Books: On the Eve
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Ivan Turgenev >> On the Eve
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'Disappeared?' said Elena.
'He has disappeared. The day before yesterday he went off somewhere
and nothing has been seen of him since.'
'He did not tell you where he was going?'
'No.'
Elena sank into a chair.
'He has most likely gone to Moscow,' she commented, trying to seem
indifferent and at the same time wondering that she should try to seem
indifferent.
'I don't think so,' rejoined Bersenyev. 'He did not go alone.'
'With whom then?'
'Two people of some sort--his countrymen they must have been--came to
him the day before yesterday, before dinner.'
'Bulgarians! what makes you think so?'
'Why as far as I could hear, they talked to him in some language I did
not know, but Slavonic . . . You are always saying, Elena Nikolaevna,
that there's so little mystery about Insarov; what could be more
mysterious than this visit? Imagine, they came to him--and then there
was shouting and quarrelling, and such savage, angry disputing. . . .
And he shouted too.'
'He shouted too?'
'Yes. He shouted at them. They seemed to be accusing each other. And
if you could have had a peep at these visitors. They had swarthy,
heavy faces with high cheek bones and hook noses, both about forty
years old, shabbily dressed, hot and dusty, looking like workmen--not
workmen, and not gentlemen--goodness knows what sort of people they
were.'
'And he went away with them?'
'Yes. He gave them something to eat and went off with them. The woman
of the house told me they ate a whole huge pot of porridge between the
two of them. They outdid one another, she said, and gobbled it up like
wolves.'
Elena gave a faint smile.
'You will see,' she said, 'all this will be explained into something
very prosaic.'
'I hope it may! But you need not use that word. There is nothing
prosaic about Insarov, though Shubin does maintain----'
'Shubin!' Elena broke in, shrugging her shoulders. 'But you must
confess these two good men gobbling up porridge----'
'Even Themistocles had his supper on the eve of Salamis,' observed
Bersenyev with a smile.
'Yes; but then there was a battle next day. Any way you will let me
know when he comes back,' said Elena, and she tried to change the
subject, but the conversation made little progress. Zoya made her
appearance and began walking about the room on tip-toe, giving them
thereby to understand that Anna Vassilyevna was not yet awake.
Bersenyev went away.
In the evening of the same day a note from him was brought to Elena.
'He has come back,' he wrote to her, 'sunburnt and dusty to his very
eyebrows; but where and why he went I don't know; won't you find out?'
'Won't you find out!' Elena whispered, 'as though he talked to me!'
XIV
The next day, at two o'clock, Elena was standing in the garden before
a small kennel, where she was rearing two puppies. (A gardener had
found them deserted under a hedge, and brought them to the young
mistress, being told by the laundry-maids that she took pity on beasts
of all sorts. He was not wrong in his reckoning. Elena had given him
a quarter-rouble.) She looked into the kennel, assured herself that
the puppies were alive and well, and that they had been provided with
fresh straw, turned round, and almost uttered a cry; down an alley
straight towards her was walking Insarov, alone.
'Good-morning,' he said, coming up to her and taking off his cap. She
noticed that he certainly had got much sunburnt during the last three
days. 'I meant to have come here with Andrei Petrovitch, but he was
rather slow in starting; so here I am without him. There is no one in
your house; they are all asleep or out of doors, so I came on here.'
'You seem to be apologising,' replied Elena. 'There's no need to do
that. We are always very glad to see you. Let us sit here on the bench
in the shade.'
She seated herself. Insarov sat down near her.
'You have not been at home these last days, I think?' she began.
'No,' he answered. 'I went away. Did Andrei Petrovitch tell you?'
Insarov looked at her, smiled, and began playing with his cap. When he
smiled, his eyes blinked, and his lips puckered up, which gave him a
very good-humoured appearance.
'Andrei Petrovitch most likely told you too that I went away with
some--unattractive people,' he said, still smiling.
Elena was a little confused, but she felt at once that Insarov must
always be told the truth.
'Yes,' she said decisively.
'What did you think of me?' he asked her suddenly.
Elena raised her eyes to him.
'I thought,' she said, 'I thought that you always know what you're
doing, and you are incapable of doing anything wrong.'
'Well--thanks for that. You see, Elena Nikolaevna,' he began, coming
closer to her in a confidential way, 'there is a little family of our
people here; among us there are men of little culture; but all are
warmly devoted to the common cause. Unluckily, one can never get on
without dissensions, and they all know me, and trust me; so they sent
for me to settle a dispute. I went.'
'Was it far from here?'
'I went about fifty miles, to the Troitsky district. There, near the
monastery, there are some of our people. At any rate, my trouble was
not thrown away; I settled the matter.'
'And had you much difficulty?'
'Yes. One was obstinate through everything. He did not want to give
back the money.'
'What? Was the dispute over money?'
'Yes; and a small sum of money too. What did you suppose?'
'And you travelled over fifty miles for such trifling matters? Wasted
three days?'
'They are not trifling matters, Elena Nikolaevna, when my countrymen
are involved. It would be wicked to refuse in such cases. I see here
that you don't refuse help even to puppies, and I think well of you
for it. And as for the time I have lost, that's no great harm; I will
make it up later. Our time does not belong to us.'
'To whom does it belong then?'
'Why, to all who need us. I have told you all this on the spur of the
moment, because I value your good opinion. I can fancy how Andrei
Petrovitch must have made you wonder!'
'You value my good opinion,' said Elena, in an undertone, 'why?'
Insarov smiled again.
'Because you are a good young lady, not an aristocrat . . . that's
all.'
A short silence followed.
'Dmitri Nikanorovitch,' said Elena, 'do you know that this is the first
time you have been so unreserved with me?'
'How's that? I think I have always said everything I thought to you.'
'No, this is the first time, and I am very glad, and I too want to be
open with you. May I?'
Insarov began to laugh and said: 'You may.'
'I warn you I am very inquisitive.'
'Never mind, tell me.'
'Andrei Petrovitch has told me a great deal of your life, of your
youth. I know of one event, one awful event. . . . I know you
travelled afterwards in your own country. . . . Don't answer me for
goodness sake, if you think my question indiscreet, but I am fretted
by one idea. . . . Tell me, did you meet that man?'
Elena caught her breath. She felt both shame and dismay at her own
audacity. Insarov looked at her intently, slightly knitting his
brows, and stroking his chin with his fingers.
'Elena Nikolaevna,' he began at last, and his voice was much lower
than usual, which almost frightened Elena, 'I understand what man you
are referring to. No, I did not meet him, and thank God I did not! I
did not try to find him. I did not try to find him: not because I did
not think I had a right to kill him--I would kill him with a very easy
conscience--but because now is not the time for private revenge, when
we are concerned with the general national vengeance--or no, that is
not the right word--when we are concerned with the liberation of a
people. The one would be a hindrance to the other. In its own time
that, too, will come . . . that too will come,' he repeated, and he
shook his head.
Elena looked at him from the side.
'You love your country very dearly?' she articulated timidly.
'That remains to be shown,' he answered. 'When one of us dies for
her, then one can say he loved his country.'
'So that, if you were cut off all chance of returning to Bulgaria,'
continued Elena, 'would you be very unhappy in Russia?'
Insarov looked down.
'I think I could not bear that,' he said.
'Tell me,' Elena began again, 'is it difficult to learn Bulgarian?'
'Not at all. It's a disgrace to a Russian not to know Bulgarian. A
Russian ought to know all the Slavonic dialects. Would you like me to
bring you some Bulgarian books? You will see how easy it is. What
ballads we have! equal to the Servian. But stop a minute, I will
translate to you one of them. It is about . . . But you know a little
of our history at least, don't you?'
'No, I know nothing of it,' answered
Elena.
'Wait a little and I will bring you a book. You will learn the
principal facts at least from it. Listen to the ballad then. . . . But
I had better bring you a written translation, though. I am sure you
will love us, you love all the oppressed. If you knew what a land of
plenty ours is! And, meanwhile, it has been downtrodden, it has been
ravaged,' he went on, with an involuntary movement of his arm, and his
face darkened; 'we have been robbed of everything; everything, our
churches, our laws, our lands; the unclean Turks drive us like cattle,
butcher us----'
'Dmitri Nikanorovitch!' cried Elena.
He stopped.
'I beg your pardon. I can't speak of this coolly. But you asked me
just now whether I love my country. What else can one love on earth?
What is the one thing unchanging, what is above all doubts, what is
it--next to God--one must believe in? And when that country needs.
. . . Think; the poorest peasant, the poorest beggar in Bulgaria, and I
have the same desire. All of us have one aim. You can understand what
strength, what confidence that gives!'
Insarov was silent for an instant; then he began again to talk of
Bulgaria. Elena listened to him with absorbed, profound, and mournful
attention. When he had finished, she asked him once more:
'Then you would not stay in Russia for anything?'
And when he went away, for a long time she gazed after him. On that
day he had become a different man for her. When she walked back with
him through the garden, he was no longer the man she had met two hours
before.
From that day he began to come more and more often, and Bersenyev less
and less often. A strange feeling began to grow up between the two
friends, of which they were both conscious, but to which they could
not give a name, and which they feared to analyse. In this way a month
passed.
XV
Anna Vassilyevna, as the reader knows already, liked staying at home;
but at times she manifested, quite unexpectedly, an irresistible
longing for something out of the common, some extraordinary _partie du
plaisir_, and the more troublesome the _partie du plaisir_ was, the more
preparations and arrangements it required, and the greater Anna
Vassilyevna's own agitation over it, the more pleasure it gave her.
If this mood came upon her in winter, she would order two or three
boxes to be taken side by side, and, inviting all her acquaintances,
would set off to the theatre or even to a masquerade; in summer she
would drive for a trip out of town to some spot as far off as
possible. The next day she would complain of a headache, groan and
keep her bed; but within two months the same craving for something
'out of the common' would break out in her again. That was just what
happened now. Some one chanced to refer to the beautiful
scenery of Tsaritsino before her, and Anna Vassilyevna suddenly
announced an intention of driving to Tsaritsino the day after
tomorrow. The household was thrown into a state of bustle; a
messenger galloped off to Moscow for Nikolai Artemyevitch; with him
galloped the butler to buy wines, pies, and all sorts of provisions;
Shubin was commissioned to hire an open carriage--the coach alone was
not enough--and to order relays of horses to be ready; a page was
twice despatched to Bersenyev and Insarov with two different notes of
invitation, written by Zoya, the first in Russian, the second in
French; Anna Vassilyevna herself was busy over the dresses of the
young ladies for the expedition. Meanwhile the _partie du plaisir_ was
very near coming to grief. Nikolai Artemyevitch arrived from Moscow in
a sour, ill-natured, _frondeurish_ frame of mind. He was still sulky
with Augustina Christianovna; and when he heard what the plan was,
he flatly declared that he would not go; that to go trotting from
Kuntsovo to Moscow and from Moscow to Tsaritsino, and then from
Tsaritsino again to Moscow, from Moscow again to Kuntsovo, was a piece
of folly; and, 'in fact,' he added, 'let them first prove to my
satisfaction, that one can be merrier on one spot of the globe than
another spot, and I will go.' This, of course, no one could prove to
his satisfaction, and Anna Vassilyevna was ready to throw up the
_partie du plaisir_ for lack of a solid escort; but she recollected
Uvar Ivanovitch, and in her distress she sent to his room for him,
saying: 'a drowning man catches at straws.' They waked him up; he came
down, listened in silence to Anna Vassilyevna's proposition, and, to
the general astonishment, with a flourish of his fingers, he consented
to go. Anna Vassilyevna kissed him on the cheek, and called him a
darling; Nikolai Artemyevitch smiled contemptuously and said: _quelle
bourde!_ (he liked on occasions to make use of a 'smart' French word);
and the following morning the coach and the open carriage,
well-packed, rolled out of the Stahovs' court-yard. In the coach were
the ladies, a maid, and Bersenyev; Insarov was seated on the box; and
in the open carriage were Uvar Ivanovitch and Shubin. Uvar Ivanovitch
had himself beckoned Shubin to him; he knew that he would tease him
the whole way, but there existed a queer sort of attachment, marked by
abusive candour, between the 'primeval force' and the young artist. On
this occasion, however, Shubin left his fat friend in peace; he was
absent-minded, silent, and gentle.
The sun stood high in a cloudless blue sky when the carriage drove up
to the ruins of Tsaritsino Castle, which looked gloomy and menacing,
even at mid-day. The whole party stepped out on to the grass, and at
once made a move towards the garden. In front went Elena and Zoya with
Insarov; Anna Vassilyevna, with an expression of perfect happiness on
her face, walked behind them, leaning on the arm of Uvar Ivanovitch.
He waddled along panting, his new straw hat cut his forehead, and his
feet twinged in his boots, but he was content; Shubin and Bersenyev
brought up the rear. 'We will form the reserve, my dear boy, like
veterans,' whispered Shubin to Bersenyev. 'Bulgaria's in it now!' he
added, indicating Elena with his eyebrows.
The weather was glorious. Everything around was flowering, humming,
singing; in the distance shone the waters of the lakes; a
light-hearted holiday mood took possession of all. 'Oh, how beautiful;
oh, how beautiful!' Anna Vassilyevna repeated incessantly; Uvar
Ivanovitch kept nodding his head approvingly in response to her
enthusiastic exclamations, and once even articulated: 'To be sure! to
be sure!' From time to time Elena exchanged a few words with Insarov;
Zoya held the brim of her large hat with two fingers while her little
feet, shod in light grey shoes with rounded toes, peeped coquettishly
out from under her pink barege dress; she kept looking to each side
and then behind her. 'Hey!' cried Shubin suddenly in a low voice,
'Zoya Nikitishna is on the lookout, it seems. I will go to her. Elena
Nikolaevna despises me now, while you, Andrei Petrovitch, she esteems,
which comes to the same thing. I am going; I'm tired of being glum. I
should advise you, my dear fellow, to do some botanising; that's the
best thing you could hit on in your position; it might be useful, too,
from a scientific point of view. Farewell!' Shubin ran up to Zoya,
offered her his arm, and saying: '_Ihre Hand, Madame_' caught hold of
her hand, and pushed on ahead with her. Elena stopped, called to
Bersenyev, and also took his arm, but continued talking to Insarov.
She asked him the words for lily-of-the-valley, clover, oak, lime, and
so on in his language. . . 'Bulgaria's in it!' thought poor Andrei
Petrovitch.
Suddenly a shriek was heard in front; every one looked up. Shubin's
cigar-case fell into a bush, flung by Zoya's hand. 'Wait a minute, I'll
pay you out!' he shouted, as he crept into the bushes; he found
his cigar-case, and was returning to Zoya; but he had hardly reached
her side when again his cigar-case was sent flying across the road.
Five times this trick was repeated, he kept laughing and threatening
her, but Zoya only smiled slyly and drew herself together, like a
little cat. At last he snatched her fingers, and squeezed them so
tightly that she shrieked, and for a long time afterwards breathed on
her hand, pretending to be angry, while he murmured something in her
ears.
'Mischievous things, young people,' Anna Vassilyevna observed gaily to
Uvar Ivanovitch.
He flourished his fingers in reply.
'What a girl Zoya Nikitishna is!' said Bersenyev to Elena.
'And Shubin? What of him?' she answered.
Meanwhile the whole party went into the arbour, well known as Pleasant
View arbour, and stopped to admire the view of the Tsaritsino lakes.
They stretched one behind the other for several miles, overshadowed by
thick woods. The bright green grass, which covered the hill sloping
down to the largest lake, gave the water itself an extraordinarily
vivid emerald colour. Even at the water's edge not a ripple stirred the
smooth surface. One might fancy it a solid mass of glass lying heavy
and shining in a huge font; the sky seemed to drop into its depths,
while the leafy trees gazed motionless into its transparent bosom. All
were absorbed in long and silent admiration of the view; even Shubin
was still; even Zoya was impressed. At last, all with one mind, began
to wish to go upon the water. Shubin, Insarov, and Bersenyev raced
each other over the grass. They succeeded in finding a large painted
boat and two boatmen, and beckoned to the ladies. The ladies stepped
into the boat; Uvar Ivanovitch cautiously lowered himself into it
after them. Great was the mirth while he got in and took his seat.
'Look out, master, don't drown us,' observed one of the boatmen, a
snubnosed young fellow in a gay print shirt. 'Get along, you swell!'
said Uvar Ivanovitch. The boat pushed off. The young men took up the
oars, but Insarov was the oniy one of them who could row. Shubin
suggested that they should sing some Russian song in chorus, and
struck up: 'Down the river Volga' . . . Bersenyev, Zoya, and even
Anna Vassilyevna, joined in--Insarov could not sing--but they did not
keep together; at the third verse the singers were all wrong. Only
Bersenyev tried to go on in the bass, 'Nothing on the waves is seen,'
but he, too, was soon in difficulties. The boatmen looked at one
another and grinned in silence.
'Eh?' said Shubin, turning to them, 'the gentlefolks can't sing,
you say?' The boy in the print shirt only shook his head. 'Wait a
little snubnose,' retorted Shubin, 'we will show you. Zoya
Nikitishna, sing us _Le lac_ of Niedermeyer. Stop rowing!' The wet
oars stood still, lifted in the air like wings, and their splash died
away with a tuneful drip; the boat drifted on a little, then stood
still, rocking lightly on the water like a swan. Zoya affected to
refuse at first. . . . '_Allons_' said Anna Vassilyevna genially. . . .
Zoya took off her hat and began to sing: '_O lac, l'annee a peine a
fini sa carriere_!'
Her small, but pure voice, seemed to dart over the surface of the
lake; every word echoed far off in the woods; it sounded as though some
one were singing there, too, in a distinct, but mysterious and
unearthly voice. When Zoya finished, a loud bravo was heard from an
arbour near the bank, from which emerged several red-faced Germans who
were picnicking at Tsaritsino. Several of them had their coats off,
their ties, and even their waistcoats; and they shouted '_bis!_' with
such unmannerly insistence that Anna Vassilyevna told the boatmen to
row as quickly as possible to the other end of the lake. But before
the boat reached the bank, Uvar Ivanovitch once more succeeded in
surprising his friends; having noticed that in one part of the wood
the echo repeated every sound with peculiar distinctness, he suddenly
began to call like a quail. At first every one was startled, but they
listened directly with real pleasure, especially as Uvar Ivanovitch
imitated the quail's cry with great correctness. Spurred on by this,
he tried mewing like a cat; but this did not go off so well; and after
one more quail-call, he looked at them all and stopped. Shubin threw
himself on him to kiss him; he pushed him off. At that instant the
boat touched the bank, and all the party got out and went on shore.
Meanwhile the coachman, with the groom and the maid, had brought the
baskets out of the coach, and made dinner ready on the grass under the
old lime-trees. They sat down round the outspread tablecloth, and fell
upon the pies and other dainties. They all had excellent appetites,
while Anna Vassilyevna, with unflagging hospitality, kept urging the
guests to eat more, assuring them that nothing was more wholesome than
eating in the open air. She even encouraged Uvar Ivanovitch with such
assurances. 'Don't trouble about me!' he grunted with his mouth
full. 'Such a lovely day is a God-send, indeed!' she repeated
constantly. One would not have known her; she seemed fully twenty
years younger. Bersenyev said as much to her. 'Yes, yes.' she said;
'I could hold my own with any one in my day.' Shubin attached himself
to Zoya, and kept pouring her out wine; she refused it, he pressed
her, and finished by drinking the glass himself, and again pressing
her to take another; he also declared that he longed to lay his head
on her knee; she would on no account permit him 'such a liberty.'
Elena seemed the most serious of the party, but in her heart there was
a wonderful sense of peace, such as she had not known for long. She
felt filled with boundless goodwill and kindness, and wanted to keep
not only Insarov, but Bersenyev too, always at her side. . . . Andrei
Petrovitch dimly understood what this meant, and secretly he sighed.
The hours flew by; the evening was coming on. Anna Vassilyevna
suddenly took alarm. 'Ah, my dear friends, how late it is!' she
cried. 'All good things must have an end; it's time to go home.' She
began bustling about, and they all hastened to get up and walk towards
the castle, where the carriages were. As they walked past the lakes,
they stopped to admire Tsaritsino for the last time. The landscape on
all sides was glowing with the vivid hues of early evening; the sky
was red, the leaves were flashing with changing colours as they
stirred in the rising wind; the distant waters shone in liquid gold;
the reddish turrets and arbours scattered about the garden stood out
sharply against the dark green of the trees. 'Farewell, Tsaritsino, we
shall not forget to-day's excursion!' observed Anna Vassilyevna. . . .
But at that instant, and as though in confirmation of her words, a
strange incident occurred, which certainly was not likely to be
forgotten,
This was what happened. Anna Vassilyevna had hardly sent her farewell
greeting to Tsaritsino, when suddenly, a few paces from her, behind a
high bush of lilac, were heard confused exclamations, shouts, and
laughter; and a whole mob of disorderly men, the same devotees of
song who had so energetically applauded Zoya, burst out on the path.
These musical gentlemen seemed excessively elevated. They stopped at
the sight of the ladies; but one of them, a man of immense height,
with a bull neck and a bull's goggle eyes, separated from his
companions, and, bowing clumsily and staggering unsteadily in his
gait, approached Anna Vassilyevna, who was petrified with alarm.
'_Bonzhoor, madame_,' he said thickly, 'how are you?'
Anna Vassilyevna started back.
'Why wouldn't you,' continued the giant in vile Russian, 'sing
again when our party shouted _bis_, and bravo?'
'Yes, why?' came from the ranks of his comrades.
Insarov was about to step forward, but Shubin stopped him, and himself
screened Anna Vassilyevna.
'Allow me,' he began, 'honoured stranger, to express to you the
heartfelt amazement, into which you have thrown all of us by your
conduct. You belong, as far as I can judge, to the Saxon branch of the
Caucasian race; consequently we are bound to assume your acquaintance
with the customs of society, yet you address a lady to whom you have
not been introduced. I assure you that I individually should be
delighted another time to make your acquaintance, since I observe in
you a phenomenal development of the muscles, biceps, triceps and
deltoid, so that, as a sculptor, I should esteem it a genuine
happiness to have you for a model; but on this occasion kindly leave
us alone.'
The 'honoured stranger' listened to Shubin's speech, his head held
contemptuously on one side and his arms akimbo.
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