dream.’… ‘Roses,’ he heard again.

‘Is that you?’ Aratov asked in the same whisper. The voice suddenly ceased.

Aratov waited … and waited, and dropped his head on the pillow. ‘Hallucinations of hearing,’ he thought. ‘But if … if she really were here, close at hand?… If I were to see her, should I be frightened? or glad? But what should I be frightened of? or glad of? Why, of this, to be sure; it would be a proof that there is another world, that the soul is immortal. Though, indeed, even if I did see something, it too might be a hallucination of the sight….’

He lighted the candle, however, and in a rapid glance, not without a certain dread, scanned the whole room … and saw nothing in it unusual. He got up, went to the stereoscope … again the same grey doll, with its eyes averted. The feeling of dread gave way to one of annoyance. He was, as it were, cheated in his expectations … the very expectation indeed struck him as absurd.

‘Well, this is positively idiotic!’ he muttered, as he got back into bed, and blew out the candle. Profound darkness reigned once more.

Aratov resolved to go to sleep this time…. But a fresh sensation started up in him. He fancied some one was standing in the middle of the room, not far from him, and scarcely perceptibly breathing. He turned round hastily and opened his eyes…. But what could be seen in impenetrable darkness? He began to feel for a match on his little bedside table … and suddenly it seemed to him that a sort of soft, noiseless hurricane was passing over the whole room, over him, through him, and the word ‘I!’ sounded distinctly in his ears….

‘I!… I!’…Some instants passed before he succeeded in getting the candle alight.

Again there was no one in the room; and he now heard nothing, except the uneven throbbing of his own heart. He drank a glass of water, and stayed still, his head resting on his hand. He was waiting.

He thought: ‘I will wait. Either it’s all nonsense … or she is here. She is not going to play cat and mouse with me like this!’ He waited, waited long … so long that the hand on which he was resting his head went numb … but not one of his previous sensations was repeated. Twice his eyes closed…. He opened them promptly … at least he believed that he opened them. Gradually they turned towards the door and rested on it. The candle burned dim, and it was once more dark in the room … but the door made a long streak of white in the half darkness. And now this patch began to move, to grow less, to disappear … and in its place, in the doorway appeared a woman’s figure. Aratov looked intently at it … Clara! And this time she was looking straight at him, coming towards him…. On her head was a wreath of red roses…. He was all in agitation, he sat up….

Before him stood his aunt in a nightcap adorned with a broad red ribbon, and in a white dressing - jacket.

‘Platosha!’ he said with an effort. ‘Is that you?’

‘Yes, it’s I,’ answered Platonida Ivanovna … ‘I, Yasha darling, yes.’

‘What have you come for?’

‘You waked me up. At first you kept moaning as it were … and then you cried out all of a sudden, “Save me! help me! “‘

‘I cried out?’

‘Yes, and such a hoarse cry, “Save me!” I thought, Mercy on us! He’s never ill, is he? And I came in. Are you quite well?’

‘Perfectly well.’

‘Well, you must have had a bad dream then. Would you like me to burn a little incense?’

Aratov once more stared intently at his aunt, and laughed aloud…. The figure of the good old lady in her nightcap and dressing - jacket, with her long face and scared expression, was certainly very comic. All the mystery surrounding him, oppressing him — everything weird was sent flying instantaneously.

‘No, Platosha dear, there’s no need,’ he said. ‘Please forgive me for unwittingly troubling you. Sleep well, and I will sleep too.’

Platonida Ivanovna remained a minute standing where she was, pointed to the candle, grumbled, ‘Why not put it out … an accident happens in a minute?’ and as she went out, could not refrain, though only at a distance, from making the sign of the cross over him.

Aratov fell asleep quickly, and slept till morning. He even got up in a happy frame of mind … though he felt sorry for something…. He felt light and free. ‘What romantic fancies, if you come to think of it!’ he said to himself with a smile. He never once glanced either at the stereoscope, or at the page torn out of the diary. Immediately after breakfast, however, he set off to go to Kupfer’s.

What drew him there … he was dimly aware.