Works of Ivan Turgenev (Illustrated) (222 page)
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Authors: IVAN TURGENEV
When I came to myself, I was lying on my back in the grass, feeling a dull ache all over me, as from a bad bruise. The dawn was beginning in the sky: I could clearly distinguish things. Not far off, alongside a birch copse, ran a road planted with willows: the country seemed familiar to me. I began to recollect what had happened to me, and shuddered all over directly my mind recalled the last, hideous apparition….
‘But what was Alice afraid of?’ I thought. ‘Can she too be subject to that power? Is she not immortal? Can she too be in danger of annihilation, dissolution? How is it possible?’
A soft moan sounded close by me. I turned my head. Two paces from me lay stretched out motionless a young woman in a white gown, with thick disordered tresses, with bare shoulders. One arm was thrown behind her head, the other had fallen on her bosom. Her eyes were closed, and on her tightly shut lips stood a fleck of crimson stain. Could it be Alice? But Alice was a phantom, and I was looking upon a living woman. I crept up to her, bent down….
‘Alice, is it you?’ I cried. Suddenly, slowly quivering, the wide eyelids rose; dark piercing eyes were fastened upon me, and at the same instant lips too fastened upon me, warm, moist, smelling of blood … soft arms twined tightly round my neck, a burning, full heart pressed convulsively to mine. ‘Farewell, farewell for ever!’ the dying voice uttered distinctly, and everything vanished.
I got up, staggering like a drunken man, and passing my hands several times over my face, looked carefully about me. I found myself near the high road, a mile and a half from my own place. The sun had just risen when I got home.
All the following nights I awaited — and I confess not without alarm — the appearance of my phantom; but it did not visit me again. I even set off one day, in the dusk, to the old oak, but nothing took place there out of the common. I did not, however, overmuch regret the discontinuance of this strange acquaintance. I reflected much and long over this inexplicable, almost unintelligible phenomenon; and I am convinced that not only science cannot explain it, but that even in fairy tales and legends nothing like it is to be met with. What was Alice, after all? An apparition, a restless soul, an evil spirit, a sylphide, a vampire, or what? Sometimes it struck me again that Alice was a woman I had known at some time or other, and I made tremendous efforts to recall where I had seen her…. Yes, yes, I thought sometimes, directly, this minute, I shall remember…. In a flash everything had melted away again like a dream. Yes, I thought a great deal, and, as is always the way, came to no conclusion. The advice or opinion of others I could not bring myself to invite; fearing to be taken for a madman. I gave up all reflection upon it at last; to tell the truth, I had no time for it. For one thing, the emancipation had come along with the redistribution of property, etc.; and for another, my own health failed; I suffered with my chest, with sleeplessness, and a cough. I got thin all over. My face was yellow as a dead man’s. The doctor declares I have too little blood, calls my illness by the Greek name, ‘anæmia,’ and is sending me to Gastein. The arbitrator swears that without me there’s no coming to an understanding with the peasants. Well, what’s one to do?
But what is the meaning of the piercingly - pure, shrill notes, the notes of an harmonica, which I hear directly any one’s death is spoken of before me? They keep growing louder, more penetrating…. And why do I shudder in such anguish at the mere thought of annihilation?
I was living at that time with my mother in a little seaside town. I was in my seventeenth year, while my mother was not quite five - and - thirty; she had married very young. When my father died, I was only seven years old, but I remember him well. My mother was a fair - haired woman, not very tall, with a charming, but always sad - looking face, a soft, tired voice and timid gestures. In her youth she had been reputed a beauty, and to the end she remained attractive and pretty. I have never seen deeper, tenderer, and sadder eyes, finer and softer hair; I never saw hands so exquisite. I adored her, and she loved me…. But our life was not a bright one; a secret, hopeless, undeserved sorrow seemed for ever gnawing at the very root of her being. This sorrow could not be accounted for by the loss of my father simply, great as that loss was to her, passionately as my mother had loved him, and devoutly as she had cherished his memory…. No! something more lay hidden in it, which I did not understand, but of which I was aware, dimly and yet intensely aware, whenever I looked into those soft and unchanging eyes, at those lips, unchanging too, not compressed in bitterness, but, as it were, for ever set in one expression.
I have said that my mother loved me; but there were moments when she repulsed me, when my presence was oppressive to her, unendurable. At such times she felt a sort of involuntary aversion for me, and was horrified afterwards, blamed herself with tears, pressed me to her heart. I used to ascribe these momentary outbreaks of dislike to the derangement of her health, to her unhappiness…. These antagonistic feelings might indeed, to some extent, have been evoked by certain strange outbursts of wicked and criminal passions, which arose from time to time in me, though I could not myself account for them….
But these evil outbursts were never coincident with the moments of aversion. My mother always wore black, as though in mourning. We were in fairly good circumstances, but we hardly knew any one.
My mother concentrated her every thought, her every care, upon me. Her life was wrapped up in my life. That sort of relation between parents and children is not always good for the children … it is rather apt to be harmful to them. Besides, I was my mother’s only son … and only children generally grow up in a one - sided way. In bringing them up, the parents think as much of themselves as of them…. That’s not the right way. I was neither spoiled nor made hard by it (one or the other is apt to be the fate of only children), but my nerves were unhinged for a time; moreover, I was rather delicate in health, taking after my mother, whom I was very like in face. I avoided the companionship of boys of my own age; I held aloof from people altogether; even with my mother I talked very little. I liked best reading, solitary walks, and dreaming, dreaming! What my dreams were about, it would be hard to say; sometimes, indeed, I seemed to stand at a half - open door, beyond which lay unknown mysteries, to stand and wait, half dead with emotion, and not to step over the threshold, but still pondering what lay beyond, still to wait till I turned faint … or fell asleep. If there had been a vein of poetry in me, I should probably have taken to writing verses; if I had felt an inclination for religion, I should perhaps have gone into a monastery; but I had no tendency of the sort, and I went on dreaming and waiting.
I have just mentioned that I used sometimes to fall asleep under the influence of vague dreams and reveries. I used to sleep a great deal at all times, and dreams played an important part in my life; I used to have dreams almost every night. I did not forget them, I attributed a significance to them, regarded them as fore - warnings, tried to divine their secret meaning; some of them were repeated from time to time, which always struck me as strange and marvellous. I was particularly perplexed by one dream. I dreamed I was going along a narrow, ill - paved street of an old - fashioned town, between stone houses of many stories, with pointed roofs. I was looking for my father, who was not dead, but, for some reason or other, hiding away from us, and living in one of these very houses. And so I entered a low, dark gateway, crossed a long courtyard, lumbered up with planks and beams, and made my way at last into a little room with two round windows. In the middle of the room stood my father in a dressing - gown, smoking a pipe. He was not in the least like my real father; he was tall and thin, with black hair, a hook nose, with sullen and piercing eyes; he looked about forty. He was displeased at my having found him; and I too was far from being delighted at our meeting, and stood still in perplexity. He turned a little away, began muttering something, and walking up and down with short steps…. Then he gradually got farther away, never ceasing his muttering, and continually looking back over his shoulder; the room grew larger and was lost in fog…. I felt all at once horrified at the idea that I was losing my father again, and rushed after him, but I could no longer see him, I could only hear his angry muttering, like a bear growling…. My heart sank with dread; I woke up and could not for a long while get to sleep again…. All the following day I pondered on this dream, and naturally could make nothing of it.
The month of June had come. The town in which I was living with my mother became exceptionally lively about that time. A number of ships were in the harbour, a number of new faces were to be seen in the streets. I liked at such times to wander along the sea front, by cafés and hotels, to stare at the widely differing figures of the sailors and other people, sitting under linen awnings, at small white tables, with pewter pots of beer before them.
As I passed one day before a café, I caught sight of a man who at once riveted my whole attention. Dressed in a long black full coat, with a straw hat pulled right down over his eyes, he was sitting perfectly still, his arms folded across his chest. The straggling curls of his black hair fell almost down to his nose; his thin lips held tight the mouthpiece of a short pipe. This man struck me as so familiar, every feature of his swarthy yellow face were so unmistakably imprinted in my memory, that I could not help stopping short before him, I could not help asking myself, ‘Who is that man? where have I seen him?’ Becoming aware, probably, of my intent stare, he raised his black, piercing eyes upon me…. I uttered an involuntary ‘Ah!’…
The man was the father I had been looking for, the father I had beheld in my dream!
There was no possibility of mistake — the resemblance was too striking. The very coat even, that wrapped his spare limbs in its long skirts, in hue and cut, recalled the dressing - gown in which my father had appeared in the dream.
‘Am I not asleep now?’ I wondered…. No…. It was daytime, about me crowds of people were bustling, the sun was shining brightly in the blue sky, and before me was no phantom, but a living man.
I went up to an empty table, asked for a pot of beer and a newspaper, and sat down not far off from this enigmatical being.
