Works of Ivan Turgenev (Illustrated) (347 page)

VI

Tyeglev was the first to speak and talked with his usual hesitating incompleted sentences and repetitions about presentiments ... about ghosts. On exactly such a night, according to him, one of his friends, a student who had just taken the place of tutor to two orphans and was sleeping with them in a lodge in the garden, saw a woman’s figure bending over their beds and next day recognised the figure in a portrait of the mother of the orphans which he had not previously noticed. Then Tyeglev told me that his parents had heard for several days before their death the sound of rushing water; that his grandfather had been saved from death in the battle of Borodino through suddenly stooping down to pick up a simple grey pebble at the very instant when a volley of grape - shot flew over his head and broke his long black plume. Tyeglev even promised to show me the very pebble which had saved his grandfather and which he had mounted into a medallion. Then he talked of the lofty destination of every man and of his own in particular and added that he still believed in it and that if he ever had any doubts on that subject he would know how to be rid of them and of his life, as life would then lose all significance for him. “You imagine perhaps,” he brought out, glancing askance at me, “that I shouldn’t have the spirit to do it? You don’t know me ... I have a will of iron.”

“Well said,” I thought to myself.

Tyeglev pondered, heaved a deep sigh and dropping his chibouk out of his hand, informed me that that day was a very important one for him. “This is the prophet Elijah’s day -
 
- my name day.... It is ... it is always for me a difficult time.”

I made no answer and only looked at him as he sat facing me, bent, round - shouldered, and clumsy, with his drowsy, lustreless eyes fixed on the ground.

“An old beggar woman” (Tyeglev never let a single beggar pass without giving alms) “told me to - day,” he went on, “that she would pray for my soul.... Isn’t that strange?”

“Why does the man want to be always bothering about himself!” I thought again. I must add, however, that of late I had begun noticing an unusual expression of anxiety and uneasiness on Tyeglev’s face, and it was not a “fatal” melancholy: something really was fretting and worrying him. On this occasion, too, I was struck by the dejected expression of his face. Were not those very doubts of which he had spoken to me beginning to assail him? Tyeglev’s comrades had told me that not long before he had sent to the authorities a project for some reforms in the artillery department and that the project had been returned to him “with a comment,” that is, a reprimand. Knowing his character, I had no doubt that such contemptuous treatment by his superior officers had deeply mortified him. But the change that I fancied I saw in Tyeglev was more like sadness and there was a more personal note about it.

“It’s getting damp, though,” he brought out at last and he shrugged his shoulders. “Let us go into the hut -
 
- and it’s bed - time, too.” He had the habit of shrugging his shoulders and turning his head from side to side, putting his right hand to his throat as he did so, as though his cravat were constricting it. Tyeglev’s character was expressed, so at least it seemed to me, in this uneasy and nervous movement. He, too, felt constricted in the world.

We went back into the hut, and both lay down on benches, he in the corner facing the door and I on the opposite side.

VII

Tyeglev was for a long time turning from side to side on his bench and I could not get to sleep, either. Whether his stories had excited my nerves or the strange night had fevered my blood -
 
- anyway, I could not go to sleep. All inclination for sleep disappeared at last and I lay with my eyes open and thought, thought intensely, goodness knows of what; of most senseless trifles -
 
- as always happens when one is sleepless. Turning from side to side I stretched out my hands.... My finger hit one of the beams of the wall. It emitted a faint but resounding, and as it were, prolonged note.... I must have struck a hollow place.

I tapped again ... this time on purpose. The same sound was repeated. I knocked again.... All at once Tyeglev raised his head.

“Ridel!” he said, “do you hear? Someone is knocking under the window.”

I pretended to be asleep. The fancy suddenly took me to play a trick at the expense of my “fatal” friend. I could not sleep, anyway.

He let his head sink on the pillow. I waited for a little and again knocked three times in succession.

Tyeglev sat up again and listened. I tapped again. I was lying facing him but he could not see my hand.... I put it behind me under the bedclothes.

“Ridel!” cried Tyeglev.

I did not answer.

“Ridel!” he repeated loudly. “Ridel!”

“Eh? What is it?” I said as though just waking up.

“Don’t you hear, someone keeps knocking under the window, wants to come in, I suppose.”

“Some passer - by,” I muttered.

“Then we must let him in or find out who it is.”

But I made no answer, pretending to be asleep.

Several minutes passed.... I tapped again. Tyeglev sat up at once and listened.

“Knock ... knock ... knock! Knock ... knock ... knock!”

Through my half - closed eyelids in the whitish light of the night I could distinctly see every movement he made. He turned his face first to the window then to the door. It certainly was difficult to make out where the sound came from: it seemed to float round the room, to glide along the walls. I had accidentally hit upon a kind of sounding board.

“Ridel!” cried Tyeglev at last, “Ridel! Ridel!”

“Why, what is it?” I asked, yawning.

“Do you mean to say you don’t hear anything? There is someone knocking.”

“Well, what if there is?” I answered and again pretended to be asleep and even snored.

Tyeglev subsided.

“Knock ... knock ... knock!”

“Who is there?” Tyeglev shouted. “Come in!”

No one answered, of course.

“Knock ... knock ... knock!”

Tyeglev jumped out of bed, opened the window and thrusting out his head, cried wildly, “Who is there? Who is knocking?” Then he opened the door and repeated his question. A horse neighed in the distance -
 
- that was all.

He went back towards his bed.

“Knock ... knock ... knock!”

Tyeglev instantly turned round and sat down.

“Knock ... knock ... knock!”

He rapidly put on his boots, threw his overcoat over his shoulders and unhooking his sword from the wall, went out of the hut. I heard him walk round it twice, asking all the time, “Who is there? Who goes there? Who is knocking?” Then he was suddenly silent, stood still outside near the corner where I was lying and without uttering another word, came back into the hut and lay down without taking off his boots and overcoat.

“Knock ... knock ... knock!” I began again. “Knock ... knock ... knock!”

But Tyeglev did not stir, did not ask who was knocking, and merely propped his head on his hand.

Seeing that this no longer acted, after an interval I pretended to wake up and, looking at Tyeglev, assumed an air of astonishment.

“Have you been out?” I asked.

“Yes,” he answered unconcernedly.

“Did you still hear the knocking?”

“Yes.”

“And you met no one?”

“No.”

“And did the knocking stop?”

“I don’t know. I don’t care now.”

“Now? Why now?”

Tyeglev did not answer.

I felt a little ashamed and a little vexed with him. I could not bring myself to acknowledge my prank, however.

“Do you know what?” I began, “I am convinced that it was all your imagination.”

Tyeglev frowned. “Ah, you think so!”

“You say you heard a knocking?”

“It was not only knocking I heard.”

“Why, what else?”

Tyeglev bent forward and bit his lips. He was evidently hesitating.

“I was called!” he brought out at last in a low voice and turned away his face.

“You were called? Who called you?”

“Someone....” Tyeglev still looked away. “A woman whom I had hitherto only believed to be dead ... but now I know it for certain.”

“I swear, Ilya Stepanitch,” I cried, “this is all your imagination!”

“Imagination?” he repeated. “Would you like to hear it for yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Then come outside.”

VIII

I hurriedly dressed and went out of the hut with Tyeglev. On the side opposite to it there were no houses, nothing but a low hurdle fence broken down in places, beyond which there was a rather sharp slope down to the plain. Everything was still shrouded in mist and one could scarcely see anything twenty paces away. Tyeglev and I went up to the hurdle and stood still.

“Here,” he said and bowed his head. “Stand still, keep quiet and listen!”

Like him I strained my ears, and I heard nothing except the ordinary, extremely faint but universal murmur, the breathing of the night. Looking at each other in silence from time to time we stood motionless for several minutes and were just on the point of going on.

“Ilyusha...” I fancied I heard a whisper from behind the hurdle.

I glanced at Tyeglev but he seemed to have heard nothing -
 
- and still held his head bowed.

“Ilyusha ... ah, Ilyusha,” sounded more distinctly than before -
 
- so distinctly that one could tell that the words were uttered by a woman.

We both started and stared at each other.

“Well?” Tyeglev asked me in a whisper. “You won’t doubt it now, will you?”

“Wait a minute,” I answered as quietly. “It proves nothing. We must look whether there isn’t anyone. Some practical joker....”

I jumped over the fence -
 
- and went in the direction from which, as far as I could judge, the voice came.

I felt the earth soft and crumbling under my feet; long ridges stretched before me vanishing into the mist. I was in the kitchen garden. But nothing was stirring around me or before me. Everything seemed spellbound in the numbness of sleep. I went a few steps further.

“Who is there?” I cried as wildly as Tyeglev had.

“Prrr - r - r!” a startled corn - crake flew up almost under my feet and flew away as straight as a bullet. Involuntarily I started.... What foolishness!

I looked back. Tyeglev was in sight at the spot where I left him. I went towards him.

“You will call in vain,” he said. “That voice has come to us -
 
- to me -
 
- from far away.”

He passed his hand over his face and with slow steps crossed the road towards the hut. But I did not want to give in so quickly and went back into the kitchen garden. That someone really had three times called “Ilyusha” I could not doubt; that there was something plaintive and mysterious in the call, I was forced to own to myself.... But who knows, perhaps all this only appeared to be unaccountable and in reality could be explained as simply as the knocking which had agitated Tyeglev so much.