Russian Literature – Children Books – Russian Poetry – Ivan Turgenev – Clara Mílitch – Contents
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VI
To wit: a messenger brought him a note, written in a large, irregular feminine hand, which ran as follows:
“If you guess who is writing to you, and if it does not bore you, come to-morrow, after dinner, to the Tver boulevard—about five o’clock—and wait. You will not be detained long. But it is very important. Come.”
There was no signature. Arátoff instantly divined who his correspondent was, and that was precisely what disturbed him.—”What nonsense!” he said, almost aloud. “This is too much! Of course I shall not go.”—Nevertheless, he ordered the messenger to be summoned, and from him he learned merely that the letter had been handed to him on the street by a maid. Having dismissed him, Arátoff reread the letter, and flung it on the floor…. But after a while he picked it up and read it over again; a second time he cried: “Nonsense!” He did not throw the letter on the floor this time, however, but put it away in a drawer.
Arátoff went about his customary avocations, busying himself now with one, now with another; but his work did not make progress, was not a success. Suddenly he noticed that he was waiting for Kupfer, that he wanted to interrogate him, or even communicate something to him…. But Kupfer did not make his appearance. Then Arátoff got Púshkin and read Tatyána’s letter and again felt convinced that that “gipsy” had not in the least grasped the meaning of the letter. But there was that jester Kupfer shouting: “A Rachel! A Viardot!” Then he went to his piano, raised the cover in an abstracted sort of way, tried to search out in his memory the melody of Tchaikóvsky’s romance; but he immediately banged to the piano-lid with vexation and went to his aunt, in her own room, which was always kept very hot, and was forever redolent of mint, sage, and other medicinal herbs, and crowded with such a multitude of rugs, étagères, little benches, cushions and various articles of softly-stuffed furniture that it was difficult for an inexperienced person to turn round in it, and breathing was oppressive. Platonída Ivánovna was sitting by the window with her knitting-needles in her hand (she was knitting a scarf for Yáshenka—the thirty-eighth, by actual count, during the course of his existence!)—and was greatly surprised. Arátoff rarely entered her room, and if he needed anything he always shouted in a shrill voice from his study: “Aunt Platósha!”—But she made him sit down and, in anticipation of his first words, pricked up her ears, as she stared at him through her round spectacles with one eye, and above them with the other. She did not inquire after his health, and did not offer him tea, for she saw that he had not come for that. Arátoff hesitated for a while … then began to talk … to talk about his mother, about the way she had lived with his father, and how his father had made her acquaintance. He knew all this perfectly well … but he wanted to talk precisely about that. Unluckily for him, Platósha did not know how to converse in the least; she made very brief replies, as though she suspected that Yásha had not come for that purpose.
“Certainly!”—she kept repeating hurriedly, as she plied her knitting-needles almost in an angry way. “Every one knows that thy mother was a dove … a regular dove…. And thy father loved her as a husband should love, faithfully and honourably, to the very grave; and he never loved any other woman,”—she added, elevating her voice and removing her spectacles.
“And was she of a timid disposition?” asked Arátoff, after a short pause.
“Certainly she was. As is fitting for the female sex. The bold ones are a recent invention.”
“And were there no bold ones in your time?”
“There were such even in our day … of course there were! But who were they? Some street-walker, or shameless hussy or other. She would drag her skirts about, and fling herself hither and thither at random…. What did she care? What anxiety had she? If a young fool came along, he fell into her hands. But steady-going people despised them. Dost thou remember ever to have beheld such in our house?”
Arátoff made no reply and returned to his study. Platonída Ivánovna gazed after him, shook her head and again donned her spectacles, again set to work on her scarf … but more than once she fell into thought and dropped her knitting-needles on her knee.
And Arátoff until nightfall kept again and again beginning, with the same vexation, the same ire as before, to think about “the gipsy,” the appointed tryst, to which he certainly would not go! During the night also she worried him. He kept constantly seeing her eyes, now narrowed, now widely opened, with their importunate gaze riveted directly on him, and those impassive features with their imperious expression.
On the following morning he again kept expecting Kupfer, for some reason or other; he came near writing him a letter … however, he did nothing … but spent most of his time pacing to and fro in his study. Not for one instant did he even admit to himself the thought that he would go to that stupid “rendezvous” … and at half-past four, after having swallowed his dinner in haste, he suddenly donned his overcoat and pulling his cap down on his brows, he stole out of the house without letting his aunt see him and wended his way to the Tver boulevard.
< < < Chapter V
Chapter VII > > >
Russian Literature – Children Books – Russian Poetry – Ivan Turgenev – Clara Mílitch – Contents
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