Works of Ivan Turgenev (Illustrated) (277 page)

‘Well, Yegor!’ cried Kondrat all at once. He had already settled himself on the box of the cart and was shaking and playing with the reins. ‘Come, sit down. What are you so thoughtful about? Still about the cow?’

‘About the cow? What cow?’ I repeated, and looked at Yegor: calm and stately as ever, he certainly did seem thoughtful, and was gazing away into the distance towards the fields already beginning to get dark.

‘Don’t you know?’ answered Kondrat; ‘his last cow died last night. He has no luck. — What are you going to do?’….

Yegor sat down on the box, without speaking, and we drove off. ‘That man knows how to bear in silence,’ I thought.

In a small, decently furnished room several young men were sitting before the fire. The winter evening was only just beginning; the samovar was boiling on the table, the conversation had hardly taken a definite turn, but passed lightly from one subject to another. They began discussing exceptional people, and in what way they differed from ordinary people. Every one expounded his views to the best of his abilities; they raised their voices and began to be noisy. A small, pale man, after listening long to the disquisitions of his companions, sipping tea and smoking a cigar the while, suddenly got up and addressed us all (I was one of the disputants) in the following words: —

‘Gentlemen! all your profound remarks are excellent in their own way, but unprofitable.

Every one, as usual, hears his opponent’s views, and every one retains his own convictions. But it’s not the first time we have met, nor the first time we have argued, and so we have probably by now had ample opportunity for expressing our own views and learning those of others. Why, then, do you take so much trouble?’

Uttering these words, the small man carelessly flicked the ash off his cigar into the fireplace, dropped his eyelids, and smiled serenely. We all ceased speaking.

‘Well, what are we to do then, according to you?’ said one of us; ‘play cards, or what? go to sleep? break up and go home?’

‘Playing cards is agreeable, and sleep’s always salutary,’ retorted the small man; ‘but it’s early yet to break up and go home. You didn’t understand me, though. Listen: I propose, if it comes to that, that each of you should describe some exceptional personality, tell us of any meeting you may have had with any remarkable man. I can assure you even the feeblest description has far more sense in it than the finest argument.’

We pondered.

‘It’s a strange thing,’ observed one of us, an inveterate jester; ‘except myself I don’t know a single exceptional person, and with my life you are all, I fancy, familiar already. However, if you insist — ’

‘No!’ cried another, ‘we don’t! But, I tell you what,’ he added, addressing the small man, ‘you begin. You have put a stopper on all of us, you’re the person to fill the gap. Only mind, if we don’t care for your story, we shall hiss you.’

‘If you like,’ answered the small man. He stood close to the fire; we sat round him and kept quiet. The small man looked at all of us, glanced at the ceiling, and began as follows: —

‘Ten years ago, my dear friends, I was a student at Moscow. My father, a virtuous landowner of the steppes, had handed me over to a retired German professor, who, for a hundred roubles a month, undertook to lodge and board me, and to watch over my morals. This German was the fortunate possessor of an exceedingly solemn and decorous manner; at first I went in considerable awe of him. But on returning home one evening, I saw, with indescribable emotion, my preceptor sitting with three or four companions at a round table, on which there stood a fair - sized collection of empty bottles and half - full glasses. On seeing me, my revered preceptor got up, and, waving his arms and stammering, presented me to the honourable company, who all promptly offered me a glass of punch. This agreeable spectacle had a most illuminating effect on my intelligence; my future rose before me in the most seductive images. And, as a fact, from that memorable day I enjoyed unbounded freedom, and all but worried my preceptor to death. He had a wife who always smelt of smoke and pickled cucumbers; she was still youngish, but had not a single front tooth in her head. All German women, as we know, very quickly lose those indispensable ornaments of the human frame. I mention her, solely because she fell passionately in love with me and fed me almost into my grave.’

‘To the point, to the point,’ we shouted. ‘Surely it’s not your own adventures you’re going to tell us?’

‘No, gentlemen!’ the small man replied composedly. ‘I am an ordinary mortal. And so I lived at my German’s, as the saying is, in clover. I did not attend lectures with too much assiduity, while at home I did positively nothing. In a very short time, I had got to know all my comrades and was on intimate terms with all of them. Among my new friends was one rather decent and good - natured fellow, the son of a town provost on the retired list. His name was Bobov. This Bobov got in the habit of coming to see me, and seemed to like me. I, too … do you know, I didn’t like him, nor dislike him; I was more or less indifferent…. I must tell I hadn’t in all Moscow a single relation, except an old uncle, who used sometimes to ask me for money. I never went anywhere, and was particularly afraid of women; I also avoided all acquaintance with the parents of my college friends, ever after one such parent (in my presence) pulled his son’s hair — because a button was off his uniform, while at the very time I hadn’t more than six buttons on my whole coat. In comparison with many of my comrades, I passed for being a person of wealth; my father used to send me every now and then small packets of faded blue notes, and consequently I not only enjoyed a position of independence, but I was continually surrounded by toadies and flatterers…. What am I saying? — why, for that matter, so was my bobtail dog Armishka, who, in spite of his setter pedigree, was so frightened of a shot, that the very sight of a gun reduced him to indescribable misery. Like every young man, however, I was not without that vague inward fermentation which usually, after bringing forth a dozen more or less shapeless poems, passes off in a peaceful and propitious manner. I wanted something, strove towards something, and dreamed of something; I’ll own I didn’t know precisely what it was I dreamed of. Now I understand what was lacking: — I felt my loneliness, thirsted for the society of so - called live people; the word Life waked echoes in my heart, and with a vague ache I listened to the sound of it…. Valerian Nikitich, pass me a cigarette.’

Lighting the cigarette, the small man continued:

‘One fine morning Bobov came running to me, out of breath: “Do you know, old man, the great news? Kolosov has arrived.” “Kolosov? and who on earth is Mr. Kolosov?”

‘“You don’t know him? Andriusha Kolosov! Come, old boy, let’s go to him directly. He came back last night from a holiday engagement.” “But what sort of fellow is he?” “An exceptional man, my boy, let me assure you!” “An exceptional man,” I answered; “then you go alone. I’ll stop at home. I know your exceptional men! A half - tipsy rhymester with an everlastingly ecstatic smile!” … “Oh no! Kolosov’s not like that.” I was on the point of observing that it was for Mr. Kolosov to call on me; but, I don’t know why, I obeyed Bobov and went. Bobov conducted me to one of the very dirtiest, crookedest, and narrowest streets in Moscow…. The house in which Kolosov lodged was built in the old - fashioned style, rambling and uncomfortable. We went into the courtyard; a fat peasant woman was hanging out clothes on a line stretched from the house to the fence…. Children were squalling on the wooden staircase…’

‘Get on! get on!’ we objected plaintively.

‘I see, gentlemen, you don’t care for the agreeable, and cling solely to the profitable. As you please! We groped our way through a dark and narrow passage to Kolosov’s room; we went in. You have most likely an approximate idea of what a poor student’s room is like. Directly facing the door Kolosov was sitting on a chest of drawers, smoking a pipe. He gave his hand to Bobov in a friendly way, and greeted me affably. I looked at Kolosov and at once felt irresistibly drawn to him. Gentlemen! Bobov was right: Kolosov really was a remarkable person. Let me describe a little more in detail…. He was rather tall, slender, graceful, and exceedingly good - looking. His face…I find it very difficult to describe his face. It is easy to describe all the features one by one; but how is one to convey to any one else what constitutes the distinguishing characteristic, the essence of just
that
face?’

‘What Byron calls “the music of the face,”‘ observed a tightly buttoned - up, pallid gentleman.

‘Quite so…. And therefore I will confine myself to a single remark: the especial “something” to which I have just referred consisted in Kolosov’s case in a carelessly gay and fearless expression of face, and also in an exceedingly captivating smile. He did not remember his parents, and had had a wretched bringing - up in the house of a distant relative, who had been degraded from the service for taking bribes. Up to the age of fifteen, he had lived in the country; then he found his way into Moscow, and after two years spent in the care of an old deaf priest’s wife, he entered the university and began to get his living by lessons. He gave instruction in history, geography, and Russian grammar, though he had only a dim notion of these branches of science; but in the first place, there is an abundance of ‘textbooks’ among us in Russia, of the greatest usefulness to teachers; and secondly, the requirements of the respectable merchants, who confided their children’s education to Kolosov, were exceedingly limited. Kolosov was neither a wit nor a humorist; but you cannot imagine how readily we all fell under that fellow’s sway. We felt a sort of instinctive admiration of him; his words, his looks, his gestures were all so full of the charm of youth that all his comrades were head over ears in love with him. The professors considered him as a fairly intelligent lad, but ‘of no marked abilities,’ and lazy.

Kolosov’s presence gave a special harmony to our evening reunions. Before him, our liveliness never passed into vulgar riotousness; if we were all melancholy — this half childlike melancholy, in his presence, led on to quiet, sometimes fairly sensible, conversation, and never ended in dejected boredom. You are smiling, gentlemen — I understand your smile; no doubt, many of us since then have turned out pretty cads! But youth … youth….’

    ’Oh, talk not to me of a name great in story!

    The days of our youth are the days of our glory….’

commented the same pallid gentleman.

‘By Jove, what a memory he’s got! and all from Byron!’ observed the storyteller. ‘In one word, Kolosov was the soul of our set. I was attached to him by a feeling stronger than any I have ever felt for any woman. And yet, I don’t feel ashamed even now to remember that strange love — yes, love it was, for I recollect I went through at that time all the tortures of that passion, jealousy, for instance. Kolosov liked us all equally, but was particularly friendly with a silent, flaxen - haired, and unobtrusive youth, called Gavrilov. From Gavrilov he was almost inseparable; he would often speak to him in a whisper, and used to disappear with him out of Moscow, no one knew where, for two or three days at a time…. Kolosov did not care to be questioned, and I was lost in surmises. It was not simple curiosity that disturbed me. I longed to become the friend, the attendant squire of Kolosov; I was jealous of Gavrilov; I envied him; I could never find an explanation to satisfy me of Kolosov’s strange absences. Meanwhile he had none of that air of mysteriousness about him, which is the proud possession of youths endowed with vanity, pallor, black hair, and ‘expressive’ eyes, nor had he anything of that studied carelessness under which we are given to understand that vast forces are slumbering; no, he was quite open and free; but when he was possessed by passion, an intense, impulsive energy was apparent in everything about him; only he did not waste his energies in vain, and never under any circumstances became high - flown or affected. By the way … tell me the truth, hasn’t it happened to you to sit smoking a pipe with an air of as weary solemnity as if you had just resolved on a grand achievement, while you were simply pondering on what colour to choose for your next pair of trousers?… But the point is, that I was the first to observe in Kolosov, always cheerful and friendly as he was, these instinctive, passionate impulses…. They may well say that love is penetrating. I made up my mind at all hazards to get into his confidence. It was no use for me to lay myself out to please Kolosov; I had such a childlike adoration for him that he could have no doubt of my devotion … but to my indescribable vexation, I had, at last, to yield to the conviction that Kolosov avoided closer intimacy with me, that he was as it were oppressed by my uninvited attachment. Once, when with obvious displeasure he asked me to lend him money — the very next day he returned me the loan with ironical gratitude. During the whole winter my relations with Kolosov were utterly unchanged; I often compared myself with Gavrilov, and could not make out in what respect he was better than I…. But suddenly everything was changed. In the middle of April, Gavrilov fell ill, and died in the arms of Kolosov, who never left his room for an instant, and went nowhere for a whole week afterwards. We were all grieved for poor Gavrilov; the pale, silent lad seemed to have had a foreboding of his end. I too grieved sincerely for him, but my heart ached with expectation of something…. One ever memorable evening … I was alone, lying on the sofa, gazing idly at the ceiling … some one rapidly opened the door of my room and stood still in the doorway; I raised my head; before me stood Kolosov.