The Torrents of Spring
the others, so much so that the old princess, who was sitting in the
next room with some sort of clerk from the Tversky gate, invited by her
for consultation on business, positively came in to look at me. But I
felt so happy that I did not mind anything, I didn’t care a straw for
any one’s jeers, or dubious looks. Zinaïda continued to show me a
preference, and kept me at her side. In one forfeit, I had to sit by
her, both hidden under one silk handkerchief: I was to tell her _my
secret_. I remember our two heads being all at once in a warm,
half-transparent, fragrant darkness, the soft, close brightness of her
eyes in the dark, and the burning breath from her parted lips, and the
gleam of her teeth and the ends of her hair tickling me and setting me
on fire. I was silent. She smiled slyly and mysteriously, and at last
whispered to me, “Well, what is it?” but I merely blushed and laughed,
and turned away, catching my breath. We got tired of forfeits—we began
to play a game with a string. My God! what were my transports when, for
not paying attention, I got a sharp and vigorous slap on my fingers
from her, and how I tried afterwards to pretend that I was
absent-minded, and she teased me, and would not touch the hands I held
out to her! What didn’t we do that evening! We played the piano, and
sang and danced and acted a gypsy encampment. Nirmatsky was dressed up
as a bear, and made to drink salt water. Count Malevsky showed us
several sorts of card tricks, and finished, after shuffling the cards,
by dealing himself all the trumps at whist, on which Lushin “had the
honour of congratulating him.” Meidanov recited portions from his poem
“The Manslayer” (romanticism was at its height at this period), which
he intended to bring out in a black cover with the title in blood-red
letters; they stole the clerk’s cap off his knee, and made him dance a
Cossack dance by way of ransom for it; they dressed up old Vonifaty in
a woman’s cap, and the young princess put on a man’s hat…. I could not
enumerate all we did. Only Byelovzorov kept more and more in the
background, scowling and angry…. Sometimes his eyes looked bloodshot,
he flushed all over, and it seemed every minute as though he would rush
out upon us all and scatter us like shavings in all directions; but the
young princess would glance at him, and shake her finger at him, and he
would retire into his corner again.
We were quite worn out at last. Even the old princess, though she was
ready for anything, as she expressed it, and no noise wearied her, felt
tired at last, and longed for peace and quiet. At twelve o’clock at
night, supper was served, consisting of a piece of stale dry cheese,
and some cold turnovers of minced ham, which seemed to me more
delicious than any pastry I had ever tasted; there was only one bottle
of wine, and that was a strange one; a dark-coloured bottle with a wide
neck, and the wine in it was of a pink hue; no one drank it, however.
Tired out and faint with happiness, I left the lodge; at parting
Zinaïda pressed my hand warmly, and again smiled mysteriously.
The night air was heavy and damp in my heated face; a storm seemed to
be gathering; black stormclouds grew and crept across the sky, their
smoky outlines visibly changing. A gust of wind shivered restlessly in
the dark trees, and somewhere, far away on the horizon, muffled thunder
angrily muttered as it were to itself.
I made my way up to my room by the back stairs. My old man-nurse was
asleep on the floor, and I had to step over him; he waked up, saw me,
and told me that my mother had again been very angry with me, and had
wished to send after me again, but that my father had prevented her. (I
had never gone to bed without saying good-night to my mother, and
asking her blessing. There was no help for it now!)
I told my man that I would undress and go to bed by myself, and I put
out the candle. But I did not undress, and did not go to bed.
I sat down on a chair, and sat a long while, as though spell-bound.
What I was feeling was so new and so sweet…. I sat still, hardly
looking round and not moving, drew slow breaths, and only from time to
time laughed silently at some recollection, or turned cold within at
the thought that I was in love, that this was she, that this was love.
Zinaïda’s face floated slowly before me in the darkness—floated, and
did not float away; her lips still wore the same enigmatic smile, her
eyes watched me, a little from one side, with a questioning, dreamy,
tender look … as at the instant of parting from her. At last I got up,
walked on tiptoe to my bed, and without undressing, laid my head
carefully on the pillow, as though I were afraid by an abrupt movement
to disturb what filled my soul…. I lay down, but did not even close my
eyes. Soon I noticed that faint glimmers of light of some sort were
thrown continually into the room…. I sat up and looked at the window.
The window-frame could be clearly distinguished from the mysteriously
and dimly-lighted panes. It is a storm, I thought; and a storm it
really was, but it was raging so very far away that the thunder could
not be heard; only blurred, long, as it were branching, gleams of
lightning flashed continually over the sky; it was not flashing,
though, so much as quivering and twitching like the wing of a dying
bird. I got up, went to the window, and stood there till morning…. The
lightning never ceased for an instant; it was what is called among the
peasants a _sparrow night_. I gazed at the dumb sandy plain, at the
dark mass of the Neskutchny gardens, at the yellowish façades of the
distant buildings, which seemed to quiver too at each faint flash…. I
gazed, and could not turn away; these silent lightning flashes, these
gleams seemed in response to the secret silent fires which were aglow
within me. Morning began to dawn; the sky was flushed in patches of
crimson. As the sun came nearer, the lightning grew gradually paler,
and ceased; the quivering gleams were fewer and fewer, and vanished at
last, drowned in the sobering positive light of the coming day….
And my lightning flashes vanished too. I felt great weariness and peace
… but Zinaïda’s image still floated triumphant over my soul. But it
too, this image, seemed more tranquil: like a swan rising out of the
reeds of a bog, it stood out from the other unbeautiful figures
surrounding it, and as I fell asleep, I flung myself before it in
farewell, trusting adoration….
Oh, sweet emotions, gentle harmony, goodness and peace of the softened
heart, melting bliss of the first raptures of love, where are they,
where are they?
VIII
The next morning, when I came down to tea, my mother scolded me—less
severely, however, than I had expected—and made me tell her how I had
spent the previous evening. I answered her in few words, omitting many
details, and trying to give the most innocent air to everything.
“Anyway, they’re people who’re not _comme il faut_,” my mother
commented, “and you’ve no business to be hanging about there, instead
of preparing yourself for the examination, and doing your work.”
As I was well aware that my mother’s anxiety about my studies was
confined to these few words, I did not feel it necessary to make any
rejoinder; but after morning tea was over, my father took me by the
arm, and turning into the garden with me, forced me to tell him all I
had seen at the Zasyekins’.
A curious influence my father had over me, and curious were the
relations existing between us. He took hardly any interest in my
education, but he never hurt my feelings; he respected my freedom, he
treated me—if I may so express it—with courtesy,… only he never let me
be really close to him. I loved him, I admired him, he was my ideal of
a man—and Heavens! how passionately devoted I should have been to him,
if I had not been continually conscious of his holding me off! But when
he liked, he could almost instantaneously, by a single word, a single
gesture, call forth an unbounded confidence in him. My soul expanded, I
chattered away to him, as to a wise friend, a kindly teacher … then he
as suddenly got rid of me, and again he was keeping me off, gently and
affectionately, but still he kept me off.
Sometimes he was in high spirits, and then he was ready to romp and
frolic with me, like a boy (he was fond of vigorous physical exercise
of every sort); once—it never happened a second time!—he caressed me
with such tenderness that I almost shed tears…. But high spirits and
tenderness alike vanished completely, and what had passed between us,
gave me nothing to build on for the future—it was as though I had
dreamed it all. Sometimes I would scrutinise his clever handsome bright
face … my heart would throb, and my whole being yearn to him … he would
seem to feel what was going on within me, would give me a passing pat
on the cheek, and go away, or take up some work, or suddenly freeze all
over as only he knew how to freeze, and I shrank into myself at once,
and turned cold too. His rare fits of friendliness to me were never
called forth by my silent, but intelligible entreaties: they always
occurred unexpectedly. Thinking over my father’s character later, I
have come to the conclusion that he had no thoughts to spare for me and
for family life; his heart was in other things, and found complete
satisfaction elsewhere. “Take for yourself what you can, and don’t be
ruled by others; to belong to oneself—the whole savour of life lies in
that,” he said to me one day. Another time, I, as a young democrat,
fell to airing my views on liberty (he was “kind,” as I used to call
it, that day; and at such times I could talk to him as I liked).
“Liberty,” he repeated; “and do you know what can give a man liberty?”
“What?”
“Will, his own will, and it gives power, which is better than liberty.
Know how to will, and you will be free, and will lead.”
“My father, before all, and above all, desired to live, and lived….
Perhaps he had a presentiment that he would not have long to enjoy the
“savour” of life: he died at forty-two.
I described my evening at the Zasyekins’ minutely to my father. Half
attentively, half carelessly, he listened to me, sitting on a garden
seat, drawing in the sand with his cane. Now and then he laughed, shot
bright, droll glances at me, and spurred me on with short questions and
assents. At first I could not bring myself even to utter the name of
Zinaïda, but I could not restrain myself long, and began singing her
praises. My father still laughed; then he grew thoughtful, stretched,
and got up. I remembered that as he came out of the house he had
ordered his horse to be saddled. He was a splendid horseman, and, long
before Rarey, had the secret of breaking in the most vicious horses.
“Shall I come with you, father?” I asked.
“No,” he answered, and his face resumed its ordinary expression of
friendly indifference. “Go alone, if you like; and tell the coachman
I’m not going.”
He turned his back on me and walked rapidly away. I looked after him;
he disappeared through the gates. I saw his hat moving along beside the
fence; he went into the Zasyekins’.
He stayed there not more than an hour, but then departed at once for
the town, and did not return home till evening.
After dinner I went myself to the Zasyekins’. In the drawing-room I
found only the old princess. On seeing me she scratched her head under
her cap with a knitting-needle, and suddenly asked me, could I copy a
petition for her.
“With pleasure,” I replied, sitting down on the edge of a chair.
“Only mind and make the letters bigger,” observed the princess, handing
me a dirty sheet of paper; “and couldn’t you do it to-day, my good
sir?”
“Certainly, I will copy it to-day.”
The door of the next room was just opened, and in the crack I saw the