Russian Literature – Children Books – Russian Poetry – Ivan Turgenev – A Desperate Character – Contents
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VIII
Three years later, I was again at home in the country; all of a sudden a servant came in and announced that Madame Poltyev was asking to see me. I knew no Madame Poltyev, and the servant, who made this announcement, for some unknown reason smiled sarcastically. To my glance of inquiry, he responded that the lady asking for me was young, poorly dressed, and had come in a peasant’s cart with one horse, which she was driving herself! I told him to ask Madame Poltyev up to my room.
I saw a woman of five-and-twenty, in the dress of the small tradesman class, with a large kerchief on her head. Her face was simple, roundish, not without charm; she looked dejected and gloomy, and was shy and awkward in her movements.
‘You are Madame Poltyev?’ I inquired, and I asked her to sit down.
‘Yes,’ she answered in a subdued voice, and she did not sit down. ‘I am the widow of your nephew, Mihail Andreevitch Poltyev.’
‘Is Mihail Andreevitch dead? Has he been dead long? But sit down, I beg.’
She sank into a chair.
‘It’s two months.’
‘And had you been married to him long?’
‘I had been a year with him.’
‘Where have you come from now?’
‘From out Tula way…. There’s a village there, Znamenskoe-Glushkovo—perhaps you may know it. I am the daughter of the deacon there. Mihail Andreitch and I lived there…. He lived in my father’s house. We were a whole year together.’
The young woman’s lips twitched a little, and she put her hand up to them. She seemed to be on the point of tears, but she controlled herself, and cleared her throat.
‘Mihail Andreitch,’ she went on: ‘before his death enjoined upon me to go to you; “You must be sure to go,” said he! And he told me to thank you for all your goodness, and to give you … this … see, this little thing (she took a small packet out of her pocket) which he always had about him…. And Mihail Andreitch said, if you would be pleased to accept it in memory of him, if you would not disdain it…. “There’s nothing else,” said he, “I can give him” … that is, you….’
In the packet there was a little silver cup with the monogram of Misha’s mother. This cup I had often seen in Misha’s hands, and once he had even said to me, speaking of some poor fellow, that he really was destitute, since he had neither cup nor bowl, ‘while I, see, have this anyway.’
I thanked her, took the cup, and asked:
‘Of what complaint had Misha died? No doubt….’
Then I bit my tongue … but the young woman understood my unuttered hint…. She took a swift glance at me, then looked down again, smiled mournfully, and said at once: ‘Oh no! he had quite given that up, ever since he got to know me … But he had no health at all! … It was shattered quite. As soon as he gave up drink, he fell into ill health directly. He became so steady; he always wanted to help father in his land or in the garden, … or any other work there might be … in spite of his being of noble birth. But how could he get the strength? … At writing, too, he tried to work; as you know, he could do that work capitally, but his hands shook, and he couldn’t hold the pen properly. … He was always finding fault with himself; “I’m a white-handed poor creature,” he would say; “I’ve never done any good to anybody, never helped, never laboured!” He worried himself very much about that…. He used to say that our people labour,—but what use are we? … Ah, Nikolai Nikolaitch, he was a good man—and he was fond of me … and I… Ah, pardon me….’
Here the young woman wept outright. I would have consoled her, but I did not know how.
‘Have you a child left you?’ I asked at last.
She sighed. ‘No, no child…. Is it likely?’ And her tears flowed faster than ever.
‘And so that was how Misha’s troubled wanderings had ended,’ the old man P. wound up his narrative. ‘You will agree with me, I am sure, that I’m right in calling him a desperate character; but you will most likely agree too that he was not like the desperate characters of to-day; still, a philosopher, you must admit, would find a family likeness between him and them. In him and in them there’s the thirst for self-destruction, the wretchedness, the dissatisfaction…. And what it all comes from, I leave the philosopher to decide.’
BOUGIVALLE, November 1881.
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Russian Literature – Children Books – Russian Poetry – Ivan Turgenev – A Desperate Character – Contents
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