‘He is the best and happiest!’ a voice was saying. But something was pressing more and more heavily on Albert. Whether it was the moon and the water, her embraces, or his tears, he did not know, but he felt he would not be able to say all that was necessary, and that soon all would be over.
Two visitors, leaving Anna Ivánovna’s house, stumbled over Albert, who lay stretched out on the threshold. One of them went back and called the hostess.
‘Why, this is inhuman!’ he said. ‘You might let a man freeze like that!’
‘Ah, that Albert! I’m sick to death of him!’ replied the hostess. ‘Ánnushka, lay him down somewhere in a room,’ she said to the maid.
‘But I am alive – why bury me?’ muttered Albert, as they carried him insensible into the room.
1 In addition to its proper meaning, the word ‘artist’ was used in Russian to denote a thief, or a man dexterous at anything, good or bad.
2 Opera by Bellini, produced in 1831.
3 Lucia di Lammermoor, an opera by Donizetti, produced in 1835.
4 Robert the Devil, an opera by Meyerbeer, produced in 1831, or possibly the allusion may be to Roberto Devereux by Donizetti.
5 Pauline Viardot-Garcia. A celebrated operatic singer with whom Turgenev had a close friendship for many years.
6 Rubini. An Italian tenor who had great success in Russia in the 1840s.
7 Angidina Bosio, an Italian singer, who was in Petersburg in 1856–9.
8 Luigi Lablache. He was regarded as the chief basso of his time.
9 ‘And even if the clouds do hide it The sun remains for ever clear.’
10 ‘I, too, have lived and enjoyed.’
11 To be free to go from place to place it was necessary to have a properly stamped passport from the police.
FAMILY HAPPINESS
A NOVEL
Translated by J. D. Duff
PART I
Chapter I
WE were in mourning for my mother, who had died in the autumn, and I spent all that winter alone in the country with Kátya and Sónya.
Kátya was an old friend of the family, our governess who had brought us all up, and I had known and loved her since my earliest recollections. Sónya was my younger sister. It was a dark and sad winter which we spent in our old house of Pokróvskoe. The weather was cold and so windy that the snowdrifts came higher than the windows; the panes were almost always dimmed by frost, and we seldom walked or drove anywhere throughout the winter. Our visitors were few, and those who came brought no addition of cheerfulness or happiness to the household. They all wore sad faces and spoke low, as if they were afraid of waking someone; they never laughed, but sighed and often shed tears as they looked at me and especially at little Sónya in her black frock. The feeling of death clung to the house; the air was still filled with the grief and horror of death. My mother’s room was kept locked; and whenever I passed it on my way to bed, I felt a strange uncomfortable impulse to look into that cold empty room.
I was then seventeen; and in the very year of her death my mother was intending to move to Petersburg, in order to take me into society. The loss of my mother was a great grief to me; but I must confess to another feeling behind that grief – a feeling that though I was young and pretty (so everybody told me), I was wasting a second winter in the solitude of the country. Before the winter ended, this sense of dejection, solitude, and simple boredom increased to such an extent that I refused to leave my room or open the piano or take up a book. When Kátya urged me to find some occupation, I said that I did not feel able for it; but in my heart I said, ‘What is the good of it? What is the good of doing anything, when the best part of my life is being wasted like this?’ And to this question, tears were my only answer.
I was told that I was growing thin and losing my looks; but even this failed to interest me. What did it matter? For whom? I felt that my whole life was bound to go on in the same solitude and helpless dreariness, from which I had myself no strength and even no wish to escape. Towards the end of winter Kátya became anxious about me and determined to make an effort to take me abroad. But money was needed for this, and we hardly knew how our affairs stood after my mother’s death. Our guardian, who was to come and clear up our position, was expected every day.
In March he arrived.
‘Well, thank God!’ Kátya said to me one day, when I was walking up and down the room like a shadow, without occupation, without a thought, and without a wish. ‘Sergéy Mikháylych has arrived; he has sent to inquire about us and means to come here for dinner. You must rouse yourself, dear Máshechka,’ she added, ‘or what will he think of you? He was so fond of you all.’
Sergéy Mikháylych was our near neighbour, and, though a much younger man, had been a friend of my father’s. His coming was likely to change our plans and to make it possible to leave the country; and also I had grown up in the habit of love and regard for him; and when Kátya begged me to rouse myself, she guessed rightly that it would give me especial pain to show to disadvantage before him, more than before any other of our friends. Like everyone in the house, from Kátya and his god-daughter Sónya down to the helper in the stables, I loved him from old habit; and also he had a special significance for me, owing to a remark which my mother had once made in my presence. ‘I should like you to marry a man like him,’ she said. At the time this seemed to me strange and even unpleasant. My ideal husband was quite different: he was to be thin, pale, and sad; and Sergéy Mikháylych was middle-aged, tall, robust, and always, as it seemed to me, in good spirits. But still my mother’s words stuck in my head; and even six years before this time, when I was eleven, and he still said ‘thou’ to me, and played with me, and called me by the pet-name of ‘violet’ – even then I sometimes asked myself in a fright, ‘What shall I do, if he suddenly wants to marry me?’
Before our dinner, to which Kátya made an addition of sweets and a dish of spinach, Sergéy Mikháylych arrived. From the window I watched him drive up to the house in a small sleigh; but as soon as it turned the corner, I hastened to the drawing-room, meaning to pretend that his visit was a complete surprise. But when I heard his tramp and loud voice and Kátya’s footsteps in the hall, I lost patience and went to meet him myself. He was holding Kátya’s hand, talking loud, and smiling. When he saw me, he stopped and looked at me for a time without bowing. I was uncomfortable and felt myself blushing.