A Lear of the Steppes and Other Stories

by Иван Тургенев

  The same day I went back with my portmanteau packed, to L., and started for Cologne. I remember the steamer was already off, and I was taking a mental farewell of those streets, all those spots which I was never to forget--when I caught sight of Hannchen. She was sitting on a seat near the river. Her face was pale but not sad; a handsome young fellow was standing beside her, laughing and telling her some story; while on the other side of the Rhine my little Madonna peeped out of the green of the old ash-tree as mournfully as ever. XXII

  IN Cologne I came upon traces of the Gagins; I found out they had gone to London; I pushed on in pursuit of them; but in London all my researches were in vain. It was long before I would resign myself, for a long while I persevered, but I was obliged, at last, to give up all hope of coming across them.

  And I never saw them again--I never saw Acia. Vague rumours reached me about him, but she had vanished for ever for me. I don't even know whether she is alive. One day, a few years later, in a railway carriage abroad, I caught a glimpse of a woman, whose face vividly recalled those features I could never forget . . . but I was most likely deceived by a chance resemblance. Acia remained in my memory a little girl such as I had known her at the best time of my life, as I saw her the last time, leaning against the back of a low wooden chair.

  But I must own I did not grieve over-long for her; I even came to the conclusion that fate had done all for the best, in not uniting me to Acia; I consoled myself with the reflection that I should probably not have been happy with such a wife. I was young then--and the future, the brief, swiftly-passing future seemed boundless to me then. Could not what had been be repeated, I thought, and better, fairer still? . . . I got to know other women--but the feeling Acia had aroused in me, that intense, tender, deep feeling has never come again. No! no eyes have for me taken the place of those that were once turned with love upon my eyes, to no heart, pressed to my breast, has my heart responded with such joyous sweet emotion! Condemned as I have been to a solitary life, without ties or family, I have led a dreary existence; but I keep as sacred relics, her little notes and the dry geranium, the flower she threw me once out of the window. It still retains a faint scent. while the hand that gave it, the hand I only once pressed to my lips, has perhaps long since decayed in the grave . . . And I myself, what has become of me? What is left of me, of those blissful, heart-stirring days, of those winged hopes and aspirations? The faint fragrance of an insignificant plant outlives all man's joys and sorrows--outlives man himself.

  1857.

  FAUST A STORY IN NINE LETTERS By Ivan Turgenev

  Entbehren sollst du, sollst entbehren (FAUST, PART I.)

  FIRST LETTER

  FROM PAVEL ALEXANDROVITCH B. . . . TO

  SEMYON NIKOLAEVITCH V. . . .

  M---- VILLAGE, 6th June 1850.

  I HAVE been here for three days, my dear fellow, and, as I promised, I take up my pen to write to you. It has been drizzling with fine rain ever since the morning; I can't go out; and I want a little chat with you, too. Here I am again in my old home, where--it's a dreadful thing to say--I have not been for nine long years. Really, as you may fancy, I have become quite a different man. Yes, utterly different, indeed; do you remember, in the drawing-room, the little tarnished looking-glass of my great-grandmother's, with the queer little curly scrolls in the corners---you always used to be speculating on what it had seen a hundred years ago--directly I arrived, I went up to it, and I could not help feeling disconcerted. I suddenly saw how old and changed I had become in these last years. But I am not alone in that respect. My little house, which was old and tottering long ago, will hardly hold together now, it is all on the slant, and seems sunk into the ground. My dear Vassilievna, the housekeeper (you can't have forgotten her; she used to regale you with such capital jam), is quite shrivelled up and bent; when she saw me, she could not call out, and did not start crying, but only moaned and choked, sank helplessly into a chair, and waved her hand. Old Terenty has some spirit left in him still; he holds himself up as much as ever, and turns out his feet as he walks. He still wears the same yellow nankeen breeches, and the same creaking goatskin slippers, with high heels and ribbons, which touched you so much sometimes, . . . but, mercy on us!--how the breeches flap about his thin legs nowadays! how white his hair has grown! and his face has shrunk up into a sort of little fist. When he speaks to me, when he begins directing the servants, and giving orders in the next room, it makes me laugh, and feel sorry for him. All his teeth are gone, and he mumbles with a whistling, hissing sound. On the other hand, the garden has got on wonderfully. The modest little plants of lilac, acacia, and honeysuckle (do you remember, we planted them together?) have grown into splendid, thick bushes. The birches, the maples--all that has spread out and grown tall; the avenues of lime-trees are particularly fine. I love those avenues, I love the tender grey, green colour, and the delicate fragrance of the air under their arching boughs; I love the changing network of rings of light on the dark earth--there is no sand here, you know. My favourite oak sapling has grown into a young oak tree. Yesterday I spent more than an hour in the middle of the day on a garden bench in its shade. I felt very happy. All about me the grass was deliciously luxuriant; a rich, soft, golden light lay upon everything; it made its way even into the shade . . . and the birds one could hear! You've not forgotten, I expect, that birds are a passion of mine? The turtle-doves cooed unceasingly; from time to time there came the whistle of the oriole; the chaffinch uttered its sweet little refrain; the blackbirds quarrelled and twittered; the cuckoo called far away; suddenly, like a mad thing, the woodpecker uttered its shrill cry. I listened and listened to this subdued, mingled sound, and did not want to move, while my heart was full of something between languor and tenderness.

  And it's not only the garden that has grown up: I am continually coming across sturdy, thick-set lads, whom I cannot recognise as the little boys I used to know in old days. Your favourite, Timosha, has turned into a Timofay, such as you could never imagine. You had fears in those days for his health, and predicted consumption; but now you should just see his huge, red hands, as they stick out from the narrow sleeves of his nankeen coat, and the stout rounded muscles that stand out all over him! He has a neck like a bull's, and a head all over tight, fair curls--a regular Farnese Hercules. His face, though, has changed less than the others'; it is not even much larger in circumference, and the good-humoured, "gaping"--as you used to say--smile has remained the same. I have taken him to be my valet; I got rid of my Petersburg fellow at Moscow; he was really too fond of putting me to shame, and making me feel the superiority of his Petersburg manners. Of my dogs I have not found one; they have all passed away. Nefka lived longer than any of them--and she did not live till my return, as Argos lived till the return of Ulysses; she was not fated to look once more with her lustreless eyes on her master and companion in the chase. But Shavka is all right, and barks as hoarsely as ever, and has one ear torn just the same, and burrs sticking to his tail,--all just as it should be. I have taken up my abode in what was your room. It is true the sun beats down upon it, and there are a lot of flies in it; but there is less of the smell of the old house in it than in the other rooms. It's a queer thing; that musty, rather sour, faint smell has a powerful effect on my imagination; I don't mean that it's disagreeable to me, quite the contrary, but it produces melancholy, and, at last, depression. I am very fond, just as you are, of podgy old chests with brass plates, white armchairs with oval backs, and crooked legs, fly-blown glass lustres, with a big egg of lilac tinsel in the centre--of all sorts of ancestral furniture, in fact. But I can't stand seeing it all continually; a sort of agitated dejection (it is just that) takes possession of me. In the room where I have established myself, the furniture is of the most ordinary, home-made description. I have left, though, in the corner, a long narrow set of shelves, on which there is an old-fashioned set of blown green and blue glasses, just discernible through the dust. And I have had hung on the wall that portrait of a woman--you rememb
er, in the black frame?--that you used to call the portrait of Manon Lescaut. It has got rather darker in these nine years; but the eyes have the same pensive, sly, and tender look, the lips have the same capricious, melancholy smile, and the half-plucked rose falls as softly as ever from her slender fingers. I am greatly amused by the blinds in my room. They were once green, but have been turned yellow by the sun; on them are depicted, in dark colours, scenes from d'Arlencourt's Hermit. On one curtain the hermit, with an immense beard, goggle-eyes, and sandals on his feet, is carrying off a young lady with dishevelled locks to the mountains. On another one, there is a terrific combat going on between four knights wearing birettas, and with puffs on their shoulders; one, much foreshortened, lies slain--in fact, there are pictures of all sorts of horrors, while all about there is such unbroken peace, and the blinds themselves throw such soft light on the ceiling. . . . A sort of inward calm has come upon me since I have been settled here; one wants to do nothing, one wants to see no one, one looks forward to nothing, one is too lazy for thought, but not too lazy for musing; two different things, as you know well. Memories of childhood, at first, came flooding upon me-- wherever I went, whatever I looked at, they surged up on all sides, distinct, to the smallest detail, and, as it were, immovable, in their clearly defined outlines. . . . Then these memories were succeeded by others, then . . . then I gradually turned away from the past, and all that was left was a sort of drowsy heaviness in my heart. Fancy! as I was sitting on the dike, under a willow, I suddenly and unexpectedly burst out crying, and should have gone on crying a long while, in spite of my advanced years, if I had not been put to shame by a passing peasant woman, who stared at me with curiosity, then, without turning her face towards me, gave a low bow from the waist, and passed on. I should be very glad to remain in the same mood (I shan't do any more crying, of course) till I go away from here, that is, till September, and should be very sorry if any of my neighbours should take it into his head to call on me. However there is no danger, I fancy, of that; I have no near neighbours here. You will understand me, I'm sure; you know yourself, by experience, how often solitude is beneficial . . . I need it now after wanderings of all sorts.

  But I shan't be dull. I have brought a few books with me, and I have a pretty fair library here. Yesterday, I opened all the bookcases, and was a long while rummaging about among the musty books. I found many curious things I had not noticed before: Candide, in a manuscript translation of somewhere about 1770; newspapers and magazines of the same period; the Triumphant Chameleon (that is, Mirabeau), le Paysan Perverti, etc. I came across children's books, my own, and my father's, and my grandmother's, and even, fancy, my great grandmother's; in one dilapidated French grammar in a particoloured binding, was written in fat letters: "Ce livre appartient à Mile Eudoxie de Lavrine," and it was dated 1741. I saw books I had brought at different times from abroad, among others, Goethe's Faust. You're not aware, perhaps, that there was a time when I knew Faust by heart (the first part, of course) word for word; I was never tired of reading it. . . But other days, other dreams, and for the last nine years, it has so happened, that I have scarcely had a Goethe in my hand. It was with an indescribable emotion that I saw the little book I knew so well, again (a poor edition of 1828). I brought it away with me, lay down on the bed, and began to read. How all that splendid first scene affected me! The entrance of the Spirit of the Earth, the words, you remember--"on the tide of life, in the whirl of creation," stirred a long unfamiliar tremor and shiver of ecstasy. I recalled everything: Berlin, and student days, and Fräulein Clara Stick, and Zeidelmann in the rôle of Mephistopheles, and the music of Radzivil, and all and everything. . . . It was a long while before I could get to sleep: my youth rose up and stood before me like a phantom; it ran like fire, like poison through my veins, my heart leaped and would not be still, something plucked at its chords, and yearnings began surging up. . . .

  You see what fantasies your friend gives himself up to, at almost forty, when he sits in solitude in his solitary little house! What if any one could have peeped at me! Well, what? I shouldn't have been a bit ashamed of myself. To be ashamed is a sign of youth, too; and I have begun (do you know how?) to notice that I'm getting old. I'll tell you how. I try in these days to make as much as I can of my happy sensations, and to make little of my sad ones, and in the days of my youth I did just the opposite. At times, one used to carry about one's melancholy as if it were a treasure, and be ashamed of a cheerful mood . . . But for all that, it strikes me, that in spite of all my experience of life, there is something in the world, friend Horatio, which I have not experienced, and that "something" almost the most important.

  Oh, what have I worked myself up to! Farewell for the present! What are you about in Petersburg? By the way; Savely, my country cook, wishes to send his duty to you. He too is older, but not very much so, he is grown rather corpulent, stouter all over. He is as good as ever at chicken-soup, with stewed onions, cheesecakes with goffered edges, and peagoose--peagoose is the famous dish of the steppes, which makes your tongue white and rough for twenty-four hours after. On the other hand, he roasts the meat as he always did, so that you can hammer on the plate with it--hard as a board. But I must really say, good-bye! Yours,

  P. B. SECOND LETTER

  From the SAME to the SAME

  M---- VILLAGE, June 12, 1850.

  I HAVE rather an important piece of news to tell you, my dear friend. Listen! Yesterday I felt disposed for a walk before dinner--only not in the garden; I walked along the road towards the town. Walking rapidly, quite aimlessly, along a straight, long road is very pleasant. You feel as if you're doing something, hurrying somewhere. I look up; a coach is coming towards me. Surely not some one to see me, I wondered with secret terror . . . No: there was a gentleman with moustaches in the carriage, a stranger to me. I felt reassured. But all of a sudden, when he got abreast with me, this gentleman told the coachman to stop the horses, politely raised his cap, and still more politely asked me, "was not I" . . . mentioning my name. I too came to a standstill, and with the fortitude of a prisoner brought up for trial, replied that I was myself; while I stared like a sheep at the gentleman with the moustaches and said to myself--"I do believe I've seen him somewhere!"

  "You don't recognise me?" he observed, as he got out of the coach.

  "No, I don't."

  "But I knew you directly."

  Explanations followed; it appeared that it was Priemkov--do you remember?--a fellow we used to know at the university. "Why, is that an important piece of news?" you are asking yourself at this instant, my dear Semyon Nikolaitch. "Priemkov, to the best of my recollection, was rather a dull chap; no harm in him though, and not a fool." Just so, my dear boy; but hear the rest of our conversation.

  "I was delighted," says he, "when I heard you had come to your country-place, into our neighbourhood. But I was not alone in that feeling."

  "Allow me to ask," I questioned: "who was so kind. . ."

  "My wife."

  "Your wife!"

  "Yes, my wife; she is an old acquaintance of yours."

  "May I ask what was your wife's name?"

  "Vera Nikolaevna; she was an Eltsov . . ."

  "Vera Nikolaevna!" I could not help exclaiming . . .

  This it is, which is the important piece of news I spoke of at the beginning of my letter.

  But perhaps you don't see anything important even in this . . . I shall have to tell you something of my past . . . long past, life.

  When we both left the university in 183-- I was three-and-twenty. You went into the service; I decided, as you know, to go to Berlin. But there was nothing to be done in Berlin before October. I wanted to spend the summer in Russia--in the country--to have a good lazy holiday for the last time; and then to set to work in earnest. How far this last project was carried out, there is no need to enlarge upon here . . . "But where am I to spend the summer?" I asked myself. I did not want to go to my own place; my father had died not long before, I had no near re
lations, I was afraid of the solitude and dreariness . . . And so I was delighted to receive an invitation from a distant cousin to stay at his country-place in T . . . province. He was a well-to-do, good-natured, simple-hearted man; he lived in style as a country magnate, and had a palatial country house. I went to stay there. My cousin had a large family; two sons and five daughters. Besides them, there was always a crowd of people in his house. Guests were for ever arriving; and yet it wasn't jolly at all. The days were spent in noisy entertainments, there was no chance of being by oneself. Everything was done in common, every one tried to be entertaining, to invent some amusement, and at the end of the day every one was fearfully exhausted. There was something vulgar about the way we lived. I was already beginning to look forward to getting away, and was only waiting till my cousin's birthday festivities were over, when on the very day of those festivities, at the ball, I saw Vera Nikolaevna Eltsov--and I stayed on.