Books: On the Eve
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Ivan Turgenev >> On the Eve
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Bersenyev talked a long while to Elena of his father. The
embarrassment he had felt in her presence disappeared, and his lisp
was less marked. The conversation passed on to the university.
'Tell me,' Elena asked him, 'were there any remarkable men among your
comrades?'
Bersenyev was again reminded of Shubin's words.
'No, Elena Nikolaevna, to tell you the truth, there was not a single
remarkable man among us. And, indeed, where are such to be found!
There was, they say, a good time once in the Moscow university! But
not now. Now it's a school, not a university. I was not happy with my
comrades,' he added, dropping his voice.
'Not happy,' murmured Elena.
'But I ought,' continued Bersenyev, 'to make an exception. I know one
student--it's true he is not in the same faculty--he is certainly a
remarkable man.'
'What is his name?' Elena inquired with interest.
'Insarov Dmitri Nikanorovitch. He is a Bulgarian.'
'Not a Russian?'
'No, he is not a Russian,'
'Why is he living in Moscow, then?'
'He came here to study. And do you know with what aim he is studying?
He has a single idea: the liberation of his country. And his story is
an exceptional one. His father was a fairly well-to-do merchant; he
came from Tirnova. Tirnova is now a small town, but it was the capital
of Bulgaria in the old days when Bulgaria was still an independent
state. He traded with Sophia, and had relations with Russia; his
sister, Insarov's aunt, is still living in Kiev, married to a senior
history teacher in the gymnasium there. In 1835, that is to say
eighteen years ago, a terrible crime was committed; Insarov's mother
suddenly disappeared without leaving a trace behind; a week later she
was found murdered.'
Elena shuddered. Bersenyev stopped.
'Go on, go on,' she said.
'There were rumours that she had been outraged and murdered by a
Turkish aga; her husband, Insarov's father, found out the truth,
tried to avenge her, but only succeeded in wounding the aga with his
poniard. . . . He was shot.'
'Shot, and without a trial?'
'Yes. Insarov was just eight years old at the time. He remained in the
hands of neighbours. The sister heard of the fate of her brother's
family, and wanted to take the nephew to live with her. They got him
to Odessa, and from there to Kiev. At Kiev he lived twelve whole
years. That's how it is he speaks Russian so well.'
'He speaks Russian?'
'Just as we do. When he was twenty (that was at the beginning of the
year 1848) he began to want to return to his country. He stayed in
Sophia and Tirnova, and travelled through the length and breadth of
Bulgaria, spending two years there, and learning his mother tongue
over again. The Turkish Government persecuted him, and he was
certainly exposed to great dangers during those two years; I once
caught sight of a broad scar on his neck, from a wound, no doubt; but
he does not like to talk about it. He is reserved, too, in his own
way. I have tried to question him about everything, but I could get
nothing out of him. He answers by generalities. He's awfully
obstinate. He returned to Russia again in 1850, to Moscow, with the
intention of educating himself thoroughly, getting intimate with
Russians, and then when he leaves the university----'
'What then?' broke in Elena.
'What God wills. It's hard to forecast the future.'
For a while Elena did not take her eyes off Bersenyev.
'You have greatly interested me by what you have told me,' she said.
'What is he like, this friend of yours; what did you call him,
Insarov?'
'What shall I say? To my mind, he's good-looking. But you will see
him for yourself.'
'How so?'
'I will bring him here to see you. He is coming to our little village
the day after tomorrow, and is going to live with me in the same
lodging.'
'Really? But will he care to come to see us?'
'I should think so. He will be delighted.'
'He isn't proud, then?'
'Not the least. That's to say, he is proud if you like, only not in
the sense you mean. He will never, for instance, borrow money from
any one.'
'Is he poor?'
'Yes, he isn't rich. When he went to Bulgaria he collected some relics
left of his father's property, and his aunt helps him; but it all
comes to very little.'
'He must have a great deal of character,' observed Elena.
'Yes. He is a man of iron. And at the same time you will see there is
something childlike and frank, with all his concentration and even his
reserve. It's true, his frankness is not our poor sort of
frankness--the frankness of people who have absolutely nothing to
conceal. . . . But there, I will bring him to see you; wait a
little.'
'And isn't he shy?' asked Elena again.
'No, he's not shy. It's only vain people who are shy.'
'Why, are you vain?'
He was confused and made a vague gesture with his hands.
'You excite my curiosity,' pursued Elena. 'But tell me, has he not
taken vengeance on that Turkish aga?'
Bersenyev smiled
'Revenge is only to be found in novels, Elena Nikolaevna; and,
besides, in twelve years that aga may well be dead.'
'Mr. Insarov has never said anything, though, to you about it?'
'No, never.'
'Why did he go to Sophia?'
'His father used to live there.'
Elena grew thoughtful.
'To liberate one's country!' she said. 'It is terrible even to
utter those words, they are so grand.'
At that instant Anna Vassilyevna came into the room, and the
conversation stopped.
Bersenyev was stirred by strange emotions when he returned home that
evening. He did not regret his plan of making Elena acquainted with
Insarov, he felt the deep impression made on her by his account of the
young Bulgarian very natural . . . had he not himself tried to deepen
that impression! But a vague, unfathomable emotion lurked secretly in
his heart; he was sad with a sadness that had nothing noble in it.
This sadness did not prevent him, however, from setting to work on the
_History of the Hohenstaufen_, and beginning to read it at the very page
at which he had left off the evening before.
XI
Two days later, Insarov in accordance with his promise arrived at
Bersenyev's with his luggage. He had no servant; but without any
assistance he put his room to rights, arranged the furniture, dusted
and swept the floor. He had special trouble with the writing table,
which would not fit into the recess in the wall assigned for it; but
Insarov, with the silent persistence peculiar to him succeeded in
getting his own way with it. When he had settled in, he asked
Bersenyev to let him pay him ten roubles in advance, and arming
himself with a thick stick, set off to inspect the country surrounding
his new abode. He returned three hours later; and in response to
Bersenyev's invitation to share his repast, he said that he would not
refuse to dine with him that day, but that he had already spoken to
the woman of the house, and would get her to send him up his meals for
the future.
'Upon my word!' said Bersenyev, 'you will fare very badly; that old
body can't cook a bit. Why don't you dine with me, we would go halves
over the cost.'
'My means don't allow me to dine as you do,' Insarov replied with a
tranquil smile.
There was something in that smile which forbade further insistence;
Bersenyev did not add a word. After dinner he proposed to Insarov that
he should take him to the Stahovs; but he replied that he had
intended to devote the evening to correspondence with his Bulgarians,
and so he would ask him to put off the visit to the Stahovs till next
day. Bersenyev was already familiar with Insarov's unbending will;
but it was only now when he was under the same roof with him, that he
fully realised at last that Insarov would never alter any decision,
just in the same way as he would never fail to carry out a promise he
had given; to Bersenyev--a Russian to his fingertips--this more
than German exactitude seemed at first odd, and even rather
ludicrous; but he soon got used to it, and ended by finding it--if not
deserving of respect--at least very convenient.
The second day after his arrival, Insarov got up at four o'clock in
the morning, made a round of almost all Kuntsovo, bathed in the river,
drank a glass of cold milk, and then set to work. And he had plenty of
work to do; he was studying Russian history and law, and political
economy, translating the Bulgarian ballads and chronicles, collecting
materials on the Eastern Question, and compiling a Russian grammar for
the use of Bulgarians, and a Bulgarian grammar for the use of
Russians. Bersenyev went up to him and began to discuss Feuerbach.
Insarov listened attentively, made few remarks, but to the point; it
was clear from his observations that he was trying to arrive at a
conclusion as to whether he need study Feuerbach, or whether he could
get on without him. Bersenyev turned the conversation on to his
pursuits, and asked him if he could not show him anything. Insarov
read him his translation of two or three Bulgarian ballads, and was
anxious to hear his opinion of them. Bersenyev thought the
translation a faithful one, but not sufficiently spirited. Insarov
paid close attention to his criticism. From the ballads Bersenyev
passed on to the present position of Bulgaria, and then for the first
time he noticed what a change came over Insarov at the mere mention of
his country: not that his face flushed nor his voice grew louder--no!
but at once a sense of force and intense onward striving was expressed
in his whole personality, the lines of his mouth grew harder and less
flexible, and a dull persistent fire glowed in the depths of his eyes.
Insarov did not care to enlarge on his own travels in his country;
but of Bulgaria in general he talked readily with any one. He talked
at length of the Turks, of their oppression, of the sorrows and
disasters of his countrymen, and of their hopes: concentrated
meditation on a single ruling passion could be heard in every word he
uttered.
'Ah, well, there's no mistake about it,' Bersenyev was reflecting
meanwhile, 'that Turkish aga, I venture to think, has been punished
for his father's and mother's death.'
Insarov had not had time to say all he wanted to say, when the door
opened and Shubin made his appearance.
He came into the room with an almost exaggerated air of ease and
good-humour; Bersenyev, who knew him well, could see at once that
something had been jarring on him.
'I will introduce myself without ceremony,' he began with a bright and
open expression on his face. 'My name is Shubin; I'm a friend of
this young man here' (he indicated Bersenyev). 'You are Mr. Insarov,
of course, aren't you?'
'I am Insarov.'
'Then give me your hand and let us be friends. I don't know if
Bersenyev has talked to you about me, but he has told me a great deal
about you. You are staying here? Capital! Don't be offended at my
staring at you so. I'm a sculptor by trade, and I foresee I shall in
a little time be begging your permission to model your head.'
'My head's at your service,' said Insarov.
'What shall we do to-day, eh?' began Shubin, sitting down suddenly
on a low chair, with his knees apart and his elbows propped on them.
'Andrei Petrovitch, has your honour any kind of plan for to-day? It's
glorious weather; there's a scent of hay and dried strawberries as if
one were drinking strawberry-tea for a cold. We ought to get up some
kind of a spree. Let us show the new inhabitant of Kuntsov all its
numerous beauties.' (Something has certainly upset him, Bersenyev kept
thinking to himself.) 'Well, why art thou silent, friend Horatio?
Open your prophetic lips. Shall we go off on a spree, or not?'
'I don't know how Insarov feels,' observed Bersenyev. 'He is just
getting to work, I fancy.'
Shubin turned round on his chair.
'You want to work?' he inquired, in a somewhat condescending voice.
'No,' answered Insarov; 'to-day I could give up to walking.'
'Ah!' commented Shubin. 'Well, that's delightful. Run along, my
friend, Andrei Petrovitch, put a hat on your learned head, and let us
go where our eyes lead us. Our eyes are young--they may lead us far.
I know a very repulsive little restaurant, where they will give us a
very beastly little dinner; but we shall be very jolly. Come along.'
Half an hour later they were all three walking along the bank of the
Moskva. Insarov had a rather queer cap with flaps, over which Shubin
fell into not very spontaneous raptures. Insarov walked without haste,
and looked about, breathing, talking, and smiling with the same
tranquillity; he was giving this day up to pleasure, and enjoying it
to the utmost. 'Just as well-behaved boys walk out on Sundays,'
Shubin whispered in Bersenyev's ear. Shubin himself played the fool a
great deal, ran in front, threw himself into the attitudes of famous
statues, and turned somersaults on the grass; Insarov's tranquillity
did not exactly irritate him, but it spurred him on to playing antics.
'What a fidget you are, Frenchman!' Bersenyev said twice to him.
'Yes, I am French, half French,' Shubin answered, 'and you hold the
happy medium between jest and earnest, as a waiter once said to me.'
The young men turned away from the river and went along a deep and
narrow ravine between two walls of tall golden rye; a bluish shadow
was cast on them from the rye on one side; the flashing sunlight
seemed to glide over the tops of the ears; the larks were singing, the
quails were calling: on all sides was the brilliant green of the
grass; a warm breeze stirred and lifted the leaves and shook the heads
of the flowers. After prolonged wanderings, with rest and chat between
(Shubin had even tried to play leap-frog with a toothless peasant they
met, who did nothing but laugh, whatever the gentlemen might do to
him), the young men reached the 'repulsive little' restaurant: the
waiter almost knocked each of them over, and did really provide them
with a very bad dinner with a sort of Balkan wine, which did not,
however, prevent them from being very jolly, as Shubin had foretold;
he himself was the loudest and the least jolly. He drank to the
health of the incomprehensible but great _Venelin_, the health of the
Bulgarian king Kuma, Huma, or Hroma, who lived somewhere about the
time of Adam.
'In the ninth century,' Insarov corrected him.
'In the ninth century?' cried Shubin. 'Oh, how delightful!'
Bersenyev noticed that among all his pranks, and jests and gaiety,
Shubin was constantly, as it were, examining Insarov; he was sounding
him and was in inward excitement, but Insarov remained as before, calm
and straightforward.
At last they returned home, changed their dress, and resolved to
finish the day as they had begun it, by going that evening to the
Stahovs. Shubin ran on before them to announce their arrival.
XII
'The conquering hero Insarov will be here directly!' he shouted
triumphantly, going into the Stahovs' drawing-room, where there
happened at the instant to be only Elena and Zoya.
'_Wer_?' inquired Zoya in German. When she was taken unawares she always
used her native language. Elena drew herself up. Shubin looked at her
with a playful smile on his lips. She felt annoyed, but said nothing.
'You heard,' he repeated, 'Mr. Insarov is coming here.'
'I heard,' she replied; 'and I heard how you spoke of him. I am
surprised at you, indeed. Mr. Insarov has not yet set foot in the
house, and you already think fit to turn him into ridicule.'
Shubin was crestfallen at once.
'You are right, you are always right, Elena Nikolaevna,' he muttered;
'but I meant nothing, on my honour. We have been walking together
with him the whole day, and he's a capital fellow, I assure you.'
'I didn't ask your opinion about that,' commented Elena, getting up.
'Is Mr. Insarov a young man?' asked Zoya.
'He is a hundred and forty-four,' replied Shubin with an air of
vexation.
The page announced the arrival of the two friends. They came in.
Bersenyev introduced Insarov. Elena asked them to sit down, and sat
down herself, while Zoya went off upstairs; she had to inform Anna
Vassilyevna of their arrival. A conversation was begun of a rather
insignificant kind, like all first conversations. Shubin was silently
watching from a corner, but there was nothing to watch. In Elena he
detected signs of repressed annoyance against him--Shubin--and that
was all. He looked at Bersenyev and at Insarov, and compared their
faces from a sculptor's point of view. 'They are neither of them
good-looking,' he thought, 'the Bulgarian has a characteristic
face--there now it's in a good light; the Great-Russian is better
adapted for painting; there are no lines, there's expression. But, I
dare say, one might fall in love with either of them. She is not in
love yet, but she will fall in love with Bersenyev,' he decided to
himself. Anna Vassilyevna made her appearance in the drawing-room, and
the conversation took the tone peculiar to summer villas--not the
country-house tone but the peculiar summer visitor tone. It was a
conversation diversified by plenty of subjects; but broken by short
rather wearisome pauses every three minutes. In one of these pauses
Anna Vassilyevna turned to Zoya. Shubin understood her silent hint,
and drew a long face, while Zoya sat down to the piano, and played and
sang all her pieces through. Uvar Ivanovitch showed himself for an
instant in the doorway, but he beat a retreat, convulsively twitching
his fingers. Then tea was served; and then the whole party went out
into the garden. ... It began to grow dark outside, and the guests
took leave.
Insarov had really made less impression on Elena than she had
expected, or, speaking more exactly, he had not made the impression
she had expected. She liked his directness and unconstraint, and she
liked his face; but the whole character of Insarov--with his calm
firmness and everyday simplicity--did not somehow accord with the
image formed in her brain by Bersenyev's account of him. Elena, though
she did not herself suspect it, had anticipated something more
fateful. 'But,' she reflected, 'he spoke very little to-day, and I am
myself to blame for it; I did not question him, we must have patience
till next time . . . and his eyes are expressive, honest eyes.' She
felt that she had no disposition to humble herself before him, but
rather to hold out her hand to him in friendly equality, and she was
puzzled; this was not how she had fancied men, like Insarov, 'heroes.'
This last word reminded her of Shubin, and she grew hot and angry, as
she lay in her bed.
'How did you like your new acquaintances?' Bersenyev inquired of
Insarov on their way home.
'I liked them very much,' answered Insarov, 'especially the daughter.
She must be a nice girl. She is excitable, but in her it's a fine kind
of excitability.'
'You must go and see them a little oftener,' observed Bersenyev.
'Yes, I must,' said Insarov; and he said nothing more all the way
home. He at once shut himself up in his room, but his candle was
burning long after midnight.
Bersenyev had had time to read a page of Raumer, when a handful of
fine gravel came rattling on his window-pane. He could not help
starting; opening the window he saw Shubin as white as a sheet.
'What an irrepressible fellow you are, you night moth----' Bersenyev
was beginning.
'Sh--' Shubin cut him short; 'I have come to you in secret, as Max
went to Agatha I absolutely must say a few words to you alone.'
'Come into the room then.'
'No, that's not necessary,' replied Shubin, and he leaned his elbows
on the window-sill, 'it's better fun like this, more as if we were in
Spain. To begin with, I congratulate you, you're at a premium now.
Your belauded, exceptional man has quite missed fire. That I'll
guarantee. And to prove my impartiality, listen--here's the sum and
substance of Mr. Insarov. No talents, none, no poetry, any amount of
capacity for work, an immense memory, an intellect not deep nor
varied, but sound and quick, dry as dust, and force, and even the gift
of the gab when the talk's about his--between ourselves let it be
said--tedious Bulgaria. What! do you say I am unjust? One remark
more: you'll never come to Christian names with him, and none ever has
been on such terms with him. I, of course, as an artist, am hateful
to him; and I am proud of it. Dry as dust, dry as dust, but he can
crush all of us to powder. He's devoted to his country--not like our
empty patriots who fawn on the people; pour into us, they say, thou
living water! But, of course, his problem is easier, more
intelligible: he has only to drive the Turks out, a mighty task. But
all these qualities, thank God, don't please women. There's no
fascination, no charm about them, as there is about you and me.'
'Why do you bring me in?' muttered Bersenyev. 'And you are wrong in
all the rest; you are not in the least hateful to him, and with his
own countrymen he is on Christian name terms--that I know.'
'That's a different matter! For them he's a hero; but, to make a
confession, I have a very different idea of a hero; a hero ought not
to be able to talk; a hero should roar like a bull, but when he butts
with his horns, the walls shake. He ought not to know himself why he
butts at things, but just to butt at them. But, perhaps, in our days
heroes of a different stamp are needed.'
'Why are you so taken up with Insarov?' asked Bersenyev. 'Can you
have run here only to describe his character to me?'
'I came here,' began Shubin, 'because I was very miserable at home.'
'Oh, that's it! Don't you want to have a cry again?'
'You may laugh! I came here because I'm at my wits' end, because I
am devoured by despair, anger, jealousy.'
'Jealousy? of whom?'
'Of you and him and every one. I'm tortured by the thought that if I
had understood her sooner, if I had set to work cleverly--But what's
the use of talking! It must end by my always laughing, playing the
fool, turning things into ridicule as she says, and then setting to
and strangling myself.'
'Stuff, you won't strangle yourself,' observed Bersenyev.
'On such a night, of course not; but only let me live on till the
autumn. On such a night people do die too, but only of happiness. Ah,
happiness! Every shadow that stretches across the road from every
tree seems whispering now: "I know where there is happiness . . .
shall I tell you?" I would ask you to come for a walk, only now you're
under the influence of prose. Go to sleep, and may your dreams be
visited by mathematical figures! My heart is breaking. You, worthy
gentlemen, see a man laughing, and that means to your notions he's all
right; you can prove to him that he's humbugging himself, that's to
say, he is not suffering. . . . God bless you!'
Shubin abruptly left the window. 'Annu-shka!' Bersenyev felt an
impulse to shout after him, but he restrained himself; Shubin had
really been white with emotion. Two minutes later, Bersenyev even
caught the sound of sobbing; he got up and opened the window;
everything was still, only somewhere in the distance some one--a
passing peasant, probably--was humming 'The Plain of Mozdok.'
XIII
During the first fortnight of Insarov's stay in the Kuntsovo
neighbourhood, he did not visit the Stahovs more than four or five
times; Bersenyev went to see them every day. Elena was always pleased
to see him, lively and interesting talk always sprang up between them,
and yet he often went home with a gloomy face. Shubin scarcely showed
himself; he was working with feverish energy at his art; he either
stayed locked up in his room, from which he would emerge in a blouse,
smeared all over with clay, or else he spent days in Moscow where he
had a studio, to which models and Italian sculptors, his friends and
teachers, used to come to see him. Elena did not once succeed in
talking with Insarov, as she would have liked to do; in his absence
she prepared questions to ask him about many things, but when he came
she felt ashamed of her plans. Insarov's very tranquillity embarrassed
her; it seemed to her that she had not the right to force him to speak
out; and she resolved to wait; for all that, she felt that at every
visit however trivial might be the words that passed between them, he
attracted her more and more; but she never happened to be left alone
with him--and to grow intimate with any one, one must have at least
one conversation alone with him. She talked a great deal about him to
Bersenyev. Bersenyev realised that Elena's imagination had been struck
by Insarov, and was glad that his friend had not 'missed fire' as
Shubin had asserted. He told her cordially all he knew of him down to
the minutest details (we often, when we want to please some one, bring
our friends into our conversation, hardly ever suspecting that we are
praising ourselves in that way), and only at times, when Elena's pale
cheeks flushed a little and her eyes grew bright and wide, he felt a
pang in his heart of that evil pain which he had felt before.
One day Bersenyev came to the Stahovs, not at the customary time, but
at eleven o'clock in the morning. Elena came down to him in the
parlour.
'Fancy,' he began with a constrained smile, 'our Insarov has
disappeared.'
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