On another occasion Lavretsky, sitting in the drawing-room and listening to the insinuating, but oppressive, chatter of Gedeonovsky, suddenly, without knowing why, turned his head and caught a profound, attentive, questioning look in Liza’s eyes…. It was directed straight at him, this enigmatic look. Lavretsky later thought about it the whole night. He was in love not like a boy, and sighs and longings did not suit him, nor did Liza herself arouse that kind of feeling; but love at any age has its sufferings, and he experienced them to the full.
XXXIII
ONCE Lavretsky, in his usual way, was sitting at the Kalitins. A tiresomely hot day had been succeeded by such a beautiful evening that Marya Dmitrievna, despite her aversion to draughts, had ordered all the windows and doors into the garden to be opened and announced that she would not play cards, that it was a sin to play cards in such weather and it was right to enjoy the beauties of nature. Panshin was the only guest. Inspired by the evening and yet unwilling to sing in front of Lavretsky, but experiencing an access of artistic feelings, he launched into poetry: he read well, but too deliberately and with unnecessary niceties, several poems by Lermontov1 (in those days Pushkin had not yet come back into fashion) – and suddenly, as if ashamed of his outpourings, began, apropos of the well-known poem Duma, to attack the younger generation; added to which, he did not overlook the opportunity to expound how he would change everything if he had the power. ‘Russia,’ he said, ‘has fallen behind Europe; we must catch up. People assert that we’re young – that’s nonsense; besides, we lack inventiveness; Khomyakov2 himself has admitted that we did not even invent the mousetrap. Consequently, we must borrow willy-nilly from others. We’re sick, says Lermontov, and I agree with him; but we’re sick because we’ve only become half-European; we must cure ourselves with more of what’s made us sick.’ (‘Le cadastre,’ thought Lavretsky.) ‘Among us’, he continued, ‘the best minds – les meilleures têtes – have long been convinced of this; all nations are in substance the same; you have only to introduce good institutions, and that’s the end of the matter. Certainly the institutions can be modified to suit the existing national customs; that is our business, the business of men of…’ (he almost said: men of state) ‘of government servants; but if the need arises, you needn’t worry: the institutions will remake the national customs.’ Marya Dmitrievna ranged herself admiringly on Panshin’s side with nods of the head ‘What an intelligent talker I have in my house,’ she thought; Liza was silent, leaning at the open window; Lavretsky was also silent; Marfa Timofeyevna, playing cards in one corner with her friend, mumbled something under her breath. Panshin walked up and down the room and spoke eloquently, but with secret exasperation, as if he was scolding not a whole generation but a few of those known to him. In the Kalitins’ garden, in a large lilac bush, lived a nightingale; the first notes of its evening song resounded during pauses in the eloquent speech; the first stars were alight in the rosy sky above the motionless tips of the limes. Lavretsky stood up and began to counter Panshin’s words; a controversy developed. Lavretsky upheld the youth and independence of Russia; he sacrificed himself and his own generation, but he interceded for the new men, for their convictions and desires; Panshin made bad-tempered and sharp rejoinders, declared that intelligent people must change everything and was finally carried away to the point where, forgetting his court status and civil service career, he called Lavretsky an outdated conservative and even hinted – true, very remotely – at his false position in society. Lavretsky did not lose his temper, did not raise his voice (he remembered that Mikhalevich had also called him outdated, only a Voltairean) and calmly defeated Panshin on all points. He demonstrated to him the impossibility of progress by leaps and bounds or making high-handed changes from above through officialdom – changes justified neither by a knowledge of one’s native land, nor by genuine belief in an ideal, even a negative one; he cited his own education as an example and he demanded first of all a recognition of Russia’s own popular ‘truth’ and reconciliation with it – that recon ciliation, without which opposition to falsehood is impossible; finally, he did not attempt to evade the – in his opinion – deserved reproach of having lightmindedly wasted his time and energies.
‘All that is admirable!’ exclaimed Panshin, furious at last. ‘So here you are, you’ve returned to Russia – what precisely do you intend to do?’
‘To plough the land,’ answered Lavretsky, ‘and to strive to plough it as well as possible.’
‘That’s very praiseworthy, no doubt of it,’ retorted Panshin, ‘and I’m told you’ve already made great strides in that direction; but you will agree that not everyone is capable of that kind of activity.’
‘Une nature poétique,’ said Marya Dmitrievna, ‘of course, cannot plough… et puis, Vladimir Nikolaich, you are called to do everything en grand.’
This was too much for Panshin; he stopped short – and curtailed the conversation. He attempted to redirect the talk to the beauties of the starlit sky and the music of Schubert – all to no avail; he ended by suggesting that Marya Dmitrievna should play picquet. ‘What! On such an evening?’ she protested weakly; however, she ordered the cards to be brought.
Panshin tore open a new pack with a crackling sound, while Liza and Lavretsky, as if literally in collusion, both rose and took their places beside Marfa Timofeyevna. Both of them suddenly became so happy they were even frightened of staying together, and simultaneously they both felt that their recent mutual embarrassment had vanished and would not return. The old lady tapped Lavretsky slyly on the cheek, knowingly screwed up her eyes and shook her head several times, whispering: ‘Thank you for dealing with the smart aleck.’ Everything grew quiet in the room; only the faint crackling of the wax candles could be heard, and occasionally a hand tapping the table, an exclamation or a reckoning of the score, and, in a broad wave of sound pouring in through the windows together with the dewy night air, the powerful, audaciously resonant song of the nightingale.
XXXIV
LIZA did not utter a word during the controversy between Lavretsky and Panshin, but she followed it closely and was entirely on Lavretsky’s side. Politics interested her very little; but the high-handed tone of the worldly government official (he had never let himself go like that before) repelled her; his contempt for Russia deeply offended her. It had never occurred to Liza that she was a patriot; but she was spiritually at home with Russian people; the Russian cast of mind delighted her; she would spend hours unselfconsciously talking to the village elder from her mother’s estate whenever he came into town, and she talked to him as an equal, without any lordly condescension. Lavretsky felt all this: he would not have spoken simply to counter Panshin’s arguments; he spoke only for Liza. They said nothing to each other, even their eyes met only occasionally; but they both understood that they had come closely together that evening, understood that they liked and disliked the same things. They differed only on one matter; but Liza secretly hoped to bring him to God. They sat beside Marfa Timofeyevna and seemed to be following her game; and they were in fact following it – yet meanwhile their hearts were expanding, nothing was lost on them: for them the nightingale sang, the stars burned and the trees whispered softly, cradled in sleep by summer softness and summer warmth. Lavretsky surrendered himself utterly to the wave of feeling that swept him away – and was filled with joy; but no words can express what was happening in the pure soul of the girl: it was a secret for her; let it remain a secret for all and everyone. No one can know, no one has seen or will ever see how the seed summoned to life and fruition swells and ripens in the bosom of the earth.
It struck ten. Marfa Timofeyevna went upstairs to her room with Nastasya Karpovna; Lavretsky and Liza crossed the room, stopped before the open door into the garden, glanced into the outer darkness and then at each other – and smiled; they were about to take each other’s hands, it seemed, and talk to their heart’s content. They turned back to Marya Dmitrievna and Panshin, whose game of picquet was going on and on. T
he final king was called, and the mistress of the house rose, groaning and sighing, from the cushion-filled armchair; Panshin seized his hat, kissed Marya Dmitrievna’s hand, remarked that nothing now prevented the lucky ones from going to sleep or enjoying the night air, but he had to sit until morning poring over a lot of stupid papers, coldly exchanged bows with Liza (he had not expected that in answer to his proposal she would ask him to wait, and consequently he was in a huff with her) – and left. Lavretsky followed him to the gate, where they parted. Panshin woke his driver by poking him in the neck with the end of his stick, sat in his droshky and drove away. Lavretsky was unwilling to go home: he went out of town into the field. The night was calm and bright, although there was no moon; Lavretsky wandered for a long while through the dewy grass; he came upon a narrow path and followed it. It led him to a long fence and a small gate; he tried pushing it, not knowing why: it creaked faintly and opened just as if it had been waiting for the touch of his hand. Lavretsky found himself in a garden, took a few steps along an avenue of limes and suddenly stopped in amazement: he recognized the Kalitins’ garden.
He at once entered a black patch of shadow cast by a thick hazelnut bush and stood there for a long time, shrugging his shoulders in wonder.
‘This was intended,’ he thought.
All was quiet around him; no sound came from the direction of the house. He stepped cautiously forward. There, at the turn in the avenue, the whole house suddenly turned its dark face towards him: a light glimmered only in two upper windows: in Liza’s a candle burned behind the white curtain, and in Marfa Timofeyevna’s bedroom the little red flame of the lamp burning before the icon was reflected in an even radiance over the gold of the frame; downstairs the door on to the balcony yawned wide open. Lavretsky sat down on a little wooden bench, leaned his head on his hand and began to watch that door and Liza’s window. It struck midnight in the town; in the house small clocks delicately chimed midnight; a watchman struck a tattoo on his board. Lavretsky had no thoughts, no expectations; it was pleasant to feel himself close to Liza, to sit in her garden on a bench where she had sat more than once…. The light went out in Liza’s room. ‘Good night, my darling,’ whispered Lavretsky, still sitting motionless without taking his eyes off the darkened window.
Suddenly a light appeared in one of the lower-floor windows, moved to another, then to a third…. Someone was walking with a candle from room to room. ‘Surely it’s not Liza? It can’t b!…’ Lavretsky half rose…. A familiar figure momentarily flashed by and Liza appeared in the drawing-room. In a white dress, with plaited hair falling to her shoulders, she quietly approached the table, leaned over it, put down the candle and looked for something; then, turning her face towards the garden, she came up to the open door and, all in white, airy, slender, stopped in the doorway. A quiver ran through Lavretsky’s limbs.
‘Liza!’ was hardly audible from his lips.
She was startled and began peering into the darkness.
‘Liza!’ Lavretsky repeated more loudly and stepped out of the shadows of the avenue.
Liza stretched back her head in fright and rocked on her heels: she had recognized him. He called her name a third time and stretched out his hands to her. She left the doorway and stepped into the garden.
‘You?’ she said.’You here?’
‘It’s me… me…. Hear what I’ve got to say,’ Lavretsky whispered and, seizing her hand, led her to the bench.
She followed him without resistance; her pale face, fixed eyes, all her movements reflected her unspeakable astonishment. Lavretsky made her sit down on the bench and himself stood in front of her.
‘I did not think of coming here,’ he began. ‘Something brought me here…I…I…I love you,’ he uttered with horror, despite himself.
Liza looked slowly up at him; it seemed she had only that instant realized where she was and what was happening to her. She wanted to get up, couldn’t make herself and covered her face with her hands.
‘Liza,’ Lavretsky uttered. ‘Liza,’ he repeated, and bowed down to her feet…
Her shoulders began to shake slightly and the fingers of her pale hands pressed more tightly to her face.
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Lavretsky and heard her quiet weeping. His heart missed a beat. He realized what these tears meant. ‘You’re in love with me, aren’t you?’ he whispered and touched her knees.
‘Get up,’ he heard her say. ‘Get up, Fyodor Ivanych. What are you and I doing this for?’
He stood up and sat down next to her on the bench. She had stopped crying and was looking closely at him with her moist eyes.
‘I’m frightened; what are we doing this for?’ she repeated.
‘I love you,’ he said again. ‘I’m ready to give up my life for you.’
Again she shuddered, as though the words had stung her, and raised her eyes to the sky.
‘It is all in God’s hands,’ she said.
‘But you love me, Liza? We’ll be happy, won’t we?’
She lowered her eyes; he quietly drew her to him, and her head dropped on to his shoulder…. He moved his head a little to one side and touched her pale lips.
Half an hour later Lavretsky was already standing by the garden gate. He found it locked and was obliged to jump over the fence. He returned to town and walked through the sleeping streets. A feeling of great and unexpected joy filled his soul; all his doubts had perished. ‘Be gone, dark shade of the past,’ he thought. ‘She loves me and will be mine.’ Suddenly he was invaded by a feeling that the air above him poured with enchanting, exultant sound; he stopped short: the sounds rang out still more magnificently; they flowed in a strong, full-throated flood – and they spoke and sang, it seemed, of all his happiness. He looked around: the sounds came from the two upper windows of a small house.
‘Lemm!’ Lavretsky shouted and ran up to the house. ‘Lemm! Lemm!’ he repeated loudly.
The sounds stopped and the figure of an old man in a nightshirt, bare-chested, with dishevelled hair, appeared in the window.
‘Aha!’ he said with dignity. ‘It’s you, is it?’
‘Christopher Fyodorych, what marvellous music! For God’s sake, let me in.’
The old man, without saying a word, made a grandiose movement of the hand and threw a key from the window into the street. Lavretsky ran briskly upstairs, dashed into the room and was on the point of embracing Lemm when the latter directed him imperiously to a chair and said in brokenly curt Russian: ‘Sit and lizten!’, seated himself before the piano, looked arrogantly and sternly round him and began to play. It was a long time since Lavretsky had heard anything similar: the sweet, passionate melody captivated his heart from the first note; it was full of radiance, full of the tender throbbing of inspiration and happiness and beauty, continually growing and melting away; it rumoured of every thing on earth that is dear and secret and sacred to mankind; it breathed of immortal sadness and it departed from the earth to die in the heavens. Lavretsky straightened himself and stood, chill and pale with the ecstasy of it. These sounds literally sank into his soul, so recently shaken by the happiness of love; they themselves blazed with love. ‘Again,’ he whispered, as soon as the final chord was played. The old man looked at him with his eagle eyes, struck his breast with his hand and said slowly in his native language: ‘I have done this, for I am a great musician’ – and played his wonderful composition once more. There were no candles in the room; the light of the risen moon fell obliquely through the windows; the air, so finely attuned, quivered vibrantly; the tiny, wretched room seemed a holy sanctuary, where the old man’s head rose high and inspired in a silvery haze. Lavretsky went up to him and embraced him. At first Lemm did not respond to his embrace, even elbowed him away; for a long time, still in every limb, he gazed ahead of him in the same stern, almost uncouth way, and once or twice grunted: ‘Aha!’ At last his transfigured face lost its severity, relaxed, and in response to Lavretsky’s enthusiastic congratulations he at first smiled a little, then burst
into tears, weakly sobbing like a child.
‘It’s astonishing,’ he said, ‘you should come precisely at this time; but I know everything, everything.’