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Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories

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The Novels Of Ivan Turgenev


KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK
And Other Stories


Translated From The Russian
By
Constance Garnett

* * * * *

CONTENTS:

KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK

THE INN

LIEUTENANT YERGUNOV'S STORY

THE DOG

THE WATCH

* * * * *

KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK

A STUDY

I

We all settled down in a circle and our good friend Alexandr
Vassilyevitch Ridel (his surname was German but he was Russian to the
marrow of his bones) began as follows:

I am going to tell you a story, friends, of something that happened to
me in the 'thirties ... forty years ago as you see. I will be
brief--and don't you interrupt me.

I was living at the time in Petersburg and had only just left the
University. My brother was a lieutenant in the horse-guard artillery.
His battery was stationed at Krasnoe Selo--it was summer time. My
brother lodged not at Krasnoe Selo itself but in one of the
neighbouring villages; I stayed with him more than once and made the
acquaintance of all his comrades. He was living in a fairly decent
cottage, together with another officer of his battery, whose name was
Ilya Stepanitch Tyeglev. I became particularly friendly with him.

Marlinsky is out of date now--no one reads him--and even his name is
jeered at; but in the 'thirties his fame was above everyone's--and in
the opinion of the young people of the day Pushkin could not hold
candle to him. He not only enjoyed the reputation of being the
foremost Russian writer; but--something much more difficult and more
rarely met with--he did to some extent leave his mark on his
generation. One came across heroes _à la_ Marlinsky everywhere,
especially in the provinces and especially among infantry and
artillery men; they talked and corresponded in his language; behaved
with gloomy reserve in society--"with tempest in the soul and flame in
the blood" like Lieutenant Byelosov in the "_Frigate Hope_."
Women's hearts were "devoured" by them. The adjective applied to them
in those days was "fatal." The type, as we all know, survived for many
years, to the days of Petchorin. [Footnote: The leading character in
Lermontov's _A Hero of Our Time_.--_Translator's Note_.] All
sorts of elements were mingled in that type. Byronism, romanticism,
reminiscences of the French Revolution, of the Dekabrists--and the
worship of Napoleon; faith in destiny, in one's star, in strength of
will; pose and fine phrases--and a miserable sense of the emptiness of
life; uneasy pangs of petty vanity--and genuine strength and daring;
generous impulses--and defective education, ignorance; aristocratic
airs--and delight in trivial foppery.... But enough of these general
reflections. I promised to tell you the story.

II

Lieutenant Tyeglev belonged precisely to the class of those "fatal"
individuals, though he did not possess the exterior commonly
associated with them; he was not, for instance, in the least like
Lermontov's "fatalist." He was a man of medium height, fairly solid
and round-shouldered, with fair, almost white eyebrows and eyelashes;
he had a round, fresh, rosy-cheeked face, a turn-up nose, a low
forehead with the hair growing thick over the temples, and full,
well-shaped, always immobile lips: he never laughed, never even smiled.
Only when he was tired and out of heart he showed his square teeth,
white as sugar. The same artificial immobility was imprinted on all his
features: had it not been for that, they would have had a good-natured
expression. His small green eyes with yellow lashes were the
only thing not quite ordinary in his face: his right eye was very
slightly higher than his left and the left eyelid drooped a little,
which made his eyes look different, strange and drowsy. Tyeglev's
countenance, which was not, however, without a certain attractiveness,
almost always wore an expression of discontent mingled with
perplexity, as though he were chasing within himself a gloomy thought
which he was never able to catch. At the same time he did not give one
the impression of being stuck up: he might rather have been taken for
an aggrieved than a haughty man. He spoke very little, hesitatingly,
in a husky voice, with unnecessary repetitions. Unlike most
"fatalists," he did not use particularly elaborate expressions in
speaking and only had recourse to them in writing; his handwriting was
quite like a child's. His superiors regarded him as an officer of no
great merit--not particularly capable and not over-zealous. The
brigadier-general, a man of German extraction, used to say of him: "He
has punctuality but not precision." With the soldiers, too, Tyeglev
had the character of being neither one thing nor the other. He lived
modestly, in accordance with his means. He had been left an orphan at
nine years old: his father and mother were drowned when they were
being ferried across the Oka in the spring floods. He had been
educated at a private school, where he had the reputation of being one
of the slowest and quietest of the boys, and at his own earnest desire
and through the good offices of a cousin who was a man of influence,
he obtained a commission in the horse-guards artillery; and, though
with some difficulty, passed his examination first as an ensign and
then as a second lieutenant. His relations with other officers were
somewhat strained. He was not liked, was rarely visited--and he
hardly went to see anyone. He felt the presence of strangers a
constraint; he instantly became awkward and unnatural ... he had no
instinct for comradeship and was not on really intimate terms with
anyone. But he was respected, and respected not for his character nor
for his intelligence and education--but because the stamp which
distinguishes "fatal" people was discerned in him. No one of his
fellow officers expected that Tyeglev would make a career or
distinguish himself in any way; but that Tyeglev might do something
extraordinary or that Tyeglev might become a Napoleon was not
considered impossible. For that is a matter of a man's "star"--and he
was regarded as a "man of destiny," just as there are "men of sighs"
and "of tears."

III

Two incidents that marked the first steps in his career did a great
deal to strengthen his "fatal" reputation. On the very first day after
receiving his commission--about the middle of March--he was walking
with other newly promoted officers in full dress uniform along the
embankment. The spring had come early that year, the Neva was melting;
the bigger blocks of ice had gone but the whole river was choked up
with a dense mass of thawing icicles. The young men were talking and
laughing ... suddenly one of them stopped: he saw a little dog some
twenty paces from the bank on the slowly moving surface of the river.
Perched on a projecting piece of ice it was whining and trembling all
over. "It will be drowned," said the officer through his teeth. The
dog was slowly being carried past one of the sloping gangways that led
down to the river. All at once Tyeglev without saying a word ran down
this gangway and over the thin ice, sinking in and leaping out again,
reached the dog, seized it by the scruff of the neck and getting
safely back to the bank, put it down on the pavement. The danger to
which Tyeglev had exposed himself was so great, his action was so
unexpected, that his companions were dumbfoundered--and only spoke all
at once, when he had called a cab to drive home: his uniform was wet
all over. In response to their exclamations, Tyeglev replied coolly
that there was no escaping one's destiny--and told the cabman to drive
on.

"You might at least take the dog with you as a souvenir," cried one of
the officers. But Tyeglev merely waved his hand, and his comrades
looked at each other in silent amazement.

The second incident occurred a few days later, at a card party at the
battery commander's. Tyeglev sat in the corner and took no part in the
play. "Oh, if only I had a grandmother to tell me beforehand what
cards will win, as in Pushkin's _Queen of Spades_," cried a
lieutenant whose losses had nearly reached three thousand. Tyeglev
approached the table in silence, took up a pack, cut it, and saying
"the six of diamonds," turned the pack up: the six of diamonds was the
bottom card. "The ace of clubs!" he said and cut again: the bottom
card turned out to be the ace of clubs. "The king of diamonds!" he
said for the third time in an angry whisper through his clenched
teeth--and he was right the third time, too ... and he suddenly turned
crimson. He probably had not expected it himself. "A capital trick! Do
it again," observed the commanding officer of the battery. "I don't go
in for tricks," Tyeglev answered drily and walked into the other room.
How it happened that he guessed the card right, I can't pretend to
explain: but I saw it with my own eyes. Many of the players present
tried to do the same--and not one of them succeeded: one or two did
guess _one_ card but never two in succession. And Tyeglev had
guessed three! This incident strengthened still further his reputation
as a mysterious, fatal character. It has often occurred to me since
that if he had not succeeded in the trick with the cards, there is no
knowing what turn it would have taken and how he would have looked at
himself; but this unexpected success clinched the matter.

IV

It may well be understood that Tyeglev clutched at this reputation. It
gave him a special significance, a special colour ... "_Cela le
posait_," as the French express it--and with his limited
intelligence, scanty education and immense vanity, such a reputation
just suited him. It was difficult to acquire it but to keep it up cost
nothing: he had only to remain silent and hold himself aloof. But it
was not owing to this reputation that I made friends with Tyeglev and,
I may say, grew fond of him. I liked him in the first place because I
was rather an unsociable creature myself--and saw in him one of my own
sort, and secondly, because he was a very good-natured fellow and in
reality, very simple-hearted. He aroused in me a feeling of something
like compassion; it seemed to me that apart from his affected
"fatality," he really was weighed down by a tragic fate which he did
not himself suspect. I need hardly say I did not express this feeling
to him: could anything be more insulting to a "fatal" hero than to be
an object of pity? And Tyeglev, on his side, was well-disposed to me;
with me he felt at ease, with me he used to talk--in my presence he
ventured to leave the strange pedestal on which he had been placed
either by his own efforts or by chance. Agonisingly, morbidly vain as
he was, yet he was probably aware in the depths of his soul that there
was nothing to justify his vanity, and that others might perhaps look
down on him ... but I, a boy of nineteen, put no constraint on him;
the dread of saying something stupid, inappropriate, did not oppress
his ever-apprehensive heart in my presence. He sometimes even
chattered freely; and well it was for him that no one heard his
chatter except me! His reputation would not have lasted long. He not
only knew very little, but read hardly anything and confined himself
to picking up stories and anecdotes of a certain kind. He believed in
presentiments, predictions, omens, meetings, lucky and unlucky days,
in the persecution and benevolence of destiny, in the mysterious
significance of life, in fact. He even believed in certain
"climacteric" years which someone had mentioned in his presence and
the meaning of which he did not himself very well understand. "Fatal"
men of the true stamp ought not to betray such beliefs: they ought to
inspire them in others.... But I was the only one who knew Tyeglev on
that side.

V

One day--I remember it was St. Elijah's day, July 20th--I came to stay
with my brother and did not find him at home: he had been ordered off
for a whole week somewhere. I did not want to go back to Petersburg; I
sauntered about the neighbouring marshes, killed a brace of snipe and
spent the evening with Tyeglev under the shelter of an empty barn
where he had, as he expressed it, set up his summer residence. We had
a little conversation but for the most part drank tea, smoked pipes
and talked sometimes to our host, a Russianised Finn or to the pedlar
who used to hang about the battery selling "fi-ine oranges and
lemons," a charming and lively person who in addition to other talents
could play the guitar and used to tell us of the unhappy love which he
cherished in his young days for the daughter of a policeman. Now that
he was older, this Don Juan in a gay cotton shirt had no experience of
unsuccessful love affairs. Before the doors of our barn stretched a
wide plain gradually sloping away in the distance; a little river
gleamed here and there in the winding hollows; low growing woods could
be seen further on the horizon. Night was coming on and we were left
alone. As night fell a fine damp mist descended upon the earth, and,
growing thicker and thicker, passed into a dense fog. The moon rose up
into the sky; the fog was soaked through and through and, as it were,
shimmering with golden light. Everything was strangely shifting,
veiled and confused; the faraway looked near, the near looked far
away, what was big looked small and what was small looked big ...
everything became dim and full of light. We seemed to be in fairyland,
in a world of whitish-golden mist, deep stillness, delicate sleep....
And how mysteriously, like sparks of silver, the stars filtered
through the mist! We were both silent. The fantastic beauty of the
night worked upon us: it put us into the mood for the fantastic.

VI

Tyeglev was the first to speak and talked with his usual hesitating
incompleted sentences and repetitions about presentiments ... about
ghosts. On exactly such a night, according to him, one of his friends,
a student who had just taken the place of tutor to two orphans and was
sleeping with them in a lodge in the garden, saw a woman's figure
bending over their beds and next day recognised the figure in a
portrait of the mother of the orphans which he had not previously
noticed. Then Tyeglev told me that his parents had heard for several
days before their death the sound of rushing water; that his
grandfather had been saved from death in the battle of Borodino
through suddenly stooping down to pick up a simple grey pebble at the
very instant when a volley of grape-shot flew over his head and broke
his long black plume. Tyeglev even promised to show me the very pebble
which had saved his grandfather and which he had mounted into a
medallion. Then he talked of the lofty destination of every man and of
his own in particular and added that he still believed in it and that
if he ever had any doubts on that subject he would know how to be rid
of them and of his life, as life would then lose all significance for
him. "You imagine perhaps," he brought out, glancing askance at me,
"that I shouldn't have the spirit to do it? You don't know me ... I
have a will of iron."

"Well said," I thought to myself.

Tyeglev pondered, heaved a deep sigh and dropping his chibouk out of
his hand, informed me that that day was a very important one for him.
"This is the prophet Elijah's day--my name day.... It is ... it is
always for me a difficult time."

I made no answer and only looked at him as he sat facing me, bent,
round-shouldered, and clumsy, with his drowsy, lustreless eyes fixed
on the ground.

"An old beggar woman" (Tyeglev never let a single beggar pass without
giving alms) "told me to-day," he went on, "that she would pray for my
soul.... Isn't that strange?"

"Why does the man want to be always bothering about himself!" I
thought again. I must add, however, that of late I had begun noticing
an unusual expression of anxiety and uneasiness on Tyeglev's face, and
it was not a "fatal" melancholy: something really was fretting and
worrying him. On this occasion, too, I was struck by the dejected
expression of his face. Were not those very doubts of which he had
spoken to me beginning to assail him? Tyeglev's comrades had told me
that not long before he had sent to the authorities a project for some
reforms in the artillery department and that the project had been
returned to him "with a comment," that is, a reprimand. Knowing his
character, I had no doubt that such contemptuous treatment by his
superior officers had deeply mortified him. But the change that I
fancied I saw in Tyeglev was more like sadness and there was a more
personal note about it.

"It's getting damp, though," he brought out at last and he shrugged
his shoulders. "Let us go into the hut--and it's bed-time, too." He
had the habit of shrugging his shoulders and turning his head from
side to side, putting his right hand to his throat as he did so, as
though his cravat were constricting it. Tyeglev's character was
expressed, so at least it seemed to me, in this uneasy and nervous
movement. He, too, felt constricted in the world.

We went back into the hut, and both lay down on benches, he in the
corner facing the door and I on the opposite side.

VII

Tyeglev was for a long time turning from side to side on his bench and
I could not get to sleep, either. Whether his stories had excited my
nerves or the strange night had fevered my blood--anyway, I could not
go to sleep. All inclination for sleep disappeared at last and I lay
with my eyes open and thought, thought intensely, goodness knows of
what; of most senseless trifles--as always happens when one is
sleepless. Turning from side to side I stretched out my hands.... My
finger hit one of the beams of the wall. It emitted a faint but
resounding, and as it were, prolonged note.... I must have struck a
hollow place.

I tapped again ... this time on purpose. The same sound was repeated.
I knocked again.... All at once Tyeglev raised his head.

"Ridel!" he said, "do you hear? Someone is knocking under the window."

I pretended to be asleep. The fancy suddenly took me to play a trick
at the expense of my "fatal" friend. I could not sleep, anyway.

He let his head sink on the pillow. I waited for a little and again
knocked three times in succession.

Tyeglev sat up again and listened. I tapped again. I was lying facing
him but he could not see my hand.... I put it behind me under the
bedclothes.

"Ridel!" cried Tyeglev.

I did not answer.

"Ridel!" he repeated loudly. "Ridel!"

"Eh? What is it?" I said as though just waking up.

"Don't you hear, someone keeps knocking under the window, wants to
come in, I suppose."

"Some passer-by," I muttered.

"Then we must let him in or find out who it is."

But I made no answer, pretending to be asleep.

Several minutes passed.... I tapped again. Tyeglev sat up at once and
listened.

"Knock ... knock ... knock! Knock ... knock ... knock!"

Through my half-closed eyelids in the whitish light of the night I
could distinctly see every movement he made. He turned his face first
to the window then to the door. It certainly was difficult to make out
where the sound came from: it seemed to float round the room, to glide
along the walls. I had accidentally hit upon a kind of sounding board.

"Ridel!" cried Tyeglev at last, "Ridel! Ridel!"

"Why, what is it?" I asked, yawning.

"Do you mean to say you don't hear anything? There is someone
knocking."

"Well, what if there is?" I answered and again pretended to be asleep
and even snored.

Tyeglev subsided.

"Knock ... knock ... knock!"

"Who is there?" Tyeglev shouted. "Come in!"

No one answered, of course.

"Knock ... knock ... knock!"

Tyeglev jumped out of bed, opened the window and thrusting out his
head, cried wildly, "Who is there? Who is knocking?" Then he
opened the door and repeated his question. A horse neighed in the
distance--that was all.

He went back towards his bed.

"Knock ... knock ... knock!"

Tyeglev instantly turned round and sat down.

"Knock ... knock ... knock!"

He rapidly put on his boots, threw his overcoat over his shoulders and
unhooking his sword from the wall, went out of the hut. I heard him
walk round it twice, asking all the time, "Who is there? Who goes
there? Who is knocking?" Then he was suddenly silent, stood still
outside near the corner where I was lying and without uttering another
word, came back into the hut and lay down without taking off his boots
and overcoat.

"Knock ... knock ... knock!" I began again. "Knock ... knock ...
knock!"

But Tyeglev did not stir, did not ask who was knocking, and merely
propped his head on his hand.

Seeing that this no longer acted, after an interval I pretended to
wake up and, looking at Tyeglev, assumed an air of astonishment.

"Have you been out?" I asked.

"Yes," he answered unconcernedly.

"Did you still hear the knocking?"

"Yes."

"And you met no one?"

"No."

"And did the knocking stop?"

"I don't know. I don't care now."

"Now? Why now?"

Tyeglev did not answer.

I felt a little ashamed and a little vexed with him. I could not bring
myself to acknowledge my prank, however.

"Do you know what?" I began, "I am convinced that it was all your
imagination."

Tyeglev frowned. "Ah, you think so!"

"You say you heard a knocking?"

"It was not only knocking I heard."

"Why, what else?"

Tyeglev bent forward and bit his lips. He was evidently hesitating.

"I was called!" he brought out at last in a low voice and turned away
his face.

"You were called? Who called you?"

"Someone...." Tyeglev still looked away. "A woman whom I had hitherto
only believed to be dead ... but now I know it for certain."

"I swear, Ilya Stepanitch," I cried, "this is all your imagination!"

"Imagination?" he repeated. "Would you like to hear it for yourself?"

"Yes."

"Then come outside."

VIII

I hurriedly dressed and went out of the hut with Tyeglev. On the side
opposite to it there were no houses, nothing but a low hurdle fence
broken down in places, beyond which there was a rather sharp slope
down to the plain. Everything was still shrouded in mist and one could
scarcely see anything twenty paces away. Tyeglev and I went up to the
hurdle and stood still.

"Here," he said and bowed his head. "Stand still, keep quiet and
listen!"

Like him I strained my ears, and I heard nothing except the ordinary,
extremely faint but universal murmur, the breathing of the night.
Looking at each other in silence from time to time we stood motionless
for several minutes and were just on the point of going on.

"Ilyusha ..." I fancied I heard a whisper from behind the hurdle.

I glanced at Tyeglev but he seemed to have heard nothing--and still
held his head bowed.

"Ilyusha ... ah, Ilyusha," sounded more distinctly than before--so
distinctly that one could tell that the words were uttered by a woman.

We both started and stared at each other.

"Well?" Tyeglev asked me in a whisper. "You won't doubt it now, will
you?"

"Wait a minute," I answered as quietly. "It proves nothing. We must
look whether there isn't anyone. Some practical joker...."

I jumped over the fence--and went in the direction from which, as far
as I could judge, the voice came.

I felt the earth soft and crumbling under my feet; long ridges
stretched before me vanishing into the mist. I was in the kitchen
garden. But nothing was stirring around me or before me. Everything
seemed spellbound in the numbness of sleep. I went a few steps
further.

"Who is there?" I cried as wildly as Tyeglev had.

"Prrr-r-r!" a startled corn-crake flew up almost under my feet and
flew away as straight as a bullet. Involuntarily I started.... What
foolishness!

I looked back. Tyeglev was in sight at the spot where I left him. I
went towards him.

"You will call in vain," he said. "That voice has come to us--to
me--from far away."

He passed his hand over his face and with slow steps crossed the road
towards the hut. But I did not want to give in so quickly and went
back into the kitchen garden. That someone really had three times
called "Ilyusha" I could not doubt; that there was something plaintive
and mysterious in the call, I was forced to own to myself.... But who
knows, perhaps all this only appeared to be unaccountable and in
reality could be explained as simply as the knocking which had
agitated Tyeglev so much.

I walked along beside the fence, stopping from time to time and
looking about me. Close to the fence, at no great distance from our
hut, there stood an old leafy willow tree; it stood out, a big dark
patch, against the whiteness of the mist all round, that dim whiteness
which perplexes and deadens the sight more than darkness itself. All
at once it seemed to me that something alive, fairly big, stirred on
the ground near the willow. Exclaiming "Stop! Who is there?" I rushed
forward. I heard scurrying footsteps, like a hare's; a crouching
figure whisked by me, whether man or woman I could not tell.... I
tried to clutch at it but did not succeed; I stumbled, fell down and
stung my face against a nettle. As I was getting up, leaning on the
ground, I felt something rough under my hand: it was a chased brass
comb on a cord, such as peasants wear on their belt.

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