Works of Ivan Turgenev (Illustrated) (217 page)
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Authors: IVAN TURGENEV
When Platonida Ivanovna came in to him next morning, he was still in the same position … but the weakness had not passed off, and he actually preferred to remain in bed. Platonida Ivanovna did not like the pallor of his face at all. ‘Lord, have mercy on us! what is it?’ she thought; ‘not a drop of blood in his face, refuses broth, lies there and smiles, and keeps declaring he’s perfectly well!’ He refused breakfast too. ‘What is the matter with you, Yasha?’ she questioned him; ‘do you mean to lie in bed all day?’ ‘And what if I did?’ Aratov answered gently. This very gentleness again Platonida Ivanovna did not like at all. Aratov had the air of a man who has discovered a great, very delightful secret, and is jealously guarding it and keeping it to himself. He was looking forward to the night, not impatiently, but with curiosity. ‘What next?’ he was asking himself; ‘what will happen?’ Astonishment, incredulity, he had ceased to feel; he did not doubt that he was in communication with Clara, that they loved one another … that, too, he had no doubt about. Only … what could come of such love? He recalled that kiss … and a delicious shiver ran swiftly and sweetly through all his limbs. ‘Such a kiss,’ was his thought, ‘even Romeo and Juliet knew not! But next time I will be stronger…. I will master her…. She shall come with a wreath of tiny roses in her dark curls….
‘But what next? We cannot live together, can we? Then must I die so as to be with her? Is it not for that she has come; and is it not
so
she means to take me captive?
‘Well; what then? If I must die, let me die. Death has no terrors for me now. It cannot, then, annihilate me? On the contrary, only
thus
and
there
can I be happy … as I have not been happy in life, as she has not…. We are both pure! Oh, that kiss!’
* * * * *
Platonida Ivanovna was incessantly coming into Aratov’s room. She did not worry him with questions; she merely looked at him, muttered, sighed, and went out again. But he refused his dinner too: this was really too dreadful. The old lady set off to an acquaintance of hers, a district doctor, in whom she placed some confidence, simply because he did not drink and had a German wife. Aratov was surprised when she brought him in to see him; but Platonida Ivanovna so earnestly implored her darling Yashenka to allow Paramon Paramonitch (that was the doctor’s name) to examine him — if only for her sake — that Aratov consented. Paramon Paramonitch felt his pulse, looked at his tongue, asked a question, and announced at last that it was absolutely necessary for him to ‘auscultate’ him. Aratov was in such an amiable frame of mind that he agreed to this too. The doctor delicately uncovered his chest, delicately tapped, listened, hummed and hawed, prescribed some drops and a mixture, and, above all, advised him to keep quiet and avoid any excitement. ‘I dare say!’ thought Aratov; ‘that idea’s a little too late, my good friend!’ ‘What is wrong with Yasha?’ queried Platonida Ivanovna, as she slipped a three - rouble note into Paramon Paramonitch’s hand in the doorway. The district doctor, who like all modern physicians — especially those who wear a government uniform — was fond of showing off with scientific terms, announced that her nephew’s diagnosis showed all the symptoms of neurotic cardialgia, and there were febrile symptoms also. ‘Speak plainer, my dear sir; do,’ cut in Platonida Ivanovna; ‘don’t terrify me with your Latin; you’re not in your surgery!’ ‘His heart’s not right,’ the doctor explained; ‘and, well — there’s a little fever too’ … and he repeated his advice as to perfect quiet and absence of excitement. ‘But there’s no danger, is there?’ Platonida Ivanovna inquired severely (‘You dare rush off into Latin again,’ she implied.) ‘No need to anticipate any at present!’
The doctor went away … and Platonida Ivanovna grieved…. She sent to the surgery, though, for the medicine, which Aratov would not take, in spite of her entreaties. He refused any herb - tea too. ‘And why are you so uneasy, dear?’ he said to her; ‘I assure you, I’m at this moment the sanest and happiest man in the whole world!’ Platonida Ivanovna could only shake her head. Towards evening he grew rather feverish; and still he insisted that she should not stay in his room, but should go to sleep in her own. Platonida Ivanovna obeyed; but she did not undress, and did not lie down. She sat in an arm - chair, and was all the while listening and murmuring her prayers.
She was just beginning to doze, when suddenly she was awakened by a terrible piercing shriek. She jumped up, rushed into Aratov’s room, and as on the night before, found him lying on the floor.
But he did not come to himself as on the previous night, in spite of all they could do. He fell the same night into a high fever, complicated by failure of the heart.
A few days later he passed away.
A strange circumstance attended his second fainting - fit. When they lifted him up and laid him on his bed, in his clenched right hand they found a small tress of a woman’s dark hair. Where did this lock of hair come from? Anna Semyonovna had such a lock of hair left by Clara; but what could induce her to give Aratov a relic so precious to her? Could she have put it somewhere in the diary, and not have noticed it when she lent the book?
In the delirium that preceded his death, Aratov spoke of himself as Romeo … after the poison; spoke of marriage, completed and perfect; of his knowing now what rapture meant. Most terrible of all for Platosha was the minute when Aratov, coming a little to himself, and seeing her beside his bed, said to her, ‘Aunt, what are you crying for? — because I must die? But don’t you know that love is stronger than death?… Death! death! where is thy sting? You should not weep, but rejoice, even as I rejoice….’
And once more on the face of the dying man shone out the rapturous smile, which gave the poor old woman such cruel pain.
Translated by Constance Garnett, 1897
‘
One instant … and the fairy tale is over, And once again the actual fills the soul
…’ — A. FET.
CONTENTS
For a long time I could not get to sleep, and kept turning from side to side. ‘Confound this foolishness about table - turning!’ I thought. ‘It simply upsets one’s nerves.’… Drowsiness began to overtake me at last….
Suddenly it seemed to me as though there were the faint and plaintive sound of a harp - string in the room.
I raised my head. The moon was low in the sky, and looked me straight in the face. White as chalk lay its light upon the floor…. The strange sound was distinctly repeated.
I leaned on my elbow. A faint feeling of awe plucked at my heart. A minute passed, another…. Somewhere, far away, a cock crowed; another answered still more remote.
I let my head sink back on the pillow. ‘See what one can work oneself up to,’ I thought again,… ‘there’s a singing in my ears.’
After a little while I fell asleep — or I thought I fell asleep. I had an extraordinary dream. I fancied I was lying in my room, in my bed — and was not asleep, could not even close my eyes. And again I heard the sound…. I turned over…. The moonlight on the floor began softly to lift, to rise up, to round off slightly above…. Before me; impalpable as mist, a white woman was standing motionless.
‘Who are you?’ I asked with an effort.
A voice made answer, like the rustle of leaves: ‘It is I … I … I … I have come for you.’
‘For me? But who are you?’
‘Come by night to the edge of the wood where there stands an old oak - tree.
I will be there.’
I tried to look closely into the face of the mysterious woman — and suddenly I gave an involuntary shudder: there was a chilly breath upon me. And then I was not lying down, but sitting up in my bed; and where, as I fancied, the phantom had stood, the moonlight lay in a long streak of white upon the floor.
The day passed somehow. I tried, I remember, to read, to work … everything was a failure. The night came. My heart was throbbing within me, as though it expected something. I lay down, and turned with my face to the wall.
‘Why did you not come?’ sounded a distinct whisper in the room.
I looked round quickly.
Again she … again the mysterious phantom. Motionless eyes in a motionless face, and a gaze full of sadness.
‘Come!’ I heard the whisper again.
‘I will come,’ I replied with instinctive horror. The phantom bent slowly forward, and undulating faintly like smoke, melted away altogether. And again the moon shone white and untroubled on the smooth floor.
