Home of the Gentry

by Ivan Turgenev

  ‘What a word to use!’ she whispered.

  ‘What word, which one?’ the old lady interrupted excitedly. ‘What do you mean? It’s awful,’ she said, suddenly throwing down her cap and seating herself on Liza’s bed, ‘it’s more than I can bear – today is the fourth day that I’ve been literally bubbling with worry; I can’t go on pretending that I don’t notice anything, that I can’t see how pale you are, how dried up you are, how much you’re crying – I can’t, I can’t.’

  ‘What’s happened to you, auntie?’ Liza asked. ‘It’s nothing…’

  ‘Nothing?’ cried Marfa Timofeyevna. ‘You can say that to the others, but not to me! Nothing! Who’s just been kneeling? Whose eyelashes are still wet with tears? Nothing! Just you take a look at yourself – what’ve you done to your face, what’s happened to your eyes? Nothing! Do you think I don’t know everything?’

  ‘It will pass, auntie. Give it time.’

  ‘It will pass – yes, but when? Oh, the Good Lord above! Did you really love him that much? After all, he’s an old man, Lizochka. I don’t dispute that he’s a good man, that he won’t bite, but is that something special? We’re all good people; the world’s not coming to an end, there’ll always be plenty of that sort of goodness.’

  ‘I tell you that it will all pass, that it’s already all over.’

  ‘Listen, Lizochka, to what I’ve got to say,’ Marfa Timofeyevna said suddenly, making Liza sit down beside her on the bed and adjusting first Liza’s hair, then her kerchief. ‘It only seems to you now, when it’s all so fresh, that there’s no cure for your grief. Ah, my dearest, it’s only for death that there’s no remedy! You just say to yourself: “I won’t give in, I’ll forget him!” – and in a while you’ll be truly amazed how quickly, how well it all passes. You just bide your time.’

  ‘Auntie,’ rejoined Liza, ‘it’s already over, it’s all over.’

  ‘It’s all over! What’s all over? See, your little nose is even looking peaky, and yet you say it’s all over. All over, indeed!’

  ‘Yes, it’s all over, auntie, if only you’ll be willing to help me,’ Liza announced with sudden animation and flung herself on Marfa Timofeyevna’s neck. ‘Dearest auntie, be my friend, help me, don’t be angry, try to understand me…’

  ‘What is it, what is it, my dear? Don’t frighten me so, please – I’ll cry out this instant! Don’t look at me like that – tell me at once what it is!’

  ‘I…. I want…’ Liza hid her face in Marfa Timofeyevna’s bosom. ‘I want to go into a convent,’ she said tonelessly.

  The old lady gave a jump.

  ‘Make the sign of the cross, Lizochka, my dear, and think what you’re saying – may God be with you!’ she eventually muttered. ‘Lie down, my darling, and have a little sleep; this is all because you haven’t been sleeping well, my dearest.’

  Liza raised her head and her cheeks were on fire.

  ‘No, auntie,’ she said, ‘don’t talk like that. I have made up my mind, I have prayed, I have sought the advice of God; everything is finished, my life with you is finished. I haven’t had to learn this lesson for nothing; and it’s not the first time I’ve thought about it. Happiness did not come to me; even when I had hopes of happiness, my heart was still full of pain. I know everything, both my own sins and others’, and how papa made all our money; I know everything. It all has to be paid for by prayer, wiped away by prayer. I am sorry for you and for mama and for Lenochka; but it can’t be helped; I feel there is no life for me here. I’ve already said good-bye to everything, said my last good-byes to everything in the house; something is calling me away, and I feel sick of it all and I want to lock myself away for ever. Don’t try to stop me, don’t try to dissuade me, help me, otherwise I’ll go off alone…’

  Marfa Timofeyevna listened with horror to what her niece had to say.

  ‘She’s sick, she’s delirious,’ she thought, ‘and we must send for a doctor – but for which one? Gedeonovsky talked highly of one not long ago, but he always talks a lot of nonsense – still, perhaps he was telling the truth this time.’ But when she had convinced herself that Liza was neither sick nor delirious, and when Liza persisted in giving the same answers despite all her protestations, Marfa Timofeyevna grew frightened and was genuinely distressed.

  ‘My dearest one, you haven’t any idea,’ she began trying to persuade her, ‘what life is like in a convent. After all, my very own dear one, they’ll feed you on green hemp oil and they’ll dress you up in clothing that’s ever so thick and coarse; they’ll make you walk about out in the cold; you won’t be able to endure that, Liza dear. This is all the result of Agafya’s influence; she’s the one who put this nonsense in your head. After all, she began by living her life first, and she lived it for her own pleasure; you must too. At least let me die peacefully, and then you do what you want. And who ever heard of anyone going into a convent, God forgive me, on account of a bearded old goat, on account of a man? Well, if you’re sick of it all, go away, make supplication to a saint, have prayers said, but don’t you go and put a black hood over your head, my dearest one, my darling…’

  And Marfa Timofeyevna cried bitterly.

  Liza comforted her, wiped away her tears, cried herself, but remained unmoved. In desperation Marfa Timofeyevna tried to employ the threat of telling her mother everything… but that did not help. It was only as a result of the old lady’s even stronger pleading that Liza agreed to postpone fulfilment of her plans for six months; in exchange Marfa Timofeyevna had to give her word that she would help in obtaining Marya Dmitrievna’s consent if at the end of the six months Liza had not changed her mind.

  With the coming of the first cold weather Varvara Pavlovna, despite her promise to bury herself in the depths of the country, provided herself with the necessary money and moved to St Petersburg where she rented a modest but charming little apartment, discovered for her by Panshin, who had left O… Province even before she did. During the last part of his stay at O… he had been completely out of favour with Marya Dmitrievna; he suddenly ceased visiting her and was almost never away from Lavriki. Varvara Pavlovna had enslaved him, literally enslaved him: there is no other way of describing the limitless, irrevocable, irresistible power she exercised over him.

  Lavretsky spent the winter in Moscow, and in the spring of the following year news reached him that Liza had taken the veil in the convent of Β…, in one of the remotest parts of Russia.

  Epilogue

  EIGHT years passed. Spring had come again.… But before going any further we will say a few words about the fate of Mikhalevich, and of Panshin, and of Madame Lavretsky – and say good-bye to them. Mikhalevich, after prolonged wandering, has finally discovered his true vocation: he has obtained the post of senior superintendent in a government institute. He is very satisfied with his lot, and his pupils ‘adore’ him, although they make fun of him behind his back. Panshin has made good progress in the bureaucratic hierarchy and is already aiming to become a departmental director; he walks about slightly bent; perhaps the Cross of St Vladimir, which he wears round his neck, weighs him down. The official in him has achieved decisive ascendancy over the artist; his still young-looking face has a jaundiced complexion, his hair has thinned, and he neither sings nor draws any more, but secretly dabbles in literature: he has written a little comedy piece, a kind of theatrical ‘proverb’, and since nowadays all who write invariably ‘take off’ someone or something, so he has portrayed a coquette in it and he reads it to two or three well-wishing ladies of his acquaintance. He has not embarked on marriage, although many excellent opportunities have arisen; for that Varvara Pavlovna is to blame. So far as she is concerned, she resides permanently in Paris as she did before: Fyodor Ivanych has allocated her a fixed sum of money and thus bought himself freedom from the possibility of her landing on him unexpectedly a second time. She has grown older and stouter, but she is still charming and elegant. Everyone has an ideal: Varvara Pavlovna has found hers – in the dramatic works of D
umas fils. She assiduously visits the theatre, where consumptive and highly strung dames aux camélias are presented on the stage; to be Madame Doche1 seems to her the summit of human bliss. She once declared that she could not wish a better fate for her daughter. It must be hoped that fate will preserve Mademoiselle Ada from such bliss: from a red-cheeked, plump child she has been turned into a weak-chested, pale little girl; she already has bad nerves. Varvara Pavlovna’s admirers have diminished, but not disappeared; she will retain some, probably, until the end of her life. The most ardent of them recently has been a certain Zakurdalo-Skubyrnikov, a moustachioed retired guardsman, of about thirty-eight years of age and unusually powerful physique. French visitors at Madame Lavretsky’s salon call him ‘le gros taureau de l’Ukraine’; Varvara Pavlovna never invites him to her fashionable evenings, but he enjoys her fullest benevolence.

  There it is… eight years have passed. The sky has again exuded the radiant happiness of spring; spring has again smiled on the earth and its people; once again at her fond touch everything has blossomed and fallen in love and begun singing. The town of O… has changed little in the course of these eight years; but Marya Dmitrievna’s house has become rejuvenated, as it were: its recently painted walls shine a welcoming white, and the glass of its open windows is pink-tinged and glittering from the setting sun; joyous, lighthearted sounds of resonant young voices and constant laughter pour from its windows into the street; the whole house, it seems, seethes with life and bubbles over with gaiety. The mistress of the house has long gone to her grave: Marya Dmitrievna died a couple of years after Liza took the veil; and Marfa Timofeyevna did not long survive her; they lie side by side in the town graveyard. Nastasya Karpovna has also gone; the loyal old lady for several years made weekly visits to pray over her friend’s grave.… Then her time came and her bones were laid to rest in the damp earth. But Marya Dmitrievna’s house did not fall into strange hands, did not pass out of her family; the ‘home’ was not destroyed. Lenochka, who had turned into a slim and beautiful girl, and her fiancé, a fair-haired hussar officer; Marya Dmitrievna’s son, just married in St Petersburg and spending the spring in O… with his young wife, his wife’s sister, a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl with crimson cheeks and limpid eyes; Shurochka, also grown up and pretty – these were the young people who made the walls of the Kalitin house resound with laughter and talk. Everything in the house had changed, everything fitted in with the new inhabitants. Beardless house-boys, pranksters and jackanapes, had taken the place of the former sedate old men-servants; where once podgy Roska used to waddle solemnly, two setters raced frantically about, jumping over the sofas; the stables contained lean race-horses, dashing shaft-horses, spirited outriders with plaited manes, Don saddle-horses; the times for breakfast, dinner and supper were all mixed up and confused; ‘unheard-of arrangements’, as the neighbours called them, held sway.

  On that evening, of which we have just spoken, the inhabitants of the Kalitin house (the eldest of them, Lenochka’s fiancé, was only twenty-four years old) were engaged in a slightly complicated but, judging by their concerted laughter, to them extremely amusing game: they were running from room to room and catching each other; the dogs were also running about and barking, and the canaries in the cages hanging by the windows strained their throats to bursting, adding to die general commotion with the loud cacophony of their frantic trilling. At the very height of this deafening fun a muddy tarantass drove up to the gates and a man of about forty-five, in a travelling cloak, stepped out of it and stopped in astonishment. He stood there for a short while, encompassed the house with his attentive gaze, entered the courtyard through the little gate and slowly climbed the porch steps. He met nobody in the hall; but the door of the dining-room was flung open and out of it dashed a red-faced Shurochka, followed an instant later, with loud shouts, by the whole party of young people. They stopped suddenly and fell quiet at the sight of the stranger; but the bright eyes directed at him did not lose their kindly look and the fresh faces did not cease their laughter. Marya Dmitrievna’s son approached the new arrival and hospitably asked him what he wanted.

  ‘I am Lavretsky,’ the new arrival replied.

  A chorus of shouts resounded in response to this – not because the young people were overjoyed at the arrival of a distant and almost forgotten relative, but simply because they were ready to shout and enjoy themselves whenever there was a suitable opportunity. They at once surrounded Lavretsky: Lenochka, like a longstanding acquaintance, introduced herself first, assuring him that, given a moment or so, she would certainly have recognized him, and then she introduced the rest of them, calling each one, even her fiancé, by their familiar, shortened names. The whole crowd moved through the dining-room into the drawing-room. The wallpaper in both these rooms was different, but the furniture was the same; Lavretsky recognized the piano; even the same embroidery-frame stood in the same place by the window – and with practically the same unfinished embroidery in it as eight years before. He was given a seat in a deep armchair; they ranged themselves round him. Questions, exclamations, stories poured out one after another.

  ‘We haven’t seen you for such a long time,’ Lenochka naively remarked, ‘and we also haven’t seen Varvara Pavlovna.’

  ‘Hardly likely!’ her brother hurriedly chimed in. ‘I took you off to St Petersburg, while Fyodor Ivanych’s lived in the country all the time.’

  ‘Yes, and since then mama’s died.’

  ‘And Marfa Timofeyevna,’ said Shurochka.

  ‘And Nastasya Karpovna,’ said Lenochka, ‘and Monsieur Lemm…’

  ‘What? Is Lemm dead, too?’ asked Lavretsky.

  ‘Yes,’ young Kalitin answered. ‘He went off to Odessa; they say someone enticed him there; and he died there.’

  ‘Do you know whether he left any of his music behind?’

  ‘I don’t know; not very likely.’

  They all grew quiet and exchanged looks. A small cloud of sorrow passed across their young faces.

  ‘But Sailor’s alive,’ Lenochka suddenly said.

  ‘And Gedeonovsky,’ her brother added.

  At the mention of Gedeonovsky there was a universal peal of laughter.

  ‘Yes, he’s alive and telling tall stories the same as ever,’ Marya Dmitrievna’s son went on. ‘And just imagine, this crazy child here’ (he indicated the school girl, his wife’s sister) ‘yesterday sprinkled pepper in his snuff-box.’

  ‘How he sneezed!’ exclaimed Lenochka, and again there was a peal of helpless laughter.

  ‘We had news of Liza recently,’ said young Kalitin, and again everyone grew quiet. ‘She’s all right, and her health’s a little better now.’

  ‘Is she still in the same convent?’ asked Lavretsky, not without effort.

  ‘In the same one.’

  ‘Does she write to you?’

  ‘No, never; we get news through other people.’

  There was a sudden, profound silence; ‘an angel has just flown by,’ they all thought.

  ‘Would you like to go into the garden?’ Kalitin asked Lavretsky. ‘It’s very pretty now, although we’ve let it grow a bit wild.’

  Lavretsky went into the garden, and the first thing that struck him was that very bench where he had once spent with Liza a few happy, never-to-be-repeated moments; it had grown blackened and bent; but he recognized it, and his soul was seized by a feeling which has no equal in its sweetness and bitterness – a feeling of living sorrow for vanished youth and for a happiness that was once possessed. Together with the young people he walked along the paths; the limes had aged a little and grown taller in the last eight years, their shade had become thicker; all the bushes had shot up, the raspberries were full-grown, the hazels had run riot and everywhere there was a fragrance of fresh wild growth, of woods and grass and lilac.

  ‘This is a good place to play “I sent a letter to my love”,’ Lenochka suddenly cried, entering a small grassy area surrounded by limes. ‘Besides, there are five of us’
/>   ‘Have you forgotten Fyodor Ivanych?’ her brother asked. ‘Or aren’t you counting yourself?’

  Lenochka blushed slightly.

  ‘Surely Fyodor Ivanych, at his age, can…’ she began.

  ‘Please, do play,’ Lavretsky said hurriedly. ‘Don’t pay any attention to me. It’ll be much pleasanter for me if I know that I’m not in your way. Don’t feel you have to entertain me; we old people have an entertainment of our own, which you don’t know about yet and which can’t be replaced by any other: our memories.’

  The young people listened to Lavretsky with affable and slightly ironic respectfulness, as if a teacher had just read them a lesson, and suddenly scattered, dashing on to the grass; four of them took up places by the trees, one in the middle – and the fun began.

  Lavretsky returned to the house, went into the dining-room, approached the piano and touched one of the keys. A faint but pure sound rang out and secretly reverberated in his heart: this was the note that began the inspired melody with which, long ago, on that happiest of nights, Lemm, the dead Lemm, had brought him to such a pitch of exultation. Then Lavretsky crossed into the drawing-room, and it was a long time before he left it: in this room, where he had seen Liza so frequently, her image rose more vividly before him; he seemed to feel traces of her presence around him; but his sadness for her was poignant and oppressive: there was none of the silence in it evocative of death. Liza still lived somewhere, shut away, far off; he tried to think of her as a living person and could not recognize the girl he had once loved in that blurred, pale ghost shrouded in her nun’s habit and surrounded by smoky waves of incense. Lavretsky would not even have been able to recognize himself, if he looked at himself as he mentally looked at Liza. In the course of these eight years the crisis had finally occurred in his life, that crisis which many never experience but without which it’s impossible to remain a decent man to the end; he had actually ceased to think about personal happiness, about venal ends. He had become tranquil and – what point is there in hiding the truth? – old, not in face and body alone, but in his soul as well; to keep the heart young into old age, as some claim they can, is difficult and almost comic; that man can be satisfied, who has not lost his faith in goodness, the constancy of the will, the desire to keep active. Lavretsky had a right to be satisfied: he had really made himself into a good proprietor, he had really learned how to plough the land, and he laboured not for himself alone; so far as was in his power, he tried to ensure and stabilize the livelihood of his peasants.