The Torrents of Spring
and employ the sum received for it in some profitable undertaking; for
instance, the improvement of your shop.” Sanin was aware that he was
saying something absurd, but he was possessed by an incomprehensible
recklessness! He looked at Gemma, who, ever since the “practical”
conversation began, kept getting up, walking about the room, and
sitting down again—he looked at her—and no obstacle existed for him,
and he was ready to arrange everything at once in the best way, if only
she were not troubled!
“Herr Klüber, too, had intended to give me a small sum for the
improvement of the shop,” Lenore observed after a slight hesitation.
“Mother! for mercy’s sake, mother!” cried Gemma in Italian.
“These things must be discussed in good time, my daughter,” Frau Lenore
replied in the same language. She addressed herself again to Sanin, and
began questioning him as to the laws existing in Russia as to marriage,
and whether there were no obstacles to contracting marriages with
Catholics as in Prussia. (At that time, in 1840, all Germany still
remembered the controversy between the Prussian Government and the
Archbishop of Cologne upon mixed marriages.) When Frau Lenore heard
that by marrying a Russian nobleman, her daughter would herself become
of noble rank, she evinced a certain satisfaction. “But, of course, you
will first have to go to Russia?”
“Why?”
“Why? Why, to obtain the permission of your Tsar.”
Sanin explained to her that that was not at all necessary … but that he
might certainly have to go to Russia for a very short time before his
marriage—(he said these words, and his heart ached painfully, Gemma
watching him, knew it was aching, and blushed and grew dreamy)—and that
he would try to take advantage of being in his own country to sell his
estate … in any case he would bring back the money needed.
“I would ask you to bring me back some good Astrakhan lambskin for a
cape,” said Frau Lenore. “They’re wonderfully good, I hear, and
wonderfully cheap!”
“Certainly, with the greatest pleasure, I will bring some for you and
for Gemma!” cried Sanin.
“And for me a morocco cap worked in silver,” Emil interposed, putting
his head in from the next room.
“Very well, I will bring it you … and some slippers for Pantaleone.”
“Come, that’s nonsense, nonsense,” observed Frau Lenore. “We are
talking now of serious matters. But there’s another point,” added the
practical lady. “You talk of selling your estate. But how will you do
that? Will you sell your peasants then, too?”
Sanin felt something like a stab at his heart. He remembered that in a
conversation with Signora Roselli and her daughter about serfdom,
which, in his own words, aroused his deepest indignation, he had
repeatedly assured them that never on any account would he sell his
peasants, as he regarded such a sale as an immoral act.
“I will try and sell my estate to some man I know something of,” he
articulated, not without faltering, “or perhaps the peasants themselves
will want to buy their freedom.”
“That would be best of all,” Frau Lenore agreed. “Though indeed selling
live people …”
“_Barbari_!” grumbled Pantaleone, who showed himself behind Emil in the
doorway, shook his topknot, and vanished.
“It’s a bad business!” Sanin thought to himself, and stole a look at
Gemma. She seemed not to have heard his last words. “Well, never mind!”
he thought again. In this way the practical talk continued almost
uninterruptedly till dinner-time. Frau Lenore was completely softened
at last, and already called Sanin “Dimitri,” shook her finger
affectionately at him, and promised she would punish him for his
treachery. She asked many and minute questions about his relations,
because “that too is very important”; asked him to describe the
ceremony of marriage as performed by the ritual of the Russian Church,
and was in raptures already at Gemma in a white dress, with a gold
crown on her head.
“She’s as lovely as a queen,” she murmured with motherly pride, “indeed
there’s no queen like her in the world!”
“There is no one like Gemma in the world!” Sanin chimed in.
“Yes; that’s why she is Gemma!” (Gemma, as every one knows, means in
Italian a precious stone.)
Gemma flew to kiss her mother…. It seemed as if only then she breathed
freely again, and the load that had been oppressing her dropped from
off her soul.
Sanin felt all at once so happy, his heart was filled with such
childish gaiety at the thought, that here, after all, the dreams had
come true to which he had abandoned himself not long ago in these very
rooms, his whole being was in such a turmoil that he went quickly out
into the shop. He felt a great desire, come what might, to sell
something in the shop, as he had done a few days before…. “I have a
full right to do so now!” he felt. “Why, I am one of the family now!”
And he actually stood behind the counter, and actually kept shop, that
is, sold two little girls, who came in, a pound of sweets, giving them
fully two pounds, and only taking half the price from them.
At dinner he received an official position, as betrothed, beside Gemma.
Frau Lenore pursued her practical investigations. Emil kept laughing
and urging Sanin to take him with him to Russia. It was decided that
Sanin should set off in a fortnight. Only Pantaleone showed a somewhat
sullen face, so much so that Frau Lenore reproached him. “And he was
his second!” Pantaleone gave her a glance from under his brows.
Gemma was silent almost all the time, but her face had never been
lovelier or brighter. After dinner she called Sanin out a minute into
the garden, and stopping beside the very garden-seat where she had been
sorting the cherries two days before, she said to him. “Dimitri, don’t
be angry with me; but I must remind you once more that you are not to
consider yourself bound …”
He did not let her go on….
Gemma turned away her face. “And as for what mamma spoke of, do you
remember, the difference of our religion—see here!…”
She snatched the garnet cross that hung round her neck on a thin cord,
gave it a violent tug, snapped the cord, and handed him the cross.
“If I am yours, your faith is my faith!” Sanin’s eyes were still wet
when he went back with Gemma into the house.
By the evening everything went on in its accustomed way. They even
played a game of _tresette_.
XXXI
Sanin woke up very early. He found himself at the highest pinnacle of
human happiness; but it was not that prevented him from sleeping; the
question, the vital, fateful question—how he could dispose of his
estate as quickly and as advantageously as possible—disturbed his rest.
The most diverse plans were mixed up in his head, but nothing had as
yet come out clearly. He went out of the house to get air and freshen
himself. He wanted to present himself to Gemma with a project ready
prepared and not without.
What was the figure, somewhat ponderous and thick in the legs, but
well-dressed, walking in front of him, with a slight roll and waddle in
his gait? Where had he seen that head, covered with tufts of flaxen
hair, and as it were set right into the shoulders, that soft cushiony
back, those plump arms hanging straight down at his sides? Could it be
Polozov, his old schoolfellow, whom he had lost sight of for the last
five years? Sanin overtook the figure walking in front of him, turned
round…. A broad, yellowish face, little pig’s eyes, with white lashes
and eyebrows, a short flat nose, thick lips that looked glued together,
a round smooth chin, and that expression, sour, sluggish, and
mistrustful—yes; it was he, it was Ippolit Polozov!
“Isn’t my lucky star working for me again?” flashed through Sanin’s
mind.
“Polozov! Ippolit Sidorovitch! Is it you?”
The figure stopped, raised his diminutive eyes, waited a little, and
ungluing his lips at last, brought out in a rather hoarse falsetto,
“Dimitri Sanin?”
“That’s me!” cried Sanin, and he shook one of Polozov’s hands; arrayed
in tight kid-gloves of an ashen-grey colour, they hung as lifeless as
before beside his barrel-shaped legs. “Have you been here long? Where
have you come from? Where are you stopping?”
“I came yesterday from Wiesbaden,” Polozov replied in deliberate tones,
“to do some shopping for my wife, and I’m going back to Wiesbaden
to-day.”
“Oh, yes! You’re married, to be sure, and they say, to such a beauty!”
Polozov turned his eyes away. “Yes, they say so.”
Sanin laughed. “I see you’re just the same … as phlegmatic as you were
at school.”
“Why should I be different?”
“And they do say,” Sanin added with special emphasis on the word “do,”
“that your wife is very rich.”
“They say that too.”
“Do you mean to say, Ippolit Sidorovitch, you are not certain on that
point?”
“I don’t meddle, my dear Dimitri … Pavlovitch? Yes, Pavlovitch!—in my
wife’s affairs.”
“You don’t meddle? Not in any of her affairs?”
Polozov again shifted his eyes. “Not in any, my boy. She does as she
likes, and so do I.”
“Where are you going now?” Sanin inquired.
“I’m not going anywhere just now; I’m standing in the street and
talking to you; but when we’ve finished talking, I’m going back to my
hotel, and am going to have lunch.”
“Would you care for my company?”
“You mean at lunch?”
“Yes.”
“Delighted, it’s much pleasanter to eat in company. You’re not a great
talker, are you?”
“I think not.”
“So much the better.”
Polozov went on. Sanin walked beside him. And Sanin
speculated—Polozov’s lips were glued together, again he snorted
heavily, and waddled along in silence—Sanin speculated in what way had
this booby succeeded in catching a rich and beautiful wife. He was not
rich himself, nor distinguished, nor clever; at school he had passed
for a dull, slow-witted boy, sleepy, and greedy, and had borne the
nickname “driveller.” It was marvellous!
“But if his wife is very rich, they say she’s the daughter of some sort
of a contractor, won’t she buy my estate? Though he does say he doesn’t
interfere in any of his wife’s affairs, that passes belief, really!
Besides, I will name a moderate, reasonable price! Why not try?
Perhaps, it’s all my lucky star…. Resolved! I’ll have a try!”
Polozov led Sanin to one of the best hotels in Frankfort, in which he
was, of course, occupying the best apartments. On the tables and chairs
lay piles of packages, cardboard boxes, and parcels. “All purchases, my
boy, for Maria Nikolaevna!” (that was the name of the wife of Ippolit
Sidorovitch). Polozov dropped into an arm-chair, groaned, “Oh, the
heat!” and loosened his cravat. Then he rang up the head-waiter, and
ordered with intense care a very lavish luncheon. “And at one, the
carriage is to be ready! Do you hear, at one o’clock sharp!”
The head-waiter obsequiously bowed, and cringingly withdrew.
Polozov unbuttoned his waistcoat. From the very way in which he raised
his eyebrows, gasped, and wrinkled up his nose, one could see that
talking would be a great labour to him, and that he was waiting in some
trepidation to see whether Sanin was going to oblige him to use his
tongue, or whether he would take the task of keeping up the
conversation on himself.
Sanin understood his companion’s disposition of mind, and so he did not
burden him with questions; he restricted himself to the most essential.
He learnt that he had been for two years in the service (in the Uhlans!
how nice he must have looked in the short uniform jacket!) that he had
married three years before, and had now been for two years abroad with
his wife, “who is now undergoing some sort of cure at Wiesbaden,” and
was then going to Paris. On his side too, Sanin did not enlarge much on
his past life and his plans; he went straight to the principal
point—that is, he began talking of his intention of selling his estate.