Works of Ivan Turgenev (Illustrated) (44 page)

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.