Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories
Иван Тургенев
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Marlinsky is out of date now--no one reads him--and even his name is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"
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. Th
e 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,