I had not expected her to come back; but she quickly reappeared. She had
not even changed her dress, and sitting down in a corner, she looked
twice intently at me. Whether it was that she was conscious in my manner
to her of the involuntary respect, inexplicable to myself, which, more
than curiosity, more even than sympathy, she aroused in me, or whether
she was in a softened frame of mind that day, any way, she suddenly went
to the piano, and laying her hand irresolutely on the keys, and turning
her head a little over her shoulder towards me, she asked what I would
like her to play. Before I had time to answer she had seated herself,
taken up some music, hurriedly opened it, and begun to play. I loved
music from childhood, but at that time I had but little comprehension of
it, and very slight knowledge of the works of the great masters, and if
Mr. Ratsch had not grumbled with some dissatisfaction, 'Aha! wieder
dieser Beethoven!' I should not have guessed what Susanna had chosen. It
was, as I found out afterwards, the celebrated sonata in F minor, opus
57. Susanna's playing impressed me more than I can say; I had not
expected such force, such fire, such bold execution. At the very first
bars of the intensely passionate allegro, the beginning of the sonata, I
felt that numbness, that chill and sweet terror of ecstasy, which
instantaneously enwrap the soul when beauty bursts with sudden flight
upon it. I did not stir a limb till the very end. I kept, wanting--and
not daring--to sigh. I was sitting behind Susanna; I could not see her
face; I saw only from time to time her long dark hair tossed up and down
on her shoulders, her figure swaying impulsively, and her delicate arms
and bare elbows swiftly, and rather angularly, moving. The last notes
died away. I sighed at last. Susanna still sat before the piano.
'Ja, ja,' observed Mr. Ratsch, who had also, however, listened with
attention; 'romantische Musik! That's all the fashion nowadays. Only,
why not play correctly? Eh? Put your finger on two notes at once--what's
that for? Eh? To be sure, all we care for is to go quickly, quickly!
Turns it out hotter, eh? Hot pancakes!' he bawled like a street seller.
Susanna turned slightly towards Mr. Ratsch. I caught sight of her face
in profile. The delicate eyebrow rose high above the downcast eyelid, an
unsteady flush overspread the cheek, the little ear was red under the
lock pushed behind it.
'I have heard all the best performers with my own ears,' pursued Mr.
Ratsch, suddenly frowning, 'and compared with the late Field they were
all--tfoo! nil! zero!! Das war ein Kerl! Und ein so reines Spiel! And
his own compositions the finest things! But all those now
"tloo-too-too," and "tra-ta-ta," are written, I suppose, more for
beginners. Da braucht man keine Delicatesse! Bang the keys anyhow... no
matter! It'll turn out some how! Janitscharen Musik! Pugh!' (Ivan
Demianitch wiped his forehead with his handkerchief.) 'But I don't say
that for you, Susanna Ivanovna; you played well, and oughtn't to be hurt
by my remarks.'
'Every one has his own taste,' Susanna said in a low voice, and her lips
were trembling; 'but your remarks, Ivan Demianitch, you know, cannot
hurt me.'
'Oh! of course not! Only don't you imagine'--Mr. Ratsch turned to
me--'don't you imagine, my young friend, that that comes from our
excessive good-nature and meekness of spirit; it's simply that we fancy
ourselves so highly exalted that--oo-oo!--we can't keep our cap on our
head, as the Russian proverb says, and, of course, no criticism can
touch us. The conceit, my dear sir, the conceit!'
I listened in surprise to Mr. Ratsch. Spite, the bitterest spite, seemed
as it were boiling over in every word he uttered.... And long it must
have been rankling! It choked him. He tried to conclude his tirade with
his usual laugh, and fell into a husky, broken cough instead. Susanna
did not let drop a syllable in reply to him, only she shook her head,
raised her face, and clasping her elbows with her hands, stared straight
at him. In the depths of her fixed, wide-open eyes the hatred of long
years lay smouldering with dim, unquenchable fire. I felt ill at ease.
'You belong to two different musical generations,' I began, with an
effort at lightness, wishing by this lightness to suggest that I noticed
nothing, 'and so it is not surprising that you do not agree in your
opinions.... But, Ivan Demianitch, you must allow me to take rather...
the side of the younger generation. I'm an outsider, of course; but I
must confess nothing in music has ever made such an impression on me as
the... as what Susanna Ivanovna has just played us.'
Ratsch pounced at once upon me.
'And what makes you suppose,' he roared, still purple from the fit of
coughing, 'that we want to enlist you on our side? We don't want that at
all! Freedom for the free, salvation for the saved! But as to the two
generations, that's right enough; we old folks find it hard to get on
with you young people, very hard! Our ideas don't agree in anything:
neither in art, nor in life, nor even in morals; do they, Susanna
Ivanovna?'
Susanna smiled a contemptuous smile.
'Especially in regard to morals, as you say, our ideas do not agree, and
cannot agree,' she responded, and something menacing seemed to flit over
her brows, while her lips were faintly trembling as before.
'Of course! of course!' Ratsch broke in, 'I'm not a philosopher! I'm not
capable of... rising so superior! I'm a plain man, swayed by
prejudices--oh yes!'
Susanna smiled again.
'I think, Ivan Demianitch, you too have sometimes been able to place
yourself above what are called prejudices.'
'Wie so? How so, I mean? I don't know what you mean.'
'You don't know what I mean? Your memory's so bad!'
Mr. Ratsch seemed utterly taken aback.
'I... I...' he repeated, 'I...'
'Yes, you, Mr. Ratsch.'
There followed a brief silence.
'Really, upon my word...' Mr. Ratsch was beginning; 'how dare you...
such insolence...'
Susanna all at once drew herself up to her full height, and still
holding her elbows, squeezing them tight, drumming on them with her
fingers, she stood still facing Ratsch. She seemed to challenge him to
conflict, to stand up to meet him. Her face was changed; it became
suddenly, in one instant, extraordinarily beautiful, and terrible too; a
sort of bright, cold brilliance--the brilliance of steel--gleamed in her
lustreless eyes; the lips that had been quivering were compressed in one
straight, mercilessly stern line. Susanna challenged Ratsch, but he
gazed blankly, and suddenly subsiding into silence, all of a heap, so to
say, drew his head in, even stepped back a pace. The veteran of the year
twelve was afraid; there could be no mistake about that.
Susanna slowly turned her eyes from him to me, as though calling upon me
to witness her victory, and the humiliation of her foe, and, smiling
once more, she walked out of the room.
The veteran remained a little while motionless in his arm-chair; at
last, as though recollecting a forgotten part, he roused himself, got
up, and, slapping me on the shoulder, laughed his noisy guffaw.
'There, 'pon my soul! fancy now, it's over ten years I've been living
with that young lady, and yet she never can see when I'm joking, and
when I'm in earnest! And you too, my young friend, are a little puzzled,
I do believe.... Ha-ha-ha! That's because you don't know old Ratsch!'
'No.... I do know you now,' I thought, not without a feeling of some
alarm and disgust.
'You don't know the old fellow, you don't know him,' he repeated,
stroking himself on the stomach, as he accompanied me into the passage.
'I may be a tiresome person, knocked about by life, ha-ha! But I'm a
good-hearted fellow, 'pon my soul, I am!'
I rushed headlong from the stairs into the street. I longed with all
speed to get away from that good-hearted fellow.