Works of Ivan Turgenev (Illustrated) (304 page)

In the doorway of the drawing - room Mr. Ratsch was already on the look - out for me, dressed in a gay - coloured dressing - gown. Beckoning to me with his hand, he led me to his own room — I had almost said, to his lair. The room, dark and close, soaked through and through with the sour smell of stale tobacco, suggested a comparison with the lair of a wolf or a fox.

XXIV

‘Rupture! rupture of the external... of the external covering.... You understand.., the envelopes of the heart!’ said Mr. Ratsch, directly the door closed. ‘Such a misfortune! Only yesterday evening there was nothing to notice, and all of a sudden, all in a minute, all was over! It’s a true saying, “heute roth, morgen todt!” It’s true; it’s what was to be expected. I always expected it. At Tambov the regimental doctor, Galimbovsky, Vikenty Kasimirovitch.... you’ve probably heard of him... a first - rate medical man, a specialist — ’

‘It’s the first time I’ve heard the name,’ I observed.

‘Well, no matter; any way he was always,’ pursued Mr. Ratsch, at first in a low voice, and then louder and louder, and, to my surprise, with a perceptible German accent, ‘he was always warning me: “Ay, Ivan Demianitch! ay! my dear boy, you must be careful! Your stepdaughter has an organic defect in the heart — hypertrophia cordialis! The least thing and there’ll be trouble! She must avoid all exciting emotions above all.... You must appeal to her reason.”... But, upon my word, with a young lady... can one appeal to reason? Ha... ha... ha...’

Mr. Ratsch was, through long habit, on the point of laughing, but he recollected himself in time, and changed the incipient guffaw into a cough.

And this was what Mr. Ratsch said! After all that I had found out about him!... I thought it my duty, however, to ask him whether a doctor was called in.

Mr. Ratsch positively bounced into the air.

‘To be sure there was.... Two were summoned, but it was already over — abgemacht! And only fancy, both, as though they were agreeing’ (Mr. Ratsch probably meant, as though they had agreed), ‘rupture! rupture of the heart! That’s what, with one voice, they cried out. They proposed a post - mortem; but I... you understand, did not consent to that.’

‘And the funeral’s to - morrow?’ I queried.

‘Yes, yes, to - morrow, to - morrow we bury our dear one! The procession will leave the house precisely at eleven o’clock in the morning.... From here to the church of St. Nicholas on Hen’s Legs... what strange names your Russian churches do have, you know! Then to the last resting - place in mother earth. You will come! We have not been long acquainted, but I make bold to say, the amiability of your character and the elevation of your sentiments!...’

I made haste to nod my head.

‘Yes, yes, yes,’ sighed Mr. Ratsch. ‘It... it really has been, as they say, a thunderbolt from a clear sky! Ein Blitz aus heiterem Himmel!’

‘And Susanna Ivanovna said nothing before her death, left nothing?’

‘Nothing, positively! Not a scrap of anything! Not a bit of paper! Only fancy, when they called me to her, when they waked me up — she was stiff already! Very distressing it was for me; she has grieved us all terribly! Alexander Daviditch will be sorry too, I dare say, when he knows.... They say he is not in Moscow.’

‘He did leave town for a few days...’ I began.

‘Viktor Ivanovitch is complaining they’re so long getting his sledge harnessed,’ interrupted a servant girl coming in — the same girl I had seen in the passage. Her face, still looking half - awake, struck me this time by the expression of coarse insolence to be seen in servants when they know that their masters are in their power, and that they do not dare to find fault or be exacting with them.

‘Directly, directly,’ Ivan Demianitch responded nervously. ‘Eleonora Karpovna! Leonora! Lenchen! come here!’

There was a sound of something ponderous moving the other side of the door, and at the same instant I heard Viktor’s imperious call: ‘Why on earth don’t they put the horses in? You don’t catch me trudging off to the police on foot!’

‘Directly, directly,’ Ivan Demianitch faltered again. ‘Eleonora Karpovna, come here!’

‘But, Ivan Demianitch,’ I heard her voice, ‘ich habe keine Toilette gemacht!’

‘Macht nichts. Komm herein!’

Eleonora Karpovna came in, holding a kerchief over her neck with two fingers. She had on a morning wrapper, not buttoned up, and had not yet done her hair. Ivan Demianitch flew up to her.

‘You hear, Viktor’s calling for the horses,’ he said, hurriedly pointing his finger first to the door, then to the window. ‘Please, do see to it, as quick as possible! Der Kerl schreit so!’

‘Der Viktor schreit immer, Ivan Demianitch, Sie wissen wohl,’ responded Eleonora Karpovna, ‘and I have spoken to the coachman myself, but he’s taken it into his head to give the horses oats. Fancy, what a calamity to happen so suddenly,’ she added, turning to me; ‘who could have expected such a thing of Susanna Ivanovna?’

‘I was always expecting it, always!’ cried Ratsch, and threw up his arms, his dressing - gown flying up in front as he did so, and displaying most repulsive unmentionables of chamois leather, with buckles on the belt. ‘Rupture of the heart! rupture of the external membrane! Hypertrophy!’

‘To be sure,’ Eleonora Karpovna repeated after him, ‘hyper... Well, so it is. Only it’s a terrible, terrible grief to me, I say again...’ And her coarse - featured face worked a little, her eyebrows rose into the shape of triangles, and a tiny tear rolled over her round cheek, that looked varnished like a doll’s.... ‘I’m very sorry that such a young person who ought to have lived and enjoyed everything... everything... And to fall into despair so suddenly!’

‘Na! gut, gut... geh, alte!’ Mr. Ratsch cut her short.

‘Geh’ schon, geh’ schon,’ muttered Eleonora Karpovna, and she went away, still holding the kerchief with her fingers, and shedding tears.

And I followed her. In the passage stood Viktor in a student’s coat with a beaver collar and a cap stuck jauntily on one side. He barely glanced at me over his shoulder, shook his collar up, and did not nod to me, for which I mentally thanked him.

I went back to Fustov.

XXV

I found my friend sitting in a corner of his room with downcast head and arms folded across his breast. He had sunk into a state of numbness, and he gazed around him with the slow, bewildered look of a man who has slept very heavily and has only just been waked. I told him all about my visit to Ratsch’s, repeated the veteran’s remarks and those of his wife, described the impression they had made on me and informed him of my conviction that the unhappy girl had taken her own life.... Fustov listened to me with no change of expression, and looked about him with the same bewildered air.

‘Did you see her?’ he asked me at last.

‘Yes.’

‘In the coffin?’

Fustov seemed to doubt whether Susanna were really dead.

‘In the coffin.’

Fustov’s face twitched and he dropped his eyes and softly rubbed his hands.

‘Are you cold?’ I asked him.

‘Yes, old man, I’m cold,’ he answered hesitatingly, and he shook his head stupidly.

I began to explain my reasons for thinking that Susanna had poisoned herself or perhaps had been poisoned, and that the matter could not be left so....

Fustov stared at me.

‘Why, what is there to be done?’ he said, slowly opening his eyes wide and slowly closing them. ‘Why, it’ll be worse... if it’s known about. They won’t bury her. We must let things... alone.’

This idea, simple as it was, had never entered my head. My friend’s practical sense had not deserted him.

‘When is... her funeral?’ he went on.

‘To - morrow.’

‘Are you going?’

‘Yes.’

‘To the house or straight to the church?’

‘To the house and to the church too; and from there to the cemetery.’

‘But I shan’t go... I can’t, I can’t!’ whispered Fustov and began crying. It was at these same words that he had broken into sobs in the morning. I have noticed that it is often so with weeping; as though to certain words, for the most of no great meaning, — but just to these words and to no others — it is given to open the fount of tears in a man, to break him down, and to excite in him the feeling of pity for others and himself... I remember a peasant woman was once describing before me the sudden death of her daughter, and she fairly dissolved and could not go on with her tale as soon as she uttered the phrase, ‘I said to her, Fekla. And she says, “Mother, where have you put the salt... the salt... sa - alt?”‘ The word ‘salt’ overpowered her.

But again, as in the morning, I was but little moved by Fustov’s tears. I could not conceive how it was he did not ask me if Susanna had not left something for him. Altogether their love for one another was a riddle to me; and a riddle it remained to me.

After weeping for ten minutes Fustov got up, lay down on the sofa, turned his face to the wall, and remained motionless. I waited a little, but seeing that he did not stir, and made no answer to my questions, I made up my mind to leave him. I am perhaps doing him injustice, but I almost believe he was asleep. Though indeed that would be no proof that he did not feel sorrow... only his nature was so constituted as to be unable to support painful emotions for long... His nature was too awfully well - balanced!

XXVI

The next day exactly at eleven o’clock I was at the place. Fine hail was falling from the low - hanging sky, there was a slight frost, a thaw was close at hand, but there were cutting, disagreeable gusts of wind flitting across in the air.... It was the most thoroughly Lenten, cold - catching weather. I found Mr. Ratsch on the steps of his house. In a black frock - coat adorned with crape, with no hat on his head, he fussed about, waved his arms, smote himself on the thighs, shouted up to the house, and then down into the street, in the direction of the funeral car with a white catafalque, already standing there with two hired carriages. Near it four garrison soldiers, with mourning capes over their old coats, and mourning hats pulled over their screwed - up eyes, were pensively scratching in the crumbling snow with the long stems of their unlighted torches. The grey shock of hair positively stood up straight above the red face of Mr. Ratsch, and his voice, that brazen voice, was cracking from the strain he was putting on it. ‘Where are the pine branches? pine branches! this way! the branches of pine!’ he yelled. ‘They’ll be bearing out the coffin directly! The pine! Hand over those pine branches! Look alive!’ he cried once more, and dashed into the house. It appeared that in spite of my punctuality, I was late: Mr. Ratsch had thought fit to hurry things forward. The service in the house was already over; the priests — of whom one wore a calotte, and the other, rather younger, had most carefully combed and oiled his hair — appeared with all their retinue on the steps. The coffin too appeared soon after, carried by a coachman, two door - keepers, and a water - carrier. Mr. Ratsch walked behind, with the tips of his fingers on the coffin lid, continually repeating, ‘Easy, easy!’ Behind him waddled Eleonora Karpovna in a black dress, also adorned with crape, surrounded by her whole family; after all of them, Viktor stepped out in a new uniform with a sword with crape round the handle. The coffin - bearers, grumbling and altercating among themselves, laid the coffin on the hearse; the garrison soldiers lighted their torches, which at once began crackling and smoking; a stray old woman, who had joined herself on to the party, raised a wail; the deacons began to chant, the fine snow suddenly fell faster and whirled round like ‘white flies.’ Mr. Ratsch bawled, ‘In God’s name! start!’ and the procession started. Besides Mr. Ratsch’s family, there were in all five men accompanying the hearse: a retired and extremely shabby officer of roads and highways, with a faded Stanislas ribbon — not improbably hired — on his neck; the police superintendent’s assistant, a diminutive man with a meek face and greedy eyes; a little old man in a fustian smock; an extremely fat fishmonger in a tradesman’s bluejacket, smelling strongly of his calling, and I. The absence of the female sex (for one could hardly count as such two aunts of Eleonora Karpovna, sisters of the sausagemaker, and a hunchback old maiden lady with blue spectacles on her blue nose), the absence of girl friends and acquaintances struck me at first; but on thinking it over I realised that Susanna, with her character, her education, her memories, could not have made friends in the circle in which she was living. In the church there were a good many people assembled, more outsiders than acquaintances, as one could see by the expression of their faces. The service did not last long. What surprised me was that Mr. Ratsch crossed himself with great fervour, quite as though he were of the orthodox faith, and even chimed in with the deacons in the responses, though only with the notes not with the words. When at last it came to taking leave of the dead, I bowed low, but did not give the last kiss. Mr. Ratsch, on the contrary, went through this terrible ordeal with the utmost composure, and with a deferential inclination of his person invited the officer of the Stanislas ribbon to the coffin, as though offering him entertainment, and picking his children up under the arms swung them up in turn and held them up to the body. Eleonora Karpovna, on taking farewell of Susanna, suddenly broke into a roar that filled the church; but she was soon soothed and continually asked in an exasperated whisper, ‘But where’s my reticule?’ Viktor held himself aloof, and seemed to be trying by his whole demeanour to convey that he was out of sympathy with all such customs and was only performing a social duty. The person who showed the most sympathy was the little old man in the smock, who had been, fifteen years before, a land surveyor in the Tambov province, and had not seen Ratsch since then. He did not know Susanna at all, but had drunk a couple of glasses of spirits at the sideboard before starting. My aunt had also come to the church. She had somehow or other found out that the deceased woman was the very lady who had paid me a visit, and had been thrown into a state of indescribable agitation! She could not bring herself to suspect me of any sort of misconduct, but neither could she explain such a strange chain of circumstances.... Not improbably she imagined that Susanna had been led by love for me to commit suicide, and attired in her darkest garments, with an aching heart and tears, she prayed on her knees for the peace of the soul of the departed, and put a rouble candle before the picture of the Consolation of Sorrow.... ‘Amishka’ had come with her too, and she too prayed, but was for the most part gazing at me, horror - stricken.... That elderly spinster, alas! did not regard me with indifference. On leaving the church, my aunt distributed all her money, more than ten roubles, among the poor.