Aratov sat with downcast head. ‘Can you give me the address of that house in Kazan?’ he said at last.
‘Yes; but what do you want it for? Do you want to write a letter there?’
‘Perhaps.’ ‘Well, you know best. But the old lady won’t answer, for she can’t read and write. The sister, though, perhaps ... Oh, the sister’s a clever creature! But I must say again, I wonder at you, my dear boy! Such indifference before ... and now such interest! All this, my boy, comes from too much solitude!’
Aratov made no reply, and went away, having provided himself with the Kazan address.
When he was on his way to Kupfer’s, excitement, bewilderment, expectation had been reflected on his face.... Now he walked with an even gait, with downcast eyes, and hat pulled over his brows; almost every one who met him sent a glance of curiosity after him ... but he did not observe any one who passed ... it was not as on the Tversky boulevard!
‘Unhappy Clara! poor frantic Clara!’ was echoing in his soul.
The following day Aratov spent, however, fairly quietly. He was even able to give his mind to his ordinary occupations. But there was one thing: both during his work and during his leisure he was continually thinking of Clara, of what Kupfer had told him the evening before. It is true that his meditations, too, were of a fairly tranquil character. He fancied that this strange girl interested him from the psychological point of view, as something of the nature of a riddle, the solution of which was worth racking his brains over. ‘Ran away with an actress living as a kept mistress,’ he pondered, ‘put herself under the protection of that princess, with whom she seems to have lived—and nolove affairs’? It’s incredible!... Kupfer talked of pride! But in the first place we know’ (Aratov ought to have said: we have read in books),...‘we know that pride can exist side by side with levity of conduct; and secondly, how came she, if she were so proud, to make an appointment with a man who might treat her with contempt ... and did treat her with it ... and in a public place, moreover ... in a boulevard!’ At this point Aratov recalled all the scene in the boulevard, and he asked himself, Had he really shown contempt for Clara? ‘No,’ he decided,... ‘it was another feeling ... a feeling of doubt ... lack of confidence, in fact!’ ‘Unhappy Clara!’ was again ringing in his head. ‘Yes, unhappy,’ he decided again.... ‘That’s the most fitting word. And, if so, I was unjust. She said truly that I did not understand her. A pity! Such a remarkable creature, perhaps, came so close ... and I did not take advantage of it, I repulsed her.... Well, no matter! Life’s all before me. There will be, very likely, other meetings, perhaps more interesting!
‘But on what grounds did she fix onmeof all the world?’ He glanced into a looking-glass by which he was passing. ‘What is there special about me? I’m not a beauty, am I? My face ... is like any face.... She was not a beauty either, though.
‘Not a beauty ... and such an expressive face! Immobile ... and yet expressive! I never met such a face.... And talent, too, she has ... that is, she had, unmistakable. Untrained, undeveloped, even coarse, perhaps ... but unmistakable talent. And in that case I was unjust to her.’ Aratov was carried back in thought to the literary musical matinée ... and he observed to himself how exceedingly clearly he recollected every word she had sung of recited, every intonation of her voice.... ‘That would not have been so had she been without talent. And now it is all in the grave, to which she has hastened of herself.... But I’ve nothing to do with that ... I’m not to blame! It would be positively ridiculous to suppose that I’m to blame.’
It again occurred to Aratov that even if she had had ‘anything of the sort’ in her mind, his behaviour during their interview must have effectually disillusioned her.... ‘That was why she laughed so cruelly, too, at parting. Besides, what proof is there that she took poison because of unrequited love? That’s only the newspaper correspondents, who ascribe every death of that sort to unrequited love! People of a character like Clara’s readily feel life repulsive ... burdensome. Yes, burdensome. Kupfer was right; she was simply sick of life.
‘In spite of her successes, her triumphs?’ Aratov mused. He got a positive pleasure from the psychological analysis to which he was devoting himself. Remote till now from all contact with women, he did not even suspect all the significance for himself of this intense realisation of a woman’s soul.
‘It follows,’ he pursued his meditations, ‘that art did not satisfy her, did not fill the void in her life. Real artists exist only for art, for the theatre.... Everything else is pale beside what they regard as their vocation.... She was a dilettante.’
At this point Aratov fell to pondering again. ‘No, the word dilettante did not accord with that face, the expression of that face, those eyes....’
And Clara’s image floated again before him, with eyes, swimming in tears, fixed upon him, with clenched hands pressed to her lips....
‘Ah, no, no,’ he muttered, ‘what’s the use?’
So passed the whole day. At dinner Aratov talked a great deal with Platosha, questioned her about the old days, which she remembered, but described very badly, as she had so few words at her command, and except her dear Yasha, had scarcely ever noticed anything in her life. She could only rejoice that he was nice and good-humoured to-day; towards evening Aratov was so far calm that he played several games of cards with his aunt.
So passed the day ... but the night!
It began well; he soon fell asleep, and when his aunt went into him on tip-toe to make the sign of the cross three times over him in his sleep—she did so every night—he lay breathing as quietly as a child. But before dawn he had a dream.
He dreamed he was on a bare steppe, strewn with big stones, under a lowering sky. Among the stones curved a little path; he walked along it.
Suddenly there rose up in front of him something of the nature of a thin cloud. He looked steadily at it; the cloud turned into a woman in a white gown with a bright sash round her waist. She was hurrying away from him. He saw neither her face nor her hair ... they were covered by a long veil. But he had an intense desire to overtake her, and to look into her face. Only, however much he hastened, she went more quickly than he.
On the path lay a broad flat stone, like a tombstone. It blocked up the way. The woman stopped. Aratov ran up to her; but yet he could not see her eyes ... they were shut. Her face was white, white as snow; her hands hung lifeless. She was like a statue.
Slowly, without bending a single limb, she fell backwards, and sank down upon the tombstone.... And then Aratov lay down beside her, stretched out straight like a figure on a monument, his hands folded like a dead man’s.
But now the woman suddenly rose, and went away. Aratov tried to get up too ... but he could neither stir nor unclasp his hands, and could only gaze after her in despair.
Then the woman suddenly turned round, and he saw bright living eyes, in a living but unknown face. She laughed, she waved her hand to him ... and still he could not move.
She laughed once more, and quickly retreated, merrily nodding her head, on which there was a crimson wreath of tiny roses.
Aratov tried to cry out, tried to throw off this awful nightmare....
Suddenly all was darkness around ... and the woman came back to him. But this was not the unknown statue ... it was Clara. She stood before him, crossed her arms, and sternly and intently looked at him. Her lips were tightly pressed together, but Aratov fancied he heard the words, ‘If you want to know what I am, come over here!’
‘Where?’ he asked.
‘Here!’ he heard the wailing answer. ‘Here!’
Aratov woke up.
He sat up in bed, lighted the candle that stood on the little table by his bedside—but did not get up—and sat a long while, chill all over, slowly looking about him. It seemed to him as if something had happened to him since he went to bed; that something had taken possession of him ... something was in control of him. ‘But is it possible?’ he murmured unconsciously. ‘Does such a power really exist?’
He could not stay in his bed. He quickly dressed, and till morning he was pacing up and down his room. And, strange to say, of Clara he never thought for a moment, and did not think of her, because he had decided to go next day to Kazan!
He thought only of the journey, of how to manage it, and what to take with him, and how he would investigate and find out everything there, and would set his mind at rest. ‘If I don’t go,’ he reasoned with himself, ‘why, I shall go out of my mind!’ He was afraid of that, afraid of his nerves. He was convinced that when once he had seen everything there with his own eyes, every obsession would vanish like that nightmare. ‘And it will be a week lost over the journey,’ he thought; ‘what is a week? else I shall never shake it off.’
The rising sun shone into his room; but the light of day did not drive away the shadows of the night that lay upon him, and did not change his resolution.
Platosha almost had a fit when he informed her of his intention. She positively sat down on the ground ... her legs gave way beneath her. ‘To Kazan? why to Kazan?’ she murmured, her dim eyes round with astonishment. She would not have been more surprised if she had been told that her Yasha was going to marry the baker woman next door, or was starting for America. ‘Will you be long in Kazan?’ ‘I shall be back in a week,’ answered Aratov, standing with his back half-turned to his aunt, who was still sitting on the floor.
Platonida Ivanovna tried to protest more, but Aratov answered her in an utterly unexpected and unheard-of way: ‘I’m not a child,’ he shouted, and he turned pale all over, his lips trembled, and his eyes glittered wrathfully. ‘I’m twenty-six, I know what I’m about, I’m free to do what I like! I suffer no one ... Give me the money for the journey, pack my box with my clothes and linen ... and don’t torture me! I’ll be back in a week, Platosha,’ he added, in a somewhat softer tone.
Platosha got up, sighing and groaning, and, without further protest, crawled to her room. Yasha had alarmed her. ‘I’ve no head on my shoulders,’ she told the cook, who was helping her to pack Yasha’s things; ‘no head at all, but a hive full of bees all a-buzz and a-hum! He’s going off to Kazan, my good soul, to Ka-a-zan!’ The cook, who had observed their dvornik the previous evening talking for a long time with a police officer, would have liked to inform her mistress of this circumstance, but did not dare, and only reflected, ‘To Kazan! if only it’s nowhere farther still!’ Platonida Ivanovna was so upset that she did not even utter her usual prayer. ‘In such a calamity the Lord God Himself cannot aid us!’
The same day Aratov set off for Kazan.
He had no sooner reached that town and taken a room in a hotel than he rushed off to find out the house of the widow Milovidov. During the whole journey he had been in a sort of benumbed condition, which had not, however, prevented him from taking all the necessary steps, changing at Nizhni-Novgorod from the railway to the steamer, getting his meals at the stations etc., etc. He was convinced as before thatthereeverything would be solved; and therefore he drove away every sort of memory and reflection, confining himself to one thing, the mental rehearsal of thespeech, in which he would lay before the family of Clara Militch the real cause of his visit. And now at last he reached the goal of his efforts, and sent up his name. He was admitted ... with perplexity and alarm—still he was admitted.
The house of the widow Milovidov turned out to be exactly as Kupfer had described it; and the widow herself really was like one of the tradesmen’s wives in Ostrovsky, though the widow of an official; her husband had held his post under government. Not without some difficulty, Aratov, after a preliminary apology for his boldness, for the strangeness of his visit, delivered the speech he had prepared, explaining that he was anxious to collect all the information possible about the gifted artist so early lost, that he was not led to this by idle curiosity, but by profound sympathy for her talent, of which he was the devoted admirer (he said that, devoted admirer!) that, in fact, it would be a sin to leave the public in ignorance of what it had lost—and why its hopes were not realised. Madame Milovidov did not interrupt Aratov; she did not understand very well what this unknown visitor was saying to her, and merely opened her eyes rather wide and rolled them upon him, thinking, however, that he had a quiet respectable air, was well dressed ... and not a pickpocket ... hadn’t come to beg.
‘You are speaking of Katia?’ she inquired, directly Aratov was silent.
‘Yes ... of your daughter.’
‘And you have come from Moscow for this?’
‘Yes, from Moscow.’
‘Only on this account?’
‘Yes.’
Madame Milovidov gave herself a sudden shake. ‘Why, are you an author? Do you write for the newspapers?’
‘No, I’m not an author—and hitherto I have not written for the newspapers.’
The widow bowed her head. She was puzzled.
‘Then, I suppose ... it’s from your own interest in the matter?’ she asked suddenly. Aratov could not find an answer for a minute.
‘Through sympathy, from respect for talent,’ he said at last.
The word ‘respect’ pleased Madame Milovidov. ‘Eh!’ she pronounced with a sigh ... ‘I’m her mother, any way—and terribly I’m grieved for her.... Such a calamity all of a sudden!... But I must say it: a crazy girl she always was—and what a way to meet with her end! Such a disgrace.... Only fancy what it was for a mother? we must be thankful indeed that they gave her a Christian burial....’ Madame Milovidov crossed herself. ‘From a child up she minded no one—she left her parent’s house ... and at last—sad to say!—turned actress! Every one knows I never shut my doors upon her; I loved her, to be sure! I was her mother, any way! she’d no need to live with strangers ... or to go begging!...’ Here the widow shed tears ... ‘But if you, my good sir,’ she began, again wiping her eyes with the ends of her kerchief, ‘really have any idea of the kind, and you are not intending anything dishonourable to us, but on the contrary, wish to show us respect, you’d better talk a bit with my other daughter. She’ll tell you everything better than I can.... Annotchka! called Madame Milovidov, ‘Annotchka, come here! Here is a worthy gentleman from Moscow wants to have a talk about Katia!’
There was a sound of something moving in the next room; but no one appeared. ‘Annotchka!’ the widow called again, ‘Anna Semyonovna! come here, I tell you!’
The door softly opened, and in the doorway appeared a girl no longer very young, looking ill—and plain—but with very soft and mournful eyes. Aratov got up from his seat to meet her, and introduced himself, mentioning his friend Kupfer. ‘Ah! Fyodor Fedoritch?’ the girl articulated softly, and softly she sank into a chair.
‘Now, then, you must talk to the gentleman,’ said Madam Milovidov, getting up heavily: ‘he’s taken trouble enough, he’s come all the way from Moscow on purpose—he wants to collect information about Katia. And will you, my good sir,’ she added, addressing Aratov—‘excuse me ... I’m going to look after my housekeeping. You can get a very good account of everything from Annotchka; she will tell you about the theatre ... and all the rest of it. She is a clever girl, well educated: speaks French, and reads books, as well as her sister did. One may say indeed she gave her her education ... she was older—and so she looked after it.’
Madame Milovidov withdrew. On being left alone with Anna Semyonovna, Aratov repeated his speech to her; but realising at the first glance that he had to do with a really cultivated girl, not a typical tradesman’s daughter, he went a little more into particulars and made use of different expressions; but towards the end he grew agitated, flushed and felt that his heart was throbbing. Anna listened to him in silence, her hands folded on her lap; a mournful smile never left her face ... bitter grief, still fresh in its poignancy, was expressed in that smile.
‘You knew my sister?’ she asked Aratov.
‘No, I did not actually know her,’ he answered. ‘I met her and heard her once ... but one need only hear and see your sister once to ...’
‘Do you wish to write her biography?’ Anna questioned him again.
Aratov had not expected this inquiry; however, he replied promptly, ‘Why not? But above all, I wanted to acquaint the public ...’
Anna stopped him by a motion of her hand.
‘What is the object of that? The public caused her plenty of suffering as it is; and indeed Katia had only just begun life. But if you yourself—(Anna looked at him and smiled again a smile as mournful but more friendly ... as though she were saying to herself, Yes, you make me feel I can trust you) ... if you yourself feel such interest in her, let me ask you to come and see us this afternoon ... after dinner. I can’t just now ... so suddenly ... I will collect my strength ... I will make an effort ... Ah, I loved her too much!’
Anna turned away; she was on the point of bursting into sobs.
Aratov rose hurriedly from his seat, thanked her for her offer, said he should be sure ... oh, very sure!—to come—and went off, carrying away with him an impression of a soft voice, gentle and sorrowful eyes, and burning in the tortures of expectation.
Aratov went back the same day to the Milovidovs and spent three whole hours in conversation with Anna Semyonovna. Madame Milovidov was in the habit of lying down directly after dinner—at two o’clock—and resting till evening tea at seven. Aratov’s talk with Clara’s sister was not exactly a conversation; she did almost all the talking, at first with hesitation, with embarrassment, then with a warmth that refused to be stifled. It was obvious that she had adored her sister. The confidence Aratov had inspired in her grew and strengthened; she was no longer stiff; twice she even dropped a few silent tears before him. He seemed to her to be worthy to hear an unreserved account of all she knew and felt ... in her own secluded life nothing of this sort had ever happened before!... As for him ... he drank in every word she uttered.
This was what he learned ... much of it of course, half-said ... much he filled in for himself.
In her early years, Clara had undoubtedly been a disagreeable child; and even as a girl, she had not been much gentler; self-willed, hot-tempered, sensitive, she had never got on with her father, whom she despised for his drunkenness and incapacity. He felt this and never forgave her for it. A gift for music showed itself early in her; her father gave it no encouragement, acknowledging no art but painting, in which he himself was so conspicuously unsuccessful though it was the means of support of himself and his family. Her mother Clara loved,... but in a careless way, as though she were her nurse; her sister she adored, though she fought with her and had even bitten her.... It is true she fell on her knees afterwards and kissed the place she had bitten. She was all fire, all passion, and all contradiction; revengeful and kind; magnanimous and vindictive; she believed in fate—and did not believe in God (these words Anna whispered with horror); she loved everything beautiful, but never troubled herself about her own looks, and dressed anyhow; she could not bear to have young men courting her, and yet in books she only read the pages which treated of love; she did not care to be liked, did not like caresses, but never forgot a caress, just as she never forgot a slight; she was afraid of death and killed herself! She used to say sometimes, ‘Such a one as I want I shall never meet ... and no other will I have!’ ‘Well, but if you meet him?’ Anna would ask. ‘If I meet him ... I will capture him.’ ‘And if he won’t let himself be captured?’ ‘Well, then ... I will make an end of myself. It will prove I am no good.’ Clara’s father—he used sometimes when drunk to ask his wife, ‘Who got you your blackbrowed she-devil there? Not I!’—Clara’s father, anxious to get her off his hands as soon as possible, betrothed her to a rich young shopkeeper, a great blockhead, one of the so-called ‘refined’ sort. A fortnight before the wedding-day—she was only sixteen at the time—she went up to her betrothed, her arms folded and her fingers drumming on her elbows—her favourite position—and suddenly gave him a slap on his rosy cheek with her large powerful hand! He jumped and merely gaped; it must be said he was head over ears in love with her.... He asked: ‘What’s that for?’ She laughed scornfully and walked off. ‘I was there in the room,’ Anna related, ‘I saw it all, I ran after her and said to her, “Katia, why did you do that, really?” And she answered me: “If he’d been a real man he would have punished me, but he’s no more pluck than a drowned hen! And then he asks, ‘What’s that for?’ If he loves me, and doesn’t bear malice, he had better put up with it and not ask, ‘What’s that for?’ I will never be anything to him—never, never!” And indeed she did not marry him. It was soon after that she made the acquaintance of that actress, and left her home. Mother cried, but father only said, “A stubborn beast is best away from the flock!” And he did not bother about her, or try to find her out. My father did not understand Katia. On the day before her flight,’ added Anna, ‘she almost smothered me in her embraces, and kept repeating: “I can’t, I can’t help it!... My heart’s torn, but I can’t help it! your cage is too small ... it cramps my wings! And there’s no escaping one’s fate....”
‘After that,’ observed Anna, ‘we saw each other very seldom.... When my father died, she came for a couple of days, would take nothing of her inheritance, and vanished again. She was unhappy with us ... I could see that. Afterwards she came to Kazan as an actress.’
Aratov began questioning Anna about the theatre, about the parts in which Clara had appeared, about her triumphs.... Anna answered in detail, but with the same mournful, though keen fervour. She even showed Aratov a photograph, in which Clara had been taken in the costume of one of her parts. In the photograph she was looking away, as though turning from the spectators; her thick hair tied with a ribbon fell in a coil on her bare arm. Aratov looked a long time at the photograph, thought it like, asked whether Clara had taken part in public recitations, and learnt that she had not; that she had needed the excitement of the theatre, the scenery ... but another question was burning on his lips.
‘Anna Semyonovna!’ he cried at last, not loudly, but with a peculiar force, ‘tell me, I implore you, tell me why did she ... what led her to this fearful step?’...
Anna looked down. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, after a pause of some instants. ‘By God, I don’t know!’ she went on strenuously, supposing from Aratov’s gesture that he did not believe her.... ‘since she came back here certainly she was melancholy, depressed. Something must have happened to her in Moscow—what, I could never guess. But on the other hand, on that fatal day she seemed as it were ... if not more cheerful, at least more serene than usual. Even I had no presentiment,’ added Anna with a bitter smile, as though reproaching herself for it.
‘You see,’ she began again, ‘it seemed as though at Katia’s birth it had been decreed that she was to be unhappy. From her early years she was convinced of it. She would lean her head on her hand, sink into thought, and say, “I shall not live long!” She used to have presentiments. Imagine! she used to see beforehand, sometimes in a dream and sometimes awake, what was going to happen to her! “If I can’t live as I want to live, then I won’t live,”... was a saying of hers too.... “Our life’s in our own hands, you know.” And she proved that!’
Anna hid her face in her hands and stopped speaking. ‘Anna Semyonovna,’ Aratov began after a short pause, ‘you have perhaps heard to what the newspapers ascribed ... “To an unhappy love affair?”’ Anna broke in, at once pulling away her hands from her face. ‘That’s a slander, a fabrication!... My pure, unapproachable Katia ... Katia!... and unhappy, unrequited love? And shouldn’t I have known of it?... Every one was in love with her ... while she ... And whom could she have fallen in love with here? Who among all the people here, who was worthy of her? Who was up to the standard of honesty, truth, purity ... yes, above all, of purity which she, with all her faults, always held up as an ideal before her?... She repulsed!... she!...’
Anna’s voice broke.... Her fingers were trembling. All at once she flushed crimson ... crimson with indignation, and for that instant, and that instant only, she was like her sister.
Aratov was beginning an apology.
‘Listen,’ Anna broke in again. ‘I have an intense desire that you should not believe that slander, and should refute it, if possible! You want to write an article or something about her: that’s your opportunity for defending her memory! That’s why I talk so openly to you. Let me tell you; Katia left a diary ...’
Aratov trembled. ‘A diary?’ he muttered.
‘Yes, a diary ... that is, only a few pages. Katia was not fond of writing ... for months at a time she would write nothing, and her letters were so short. But she was always, always truthful, she never told a lie.... She, with her pride, tell a lie! I ... I will show you this diary! You shall see for yourself whether there is the least hint in it of any unhappy love affair!’
Anna quickly took out of a table-drawer a thin exercise-book, ten pages, no more, and held it out to Aratov. He seized it eagerly, recognised the irregular sprawling handwriting, the handwriting of that anonymous letter, opened it at random, and at once lighted upon the following lines.
‘Moscow, Tuesday ... June.—Sang and recited at a literary matinée. To-day is a vital day for me.It must decide my fate.(These words were twice underlined.) I saw again....’ Here followed a few lines carefully erased. And then, ‘No! no! no!.... Must go back to the old way, if only ...’
Aratov dropped the hand that held the diary, and his head slowly sank upon his breast.
‘Read it!’ cried Anna. ‘Why don’t you read it? Read it through from the beginning.... It would take only five minutes to read it all, though the diary extends over two years. In Kazan she used to write down nothing at all....’
Aratov got up slowly from his chair and flung himself on his knees before Anna.
She was simply petrified with wonder and dismay.
‘Give me ... give me that diary,’ Aratov began with failing voice, and he stretched out both hands to Anna. ‘Give it me ... and the photograph ... you are sure to have some other one, and the diary I will return.... But I want it, oh, I want it!...’
In his imploring words, in his contorted features there was something so despairing that it looked positively like rage, like agony.... And he was in agony, truly. He could not himself have foreseen that such pain could be felt by him, and in a frenzy he implored forgiveness, deliverance ...
‘Give it me,’ he repeated.
‘But ... you ... you were in love with my sister?’ Anna said at last.
Aratov was still on his knees.
‘I only saw her twice ... believe me!... and if I had not been impelled by causes, which I can neither explain nor fully understand myself,... if there had not been some power over me, stronger than myself.... I should not be entreating you ... I should not have come here. I want ... I must ... you yourself said I ought to defend her memory!’
‘And you were not in love with my sister?’ Anna asked a second time.
Aratov did not at once reply, and he turned aside a little, as though in pain.
‘Well, then! I was! I was—I’m in love now,’ he cried in the same tone of despair.
Steps were heard in the next room.
‘Get up ... get up ...’ said Anna hurriedly. ‘Mamma is coming.’
Aratov rose.
‘And take the diary and the photograph, in God’s name! Poor, poor Katia!... But you will give me back the diary,’ she added emphatically. ‘And if you write anything, be sure to send it me.... Do you hear?’
The entrance of Madame Milovidov saved Aratov from the necessity of a reply. He had time, however, to murmur, ‘You are an angel! Thanks! I will send anything I write....’
Madame Milovidov, half awake, did not suspect anything. So Aratov left Kazan with the photograph in the breast-pocket of his coat. The diary he gave back to Anna; but, unobserved by her, he cut out the page on which were the words underlined.
On the way back to Moscow he relapsed again into a state of petrifaction. Though he was secretly delighted that he had attained the object of his journey, still all thoughts of Clara he deferred till he should be back at home. He thought much more about her sister Anna. ‘There,’ he thought, ‘is an exquisite, charming creature. What delicate comprehension of everything, what a loving heart, what a complete absence of egoism! And how girls like that spring up among us, in the provinces, and in such surroundings too! She is not strong, and not good-looking, and not young; but what a splendid helpmate she would be for a sensible, cultivated man! That’s the girl I ought to have fallen in love with!’ Such were Aratov’s reflections ... but on his arrival in Moscow things put on quite a different complexion.
Platonida Ivanovna was unspeakably rejoiced at her nephew’s return. There was no terrible chance she had not imagined during his absence. ‘Siberia at least!’ she muttered, sitting rigidly still in her little room; ‘at least for a year!’ The cook too had terrified her by the most well-authenticated stories of the disappearance of this and that young man of the neighbourhood. The perfect innocence and absence of revolutionary ideas in Yasha did not in the least reassure the old lady. ‘For indeed ... if you come to that, he studies photography ... and that’s quite enough for them to arrest him!’ ‘And behold, here was her darling Yasha back again, safe and sound. She observed, indeed, that he seemed thinner, and looked hollow in the face; natural enough, with no one to look after him! but she did not venture to question him about his journey. She asked at dinner. ‘And is Kazan a fine town?’ ‘Yes,’ answered Aratov. ‘I suppose they’re all Tartars living there?’ ‘Not only Tartars.’ ‘And did you get a Kazan dressing-gown while you were there?’ ‘No, I didn’t.’ With that the conversation ended.
But as soon as Aratov found himself alone in his own room, he quickly felt as though something were enfolding him about, as though he were once morein the power, yes, in the power of another life, another being. Though he had indeed said to Anna in that sudden delirious outburst that he was in love with Clara, that saying struck even him now as senseless and frantic. No, he was not in love; and how could he be in love with a dead woman, whom he had not even liked in her lifetime, whom he had almost forgotten? No, but he was inherpower ... he no longer belonged to himself. He wascaptured. So completely captured, that he did not even attempt to free himself by laughing at his own absurdity, nor by trying to arouse if not a conviction, at least a hope in himself that it would all pass, that it was nothing but nerves, nor by seeking for proofs, nor by anything! ‘If I meet him, I will capture him,’ he recalled those words of Clara’s Anna had repeated to him. Well, he was captured. But was not she dead? Yes, her body was dead ... but her soul?... is not that immortal?... does it need corporeal organs to show its power? Magnetism has proved to us the influence of one living human soul over another living human soul.... Why should not this influence last after death, if the soul remains living? But to what end? What can come of it? But can we, as a rule, apprehend what is the object of all that takes place about us? These ideas so absorbed Aratov that he suddenly asked Platosha at tea-time whether she believed in the immortality of the soul. She did not for the first minute understand what his question was, then she crossed herself and answered. ‘She should think so indeed! The soul not immortal!’ ‘And, if so, can it have any influence after death?’ Aratov asked again. The old lady replied that it could ... pray for us, that is to say; at least, when it had passed through all its ordeals, awaiting the last dread judgment. But for the first forty days the soul simply hovered about the place where its death had occurred.
‘The first forty days?’
‘Yes; and then the ordeals follow.’
Aratov was astounded at his aunt’s knowledge, and went off to his room. And again he felt the same thing, the same power over him. This power showed itself in Clara’s image being constantly before him to the minutest details, such details as he seemed hardly to have observed in her lifetime; he saw ... saw her fingers, her nails, the little hairs on her cheeks near her temples, the little mole under her left eye; he saw the slight movement of her lips, her nostrils, her eyebrows ... and her walk, and how she held her head a little on the right side ... he saw everything. He did not by any means take a delight in it all, only he could not help thinking of it and seeing it. The first night after his return he did not, however, dream of her ... he was very tired, and slept like a log. But directly he waked up, she came back into his room again, and seemed to establish herself in it, as though she were the mistress, as though by her voluntary death she had purchased the right to it, without asking him or needing his permission. He took up her photograph, he began reproducing it, enlarging it. Then he took it into his head to fit it to the stereoscope. He had a great deal of trouble to do it ... at last he succeeded. He fairly shuddered when through the glass he looked upon her figure, with the semblance of corporeal solidity given it by the stereoscope. But the figure was grey, as though covered with dust ... and moreover the eyes—the eyes looked always to one side, as though turning away. A long, long while he stared at them, as though expecting them to turn to him ... he even half-closed his eyelids on purpose ... but the eyes remained immovable, and the whole figure had the look of some sort of doll. He moved away, flung himself in an armchair, took out the leaf from her diary, with the words underlined, and thought, ‘Well, lovers, they say, kiss the words traced by the hand of the beloved—but I feel no inclination to do that—and the handwriting I think ugly. But that line contains my sentence.’ Then he recalled the promise he had made Anna about the article. He sat down to the table, and set to work upon it, but everything he wrote struck him as so false, so rhetorical ... especially so false ... as though he did not believe in what he was writing nor in his own feelings.... And Clara herself seemed so utterly unknown and uncomprehended! She seemed to withhold herself from him. ‘No!’ he thought, throwing down the pen ... ‘either authorship’s altogether not my line, or I must wait a little!’ He fell to recalling his visit to the Milovidovs, and all Anna had told him, that sweet, delightful Anna.... A word she had uttered—‘pure’—suddenly struck him. It was as though something scorched him, and shed light. ‘Yes,’ he said aloud, ‘she was pure, and I am pure.... That’s what gave her this power.’
Thoughts of the immortality of the soul, of the life beyond the grave crowded upon him again. Was it not said in the Bible: ‘Death, where is thy sting?’ And in Schiller: ‘And the dead shall live!’ (Auch die Todten sollen leben!)
And too, he thought, in Mitskevitch: ‘I will love thee to the end of time ... and beyond it!’ And an English writer had said: ‘Love is stronger than death.’ The text from Scripture produced particular effect on Aratov.... He tried to find the place where the words occurred.... He had no Bible; he went to ask Platosha for one. She wondered, she brought out, however, a very old book in a warped leather binding, with copper clasps, covered with candle wax, and handed it over to Aratov. He bore it off to his own room, but for a long time he could not find the text ... he stumbled, however, on another: ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends’ (S. John xv. 13).
He thought: ‘That’s not right. It ought to be: Greaterpowerhath no man.’
‘But if she did not lay down her life for me at all? If she made an end of herself simply because life had become a burden to her? What if, after all, she did not come to that meeting for anything to do with love at all?’
But at that instant he pictured to himself Clara before their parting on the boulevard.... He remembered the look of pain on her face, and the tears and the words, ‘Ah, you understood nothing!’
No! he could have no doubt why and for whom she had laid down her life....
So passed that whole day till night-time.
Aratov went to bed early, without feeling specially sleepy, but he hoped to find repose in bed. The strained condition of his nerves brought about an exhaustion far more unbearable than the bodily fatigue of the journey and the railway. However, exhausted as he was, he could not get to sleep. He tried to read ... but the lines danced before his eyes. He put out the candle, and darkness reigned in his room. But still he lay sleepless, with his eyes shut.... And it began to seem to him some one was whispering in his ear.... ‘The beating of the heart, the pulse of the blood,’ he thought.... But the whisper passed into connected speech. Some one was talking in Russian hurriedly, plaintively, and indistinctly. Not one separate word could he catch.... But it was the voice of Clara.
Aratov opened his eyes, raised himself, leaned on his elbow.... The voice grew fainter, but kept up its plaintive, hurried talk, indistinct as before....
It was unmistakably Clara’s voice.
Unseen fingers ran light arpeggios up and down the keys of the piano ... then the voice began again. More prolonged sounds were audible ... as it were moans ... always the same over and over again. Then apart from the rest the words began to stand out ... ‘Roses ... roses ... roses....’
‘Roses,’ repeated Aratov in a whisper. ‘Ah, yes! it’s the roses I saw on that woman’s head in the dream.’... ‘Roses,’ he heard again.
‘Is that you?’ Aratov asked in the same whisper. The voice suddenly ceased.
Aratov waited ... and waited, and dropped his head on the pillow. ‘Hallucinations of hearing,’ he thought. ‘But if ... if she really were here, close at hand?... If I were to see her, should I be frightened? or glad? But what should I be frightened of? or glad of? Why, of this, to be sure; it would be a proof that there is another world, that the soul is immortal. Though, indeed, even if I did see something, it too might be a hallucination of the sight....’
He lighted the candle, however, and in a rapid glance, not without a certain dread, scanned the whole room ... and saw nothing in it unusual. He got up, went to the stereoscope ... again the same grey doll, with its eyes averted. The feeling of dread gave way to one of annoyance. He was, as it were, cheated in his expectations ... the very expectation indeed struck him as absurd.
‘Well, this is positively idiotic!’ he muttered, as he got back into bed, and blew out the candle. Profound darkness reigned once more.
Aratov resolved to go to sleep this time.... But a fresh sensation started up in him. He fancied some one was standing in the middle of the room, not far from him, and scarcely perceptibly breathing. He turned round hastily and opened his eyes.... But what could be seen in impenetrable darkness? He began to feel for a match on his little bedside table ... and suddenly it seemed to him that a sort of soft, noiseless hurricane was passing over the whole room, over him, through him, and the word ‘I!’ sounded distinctly in his ears....
Some instants passed before he succeeded in getting the candle alight.
Again there was no one in the room; and he now heard nothing, except the uneven throbbing of his own heart. He drank a glass of water, and stayed still, his head resting on his hand. He was waiting.
He thought: ‘I will wait. Either it’s all nonsense ... or she is here. She is not going to play cat and mouse with me like this!’ He waited, waited long ... so long that the hand on which he was resting his head went numb ... but not one of his previous sensations was repeated. Twice his eyes closed.... He opened them promptly ... at least he believed that he opened them. Gradually they turned towards the door and rested on it. The candle burned dim, and it was once more dark in the room ... but the door made a long streak of white in the half darkness. And now this patch began to move, to grow less, to disappear ... and in its place, in the doorway appeared a woman’s figure. Aratov looked intently at it ... Clara! And this time she was looking straight at him, coming towards him.... On her head was a wreath of red roses.... He was all in agitation, he sat up....
Before him stood his aunt in a nightcap adorned with a broad red ribbon, and in a white dressing-jacket.
‘Platosha!’ he said with an effort. ‘Is that you?’
‘Yes, it’s I,’ answered Platonida Ivanovna ... ‘I, Yasha darling, yes.’
‘What have you come for?’
‘You waked me up. At first you kept moaning as it were ... and then you cried out all of a sudden, “Save me! help me! “’
‘I cried out?’
‘Yes, and such a hoarse cry, “Save me!” I thought, Mercy on us! He’s never ill, is he? And I came in. Are you quite well?’
‘Perfectly well.’
‘Well, you must have had a bad dream then. Would you like me to burn a little incense?’
Aratov once more stared intently at his aunt, and laughed aloud.... The figure of the good old lady in her nightcap and dressing-jacket, with her long face and scared expression, was certainly very comic. All the mystery surrounding him, oppressing him—everything weird was sent flying instantaneously.
‘No, Platosha dear, there’s no need,’ he said. ‘Please forgive me for unwittingly troubling you. Sleep well, and I will sleep too.’
Platonida Ivanovna remained a minute standing where she was, pointed to the candle, grumbled, ‘Why not put it out ... an accident happens in a minute?’ and as she went out, could not refrain, though only at a distance, from making the sign of the cross over him.
Aratov fell asleep quickly, and slept till morning. He even got up in a happy frame of mind ... though he felt sorry for something.... He felt light and free. ‘What romantic fancies, if you come to think of it!’ he said to himself with a smile. He never once glanced either at the stereoscope, or at the page torn out of the diary. Immediately after breakfast, however, he set off to go to Kupfer’s.
What drew him there ... he was dimly aware.
Aratov found his sanguine friend at home. He chatted a little with him, reproached him for having quite forgotten his aunt and himself, listened to fresh praises of that heart of gold, the princess, who had just sent Kupfer from Yaroslav a smoking-cap embroidered with fish-scales ... and all at once, sitting just opposite Kupfer and looking him straight in the face, he announced that he had been a journey to Kazan.
‘You have been to Kazan; what for?’
‘Oh, I wanted to collect some facts about that ... Clara Militch.’
‘The one that poisoned herself?’
‘Yes.’
Kupfer shook his head. ‘Well, you are a chap! And so quiet about it! Toiled a thousand miles out there and back ... for what? Eh? If there’d been some woman in the case now! Then I can understand anything! anything! any madness!’ Kupfer ruffled up his hair. ‘But simply to collect materials, as it’s called among you learned people.... I’d rather be excused! There are statistical writers to do that job! Well, and did you make friends with the old lady and the sister? Isn’t she a delightful girl?’
‘Delightful,’ answered Aratov, ‘she gave me a great deal of interesting information.’
‘Did she tell you exactly how Clara took poison?’
‘You mean ... how?’
‘Yes, in what manner?’
‘No ... she was still in such grief ... I did not venture to question her too much. Was there anything remarkable about it?’
‘To be sure there was. Only fancy; she had to appear on the stage that very day, and she acted her part. She took a glass of poison to the theatre with her, drank it before the first act, and went through all that act afterwards. With the poison inside her! Isn’t that something like strength of will? Character, eh? And, they say, she never acted her part with such feeling, such passion! The public suspected nothing, they clapped, and called for her.... And directly the curtain fell, she dropped down there, on the stage. Convulsions ... and convulsions, and within an hour she was dead! But didn’t I tell you all about it? And it was in the papers too!’
Aratov’s hands had grown suddenly cold, and he felt an inward shiver.
‘No, you didn’t tell me that,’ he said at last. ‘And you don’t know what play it was?
Kupfer thought a minute. ‘I did hear what the play was ... there is a betrayed girl in it.... Some drama, it must have been. Clara was created for dramatic parts.... Her very appearance ... But where are you off to?’ Kupfer interrupted himself, seeing that Aratov was reaching after his hat.
‘I don’t feel quite well,’ replied Aratov. ‘Good-bye ... I’ll come in another time.’
Kupfer stopped him and looked into his face. ‘What a nervous fellow you are, my boy! Just look at yourself.... You’re as white as chalk.’
‘I’m not well,’ repeated Aratov, and, disengaging himself from Kupfer’s detaining hands, he started homewards. Only at that instant it became clear to him that he had come to Kupfer with the sole object of talking of Clara...