He found Valeria sleeping as before, with an even more tranquil expression on her face. He did not undress, but seated himself by the window, his head in his hand, and once more sank into thought. The rising sun found him still in the same place. Valeria had not waked up.
XI
Fabio intended to wait till she awakened, and then to set off to Ferrara, when suddenly some one tapped lightly at the bedroom door. Fabio went out, and saw his old steward, Antonio. ‘Signor,’ began the old man, ‘the Malay has just informed me that Signor Muzzio has been taken ill, and wishes to be moved with all his belongings to the town; and that he begs you to let him have servants to assist in packing his things; and that at dinner - time you would send pack - horses, and saddle - horses, and a few attendants for the journey. Do you allow it?’
‘The Malay informed you of this?’ asked Fabio. ‘In what manner? Why, he is dumb.’
‘Here, signor, is the paper on which he wrote all this in our language, and very correctly.’
‘And Muzzio, you say, is ill?’ ‘Yes, he is very ill, and can see no one.’
‘Have they sent for a doctor?’ ‘No. The Malay forbade it.’ ‘And was it the
Malay wrote you this?’ ‘Yes, it was he.’ Fabio did not speak for a moment.
‘Well, then, arrange it all,’ he said at last. Antonio withdrew.
Fabio looked after his servant in bewilderment. ‘Then, he is not dead?’ he thought … and he did not know whether to rejoice or to be sorry. ‘Ill?’ But a few hours ago it was a corpse he had looked upon!
Fabio returned to Valeria. She waked up and raised her head. The husband and wife exchanged a long look full of significance. ‘He is gone?’ Valeria said suddenly. Fabio shuddered. ‘How gone? Do you mean …’ ‘Is he gone away?’ she continued. A load fell from Fabio’s heart. ‘Not yet; but he is going to - day.’ ‘And I shall never, never see him again?’ ‘Never.’ ‘And these dreams will not come again?’ ‘No.’ Valeria again heaved a sigh of relief; a blissful smile once more appeared on her lips. She held out both hands to her husband. ‘And we will never speak of him, never, do you hear, my dear one? And I will not leave my room till he is gone. And do you now send me my maids … but stay: take away that thing!’ she pointed to the pearl necklace, lying on a little bedside table, the necklace given her by Muzzio, ‘and throw it at once into our deepest well. Embrace me. I am your Valeria; and do not come in to me till … he has gone.’ Fabio took the necklace — the pearls he fancied looked tarnished — and did as his wife had directed. Then he fell to wandering about the garden, looking from a distance at the pavilion, about which the bustle of preparations for departure was beginning. Servants were bringing out boxes, loading the horses … but the Malay was not among them. An irresistible impulse drew Fabio to look once more upon what was taking place in the pavilion. He recollected that there was at the back a secret door, by which he could reach the inner room where Muzzio had been lying in the morning. He stole round to this door, found it unlocked, and, parting the folds of a heavy curtain, turned a faltering glance upon the room within.
XII
Muzzio was not now lying on the rug. Dressed as though for a journey, he sat in an arm - chair, but seemed a corpse, just as on Fabio’s first visit. His torpid head fell back on the chair, and his outstretched hands hung lifeless, yellow, and rigid on his knees. His breast did not heave. Near the chair on the floor, which was strewn with dried herbs, stood some flat bowls of dark liquid, which exhaled a powerful, almost suffocating, odour, the odour of musk. Around each bowl was coiled a small snake of brazen hue, with golden eyes that flashed from time to time; while directly facing Muzzio, two paces from him, rose the long figure of the Malay, wrapt in a mantle of many - coloured brocade, girt round the waist with a tiger’s tail, with a high hat of the shape of a pointed tiara on his head. But he was not motionless: at one moment he bowed down reverently, and seemed to be praying, at the next he drew himself up to his full height, even rose on tiptoe; then, with a rhythmic action, threw wide his arms, and moved them persistently in the direction of Muzzio, and seemed to threaten or command him, frowning and stamping with his foot. All these actions seemed to cost him great effort, even to cause him pain: he breathed heavily, the sweat streamed down his face. All at once he sank down to the ground, and drawing in a full breath, with knitted brow and immense effort, drew his clenched hands towards him, as though he were holding reins in them … and to the indescribable horror of Fabio, Muzzio’s head slowly left the back of the chair, and moved forward, following the Malay’s hands…. The Malay let them fall, and Muzzio’s head fell heavily back again; the Malay repeated his movements, and obediently the head repeated them after him. The dark liquid in the bowls began boiling; the bowls themselves began to resound with a faint bell - like note, and the brazen snakes coiled freely about each of them. Then the Malay took a step forward, and raising his eyebrows and opening his eyes immensely wide, he bowed his head to Muzzio … and the eyelids of the dead man quivered, parted uncertainly, and under them could be seen the eyeballs, dull as lead. The Malay’s face was radiant with triumphant pride and delight, a delight almost malignant; he opened his mouth wide, and from the depths of his chest there broke out with effort a prolonged howl…. Muzzio’s lips parted too, and a faint moan quivered on them in response to that inhuman sound…. But at this point Fabio could endure it no longer; he imagined he was present at some devilish incantation! He too uttered a shriek and rushed out, running home, home as quick as possible, without looking round, repeating prayers and crossing himself as he ran.
XIII
Three hours later, Antonio came to him with the announcement that everything was ready, the things were packed, and Signor Muzzio was preparing to start. Without a word in answer to his servant, Fabio went out on to the terrace, whence the pavilion could be seen. A few pack - horses were grouped before it; a powerful raven horse, saddled for two riders, was led up to the steps, where servants were standing bare - headed, together with armed attendants. The door of the pavilion opened, and supported by the Malay, who wore once more his ordinary attire, appeared Muzzio. His face was death - like, and his hands hung like a dead man’s — but he walked … yes, positively walked, and, seated on the charger, he sat upright and felt for and found the reins. The Malay put his feet in the stirrups, leaped up behind him on the saddle, put his arm round him, and the whole party started. The horses moved at a walking pace, and when they turned round before the house, Fabio fancied that in Muzzio’s dark face there gleamed two spots of white…. Could it be he had turned his eyes upon him? Only the Malay bowed to him … ironically, as ever.
Did Valeria see all this? The blinds of her windows were drawn … but it may be she was standing behind them.
XIV
At dinner - time she came into the dining - room, and was very quiet and affectionate; she still complained, however, of weariness. But there was no agitation about her now, none of her former constant bewilderment and secret dread; and when, the day after Muzzio’s departure, Fabio set to work again on her portrait, he found in her features the pure expression, the momentary eclipse of which had so troubled him … and his brush moved lightly and faithfully over the canvas.
The husband and wife took up their old life again. Muzzio vanished for them as though he had never existed. Fabio and Valeria were agreed, as it seemed, not to utter a syllable referring to him, not to learn anything of his later days; his fate remained, however, a mystery for all. Muzzio did actually disappear, as though he had sunk into the earth. Fabio one day thought it his duty to tell Valeria exactly what had taken place on that fatal night … but she probably divined his intention, and she held her breath, half - shutting her eyes, as though she were expecting a blow…. And Fabio understood her; he did not inflict that blow upon her.
One fine autumn day, Fabio was putting the last touches to his picture of his Cecilia; Valeria sat at the organ, her fingers straying at random over the keys…. Suddenly, without her knowing
it, from under her hands came the first notes of that song of triumphant love which Muzzio had once played; and at the same instant, for the first time since her marriage, she felt within her the throb of a new palpitating life…. Valeria started, stopped….
What did it mean? Could it be….
* * * * *
At this word the manuscript ended.
CLARA MILITCH
Translated by Constance Garnett, 1897
CONTENTS
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
I
In the spring of 1878 there was living in Moscow, in a small wooden house in Shabolovka, a young man of five - and - twenty, called Yakov Aratov. With him lived his father’s sister, an elderly maiden lady, over fifty, Platonida Ivanovna. She took charge of his house, and looked after his household expenditure, a task for which Aratov was utterly unfit. Other relations he had none. A few years previously, his father, a provincial gentleman of small property, had moved to Moscow together with him and Platonida Ivanovna, whom he always, however, called Platosha; her nephew, too, used the same name. On leaving the country - place where they had always lived up till then, the elder Aratov settled in the old capital, with the object of putting his son to the university, for which he had himself prepared him; he bought for a trifle a little house in one of the outlying streets, and established himself in it, with all his books and scientific odds and ends. And of books and odds and ends he had many — for he was a man of some considerable learning … ‘an out - and - out eccentric,’ as his neighbours said of him. He positively passed among them for a sorcerer; he had even been given the title of an ‘insectivist.’ He studied chemistry, mineralogy, entomology, botany, and medicine; he doctored patients gratis with herbs and metallic powders of his own invention, after the method of Paracelsus. These same powders were the means of his bringing to the grave his pretty, young, too delicate wife, whom he passionately loved, and by whom he had an only son. With the same powders he fairly ruined his son’s health too, in the hope and intention of strengthening it, as he detected anæmia and a tendency to consumption in his constitution inherited from his mother. The name of ‘sorcerer’ had been given him partly because he regarded himself as a descendant — not in the direct line, of course — of the great Bruce, in honour of whom he had called his son Yakov, the Russian form of James.
He was what is called a most good - natured man, but of melancholy temperament, pottering, and timid, with a bent for everything mysterious and occult…. A half - whispered ah! was his habitual exclamation; he even died with this exclamation on his lips, two years after his removal to Moscow.
His son, Yakov, was in appearance unlike his father, who had been plain, clumsy, and awkward; he took more after his mother. He had the same delicate pretty features, the same soft ash - coloured hair, the same little aquiline nose, the same pouting childish lips, and great greenish - grey languishing eyes, with soft eyelashes. But in character he was like his father; and the face, so unlike the father’s face, wore the father’s expression; and he had the triangular - shaped hands and hollow chest of the old Aratov, who ought, however, hardly to be called old, since he never reached his fiftieth year. Before his death, Yakov had already entered the university in the faculty of physics and mathematics; he did not, however, complete his course; not through laziness, but because, according to his notions, you could learn no more in the university than you could studying alone at home; and he did not go in for a diploma because he had no idea of entering the government service. He was shy with his fellow - students, made friends with scarcely any one, especially held aloof from women, and lived in great solitude, buried in books. He held aloof from women, though he had a heart of the tenderest, and was fascinated by beauty…. He had even obtained a sumptuous English keepsake, and (oh shame!) gloated adoringly over its ‘elegantly engraved’ representations of the various ravishing Gulnaras and Medoras…. But his innate modesty always kept him in check. In the house he used to work in what had been his father’s study, it was also his bedroom, and his bed was the very one in which his father had breathed his last.
The mainstay of his whole existence, his unfailing friend and companion, was his aunt Platosha, with whom he exchanged barely a dozen words in the day, but without whom he could not stir hand or foot. She was a long - faced, long - toothed creature, with pale eyes, and a pale face, with an invariable expression, half of dejection, half of anxious dismay. For ever garbed in a grey dress and a grey shawl, she wandered about the house like a spirit, with noiseless steps, sighed, murmured prayers — especially one favourite one, consisting of three words only, ‘Lord, succour us!’ — and looked after the house with much good sense, taking care of every halfpenny, and buying everything herself. Her nephew she adored; she was in a perpetual fidget over his health — afraid of everything — not for herself but for him; and directly she fancied the slightest thing wrong, she would steal in softly, and set a cup of herb tea on his writing - table, or stroke him on the spine with her hands, soft as wadding. Yakov was not annoyed by these attentions — though the herb tea he left untouched — he merely nodded his head approvingly. However, his health was really nothing to boast of. He was very impressionable, nervous, fanciful, suffered from palpitations of the heart, and sometimes from asthma; like his father, he believed that there are in nature and in the soul of man, mysteries which may sometimes be divined, but to which one can never penetrate; he believed in the existence of certain powers and influences, sometimes beneficent, but more often malignant,… and he believed too in science, in its dignity and importance. Of late he had taken a great fancy to photography. The smell of the chemicals used in this pursuit was a source of great uneasiness to his old aunt — not on her own account again, but on Yasha’s, on account of his chest; but for all the softness of his temper, there was not a little obstinacy in his composition, and he persisted in his favourite pursuit. Platosha gave in, and only sighed more than ever, and murmured, ‘Lord, succour us!’ whenever she saw his fingers stained with iodine.
Yakov, as we have already related, had held aloof from his fellow - students; with one of them he had, however, become fairly intimate, and saw him frequently, even after the fellow - student had left the university and entered the service, in a position involving little responsibility. He had, in his own words, got on to the building of the Church of our Saviour, though, of course, he knew nothing whatever of architecture. Strange to say, this one solitary friend of Aratov’s, by name Kupfer, a German, so far Russianised that he did not know one word of German, and even fell foul of ‘the Germans,’ this friend had apparently nothing in common with him. He was a black - haired, red - cheeked young man, very jovial, talkative, and devoted to the feminine society Aratov so assiduously avoided. It is true Kupfer both lunched and dined with him pretty often, and even, being a man of small means, used to borrow trifling sums of him; but this was not what induced the free and easy German to frequent the humble little house in Shabolovka so diligently. The spiritual purity, the idealism of Yakov pleased him, possibly as a contrast to what he was seeing and meeting every day; or possibly this very attachment to the youthful idealist betrayed him of German blood after all. Yakov liked Kupfer’s simple - hearted frankness; and besides that, his accounts of the theatres, concerts, and balls, where he was always in attendance — of the unknown world altogether, into which Yakov could not make up his mind to enter — secretly interested and even excited the young hermit, without, however, arousing any desire to learn all this by his own experience. And Platosha made Kupfer welcome; it is true she thought him at times excessively unceremonious, but instinctively perceiving and realising that he was sincerely attached to her p
recious Yasha, she not only put up with the noisy guest, but felt kindly towards him.
II
At the time with which our story is concerned, there was in Moscow a certain widow, a Georgian princess, a person of somewhat dubious, almost suspicious character. She was close upon forty; in her youth she had probably bloomed with that peculiar Oriental beauty, which fades so quickly; now she powdered, rouged, and dyed her hair yellow. Various reports, not altogether favourable, nor altogether definite, were in circulation about her; her husband no one had known, and she had never stayed long in any one town. She had no children, and no property, yet she kept open house, in debt or otherwise; she had a salon, as it is called, and received a rather mixed society, for the most part young men. Everything in her house from her own dress, furniture, and table, down to her carriage and her servants, bore the stamp of something shoddy, artificial, temporary,… but the princess herself, as well as her guests, apparently desired nothing better. The princess was reputed a devotee of music and literature, a patroness of artists and men of talent, and she really was interested in all these subjects, even to the point of enthusiasm, and an enthusiasm not altogether affected. There was an unmistakable fibre of artistic feeling in her. Moreover she was very approachable, genial, free from presumption or pretentiousness, and, though many people did not suspect it, she was fundamentally good - natured, soft - hearted, and kindly disposed…. Qualities rare — and the more precious for their rarity — precisely in persons of her sort! ‘A fool of a woman!’ a wit said of her: ‘but she’ll get into heaven, not a doubt of it! Because she forgives everything, and everything will be forgiven her.’ It was said of her too that when she disappeared from a town, she always left as many creditors behind as persons she had befriended. A soft heart readily turned in any direction.
Works of Ivan Turgenev (Illustrated) Page 181