Virgin Soil (Garnett)/Volume 2/Chapter 10

by Ivan Turgenev

XXX

A fortnight later, in the same place, this was what Nezhdanov was writing to his friend Silin, as he bent over his little three-legged table, on which a tallow candle gave a dim and niggardly light. (It was long after midnight. On the sofa and on the floor lay mud-stained garments, hurriedly flung off; a fine, incessant rain was pattering on the window-panes, and a strong, warm wind breathed in great sighs about the roof.)

'Dear Vladimir,—I am writing to you without putting an address, and this letter will even be sent by a messenger to a distant posting-station, because my presence here is a secret; and to tell it you might mean the ruin not of myself alone. It will be enough for you to know that I have been living at a large factory, together with Marianna, for the last fort-night. We ran away from the Sipyagins' the very day I wrote to you last. We were given a home here by a friend. I will call him Vassily. He is the chief person here—a splendid fellow. Our stay in this factory is only temporary. We are here till the time comes for action—though, to judge by what has happened so far, this time is hardly likely ever to come! Vladimir, my heart is heavy, heavy. First of all, I must tell you that though Marianna and I have run away together, we are so far as brother and sister. She loves me . . . and has told me she will be mine if . . . I feel I have the right to ask it of her.

'Vladimir, I don't feel I have the right! She believes in me, in my honesty—I'm not going to deceive her. I know I have never loved any one and never shall love (that's pretty certain!) any one more than her. But, for all that, how can I unite her fate for ever to mine? A living being—to a corpse? Well, not a corpse—to a half-dead creature! Where would one's conscience be? You will say, if there were a strong passion—conscience would have nothing to say. That's the very point that I am a corpse; an honest, well-meaning corpse, if you like. Please don't cry out that I always exaggerate.. . . All I am telling you is the truth! the truth! Marianna is a very concentrated nature, and now she is all absorbed in her activity, in which she believes. . . While I?

'Well, enough of love and personal happiness, and everything of that sort. For the last fortnight now I have been "going to the people," and alack and alack! anything more absurd you cannot imagine. Of course, there the fault lies in me, and not in the work itself. Granted, I'm not a Slavophil; I'm not one of those who find their panacea in the people, in contact with them; I don't lay the people on my aching stomach like a flannel bandage . . . I want to have an influence on them myself; but how? How accomplish that? It appears when I am with the people that I am always only stooping to them, and listening; and when it does happen that I say anything, it's below contempt! I feel myself I'm no good. It's like a bad actor in the wrong part. Conscientiousness is quite out of place in this, and so is scepticism, and even a sort of pitiful humour directed against myself. . . . It's all not worth a brass farthing! It's positively sickening to remember; sickening to look at the rags I drag about on me, at this masquerade, as Vassily expresses it! They maintain one ought first to study the people's talk, learn their character and habits.. . . Rubbish! rubbish! rubbish! One must believe in what one says, and then one may say what one likes. I once chanced to hear something like a sermon from a sectarian prophet. There's no saying what rot he talked; it was a sort of hotch-potch of ecclesiastical and bookish language, with simple peasant idioms, and that not Russian, but White Russian of some sort. . . . And you know he kept pounding away at the same thing, like a plover calling! "The spirit has dee-scended, the spirit has dee-scended!" But then his eyes were ablaze, his voice firm and hoarse, his fists clenched—he was like iron all over! The listeners did not understand, but they revered him! And they followed him! While I start speaking like a criminal—I'm begging pardon all the while. I ought to go to the sectarians, really; their art is not great . . . but there's the place to get faith, faith! Marianna there has faith. She's at work from early morning, busy with Tatyana, a peasant woman here, good-natured and not a fool; by the way, she says of us that we want simplification, and calls us simplified folks;—well, Marianna busies herself with this woman, and never sits down a minute; she's a regular ant! She's delighted that her hands are getting red and rough; and looks forward to some day, if necessary, the scaffold! While awaiting the scaffold, she has even tried giving up shoes; she went somewhere barefoot, and came back barefoot. I heard her afterwards washing her feet a long while; I see she walks cautiously on them—they're sore from not being used to it; but she looks as joyful, as radiant, as though she had found a treasure, as though the sun were shining on her. Yes, Marianna's first-rate! And when I try to talk to her of my feelings, to begin with, I feel somehow ashamed, as though I were laying hands on what's not mine; and then that look . . . oh, that awful, devoted, unresisting look. . . . "Take me," it seems to say . . . "but remember! And what need of all this? Isn't there something better, higher upon earth?" That is, in other words, "Put on your stinking overcoat, and go out to the people." . . . And so, you see, I go out to the people.. . .

'Oh, how I curse at such times my nervousness, delicacy, sensitiveness, squeamishness, all I have inherited from my aristocratic father! What right had he to shove me into life, supplying me with organs utterly unfit for the surroundings in which I must move? To hatch a chicken and shove it into the water! An artist in the mud! a democrat, a lover of the people, whom the mere smell of that loathsome vodka, "the green wine," turns ill and nearly sick?

'See what I've worked myself up to—abusing my father! And, indeed, I became a democrat of myself; he'd no hand in that.

'Yes, Vladimir, I'm in a bad way. I have begun to be haunted by some grey, ugly thoughts! Can it be, you will ask me, that I have not even during this fortnight come across anything consolatory, any good, live person, however ignorant? What shall I say? I have met something of the sort . . . I've even come across one very fine, splendid, plucky chap. But turn it which way I will, I'm no use to him with my pamphlets, and that's all about it! Pavel—a man in the factory here—(he's Vassily's right hand, a very clever, very sharp fellow, a future "head" . . . I fancy I wrote to you about him)—he has a friend, a peasant, Elizar is his name . . . a clear brain, too, and a free spirit, untrammelled in every way; but directly we meet, it's as though there's a wall between us! his face is nothing but a "No!" And again another fellow I met with . . . he was one of the hot-tempered sort, though. "Now then, sir," says he, "no soft soap, please, but say straight out, are you giving up all your land, as it is, or not?" "What do you mean?" I answered; "I'm not a gentleman!" (and I even added, I remember, "Lord bless you!"). "But if you're a common man," says he, "what sort of sense is there in you? Do me the favour to let me alone!"

'And another thing. I've noticed if any one listens to you very readily, takes pamphlets at once, you may be sure he's one of the wrong sort, a featherhead; or you'll come on a fine talker, an educated fellow, who can do nothing but keep repeating some favourite expression. One, for instance, simply drove me distracted; everything with him was "product." Whatever you say to him, he keeps on, "To be sure a product!" Ugh, to the devil with him. One remark more. . . . Do you remember at one time, a long while ago, there used to be a great deal of talk about "superfluous" people—Hamlets? Fancy, such "superfluous" people are to be found now among the peasants! with a special tone of their own, of course.. . . Moreover, they're for the most part of consumptive build. Interesting types, and they come to us readily; but for the cause they're no good—just like the Hamlets of former days. Come, what is one to do, then? Found a secret printing-press? Why, there are books enough as it is, both of the sort, "Cross yourself and take up the hatchet," and the sort that say, "Take up the hatchet" simply. Write novels of peasant life, filled out with padding? They wouldn't get printed, most likely. Or first take up the hatchet?. . . But against whom, with whom, what for? So that the national soldier may shoot you down with the national rifle! Well, that's a sort of complex suicide! It would be better to make an end of myself. At least I shall know when and how, and shall choose myself what part to aim at.. . . Really, I fancy if there were a war of independence going on now anywhere, I would set off there, not to liberate anybody whatever (the idea of liberating others when one's own people are not free!), but to make an end of myself.

'Our friend Vassily, the man who has taken us in here, is a happy man; he is of our camp, and a quiet fellow in a way. He's not in a hurry. Another man I should abuse for that . . . but him I can't. And it seems as though the whole basis of it doesn't lie in convictions, but in character. Vassily has a character you can't pick holes in. Well, to be sure he's right. He sits a great deal with us, with Marianna. And here's a curious fact. I love her and she loves me (I can see you smiling at that phrase, but, by God, it's so!); and we have hardly anything to say to one another. But she argues and discusses with him, and listens to him. I'm not jealous of him; he's taking steps for getting her into some place, at least she asks him about it; only my heart aches when I look at them. And yet imagine: if I were to falter out a word about marriage, she'd agree at once, and the priest, Zosim, would put in an appearance: "Esaias, be exalted," and all the rest in due order. Only, it would make it no better for me, and nothing would be changed.. . . There's no way out of it! Life's cut me on the cross, dear Vladimir, as you remember our friend the drunken tailor used to complain of his wife.

'I feel, though, that it won't last long, I feel that something is preparing.. . .

'Haven't I demanded and proved that we ought to "act"? Well, now we are going to act.

'I don't remember whether I wrote to you of another friend of mine, a dark fellow, a relation of the Sipyagins. He may, very likely, cook a kettle of fish that won't be swallowed too easily.

'I quite meant to finish this letter before, but there! Though I do nothing, nothing at all, I scribble verses. I don't read them to Marianna, she doesn't much care for them, but you . . . sometimes even praise them; and what's of most importance, you won't talk about them to any one. I have been struck by one universal phenomenon in Russia. Any way, here they are—the verses:

'SLEEP

'A long while I had not been in my own land.. . .
But I found in it no change to notice—
Everywhere the same deathlike, senseless stagnation,
Houses without roofs, walls tumbling down,
And the same filth and stench and poverty and boredom!
And the same slavish glance, now insolent, now abject!
Our people were made free; and the free arm
Hangs as before like a whip unused.
All, all is as before.. . . And in one thing alone
Europe, Asia, the whole world we have outstripped!
No! never yet have my dear countrymen
Sunk into a sleep so terrible!

'Everything is asleep; everywhere, in village and in town,
In cart, in sledge, by day, by night, sitting and standing. . .
The merchant, the official sleeps; the sentinel at his post
Stands asleep in the cold of the snow and in the burning heat!
And the prisoner sleeps; and the judge snores;
Dead asleep are the peasants; asleep, they reap and plough;
They thresh asleep; the father sleeps, the mother and children
All are asleep! He that flogs is asleep, and he too that is flogged!
Only the Tsar's gin-shop never closes an eye;
And grasping tight her pot of gin,
Her brow on the Pole and her heels on the Caucasus,
Lies in interminable sleep our country, holy Russia!

'Please forgive me: I didn't want to send you such a melancholy letter without giving you a little amusement at the end (you'll certainly notice some halting lines . . . but what of it!). When shall I write to you again? Shall I write again? Whatever becomes of me, I am sure you will not forget your faithful friend,

'A. N.

'P.S.—Yes, our people is asleep.. . . But I fancy if anything ever does wake it, it won't be what we are thinking of.. . .'

After writing the last line Nezhdanov flung down the pen, and saying to himself, 'Well, now try to sleep and forget all this rot, rhymester'; he lay down on the bed . . . but it was long before sleep visited his eyes.

Next morning Marianna waked him, passing through his room to Tatyana; but he had only just had time to dress when she came back again. Her face expressed delight and agitation; she seemed excited.

'Do you know, Alyosha, they say that in the T——— district, not far from here, it has begun already!'

'Eh? what has begun? who says so?'

'Pavel. They say the peasants are rising refusing to pay taxes, collecting in mobs.'

'You heard that yourself?'

'Tatyana told me. But here's Pavel himself. Ask him.'

Pavel came in and confirmed Marianna's tale.

'There's disturbance in T——— district, that's true!' he said, shaking his beard and screwing up his flashing black eyes. 'It's Sergei Mihalovitch's work, one must suppose. It's five days now he's not been at home.'

Nezhdanov snatched up his cap.

'Where are you going?' asked Marianna.

'Where?. . . there,' he answered, scowling, and not raising his eyes; 'to T———district.'

'Then I'll go with you. You'll take me, won't you? Only let me put a big kerchief over my head.'

'It's not a woman's work,' said Nezhdanov sullenly, as before looking down as though irritated.

'No! . . . no! . . . You do right to go; or Markelov would think you a coward.. . . And I will go with you.'

'I'm not a coward,' said Nezhdanov in the same sullen voice.

'I meant to say he would take us both for cowards. I'm coming with you.'

Marianna went into her room for the kerchief, while Pavel uttered in a sort of stealthy inward whistle, 'Ah-ha, aha!' and promptly vanished. He ran to warn Solomin.

Marianna had not reappeared when Solomin came into Nezhdanov's room. He was standing with his face to the window, his forehead resting on his arm, and his arm on the window-pane. Solomin touched him on the shoulder. He turned quickly round. Dishevelled and unwashed, Nezhdanov had a wild and strange look. Though indeed Solomin too had changed of late. He had grown yellow, his face looked drawn, his upper teeth were slightly visible. . . . He too seemed unhinged, so far as his 'well-balanced' nature could be.

'So Markelov could not control himself,' he began; 'this may turn out badly, for him chiefly . . . and for others too.'

'I want to go and see what's going on. . .' observed Nezhdanov.

'And I too,' added Marianna, making her appearance in the doorway.

Solomin turned slowly to her.

'I would not advise you to, Marianna. You might betray yourself and us; without meaning to and utterly needlessly. Let Nezhdanov go and see what's in the air a little, if he likes. . . and the less of that the better!—but why should you?'

'I don't like to stay behind when he goes.'

You will hamper him.'

Marianna glanced at Nezhdanov. He stood immovable, with an immovable, sullen face.

'But if there's danger?' she said.

Solomin smiled.

'Don't be afraid . . . when there's danger, I'll let you go.'

Marianna silently took the kerchief off her head and sat down.

Then Solomin turned to Nezhdanov.

'And do you, brother, really look about a little. Perhaps it's all exaggerated. Only, please, be careful. Some one shall go with you, though. And come back as quick as possible. You promise? Nezhdanov, do you promise?'

'Yes.'

'Yes, for certain?'

'Since every one obeys you here, Marianna and all.'

Nezhdanov went out into the passage without saying good-bye. Pavel popped up out of the darkness and ran down the staircase before him, his iron-shod boots ringing as he went. Was he then to accompany Nezhdanov?

Solomin sat down by Marianna.

'You heard Nezhdanov's last words?'

'Yes; he's vexed that I listen to you more than to him. And indeed it's the truth. I love him, but I obey you. He's dearer to me . . . but you're nearer.'

Solomin cautiously stroked her hand with his.

'This . . . is a most unpleasant affair,' he observed at last. 'If Markelov's mixed up in it—he's lost.'

Marianna shuddered.

'Lost?'

'Yes. . . . He does nothing by halves, and he won't hide behind others.'

'Lost!' murmured Marianna again, and the tears ran down her face. 'O Vassily Fedotitch! I am very sorry for him. But why can't he be victorious? Why must he inevitably be lost?'

'Because in such undertakings, Marianna, the first always perish, even if they succeed. . . . And in the work he's, plotting for, not only the first and the second, but even the tenth . . . and the twentieth.'

'Then we shall never live to see it?'

'What you are dreaming of? Never. With our eyes we shall never look upon it; with these living eyes. In the spirit . . . to be sure, that's a different matter. We may gratify ourselves by the sight of it that way now, at once. There's no restriction there.'

'Then how is it you, Solomin———

'What?'

'How is it you are going along the same way?'

'Because there's no other; that is, speaking more correctly, my aim is the same as Markelov's; but our paths are different.'

'Poor Sergei Mihalovitch!' said Marianna mournfully. Solomin again gave her a discreet caress.

'Come, come; there's nothing certain yet. We shall see what news Pavel brings. In our . . . work one must be of good courage. The English say, "Never say die." A good proverb. Better than the Russian, "When trouble comes, open the gates wide." It's useless lamenting beforehand.'

Solomin got up from his seat.

'And the place you meant to get me?' asked Marianna suddenly. The tears were still glistening on her cheeks, but there was no sadness in her eyes.

Solomin sat down again.

'Do you want so much to get away from here as soon as possible?'

'Oh, no! but I should like to be of use.'

'Marianna, you are of great use even here. Don't forsake us, wait a little. What is it?' Solomin asked of Tatyana, who came in.

'Well, there's some sort of a female article asking for Alexey Dmitritch,' answered Tatyana, laughing and gesticulating. 'I was for saying that he wasn't here, not here at all. We don't know any such person, says I. But then it———'

'Who's—it?'

'Why, this same female article took and wrote her name on this slip of paper here, and says I'm to show it, and that'll admit her; and that if Alexey Dmitritch really isn't at home, then she can wait.'

On the paper stood in large letters, 'Mashurina.'

'Show her in,' said Solomin. 'You won't mind, Marianna, if she comes in here? She, too, is one of ours.'

'Oh, no! indeed!'

A few seconds later Mashurina appeared in the doorway, in the same dress in which we saw her at the beginning of the first chapter.