A Sportsman's Sketches: Works of Ivan Turgenev 1

by Ivan Turgenev

  XIII

  I remember I happened to be present at a conversation with David over the fence, on the very day of her mother’s death.

  “Mother died this morning at daybreak,” she said, first looking round with her dark expressive eyes and then fixing them on the ground.

  “Cook undertook to get a coffin cheap but she’s not to be trusted; she may spend the money on drink, even. You might come and look after her, Davidushka, she’s afraid of you.”

  “I will come,” answered David. “I will see to it. And how’s your father?”

  “He cries; he says: ‘you must spoil me, too.’ Spoil must mean bury. Now he has gone to sleep.” Raissa suddenly gave a deep sigh. “Oh, Davidushka, Davidushka!” She passed her half - clenched fist over her forehead and her eyebrows, and the action was so bitter ... and as sincere and beautiful as all her actions.

  “You must take care of yourself, though,” David observed; “you haven’t slept at all, I expect.... And what’s the use of crying? It doesn’t help trouble.”

  “I have no time for crying,” answered Raissa.

  “That’s a luxury for the rich, crying,” observed David.

  Raissa was going, but she turned back.

  “The yellow shawl’s being sold, you know; part of mother’s dowry. They are giving us twelve roubles; I think that is not much.”

  “It certainly is not much.”

  “We shouldn’t sell it,” Raissa said after a brief pause, “but you see we must have money for the funeral.”

  “Of course you must. Only you mustn’t spend money at random. Those priests are awful! But I say, wait a minute. I’ll come. Are you going? I’ll be with you soon. Goodbye, darling.”

  “Good - bye, Davidushka, darling.”

  “Mind now, don’t cry!”

  “As though I should cry! It’s either cooking the dinner or crying. One or the other.”

  “What! does she cook the dinner?” I said to David, as soon as Raissa was out of hearing, “does she do the cooking herself?”

  “Why, you heard that the cook has gone to buy a coffin.”

  “She cooks the dinner,” I thought, “and her hands are always so clean and her clothes so neat.... I should like to see her there at work in the kitchen.... She is an extraordinary girl!”

  I remember another conversation at the fence. That time Raissa brought with her her little deaf and dumb sister. She was a pretty child with immense, astonished - looking eyes and a perfect mass of dull, black hair on her little, head (Raissa’s hair, too, was black and hers, too, was without lustre). Latkin had by then been struck down by paralysis.

  “I really don’t know what to do,” Raissa began. “The doctor has written a prescription. We must go to the chemist’s; and our peasant (Latkin had still one serf) has brought us wood from the village and a goose. And the porter has taken it away, ‘you are in debt to me,’ he said.”

  “Taken the goose?” asked David.

  “No, not the goose. He says it is an old one; it is no good for anything; he says that is why our peasant brought it us, but he is taking the wood.”

  “But he has no right to,” exclaimed David.

  “He has no right to, but he has taken it. I went up to the garret, there we have got a very, very old trunk. I began rummaging in it and what do you think I found? Look!”

  She took from under her kerchief a rather large field glass in a copper setting, covered with morocco, yellow with age. David, as a connoisseur of all sorts of instruments, seized upon it at once.

  “It’s English,” he pronounced, putting it first to one eye and then to the other. “A marine glass.”

  “And the glasses are perfect,” Raissa went on. “I showed it to father; he said, ‘Take it and pawn it to the diamond - merchant’! What do you think, would they give us anything for it? What do we want a telescope for? To look at ourselves in the looking - glass and see what beauties we are? But we haven’t a looking - glass, unluckily.”

  And Raissa suddenly laughed aloud. Her sister, of course, could not hear her. But most likely she felt the shaking of her body: she clung to Raissa’s hand and her little face worked with a look of terror as she raised her big eyes to her sister and burst into tears.

  “That’s how she always is,” said Raissa, “she doesn’t like one to laugh.

  “Come, I won’t, Lyubotchka, I won’t,” she added, nimbly squatting on her heels beside the child and passing her fingers through her hair. The laughter vanished from Raissa’s face and her lips, the corners of which twisted upwards in a particularly charming way, became motionless again. The child was pacified. Raissa got up.

  “So you will do what you can, about the glass I mean, Davidushka. But I do regret the wood, and the goose, too, however old it may be.”

  “They would certainly give you ten roubles,” said David, turning the telescope in all directions. “I will buy it of you, what could be better? And here, meanwhile, are fifteen kopecks for the chemist’s.... Is that enough?”

  “I’ll borrow that from you,” whispered Raissa, taking the fifteen kopecks from him.

  “What next? Perhaps you would like to pay interest? But you see I have a pledge here, a very fine thing.... First - rate people, the English.”

  “They say we are going to war with them.”

  “No,” answered David, “we are fighting the French now.”

  “Well, you know best. Take care of it, then. Good - bye, friends.”

  XIV

  Here is another conversation that took place beside the same fence. Raissa seemed more worried than usual.

  “Five kopecks for a cabbage, and a tiny little one, too,” she said, propping her chin on her hand. “Isn’t it dear? And I haven’t had the money for my sewing yet.”

  “Who owes it you?” asked David.

  “Why, the merchant’s wife who lives beyond the rampart.”

  “The fat woman who goes about in a green blouse?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “I say, she is fat! She can hardly breathe for fat. She positively steams in church, and doesn’t pay her debts!”

  “She will pay, only when? And do you know, Davidushka, I have fresh troubles. Father has taken it into his head to tell me his dreams - - you know he cannot say what he means: if he wants to say one word, it comes out another. About food or any everyday thing we have got used to it and understand; but it is not easy to understand the dreams even of healthy people, and with him, it’s awful! ‘I am very happy,’ he says; ‘I was walking about all among white birds to - day; and the Lord God gave me a nosegay and in the nosegay was Andryusha with a little knife,’ he calls our Lyubotchka, Andryusha; ‘now we shall both be quite well,’ he says. ‘We need only one stroke with the little knife, like this!’ and he points to his throat. I don’t understand him, but I say, ‘All right, dear, all right,’ but he gets angry and tries to explain what he means. He even bursts into tears.”

  “But you should have said something to him,” I put in; “you should have made up some lie.”

  “I can’t tell lies,” answered Raissa, and even flung up her hands.

  And indeed she could not tell lies.

  “There is no need to tell lies,” observed David, “but there is no need to kill yourself, either. No one will say thank you for it, you know.”

  Raissa looked at him intently.

  “I wanted to ask you something, Davidushka; how ought I to spell ‘while’?”

  “What sort of ‘while’?”

  “Why, for instance: I hope you will live a long while.”

  “Spell: w - i - l - e.”

  “No,” I put in, “w - h - i - l - e.”

  “Well, it does not matter. Spell it with an h, then! What does matter is, that you should live a long while.”

  “I should like to write correctly,” observed Raissa, and she flushed a little.

  When she flushed she was amazingly pretty at once.

  “It may be of use.... How father wrote in his day ..
. wonderfully! He taught me. Well, now he can hardly make out the letters.”

  “You only live, that’s all I want,” David repeated, dropping his voice and not taking his eyes off her. Raissa glanced quickly at him and flushed still more.

  “You live and as for spelling, spell as you like.... Oh, the devil, the witch is coming!” (David called my aunt the witch.) “What ill - luck has brought her this way? You must go, darling.”

  Raissa glanced at David once more and ran away.

  David talked to me of Raissa and her family very rarely and unwillingly, especially from the time when he began to expect his father’s return. He thought of nothing but him and how we should live together afterwards. He had a vivid memory of him and used to describe him to me with particular pleasure.

  “He is big and strong; he can lift three hundred - weight with one hand.... When he shouted: ‘Where’s the lad?’ he could be heard all over the house. He’s so jolly and kind ... and a brave man! Nobody can intimidate him. We lived so happily together before we were ruined. They say he has gone quite grey, and in old days his hair was as red as mine. He was a strong man.”

  David would never admit that we might remain in Ryazan.

  “You will go away,” I observed, “but I shall stay.”

  “Nonsense, we shall take you with us.”

  “And how about my father?”

  “You will cast off your father. You will be ruined if you don’t.”

  “How so?”

  David made me no answer but merely knitted his white brows.

  “So when we go away with father,” he began again, “he will get a good situation and I shall marry.”

  “Well, that won’t be just directly,” I said.

  “No, why not? I shall marry soon.”

  “You?”

  “Yes, I; why not?”

  “You haven’t fixed on your wife, I suppose.”

  “Of course, I have.”

  “Who is she?”

  David laughed.

  “What a senseless fellow you are, really? Raissa, of course.”

  “Raissa!” I repeated in amazement; “you are joking!”

  “I am not given to joking, and don’t like it.”

  “Why, she is a year older than you are.”

  “What of it? but let’s drop the subject.”

  “Let me ask one question,” I said. “Does she know that you mean to marry her?”

  “Most likely.”

  “But haven’t you declared your feelings?”

  “What is there to declare? When the time comes I shall tell her. Come, that’s enough.”

  David got up and went out of the room. When I was alone, I pondered ... and pondered ... and came to the conclusion that David would act like a sensible and practical man; and indeed I felt flattered at the thought of being the friend of such a practical man!

  And Raissa in her everlasting black woollen dress suddenly seemed to me charming and worthy of the most devoted love.

  XV

  David’s father still did not come and did not even send a letter. It had long been summer and June was drawing to its end. We were wearing ourselves out in suspense.

  Meanwhile there began to be rumours that Latkin had suddenly become much worse, and that his family were likely to die of hunger or else the house would fall in and crush them all under the roof.

  David’s face even looked changed and he became so ill - tempered and surly that there was no going near him. He began to be more often absent from home, too. I did not meet Raissa at all. From time to time, I caught a glimpse of her in the distance, rapidly crossing the street with her beautiful, light step, straight as an arrow, with her arms crossed, with her dark, clever eyes under her long brows, with an anxious expression on her pale, sweet face - - that was all. My aunt with the help of her Trankvillitatin pitched into me as before, and as before reproachfully whispered in my ear: “You are a thief, sir, a thief!” But I took no notice of her; and my father was very busy, and occupied with his writing and driving all over the place and did not want to hear anything.

  One day, passing by the familiar apple - tree, more from habit than anything I cast a furtive glance in the direction of the little spot I knew so well, and it suddenly struck me that there was a change in the surface of the soil that concealed our treasure ... as though there were a little protuberance where there had been a hollow, and the bits of rubbish were disarranged. “What does that mean?” I wondered. “Can someone have guessed our secret and dug up the watch?”

  I had to make certain with my own eyes. I felt, of course, the most complete indifference in regard to the watch that lay rusting in the bosom of the earth; but was not prepared to let anyone else make use of it! And so next day I got up before dawn again and arming myself with a knife went into the orchard, sought out the marked spot under the apple - tree, began digging - - and after digging a hole a yard deep was forced to the conviction that the watch was gone, that someone had got hold of it, taken it away, stolen it!

  But who could have dug it up except David?

  Who else knew where it was?

  I filled in the hole and went back to the house. I felt deeply injured.

  “Supposing,” I thought, “that David needs the watch to save his future wife or her father from dying of starvation.... Say what you like, the watch was worth something.... Why did he not come to me and say: ‘Brother’ (in David’s place I should have certainly begun by saying brother), ‘brother, I need money; you have none, I know, but let me make use of that watch which we buried together under the old apple - tree? It is of no use to anyone and I shall be so grateful to you, brother!’ With what joy I should have consented. But to act secretly, treacherously, not to trust his friend.... No! No passion, no necessity would justify that!”

  I repeat, I felt horribly injured. I began by a display of coldness and sulking....

  But David was not one of the sort to notice this and be upset by it.

  I began dropping hints.

  But David appeared not to understand my hints in the least!

  I said before him how base in my eyes was the man who having a friend and understanding all that was meant by that sacred sentiment “friendship,” was yet so devoid of generosity as to have recourse to deception; as though it were possible to conceal anything.

  As I uttered these last words I laughed scornfully.

  But David did not turn a hair. At last I asked him straight out: “What did he think, had our watch gone for some time after being buried in the earth or had it stopped at once?”

  He answered me: “The devil only knows! What a thing to wonder about!”

  I did not know what to think! David evidently had something on his mind ... but not the abduction of the watch. An unexpected incident showed me his innocence.

  XVI

  One day I came home by a side lane which I usually avoided as the house in which my enemy Trankvillitatin lodged was in it; but on this occasion Fate itself led me that way. Passing the open window of an eating - house, I suddenly heard the voice of our servant, Vassily, a young man of free and easy manners, “a lazy fellow and a scamp,” as my father called him, but also a great conqueror of female hearts which he charmed by his wit, his dancing and his playing on the tambourine.

  “And what do you suppose they’ve been up to?” said Vassily, whom I could not see but heard distinctly; he was, most likely, sitting close by, near the window with a companion over the steaming tea - - and as often happens with people in a closed room, spoke in a loud voice without suspecting that anyone passing in the street could hear every word: “They buried it in the ground!”

  “Nonsense!” muttered another voice.

  “I tell you they did, our young gentlemen are extraordinary! Especially that Davidka, he’s a regular Aesop! I got up at daybreak and went to the window.... I looked out and, what do you think! Our two little dears were coming along the orchard bringing that same watch and they dug a hole under the apple - tree and th
ere they buried it, as though it had been a baby! And they smoothed the earth over afterwards, upon my soul they did, the young rakes!”

  “Ah! plague take them,” Vassily’s companion commented. “Too well off, I suppose. Well, did you dig up the watch?”

  “To be sure I did. I have got it now. Only it won’t do to show it for a time. There’s been no end of a fuss over it. Davidka stole it that very night from under our old lady’s back.”

  “Oh - - oh!”