I
WHEN visitors to the provincial town S---- complained of the dreariness
and monotony of life, the inhabitants of the town, as though defending
themselves, declared that it was very nice in S----, that there was a
library, a theatre, a club; that they had balls; and, finally, that
there were clever, agreeable, and interesting families with whom one
could make acquaintance. And they used to point to the family of the
Turkins as the most highly cultivated and talented.
This family lived in their own house in the principal street, near the
Governor's. Ivan Petrovitch Turkin himself--a stout, handsome, dark man
with whiskers--used to get up amateur performances for benevolent
objects, and used to take the part of an elderly general and cough very
amusingly. He knew a number of anecdotes, charades, proverbs, and was
fond of being humorous and witty, and he always wore an expression from
which it was impossible to tell whether he were joking or in earnest.
His wife, Vera Iosifovna--a thin, nice-looking lady who wore a
pince-nez--used to write novels and stories, and was very fond of
reading them aloud to her visitors. The daughter, Ekaterina Ivanovna, a
young girl, used to play on the piano. In short, every member of the
family had a special talent. The Turkins welcomed visitors, and
good-humouredly displayed their talents with genuine simplicity. Their
stone house was roomy and cool in summer; half of the windows looked
into a shady old garden, where nightingales used to sing in the spring.
When there were visitors in the house, there was a clatter of knives in
the kitchen and a smell of fried onions in the yard--and that was always
a sure sign of a plentiful and savoury supper to follow.
And as soon as Dmitri Ionitch Startsev was appointed the district
doctor, and took up his abode at Dyalizh, six miles from S----, he, too,
was told that as a cultivated man it was essential for him to make the
acquaintance of the Turkins. In the winter he was introduced to Ivan
Petrovitch in the street; they talked about the weather, about the
theatre, about the cholera; an invitation followed. On a holiday in the
spring--it was Ascension Day--after seeing his patients, Startsev set
off for town in search of a little recreation and to make some
purchases. He walked in a leisurely way (he had not yet set up his
carriage), humming all the time:
"'Before I'd drunk the tears from life's goblet....'"
In town he dined, went for a walk in the gardens, then Ivan
Petrovitch's invitation came into his mind, as it were of itself,
and he decided to call on the Turkins and see what sort of people
they were.
"How do you do, if you please?" said Ivan Petrovitch, meeting him
on the steps. "Delighted, delighted to see such an agreeable visitor.
Come along; I will introduce you to my better half. I tell him,
Verotchka," he went on, as he presented the doctor to his wife--"I
tell him that he has no human right to sit at home in a hospital;
he ought to devote his leisure to society. Oughtn't he, darling?"
"Sit here," said Vera Iosifovna, making her visitor sit down beside
her. "You can dance attendance on me. My husband is jealous--he
is an Othello; but we will try and behave so well that he will
notice nothing."
"Ah, you spoilt chicken!" Ivan Petrovitch muttered tenderly, and
he kissed her on the forehead. "You have come just in the nick of
time," he said, addressing the doctor again. "My better half has
written a 'hugeous' novel, and she is going to read it aloud to-day."
"Petit Jean," said Vera Iosifovna to her husband, "dites que l'on
nous donne du thé."
Startsev was introduced to Ekaterina Ivanovna, a girl of eighteen,
very much like her mother, thin and pretty. Her expression was still
childish and her figure was soft and slim; and her developed girlish
bosom, healthy and beautiful, was suggestive of spring, real spring.
Then they drank tea with jam, honey, and sweetmeats, and with very
nice cakes, which melted in the mouth. As the evening came on, other
visitors gradually arrived, and Ivan Petrovitch fixed his laughing
eyes on each of them and said:
"How do you do, if you please?"
Then they all sat down in the drawing-room with very serious faces,
and Vera Iosifovna read her novel. It began like this: "The frost
was intense...." The windows were wide open; from the kitchen
came the clatter of knives and the smell of fried onions.... It
was comfortable in the soft deep arm-chair; the lights had such a
friendly twinkle in the twilight of the drawing-room, and at the
moment on a summer evening when sounds of voices and laughter floated
in from the street and whiffs of lilac from the yard, it was difficult
to grasp that the frost was intense, and that the setting sun was
lighting with its chilly rays a solitary wayfarer on the snowy
plain. Vera Iosifovna read how a beautiful young countess founded
a school, a hospital, a library, in her village, and fell in love
with a wandering artist; she read of what never happens in real
life, and yet it was pleasant to listen--it was comfortable, and
such agreeable, serene thoughts kept coming into the mind, one had
no desire to get up.
"Not badsome ..." Ivan Petrovitch said softly.
And one of the visitors hearing, with his thoughts far away, said
hardly audibly:
"Yes ... truly...."
One hour passed, another. In the town gardens close by a band was
playing and a chorus was singing. When Vera Iosifovna shut her
manuscript book, the company was silent for five minutes, listening
to "Lutchina" being sung by the chorus, and the song gave what was
not in the novel and is in real life.
"Do you publish your stories in magazines?" Startsev asked Vera
Iosifovna.
"No," she answered. "I never publish. I write it and put it away
in my cupboard. Why publish?" she explained. "We have enough to
live on."
And for some reason every one sighed.
"And now, Kitten, you play something," Ivan Petrovitch said to his
daughter.
The lid of the piano was raised and the music lying ready was opened.
Ekaterina Ivanovna sat down and banged on the piano with both hands,
and then banged again with all her might, and then again and again;
her shoulders and bosom shook. She obstinately banged on the same
notes, and it sounded as if she would not leave off until she had
hammered the keys into the piano. The drawing-room was filled with
the din; everything was resounding; the floor, the ceiling, the
furniture.... Ekaterina Ivanovna was playing a difficult passage,
interesting simply on account of its difficulty, long and monotonous,
and Startsev, listening, pictured stones dropping down a steep hill
and going on dropping, and he wished they would leave off dropping;
and at the same time Ekaterina Ivanovna, rosy from the violent
exercise, strong and vigorous, with a lock of hair falling over her
forehead, attracted him very much. After the winter spent at Dyalizh
among patients and peasants, to sit in a drawing-room, to watch
this young, elegant, and, in all probability, pure creature, and
to listen to these noisy, tedious but still cultured sounds, was
so pleasant, so novel....
"Well, Kitten, you have played as never before," said Ivan Petrovitch,
with tears in his eyes, when his daughter had finished and stood
up. "Die, Denis; you won't write anything better."
All flocked round her, congratulated her, expressed astonishment,
declared that it was long since they had heard such music, and she
listened in silence with a faint smile, and her whole figure was
expressive of triumph.
"Splendid, superb!"
"Splendid," said Startsev, too, carried away by the general enthusiasm.
"Where have you studied?" he asked Ekaterina Ivanovna. "At the
Conservatoire?"
"No, I am only preparing for the Conservatoire, and till now have
been working with Madame Zavlovsky."
"Have you finished at the high school here?"
"Oh, no," Vera Iosifovna answered for her, "We have teachers for
her at home; there might be bad influences at the high school or a
boarding school, you know. While a young girl is growing up, she
ought to be under no influence but her mother's."
"All the same, I'm going to the Conservatoire," said Ekaterina
Ivanovna.
"No. Kitten loves her mamma. Kitten won't grieve papa and mamma."
"No, I'm going, I'm going," said Ekaterina Ivanovna, with playful
caprice and stamping her foot.
And at supper it was Ivan Petrovitch who displayed his talents.
Laughing only with his eyes, he told anecdotes, made epigrams, asked
ridiculous riddles and answered them himself, talking the whole
time in his extraordinary language, evolved in the course of prolonged
practice in witticism and evidently now become a habit: "Badsome,"
"Hugeous," "Thank you most dumbly," and so on.
But that was not all. When the guests, replete and satisfied, trooped
into the hall, looking for their coats and sticks, there bustled
about them the footman Pavlusha, or, as he was called in the family,
Pava--a lad of fourteen with shaven head and chubby cheeks.
"Come, Pava, perform!" Ivan Petrovitch said to him.
Pava struck an attitude, flung up his arm, and said in a tragic
tone: "Unhappy woman, die!"
And every one roared with laughter.
"It's entertaining," thought Startsev, as he went out into the
street.
He went to a restaurant and drank some beer, then set off to walk
home to Dyalizh; he walked all the way singing:
"'Thy voice to me so languid and caressing....'"
On going to bed, he felt not the slightest fatigue after the six miles'
walk. On the contrary, he felt as though he could with pleasure have
walked another twenty.
"Not badsome," he thought, and laughed as he fell asleep.