I have forgotten, I fancy, to make known to you that up to that time I had been afraid of women and avoided them, though I would sometimes, in solitude, spend whole hours in dreaming of tender interviews, of love, of mutual love, and so on. Varvara Ivanovna was the first girl with whom I was forced to talk, by necessity—by necessity it really was. Varia was an ordinary girl, and yet there are very few such girls in holy Russia. You will ask me—why so? Because I never noticed in her anything strained, unnatural, affected; because she was a simple, candid, rather melancholy creature, because one could never call her 'a young lady.' I liked her soft smile; I liked her simple-hearted, ringing little voice, her light and mirthful laugh, her attentive though by no means 'profound' glances. The child promised nothing; but you could not help admiring her, as you admire the sudden, soft cry of the oriole at evening, in the lofty, dark birch-wood. I must confess that at the present time I should pass by such a creature with some indifference; I've no taste now for solitary evening strolls, and orioles; but in those days …
I've no doubt, gentlemen, that, like all well-educated persons, you have been in love at least once in the course of your life, and have learnt from your own experience how love springs up and develops in the human heart, and therefore I'm not going to enlarge too much on what took place with me at that time. Kolosov and I used to go pretty often to Ivan Semyonitch's; and though those damned cards often drove me to utter despair, still, in the mere proximity of the woman one loves (I had fallen in love with Varia) there is a sort of strange, sweet, tormenting joy. I made no effort to suppress this growing feeling; besides, by the time I had at last brought myself to call the emotion by its true name, it was already too strong…. I cherished my love in silence, and jealously and shyly concealed it. I myself enjoyed this agonising ferment of silent passion. My sufferings did not rob me of my sleep, nor of my appetite; but for whole days together I was conscious of that peculiar physical sensation in my breast which is a symptom of the presence of love. I am incapable of depicting the conflict of various sensations which took place within me when, for example, Kolosov came in from the garden with Varia, and her whole face was aglow with ecstatic devotion, exhaustion from excess of bliss…. She so completely lived in his life, was so completely taken up with him, that unconsciously she adopted his ways, looked as he looked, laughed as he laughed…. I can imagine the moments she passed with Andrei, the raptures she owed to him…. While he … Kolosov did not lose his freedom; in her absence he did not, I suppose, even think of her; he was still the same unconcerned, gay, and happy fellow we had always known him.
And, as I have already told you, we used, Kolosov and I, to go pretty often to Ivan Semyonitch's. Sometimes, when he was out of humour, the retired lieutenant did not make me sit down to cards; on such occasions, he would shrink into a corner in silence, scowling and looking crossly at every one. The first time I was delighted at his letting me off so easily; but afterwards I would sometimes begin myself begging him to sit down to whist, the part of third person was so insupportable! I was so unpleasantly in Kolosov's and Varia's way, though they did assure each other that there was no need to mind me!…
Meanwhile time went on…. They were happy…. I have no great fondness for describing other people's happiness. But then I began to notice that Varia's childish ecstasy had gradually given way to a more womanly, more restless feeling. I began to surmise that the new song was being sung to the old tune—that is, that Kolosov was…little by little…cooling. This discovery, I must own, delighted me; I did not feel, I must confess, the slightest indignation against Andrei.
The intervals between our visits became longer and longer…. Varia began to meet us with tear-stained eyes. Reproaches were heard … Sometimes I asked Kolosov with affected indifference, 'Well, shall we go to Ivan Semyonitch's to-day?' … He looked coldly at me, and answered quietly, 'No, we're not going.' I sometimes fancied that he smiled slily when he spoke to me of Varia…. I failed generally to fill Gavrilov's place with him…. Gavrilov was a thousand times more good-natured and foolish than I.
Now allow me a slight digression…. When I spoke of my university comrades, I did not mention a certain Mr. Shtchitov. He was five-and-thirty; he had been a student for ten years already. I can see even now his rather long pale face, his little brown eyes, his long hawk nose crooked at the end, his thin sarcastic lips, his solemn upstanding shock of hair, and his chin that lost itself complacently in the wide striped cravat of the colour of a raven's wing, the shirt front with bronze buttons, the open blue frock-coat and striped waistcoat…. I can hear his unpleasantly jarring laugh…. He went everywhere, was conspicuous at all possible kinds of 'dancing classes.' … I remember I could not listen to his cynical stories without a peculiar shudder…. Kolosov once compared him to an unswept Russian refreshment bar … a horrible comparison! And with all that, there was a lot of intelligence, common sense, observation, and wit in the man…. He sometimes impressed us by some saying so apt, so true and cutting, that we were all involuntarily reduced to silence and looked at him with amazement. But, to be sure, it is just the same to a Russian whether he has uttered an absurdity or a clever thing. Shtchitov was especially dreaded by those self-conscious, dreamy, and not particularly gifted youths who spend whole days in painfully hatching a dozen trashy lines of verse and reading them in sing-song to their 'friends,' and who despise every sort of positive science. One such he simply drove out of Moscow, by continually repeating to him two of his own lines. Yet all the while Shtchitov himself did nothing and learnt nothing…. But that's all in the natural order of things. Well, Shtchitov, God only knows why, began jeering at my romantic attachment to Kolosov. The first time, with noble indignation, I told him to go to the devil; the second time, with chilly contempt, I informed him that he was not capable of judging of our friendship—but I did not send him away; and when, on taking leave of me, he observed that without Kolosov's permission I didn't even dare to praise him, I felt annoyed; Shtchitov's last words sank into my heart.—For more than a fortnight I had not seen Varia…. Pride, love, a vague anticipation, a number of different feelings were astir within me … with a wave of the hand and a fearful sinking at my heart, I set off alone to Ivan Semyonitch's.
I don't know how I made my way to the familiar little house; I remember I sat down several times by the road to rest, not from fatigue, but from emotion. I went into the passage, and had not yet had time to utter a single word when the door of the drawing-room flew open and Varia ran to meet me. 'At last,' she said, in a quavering voice; 'where's Andrei Nikolaevitch?' 'Kolosov has not come,' I muttered with an effort. 'Not come!' she repeated. 'Yes … he told me to tell you that … he was detained….' I positively did not know what I was saying, and I did not dare to raise my eyes. Varia stood silent and motionless before me. I glanced at her: she turned away her head; two big tears rolled slowly down her cheeks. In the expression of her face there was such sudden, bitter suffering; the conflict between bashfulness, sorrow, and confidence in me was so simply, so touchingly apparent in the unconscious movement of her poor little head that it sent a pang to my heart. I bent a little forward … she gave a hurried start and ran away. In the parlour I was met by Ivan Semyonitch. 'How's this, my good sir, are you alone?' he asked me, with a queer twitch of his left eyelid. 'Yes, I've come alone,' I stammered. Sidorenko went off into a sudden guffaw and departed into the next room.
I had never been in such a foolish position; it was too devilishly disgusting! But there was nothing to be done. I began walking up and down the room. 'What was the fat pig laughing at?' I wondered. Matrona Semyonovna came into the room with a stocking in her hands and sat down in the window. I began talking to her. Meanwhile tea was brought in. Varia came downstairs, pale and sorrowful. The retired lieutenant made jokes about Kolosov. 'I know,' said he, 'what sort of customer he is; you couldn't tempt him here with lollipops now, I expect!' Varia hurriedly got up and went away. Ivan Semyonitch looked after her and gave a sly whistle. I glanced at hi
m in perplexity. 'Can it be,' I wondered, 'that he knows all about it?' And the lieutenant, as though divining my thoughts, nodded his head affirmatively. Directly after tea I got up and took leave. 'You, my good sir, we shall see again,' observed the lieutenant. I did not say a word in reply…. I began to feel simply frightened of the man.
On the steps a cold and trembling hand clutched at mine; I looked round: Varia. 'I must speak to you,' she whispered. 'Come to-morrow rather earlier, straight into the garden. After dinner papa is asleep; no one will interfere with us.' I pressed her hand without a word, and we parted.
Next day, at three o'clock in the afternoon, I was in Ivan Semyonitch's garden. In the morning I had not seen Kolosov, though he had come to see me. It was a grey autumn day, but soft and warm. Delicate yellow blades of grass nodded over the blanching turf; the nimble tomtits were hopping about the bare dark-brown twigs; some belated larks were hurriedly running about the paths; a hare was creeping cautiously about among the greens; a herd of cattle wandered lazily over the stubble. I found Varia in the garden under the apple-tree on the little garden-seat; she was wearing a dark dress, rather creased; her weary eyes, the dejected droop of her hair, seemed to express genuine suffering.
I sat down beside her. We were both silent. For a long while she kept twisting a twig in her hand; she bent her head, and uttered: 'Andrei Nikolaevitch….' I noticed at once, by the twitching of her lips, that she was getting ready to cry, and began consoling her, assuring her hotly of Andrei's devotion…. She heard me, nodded her head mournfully, articulated some indistinct words, and then was silent but did not cry. The first moments I had dreaded most of all had gone off fairly well. She began little by little to talk about Andrei. 'I know that he does not love me now,' she repeated: 'God be with him! I can't imagine how I am to live without him…. I don't sleep at nights, I keep weeping…. What am I to do! What am I to do! …' Her eyes filled with tears. 'I thought him so kind … and here …' Varia wiped her eyes, cleared her throat, and sat up. 'It seems such a little while ago,' she went on: 'he was reading to me out of Pushkin, sitting with me on this bench….' Varia's naïve communicativeness touched me. I listened in silence to her confessions; my soul was slowly filled with a bitter, torturing bliss; I could not take my eyes off that pale face, those long, wet eyelashes, and half-parted, rather parched lips…. And meanwhile I felt … Would you care to hear a slight psychological analysis of my emotions at that moment? in the first place I was tortured by the thought that it was not I that was loved, not I that as making Varia suffer: secondly, I was delighted at her confidence; I knew she would be grateful to me for giving her an opportunity of expressing her sorrow: thirdly, I was inwardly vowing to myself to bring Kolosov and Varia together again, and was deriving consolation from the consciousness of my magnanimity … in the fourth place, I hoped, by my self-sacrifice, to touch Varia's heart; and then … You see I do not spare myself; no, thank God! it's high time!
But from the bell-tower of the monastery near it struck five o'clock; the evening was coming on rapidly. Varia got up hastily, thrust a little note into my hand, and went off towards the house. I overtook her, promised to bring Andrei to her, and stealthily, like a happy lover, crept out by the little gate into the field. On the note was written in an unsteady hand the words: To Andrei Nikolaevitch.
Next day I set off early in the morning to Kolosov's. I'm bound to confess that, although I assured myself that my intentions were not only honourable, but positively brimful of great-hearted self-sacrifice, I was yet conscious of a certain awkwardness, even timidity. I arrived at Kolosov's. There was with him a fellow called Puzyritsin, a former student who had never taken his degree, one of those authors of sensational novels of the so-called 'Moscow' or 'grey' school. Puzyritsin was a very good-natured and shy person, and was always preparing to be an hussar, in spite of his thirty-three years. He belonged to that class of people who feel it absolutely necessary, once in the twenty-four hours, to utter a phrase after the pattern of, 'The beautiful always falls into decay in the flower of its splendour; such is the fate of the beautiful in the world,' in order to smoke his pipe with redoubled zest all the rest of the day in a circle of 'good comrades.' On this account he was called an idealist. Well, so Puzyritsin was sitting with Kolosov reading him some 'fragment.' I began to listen; it was all about a youth, who loves a maiden, kills her, and so on. At last Puzyritsin finished and retreated. His absurd production, solemnly bawling voice, his presence altogether, had put Kolosov into a mood of sarcastic irritability. I felt that I had come at an unlucky moment, but there was nothing to be done for it; without any kind of preface, I handed Andrei Varia's note.
Kolosov looked at me in perplexity, tore open the note, ran his eyes over it, said nothing, but smiled composedly. 'Oh, ho!' he said at last; 'so you've been at Ivan Semyonitch's?'
'Yes, I was there yesterday, alone,' I answered abruptly and resolutely.
'Ah!…' observed Kolosov ironically, and he lighted his pipe. 'Andrei,' I said to him, 'aren't you sorry for her?… If you had seen her tears…'
And I launched into an eloquent description of my visit of the previous day. I was genuinely moved. Kolosov did not speak, and smoked his pipe.
'You sat with her under the apple-tree in the garden,' he said at last. 'I remember in May I, too, used to sit with her on that seat…. The apple-tree was in blossom, the fresh white flowers fell upon us sometimes; I held both Varia's hands… we were happy then…. Now the apple-blossom is over, and the apples on the tree are sour.'
I flew into a passion of noble indignation, began reproaching Andrei for coldness, for cruelty, argued with him that he had no right to abandon a girl so suddenly, after awakening in her a multitude of new emotions; I begged him at least to go and say good-bye to Varia. Kolosov heard me to the end.
'Admitting,' he said to me, when, agitated and exhausted, I flung myself into an armchair, 'that you, as my friend, may be allowed to criticise me. But hear my defence, at least, though…'
Here he paused for a little while and smiled curiously. 'Varia's an excellent girl,' he went on, 'and has done me no wrong whatever…. On the contrary, I am greatly, very greatly indebted to her. I have left off going to see her for a very simple reason—I have left off caring for her….'
'But why? why?' I interrupted him.
'Goodness knows why. While I loved her, I was entirely hers; I never thought of the future, and everything, my whole life, I shared with her … now this passion has died out in me…. Well, you would tell me to be a humbug, to play at being in love, wouldn't you? But what for? from pity for her? If she's a decent girl, she won't care for such charity herself, but if she is glad to be consoled by my … my sympathy, well, she's not good for much!'
Kolosov's carelessly offhand expressions offended me, perhaps, the more because they were applied to the woman with whom I was secretly in love…. I fired up. 'Stop,' I said to him; 'stop! I know why you have given up going to see Varia.'
'Why?'
'Taniusha has forbidden you to.'
In uttering these words, I fancied I was dealing a most cutting blow at Andrei. Taniusha was a very 'easy-going' young lady, black-haired, dark, five-and-twenty, free in her manners, and devilishly clever, a Shtchitov in petticoats. Kolosov quarrelled with her and made it up again half a dozen times in a month. She was passionately fond of him, though sometimes, during their misunderstandings, she would vow and declare that she thirsted for his blood…. And Andrei, too, could not get on without her. Kolosov looked at me, and responded serenely, 'Perhaps so.'
'Not perhaps so,' I shouted, 'but certainly!'
Kolosov at last got sick of my reproaches…. He got up and put on his cap.
'Where are you going?'
'For a walk; you and Puzyritsin have given me a headache between you.'
'You are angry with me?'
'No,' he answered, smiling his sweet smile, and holding out his hand to me.
'Well, anyway, what do you wish me to tell Varia?'
'Eh?' … He thought a little. 'She told you,' he said, 'that we had read Pushkin together…. Remind her of one line of Pushkin's.' 'What line? what line?' I asked impatiently. 'This one:
"What has been will not be again."'
With those words he went out of the room. I followed him; on the stairs he stopped.
'And is she very much upset?' he asked me, pulling his cap over his eyes.
'Very, very much!…'
'Poor thing! Console her, Nikolai; you love her, you know.'
'Yes, I have grown fond of her, certainly….'
'You love her,' repeated Kolosov, and he looked me straight in the face. I turned away without a word, and we separated.
On reaching home, I was in a perfect fever.
'I have done my duty,' I thought; 'I have overcome my own egoism; I have urged Andrei to go back to Varia!… Now I am in the right; he that will not when he may…!' At the same time Andrei's indifference wounded me. He had not been jealous of me, he told me to console her…. But is Varia such an ordinary girl, is she not even worthy of sympathy?… There are people who know how to appreciate what you despise, Andrei Nikolaitch!… But what's the good? She does not love me…. No, she does not love me now, while she has not quite lost hope of Kolosov's return…. But afterwards…who knows, my devotion will touch her. I will make no claims…. I will give myself up to her wholly, irrevocably…. Varia! is it possible you will not love me?…never!…never!…
Such were the speeches your humble servant was rehearsing in the city of Moscow, in the year 1833, in the house of his revered preceptor. I wept… I felt faint… The weather was horrible…a fine rain trickled down the window panes with a persistent, thin, little patter; damp, dark-grey storm-clouds hung stationary over the town. I dined hurriedly, made no response to the anxious inquiries of the kind German woman, who whimpered a little herself at the sight of my red, swollen eyes (Germans—as is well known—are always glad to weep). I behaved very ungraciously to my preceptor…and at once after dinner set off to Ivan Semyonitch… Bent double in a jolting droshky, I kept asking myself whether I should tell Varia all as it was, or go on deceiving her, and little by little turn her heart from Andrei… I reached Ivan Semyonitch's without knowing what to decide upon… I found all the family in the parlour. On seeing me, Varia turned fearfully white, but did not move from her place; Sidorenko began talking to me in a peculiarly jeering way. I responded as best I could, looking from time to time at Varia, and almost unconsciously giving a dejected and pensive expression to my features. The lieutenant started whist again. Varia sat near the window and did not stir. 'You're dull now, I suppose?' Ivan Semyonitch asked her twenty times over.
The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories Page 15
