Works of Ivan Turgenev (Illustrated) (387 page)
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Authors: IVAN TURGENEV
The last day of July; for a thousand versts around, Russia, our native land.
An unbroken blue flooding the whole sky; a single cloudlet upon it, half floating, half fading away. Windlessness, warmth … air like new milk!
Larks are trilling; pouter - pigeons cooing; noiselessly the swallows dart to and fro; horses are neighing and munching; the dogs do not bark and stand peaceably wagging their tails.
A smell of smoke and of hay, and a little of tar, too, and a little of hides. The hemp, now in full bloom, sheds its heavy, pleasant fragrance.
A deep but sloping ravine. Along its sides willows in rows, with big heads above, trunks cleft below. Through the ravine runs a brook; the tiny pebbles at its bottom are all aquiver through its clear eddies. In the distance, on the border - line between earth and heaven, the bluish streak of a great river.
Along the ravine, on one side, tidy barns, little storehouses with close - shut doors; on the other side, five or six pinewood huts with boarded roofs. Above each roof, the high pole of a pigeon - house; over each entry a little short - maned horse of wrought iron. The window - panes of faulty glass shine with all the colours of the rainbow. Jugs of flowers are painted on the shutters. Before each door, a little bench stands prim and neat; on the mounds of earth, cats are basking, their transparent ears pricked up alert; beyond the high door - sills, is the cool dark of the outer rooms.
I lie on the very edge of the ravine, on an outspread horse - cloth; all about are whole stacks of fresh - cut hay, oppressively fragrant. The sagacious husbandmen have flung the hay about before the huts; let it get a bit drier in the baking sunshine; and then into the barn with it. It will be first - rate sleeping on it.
Curly, childish heads are sticking out of every haycock; crested hens are looking in the hay for flies and little beetles, and a white - lipped pup is rolling among the tangled stalks.
Flaxen - headed lads in clean smocks, belted low, in heavy boots, leaning over an unharnessed waggon, fling each other smart volleys of banter, with broad grins showing their white teeth.
A round - faced young woman peeps out of window; laughs at their words or at the romps of the children in the mounds of hay.
Another young woman with powerful arms draws a great wet bucket out of the well…. The bucket quivers and shakes, spilling long, glistening drops.
Before me stands an old woman in a new striped petticoat and new shoes.
Fat hollow beads are wound in three rows about her dark thin neck, her grey head is tied up in a yellow kerchief with red spots; it hangs low over her failing eyes.
But there is a smile of welcome in the aged eyes; a smile all over the wrinkled face. The old woman has reached, I dare say, her seventieth year … and even now one can see she has been a beauty in her day.
With a twirl of her sunburnt finger, she holds in her right hand a bowl of cold milk, with the cream on it, fresh from the cellar; the sides of the bowl are covered with drops, like strings of pearls. In the palm of her left hand the old woman brings me a huge hunch of warm bread, as though to say, ‘Eat, and welcome, passing guest!’
A cock suddenly crows and fussily flaps his wings; he is slowly answered by the low of a calf, shut up in the stall.
‘My word, what oats!’ I hear my coachman saying…. Oh, the content, the quiet, the plenty of the Russian open country! Oh, the deep peace and well - being!
And the thought comes to me: what is it all to us here, the cross on the cupola of St. Sophia in Constantinople and all the rest that we are struggling for, we men of the town?
‘Neither the Jungfrau nor the Finsteraarhorn has yet been trodden by the foot of man!’
The topmost peaks of the Alps … A whole chain of rugged precipices …
The very heart of the mountains.
Over the mountain, a pale green, clear, dumb sky. Bitter, cruel frost; hard, sparkling snow; sticking out of the snow, the sullen peaks of the ice - covered, wind - swept mountains.
Two massive forms, two giants on the sides of the horizon, the Jungfrau and the Finsteraarhorn.
And the Jungfrau speaks to its neighbour: ‘What canst thou tell that is new? thou canst see more. What is there down below?’
A few thousand years go by: one minute. And the Finsteraarhorn roars back in answer: ‘Thick clouds cover the earth…. Wait a little!’
Thousands more years go by: one minute.
‘Well, and now?’ asks the Jungfrau.
‘Now I see, there below all is the same. There are blue waters, black forests, grey heaps of piled - up stones. Among them are still fussing to and fro the insects, thou knowest, the bipeds that have never yet once defiled thee nor me.’
‘Men?’
‘Yes, men.’
Thousands of years go by: one minute.
‘Well, and now?’ asks the Jungfrau.
‘There seem fewer insects to be seen,’ thunders the Finsteraarhorn, ‘it is clearer down below; the waters have shrunk, the forests are thinner.’ Again thousands of years go by: one minute.
‘What seeest thou?’ says the Jungfrau.
‘Close about us it seems purer,’ answers the Finsteraarhorn, ‘but there in the distance in the valleys are still spots, and something is moving.’ ‘And now?’ asks the Jungfrau, after more thousands of years: one minute.
‘Now it is well,’ answers the Finsteraarhorn, ‘it is clean everywhere, quite white, wherever you look … Everywhere is our snow, unbroken snow and ice. Everything is frozen. It is well now, it is quiet.’
‘Good,’ said the Jungfrau. ‘But we have gossipped enough, old fellow. It’s time to slumber.’
‘It is time, indeed.’
The huge mountains sleep; the green, clear sky sleeps over the region of eternal silence.
February 1878.
I was walking over a wide plain alone.
And suddenly I fancied light, cautious footsteps behind my back…. Some one was walking after me.
I looked round, and saw a little, bent old woman, all muffled up in grey rags. The face of the old woman alone peeped out from them; a yellow, wrinkled, sharp - nosed, toothless face.
I went up to her…. She stopped.
‘Who are you? What do you want? Are you a beggar? Do you seek alms?’
The old woman did not answer. I bent down to her, and noticed that both her eyes were covered with a half - transparent membrane or skin, such as is seen in some birds; they protect their eyes with it from dazzling light.
But in the old woman, the membrane did not move nor uncover the eyes … from which I concluded she was blind.
‘Do you want alms?’ I repeated my question. ‘Why are you following me?’ But the old woman as before made no answer, but only shrank into herself a little.
I turned from her and went on my way.
And again I hear behind me the same light, measured, as it were, stealthy steps.
‘Again that woman!’ I thought, ‘why does she stick to me?’ But then, I added inwardly, ‘Most likely she has lost her way, being blind, and now is following the sound of my steps so as to get with me to some inhabited place. Yes, yes, that’s it.’
But a strange uneasiness gradually gained possession of my mind. I began to fancy that the old woman was not only following me, but that she was directing me, that she was driving me to right and to left, and that I was unwittingly obeying her.
I still go on, however … but, behold, before me, on my very road, something black and wide … a kind of hole…. ‘A grave!’ flashed through my head. ‘That is where she is driving me!’
I turned sharply back. The old woman faced me again … but she sees! She is looking at me with big, cruel, malignant eyes … the eyes of a bird of prey…. I stoop down to her face, to her eyes…. Again the same opaque membrane, the same blind, dull countenance….
‘Ah!’ I think, ‘this old woman is my fate. The fate from which there is no escape for man!’
‘No escape! no escape! What madness…. One must try.’ And I rush away in another direction.
I go swiftly…. But light footsteps as before patter behind me, close, close…. And before me again the dark hole.
Again I turn another way…. And again the same patter behind, and the same menacing blur of darkness before.
And whichever way I run, doubling like a hunted hare … it’s always the same, the same!
‘Wait!’ I think, ‘I will cheat her! I will go nowhere!’ and I instantly sat down on the ground.
The old woman stands behind, two paces from me. I do not hear her, but I feel she is there.
And suddenly I see the blur of darkness in the distance is floating, creeping of itself towards me!
God! I look round again … the old woman looks straight at me, and her toothless mouth is twisted in a grin.
No escape!
Us two in the room; my dog and me…. Outside a fearful storm is howling.
The dog sits in front of me, and looks me straight in the face.
And I, too, look into his face.
He wants, it seems, to tell me something. He is dumb, he is without words, he does not understand himself — but I understand him.
I understand that at this instant there is living in him and in me the same feeling, that there is no difference between us. We are the same; in each of us there burns and shines the same trembling spark.
Death sweeps down, with a wave of its chill broad wing….
And the end!
Who then can discern what was the spark that glowed in each of us?
No! We are not beast and man that glance at one another….
They are the eyes of equals, those eyes riveted on one another.
And in each of these, in the beast and in the man, the same life huddles up in fear close to the other.
February 1878.
I had a comrade who was my adversary; not in pursuits, nor in service, nor in love, but our views were never alike on any subject, and whenever we met, endless argument arose between us.
We argued about everything: about art, and religion, and science, about life on earth and beyond the grave, especially about life beyond the grave.
He was a person of faith and enthusiasm. One day he said to me, ‘You laugh at everything; but if I die before you, I will come to you from the other world…. We shall see whether you will laugh then.’
And he did, in fact, die before me, while he was still young; but the years went by, and I had forgotten his promise, his threat.
One night I was lying in bed, and could not, and, indeed, would not sleep.
In the room it was neither dark nor light. I fell to staring into the grey twilight.
And all at once, I fancied that between the two windows my adversary was standing, and was slowly and mournfully nodding his head up and down.
I was not frightened; I was not even surprised … but raising myself a little, and propping myself on my elbow, I stared still more intently at the unexpected apparition.
The latter continued to nod his head.
‘Well?’ I said at last; ‘are you triumphant or regretful? What is this — warning or reproach?… Or do you mean to give me to understand that you were wrong, that we were both wrong? What are you experiencing? The torments of hell? Or the bliss of paradise? Utter one word at least!’
But my opponent did not utter a single sound, and only, as before, mournfully and submissively nodded his head up and down.
I laughed … he vanished.
February 1878.
