Works of Ivan Turgenev (Illustrated) (225 page)
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Authors: IVAN TURGENEV
While she had been walking to the fatal spot she had been in a fever, but she controlled herself. The disappearance of the dead body came upon her as a final blow. She was struck dumb. I feared for her reason. With great difficulty I got her home. I made her lie down again on her bed, again I sent for the doctor, but as soon as my mother had recovered herself a little, she at one desired me to set off without delay to find out ‘that man.’ I obeyed. But, in spite of every possible effort, I discovered nothing. I went several times to the police, visited several villages in the neighbourhood, put several advertisements in the papers, collected information in all directions, and all in vain! I received information, indeed, that the corpse of a drowned man had been picked up in one of the seaside villages near…. I at once hastened off there, but from all I could hear the body had no resemblance to the baron. I found out in what ship he had set sail for America; at first every one was positive that ship had gone down in the storm; but a few months later there were rumours that it had been seen riding at anchor in New York harbour. Not knowing what steps to take, I began seeking out the negro I had seen, offering him in the papers a considerable sum of money if he would call at our house. Some tall negro in a cloak did actually call on us in my absence…. But after questioning the maid, he abruptly departed, and never came back again.
So all traces were lost of my … my father; so he vanished into silence and darkness never to return. My mother and I never spoke of him; only one day, I remember, she expressed surprise that I had never told her before of my strange dream; and added, ‘It must mean he really….’, but did not utter all her thought. My mother was ill a long while, and even after her recovery our former close relations never returned. She was ill at ease with me to the day of her death…. Ill at ease was just what she was. And that is a trouble there is no cure for. Anything may be smoothed over, memories of even the most tragic domestic incidents gradually lose their strength and bitterness; but if once a sense of being ill at ease installs itself between two closely united persons, it can never be dislodged! I never again had the dream that had once so agitated me; I no longer ‘look for’ my father; but sometimes I fancied — and even now I fancy — that I hear, as it were, distant wails, as it were, never silent, mournful plaints; they seem to sound somewhere behind a high wall, which cannot be crossed; they wring my heart, and I weep with closed eyes, and am never able to tell what it is, whether it is a living man moaning, or whether I am listening to the wild, long - drawn - out howl of the troubled sea. And then it passes again into the muttering of some beast, and I fall asleep with anguish and horror in my heart.
Translated by Constance Garnett, 1895
This collection of short stories, first published in book form in 1852, were Turgenev’s first printed work and at once established his reputation as an up and coming writer of fiction.
The short stories are based on his own observations while hunting at his mother’s estate at Spasskoye, where he learned of the abuse of the serfs and the injustices of the Russian system that enslaved them. The frequent abuse of Turgenev by his mother certainly had an effect on this work. The stories were first published in
The Contemporary
with each story in a separate magazine. He was about to give up writing when the first story
Khor and Khalinich
received acclaim.
The collection is part of the Russian Realist tradition, featuring a narrator that is usually an uncommitted observer of the people he meets. The work as a whole actually led to Turgenev’s house arrest at Spasskoye and was later partly responsible for the abolishment of serfdom in Russia.
