Worlds Apart

by Alexander Levitsky

  Around midnight he grew calmer, sat down at the table, lit a candle, and took a sheet of paper and began a drawing—all was quiet. The candle burned brightly and tranquilly; he was sketching the head of an old man, and when he finished he was struck by the similarity between that head and the head of someone he knew. He raised his eyes to the portrait hanging opposite him; the resemblance was striking; he involuntarily shuddered and turned around; it seemed to him that the doors leading into the empty parlor had squeaked; he could not tear his eyes from the door.

  “Who’s there?” he cried out.

  He heard a rustle, like the shuffling of slippers, behind the door; plaster dust from the stove sprinkled down onto the floor. “Who is that?” he repeated in a faint voice.

  At that moment both leaves of the door began to open quietly, noiselessly; a chill breath wafted into room; the door was opening by itself—the room beyond was as dark as a cellar.

  When the doors had opened a figure in a striped dressing gown and slippers appeared: it was a gray, hunched little old man; he moved slowly in a cringing stoop. His face—long and pale-—was motionless; his lips were compressed; his gray, dull eyes, rimmed in red, looked straight ahead, blankly. He sat down at the table, across from Lugin, pulled from his dressing gown two decks of cards, placed one of them opposite Lugin, the other in front of himself, and smiled …

  “What do you want?” said Lugin with the courage that comes from despair. His fists clenched convulsively, and he was ready to throw the large candleholder at the uninvited guest.

  From the dressing gown came a sigh.

  “This is unbearable,” gasped Lugin. His thoughts were confused.

  The little old man began to fidget on his chair; his whole figure was changing constantly: he became now taller, now stouter, then almost shrank away completely; at last he assumed his original form.

  “All right,” thought Lugin, “if this is an apparition, I won’t yield to it.”

  “Wouldn’t you like me to deal a hand of shtoss?” asked the little old man.

  Lugin took the deck of cards lying in front of him and answered mockingly, “But what shall we play for? I want to warn you that I will not stake my soul on a card!” (He thought he would perplex the apparition with this.)”… but if you want,” he continued, “I’ll stake a klyunger [a gold piece]. I doubt that you have those in your ethereal bank.”

  This joke did not confuse the little old man at all.

  “I have this in the bank,” he said, extending his hand.

  “That?” said Lugin, taking fright and averting his gaze to the left. “What is it?” Something white, vague, and transparent fluttered near him. He turned away in repugnance. “Deal,” he said, recovering a little. He took a klyunger from his pocket and placed it on a card. “We’ll go on blind luck.” The little old man bowed, shuffled the cards, cut the deck and began to deal. Lugin played the seven of clubs; it was beaten immediately. The little old man extended his hand and took the gold coin.

  “Another round!” said Lugin with vexation.

  The apparition shook his head.

  “What does that mean?”

  “On Wednesday,” said the little old man.

  “Oh! Wednesday!” cried Lugin in a rage. “No! I don’t want to on Wednesday! Tomorrow or never! Do you hear me?”

  The strange guest’s eyes glittered piercingly, and he again squirmed uneasily in his seat.

  “All right,” he said at last. He rose, bowed, and walked out with his cringing gait. The door again quietly closed after him; from the next room again came the sound of shuffling slippers … and little by little everything became quiet. The blood was pounding inside Lugin’s head like a mallet; a strange feeling agitated him and gnawed at his soul. He was vexed and offended that he had lost …

  “But I didn’t yield to him!” he said, trying to console himself. “I forced him to agree to my terms. On Wednesday?—But of course! I must be mad! But that’s good, very good! He won’t rid himself of me!

  And he looks so much like that portrait! … Terribly, terribly like it! Aha! Now I understand!”

  At this he fell asleep in his chair. The next morning he told no one what had occurred, spent the entire day at home, awaited the evening with feverish impatience.

  “But I didn’t get a look at what he had in the bank! …” he thought. “It must be something unusual.”

  When midnight had come, he rose from his chair, went out into the next room, locked the door leading into the vestibule, and returned to his seat. He did not have to wait long; again he heard a rustling sound, the shuffling of slippers, the old man’s cough, and again his cadaverous figure appeared at the door. Another figure followed him, but it was indistinct and Lugin could not make out its shape.

  Just as he had done the evening before, the little old man sat down, placed two decks of cards on the table, cut one, and prepared to deal: he obviously expected no resistance from Lugin; his eyes shone with an unusual confidence, as if they were reading the future. Lugin, completely under the magnetic spell of those gray eyes, was about to throw two half-imperials on the table, when suddenly he came to his senses.

  “Just a moment,” said Lugin, covering his deck with his hand.

  The little old man sat motionless.

  “There was something I wanted to say to you! Just a moment … yes!” Lugin had become confused.

  Finally, with an effort, he slowly said, “All right—I will play with you—I accept the challenge—I am not afraid—but there is one condition: I must know with whom I am playing! What is your surname?”

  The little old man smiled.

  “I won’t play otherwise,” said Lugin, while at the same time his shaking hand was pulling the next card from the deck.

  “Chto-s? [What, sir],” said the unknown one, smiling mockingly.

  “Shtoss?—Who?” Lugin faltered; he was frightened.

  At that instant he sensed a fresh, aromatic breath nearby; and a faint, rustling sound, and an involuntary sigh, and a light fiery touch. A strange, sweet, but at the same time morbid tremor ran through his veins. He turned his head for an instant, and immediately returned his gaze to the cards; but that momentary glance was sufficient to compel him to gamble away his soul. It was a marvelous divine vision: leaning at his shoulder there gleamed the head of a woman; her lips entreated him; and in her eyes there was an inexpressible melancholy … she stood out against the dark walls of the room as the morning star stands out in the misty east. Life had never produced anything so ethereal-heavenly; death had never taken from earth anything so full of ardent life; the vision was not an earthly being: it was made up of color and light rather than form and body, a warm breath in place of blood, and thought rather than feeling; nor was it an empty and deceitful vision … because these indistinct features were infused with a turbulent and avid passion, with desire, grief, love, fear, and hope. This was one of those marvelously beautiful women youthful imagination depicts for us—before which we fall to our knees in the high emotion accompanying ardent visions, and we cry, pray, and celebrate for God knows what reason—one of those divine creations of a soul in its youth, when with its surplus of power it creates for itself a new nature—better and more complete than the one to which it is chained.

  At that moment Lugin could not have explained what had happened to him, but from that instant he decided to play until he won; that goal became the goal of his life; he was very happy about it.

  The little old man began to deal. Lugin’s card was beaten. A pale hand again drew the two half-imperials across the table.

  “Tomorrow,” said Lugin.

  The little old man sighed gravely, but nodded his head in assent, and went out as he had the previous evening.

  The scene repeated itself every night for a month: every night Lugin lost, but he didn’t regret the money; he was certain that at least one winning card would ultimately be dealt to him, and for that reason he doubled his already large wagers. He suffered terrible los
ses, but nevertheless every night for a second he met the gaze and smile for which he was ready to give up everything on earth. He grew terribly thin and yellow. He spent entire days at home, locked in his room; he rarely ate. He awaited evening as a lover awaits a rendezvous: and every evening he was rewarded with an ever more tender gaze, a friendlier smile. She—I don’t know her name—she seemed to take an anxious interest in the play of the cards; she seemed to be awaiting impatiently the moment when she would be released from the yoke of the old man; and each time Lugin’s card was beaten, each time he turned to her with a sad look, he would find fixed upon him her passionate, deep gaze, which seemed to say, “Take courage, don’t lose heart. Wait, I will be yours no matter what happens! I love you …” and a bitter, wordless sorrow would cast its shadow over her changeable features. And every evening, as they parted, Lugin’s heart painfully contracted in despair and frenzy. He had already sold many of his belongings in order to sustain the game; he saw that in the not too distant future the moment would come when he would have nothing left to stake on the cards. It was necessary to make some sort of decision, or go mad. He did.—

  Translated by David Lowe; edited by A. L. and M.K.

  Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1818-1883)

  I am a writer of a transitional period,

  and I am fit only for people

  who are in a transitional state …

  OF THE WRITERS CITED so far I. S. Turgenev was the first to travel extensively abroad, though Gogol (introduced in the next section) had done so at length before him; Turgenev was also the first major Russian writer to die in emigration. In this regard he is the melancholy herald of a tragic aspect of twentieth-century Russian cultural history—a period in which a good half of Russia’s brightest talents, men and women of extraordinary merits and accomplishments in many fields, would be forced to live their lives abroad and die there as well. Gogol died in Moscow in 1852, and shortly thereafter Turgenev was arrested, imprisoned for a month, then forcibly confined for an additional sixteen-months exile to his own estate. His offense had been writing an innocuous eulogy commemorating Gogol, who was in official disfavor at the time. This draconian treatment was certainly a factor in Turgenev’s eventual self-imposed exile. Finally—while in no sense ever seriously affected by Gogol’s style—there is yet a third aspect which connects these two writers, namely that Turgenev, like Gogol, began his immersion in literature as a poet, but gave it up early to become an unquestioned master of prose. His achievements were so high in the latter that popular consensus bestows on him a seat, along with Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, in what some have called the “Holy Trinity of Russian Realism.” Yet, unlike Gogol, Turgenev never really gave up his fascination with the succinct richness of poetic diction and, at the end of his life felt like uniting his very real achievements in prose with poetry again.

  Turgenev was one of the first Russian writers to feel that the power of his pen might affect the unfolding of actual history. For students of social history, especially those who relish the petrified thought that Russia has always lagged behind the West in social developments (a view which, incidentally, Turgenev himself was inclined to hold), it might be irksome to recall that in the United States—the so-called bastion of democracy at the time, and certainly very much admired by Turgenev—the loathsome institution of slavery was abolished a full three years after Tsar Alexander II abolished serfdom in Russia. The young Alexander is known to have been profoundly influenced in this connection by Turgenev’s first famous collection of short prose, A Sportsman’s Sketches (Zapiski okhotnika, 1852). Thematically devoted to a sympathetic portrayal of Russian peasants and exposure of the evils of serfdom, the work was undeniably instrumental in preparing the ground for Alexander’s 1861 Emancipation Proclamation. By 1861 Turgenev was not only viewed as an active contributor to the great reform, but also as a first-rate novelist who had articulated contemporary life in three major works—the novels Rudin (1856), A Nest of the Gentry (Dvorianskoe gnezdo, 1859), and On the Eve (Nakanune, 1860). Now that Russia finally had a writer whose fiction could capture the aspirations of the times, it is ironic that Turgenev’s best-wrought novel, Fathers and Children (Ottsy i deti, 1862), caused his prestige as a conduit of such aspirations to fall. Both radicals and conservatives saw in the personages of this work a lampoon of themselves and mercilessly attacked it, often for issues that lay outside its fictional universe. Pained by such a reception, Turgenev left his homeland and took up residence in Europe where he continued to write and to win a wide audience of admirers. Henry James, for instance, regarded Turgenev as his master and coined the appellation of “beautiful genius” to express this admiration.

  Our volume attempts to provide a corrective to the notion that Turgenev’s merits lay principally in the role of a writer occupied with social change. In fact, it would be surprising to expect of a writer whose prose was often said to read like poetry to be occupied with anything less than the craft of fiction itself. Indeed, it is precisely for the way his Fathers and Children was written and for the depiction of the trasformative drama within the soul of its protagonist, Bazarov, that Dostoevsky—Turgenev’s otherwise lifelong nemesis—provided an isolated note of lavish praise within the heat of Russian polemics surrounding the novel’s publication. It is then on Turgenev’s art—and its collateral need for fantasy weaving—that the discussion of even his most socially influential works, such as the A Sportsman’s Sketches should be focused. If one takes up, for instance, his most memorable story Bezhin Meadow (Bezhin lug, 1851), available in nearly every collection of Russian short stories, one will encounter its traditional interpretation along the following lines: it is essentially a tale written by a budding realist foregrounding for the reader the mythopoetic world of the Russian folk: As peasant boys sit around their campfire artlessly narrating horror-stories and anecdotes of the supernatural, the reader should be supposedly aware that these are merely superstitions, even though such complacency is challenged at the end of the tale by the surprising fate of one of the boys. Rarely, however, it is noted that this story exists within a context of the wider meaning provided by the Russian title of the original collection, Zapiski okhotnika. None of this title’s various English translations (A Sportsman’s Sketches, Diary of a Hunter, etc.) has ever captured a crucial alternate sense of the word okhotnik. As Turgenev was well aware, the word—which commonly does mean “hunter”—also serves as a calque of the eighteenth-century French term amateur, signifying connoisseur or expert admirer, an enthusiast or devotee, and the title Notes of a Connoisseur Enthusiast would be truer to Turgenev’s intentions than the traditional one, which focuses almost exclusively on the subject matter. The author is after far more elusive game here than snipe or grouse. Perhaps for this reason alone Turgenev never seems to have considered the collection as a whole, finished opus. It grew bulkier and bulkier as years went by as Turgenev added more and more stories, each representing varied degrees of immersion of the narrative space into the fantastic. Bezhin Meadow, one of the first to be composed for this collection, was an actual meadow on Turgenev’s former estates. One of the last tales to be added was A Living Relic (Zhivye moshchi, 1874) a sympathetic depiction of a paralyzed Russian woman spending her entire adult life immobile in a village barn, who was considered by local folk as a living saint. One of the final works added by Turgenev was Father Alexei’s Story (Rasskaz Otsa Alekseia, 1877). Here the principal narrator is a country priest. His story is framed by comments from the narrator—an aristocratic landowner—whose restraint foregrounds the intensity of Father Alexis’ tale: the priest is grieving for the tragic fate of his son, Yakov. The boy’s experiences with the supernatural, which intensify and become more harrowing as he grows older, are in his father’s world explicable as satanic attacks on a Christian soul. The reader, however, is left with a more nuanced and ambivalent understanding which accommodates the pathological as well as the paranormal. Thematically, in Father Alexis Turgenev engages with the supernatural and the fan
tastic as they are experienced in the everyday world surrounding us.

  Since we are fully cognizant of the fact that A Sportsman’s Sketches are generally available to western readers, we chose to omit these wonderful tales from our volume. We offer instead his less well known Phantoms (Prizraki, 1864) and two selections from his last opus Senilia: Poems in Prose (Stikhotvorenia v proze, 1878-82). Phantoms can be read as autobiographical work, given its depictions of ennui (toska) and the author’s complex, unsettling relationship with the French operatic singer, Pauline Viardot. An image that might have provided the genesis for the story is a painting at Baden-Baden, a spa frequented by Turgenev. The work is a fresco of a knight kneeling in front of a phantom female who drifts low above ground in front of him. Above both figures is a depiction of a circling bird and the backdrop is a forest with an old oak tree in the foreground. Whatever its origins the tale’s fantastic elements are striking—indeed it is one of Russia’s first works to be subtitled by the author as Fantasy in its generic sense, and we have chosen to abridge the work to give this greater prominence. The vampiric allusions of the narrator’s encounters with the ghostly Ellis and the fantastic flight through space and time is the story’s frame, within which the author expresses his distain for the barbarism of the past (especially focused on the Roman Empire) and the philistinism of the present. The latter is particularly found in Paris and in Petersburg, which Turgenev clearly sees as urban dystopias.