Books: On the Eve
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Ivan Turgenev >> On the Eve
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'Your nephew,' resumed Shubin, 'threatens to lodge a complaint with
the Metropolitan and the General-Governor and the Minister, but it
will end by her going. A happy thought to ruin his own daughter! He'll
crow a little and then lower his colours.'
'They'd no right,' observed Uvar Ivanovitch, and he drank out of the
jug.
'To be sure. But what a storm of criticism, gossip, and comments will
be raised in Moscow! She's not afraid of them. . . . Besides she's
above them. She's going away . . . and it's awful to think where she's
going--to such a distance, such a wilderness! What future awaits her
there? I seem to see her setting off from a posting station in a
snow-storm with thirty degrees of frost. She's leaving her country,
and her people; but I understand her doing it. Whom is she leaving
here behind her? What people has she seen? Kurnatovsky and Bersenyev
and our humble selves; and these are the best she's seen. What is
there to regret about it? One thing's bad; I'm told her husband--the
devil, how that word sticks in my throat!--Insarov, I'm told, is
spitting blood; that's a bad lookout. I saw him the other day: his
face--you could model Brutus from it straight off. Do you know who
Brutus was, Uvar Ivanovitch?'
'What is there to know? a man to be sure.'
'Precisely so: he was a "man." Yes he's a wonderful face, but
unhealthy, very unhealthy.'
'For fighting ... it makes no difference,' observed Uvar Ivanovitch.
'For fighting it makes no difference, certainly; you are pleased to
express yourself with great justice to-day; but for living it makes
all the difference. And you see she wants to live with him a little
while.'
'A youthful affair,' responded Uvar Ivanovitch.
'Yes, a youthful, glorious, bold affair. Death, life, conflict,
defeat, triumph, love, freedom, country. . . . Good God, grant as much
to all of us! That's a very different thing from sitting up to one's
neck in a bog, and pretending it's all the same to you, when in fact
it really is all the same. While there--the strings are tuned to the
highest pitch, to play to all the world or to break!'
Shubin's head sank on to his breast.
'Yes,' he resumed, after a prolonged silence, 'Insarov deserves her.
What nonsense, though! No one deserves her. . . Insarov . . . Insarov
. . . What's the use of pretended modesty? We'll own he's a fine
fellow, he stands on his own feet, though up to the present he has
done no more than we poor sinners; and are we such absolutely
worthless dirt? Am I such dirt, Uvar Ivanovitch? Has God been hard
on me in every way? Has He given me no talents, no abilities? Who
knows, perhaps, the name of Pavel Shubin will in time be a great name?
You see that bronze farthing there lying on your table. Who knows;
some day, perhaps in a century, that bronze will go to a statue of
Pavel Shubin, raised in his honour by a grateful posterity!'
Uvar Ivanovitch leaned on his elbow and stared at the enthusiastic
artist.
'That's a long way off,' he said at last with his usual gesture;
'we're speaking of other people, why bring in yourself?'
'O great philosopher of the Russian world!' cried Shubin, 'every
word of yours is worth its weight in gold, and it's not to me but to
you a statue ought to be raised, and I would undertake it. There, as
you are lying now, in that pose; one doesn't know which is uppermost
in it, sloth or strength! That's how I would cast you in bronze. You
aimed a just reproach at my egoism and vanity! Yes! yes! it's
useless talking of one's-self; it's useless bragging. We have no one
yet, no men, look where you will. Everywhere--either small fry,
nibblers, Hamlets on a small scale, self-absorbed, or darkness and
subterranean chaos, or idle babblers and wooden sticks. Or else they
are like this: they study themselves to the most shameful detail, and
are for ever feeling the pulse of every sensation and reporting to
themselves: "That's what I feel, that's what I think." A useful,
rational occupation! No, if we only had some sensible men among us,
that girl, that delicate soul, would not have run away from us, would
not have slipped off like a fish to the water! What's the meaning of
it, Uvar Ivanovitch? When will our time come? When will men be born
among us?'
'Give us time,' answered Uvar Ivanovitch; 'they will be----'
'They will be? soil of our country! force of the black earth! thou
hast said: they will be. Look, I will write down your words. But why
are you putting out the candle?'
'I'm going to sleep; good-bye.'
XXXI
Shubin had spoken truly. The unexpected news of Elena's marriage
nearly killed Anna Vassilyevna. She took to her bed. Nikolai
Artemyevitch insisted on her not admitting her daughter to her
presence; he seemed to be enjoying the opportunity of showing himself
in the fullest sense the master of the house, with all the authority
of the head of the family; he made an incessant uproar in the
household, storming at the servants, and constantly saying: 'I will
show you who I am, I will let you know--you wait a little!' While he
was in the house, Anna Vassilyevna did not see Elena, and had to be
content with Zoya, who waited on her very devotedly, but kept thinking
to herself: '_Diesen Insarof vorziehen--und wem?_' But directly Nikolai
Artemyevitch went out--and that happened pretty often, Augustina
Christianovna had come back in sober earnest--Elena went to her
mother, and a long time her mother gazed at her in silence and in
tears.
This dumb reproach, more deeply than any other, cut Elena to the
heart; at such moments she felt, not remorse, but a deep, boundless
pity akin to remorse.
'Mamma, dear mamma!' she would repeat, kissing her hands; 'what
was I to do? I'm not to blame, I loved him, I could not have acted
differently. Throw the blame on fate for throwing me with a man whom
papa doesn't like, and who is taking me away from you.'
'Ah!' Anna Vassilyevna cut her short, 'don't remind me of that.
When I think where you mean to go, my heart is ready to burst!'
'Dear mamma,' answered Elena, 'be comforted; at least, it might have
been worse; I might have died.'
'But, as it is, I don't expect to see you again. Either you will end
your days there in a tent somewhere'--Anna Vassilyevna pictured
Bulgaria as something after the nature of the Siberian swamps,--'or
I shall not survive the separation----'
'Don't say that, mamma dearest, we shall see each other again, please
God. There are towns in Bulgaria just as there are here.'
'Fine towns there, indeed! There is war going on there now; wherever
you go, I suppose they are firing cannons off all the while . . . Are
you meaning to set off soon?'
'Soon ... if only papa. He means to appeal to the authorities; he
threatens to separate us.'
Anna Vassilyevna turned her eyes heavenwards.
'No, Lenotchka, he will not do that. I would not myself have consented
to this marriage. I would have died first; but what's done can't be
undone, and I will not let my daughter be disgraced.'
So passed a few days. At last Anna Vassilyevna plucked up her courage,
and one evening she shut herself up alone with her husband in her
room. The whole house was hushed to catch every sound. At first
nothing was to be heard; then Nikolai Artemyevitch's voice began to
tune up, then a quarrel broke out, shouts were raised, even groans
were discerned. . . . Already Shubin was plotting with the maids and
Zoya to rush in to the rescue; but the uproar in the bedroom began by
degrees to grow less, passed into quiet talk, and ceased. Only from
time to time a faint sob was to be heard, and then those, too, were
still. There was the jingling of keys, the creak of a bureau being
unfastened. . . . The door was opened, and Nikolai Artemyevitch
appeared. He looked surlily at every one who met him, and went out to
the club; while Anna Vassilyevna sent for Elena, embraced her warmly,
and, with bitter tears flowing down her cheeks, she said:
'Everything is settled, he will not make a scandal, and there is
nothing now to hinder you from going--from abandoning us.'
'You will let Dmitri come to thank you?' Elena begged her mother, as
soon as the latter had been restored a little.
'Wait a little, my darling, I cannot bear yet to see the man who has
come between us. We shall have time before you go.'
'Before we go,' repeated Elena mournfully.
Nikolai Artemyevitch had consented 'not to make a scandal,' but Anna
Vassilyevna did not tell her daughter what a price he had put on his
consent. She did not tell her that she had promised to pay all his
debts, and had given him a thousand roubles down on the spot.
Moreover, he had declared decisively to Anna Vassilyevna that he had
no wish to meet Insarov, whom he persisted in calling 'the Montenegrin
vagrant,' and when he got to the club, he began, quite without
occasion, talking of Elena's marriage, to his partner at cards, a
retired general of engineers. 'You have heard,' he observed with a
show of carelessness, 'my daughter, through the higher education, has
gone and married a student.' The general looked at him through his
spectacles, muttered, 'H'm!' and asked him what stakes would he play
for.
XXXII
The day of departure drew near. November was already over; the latest
date for starting had come. Insarov had long ago made his
preparations, and was burning with anxiety to get out of Moscow as
soon as possible. And the doctor was urging him on. 'You need a warm
climate,' he told him; 'you will not get well here.' Elena, too, was
fretting with impatience; she was worried by Insarov's pallor, and
his emaciation. She often looked with involuntary terror at his
changed face. Her position in her parents' house had become
insupportable. Her mother mourned over her, as over the dead, while
her father treated her with contemptuous coldness; the approaching
separation secretly pained him too, but he regarded it as his
duty--the duty of an offended father--to disguise his feelings, his
weakness. Anna Vassilyevna at last expressed a wish to see Insarov. He
was taken up to her secretly by the back stairs. After he had entered
her room, for a long time she could not speak to him, she could not
even bring herself to look at him; he sat down near her chair, and
waited, with quiet respectfulness, for her first word. Elena sat down
close, and held her mother's hand in hers. At last Anna Vassilyevna
raised her eyes, saying: 'God is your judge, Dmitri
Nikanorovitch'--she stopped short: the reproaches died away on her
lips. 'Why, you are ill,' she cried: 'Elena, your husband's ill!'
'I have been unwell, Anna Vassilyevna,' answered Insarov; 'and even
now I am not quite strong yet: but I hope my native air will make me
perfectly well again.'
'Ah--Bulgaria!' murmured Anna Vassilyevna, and she thought: 'Good God,
a Bulgarian, and dying; a voice as hollow as a drum; and eyes like
saucers, a perfect skeleton; his coat hanging loose on his shoulders,
his face as yellow as a guinea, and she's his wife--she loves him--it
must be a bad dream. But----' she checked herself at once: 'Dmitri
Nikanorovitch,' she said, 'are you absolutely, absolutely bound to go
away?'
'Absolutely, Anna Vassilyevna.'
Anna Vassilyevna looked at him.
'Ah, Dmitri Nikanorovitch, God grant you never have to go through what
I am going through now. But you will promise me to take care of
her--to love her. You will not have to face poverty while I an,
living!'
Tears choked her voice. She opened her arms, and Elena and Insarov
flung themselves into her embrace.
The fatal day had come at last. It had been arranged that Elena should
say good-bye to her parents at home, and should start on the journey
from Insarov's lodgings. The departure was fixed for twelve o'clock.
About a quarter of an hour before the appointed time Bersenyev
arrived. He had expected to find Insarov's compatriots at his
lodgings, anxious to see him off; but they had already gone before;
and with them the two mysterious persons known to the reader (they had
been witnesses at Insarov's wedding). The tailor met the 'kind
gentlemen' with a bow; he, presumably, to drown his grief, but
possibly to celebrate his delight at getting the furniture, had been
drinking heavily; his wife soon led him away. In the room everything
was by this time ready; a trunk, tied up with cord, stood on the
floor. Bersenyev sank into thought: many memories came rushing upon
him.
Twelve o'clock had long ago struck; and the driver had already
brought round the horses, but the 'young people' still did not appear.
At last hurrying steps were heard on the stairs, and Elena came out
escorted by Insarov and Shubin. Elena's eyes were red; she had left
her mother lying unconscious; the parting had been terrible. Elena had
not seen Bersenyev for more than a week: he had been seldom of late at
the Stahovs'. She had not expected to meet him; and crying, 'You!
thank you!' she threw herself on his neck; Insarov, too, embraced him.
A painful silence followed. What could these three say to one another?
what were they feeling in their hearts? Shubin realised the necessity
of cutting short everything painful with light words.
'Our trio has come together again,' he began, 'for the last time. Let
us submit to the decrees of fate; speak of the past with kindness;
and in God's name go forward to the new life! In God's name, on our
distant way,' he began to hum, and stopped short. He felt suddenly
ashamed and awkward. It is a sin to sing where the dead are lying: and
at that instant, in that room, the past of which he had spoken was
dying, the past of the people met together in it. It was dying to be
born again in a new life--doubtless--still it was death.
'Come, Elena,' began Insarov, turning to his wife, 'I think everything
is done? Everything paid, and everything packed. There's nothing more
except to take the box down.' He called his landlord.
The tailor came into the room, together with his wife and daughter. He
listened, slightly reeling, to Insarov's instructions, dragged the box
up on to his shoulders, and ran quickly down the staircases, tramping
heavily with his boots.
'Now, after the Russian custom, we must sit down,' observed Insarov.
They all sat down; Bersenyev seated himself on the old sofa, Elena
sat next him; the landlady and her daughter squatted in the doorway.
All were silent; all smiled constrainedly, though no one knew why he
was smiling; each of them wanted to say something at parting, and
each (except, of course, the landlady and her daughter, they were
simply rolling their eyes) felt that at such moments it is only
permissible to utter common-places, that any word of importance, of
sense, or even of deep feeling, would be somehow out of place, almost
insincere. Insarov was the first to get up, and he began crossing
himself. 'Farewell, our little room!' he cried.
Then came kisses, the sounding but cold kisses of leave-taking, good
wishes--half expressed--for the journey, promises to write, the last,
half-smothered words of farewell.
Elena, all in tears, had already taken her seat in the sledge; Insarov
had carefully wrapped her feet up in a rug; Shubin, Bersenyev, the
landlord, his wife, the little daughter, with the inevitable kerchief
on her head, the doorkeeper, a workman in a striped bedgown, were all
standing on the steps, when suddenly a splendid sledge, harnessed with
spirited horses, flew into the courtyard, and from the sledge, shaking
the snow off the collar of his cloak, leapt Nikolai Artemyevitch.
'I am not too late, thank God,' he cried, running up to their sledge.
'Here, Elena, is our last parental benediction,' he said, bending down
under the hood, and taking from his pocket a little holy image, sewn
in a velvet bag, he put it round her neck. She began to sob, and kiss
his hands; and the coachman meantime pulled out of the forepart of
the sledge a half bottle of champagne, and three glasses.
'Come!' said Nikolai Artemyevitch--and his own tears were trickling on
to the beaver collar of his cloak--'we must drink to--good
journey--good wishes----' He began pouring out the champagne: his
hands were shaking, the foam rose over the edge and fell on to the
snow. He took one glass, and gave the other two to Elena and Insarov,
who by now was seated beside hen 'God give you----' began Nikolai
Artemyevitch, and he could not go on: he drank off the wine; they,
too, drank off their glasses. 'Now you should drink, gentlemen,' he
added, turning to Shubin and Bersenyev, but at that instant the driver
started the horses. Nikolai Artemyevitch ran beside the sledge. 'Mind
and write to us,' he said in a broken voice. Elena put out her head,
saying: 'Good-bye, papa, Andrei Petrovitch, Pavel Yakovlitch, good-bye
all, good-bye, Russia!' and dropped back in her place. The driver
flourished his whip, and gave a whistle; the sledge, its runners
crunching on the snow, turned out of the gates to the right and
disappeared.
XXXIII
It was a bright April day. On the broad lagoon which separates Venice
from the narrow strip of accumulated sea sand, called the Lido, a
gondola was gliding--swaying rhythmically at every push made by the
gondolier as he leaned on the big pole. Under its low awning, on soft
leather cushions, were sitting Elena and Insarov.
Elena's features had not changed much since the day of her departure
from Moscow, but their expression was different; it was more
thoughtful and more severe, and her eyes had a bolder look. Her whole
figure had grown finer and more mature, and the hair seemed to lie in
greater thickness and luxuriance along her white brow and her fresh
cheeks. Only about her lips, when she was not smiling, a scarcely
perceptible line showed the presence of a hidden constant anxiety. In
Insarov's face, on the contrary, the expression had remained the same,
but his features had undergone a cruel change. He had grown thin, old,
pale and bent; he was constantly coughing a short dry cough, and his
sunken eyes shone with a strange brilliance. On the way from Russia,
Insarov had lain ill for almost two months at Vienna, and only at the
end of March had he been able to come with his wife to Venice; from
there he was hoping to make his way through Zara to Servia, to
Bulgaria; the other roads were closed. The war was now at its height
about the Danube; England and France had declared war on Russia, all
the Slavonic countries were roused and were preparing for an uprising.
The gondola put in to the inner shore of the Lido. Elena and Insarov
walked along the narrow sandy road planted with sickly trees (every
year they plant them and every year they die) to the outer shore of
the Lido, to the sea.
They walked along the beach. The Adriatic rolled its muddy-blue waves
before them; they raced into the shore, foaming and hissing, and drew
back again, leaving fine shells and fragments of seaweed on the beach.
'What a desolate place!' observed Elena 'I'm afraid it's too cold
for you here, but I guess why you wanted to come here.'
'Cold!' rejoined Insarov with a rapid and bitter smile, 'I shall be a
fine soldier, if I'm to be afraid of the cold. I came here ... I will
tell you why. I look across that sea, and I feel as though here, I am
nearer my country. It is there, you know,' he added, stretching out
his hand to the East, 'the wind blows from there.'
'Will not this wind bring the ship you are expecting?' said Elena.
'See, there is a white sail, is not that it?'
Insarov gazed seaward into the distance to where Elena was pointing.
'Renditch promised to arrange everything for us within a week,' he
said, 'we can rely on him, I think. . . . Did you hear, Elena,' he
added with sudden animation, 'they say the poor Dalmatian fishermen
have sacrificed their dredging weights--you know the leads they weigh
their nets with for letting them down to the bottom--to make bullets!
They have no money, they only just live by fishing; but they have
joyfully given up their last property, and now are starving. What a
nation!'
'_Aufgepasst_!' shouted a haughty voice behind them. The heavy thud of
horse's hoofs was heard, and an Austrian officer in a short grey tunic
and a green cap galloped past them--they had scarcely time to get out
of the way.
Insarov looked darkly after him.
'He was not to blame,' said Elena, 'you know, they have no other place
where they can ride.'
'He was not to blame,' answered Insarov 'but he made my blood boil
with his shout, his moustaches, his cap, his whole appearance. Let us
go back.'
'Yes, let us go back, Dmitri. It's really cold here. You did not take
care of yourself after your Moscow illness, and you had to pay for
that at Vienna. Now you must be more cautious.'
Insarov did not answer, but the same bitter smile passed over his
lips.
'If you like,' Elena went on, 'we will go along to the Canal Grande.
We have not seen Venice properly, you know, all the while we have been
here. And in the evening we are going to the theatre; I have two
tickets for the stalls. They say there's a new opera being given. If
you like, we will give up to-day to one another; we will forget
politics and war and everything, we will forget everything but that we
are alive, breathing, thinking together; that we are one for
ever--would you like that?'
'If you would like it, Elena,' answered Insarov, 'it follows that I
should like it too.'
'I knew that,' observed Elena with a smile, 'come, let us go.'
They went back to the gondola, took their seats, told the gondolier to
take them without hurry along the Canal Grande.
No one who has not seen Venice in April knows all the unutterable
fascinations of that magic town. The softness and mildness of spring
harmonise with Venice, just as the glaring sun of summer suits the
magnificence of Genoa, and as the gold and purple of autumn suits the
grand antiquity of Rome. The beauty of Venice, like the spring,
touches the soul and moves it to desire; it frets and tortures the
inexperienced heart like the promise of a coming bliss, mysterious but
not elusive. Everything in it is bright, and everything is wrapt in a
drowsy, tangible mist, as it were, of the hush of love; everything in
it is so silent, and everything in it is kindly; everything in it is
feminine, from its name upwards. It has well been given the name of
'the fair city.' Its masses of palaces and churches stand out light
and wonderful like the graceful dream of a young god; there is
something magical, something strange and bewitching in the
greenish-grey light and silken shimmer of the silent water of the
canals, in the noiseless gliding of the gondolas, in the absence of
the coarse din of a town, the coarse rattling, and crashing, and
uproar. 'Venice is dead, Venice is deserted,' her citizens will tell
you, but perhaps this last charm--the charm of decay--was not
vouchsafed her in the very heyday of the flower and majesty of her
beauty. He who has not seen her, knows her not; neither Canaletto nor
Guardi (to say nothing of later painters) has been able to convey the
silvery tenderness of the atmosphere, the horizon so close, yet so
elusive, the divine harmony of exquisite lines and melting colours.
One who has outlived his life, who has been crushed by it, should not
visit Venice; she will be cruel to him as the memory of unfulfilled
dreams of early days; but sweet to one whose strength is at its full,
who is conscious of happiness; let him bring his bliss under her
enchanted skies; and however bright it may be, Venice will make it
more golden with her unfading splendour.
The gondola in which Insarov and Elena were sitting passed _Riva dei
Schiavoni_, the palace of the Doges, and Piazzetta, and entered the
Grand Canal. On both sides stretched marble palaces; they seemed to
float softly by, scarcely letting the eye seize or absorb their
beauty. Elena felt herself deeply happy; in the perfect blue of her
heavens there was only one dark cloud--and it was in the far distance;
Insarov was much better that day. They glided as far as the acute
angle of the Rialto and turned back. Elena was afraid of the chill of
the churches for Insarov; but she remembered the academy delle Belle
Arti, and told the gondolier to go towards it. They quickly walked
through all the rooms of that little museum. Being neither
connoisseurs nor dilettantes, they did not stop before every picture;
they put no constraint on themselves; a spirit of light-hearted
gaiety came over them. Everything seemed suddenly very entertaining.
(Children know this feeling very well.) To the great scandal of three
English visitors, Elena laughed till she cried over the St Mark of
Tintoretto, skipping down from the sky like a frog into the water, to
deliver the tortured slave; Insarov in his turn fell into raptures
over the back and legs of the sturdy man in the green cloak, who
stands in the foreground of Titian's Ascension and holds his arms
outstretched after the Madonna; but the Madonna--a splendid, powerful
woman, calmly and majestically making her way towards the bosom of God
the Father--impressed both Insarov and Elena; they liked, too, the
austere and reverent painting of the elder Cima da Conegliano. As they
were leaving the academy, they took another look at the Englishmen
behind them--with their long rabbit-like teeth and drooping
whiskers--and laughed; they glanced at their gondolier with his
abbreviated jacket and short breeches--and laughed; they caught sight
of a woman selling old clothes with a knob of grey hair on the very
top of her head--and laughed more than ever; they looked into one
another's face--and went off into peals of laughter, and directly they
had sat down in the gondola, they clasped each other's hand in a
close, close grip. They reached their hotel, ran into their room, and
ordered dinner to be brought in. Their gaiety did not desert them at
dinner. They pressed each other to eat, drank to the health of their
friends in Moscow, clapped their hands at the waiter for a delicious
dish of fish, and kept asking him for live _frutti di mare_; the
waiter shrugged his shoulders and scraped with his feet, but when he
had left them, he shook his head and once even muttered with a sigh,
_poveretti_! (poor things!) After dinner they set off for the theatre.
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