A Reckless Character, and Other Stories Part 26

"You don't say so!" thought Aratoff.... "Well, brother, thou hast bethought thyself too late!"

"What ails Yasha?" asked Platonida Ivanovna, as she handed Paramon Paramonitch a three-ruble bank-note on the threshold. The district doctor, who, like all contemporary doctors,--especially those of them who wear a uniform,--was fond of showing off his learned terminology, informed her that her nephew had all the dioptric symptoms of nervous cardialgia, and that febris was present also.

"But speak more simply, dear little father," broke in Platonida Ivanovna; "don't scare me with Latin; thou art not in an apothecary's shop!"

"His heart is out of order," explained the doctor;--"well, and he has fever also," ... and he repeated his advice with regard to repose and moderation.

"But surely there is no danger?" sternly inquired Platonida Ivanovna, as much as to say: "Look out and don't try your Latin on me again!"

"Not at present!"

The doctor went away, and Platonida Ivanovna took to grieving....

Nevertheless she sent to the apothecary for the medicine, which Aratoff would not take, despite her entreaties. He even refused herb-tea.

"What makes you worry so, dear?" he said to her. "I a.s.sure you I am now the most perfectly healthy and happy man in the whole world!"

Platonida Ivanovna merely shook her head. Toward evening he became slightly feverish; yet he still insisted upon it that she should not remain in his room, and should go away to her own to sleep. Platonida Ivanovna obeyed, but did not undress, and did not go to bed; she sat up in an arm-chair and kept listening and whispering her prayer.

She was beginning to fall into a doze, when suddenly a dreadful, piercing shriek awakened her. She sprang to her feet, rushed into Aratoff's study, and found him lying on the floor, as upon the night before.

But he did not come to himself as he had done the night before, work over him as they would. That night he was seized with a high fever, complicated by inflammation of the heart.

A few days later he died.

A strange circ.u.mstance accompanied his second swoon. When they lifted him up and put him to bed, there proved to be a small lock of woman's black hair clutched in his right hand. Where had that hair come from?

Anna Semyonovna had such a lock, which she had kept after Clara's death; but why should she have given to Aratoff an object which was so precious to her? Could she have laid it into the diary, and not noticed the fact when she gave him the book?

In the delirium which preceded his death Aratoff called himself Romeo ... after the poison; he talked about a marriage contracted, consummated;--said that now he knew the meaning of delight. Especially dreadful for Platonida Ivanovna was the moment when Aratoff, recovering consciousness, and seeing her by his bedside, said to her:

"Aunty, why art thou weeping? Is it because I must die? But dost thou not know that love is stronger than death?... Death! O Death, where is thy sting? Thou must not weep, but rejoice, even as I rejoice...."

And again the face of the dying man beamed with that same blissful smile which had made the poor old woman shudder so.

POEMS IN PROSE

(1878-1882)

_From the Editor of the "European Messenger_"

In compliance with our request, Ivan Sergyeevitch Turgenieff has given his consent to our sharing now with the readers of our journal, without delay, those pa.s.sing comments, thoughts, images which he had noted down, under one impression or another of current existence, during the last five years,--those which belong to him personally, and those which pertain to society in general. They, like many others, have not found a place in those finished productions of the past which have already been presented to the world, and have formed a complete collection in themselves. From among these the author has made fifty selections.

In the letter accompanying the pages which we are now about to print, I.

S. Turgenieff says, in conclusion:

"... Let not your reader peruse these 'Poems in Prose' at one sitting; he will probably be bored, and the book will fall from his hands. But let him read them separately,--to-day one, to-morrow another,--and then perchance some one of them may leave some trace behind in his soul...."

The pages have no general t.i.tle; the author has written on their wrapper: "Senilia--An Old Man's Jottings,"--but we have preferred the words carelessly dropped by the author in the end of his letter to us, quoted above,--"Poems in Prose"--and we print the pages under that general t.i.tle. In our opinion, it fully expresses the source from which such comments might present themselves to the soul of an author well known for his sensitiveness to the various questions of life, as well as the impression which they may produce on the reader, "leaving behind in his soul" many things. They are, in reality, poems in spite of the fact that they are written in prose. We place them in chronological order, beginning with the year 1878.

M. S.[68]

October 28, 1882.

I

(1878)

THE VILLAGE

The last day of July; for a thousand versts round about lies Russia, the fatherland.

The whole sky is suffused with an even azure; there is only one little cloud in it, which is half floating, half melting. There is no wind, it is warm ... the air is like new milk!

Larks are carolling; large-cropped pigeons are cooing; the swallows dart past in silence; the horses neigh and munch, the dogs do not bark, but stand peaceably wagging their tails.

And there is an odour of smoke abroad, and of gra.s.s,--and a tiny whiff of tan,--and another of leather.--The hemp-patches, also, are in their glory, and emit their heavy but agreeable fragrance.

A deep but not long ravine. Along its sides, in several rows, grow bulky-headed willows, stripped bare at the bottom. Through the ravine runs a brook; on its bottom tiny pebbles seem to tremble athwart its pellucid ripples.--Far away, at the spot where the rims of earth and sky come together, is the bluish streak of a large river.

Along the ravine, on one side are neat little storehouses, and buildings with tightly-closed doors; on the other side are five or six pine-log cottages with board roofs. Over each roof rises a tall pole with a starling house; over each tiny porch is an openwork iron horse's head with a stiff mane.[69] The uneven window-panes sparkle with the hues of the rainbow. Jugs holding bouquets are painted on the shutters. In front of each cottage stands sedately a precise little bench; on the earthen banks around the foundations of the house cats lie curled in b.a.l.l.s, with their transparent ears p.r.i.c.ked up on the alert; behind the lofty thresholds the anterooms look dark and cool.

I am lying on the very brink of the ravine, on an outspread horse-cloth; round about are whole heaps of new-mown hay, which is fragrant to the point of inducing faintness. The sagacious householders have spread out the hay in front of their cottages: let it dry a little more in the hot sun, and then away with it to the barn! It will be a glorious place for a nap!

The curly heads of children project from each hayc.o.c.k; crested hens are searching in the hay for gnats and small beetles; a white-toothed puppy is sprawling among the tangled blades of gra.s.s.

Ruddy-curled youths in clean, low-girt s.h.i.+rts, and heavy boots with borders, are bandying lively remarks as they stand with their b.r.e.a.s.t.s resting on the unhitched carts, and display their teeth in a grin.

From a window a round-faced la.s.s peeps out; she laughs, partly at their words, and partly at the pranks of the children in the heaped-up hay.

Another la.s.s with her st.u.r.dy arms is drawing a huge, dripping bucket from the well.... The bucket trembles and rocks on the rope, scattering long, fiery drops.

In front of me stands an aged housewife in a new-checked petticoat of homespun and new peasant-shoes.