Books: On the Eve
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Ivan Turgenev >> On the Eve
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'Not a lecture at all,' murmured Bersenyev, turning crimson. 'I
meant----'
'And why not a lecture?' put in Elena. 'You and I are in need of
lectures, Pavel Yakovlitch.'
Shubin stared at her, and suddenly burst out laughing.
'What are you laughing at?' she said coldly, and almost sharply.
Shubin did not answer.
'Come, don't be angry,' he said, after a short pause. 'I am sorry.
But really it's a strange taste, upon my word, to discuss philosophy
in weather like this under these trees. Let us rather talk of
nightingales and roses, youthful eyes and smiles.'
'Yes; and of French novels, and of feminine frills and fal-lals,'
Elena went on.
'Fal-lals, too, of course,' rejoined Shubin, 'if they're pretty.'
'Of course. But suppose we don't want to talk of frills? You are
always boasting of being a free artist; why do you encroach on the
freedom of others? And allow me to inquire, if that's your bent of
mind, why do you attack Zoya? With her it would be peculiarly
suitable to talk of frills and roses?'
Shubin suddenly fired up, and rose from the garden seat. 'So that's
it?' he began in a nervous voice. 'I understand your hint; you
want to send me away to her, Elena Nikolaevna. In other words, I'm
not wanted here.'
'I never thought of sending you away from here.'
'Do you mean to say,' Shubin continued passionately, 'that I am not
worthy of other society, that I am her equal; that I am as vain, and
silly and petty as that mawkish German girl? Is that it?'
Elena frowned. 'You did not always speak like that of her, Pavel
Yakovlitch,' she remarked.
'Ah! reproaches! reproaches now!' cried Shubin. 'Well, then I
don't deny there was a moment--one moment precisely, when those fresh,
vulgar cheeks of hers . . . But if I wanted to repay you with
reproaches and remind you . . . Good-bye,' he added suddenly, 'I feel
I shall say something silly.'
And with a blow on the clay moulded into the shape of a head, he ran
out of the arbour and went off to his room.
'What a baby,' said Elena, looking after him.
'He's an artist,' observed Bersenyev with a quiet smile. 'All artists
are like that. One must forgive them their caprices. That is their
privilege.'
'Yes,' replied Elena; 'but Pavel has not so far justified his claim
to that privilege in any way. What has he done so far? Give me your
arm, and let us go along the avenue. He was in our way. We were
talking of your father's works.'
Bersenyev took Elena's arm in his, and walked beside her through the
garden; but the conversation prematurely broken off was not renewed.
Bersenyev began again unfolding his views on the vocation of a
professor, and on his own future career. He walked slowly beside
Elena, moving awkwardly, awkwardly holding her arm, sometimes jostling
his shoulder against her, and not once looking at her; but his talk
flowed more easily, even if not perfectly freely; he spoke simply and
genuinely, and his eyes, as they strayed slowly over the trunks of the
trees, the sand of the path and the grass, were bright with the quiet
ardour of generous emotions, while in his soothed voice there was
heard the delight of a man who feels that he is succeeding in
expressing himself to one very dear to him. Elena listened to him very
attentively, and turning half towards him, did not take her eyes off
his face, which had grown a little paler--off his eyes, which were
soft and affectionate, though they avoided meeting her eyes. Her soul
expanded; and something tender, holy, and good seemed half sinking
into her heart, half springing up within it.
V
Shubin did not leave his room before night. It was already quite
dark; the moon--not yet at the full--stood high in the sky, the milky way
shone white, and the stars spotted the heavens, when Bersenyev, after
taking leave of Anna Vassilyevna, Elena, and Zoya, went up to his
friend's door. He found it locked. He knocked.
'Who is there?' sounded Shubin's voice.
'I,' answered Bersenyev.
'What do you want?'
'Let me in, Pavel; don't be sulky; aren't you ashamed of yourself?'
'I am not sulky; I'm asleep and dreaming about Zoya.'
'Do stop that, please; you're not a baby. Let me in. I want to talk to
you.'
'Haven't you had talk enough with Elena?'
'Come, come; let me in!' Shubin responded by a pretended snore.
Bersenyev shrugged his shoulders and turned homewards.
The night was warm and seemed strangely still, as though everything
were listening and expectant; and Bersenyev, enfolded in the still
darkness, stopped involuntarily; and he, too, listened expectant. On
the tree-tops near there was a faint stir, like the rustle of a
woman's dress, awaking in him a feeling half-sweet, half-painful, a
feeling almost of fright. He felt a tingling in his cheeks, his eyes
were chill with momentary tears; he would have liked to move quite
noiselessly, to steal along in secret. A cross gust of wind blew
suddenly on him; he almost shuddered, and his heart stood still; a
drowsy beetle fell off a twig and dropped with a thud on the path;
Bersenyev uttered a subdued 'Ah!' and again stopped. But he began
to think of Elena, and all these passing sensations vanished at once;
there remained only the reviving sense of the night freshness, of the
walk by night; his whole soul was absorbed by the image of the young
girl. Bersenyev walked with bent head, recalling her words, her
questions. He fancied he heard the tramp of quick steps behind. He
listened: some one was running, some one was overtaking him; he
heard panting, and suddenly from a black circle of shadow cast by a
huge tree Shubin sprang out before him, quite pale in the light of the
moon, with no cap on his disordered curls.
'I am glad you came along this path,' he said with an effort. 'I
should not have slept all night, if I had not overtaken you. Give me
your hand. Are you going home?'
'Yes.'
'I will see you home then.'
'But why have you come without a cap on?'
'That doesn't matter. I took off my neckerchief too. It is quite
warm.'
The friends walked a few paces.
'I was very stupid to-day, wasn't I?' Shubin asked suddenly.
'To speak frankly, you were. I couldn't make you out. I have never
seen you like that before. And what were you angry about really? Such
trifles!'
'H'm,' muttered Shubin. 'That's how you put it; but they were not
trifles to me. You see,' he went on, 'I ought to point out to you
that I--that--you may think what you please of me--I--well there!
I'm in love with Elena.'
'You in love with Elena!' repeated Bersenyev, standing still.
'Yes,' pursued Shubin with affected carelessness. 'Does that astonish
you? I will tell you something else. Till this evening I still had
hopes that she might come to love me in time. But to-day I have seen
for certain that there is no hope for me. She is in love with some one
else.'
'Some one else? Whom?'
'Whom? You!' cried Shubin, slapping Bersenyev on the shoulder.
'Me!'
'You,' repeated Shubin.
Bersenyev stepped back a pace, and stood motionless. Shubin looked
intently at him.
'And does that astonish you? You are a modest youth. But she loves
you. You can make your mind easy on that score.'
'What nonsense you talk!' Bersenyev protested at last with an air of
vexation.
'No, it's not nonsense. But why are we standing still? Let us go on.
It's easier to talk as we walk. I have known her a long while, and I
know her well. I cannot be mistaken. You are a man after her own
heart. There was a time when she found me agreeable; but, in the
first place, I am too frivolous a young man for her, while you are a
serious person, you are a morally and physically well-regulated
person, you--hush, I have not finished, you are a conscientiously
disposed enthusiast, a genuine type of those devotees of science,
of whom--no not of whom--whereof the middle class of Russian gentry
are so justly proud! And, secondly, Elena caught me the other day
kissing Zoya's arms!'
'Zoya's?'
'Yes, Zoya's. What would you have? She has such fine shoulders.'
'Shoulders?'
'Well there, shoulders and arms, isn't it all the same? Elena caught
me in this unconstrained proceeding after dinner, and before dinner I
had been abusing Zoya in her hearing. Elena unfortunately doesn't
understand how natural such contradictions are. Then you came on the
scene, you have faith in--what the deuce is it you have faith in? ...
You blush and look confused, you discuss Schiller and Schelling (she's
always on the look-out for remarkable men), and so you have won the
day, and I, poor wretch, try to joke--and all the while----'
Shubin suddenly burst into tears, turned away, and dropping upon the
ground clutched at his hair.
Bersenyev went up to him.
'Pavel,' he began, 'what childishness this is! Really! what's the
matter with you to-day? God knows what nonsense you have got into your
head, and you are crying. Upon my word, I believe you must be putting
it on.'
Shubin lifted up his head. The tears shone bright on his cheeks in the
moonlight, but there was a smile on his face.
'Andrei Petrovitch,' he said, 'you may think what you please about me.
I am even ready to agree with you that I'm hysterical now, but, by
God, I'm in love with Elena, and Elena loves you. I promised, though,
to see you home, and I will keep my promise.'
He got up.
'What a night! silvery, dark, youthful! How sweet it must be to-night
for men who are loved! How sweet for them not to sleep! Will you
sleep, Andrei Petrovitch?'
Bersenyev made no answer, and quickened his pace.
'Where are you hurrying to?' Shubin went on. 'Trust my words, a night
like this will never come again in your life, and at home, Schelling
will keep. It's true he did you good service to-day; but you need not
hurry for all that. Sing, if you can sing, sing louder than ever; if
you can't sing, take off your hat, throw up your head, and smile to
the stars. They are all looking at you, at you alone; the stars never
do anything but look down upon lovers--that's why they are so
charming. You are in love, I suppose, Andrei Petrovitch? . . . You don't
answer me . . . why don't you answer?' Shubin began again: 'Oh, if you
feel happy, be quiet, be quiet! I chatter because I am a poor devil,
unloved, I am a jester, an artist, a buffoon; but what unutterable
ecstasy would I quaff in the night wind under the stars, if I knew
that I were loved! . . . Bersenyev, are you happy?'
Bersenyev was silent as before, and walked quickly along the smooth
path. In front, between the trees, glimmered the lights of the little
village in which he was staying; it consisted of about a dozen small
villas for summer visitors. At the very beginning of the village, to
the right of the road, a little shop stood under two spreading
birch-trees; its windows were all closed already, but a wide patch of
light fell fan-shaped from the open door upon the trodden grass, and
was cast upwards on the trees, showing up sharply the whitish
undersides of the thick growing leaves. A girl, who looked like a
maid-servant, was standing in the shop with her back against the
doorpost, bargaining with the shopkeeper; from beneath the red
kerchief which she had wrapped round her head, and held with bare hand
under her chin, could just be seen her round cheek and slender throat.
The young men stepped into the patch of light; Shubin looked into the
shop, stopped short, and cried 'Annushka!' The girl turned round
quickly. They saw a nice-looking, rather broad but fresh face, with
merry brown eyes and black eyebrows. 'Annushka!' repeated Shubin.
The girl saw him, looked scared and shamefaced, and without finishing
her purchases, she hurried down the steps, slipped quickly past, and,
hardly looking round, went along the road to the left. The shopkeeper,
a puffy man, unmoved by anything in the world, like all country
shopkeepers gasped and gaped after her, while Shubin turned to
Bersenyev with the words: 'That's . . . you see . . . there's a
family here I know . . . so at their house . . . you mustn't imagine'
. . . and, without finishing his speech, he ran after the retreating
girl.
'You'd better at least wipe your tears away,' Bersenyev shouted after
him, and he could not refrain from laughing. But when he got home, his
face had not a mirthful expression; he laughed no longer. He had not
for a single instant believed what Shubin had told him, but the words
he had uttered had sunk deep into his soul.
'Pavel was making a fool of me,' he thought; ' . . . but she will
love one day . . . whom will she love?'
In Bersenyev's room there was a piano, small, and by no means new, but
of a soft and sweet tone, though not perfectly in tune. Bersenyev
sat down to it, and began to strike some chords. Like all Russians of
good birth, he had studied music in his childhood, and like almost all
Russian gentlemen, he played very badly; but he loved music
passionately. Strictly speaking, he did not love the art, the forms in
which music is expressed (symphonies and sonatas, even operas wearied
him), but he loved the poetry of music: he loved those vague and
sweet, shapeless, and all-embracing emotions which are stirred in the
soul by the combinations and successions of sounds. For more than an
hour, he did not move from the piano, repeating many times the same
chords, awkwardly picking out new ones, pausing and melting over the
minor sevenths. His heart ached, and his eyes more than once filled
with tears. He was not ashamed of them; he let them flow in the
darkness. 'Pavel was right,' he thought, 'I feel it; this evening
will not come again.' At last he got up, lighted a candle, put on his
dressing-gown, took down from the bookshelf the second volume of
Raumer's _History of the Hohenstaufen_, and sighing twice, he set to
work diligently to read it.
VI
Meanwhile, Elena had gone to her room, and sat down at the open
window, her head resting on her hands. To spend about a quarter of an
hour every evening at her bedroom window had become a habit with her.
At this time she held converse with herself, and passed in review the
preceding day. She had not long reached her twentieth year. She was
tall, and had a pale and dark face, large grey eyes under arching
brows, covered with tiny freckles, a perfectly regular forehead and
nose, tightly compressed lips, and a rather sharp chin. Her hair, of a
chestnut shade, fell low on her slender neck. In her whole
personality, in the expression of her face, intent and a little
timorous, in her clear but changing glance, in her smile, which was,
as it were, intense, in her soft and uneven voice, there was something
nervous, electric, something impulsive and hurried, something, in
fact, which could never be attractive to every one, which even
repelled some.
Her hands were slender and rosy, with long fingers; her feet were
slender; she walked swiftly, almost impetuously, her figure bent a
little forward. She had grown up very strangely; first she idolised
her father, then she became passionately devoted to her mother, and
had grown cold to both of them, especially to her father. Of late
years she had behaved to her mother as to a sick grandmother; while
her father, who had been proud of her while she had been regarded as
an exceptional child, had come to be afraid of her when she was grown
up, and said of her that she was a sort of enthusiastic republican--no
one could say where she got it from. Weakness revolted her, stupidity
made her angry, and deceit she could never, never pardon. She was
exacting beyond all bounds, even her prayers had more than once been
mingled with reproaches. When once a person had lost her respect--and
she passed judgment quickly, often too quickly--he ceased to exist for
her. All impressions cut deeply into her heart; life was bitter
earnest for her.
The governess to whom Anna Vassilyevna had entrusted the finishing of
her daughter's education--an education, we may remark in parenthesis,
which had not even been begun by the languid lady--was a Russian, the
daughter of a ruined official, educated at a government boarding
school, a very emotional, soft-hearted, and deceitful creature; she
was for ever falling in love, and ended in her fiftieth year (when
Elena was seventeen) by marrying an officer of some sort, who deserted
her without loss of time. This governess was very fond of literature,
and wrote verses herself; she inspired Elena with a love of reading,
but reading alone did not satisfy the girl; from childhood she
thirsted for action, for active well-doing--the poor, the hungry, and
the sick absorbed her thoughts, tormented her, and made her heart
heavy; she used to dream of them, and to ply all her friends with
questions about them; she gave alms carefully, with unconscious
solemnity, almost with a thrill of emotion. All ill-used creatures,
starved dogs, cats condemned to death, sparrows fallen out of the
nest, even insects and reptiles found a champion and protector in
Elena; she fed them herself, and felt no repugnance for them. Her
mother did not interfere with her; but her father used to be very
indignant with his daughter, for her--as he called it--vulgar
soft-heartedness, and declared there was not room to move for the cats
and dogs in the house. 'Lenotchka,' he would shout to her, 'come
quickly, here's a spider eating a fly; come and save the poor wretch!'
And Lenotchka, all excitement, would run up, set the fly free, and
disentangle its legs. 'Well, now let it bite you a little, since you
are so kind,' her father would say ironically; but she did not hear
him. At ten years old Elena made friends with a little beggar-girl,
Katya, and used to go secretly to meet her in the garden, took her
nice things to eat, and presented her with handkerchiefs and pennies;
playthings Katya would not take. She would sit beside her on the dry
earth among the bushes behind a thick growth of nettles; with a
feeling of delicious humility she ate her stale bread and listened to
her stories. Katya had an aunt, an ill-natured old woman, who often
beat her; Katya hated her, and was always talking of how she would run
away from her aunt and live in '_God's full freedom_'; with secret
respect and awe Elena drank in these new unknown words, stared
intently at Katya and everything about her--her quick black, almost
animal eyes, her sun-burnt hands, her hoarse voice, even her ragged
clothes--seemed to Elena at such times something particular and
distinguished, almost holy. Elena went back home, and for long after
dreamed of beggars and God's freedom; she would dream over plans of
how she would cut herself a hazel stick, and put on a wallet and run
away with Katya; how she would wander about the roads in a wreath of
corn-flowers; she had seen Katya one day in just such a wreath. If, at
such times, any one of her family came into the room, she would shun
them and look shy. One day she ran out in the rain to meet Katya, and
made her frock muddy; her father saw her, and called her a slut and a
peasant-wench. She grew hot all over, and there was something of
terror and rapture in her heart Katya often sang some half-brutal
soldier's song. Elena learnt this song from her. . . . Anna
Vassilyevna overheard her singing it, and was very indignant.
'Where did you pick up such horrors?' she asked her daughter.
Elena only looked at her mother, and would not say a word; she felt
that she would let them tear her to pieces sooner than betray her
secret, and again there was a terror and sweetness in her heart. Her
friendship with Katya, however, did not last long; the poor little
girl fell sick of fever, and in a few days she was dead.
Elena was greatly distressed, and spent sleepless nights for long
after she heard of Katya's death. The last words of the little
beggar-girl were constantly ringing in her ears, and she fancied that
she was being called. . . .
The years passed and passed; swiftly and noiselessly, like waters
running under the snow, Elena's youth glided by, outwardly uneventful,
inwardly in conflict and emotion. She had no friend; she did not get
on with any one of all the girls who visited the Stahovs' house. Her
parents' authority had never weighed heavily on Elena, and from her
sixteenth year she became absolutely independent; she began to live a
life of her own, but it was a life of solitude. Her soul glowed, and
the fire died away again in solitude; she struggled like a bird in a
cage, and cage there was none; no one oppressed her, no one restrained
her, while she was torn, and fretted within. Sometimes she did not
understand herself, was even frightened of herself. Everything that
surrounded her seemed to her half-senseless, half-incomprehensible.
'How live without love? and there's no one to love!' she thought; and
she felt terror again at these thoughts, these sensations. At
eighteen, she nearly died of malignant fever; her whole
constitution--naturally healthy and vigorous--was seriously affected,
and it was long before it could perfectly recover; the last traces of
the illness disappeared at last, but Elena Nikolaevna's father was
never tired of talking with some spitefulness of her 'nerves.'
Sometimes she fancied that she wanted something which no one wanted,
of which no one in all Russia dreamed. Then she would grow calmer, and
even laugh at herself, and pass day after day unconcernedly; but
suddenly some over-mastering, nameless force would surge up within
her, and seem to clamour for an outlet. The storm passed over, and the
wings of her soul drooped without flight; but these tempests of
feeling cost her much. However she might strive not to betray what was
passing within her, the suffering of the tormented spirit was
expressed in her even external tranquillity, and her parents were
often justified in shrugging their shoulders in astonishment, and
failing to understand her 'queer ways.'
On the day with which our story began, Elena did not leave the window
till later than usual. She thought much of Bersenyev, and of her
conversation with him. She liked him; she believed in the warmth of
his feelings, and the purity of his aims. He had never before talked
to her as on that evening. She recalled the expression of his timid
eyes, his smiles--and she smiled herself and fell to musing, but not
of him. She began to look out into the night from the open window.
For a long time she gazed at the dark, low-hanging sky; then she got
up, flung back her hair from her face with a shake of her head, and,
herself not knowing why, she stretched out to it--to that sky--her
bare chilled arms; then she dropped them, fell on her knees beside her
bed, pressed her face into the pillow, and, in spite of all her
efforts not to yield to the passion overwhelming her, she burst into
strange, uncomprehending, burning tears.
VII
The next day at twelve o'clock, Bersenyev set off in a return coach to
Moscow. He had to get some money from the post-office, to buy some
books, and he wanted to seize the opportunity to see Insarov and have
some conversation with him. The idea had occurred to Bersenyev, in the
course of his last conversation with Shubin, to invite Insarov to stay
with him at his country lodgings. But it was some time before he found
him out; from his former lodging he had moved to another, which it
was not easy to discover; it was in the court at the back of a
squalid stone house, built in the Petersburg style, between Arbaty
Road and Povarsky Street. In vain Bersenyev wandered from one dirty
staircase to another, in vain he called first to a doorkeeper, then to
a passer-by. Porters even in Petersburg try to avoid the eyes of
visitors, and in Moscow much more so; no one answered Bersenyev's
call; only an inquisitive tailor, in his shirt sleeves, with a skein
of grey thread on his shoulder, thrust out from a high casement window
a dirty, dull, unshorn face, with a blackened eye; and a black and
hornless goat, clambering up on to a dung heap, turned round, bleated
plaintively, and went on chewing the cud faster than before. A woman
in an old cloak, and shoes trodden down at heel, took pity at last on
Bersenyev and pointed out Insarov's lodging to him. Bersenyev found
him at home. He had taken a room with the very tailor who had stared
down so indifferently at the perplexity of a wandering stranger; a
large, almost empty room, with dark green walls, three square windows,
a tiny bedstead in one corner, a little leather sofa in another, and a
huge cage hung up to the very ceiling; in this cage there had once
lived a nightingale. Insarov came to meet Bersenyev directly he
crossed the threshold, but he did not exclaim, 'Ah, it's you!' or
'Good Heavens, what happy chance has brought you?' He did not even
say, 'How do you do?' but simply pressed his hand and led him up to
the solitary chair in the room.
'Sit down,' he said, and he seated himself on the edge of the table.
'I am, as you see, still in disorder,' added Insarov, pointing to a
pile of papers and books on the floor, 'I haven't got settled in as I
ought. I have not had time yet.'
Insarov spoke Russian perfectly correctly, pronouncing every word
fully and purely; but his guttural though pleasant voice sounded
somehow not Russian. Insarov's foreign extraction (he was a Bulgarian
by birth) was still more clearly marked in his appearance; he was a
young man of five-and-twenty, spare and sinewy, with a hollow chest
and knotted fingers; he had sharp features, a hooked nose, blue-black
hair, a low forehead, small, intent-looking, deep-set eyes, and bushy
eyebrows; when he smiled, splendid white teeth gleamed for an instant
between his thin, hard, over-defined lips. He was in a rather old but
tidy coat, buttoned up to the throat.
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