A Lear Of The Steppes by Ivan Turgenev

Translated from the Russian by Constance Garnett

Russian Literature – Children Books – Russian Poetry – Ivan Turgenev – A Lear Of The Steppes – Contents

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What had he wanted to say to her as he lay dying? I asked myself as I went home on my cob: ‘I do not … forgive,’ or ‘do not … pardon.’ The rain had come on again, but I rode at a walking pace. I wanted to be alone as long as possible; I wanted to give myself up to my reflections, unchecked. Souvenir had gone back in one of the carts that had come with Kvitsinsky. Young and frivolous as I was at that time, the sudden sweeping change (not in mere details only) that is invariably called forth in all hearts by the coming of death—expected or unexpected, it makes no difference!—its majesty, its gravity, and its truthfulness could not fail to impress me. I was impressed too, … but for all that, my troubled, childish eyes noted many things at once; they noted how Sletkin, hurriedly and furtively, as though it were something stolen, popped the gun out of sight; how he and his wife became, both of them, instantly the object of a sort of unspoken but universal aloofness. To Evlampia, though her fault was probably no less than her sister’s, this aloofness did not extend. She even aroused a certain sympathy, when she fell at her dead father’s feet. But that she too was guilty, that was none the less felt by all. ‘The old man was wronged,’ said a grey-haired peasant with a big head, leaning, like some ancient judge, with both hands and his beard on a long staff; ‘on your soul lies the sin! You wronged him!’ That saying was at once accepted by every one as the final judgment. The peasants’ sense of justice found expression in it, I felt that at once. I noticed too that, at the first, Sletkin did not dare to give directions. Without him, they lifted up the body and carried it into the other house. Without asking him, the priest went for everything needful to the church, while the village elder ran to the village to send off a cart and horse to the town. Even Anna Martinovna did not venture to use her ordinary imperious tone in ordering the samovar to be brought, ‘for hot water, to wash the deceased.’ Her orders were more like an entreaty, and she was answered rudely.…

I was absorbed all the while by the question, What was it exactly he wanted to say to his daughter? Did he want to forgive her or to curse her? Finally I decided that it was—forgiveness.

Three days later, the funeral of Martin Petrovitch took place. The cost of the ceremony was undertaken by my mother, who was deeply grieved at his death, and gave orders that no expense was to be spared. She did not herself go to the church, because she was unwilling, as she said, to set eyes on those two vile hussies and that nasty little Jew. But she sent Kvitsinsky, me, and Zhitkov, though from that time forward she always spoke of the latter as a regular old woman. Souvenir she did not admit to her presence, and was furious with him for long after, saying that he was the murderer of her friend. He felt his disgrace acutely; he was continually running, on tiptoe, up and down the room, next to the one where my mother was; he gave himself up to a sort of scared and abject melancholy, shuddering and muttering, ‘d’rectly!’

In church, and during the procession, Sletkin struck me as having recovered his self-possession. He gave directions and bustled about in his old way, and kept a greedy look-out that not a superfluous farthing should be spent, though his own pocket was not in question. Maximka, in a new Cossack dress, also a present from my mother, gave vent to such tenor notes in the choir, that certainly no one could have any doubts as to the sincerity of his devotion to the deceased. Both the sisters were duly attired in mourning, but they seemed more stupefied than grieved, especially Evlampia. Anna wore a meek, Lenten air, but made no attempt to weep, and was continually passing her handsome, thin hand over her hair and cheek. Evlampia seemed deep in thought all the time. The universal, unbending alienation, condemnation, which I had noticed on the day of Harlov’s death, I detected now too on the faces of all the people in the church, in their actions and their glances, but still more grave and, as it were, impersonal. It seemed as though all those people felt that the sin into which the Harlov family had fallen—this great sin—had gone now before the presence of the one righteous Judge, and that for that reason, there was no need now for them to trouble themselves and be indignant. They prayed devoutly for the soul of the dead man, whom in life they had not specially liked, whom they had feared indeed. Very abruptly had death overtaken him.

‘And it’s not as though he had been drinking heavily, brother,’ said one peasant to another, in the porch.

‘Nay, without drink he was drunken indeed,’ responded the other.

‘He was cruelly wronged,’ the first peasant repeated the phrase that summed it up.

‘Cruelly wronged,’ the others murmured after him.

‘The deceased was a hard master to you, wasn’t he?’ I asked a peasant, whom I recognised as one of Harlov’s serfs.

‘He was a master, certainly,’ answered the peasant, ‘but still … he was cruelly wronged!’

‘Cruelly wronged.…’ I heard again in the crowd.

At the grave, too, Evlampia stood, as it were, lost. Thoughts were torturing her … bitter thoughts. I noticed that Sletkin, who several times addressed some remark to her, she treated as she had once treated Zhitkov, and worse still.

Some days later, there was a rumour all over our neighbourhood, that Evlampia Martinovna had left the home of her fathers for ever, leaving all the property that came to her to her sister and brother-in-law, and only taking some hundreds of roubles.… ‘So Anna’s bought her out, it seems!’ remarked my mother; ‘but you and I, certainly,’ she added, addressing Zhitkov, with whom she was playing picquet—he took Souvenir’s place, ‘are not skilful hands!’ Zhitkov looked dejectedly at his mighty palms.… ‘Hands like that! Not skilful!’ he seemed to be saying to himself.…

Soon after, my mother and I went to live in Moscow, and many years passed before it was my lot to behold Martin Petrovitch’s daughters again.

< < < Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXX > > >

Russian Literature – Children Books – Russian Poetry – Ivan Turgenev – A Lear Of The Steppes – Contents

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