Russian Literature – Children Books – Russian Poetry – Ivan Turgenev – Clara Mílitch – Contents
< < < Chapter XVII
> > >
XVIII
When Platonída Ivánovna entered his room on the following morning he was in the same condition … but his weakness had not passed off, and he even preferred to remain in bed. Platonída Ivánovna did not like the pallor of his face in particular.
“What does it mean, O Lord!” she thought. “There isn’t a drop of blood in his face, he refuses his beef-tea; he lies there and laughs, and keeps asserting that he is quite well!”
He refused breakfast also.—”Why dost thou do that, Yásha?” she asked him; “dost thou intend to lie like this all day?”
“And what if I do?” replied Arátoff, affectionately.
This very affection also did not please Platonída Ivánovna. Arátoff wore the aspect of a man who has learned a great secret, which is very agreeable to him, and is jealously clinging to it and reserving it for himself. He was waiting for night, not exactly with impatience but with curiosity.
“What comes next?” he asked himself;—”what will happen?” He had ceased to be surprised, to be perplexed; he cherished no doubt as to his having entered into communication with Clara; that they loved each other … he did not doubt, either. Only … what can come of such a love?—He recalled that kiss … and a wondrous chill coursed swiftly and sweetly through all his limbs.—”Romeo and Juliet did not exchange such a kiss as that!” he thought. “But the next time I shall hold out better…. I shall possess her…. She will come with the garland of tiny roses in her black curls….
“But after that what? For we cannot live together, can we? Consequently I must die in order to be with her? Was not that what she came for,—and is it not in that way she wishes to take me?
“Well, and what of that? If I must die, I must. Death does not terrify me in the least now. For it cannot annihilate me, can it? On the contrary, only thus and there shall I be happy … as I have never been happy in my lifetime, as she has never been in hers…. For we are both unsullied!—Oh, that kiss!”
* * * * *
Platonída Ivánovna kept entering Arátoff’s room; she did not worry him with questions, she merely took a look at him, whispered, sighed, and went out again.—But now he refused his dinner also…. Things were getting quite too bad. The old woman went off to her friend, the medical man of the police-district, in whom she had faith simply because he did not drink and was married to a German woman. Arátoff was astonished when she brought the man to him; but Platonída Ivánovna began so insistently to entreat her Yáshenka to permit Paramón Paramónitch (that was the medical man’s name) to examine him—come, now, just for her sake!—that Arátoff consented. Paramón Paramónitch felt his pulse, looked at his tongue, interrogated him after a fashion, and finally announced that it was indispensably necessary to “auscultate” him. Arátoff was in such a submissive frame of mind that he consented to this also. The doctor delicately laid bare his breast, delicately tapped it, listened, smiled, prescribed some drops and a potion, but chief of all, advised him to be quiet, and refrain from violent emotions.
“You don’t say so!” thought Arátoff…. “Well, brother, thou hast bethought thyself too late!”
“What ails Yásha?” asked Platonída Ivánovna, as she handed Paramón Paramónitch 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 Platonída Ivánovna; “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 Platonída Ivánovna, as much as to say: “Look out and don’t try your Latin on me again!”
“Not at present!”
The doctor went away, and Platonída Ivánovna took to grieving…. Nevertheless she sent to the apothecary for the medicine, which Arátoff would not take, despite her entreaties. He even refused herb-tea.
“What makes you worry so, dear?” he said to her. “I assure you I am now the most perfectly healthy and happy man in the whole world!”
Platonída Ivánovna 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. Platonída Ivánovna 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 Arátoff’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 circumstance 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 Semyónovna had such a lock, which she had kept after Clara’s death; but why should she have given to Arátoff 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 Arátoff 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 Platonída Ivánovna was the moment when Arátoff, 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.
< < < Chapter XVII
> > >
Russian Literature – Children Books – Russian Poetry – Ivan Turgenev – Clara Mílitch – Contents
Copyright holders – Public Domain Book
| If you liked this site, subscribe , put likes, write comments! Share on social networks Check out Our Latest Posts |
© 2023 Akirill.com – All Rights Reserved
AKirill, Learn, apprenez, translation, traduction, livres bilingues, bilingual books 