Platonida Ivanovna was unspeakably rejoiced at her nephew’s return. There
was no terrible chance she had not imagined during his absence. ‘Siberia at
least!’ she muttered, sitting rigidly still in her little room; ‘at least
for a year!’ The cook too had terrified her by the most well-authenticated
stories of the disappearance of this and that young man of the
neighbourhood. The perfect innocence and absence of revolutionary ideas in
Yasha did not in the least reassure the old lady. ‘For indeed ... if you
come to that, he studies photography ... and that’s quite enough for them
to arrest him!’ ‘And behold, here was her darling Yasha back again, safe
and sound. She observed, indeed, that he seemed thinner, and looked hollow
in the face; natural enough, with no one to look after him! but she did not
venture to question him about his journey. She asked at dinner. ‘And is
Kazan a fine town?’ ‘Yes,’ answered Aratov. ‘I suppose they’re all Tartars
living there?’ ‘Not only Tartars.’ ‘And did you get a Kazan dressing-gown
while you were there?’ ‘No, I didn’t.’ With that the conversation ended.
But as soon as Aratov found himself alone in his own room, he quickly felt
as though something were enfolding him about, as though he were once more
_in the power_, yes, in the power of another life, another being. Though he
had indeed said to Anna in that sudden delirious outburst that he was in
love with Clara, that saying struck even him now as senseless and frantic.
No, he was not in love; and how could he be in love with a dead woman, whom
he had not even liked in her lifetime, whom he had almost forgotten? No,
but he was in _her_ power ... he no longer belonged to himself. He was
_captured_. So completely captured, that he did not even attempt to free
himself by laughing at his own absurdity, nor by trying to arouse if not
a conviction, at least a hope in himself that it would all pass, that it
was nothing but nerves, nor by seeking for proofs, nor by anything! ‘If
I meet him, I will capture him,’ he recalled those words of Clara’s Anna
had repeated to him. Well, he was captured. But was not she dead? Yes,
her body was dead ... but her soul?... is not that immortal?... does it
need corporeal organs to show its power? Magnetism has proved to us the
influence of one living human soul over another living human soul.... Why
should not this influence last after death, if the soul remains living? But
to what end? What can come of it? But can we, as a rule, apprehend what is
the object of all that takes place about us? These ideas so absorbed Aratov
that he suddenly asked Platosha at tea-time whether she believed in the
immortality of the soul. She did not for the first minute understand what
his question was, then she crossed herself and answered. ‘She should think
so indeed! The soul not immortal!’ ‘And, if so, can it have any influence
after death?’ Aratov asked again. The old lady replied that it could ...
pray for us, that is to say; at least, when it had passed through all its
ordeals, awaiting the last dread judgment. But for the first forty days the
soul simply hovered about the place where its death had occurred.
‘The first forty days?’
‘Yes; and then the ordeals follow.’
Aratov was astounded at his aunt’s knowledge, and went off to his room.
And again he felt the same thing, the same power over him. This power
showed itself in Clara’s image being constantly before him to the minutest
details, such details as he seemed hardly to have observed in her lifetime;
he saw ... saw her fingers, her nails, the little hairs on her cheeks near
her temples, the little mole under her left eye; he saw the slight movement
of her lips, her nostrils, her eyebrows ... and her walk, and how she held
her head a little on the right side ... he saw everything. He did not by
any means take a delight in it all, only he could not help thinking of it
and seeing it. The first night after his return he did not, however, dream
of her ... he was very tired, and slept like a log. But directly he waked
up, she came back into his room again, and seemed to establish herself
in it, as though she were the mistress, as though by her voluntary death
she had purchased the right to it, without asking him or needing his
permission. He took up her photograph, he began reproducing it, enlarging
it. Then he took it into his head to fit it to the stereoscope. He had
a great deal of trouble to do it ... at last he succeeded. He fairly
shuddered when through the glass he looked upon her figure, with the
semblance of corporeal solidity given it by the stereoscope. But the figure
was grey, as though covered with dust ... and moreover the eyes--the eyes
looked always to one side, as though turning away. A long, long while
he stared at them, as though expecting them to turn to him ... he even
half-closed his eyelids on purpose ... but the eyes remained immovable, and
the whole figure had the look of some sort of doll. He moved away, flung
himself in an armchair, took out the leaf from her diary, with the words
underlined, and thought, ‘Well, lovers, they say, kiss the words traced
by the hand of the beloved--but I feel no inclination to do that--and the
handwriting I think ugly. But that line contains my sentence.’ Then he
recalled the promise he had made Anna about the article. He sat down to
the table, and set to work upon it, but everything he wrote struck him
as so false, so rhetorical ... especially so false ... as though he did
not believe in what he was writing nor in his own feelings.... And Clara
herself seemed so utterly unknown and uncomprehended! She seemed to
withhold herself from him. ‘No!’ he thought, throwing down the pen ...
‘either authorship’s altogether not my line, or I must wait a little!’ He
fell to recalling his visit to the Milovidovs, and all Anna had told him,
that sweet, delightful Anna.... A word she had uttered--‘pure’--suddenly
struck him. It was as though something scorched him, and shed light. ‘Yes,’
he said aloud, ‘she was pure, and I am pure.... That’s what gave her this
power.’
Thoughts of the immortality of the soul, of the life beyond the grave
crowded upon him again. Was it not said in the Bible: ‘Death, where is thy
sting?’ And in Schiller: ‘And the dead shall live!’ (Auch die Todten sollen
leben!)
And too, he thought, in Mitskevitch: ‘I will love thee to the end of time
... and beyond it!’ And an English writer had said: ‘Love is stronger than
death.’ The text from Scripture produced particular effect on Aratov....
He tried to find the place where the words occurred.... He had no Bible;
he went to ask Platosha for one. She wondered, she brought out, however, a
very old book in a warped leather binding, with copper clasps, covered with
candle wax, and handed it over to Aratov. He bore it off to his own room,
but for a long time he could not find the text ... he stumbled, however, on
another: ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life
for his friends’ (S. John xv. 13).
He thought: ‘That’s not right. It ought to be: Greater _power_ hath no
man.’
‘But if she did not lay down her life for me at all? If she made an end of
herself simply because life had become a burden to her? What if, after all,
she did not come to that meeting for anything to do with love at all?’
But at that instant he pictured to himself Clara before their parting on
the boulevard.... He remembered the look of pain on her face, and the tears
and the words, ‘Ah, you understood nothing!’
No! he could have no doubt why and for whom she had laid down her life....
So passed that whole day till night-time.