A Sportsman's Sketches: Works of Ivan Turgenev 1

by Ivan Turgenev

  “Merci, merci,” said the countess. “Allons, allons, Monsieur Fox, montrez nous ça.”

  The waiter put the dish down on a little round table. There was a slight movement among the guests; several heads were craned forward; only the generals at the card - table preserved the serene solemnity of their pose. The spiritualist ruffled up his hair, frowned, and, approaching the table, began waving his hands in the air; the crab stretched itself, backed, and raised its claws. The spiritualist repeated and quickened his movements; the crab stretched itself as before. “Mais que doit - elle donc faire?” inquired the countess.

  “Elle doâ rester immobile et se dresser sur sa quiou,” replied Mr. Fox, with a strong American accent, and he brandished his fingers with convulsive energy over the dish; but the mesmerism had no effect, the crab continued to move. The spiritualist declared that he was not himself, and retired with an air of displeasure from the table. The countess began to console him, by assuring him that similar failures occurred sometimes even with Mr. Home. . . . Prince Kokó confirmed her words. The authority on the Apocalypse and the Talmud stealthily went up to the table, and making rapid but vigorous thrusts with his fingers in the direction of the crab, he too tried his luck, but without success; no symptom of catalepsy showed itself. Then the waiter was called, and told to take away the crab, which he accordingly did, grinning from ear to ear, as before; he could be heard exploding outside the door.

  There was much laughter afterwards in the kitchen über diese Russen. The self - taught genius, who had gone on striking notes during the experiments with the crab, dwelling on melancholy chords, on the ground that there was no knowing what influence music might have - - the self - taught genius played his invariable waltz, and, of course, was deemed worthy of the most flattering applause. Pricked on by rivalry, Count H., our incomparable dilettante (see Chapter I), gave a little song of his own composition, cribbed wholesale from Offenbach. Its playful refrain to the words: “Quel oeuf? quel boeuf?” set almost all the ladies’ heads swinging to right and to left; one went so far as to hum the tune lightly, and the irrepressible, inevitable word, “Charmant! charmant!” was fluttering on every one’s lips. Irina exchanged a glance with Litvinov, and again the same secret, ironical expression quivered about her lips. . . . But a little later it was still more strongly marked, there was even a shade of malice in it, when Prince Kokó, that representative and champion of the interests of the nobility, thought fit to propound his views to the spiritualist, and, of course, gave utterance before long to his famous phrase about the shock to the principle of property, accompanied naturally by an attack on democrats. The spiritualist’s American blood was stirred; he began to argue. The prince, as his habit was, at once fell to shouting at the top of his voice; instead of any kind of argument he repeated incessantly: “C’est absurde! cela n’a pas le sens commun!” The millionaire Finikov began saying insulting things, without much heed to whom they referred; the Talmudist’s piping notes and even the Countess S.’s jarring voice could be heard. . . . In fact, almost the same incongruous uproar arose as at Gubaryov’s; the only difference was that here there was no beer nor tobacco - smoke, and every one was better dressed. Ratmirov tried to restore tranquillity (the generals manifested their displeasure, Boris’s exclamation could be heard, “Encore cette satanée politique!”), but his efforts were not successful, and at that point, a high official of the stealthily inquisitorial type, who was present, and undertook to present le résumé en peu de mots, sustained a defeat: in fact he so hummed and hawed, so repeated himself, and was so obviously incapable of listening to or taking in the answers he received, and so unmistakably failed to perceive himself what precisely constituted la question that no other result could possibly have been anticipated. And then, too, Irina was slyly provoking the disputants and setting them against one another, constantly exchanging glances and slight signs with Litvinov as she did so.

  But he was sitting like one spellbound, he was hearing nothing, and waiting for nothing but for those splendid eyes to sparkle again, that pale, tender, mischievous, exquisite face to flash upon him again. . . It ended by the ladies growing restive, and requesting that the dispute should cease. . . . Ratmirov entreated the dilettante to sing his song again, and the self - taught genius once more played his waltz. . . .

  Litvinov stayed till after midnight, and went away later than all the rest. The conversation had in the course of the evening touched upon a number of subjects, studiously avoiding anything of the faintest interest; the generals, after finishing their solemn game, solemnly joined in it: the influence of these statesmen was at once apparent. The conversation turned upon notorieties of the Parisian demi - monde, with whose names and talents every one seemed intimately acquainted, on Sardou’s latest play, on a novel of About’s, on Patti in the Traviata. Some one proposed a game of “secretary,” au secrétaire; but it was not a success. The answers given were pointless, and often not free from grammatical mistakes; the stout general related that he had once in answer to the question: Qu’est - ce que l’amour? replied, Une colique remontée au coeur, and promptly went off into his wooden guffaw; the ancient ruin with a mighty effort struck him with her fan on the arm; a flake of plaster was shaken off her forehead by this rash action. The old crone was beginning a reference to the Slavonic principalities and the necessity of orthodox propaganda on the Danube, but, meeting with no response, she subsided with a hiss. In reality they talked more about Home than anything else; even the “Queen of the Wasps” described how hands had once crept about her, and how she had seen them, and put her own ring on one of them. It was certainly a triumph for Irina: even if Litvinov had paid more attention to what was being said around him, he still could not have gleaned one single sincere saying, one single clever. thought, one single new fact from all their disconnected and lifeless babble. Even in their cries and exclamations, there was no note of real feeling, in their slander no real heat. Only at rare intervals under the mask of assumed patriotic indignation, or of assumed contempt and indifference, the dread of possible losses could be heard in a plaintive whimper, and a few names, which will not be forgotten by posterity, were pronounced with gnashing of teeth. . . . And not a drop of living water under all this noise and wrangle! What stale, what unprofitable nonsense, what wretched trivialities were absorbing all these heads and hearts, and not for that one evening, not in society only, but at home too, every hour and every day, in all the depth and breadth of their existence! And what ignorance, when all is said! What lack of understanding of all on which human life is built, all by which life is made beautiful!

  On parting from Litvinov, Irina again pressed his hand and whispered significantly, “Well? Are you pleased? Have you seen enough? Do you like it?” He made her no reply, but merely bowed low in silence.

  Left alone with her husband, Irina was just going to her bedroom. . . . He stopped her.

  “Je vous ai beaucoup admirée ce soir, madame,” he observed, smoking a cigarette, and leaning against the mantelpiece, “vous vous êtes parfaitement moquée de nous tons.”

  “Pas plus cette fois - ci que les autres,” she answered indifferently.

  “How do you mean me to understand you?” asked Ratmirov.

  “As you like.”

  “Hm. C’est clair.” Ratmirov warily, like a cat, knocked off the ash of the cigarette with the tip of the long nail of his little finger. “Oh, by the way! This new friend of yours - - what the dickens is his name? - - Mr. Litvinov - - doubtless enjoys the reputation of a very clever man.”

  At the name of Litvinov, Irina turned quickly round.

  “What do you mean to say?”

  The general smiled.

  “He keeps very quiet . . . one can see he’s afraid of compromising himself.”

  Irina, too, smiled! it was a very different smile from her husband’s.

  “Better keep quiet than talk . . . as some people talk.” “Attrapé!” answered Ratmirov with feigned submissiveness. “Joking apart, he
has a very interesting face. Such a . . . concentrated expression . . . and his whole bearing. . . . Yes. . .” The general straightened his cravat, and bending his head stared at his own moustache. “He’s a republican, I imagine, of the same sort as your other friend, Mr. Potugin; that’s another of your clever fellows who are dumb.”

  Irina’s brows were slowly raised above her wide open clear eyes, while her lips were tightly pressed together and faintly curved. “What’s your object in saying that, Valerian Vladimiritch,” she remarked, as though sympathetically. “You are wasting your arrows on the empty air. . We are not in Russia, and there is no one to hear you.”

  Ratmirov was stung.

  “That’s not merely my opinion, Irina Pavlovna,” he began in a voice suddenly guttural; “other people, too, notice that that gentleman has the air of a conspirator.”

  “Really? who are these other people?”

  “Well, Boris for instance - - “

  “What? Was it necessary for him too to express his opinion?”

  Irina shrugged her shoulders as though shrinking from the cold, and slowly passed the tips of her fingers over them.

  “Him . . . yes, him. Allow me to remark, Irina Pavlovna, that you seem angry; and you know if one is angry - - “

  “Am I angry? Oh, what for?”

  “I don’t know; possibly you have been disagreeably affected by the observation I permitted myself to make in reference to - - - - “

  Ratmirov stammered.

  “In reference to?” Irina repeated interrogatively. “Ah, if you please, no irony, and make haste. I’m tired and sleepy.”

  She took a candle from the table. “In reference to - - - - ?”

  “Well, in reference to this same Mr. Litvinov; since there’s no doubt now that you take a great interest in him.”

  Irina lifted the hand in which she was holding the candlestick, till the flame was brought on a level with her husband’s face, and attentively, almost with curiosity, looking him straight in the face, she suddenly burst into laughter.

  “What is it?” asked Ratmirov scowling.

  Irina went on laughing.

  “Well, what is it?” he repeated, and he stamped his foot.

  He felt insulted, wounded, and at the same time against his will he was impressed by the beauty of this woman, standing so lightly and boldly before him . . she was tormenting him. He saw everything, all her charms - - even the pink reflection of the delicate nails on her slender finger - tips, as they tightly clasped the dark bronze of the heavy candlestick - - even that did not escape him . . . while the insult cut deeper and deeper into his heart. And still Irina laughed.

  “What? You? You jealous?” she brought out at last, and turning her back on her husband she went out of the room. “He’s jealous!” he heard outside the door, and again came the sound of her laugh.

  Ratmirov looked moodily after his wife; he could not even then help noticing the bewitching grace of her figure, her movements, and with a violent blow, crushing the cigarette on the marble slab of the mantelpiece, he flung it to a distance. His cheeks had suddenly turned white, a spasm passed over the lower half of his face, and with a dull animal stare his eyes strayed about the floor, as though in search of something. . . . Every semblance of refinement had vanished from his face. Such an expression it must have worn when he was flogging the White Russian peasants.

  Litvinov had gone home to his rooms, and sitting down to the table he had buried his head in both hands, and remained a long while without stirring. He got up at last, opened a box, and taking out a pocket - book, he drew out of an inner pocket a photograph of Tatyana. Her face gazed out mournfully at him, looking ugly and old, as photographs usually do. Litvinov’s betrothed was a girl of Great Russian blood, a blonde, rather plump, and with the features of her face rather heavy, but with a wonderful expression of kindness and goodness in her intelligent, clear brown eyes, with a serene, white brow, on which it seemed as though a sunbeam always rested. For a long time Litvinov did not take his eyes from the photograph, then he pushed it gently away and again clutched his head in both hands. “All is at an end!” he whispered at last, “Irina! Irina!”

  Only now, only at that instant, he realized that he was irrevocably, senselessly, in love with her, that he had loved her since the very day of that first meeting with her at the Old Castle, that he had never ceased to love her. And yet how astounded, how incredulous, how scornful, he would have been, had he been told so a few hours back!

  “But Tanya, Tanya, my God! Tanya! Tanya!” he repeated in contrition; while Irina’s shape fairly rose before his eyes in her black almost funereal garb, with the radiant calm of victory on her marble white face.

  XVI

  LITVINOV did not sleep all night, and did not undress. He was very miserable. As an honest and straightforward man, he realized the force of obligations, the sacredness of duty, and would have been ashamed of any double dealing with himself, his weakness, his fault. At first he was overcome by apathy; it was long before he could throw off the gloomy burden of a single half - conscious, obscure sensation; then terror took possession of him at the thought that the future, his almost conquered future, had slipped back into the darkness, that his home, the solidly - built home he had only just raised, was suddenly tottering about him. . . .

  He began reproaching himself without mercy, but at once checked his own vehemence. “What feebleness!” he thought. “It’s no time for self - reproach and cowardice; now I must act. Tanya is my betrothed, she has faith in my love, my honor, we are bound together for life, and cannot, must not, be put asunder.” He vividly pictured to himself all Tanya’s qualities, mentally he picked them out and reckoned them up; he was trying to call up feeling and tenderness in himself. “One thing’s left for me,” he thought again, “to run away, to run away directly, without waiting for her arrival, to hasten to meet her; whether I suffer, whether I am wretched with Tanya - - that’s not likely - - but in any case to think of that, to take that into consideration is useless; I must do my duty, if I die for it! But you have no right to deceive her,” whispered another voice within him. “You have no right to hide from her the change in your feelings; it may be that when she knows you love another woman, she will not be willing to become your wife? Rubbish! rubbish!” he answered, “that’s all sophistry, shameful, double - dealing, deceitful conscientiousness; I have no right not to keep my word, that’s the thing. Well, so be it. . . . Then I must go away from here, without seeing the other. . . .”

  But at that point Litvinov’s heart throbbed with anguish, he turned cold, physically cold, a momentary shiver passed over him, his teeth chattered weakly. He stretched and yawned, as though he were in a fever. Without dwelling longer on his last thought, choking back that thought, turning away from it, he set himself to marveling and wondering in perplexity how he could again . . . again love that corrupt worldly creature, all of whose surroundings were so hateful, so repulsive to him. He tried to put to himself the question: “What nonsense, do you really love her?” and could only wring his hands in despair. He was still marveling and wondering, and suddenly there rose up before his eyes, as though from a soft fragrant mist, a seductive shape, shining eyelashes were lifted, and softly and irresistibly the marvelous eyes pierced him to the heart and a voice was singing with sweetness in his ears, and resplendent shoulders, the shoulders of a young queen, were breathing with voluptuous freshness and warmth. . .

  Towards morning a determination was at last fully formed in Litvinov’s mind. He decided to set off that day to meet Tatyana, and seeing Irina for the last time, to tell her, since there was nothing else for it, the whole truth, and to part from her for ever.

  He set in order and packed his things, waited till twelve o’clock, and started to go to her. But at the sight of her half - curtained windows Litvinov’s heart fairly failed him . . . he could not summon up courage to enter the hotel. He walked once or twice up. and down Lichtenthaler Allee. “A very good day to Mr. Litvinov!” h
e suddenly heard an ironical voice call from the top of a swiftly - moving “dogcart.” Litvinov raised his eyes and saw General Ratmirov sitting beside Prince M., a well - known sportsman and fancier of English carriages and horses. The prince was driving, the general was leaning over on one side, grinning, while he lifted his hat high above his head. Litvinov bowed to him, and at the same instant, as though he were obeying a secret command, he set off at a run towards Irina’s.

  She was at home. He sent up his name; he was at once received. When he went in, she was standing in the middle of the room. She was wearing a morning blouse with wide open sleeves; her face, pale as the day before, but not fresh as it had been then, expressed weariness; the languid smile with which she welcomed her visitor emphasized that expression even more clearly. She held out her hand to him in a friendly way, but absent - mindedly.

  “Thanks for coming,” she began in a plaintive voice, and she sank into a low chair. “I am not very well this morning; I spent a bad night. Well, what have you to say about last night? Wasn’t I right?”

  Litvinov sat down.

  “I have come to you, Irina Pavlovna,” he began.

  She instantly sat up and turned round; her eyes simply fastened upon Litvinov.

  “What is it,” she cried. “You’re pale as death, you’re ill. What’s the matter with you?”

  Litvinov was confused.

  “With me, Irina Pavlovna?”

  “Have you had bad news?

  Some misfortune has happened, tell me, tell me - - “

  Litvinov in his turn looked at Irina. “I have had no bad news,” he brought out not without effort, “but a misfortune has certainly happened, a great misfortune . . . and it has brought me to you.”

  “A misfortune? What is it?”

  “Why . . . that - - “