Works of Ivan Turgenev (Illustrated) (260 page)

There is no need to describe to the reader how they put the great man in the most important place, between the civilian general and the marshal of the province, a man of an independent and dignified expression of face, in perfect keeping with his starched shirt - front, his expanse of waistcoat, and his round snuff - box full of French snuff; how our host bustled about, and ran up and down, fussing and pressing the guests to eat, smiling at the great man’s back in passing, and hurriedly snatching a plate of soup or a bit of bread in a corner like a schoolboy; how the butler brought in a fish more than a yard long, with a nosegay in its mouth; how the surly - looking foot - men in livery sullenly plied every gentleman, now with Malaga, now dry Madeira; and how almost all the gentlemen, particularly the more elderly ones, drank off glass after glass with an air of reluctantly resigning themselves to a sense of duty; and finally, how they began popping champagne bottles and proposing toasts: all that is probably only too well known to the reader. But what struck me as especially noteworthy was the anecdote told us by the great man himself amid a general delighted silence. Someone — I fancy it was the destitute general, a man familiar with modern literature — referred to the influence of women in general, and especially on young men. ‘Yes, yes,’ chimed in the great man, ‘that’s true; but young men ought to be kept in strict subjection, or else, very likely, they’ll go out of their senses over every petticoat.’ (A smile of child - like delight flitted over the faces of all the guests; positive gratitude could be seen in one gentleman’s eyes.) ‘For young men are idiots.’ (The great man, I suppose for the sake of greater impressiveness, sometimes changed the accepted accentuation of words.)

‘My son, Ivan, for instance,’ he went on; ‘the fool’s only just twenty — and all at once he comes to me and says: “Let me be married, father.” I told him he was a fool; told him he must go into the service first.... Well, there was despair — tears... but with me... no nonsense.’ (The words ‘no nonsense’ the great man seemed to enunciate more with his stomach than his lips; he paused and glanced majestically at his neighbour, the general, while he raised his eyebrows higher than any one could have expected. The civilian general nodded agreeably a little on one side, and with extraordinary rapidity winked with the eye turned to the great man.) ‘And what do you think?’ the great man began again: ‘now he writes to me himself, and thanks me for looking after him when he was a fool.... So that’s the way to act.’ All the guests, of course, were in complete agreement with the speaker, and seemed quite cheered up by the pleasure and instruction they derived from him.... After dinner, the whole party rose and moved into the drawing - room with a great deal of noise — decorous, however; and, as it were, licensed for the occasion.... They sat down to cards.

I got through the evening somehow, and charging my coachman to have my carriage ready at five o’clock next morning, I went to my room. But I was destined, in the course of that same day, to make the acquaintance of a remarkable man.

In consequence of the great number of guests staying in the house, no one had a bedroom to himself. In the small, greenish, damp room to which I was conducted by Alexandr Mihalitch’s butler, there was already another guest, quite undressed. On seeing me, he quickly ducked under the bed - clothes, covered himself up to the nose, turned a little on the soft feather - bed, and lay quiet, keeping a sharp look - out from under the round frill of his cotton night - cap. I went up to the other bed (there were only two in the room), undressed, and lay down in the damp sheets. My neighbour turned over in bed.... I wished him good - night.

Half - an - hour went by. In spite of all my efforts, I could not get to sleep: aimless and vague thoughts kept persistently and monotonously dragging one after another on an endless chain, like the buckets of a hydraulic machine.

‘You’re not asleep, I fancy?’ observed my neighbour.

‘No, as you see,’ I answered. ‘And you’re not sleepy either, are you?’

‘I’m never sleepy.’

‘How’s that?’

‘Oh! I go to sleep — I don’t know what for. I lie in bed, and lie in bed, and so get to sleep.’

‘Why do you go to bed before you feel sleepy?’

‘Why, what would you have me do?’

I made no answer to my neighbour’s question.

‘I wonder,’ he went on, after a brief silence, ‘how it is there are no fleas here? Where should there be fleas if not here, one wonders?’

‘You seem to regret them,’ I remarked.

‘No, I don’t regret them; but I like everything to be consecutive.’

‘O - ho!’ thought I; ‘what words he uses.’

My neighbour was silent again.

‘Would you like to make a bet with me?’ he said again, rather loudly.

‘What about?’

I began to be amused by him.

‘Hm... what about? Why, about this: I’m certain you take me for a fool.’

‘Really,’ I muttered, astounded.

‘For an ignoramus, for a rustic of the steppes.... Confess....’

‘I haven’t the pleasure of knowing you,’ I responded. ‘What can make you infer?...’

‘Why, the sound of your voice is enough; you answer me so carelessly.... But I’m not at all what you suppose....’

‘Allow me....’

‘No, you allow me. In the first place, I speak French as well as you, and German even better; secondly, I have spent three years abroad — in Berlin alone I lived eight months. I’ve studied Hegel, honoured sir; I know Goethe by heart: add to that, I was a long while in love with a German professor’s daughter, and was married at home to a consumptive lady, who was bald, but a remarkable personality. So I’m a bird of your feather; I’m not a barbarian of the steppes, as you imagine.... I too have been bitten by reflection, and there’s nothing obvious about me.’

I raised my head and looked with redoubled attention at the queer fellow. By the dim light of the night - lamp I could hardly distinguish his features.

‘There, you’re looking at me now,’ he went on, setting his night - cap straight, ‘and probably you’re asking yourself, “How is it I didn’t notice him to - day?” I’ll tell you why you didn’t notice me: because I didn’t raise my voice; because I get behind other people, hang about doorways, and talk to no one; because, when the butler passes me with a tray, he raises his elbow to the level of my shoulder.... And how is it all that comes about? From two causes: first, I’m poor; and secondly, I’ve grown humble.... Tell the truth, you didn’t notice me, did you?’

‘Certainly, I’ve not had the pleasure....’

‘There, there,’ he interrupted me, ‘I knew that.’

He raised himself and folded his arms; the long shadow of his cap was bent from the wall to the ceiling.

‘And confess, now,’ he added, with a sudden sideway glance at me; ‘I must strike you as a queer fellow, an original, as they say, or possibly as something worse: perhaps you think I affect to be original!’

‘I must repeat again that I don’t know you....’

He looked down an instant.

‘Why have I begun talking so unexpectedly to you, a man utterly a stranger? — the Lord, the Lord only knows!’ (He sighed.) ‘Not through the natural affinity of our souls! Both you and I are respectable people, that’s to say, egoists: neither of us has the least concern with the other; isn’t it so? But we are neither of us sleepy... so why not chat? I’m in the mood, and that’s rare with me. I’m shy, do you see? and not shy because I’m a provincial, of no rank and poor, but because I’m a fearfully vain person. But at times, under favourable circumstances, occasions which I could not, however, particularise nor foresee, my shyness vanishes completely, as at this moment, for instance. At this moment you might set me face to face with the Grand Lama, and I’d ask him for a pinch of snuff. But perhaps you want to go to sleep?’

‘Quite the contrary,’ I hastened to respond; ‘it is a pleasure for me to talk to you.’

‘That is, I amuse you, you mean to say.... All the better.... And so, I tell you, they call me here an original; that’s what they call me when my name is casually mentioned, among other gossip. No one is much concerned about my fate.... They think it wounds me.... Oh, good Lord! if they only knew... it’s just what’s my ruin, that there is absolutely nothing original in me — nothing, except such freaks as, for instance, my conversation at this moment with you; but such freaks are not worth a brass farthing. That’s the cheapest and lowest sort of originality.’

He turned facing me, and waved his hands.

‘Honoured sir!’ he cried, ‘I am of the opinion that life on earth’s only worth living, as a rule, for original people; it’s only they who have a right to live.
Man verre n’est pas grand, maisje bois dans mon verre,
said someone.
Do you see,’ he added in an undertone, ‘how well I pronounce French? What is it to one if one’s a capacious brain, and understands everything, and knows a lot, and keeps pace with the age, if one’s nothing of one’s own, of oneself! One more storehouse for hackneyed commonplaces in the world; and what good does that do to anyone? No, better be stupid even, but in one’s own way! One should have a flavour of one’s own, one’s individual flavour; that’s the thing! And don’t suppose that I am very exacting as to that flavour.... God forbid! There are no end of original people of the sort I mean: look where you will — there’s an original: every live man is an original; but I am not to be reckoned among them!’

‘And yet,’ he went on, after a brief silence, ‘in my youth what expectations I aroused! What a high opinion I cherished of my own individuality before I went abroad, and even, at first, after my return! Well, abroad I kept my ears open, held aloof from everyone, as befits a man like me, who is always seeing through things by himself, and at the end has not understood the A B C!’

‘An original, an original!’ he hurried on, shaking his head reproachfully....’ They call me an original.... In reality, it turns out that there’s not a man in the world less original than your humble servant. I must have been born even in imitation of someone else.... Oh, dear! It seems I am living, too, in imitation of the various authors studied by me; in the sweat of my brow I live: and I’ve studied, and fallen in love, and married, in fact, as it were, not through my own will — as it were, fulfilling some sort of duty, or sort of fate — who’s to make it out?’

He tore the nightcap off his head and flung it on the bed.

‘Would you like me to tell you the story of my life?’ he asked me in an abrupt voice; ‘or, rather, a few incidents of my life?’

‘Please do me the favour.’

‘Or, no, I’d better tell you how I got married. You see marriage is an important thing, the touchstone that tests the whole man: in it, as in a glass, is reflected.... But that sounds too hackneyed.... If you’ll allow me, I’ll take a pinch of snuff.’

He pulled a snuff - box from under his pillow, opened it, and began again, waving the open snuff - box about.

‘Put yourself, honoured sir, in my place.... Judge for yourself, what, now what, tell me as a favour: what benefit could I derive from the encyclopaedia of Hegel? What is there in common, tell me, between that encyclopaedia and Russian life? and how would you advise me to apply it to our life, and not it, the encyclopaedia only, but German philosophy in general.... I will say more — science itself?’

He gave a bound on the bed and muttered to himself, gnashing his teeth angrily.

‘Ah, that’s it, that’s it!... Then why did you go trailing off abroad? Why didn’t you stay at home and study the life surrounding you on the spot? You might have found out its needs and its future, and have come to a clear comprehension of your vocation, so to say.... But, upon my word,’ he went on, changing his tone again as though timidly justifying himself, ‘where is one to study what no sage has yet inscribed in any book? I should have been glad indeed to take lessons of her — of Russian life, I mean — but she’s dumb, the poor dear. You must take her as she is; but that’s beyond my power: you must give me the inference; you must present me with a conclusion. Here you have a conclusion too: listen to our wise men of Moscow — they’re a set of nightingales worth listening to, aren’t they? Yes, that’s the pity of it, that they pipe away like Kursk nightingales, instead of talking as the people talk.... Well, I thought, and thought — ”Science, to be sure,” I thought, “is everywhere the same, and truth is the same” — so I was up and off, in God’s name, to foreign parts, to the heathen.... What would you have? I was infatuated with youth and conceit; I didn’t want, you know, to get fat before my time, though they say it’s healthy. Though, indeed, if nature doesn’t put the flesh on your bones, you won’t see much fat on your body!’