Acia by Ivan Turgenev

Translated from the Russian by Constance Garnett

Russian Literature – Children Books – Russian Poetry – Ivan Turgenev – Acia – Contents

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‘Can it be that she loves me?’ I asked myself next morning, directly I awoke. I did not want to look into myself. I felt that her image, the image of the ‘girl with the affected laugh,’ had crept close into my heart, and that I should not easily get rid of it. I went to L—— and stayed there the whole day, but I saw Acia only by glimpses. She was not well; she had a headache. She came downstairs for a minute, with a bandage round her forehead, looking white and thin, her eyes half-closed. With a faint smile she said, ‘It will soon be over, it’s nothing; everything’s soon over, isn’t it?’ and went away. I felt bored and, as it were, listlessly sad, yet I could not make up my mind to go for a long while, and went home late, without seeing her again.

The next morning passed in a sort of half slumber of the consciousness. I tried to set to work, and could not; I tried to do nothing and not to think—and that was a failure too. I strolled about the town, returned home, went out again.

‘Are you Herr N——?’ I heard a childish voice ask suddenly behind me. I looked round; a little boy was standing before me. ‘This is for you from Fraülein Annette,’ he said, handing me a note.

I opened it and recognised the irregular rapid handwriting of Acia. ‘I must see you to-day,’ she wrote to me; ‘come to-day at four o’clock to the stone chapel on the road near the ruin. I have done a most foolish thing to-day.… Come, for God’s sake; you shall know all about it.… Tell the messenger, yes.’

‘Is there an answer?’ the boy asked me.

‘Say, yes,’ I replied. The boy ran off.

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Chapter XIV > > >

Russian Literature – Children Books – Russian Poetry – Ivan Turgenev – Acia – Contents

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