Authors: Ivan Turgenev
I had already fixed on the spot from which to keep watch. At the end of the garden, at the point where the fence, separating our domain from the Zasyekins’, joined the common wall, grew a pinetree, standing alone. Standing under its low thick branches, I could see well, as far as the darkness of the night permitted, what took place around. Close by, ran a winding path which had always seemed mysterious to me; it coiled like a snake under the fence, which at that point bore traces of having been climbed over, and led to a round arbour formed of thick acacias. I made my way to the pinetree, leaned my back against its trunk, and began my watch.
The night was as still as the night before, but there were fewer clouds in the sky, and the outlines of bushes, even of tall flowers, could be more distinctly seen. The first moments of expectation were oppressive, almost terrible. I had made up my mind to everything. I only debated how to act; whether to thunder, “Where goest thou? Stand! show thyself—or death!” or simply to strike.… Every sound, every whisper and rustle, seemed to me portentous and extraordinary.…
I prepared myself.… I bent forward.… But half-an-hour passed, an hour passed; my blood had grown quieter, colder; the consciousness that I was doing all this for nothing, that I was even a little absurd, that Malevsky had been making fun of me, began to steal over me. I left my ambush, and walked all about the garden. As if to taunt me, there was not the smallest sound to be heard anywhere; everything was at rest. Even our dog was asleep, curled up into a ball at the gate. I climbed up into the ruins of the greenhouse, saw the open country far away before me, recalled my meeting with Zinaïda, and fell to dreaming.…
I started.… I fancied I heard the creak of a door opening, then the faint crack of a broken twig. In two bounds I got down from the ruin, and stood still, all aghast. Rapid, light, but cautious footsteps sounded distinctly in the garden. They were approaching me. “Here he is … here he is, at last!” flashed through my heart. With spasmodic haste, I pulled the knife out of my pocket; with spasmodic haste, I opened it. Flashes of red were whirling before my eyes; my hair stood up on my head in my fear and fury.… The steps were coming straight towards me; I bent—I craned forward to meet him.… A man came into view.… My God! It was my father!
I recognised him at once, though he was all muffled up in a dark cloak, and his hat was pulled down over his face. On tip-toe he walked by. He did not notice me, though nothing concealed me; but I was so huddled up and shrunk together that I fancy I was
almost on the level of the ground. The jealous Othello, ready for murder, was suddenly transformed into a schoolboy.… I was so taken aback by my father’s unexpected appearance that for the first moment I did not notice where he had come from or in what direction he disappeared. I only drew myself up, and thought, “Why is it my father is walking about in the garden at night?” when everything was still again. In my horror I had dropped my knife in the grass, but I did not even attempt to look for it; I was very much ashamed of myself. I was completely sobered at once. On my way to the house, however, I went up to my seat under the elder-tree, and looked up at Zinaïda’s window. The small slightly convex panes of the window shone dimly blue in the faint light thrown on them by the night sky. All at once—their colour began to change.… Behind them—I saw this, saw it distinctly—softly and cautiously a white blind was let down, let down right to the window-frame, and so stayed.
“What is that for?” I said aloud almost involuntarily when I found myself once more in my room. “A dream, a chance, or.…” The suppositions which suddenly rushed into my head were so new and strange that I did not dare to entertain them.
I got up in the morning with a headache. My emotion of the previous day had vanished. It was replaced by a dreary sense of blankness and a sort of sadness I had not known till then, as though something had died in me.
“Why is it you’re looking like a rabbit with half its brain removed?” said Lushin on meeting me. At lunch I stole a look first at my father, then at my mother: he was composed, as usual; she was, as usual, secretly irritated. I waited to see whether my father would make some friendly remarks to me, as he sometimes did.… But he did not even bestow his everyday cold greeting upon me. “Shall I tell Zinaïda all?” I wondered … It’s all the same, anyway; all is at an end between us.” I went to see her, but told her nothing, and, indeed, I could not even have managed to get a
talk with her if I had wanted to. The old princess’s son, a cadet of twelve years old, had come from Petersburg for his holidays; Zinaïda at once handed her brother over to me. “Here,” she said, “my dear Volodya”—it was the first time she had used this pet-name to me—“is a companion for you. His name is Volodya, too. Please, like him; he is still shy, but he has a good heart. Show him Neskutchny gardens, go on walks with him, take him under your protection. You’ll do that, won’t you? You’re so good, too!” She laid both her hands affectionately on my shoulders, and I was utterly bewildered. The presence of this boy transformed me, too, into a boy. I looked in silence at the cadet, who stared as silently at me. Zinaïda laughed, and pushed us towards each other. “Embrace each other, children!” We embraced each other. “Would you like me to show you the garden?” I inquired of the cadet. “If you please,” he replied, in the regular cadet’s hoarse voice. Zinaïda laughed again.… I had time to notice that she had never had such an exquisite colour in her face before. I set off with the cadet. There was an old-fashioned swing in our garden. I sat him down on the narrow plank seat, and began swinging him. He sat rigid in his new little uniform of stout cloth, with its broad gold braiding, and kept tight hold of the cords. “You’d better unbutton your collar,” I said to him. “It’s all right; we’re used to it,” he said, and cleared his throat. He was like his sister. The eyes especially recalled her. I liked being nice to him; and at the same time an aching sadness was gnawing at my heart. “Now I certainly am
a child,” I thought; “but yesterday.…” I remembered where I had dropped my knife the night before, and looked for it. The cadet asked me for it, picked a thick stalk of wild parsley, cut a pipe out of it, and began whistling. Othello whistled too.
But in the evening how he wept, this Othello, in Zinaïda’s arms, when, seeking him out in a corner of the garden, she asked him why he was so depressed. My tears flowed with such violence that she was frightened. “What is wrong with you? What is it, Volodya?” she repeated; and seeing I made no answer, and did not cease weeping, she was about to kiss my wet cheek. But I turned away from her, and whispered through my sobs, “I know all. Why did you play with me?… What need had you of my love?”
“I am to blame, Volodya …” said Zinaïda. “I am very much to blame …” she added, wringing her hands. “How much there is bad and black and sinful in me!… But I am not playing with you now. I love you; you don’t even suspect why and how.… But what is it you know?”
What could I say to her? She stood facing me, and looked at me; and I belonged to her altogether from head to foot directly she looked at me.… A quarter of an hour later I was running races with the cadet and Zinaïda. I was not crying, I was laughing, though my swollen eyelids dropped a tear or two as I laughed. I had Zinaïda’s ribbon round my neck for a cravat, and I shouted with delight whenever I succeeded in catching her round the waist. She did just as she liked with me.
I should be in a great difficulty, if I were forced to describe exactly what passed within me in the course of the week after my unsuccessful midnight expedition. It was a strange feverish time, a sort of chaos, in which the most violently opposed feelings, thoughts, suspicions, hopes, joys, and sufferings, whirled together in a kind of hurricane. I was afraid to look into myself, if a boy of sixteen ever can look into himself; I was afraid to take stock of anything; I simply hastened to live through every day till evening; and at night I slept … the light-heartedness of childhood came to my aid. I did not want to know whether I was loved, and I did not want to acknowledge to myself that I was not loved; my father I avoided—but Zinaïda I could not avoid.… I burnt as in a fire in her
presence … but what did I care to know what the fire was in which I burned and melted—it was enough that it was sweet to burn and melt. I gave myself up to all my passing sensations, and cheated myself, turning away from memories, and shutting my eyes to what I foreboded before me.… This weakness would not most likely have lasted long in any case … a thunderbolt cut it all short in a moment, and flung me into a new track altogether.
Coming in one day to dinner from a rather long walk, I learnt with amazement that I was to dine alone, that my father had gone away and my mother was unwell, did not want any dinner, and had shut herself up in her bedroom. From the faces of the footmen, I surmised that something extraordinary had taken place.… I did not dare to cross-examine them, but I had a friend in the young waiter Philip, who was passionately fond of poetry, and a performer on the guitar. I addressed myself to him. From him I learned that a terrible scene had taken place between my father and mother (and every word had been overheard in the maids’ room; much of it had been in French, but Masha the lady’s-maid had lived five years with a dressmaker from Paris, and she understood it all); that my mother had reproached my father with infidelity, with an intimacy with the young lady next door, that my father at first had defended himself, but afterwards had lost his temper, and he too had said something cruel, “reflecting on her age,” which had made my mother cry; that my mother too
had alluded to some loan which it seemed had been made to the old princess, and had spoken very ill of her and of the young lady too, and that then my father had threatened her. “And all the mischief,” continued Philip, “came from an anonymous letter; and who wrote it, no one knows, or else there’d have been no reason whatever for the matter to have come out at all.”
“But was there really any ground,” I brought out with difficulty, while my hands and feet went cold, and a sort of shudder ran through my inmost being.
Philip winked meaningly. “There was. There’s no hiding those things; for all that your father was careful this time—but there, you see, he’d, for instance, to hire a carriage or something … no getting on without servants, either.”
I dismissed Philip, and fell onto my bed. I did not sob, I did not give myself up to despair; I did not ask myself when and how this had happened; I did not wonder how it was I had not guessed it before, long ago; I did not even upbraid my father.… What I had learnt was more than I could take in; this sudden revelation stunned me.… All was at an end. All the fair blossoms of my heart were roughly plucked at once, and lay about me, flung on the ground, and trampled underfoot.
My mother next day announced her intention of returning to the town. In the morning my father had gone into her bedroom, and stayed there a long while alone with her. No one had overheard what he said to her; but my mother wept no more; she regained her composure, and asked for food, but did not make her appearance nor change her plans. I remember I wandered about the whole day, but did not go into the garden, and never once glanced at the lodge, and in the evening I was the spectator of an amazing occurrence: my father conducted Count Malevsky by the arm through the dining room into the hall, and, in the presence of a footman, said icily to him: “A few days ago your excellency was shown the door in our house; and now I am not going to enter into any kind of
explanation with you, but I have the honor to announce to you that if you ever visit me again, I shall throw you out of the window. I don’t like your handwriting.” The count bowed, bit his lips, shrank away, and vanished.
Preparations were beginning for our removal to town, to Arbaty Street, where we had a house. My father himself probably no longer cared to remain at the country house; but clearly he had succeeded in persuading my mother not to make a public scandal. Everything was done quietly, without hurry; my mother even sent her compliments to the old princess, and expressed her regret that she was prevented by indisposition from seeing her again before her departure. I wandered about like one possessed, and only longed for one thing, for it all to be over as soon as possible. One thought I could not get out of my head: How could she, a young girl, and a princess too, after all, bring herself to such a step, knowing that my father was not a free man, and having an opportunity of marrying, for instance, Byelovzorov? What did she hope for? How was it she was not afraid of ruining her whole future? Yes, I thought, this is love, this is passion, this is devotion … and Lushin’s words came back to me: To sacrifice oneself for some people is sweet. I chanced somehow to catch sight of something white in one of the windows of the lodge.… “Can it be Zinaïda’s face?” I thought … yes, it really was her face. I could not restrain myself. I could not part from her without saying a last good-bye to her. I seized a favourable instant, and went into the lodge.
In the drawing room the old princess met me with her usual slovenly and careless greetings.
“How’s this, my good man, your folks are off in such a hurry?” she observed, thrusting snuff into her nose. I looked at her, and a load was taken off my heart. The word “loan,” dropped by Philip, had been torturing me. She had no suspicion … at least I thought so then. Zinaïda came in from the next room, pale, and dressed in black, with her hair hanging loose; she took me by the hand without a word, and drew me away with her.
“I heard your voice,” she began, “and came out at once. Is it so easy for you to leave us, bad boy?”
“I have come to say good-bye to you, princess,” I answered, “probably forever. You have heard, perhaps, we are going away.”
Zinaïda looked intently at me.
“Yes, I have heard. Thanks for coming. I was beginning to think I should not see you again. Don’t remember evil against me. I have sometimes tormented you, but all the same I am not what you imagine me.”