Books: On the Eve
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Ivan Turgenev >> On the Eve
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'Have you noticed,' began Bersenyev, eking out his words with
gesticulations, 'what a strange feeling nature produces in us?
Everything in nature is so complete, so defined, I mean to say, so
content with itself, and we understand that and admire it, and at the
same time, in me at least, it always excites a kind of restlessness, a
kind of uneasiness, even melancholy. What is the meaning of it? Is it
that in the face of nature we are more vividly conscious of all our
incompleteness, our indefiniteness, or have we little of that content
with which nature is satisfied, but something else--I mean to say,
what we need, nature has not?'
'H'm,' replied Shubin, 'I'll tell you, Andrei Petrovitch, what all
that comes from. You describe the sensations of a solitary man, who
is not living but only looking on in ecstasy. Why look on? Live,
yourself, and you will be all right. However much you knock at
nature's door, she will never answer you in comprehensible words,
because she is dumb. She will utter a musical sound, or a moan, like a
harp string, but don't expect a song from her. A living heart,
now--that will give you your answer--especially a woman's heart. So,
my dear fellow, I advise you to get yourself some one to share your
heart, and all your distressing sensations will vanish at once.
"That's what we need," as you say. This agitation, and melancholy, all
that, you know, is simply a hunger of a kind. Give the stomach some
real food, and everything will be right directly. Take your place in
the landscape, live in the body, my dear boy. And after all, what is
nature? what's the use of it? Only hear the word, love--what an
intense, glowing sound it has! Nature--what a cold, pedantic
expression. And so' (Shubin began humming), 'my greetings to Marya
Petrovna! or rather,' he added, 'not Marya Petrovna, but it's all the
same! _Voo me compreny_.'
Bersenyev got up and stood with his chin leaning on his clasped hands.
'What is there to laugh at?' he said, without looking at his
companion, 'why should you scoff? Yes, you are right: love is a
grand word, a grand feeling. . . . But what sort of love do you mean?'
Shubin too, got up. 'What sort? What you like, so long as it's there.
I will confess to you that I don't believe in the existence of
different kinds of love. If you are in love----'
'With your whole heart,' put in Bersenyev.
'Well, of course, that's an understood thing; the heart's not an
apple; you can't divide it. If you're in love, you're justified. And
I wasn't thinking of scoffing. My heart's as soft at this moment as if
it had been melted. ... I only wanted to explain why nature has the
effect on us you spoke of. It's because she arouses in us a need for
love, and is not capable of satisfying it. Nature is gently driving us
to other living embraces, but we don't understand, and expect
something from nature herself. Ah, Andrei, Andrei, this sun, this sky
is beautiful, everything around us is beautiful, still you are sad;
but if, at this instant, you were holding the hand of a woman you
loved, if that hand and the whole woman were yours, if you were even
seeing with her eyes, feeling not your own isolated emotion, but her
emotion--nature would not make you melancholy or restless then, and
you would not be observing nature's beauty; nature herself would be
full of joy and praise; she would be re-echoing your hymn, because
then you would have given her--dumb nature--speech!'
Shubin leaped on to his feet and walked twice up and down, but
Bersenyev bent his head, and his face was overcast by a faint flush.
'I don't altogether agree with you,' he began: 'nature does not always
urge us ... towards love.' (He could not at once pronounce the word.)
'Nature threatens us, too; she reminds us of dreadful . . . yes,
insoluble mysteries. Is she not destined to swallow us up, is she not
swallowing us up unceasingly? She holds life and death as well; and
death speaks in her as loudly as life.'
'In love, too, there is both life and death,' interposed Shubin.
'And then,' Bersenyev went on: 'when I, for example, stand in the
spring in the forest, in a green glade, when I can fancy the romantic
notes of Oberon's fairy horn' (Bersenyev was a little ashamed when he
had spoken these words)--'is that, too----'
'The thirst for love, the thirst for happiness, nothing more!' broke
in Shubin. 'I, too, know those notes, I know the languor and the
expectation which come upon the soul in the forest's shade, in its
deep recesses, or at evening in the open fields when the sun sets and
the river mist rises behind the bushes. But forest, and river, and
fields, and sky, every cloud and every blade of grass sets me
expecting, hoping for happiness, I feel the approach, I hear the voice
of happiness calling in everything. "God of my worship, bright and
gay!" That was how I tried to begin my sole poem; you must own it's a
splendid first line, but I could never produce a second. Happiness!
happiness! as long as life is not over, as long as we have the use of
all our limbs, as long as we are going up, not down, hill! Damn it
all!' pursued Shubin with sudden vehemence, 'we are young, and neither
fools nor monsters; we will conquer happiness for ourselves!'
He shook his curls, and turned a confident almost challenging glance
upwards to the sky. Bersenyev raised his eyes and looked at him.
'Is there nothing higher than happiness?' he commented softly.
'And what, for instance?' asked Shubin, stopping short.
'Why, for instance, you and I are, as you say, young; we are good
men, let us suppose; each of us desires happiness for himself. . . .
But is that word, happiness, one that could unite us, set us both on
fire, and make us clasp each other's hands? Isn't that word an
egoistic one; I mean, isn't it a source of disunion?'
'Do you know words, then, that unite men?'
'Yes; and they are not few in number; and you know them, too.'
'Eh? What words?'
'Well, even Art--since you are an artist--Country, Science, Freedom,
Justice.'
'And what of love?' asked Shubin.
'Love, too, is a word that unites; but not the love you are eager for
now; the love which is not enjoyment, the love which is
self-sacrifice.'
Shubin frowned.
'That's all very well for Germans; I want to love for myself; I want
to be first.'
'To be first,' repeated Bersenyev. 'But it seems to me that to put
one's-self in the second place is the whole significance of our life.'
'If all men were to act as you advise,' commented Shubin with a
plaintive expression, 'none on earth would eat pine-apples; every
one would be offering them to other people.'
'That's as much as to say, pine-apples are not necessary; but you
need not be alarmed; there will always be plenty of people who like
them enough to take the bread out of other men's mouths to get them.'
Both friends were silent a little.
'I met Insarov again the other day,' began Bersenyev. 'I invited him
to stay with me; I really must introduce him to you--and to the
Stahovs.'
'Who is Insarov? Ah, to be sure, isn't it that Servian or Bulgarian
you were telling me about? The patriot? Now isn't it he who's at the
bottom of all these philosophical ideas?'
'Perhaps.'
'Is he an exceptional individual?'
'Yes.'
'Clever? Talented?'
'Clever--talented--I don't know, I don't think so.'
'Not? Then, what is there remarkable in him?'
'You shall see. But now I think it's time to be going. Anna
Vassilyevna will be waiting for us, very likely. What's the time?'
'Three o'clock. Let us go. How baking it is! This conversation has
set all my blood aflame. There was a moment when you, too, ... I am
not an artist for nothing; I observe everything. Confess, you are
interested in a woman?'
Shubin tried to get a look at Bersenyev's face, but he turned away and
walked out of the lime-tree's shade. Shubin went after him, moving his
little feet with easy grace. Bersenyev walked clumsily, with his
shoulders high and his neck craned forward. Yet, he looked a man of
finer breeding than Shubin; more of a gentleman, one might say, if
that word had not been so vulgarised among us.
II
The young men went down to the river Moskva and walked along its bank.
There was a breath of freshness from the water, and the soft plash of
tiny waves caressed the ear.
'I would have another bathe,' said Shubin, 'only I'm afraid of being
late. Look at the river; it seems to beckon us. The ancient Greeks
would have beheld a nymph in it. But we are not Greeks, O nymph! we
are thick-skinned Scythians.'
'We have _roussalkas_,' observed Bersenyev.
'Get along with your _roussalkas!_ What's the use to me--a sculptor--of
those children of a cold, terror-stricken fancy, those shapes begotten
in the stifling hut, in the dark of winter nights? I want light,
space. . . . Good God, when shall I go to Italy? When----'
'To Little Russia, I suppose you mean?'
'For shame, Andrei Petrovitch, to reproach me for an act of
unpremeditated folly, which I have repented bitterly enough without
that. Oh, of course, I behaved like a fool; Anna Vassilyevna most
kindly gave me the money for an expedition to Italy, and I went off to
the Little Russians to eat dumplings and----'
'Don't let me have the rest, please,' interposed Bersenyev.
'Yet still, I will say, the money was not spent in vain. I saw there
such types, especially of women. . . . Of course, I know; there is no
salvation to be found outside of Italy!'
'You will go to Italy,' said Bersenyev, without turning towards him,
'and will do nothing. You will always be pluming your wings and never
take flight. We know you!'
'Stavasser has taken flight. . . . And he's not the only one. If I
don't fly, it will prove that I'm a sea penguin, and have no wings. I
am stifled here, I want to be in Italy,' pursued Shubin, 'there is
sunshine, there is beauty.'
A young girl in a large straw hat, with a pink parasol on her
shoulder, came into sight at that instant, in the little path along
which the friends were walking.
'But what do I see? Even here, there is beauty--coming to meet us! A
humble artist's compliments to the enchanting Zoya!' Shubin cried at
once, with a theatrical flourish of his hat.
The young girl to whom this exclamation referred, stopped, threatening
him with her finger, and, waiting for the two friends to come up to
her, she said in a ringing voice:
'Why is it, gentlemen, you don't come in to dinner? It is on the
table.'
'What do I hear?' said Shubin, throwing his arms up. 'Can it be that
you, bewitching Zoya, faced such heat to come and look for us? Dare I
think that is the meaning of your words? Tell me, can it be so? Or
no, do not utter that word; I shall die of regret on the spot'
'Oh, do leave off, Pavel Yakovlitch,' replied the young girl with some
annoyance. 'Why will you never talk to me seriously? I shall be
angry,' she added with a little coquettish grimace, and she pouted.
'You will not be angry with me, ideal Zoya Nikitishna; you would not
drive me to the dark depths of hopeless despair. And I can't talk to
you seriously, because I'm not a serious person.'
The young girl shrugged her shoulders, and turned to Bersenyev.
'There, he's always like that; he treats me like a child; and I am
eighteen. I am grown-up now.'
'O Lord!' groaned Shubin, rolling his eyes upwards; and Bersenyev
smiled quietly.
The girl stamped with her little foot.
'Pavel Yakovlitch, I shall be angry! _Helene_ was coming with me,' she
went on, 'but she stopped in the garden. The heat frightened her, but
I am not afraid of the heat. Come along.'
She moved forward along the path, slightly swaying her slender figure
at each step, and with a pretty black-mittened little hand pushing her
long soft curls back from her face.
The friends walked after her (Shubin first pressed his hands, without
speaking, to his heart, and then flung them higher than his head), and
in a few instants they came out in front of one of the numerous
country villas with which Kuntsovo is surrounded. A small wooden house
with a gable, painted a pink colour, stood in the middle of the
garden, and seemed to be peeping out innocently from behind the green
trees. Zoya was the first to open the gate; she ran into the garden,
crying: 'I have brought the wanderers!' A young girl, with a pale
and expressive face, rose from a garden bench near the little path,
and in the doorway of the house appeared a lady in a lilac silk dress,
holding an embroidered cambric handkerchief over her head to screen it
from the sun, and smiling with a weary and listless air.
III
Anna Vassilyevna Stahov--her maiden name was Shubin--had been left, at
seven years old, an orphan and heiress of a pretty considerable
property. She had very rich and also very poor relations; the poor
relations were on her father's, the rich on her mother's side; the
latter including the senator Volgin and the Princes Tchikurasov.
Prince Ardalion Tchikurasov, who had been appointed her guardian,
placed her in the best Moscow boarding-school, and when she left
school, took her into his own home. He kept open house, and gave balls
in the winter. Anna Vassilyevna's future husband, Nikolai Artemyevitch
Stahov, captured her heart at one of these balls when she was arrayed
in a charming rose-coloured gown, with a wreath of tiny roses. She had
treasured that wreath all her life. Nikolai Artemyevitch Stahov was
the son of a retired captain, who had been wounded in 1812, and had
received a lucrative post in Petersburg. Nikolai Artemyevitch entered
the School of Cadets at sixteen, and left to go into the Guards. He
was a handsome, well-made fellow, and reckoned almost the most dashing
beau at evening parties of the middling sort, which were those he
frequented for the most part; he had not gained a footing in the best
society. From his youth he had been absorbed by two ideals: to get
into the Imperial adjutants, and to make a good marriage; the first
ideal he soon discarded, but he clung all the more closely to the
second, and it was with that object that he went every winter to
Moscow. Nikolai Artemyevitch spoke French fairly, and passed for being
a philosopher, because he was not a rake. Even while he was no more
than an ensign, he was given to discussing, persistently, such
questions as whether it is possible for a man to visit the whole of
the globe in the course of his whole lifetime, whether it is possible
for a man to know what is happening at the bottom of the sea; and he
always maintained the view that these things were impossible.
Nikolai Artemyevitch was twenty-five years old when he 'hooked' Anna
Vassilyevna; he retired from the service and went into the country to
manage the property. He was soon tired of country life, and as the
peasants' labour was all commuted for rent he could easily leave the
estate; he settled in Moscow in his wife's house. In his youth he had
played no games of any kind, but now he developed a passion for loto,
and, when loto was prohibited, for whist. At home he was bored; he
formed a connection with a widow of German extraction, and spent
almost all his time with her. In the year 1853 he had not moved to
Kuntsovo; he stopped at Moscow, ostensibly to take advantage of the
mineral waters; in reality, he did not want to part from his widow.
He did not, however, have much conversation with her, but argued more
than ever as to whether one can foretell the weather and such
questions. Some one had once called him a _frondeur_; he was greatly
delighted with that name. 'Yes,' he thought, letting the corners of
his mouth drop complacently and shaking his head, 'I am not easily
satisfied; you won't take me in.' Nikolai Artemyevitch's _frondeurism_
consisted in saying, for instance, when he heard the word nerves: 'And
what do you mean by nerves?' or if some one alluded in his presence to
the discoveries of astronomy, asking: 'And do you believe in
astronomy?' When he wanted to overwhelm his opponent completely, he
said: 'All that is nothing but words.' It must be admitted that to
many persons remarks of that kind seemed (and still seem) irrefutable
arguments. But Nikolai Artemyevitch never suspected that Augustina
Christianovna, in letters to her cousin, Theodolina Peterzelius,
called him _Mein Pinselchen_.
Nikolai Artemyevitch's wife, Anna Vassilyevna, was a thin, little
woman with delicate features, and a tendency to be emotional and
melancholy. At school, she had devoted herself to music and reading
novels; afterwards she abandoned all that. She began to be absorbed
in dress, and that, too, she gave up. She did, for a time, undertake
her daughter's education, but she got tired of that too, and handed
her over to a governess. She ended by spending her whole time in
sentimental brooding and tender melancholy. The birth of Elena
Nikolaevna had ruined her health, and she could never have another
child. Nikolai Artemyevitch used to hint at this fact in justification
of his intimacy with Augustina Christianovna. Her husband's infidelity
wounded Anna Vassilyevna deeply; she had been specially hurt by his
once giving his German woman, on the sly, a pair of grey horses out of
her (Anna Vassilyevna's) own stable. She had never reproached him to
his face, but she complained of him secretly to every one in the house
in turn, even to her daughter. Anna Vassilyevna did not care for going
out, she liked visitors to come and sit with her and talk to her; she
collapsed at once when she was left alone. She had a very tender and
loving heart; life had soon crushed her.
Pavel Yakovlitch Shubin happened to be a distant cousin of hers. His
father had been a government official in Moscow. His brothers had
entered cadets' corps; he was the youngest, his mother's darling, and
of delicate constitution; he stopped at home. They intended him for
the university, and strained every effort to keep him at the
gymnasium. From his early years he began to show an inclination for
sculpture. The ponderous senator, Volgin, saw a statuette of his one
day at his aunt's--he was then sixteen--and declared that he intended
to protect this youthful genius. The sudden death of Shubin's father
very nearly effected a complete transformation in the young man's
future. The senator, the patron of genius, made him a present of a
bust of Homer in plaster, and did nothing more. But Anna Vassilyevna
helped him with money, and at nineteen he scraped through into the
university in the faculty of medicine. Pavel felt no inclination for
medical science, but, as the university was then constituted, it was
impossible for him to enter in any other faculty. Besides, he looked
forward to studying anatomy. But he did not complete his anatomical
studies; at the end of the first year, and before the examination, he
left the university to devote himself exclusively to his vocation. He
worked zealously, but by fits and starts; he used to stroll about the
country round Moscow sketching and modelling portraits of peasant
girls, and striking up acquaintance with all sorts of people, young
and old, of high and low degree, Italian models and Russian artists.
He would not hear of the Academy, and recognised no one as a teacher.
He was possessed of unmistakeable talent; it began to be talked about
in Moscow. His mother, who came of a good Parisian family, a
kind-hearted and clever woman, had taught him French thoroughly and
had toiled and thought for him day and night. She was proud of him,
and when, while still young in years, she died of consumption, she
entreated Anna Vassilyevna to take him under her care. He was at that
time twenty-one. Anna Vassilyevna carried out her last wish; a small
room in the lodge of the country villa was given up to him.
IV
'Come to dinner, come along,' said the lady of the house in a
plaintive voice, and they all went into the dining-room. 'Sit beside
me, _Zoe_,' added Anna Vassilyevna, 'and you, Helene, take our guest;
and you, _Paul_, please don't be naughty and tease _Zoe_. My head
aches to-day.'
Shubin again turned his eyes up to the ceiling; Zoe responded with a
half-smile. This Zoe, or, to speak more precisely, Zoya Nikitishna
Mueller, was a pretty, fair-haired, half-Russian German girl, with a
little nose rather wide at the end, and tiny red lips. She sang
Russian ballads fairly well and could play various pieces, both lively
and sentimental, very correctly on the piano. She dressed with taste,
but in a rather childish style, and even over-precisely. Anna
Vassilyevna had taken her as a companion for her daughter, and she
kept her almost constantly at her side. Elena did not complain of that;
she was absolutely at a loss what to say to Zoya when she happened to
be left alone with her.
The dinner lasted rather a long time; Bersenyev talked with Elena
about university life, and his own plans and hopes; Shubin listened
without speaking, ate with an exaggerated show of greediness, and now
and then threw comic glances of despair at Zoya, who responded always
with the same phlegmatic smile. After dinner, Elena with Bersenyev and
Shubin went into the garden; Zoya looked after them, and, with a
slight shrug of her shoulders, sat down to the piano. Anna Vassilyevna
began: 'Why don't you go for a walk, too?' but, without waiting
for a reply, she added: 'Play me something melancholy.'
'_La derniere pensee de Weber_?' suggested Zoya.
'Ah, yes, Weber,' replied Anna Vassilyevna. She sank into an easy
chair, and the tears started on to her eyelashes.
Meanwhile, Elena led the two friends to an arbour of acacias, with a
little wooden table in the middle, and seats round. Shubin looked
round, and, whispering 'Wait a minute!' he ran off, skipping and
hopping to his own room, brought back a piece of clay, and began
modelling a bust of Zoya, shaking his head and muttering and laughing
to himself.
'At his old tricks again,' observed Elena, glancing at his work. She
turned to Bersenyev, with whom she was continuing the conversation
begun at dinner.
'My old tricks!' repeated Shubin. 'It's a subject that's simply
inexhaustible! To-day, particularly, she drove me out of all
patience.'
'Why so?' inquired Elena. 'One would think you were speaking of
some spiteful, disagreeable old woman. She is a pretty young girl.'
'Of course,' Shubin broke in, 'she is pretty, very pretty; I am sure
that no one who meets her could fail to think: that's some one I
should like to--dance a polka with; I'm sure, too, that she knows
that, and is pleased. . . . Else, what's the meaning of those modest
simpers, that discreet air? There, you know what I mean,' he muttered
between his teeth. 'But now you're absorbed in something else.'
And breaking up the bust of Zoya, Shubin set hastily to modelling and
kneading the clay again with an air of vexation.
'So it is your wish to be a professor?' said Elena to Bersenyev.
'Yes,' he answered, squeezing his red hands between his knees.
'That's my cherished dream. Of course I know very well how far I fall
short of being--to be worthy of such a high--I mean that I am too
little prepared, but I hope to get permission for a course of travel
abroad; I shall pass three or four years in that way, if necessary,
and then----'
He stopped, dropped his eyes, then quickly raising them again, he gave
an embarrassed smile and smoothed his hair. When Bersenyev was talking
to a woman, his words came out more slowly, and he lisped more than
ever.
'You want to be a professor of history?' inquired Elena.
'Yes, or of philosophy,' he added, in a lower voice--'if that is
possible.'
'He's a perfect devil at philosophy already,' observed Shubin, making
deep lines in the clay with his nail. 'What does he want to go abroad
for?'
'And will you be perfectly contented with such a position?' asked
Elena, leaning on her elbow and looking him straight in the face.
'Perfectly, Elena Nikolaevna, perfectly. What could be a finer
vocation? To follow, perhaps, in the steps of Timofay Nikolaevitch
. . . The very thought of such work fills me with delight and confusion
. . . yes, confusion . . . which comes from a sense of my own
deficiency. My dear father consecrated me to this work. . . I shall
never forget his last words.' . . .
'Your father died last winter?'
'Yes, Elena Nikolaevna, in February.'
'They say,' Elena went on, 'that he left a remarkable work in
manuscript; is it true?'
'Yes. He was a wonderful man. You would have loved him, Elena
Nikolaevna.'
'I am sure I should. And what was the subject of the work?'
'To give you an idea of the subject of the work in few words, Elena
Nikolaevna, would be somewhat difficult. My father was a learned man,
a Schellingist; he used terms which were not always very clear----'
'Andrei Petrovitch,' interrupted Elena, 'excuse my ignorance, what
does that mean, a Schellingist?'
Bersenyev smiled slightly.
'A Schellingist means a follower of Schelling, a German philosopher;
and what the philosophy of Schelling consists in----'
'Andrei Petrovitch!' cried Shubin suddenly, 'for mercy's sake!
Surely you don't mean to give Elena Nikolaevna a lecture on Schelling?
Have pity on her!'
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