Works of Ivan Turgenev (Illustrated)

by Ivan Turgenev

  “No. I was in fault,” Gagin went on. “I couldn’t restrain myself. Contrary to our agreement, I went to the chapel; she was not there; didn’t she come, then?”

  “She hasn’t been at the chapel?”

  “And you haven’t seen her?”

  I was obliged to admit I had seen her.

  “Where?”

  “At Frau Luise’s. I parted from her an hour ago,” I added. “I felt sure she had come home.”

  “We will wait a little,” said Gagin.

  We went into the house and sat down near each other. We were silent. We both felt very uncomfortable. We were continually looking round, staring at the door, listening. At last Gagin got up.

  “Oh, this is beyond anything!” he cried. “My heart’s in my mouth. She’ll be the death of me, by God! . . . Let’s go and look for her.”

  We went out. It was quite dark by now, outside.

  “What did you talk about to her?” Gagin asked me, as he pulled his hat over his eyes.

  “I only saw her for five minutes,” I answered. “I talked to her as we agreed.”

  “Do you know what?” he replied, “it’s better for us to separate. In that way we are more likely to come across her before long. In any case come back here within an hour.”

  XIX

  I WENT hurriedly down from the vineyard and rushed into the town. I walked rapidly through all the streets, looked in all directions, even at Frau Luise’s windows, went back to the Rhine, and ran along the bank. . . . From time to time I was met by women’s figures, but Acia was nowhere to be seen. There was no anger gnawing at my heart now. I was tortured by a secret terror, and it was not only terror that I felt . . . no, I felt remorse, the most intense regret, and love, - - yes! the tenderest love. I wrung my hands. I called “Acia” through the falling darkness of the night, first in a low voice, then louder and louder; I repeated a hundred times over that I loved her. I vowed I would never part from her. I would have given everything in the world to hold her cold hand again, to hear again her soft voice, to see her again before me. . . . She had been so near, she had come to me, her mind perfectly. made up, in perfect innocence of heart and feelings, she had offered me her unsullied youth . . . and I had not folded her to my breast, I had robbed myself of the bliss of watching her sweet face blossom with delight and the peace of rapture. . . This thought drove me out of my mind.

  “Where can she have gone? What can she have done with herself?” I cried in an agony of helpless despair. . . . I caught a glimpse of something white on the very edge of the river. I knew the place; there stood there, over the tomb of a man who had been drowned seventy years ago, a stone cross half - buried in the ground, bearing an old inscription. My heart sank . . . I ran up to the cross; the white figure vanished. I shouted “Acia!” I felt frightened myself by my uncanny voice, but no one called back.

  I resolved to go and see whether Gagin had found her.

  XX

  As I climbed swiftly up the vineyard path I caught sight of a light in Acia’s room. . . . This reassured me a little.

  I went up to the house. Th e door below was fastened. I knocked. A window on the ground floor was cautiously opened, and Gagin’s head appeared.

  “Have you found her?” I asked.

  “She has come back,” he answered in a whisper. “She is in her own room undressing. Everything is all right.”

  “Thank God!” I cried, in an indescribable rush of joy. “Thank God! now everything is right. But you know we must have another talk.”

  “Another time,” he replied, softly drawing the casement towards him. “Another time; but now good - bye.”

  “Till to - morrow,” I said. “To - morrow everything shall be arranged.”

  “Good - bye,” repeated Gagin. The window was closed. I was on the point of knocking at the window. I was on the point of telling Gagin there and then that I wanted to ask him for his sister’s hand. But such a proposal at such a time. . . . “To - morrow,” I reflected, “to - morrow I shall be happy. . . .”

  To - morrow I shall be happy! Happiness has no to - morrow, no yesterday; it thinks not on the past, and dreams not of the future; it has the present - - not a day even - - a moment.

  I don’t remember how I got to Z. It was not my legs that carried me, nor a boat that ferried me across; I felt that I was borne along by great, mighty wings. I passed a bush where a nightingale was singing. I stopped and listened long; I fancied it sang my love and happiness.

  XXI

  WHEN next morning I began to approach the little house I knew so well, I was struck with one circumstance; all the windows in it were open, and the door too stood open; some bits of paper were lying about in front of the doorway; a maidservant appeared with a broom at the door.

  I went up to her. . . .

  “They are gone!” she bawled, before I had time to inquire whether Gagin was at home.

  “Gone?” . . . I repeated. “What do you mean by gone? Where?”

  “They went away this morning at six o’clock, and didn’t say where. Wait a minute, I believe you’re Mr. N - - - - , aren’t you?”

  “I’m Mr. N - - - - , yes.”

  “The mistress has a letter for you.” The maid went up - stairs and returned with a letter. “Here it is, if you please, sir.”

  “But it’s impossible. . . . how can it be?”. . . I was beginning. The servant stared blankly at me, and began sweeping.

  I opened the letter. Gagin had written it; there was not one word from Acia. He began with begging me not to be angry at his sudden departure; he felt sure that, on mature consideration, I should approve of his decision. He could find no other way out of a position which might become difficult and dangerous. “Yesterday evening,” he wrote, “while we were both waiting in silence for Acia, I realised conclusively the necessity of separation. There are prejudices I respect; I can understand that it’s impossible for you to marry Acia. She has told me everything; for the sake of her peace of mind, I was bound to yield to her reiterated urgent entreaties.” At the end of the letter he expressed his regret that our acquaintance had come to such a speedy termination, wished me every happiness, shook my hand in friendship, and besought me not to try to seek them out.

  “What prejudices?” I cried aloud, as though he could hear me; “what rubbish! What right has he to snatch her from me? . . .” I clutched at my head.

  The servant began loudly calling for her mistress; her alarm forced me to control myself. One idea was aflame within me; to find them, to find them wherever they might be. To accept this blow, to resign myself to such a calamity was impossible. I learnt from the landlady that they had got on to a steamer at six o’clock in the morning, and were going down the Rhine. I went to the ticket - office; there I was told they had taken tickets for Cologne. I was going home to pack up at once and follow them. I happened to pass the house of Frau Luise. . . . Suddenly I heard some one calling me. I raised my head, and at the window of the very room where I had met Acia the day before, I saw the burgomaster’s widow. She smiled her loathsome smile, and called me. I turned away, and was going on; but she called after me that she had something for me. These words brought me to a halt, and I went into her house. How can I describe my feelings when I saw that room again? . . .

  “By rights,” began the old woman, showing me a little note; “I oughtn’t to have given you this unless you’d come to me of your own accord, but you are such a fine young man. Take it.”

  I took the note.

  On a tiny scrap of paper stood the following words, hurriedly scribbled in pencil:

  “Good - bye, we shall not see each other again. It is not through pride that I’m going away - - no, I can’t help it. Yesterday when I was crying before you, if you had said one word to me, only one word - - I should have stayed. You did not say it. It seems it is better so . . . Good - bye for ever!”

  One word . . . Oh, madman that I was! That word . . . I had repeated it the night before with tears, I had flung it to th
e wind, I had said it over and over again among the empty fields . . . but I did not say it to her, I did not tell her I loved her . . . Indeed, I could not have uttered that word then. When I met her in that fatal room, I had as yet no clear consciousness of my love; it had not fully awakened even when I was sitting with her brother in senseless and burdensome silence . . . it flamed up with irrepressible force only a few instants later, when, terrified by the possibility of misfortune, I began to seek and call her . . . but then it was already too late. “But that’s impossible!” I shall be told; I don’t know whether it’s possible, I know that it’s the truth. Acia would not have gone away if there had been the faintest shade of coquetry in her, and if her position had not been a false one. She could not put up with what any other girl would have endured; I did not realise that. My evil genius had arrested an avowal on my lips at my last interview with Gagin at the darkened window, and the last thread I might have caught at, had slipped out of my fingers.

  The same day I went back with my portmanteau packed, to L., and started for Cologne. I remember the steamer was already off, and I was taking a mental farewell of those streets, all those spots which I was never to forget - - when I caught sight of Hannchen. She was sitting on a seat near the river. Her face was pale but not sad; a handsome young fellow was standing beside her, laughing and telling her some story; while on the other side of the Rhine my little Madonna peeped out of the green of the old ash - tree as mournfully as ever.

  XXII

  IN Cologne I came upon traces of the Gagins; I found out they had gone to London; I pushed on in pursuit of them; but in London all my researches were in vain. It was long before I would resign myself, for a long while I persevered, but I was obliged, at last, to give up all hope of coming across them.

  And I never saw them again - - I never saw Acia. Vague rumours reached me about him, but she had vanished for ever for me. I don’t even know whether she is alive. One day, a few years later, in a railway carriage abroad, I caught a glimpse of a woman, whose face vividly recalled those features I could never forget . . . but I was most likely deceived by a chance resemblance. Acia remained in my memory a little girl such as I had known her at the best time of my life, as I saw her the last time, leaning against the back of a low wooden chair.

  But I must own I did not grieve over - long for her; I even came to the conclusion that fate had done all for the best, in not uniting me to Acia; I consoled myself with the reflection that I should probably not have been happy with such a wife. I was young then - - and the future, the brief, swiftly - passing future seemed boundless to me then. Could not what had been be repeated, I thought, and better, fairer still? . . . I got to know other women - - but the feeling Acia had aroused in me, that intense, tender, deep feeling has never come again. No! no eyes have for me taken the place of those that were once turned with love upon my eyes, to no heart, pressed to my breast, has my heart responded with such joyous sweet emotion! Condemned as I have been to a solitary life, without ties or family, I have led a dreary existence; but I keep as sacred relics, her little notes and the dry geranium, the flower she threw me once out of the window. It still retains a faint scent. while the hand that gave it, the hand I only once pressed to my lips, has perhaps long since decayed in the grave . . . And I myself, what has become of me? What is left of me, of those blissful, heart - stirring days, of those winged hopes and aspirations? The faint fragrance of an insignificant plant outlives all man’s joys and sorrows - - outlives man himself.

  FIRST LOVE

  Translated by Constance Garnett, 1897

  This famous novella was first published in 1860. First Love employs a frame story structure, recounting the memory of the protagonist’s first love.

  Turgenev at the time of publication

  CONTENTS

  FIRST LOVE

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  XIX

  XX

  XXI

  XXII

  FIRST LOVE

  The party had long ago broken up. The clock struck half - past twelve.

  There was left in the room only the master of the house and Sergei

  Nikolaevitch and Vladimir Petrovitch.

  The master of the house rang and ordered the remains of the supper to be cleared away. ‘And so it’s settled,’ he observed, sitting back farther in his easy - chair and lighting a cigar; ‘each of us is to tell the story of his first love. It’s your turn, Sergei Nikolaevitch.’

  Sergei Nikolaevitch, a round little man with a plump, light - complexioned face, gazed first at the master of the house, then raised his eyes to the ceiling. ‘I had no first love,’ he said at last; ‘I began with the second.’

  ‘How was that?’

  ‘It’s very simple. I was eighteen when I had my first flirtation with a charming young lady, but I courted her just as though it were nothing new to me; just as I courted others later on. To speak accurately, the first and last time I was in love was with my nurse when I was six years old; but that’s in the remote past. The details of our relations have slipped out of my memory, and even if I remembered them, whom could they interest?’

  ‘Then how’s it to be?’ began the master of the house. ‘There was nothing much of interest about my first love either; I never fell in love with any one till I met Anna Nikolaevna, now my wife, — and everything went as smoothly as possible with us; our parents arranged the match, we were very soon in love with each other, and got married without loss of time. My story can be told in a couple of words. I must confess, gentlemen, in bringing up the subject of first love, I reckoned upon you, I won’t say old, but no longer young, bachelors. Can’t you enliven us with something, Vladimir Petrovitch?’

  ‘My first love, certainly, was not quite an ordinary one,’ responded, with some reluctance, Vladimir Petrovitch, a man of forty, with black hair turning grey.

  ‘Ah!’ said the master of the house and Sergei Nikolaevitch with one voice: ‘So much the better…. Tell us about it.’

  ‘If you wish it … or no; I won’t tell the story; I’m no hand at telling a story; I make it dry and brief, or spun out and affected. If you’ll allow me, I’ll write out all I remember and read it you.’

  His friends at first would not agree, but Vladimir Petrovitch insisted on his own way. A fortnight later they were together again, and Vladimir Petrovitch kept his word.

  His manuscript contained the following story: —

  I

  I was sixteen then. It happened in the summer of 1833.

  I lived in Moscow with my parents. They had taken a country house for the summer near the Kalouga gate, facing the Neskutchny gardens. I was preparing for the university, but did not work much and was in no hurry.

  No one interfered with my freedom. I did what I liked, especially after parting with my last tutor, a Frenchman who had never been able to get used to the idea that he had fallen ‘like a bomb’ (comme une bombe) into Russia, and would lie sluggishly in bed with an expression of exasperation on his face for days together. My father treated me with careless kindness; my mother scarcely noticed me, though she had no children except me; other cares completely absorbed her. My father, a man still young and very handsome, had married her from mercenary considerations; she was ten years older than he. My mother led a melancholy life; she was for ever agitated, jealous and angry, but not in my father’s presence; she was very much afraid of him, and he was severe, cold, and distant in his behaviour…. I have never seen a man more elaborately serene, self - confident, and commanding.

  I shall never forget the first weeks I spent at the country house. The weather was magnificent; we left town on the 9th of May, on St. Nicholas’s day. I
used to walk about in our garden, in the Neskutchny gardens, and beyond the town gates; I would take some book with me — Keidanov’s Course, for instance — but I rarely looked into it, and more often than anything declaimed verses aloud; I knew a great deal of poetry by heart; my blood was in a ferment and my heart ached — so sweetly and absurdly; I was all hope and anticipation, was a little frightened of something, and full of wonder at everything, and was on the tiptoe of expectation; my imagination played continually, fluttering rapidly about the same fancies, like martins about a bell - tower at dawn; I dreamed, was sad, even wept; but through the tears and through the sadness, inspired by a musical verse, or the beauty of evening, shot up like grass in spring the delicious sense of youth and effervescent life.

  I had a horse to ride; I used to saddle it myself and set off alone for long rides, break into a rapid gallop and fancy myself a knight at a tournament. How gaily the wind whistled in my ears! or turning my face towards the sky, I would absorb its shining radiance and blue into my soul, that opened wide to welcome it.

  I remember that at that time the image of woman, the vision of love, scarcely ever arose in definite shape in my brain; but in all I thought, in all I felt, lay hidden a half - conscious, shamefaced presentiment of something new, unutterably sweet, feminine….

  This presentiment, this expectation, permeated my whole being; I breathed in it, it coursed through my veins with every drop of blood … it was destined to be soon fulfilled.

  The place, where we settled for the summer, consisted of a wooden manor - house with columns and two small lodges; in the lodge on the left there was a tiny factory for the manufacture of cheap wall - papers…. I had more than once strolled that way to look at about a dozen thin and dishevelled boys with greasy smocks and worn faces, who were perpetually jumping on to wooden levers, that pressed down the square blocks of the press, and so by the weight of their feeble bodies struck off the variegated patterns of the wall - papers. The lodge on the right stood empty, and was to let. One day — three weeks after the 9th of May — the blinds in the windows of this lodge were drawn up, women’s faces appeared at them — some family had installed themselves in it. I remember the same day at dinner, my mother inquired of the butler who were our new neighbours, and hearing the name of the Princess Zasyekin, first observed with some respect, ‘Ah! a princess!’ … and then added, ‘A poor one, I suppose?’