A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

The Torrents of Spring

I >> Ivan Turgenev >> The Torrents of Spring



THE TORRENTS OF SPRING

BY IVAN TURGENEV

Translated from the Russian

BY CONSTANCE GARNETT

1897







CONTENTS


THE TORRENTS OF SPRING

FIRST LOVE

MUMU




THE TORRENTS OF SPRING


'Years of gladness,
Days of joy,
Like the torrents of spring
They hurried away.'

--_From an Old Ballad_.


... At two o'clock in the night he had gone back to his study. He had
dismissed the servant after the candles were lighted, and throwing
himself into a low chair by the hearth, he hid his face in both hands.

Never had he felt such weariness of body and of spirit. He had passed
the whole evening in the company of charming ladies and cultivated
men; some of the ladies were beautiful, almost all the men were
distinguished by intellect or talent; he himself had talked with great
success, even with brilliance ... and, for all that, never yet had
the _taedium vitae_ of which the Romans talked of old, the 'disgust
for life,' taken hold of him with such irresistible, such suffocating
force. Had he been a little younger, he would have cried with misery,
weariness, and exasperation: a biting, burning bitterness, like
the bitter of wormwood, filled his whole soul. A sort of clinging
repugnance, a weight of loathing closed in upon him on all sides like
a dark night of autumn; and he did not know how to get free from this
darkness, this bitterness. Sleep it was useless to reckon upon; he
knew he should not sleep.

He fell to thinking ... slowly, listlessly, wrathfully. He thought of
the vanity, the uselessness, the vulgar falsity of all things human.
All the stages of man's life passed in order before his mental gaze
(he had himself lately reached his fifty-second year), and not one
found grace in his eyes. Everywhere the same ever-lasting pouring of
water into a sieve, the ever-lasting beating of the air, everywhere
the same self-deception--half in good faith, half conscious--any toy
to amuse the child, so long as it keeps him from crying. And then, all
of a sudden, old age drops down like snow on the head, and with it the
ever-growing, ever-gnawing, and devouring dread of death ... and the
plunge into the abyss! Lucky indeed if life works out so to the end!
May be, before the end, like rust on iron, sufferings, infirmities
come.... He did not picture life's sea, as the poets depict it,
covered with tempestuous waves; no, he thought of that sea as a
smooth, untroubled surface, stagnant and transparent to its darkest
depths. He himself sits in a little tottering boat, and down below
in those dark oozy depths, like prodigious fishes, he can just make
out the shapes of hideous monsters: all the ills of life, diseases,
sorrows, madness, poverty, blindness.... He gazes, and behold, one
of these monsters separates itself off from the darkness, rises
higher and higher, stands out more and more distinct, more and more
loathsomely distinct.... An instant yet, and the boat that bears him
will be overturned! But behold, it grows dim again, it withdraws,
sinks down to the bottom, and there it lies, faintly stirring in the
slime.... But the fated day will come, and it will overturn the boat.

He shook his head, jumped up from his low chair, took two turns up and
down the room, sat down to the writing-table, and opening one drawer
after another, began to rummage among his papers, among old letters,
mostly from women. He could not have said why he was doing it; he was
not looking for anything--he simply wanted by some kind of external
occupation to get away from the thoughts oppressing him. Opening
several letters at random (in one of them there was a withered flower
tied with a bit of faded ribbon), he merely shrugged his shoulders,
and glancing at the hearth, he tossed them on one side, probably with
the idea of burning all this useless rubbish. Hurriedly, thrusting his
hands first into one, and then into another drawer, he suddenly opened
his eyes wide, and slowly bringing out a little octagonal box of
old-fashioned make, he slowly raised its lid. In the box, under two
layers of cotton wool, yellow with age, was a little garnet cross.

For a few instants he looked in perplexity at this cross--suddenly
he gave a faint cry.... Something between regret and delight was
expressed in his features. Such an expression a man's face wears when
he suddenly meets some one whom he has long lost sight of, whom he has
at one time tenderly loved, and who suddenly springs up before his
eyes, still the same, and utterly transformed by the years.

He got up, and going back to the hearth, he sat down again in the
arm-chair, and again hid his face in his hands.... 'Why to-day? just
to-day?' was his thought, and he remembered many things, long since
past.

This is what he remembered....

But first I must mention his name, his father's name and his surname.
He was called Dimitri Pavlovitch Sanin.

Here follows what he remembered.




I


It was the summer of 1840. Sanin was in his twenty-second year, and he
was in Frankfort on his way home from Italy to Russia. He was a man of
small property, but independent, almost without family ties. By the
death of a distant relative, he had come into a few thousand roubles,
and he had decided to spend this sum abroad before entering the
service, before finally putting on the government yoke, without which
he could not obtain a secure livelihood. Sanin had carried out this
intention, and had fitted things in to such a nicety that on the day
of his arrival in Frankfort he had only just enough money left to take
him back to Petersburg. In the year 1840 there were few railroads in
existence; tourists travelled by diligence. Sanin had taken a place in
the '_bei-wagon_'; but the diligence did not start till eleven o'clock
in the evening. There was a great deal of time to be got through
before then. Fortunately it was lovely weather, and Sanin after dining
at a hotel, famous in those days, the White Swan, set off to stroll
about the town. He went in to look at Danneker's Ariadne, which he did
not much care for, visited the house of Goethe, of whose works he had,
however, only read _Werter_, and that in the French translation. He
walked along the bank of the Maine, and was bored as a well-conducted
tourist should be; at last at six o'clock in the evening, tired, and
with dusty boots, he found himself in one of the least remarkable
streets in Frankfort. That street he was fated not to forget long,
long after. On one of its few houses he saw a signboard: 'Giovanni
Roselli, Italian confectionery,' was announced upon it. Sanin went
into it to get a glass of lemonade; but in the shop, where, behind
the modest counter, on the shelves of a stained cupboard, recalling
a chemist's shop, stood a few bottles with gold labels, and as many
glass jars of biscuits, chocolate cakes, and sweetmeats--in this room,
there was not a soul; only a grey cat blinked and purred, sharpening
its claws on a tall wicker chair near the window and a bright patch
of colour was made in the evening sunlight, by a big ball of red wool
lying on the floor beside a carved wooden basket turned upside down. A
confused noise was audible in the next room. Sanin stood a moment, and
making the bell on the door ring its loudest, he called, raising his
voice, 'Is there no one here?' At that instant the door from an inner
room was thrown open, and Sanin was struck dumb with amazement.




II


A young girl of nineteen ran impetuously into the shop, her dark curls
hanging in disorder on her bare shoulders, her bare arms stretched out
in front of her. Seeing Sanin, she rushed up to him at once, seized
him by the hand, and pulled him after her, saying in a breathless
voice, 'Quick, quick, here, save him!' Not through disinclination
to obey, but simply from excess of amazement, Sanin did not at once
follow the girl. He stood, as it were, rooted to the spot; he had
never in his life seen such a beautiful creature. She turned towards
him, and with such despair in her voice, in her eyes, in the gesture
of her clenched hand, which was lifted with a spasmodic movement to
her pale cheek, she articulated, 'Come, come!' that he at once darted
after her to the open door.

In the room, into which he ran behind the girl, on an old-fashioned
horse-hair sofa, lay a boy of fourteen, white all over--white, with
a yellowish tinge like wax or old marble--he was strikingly like the
girl, obviously her brother. His eyes were closed, a patch of shadow
fell from his thick black hair on a forehead like stone, and delicate,
motionless eyebrows; between the blue lips could be seen clenched
teeth. He seemed not to be breathing; one arm hung down to the floor,
the other he had tossed above his head. The boy was dressed, and his
clothes were closely buttoned; a tight cravat was twisted round his
neck.

The girl rushed up to him with a wail of distress. 'He is dead, he is
dead!' she cried; 'he was sitting here just now, talking to me--and
all of a sudden he fell down and became rigid.... My God! can nothing
be done to help him? And mamma not here! Pantaleone, Pantaleone, the
doctor!' she went on suddenly in Italian. 'Have you been for the
doctor?'

'Signora, I did not go, I sent Luise,' said a hoarse voice at the
door, and a little bandy-legged old man came hobbling into the room in
a lavender frock coat with black buttons, a high white cravat, short
nankeen trousers, and blue worsted stockings. His diminutive little
face was positively lost in a mass of iron-grey hair. Standing up in
all directions, and falling back in ragged tufts, it gave the old
man's figure a resemblance to a crested hen--a resemblance the more
striking, that under the dark-grey mass nothing could be distinguished
but a beak nose and round yellow eyes.

'Luise will run fast, and I can't run,' the old man went on in
Italian, dragging his flat gouty feet, shod in high slippers with
knots of ribbon. 'I've brought some water.'

In his withered, knotted fingers, he clutched a long bottle neck.

'But meanwhile Emil will die!' cried the girl, and holding out her
hand to Sanin, 'O, sir, O _mein Herr_! can't you do something for
him?'

'He ought to be bled--it's an apoplectic fit,' observed the old man
addressed as Pantaleone.

Though Sanin had not the slightest notion of medicine, he knew one
thing for certain, that boys of fourteen do not have apoplectic fits.

'It's a swoon, not a fit,' he said, turning to Pantaleone. 'Have you
got any brushes?'

The old man raised his little face. 'Eh?'

'Brushes, brushes,' repeated Sanin in German and in French. 'Brushes,'
he added, making as though he would brush his clothes.

The little old man understood him at last.

'Ah, brushes! _Spazzette_! to be sure we have!'

'Bring them here; we will take off his coat and try rubbing him.'

'Good ... _Benone_! And ought we not to sprinkle water on his head?'

'No ... later on; get the brushes now as quick as you can.'

Pantaleone put the bottle on the floor, ran out and returned at once
with two brushes, one a hair-brush, and one a clothes-brush. A curly
poodle followed him in, and vigorously wagging its tail, it looked up
inquisitively at the old man, the girl, and even Sanin, as though it
wanted to know what was the meaning of all this fuss.

Sanin quickly took the boy's coat off, unbuttoned his collar, and
pushed up his shirt-sleeves, and arming himself with a brush, he
began brushing his chest and arms with all his might. Pantaleone as
zealously brushed away with the other--the hair-brush--at his boots
and trousers. The girl flung herself on her knees by the sofa, and,
clutching her head in both hands, fastened her eyes, not an eyelash
quivering, on her brother.

Sanin rubbed on, and kept stealing glances at her. Mercy! what a
beautiful creature she was!




III


Her nose was rather large, but handsome, aquiline-shaped; her upper
lip was shaded by a light down; but then the colour of her face,
smooth, uniform, like ivory or very pale milky amber, the wavering
shimmer of her hair, like that of the Judith of Allorio in the
Palazzo-Pitti; and above all, her eyes, dark-grey, with a black ring
round the pupils, splendid, triumphant eyes, even now, when terror and
distress dimmed their lustre.... Sanin could not help recalling the
marvellous country he had just come from.... But even in Italy he had
never met anything like her! The girl drew slow, uneven breaths; she
seemed between each breath to be waiting to see whether her brother
would not begin to breathe.

Sanin went on rubbing him, but he did not only watch the girl. The
original figure of Pantaleone drew his attention too. The old man was
quite exhausted and panting; at every movement of the brush he hopped
up and down and groaned noisily, while his immense tufts of hair,
soaked with perspiration, flapped heavily from side to side, like the
roots of some strong plant, torn up by the water.

'You'd better, at least, take off his boots,' Sanin was just saying to
him.

The poodle, probably excited by the unusualness of all the
proceedings, suddenly sank on to its front paws and began barking.

'_Tartaglia--canaglia_!' the old man hissed at it. But at that instant
the girl's face was transformed. Her eyebrows rose, her eyes grew
wider, and shone with joy.

Sanin looked round ... A flush had over-spread the lad's face; his
eyelids stirred ... his nostrils twitched. He drew in a breath through
his still clenched teeth, sighed....

'Emil!' cried the girl ... 'Emilio mio!'

Slowly the big black eyes opened. They still had a dazed look, but
already smiled faintly; the same faint smile hovered on his pale lips.
Then he moved the arm that hung down, and laid it on his chest.

'Emilio!' repeated the girl, and she got up. The expression on her
face was so tense and vivid, that it seemed that in an instant either
she would burst into tears or break into laughter.

'Emil! what is it? Emil!' was heard outside, and a neatly-dressed lady
with silvery grey hair and a dark face came with rapid steps into the
room.

A middle-aged man followed her; the head of a maid-servant was visible
over their shoulders.

The girl ran to meet them.

'He is saved, mother, he is alive!' she cried, impulsively embracing
the lady who had just entered.

'But what is it?' she repeated. 'I come back ... and all of a sudden I
meet the doctor and Luise ...'

The girl proceeded to explain what had happened, while the doctor went
up to the invalid who was coming more and more to himself, and was
still smiling: he seemed to be beginning to feel shy at the commotion
he had caused.

'You've been using friction with brushes, I see,' said the doctor to
Sanin and Pantaleone, 'and you did very well.... A very good idea ...
and now let us see what further measures ...'

He felt the youth's pulse. 'H'm! show me your tongue!'

The lady bent anxiously over him. He smiled still more ingenuously,
raised his eyes to her, and blushed a little.

It struck Sanin that he was no longer wanted; he went into the shop.
But before he had time to touch the handle of the street-door, the
girl was once more before him; she stopped him.

'You are going,' she began, looking warmly into his face; 'I will not
keep you, but you must be sure to come to see us this evening: we are
so indebted to you--you, perhaps, saved my brother's life, we want to
thank you--mother wants to. You must tell us who you are, you must
rejoice with us ...'

'But I am leaving for Berlin to-day,' Sanin faltered out.

'You will have time though,' the girl rejoined eagerly. 'Come to us
in an hour's time to drink a cup of chocolate with us. You promise? I
must go back to him! You will come?'

What could Sanin do?

'I will come,' he replied.

The beautiful girl pressed his hand, fluttered away, and he found
himself in the street.




IV


When Sanin, an hour and a half later, returned to the Rosellis' shop
he was received there like one of the family. Emilio was sitting on
the same sofa, on which he had been rubbed; the doctor had prescribed
him medicine and recommended 'great discretion in avoiding strong
emotions' as being a subject of nervous temperament with a tendency to
weakness of the heart. He had previously been liable to fainting-fits;
but never had he lost consciousness so completely and for so long.
However, the doctor declared that all danger was over. Emil, as
was only suitable for an invalid, was dressed in a comfortable
dressing-gown; his mother wound a blue woollen wrap round his neck;
but he had a cheerful, almost a festive air; indeed everything had
a festive air. Before the sofa, on a round table, covered with a
clean cloth, towered a huge china coffee-pot, filled with fragrant
chocolate, and encircled by cups, decanters of liqueur, biscuits
and rolls, and even flowers; six slender wax candles were burning
in two old-fashioned silver chandeliers; on one side of the sofa,
a comfortable lounge-chair offered its soft embraces, and in this
chair they made Sanin sit. All the inhabitants of the confectioner's
shop, with whom he had made acquaintance that day, were present, not
excluding the poodle, Tartaglia, and the cat; they all seemed happy
beyond expression; the poodle positively sneezed with delight, only
the cat was coy and blinked sleepily as before. They made Sanin tell
them who he was, where he came from, and what was his name; when
he said he was a Russian, both the ladies were a little surprised,
uttered ejaculations of wonder, and declared with one voice that he
spoke German splendidly; but if he preferred to speak French, he
might make use of that language, as they both understood it and spoke
it well. Sanin at once availed himself of this suggestion. 'Sanin!
Sanin!' The ladies would never have expected that a Russian surname
could be so easy to pronounce. His Christian name--'Dimitri'--they
liked very much too. The elder lady observed that in her youth she had
heard a fine opera--Demetrio e Polibio'--but that 'Dimitri' was much
nicer than 'Demetrio.' In this way Sanin talked for about an hour. The
ladies on their side initiated him into all the details of their own
life. The talking was mostly done by the mother, the lady with grey
hair. Sanin learnt from her that her name was Leonora Roselli; that
she had lost her husband, Giovanni Battista Roselli, who had settled
in Frankfort as a confectioner twenty--five years ago; that Giovanni
Battista had come from Vicenza and had been a most excellent, though
fiery and irascible man, and a republican withal! At those words
Signora Roselli pointed to his portrait, painted in oil-colours, and
hanging over the sofa. It must be presumed that the painter, 'also
a republican!' as Signora Roselli observed with a sigh, had not
fully succeeded in catching a likeness, for in his portrait the late
Giovanni Battista appeared as a morose and gloomy brigand, after the
style of Rinaldo Rinaldini! Signora Roselli herself had come from
'the ancient and splendid city of Parma where there is the wonderful
cupola, painted by the immortal Correggio!' But from her long
residence in Germany she had become almost completely Germanised.
Then she added, mournfully shaking her head, that all she had left
was _this_ daughter and _this_ son (pointing to each in turn with her
finger); that the daughter's name was Gemma, and the son's Emilio;
that they were both very good and obedient children--especially Emilio
... ('Me not obedient!' her daughter put in at that point. 'Oh,
you're a republican, too!' answered her mother). That the business,
of course, was not what it had been in the days of her husband, who
had a great gift for the confectionery line ... ('_Un grand uomo_!'
Pantaleone confirmed with a severe air); but that still, thank God,
they managed to get along!




V


Gemma listened to her mother, and at one minute laughed, then sighed,
then patted her on the shoulder, and shook her finger at her, and then
looked at Sanin; at last, she got up, embraced her mother and kissed
her in the hollow of her neck, which made the latter laugh extremely
and shriek a little. Pantaleone too was presented to Sanin. It
appeared he had once been an opera singer, a baritone, but had long
ago given up the theatre, and occupied in the Roselli family a
position between that of a family friend and a servant. In spite of
his prolonged residence in Germany, he had learnt very little German,
and only knew how to swear in it, mercilessly distorting even the
terms of abuse. '_Ferroflucto spitchebubbio_' was his favourite
epithet for almost every German. He spoke Italian with a perfect
accent--for was he not by birth from Sinigali, where may be heard
'_lingua toscana in bocca romana_'! Emilio, obviously, played the
invalid and indulged himself in the pleasant sensations of one who has
only just escaped a danger or is returning to health after illness;
it was evident, too, that the family spoiled him. He thanked Sanin
bashfully, but devoted himself chiefly to the biscuits and sweetmeats.
Sanin was compelled to drink two large cups of excellent chocolate,
and to eat a considerable number of biscuits; no sooner had he
swallowed one than Gemma offered him another--and to refuse was
impossible! He soon felt at home: the time flew by with incredible
swiftness. He had to tell them a great deal--about Russia in general,
the Russian climate, Russian society, the Russian peasant--and
especially about the Cossacks; about the war of 1812, about Peter the
Great, about the Kremlin, and the Russian songs and bells. Both ladies
had a very faint conception of our vast and remote fatherland; Signora
Roselli, or as she was more often called, Frau Lenore, positively
dumfoundered Sanin with the question, whether there was still existing
at Petersburg the celebrated house of ice, built last century, about
which she had lately read a very curious article in one of her
husband's books, '_Bettezze delle arti_.' And in reply to Sanin's
exclamation, 'Do you really suppose that there is never any summer in
Russia?' Frau Lenore replied that till then she had always pictured
Russia like this--eternal snow, every one going about in furs, and all
military men, but the greatest hospitality, and all the peasants very
submissive! Sanin tried to impart to her and her daughter some more
exact information. When the conversation touched on Russian music,
they begged him at once to sing some Russian air and showed him a
diminutive piano with black keys instead of white and white instead
of black. He obeyed without making much ado and accompanying himself
with two fingers of the right hand and three of the left (the first,
second, and little finger) he sang in a thin nasal tenor, first 'The
Sarafan,' then 'Along a Paved Street.' The ladies praised his voice
and the music, but were more struck with the softness and sonorousness
of the Russian language and asked for a translation of the text. Sanin
complied with their wishes--but as the words of 'The Sarafan,' and
still more of 'Along a Paved Street' (_sur une rue pavée une jeune
fille allait à l'eau_ was how he rendered the sense of the original)
were not calculated to inspire his listeners with an exalted idea
of Russian poetry, he first recited, then translated, and then sang
Pushkin's, 'I remember a marvellous moment,' set to music by Glinka,
whose minor bars he did not render quite faithfully. Then the ladies
went into ecstasies. Frau Lenore positively discovered in Russian
a wonderful likeness to the Italian. Even the names Pushkin (she
pronounced it Pussekin) and Glinka sounded somewhat familiar to her.
Sanin on his side begged the ladies to sing something; they too did
not wait to be pressed. Frau Lenore sat down to the piano and sang
with Gemma some duets and 'stornelle.' The mother had once had a fine
contralto; the daughter's voice was not strong, but was pleasing.




VI


But it was not Gemma's voice--it was herself Sanin was admiring. He
was sitting a little behind and on one side of her, and kept thinking
to himself that no palm-tree, even in the poems of Benediktov--the
poet in fashion in those days--could rival the slender grace of her
figure. When, at the most emotional passages, she raised her eyes
upwards--it seemed to him no heaven could fail to open at such a look!
Even the old man, Pantaleone, who with his shoulder propped against
the doorpost, and his chin and mouth tucked into his capacious cravat,
was listening solemnly with the air of a connoisseur--even he was
admiring the girl's lovely face and marvelling at it, though one would
have thought he must have been used to it! When she had finished the
duet with her daughter, Frau Lenore observed that Emilio had a fine
voice, like a silver bell, but that now he was at the age when the
voice changes--he did, in fact, talk in a sort of bass constantly
falling into falsetto--and that he was therefore forbidden to sing;
but that Pantaleone now really might try his skill of old days in
honour of their guest! Pantaleone promptly put on a displeased air,
frowned, ruffled up his hair, and declared that he had given it all
up long ago, though he could certainly in his youth hold his own,
and indeed had belonged to that great period, when there were real
classical singers, not to be compared to the squeaking performers of
to-day! and a real school of singing; that he, Pantaleone Cippatola of
Varese, had once been brought a laurel wreath from Modena, and that
on that occasion some white doves had positively been let fly in the
theatre; that among others a Russian prince Tarbusky--'_il principe
Tarbusski_'--with whom he had been on the most friendly terms, had
after supper persistently invited him to Russia, promising him
mountains of gold, mountains!... but that he had been unwilling to
leave Italy, the land of Dante--_il paese del Dante!_ Afterward, to
be sure, there came ... unfortunate circumstances, he had himself
been imprudent.... At this point the old man broke off, sighed
deeply twice, looked dejected, and began again talking of the
classical period of singing, of the celebrated tenor Garcia, for
whom he cherished a devout, unbounded veneration. 'He was a man!'
he exclaimed. 'Never had the great Garcia (_il gran Garcia_)
demeaned himself by singing falsetto like the paltry tenors of
to-day--_tenoracci_; always from the chest, from the chest, _voce di
petto, si!_' and the old man aimed a vigorous blow with his little
shrivelled fist at his own shirt-front! 'And what an actor! A volcano,
_signori miei_, a volcano, _un Vesuvio_! I had the honour and the
happiness of singing with him in the _opera dell' illustrissimo
maestro_ Rossini--in Otello! Garcia was Otello,--I was Iago--and
when he rendered the phrase':--here Pantaleone threw himself into an
attitude and began singing in a hoarse and shaky, but still moving
voice:

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.