Virgin Soil (Garnett)/Volume 2/Chapter 15

by Ivan Turgenev

XXXV

The governor of the town of S——— was one of those good-natured, careless, worldly generals, those generals endowed with an exquisitely well-washed white body, and an almost equally pure soul, those well-born, well-bred generals, kneaded, so to speak, of the most finely sifted flour, who, though they never lay themselves out to be 'shepherds of the people,' do nevertheless give proof of very tolerable administrative abilities; and doing very little work, for ever sighing for Petersburg and dangling after pretty provincial ladies, are of the most unmistakable service to their province and leave pleasant memories behind them. He had only just got out of bed, and, sitting in a silk dressing-gown and a loose night-shirt before his looking-glass, he was dabbing his face and neck with eau-de-cologne, after taking off a perfect collection of little amulets and relics as a preliminary,—when he was informed of the arrival of Sipyagin and Kallomyetsev on important and urgent business. With Sipyagin he was very intimate, called him by his Christian name, had known him from his youth up, was continually meeting him in Petersburg drawing-rooms, and of late he had begun, every time his name occurred to him, to ejaculate mentally a respectful 'Ah!' as on hearing the name of a future statesman. Kallomyetsev he knew rather less and respected much less, seeing that for some time past 'unpleasant' complaints had begun to be made against him; he regarded him, however, as a man—qui fera chemin—one way or another.

He gave orders that the visitors should be asked into his study, and promptly came into it in the same silk dressing-gown, and without even an apology for receiving them in such an unofficial attire; and he shook hands cordially with them. Only Sipyagin and Kallomyetsev had, however, been conducted to the governor's study; Paklin had been left in the drawing-room. As he crawled out of the coach, he had tried to sneak off, muttering that he had business at home; but Sipyagin with courteous firmness had detained him (Kallomyetsev had skipped up and whispered in Sipyagin's ear: 'Ne le lâches pas! Tonnerre de tonnerre!') and taken him in along with him. To the study, however, he had not led him, but had requested him, still with the same courteous firmness, to wait in the drawing-room till he should be sent for. Paklin even here hoped to slink off . . . but, at a hint from Kallomyetsev, a stalwart gendarme showed himself at the door.. . . Paklin remained.

'You guess, no doubt, what has brought me to you, Voldemar?' began Sipyagin.

'No, dear boy, I can't guess,' answered the amiable epicurean, while a smile of welcome curved his rosy cheeks and showed a glimpse of his shining teeth, half hidden by silky moustaches.. . .

'What?. . . Don't you know about Markelov?'

'What do you mean?—Markelov?' the governor repeated with the same expression. He had, to begin with, no clear recollection that the man arrested the day before was called Markelov; and he had besides utterly forgotten that Sipyagin's wife had a brother of that surname. 'But why are you standing, Boris? sit down; won't you have some tea?'

But Sipyagin was in no mood for tea.

When he explained at last what was the matter and for what reason he and Kallomyetsev had made their appearance, the governor uttered a pained exclamation, and slapped himself on the forehead, while his face assumed an expression of grief.

'Yes . . . yes . . . yes!' he repeated; 'what a misfortune! And he's here now—to-day—for a while; you know we never keep that sort with us longer than one night; but the commander of police is out of the town, so your brother-in-law's been detained.. . . But to-morrow they will forward him. Dear me! how very unfortunate! How distressed your wife must be! What is it you wish?'

'I should have liked to have an interview with him, here—if it's not contrary to law.'

'My dear fellow! laws are not made for men like you. I do feel for you! . . . C'est affreux, tu sais!'

He gave a peculiar ring. An adjutant appeared.

'My dear baron, if you please—some arrangements here.' He told him what he wanted. The baron vanished. 'Only fancy, mon cher ami, you know they all but murdered him. They tied his hands behind him, clapped him in a cart, and off they went with him! And he—fancy! isn't in the least angry with them—not a bit indignant—dear, dear! He's so composed altogether. . . . I was astonished! but there, you will see for yourself. C'est un fanatique tranquille.'

'Ce sont les pires,' Kallomyetsev pronounced sententiously.

The governor gave him a dubious look.

'By the way, I must have a word with you, Semyon Petrovitch.'

'Why, what is it?'

'0h, something's amiss.'

'And what?'

'Well, I must tell you; your debtor, that peasant who came to me with a complaint———'

'Well?'

'He's hanged himself, you know.'

'When?'

'It's of no consequence when: but it's a bad business.'

Kallomyetsev shrugged his shoulders, and with a dandified swing of his elegant person moved away to the window. At that instant the adjutant brought in Markelov.

The governor had spoken truly about him; he was unnaturally calm. Even his habitual moroseness had vanished from his face and was replaced by an expression of a sort of indifferent weariness. It did not change when he saw his brother-in-law, and only in the glance he flung at the German adjutant escorting him there was a momentary flash of his old hatred for that class of persons. His coat had been torn in two places and hurriedly sown up with coarse thread; on his forehead, over one eyebrow, and on the bridge of his nose could be seen small scars covered with clotted blood. He had not washed, but had combed his hair. Stuffing both hands up to the wrists into his sleeves, he stood not far from the door. His breathing was quite even.

'Sergei Mihalovitch!' Sipyagin began in an agitated voice, going two steps towards him, and stretching out his right hand so that it might touch him or stop him if he were to make a forward movement. 'Sergei Mihalovitch! I am not here to express to you our amazement, our deep distress—that you cannot doubt! You have yourself willed your own ruin! And you have ruined yourself! But I desired to see you so as to say to you . . . er . . . er . . . to render . . . to give you the chance of hearing the voice of common sense, honour, and friendship! You may still mitigate your lot; and, believe me, I will, for my part, do all that lies in my power, and the honoured head of this province will support me in this.' Here Sipyagin raised his voice: 'Unfeigned penitence for your errors, and a full confession without reserve, which shall be duly represented in the proper quarters . . .'

'Your Excellency,' Markelov began all at once, addressing the governor, and the very sound of his voice was quiet, though a little hoarse, 'I imagined it was your pleasure to see me to make a further examination of me or something.. . . But if you have summoned me only at the desire of Mr. Sipyagin, give orders, please, for me to be taken back; we can't understand one another. All he says . . . is so much Greek to me.'

'Greek . . . indeed!' Kallomyetsev intervened in a haughty treble; 'but it's not Greek to you to set peasants rioting! That's not Greek, is it? Eh?'

'What have you here, your Excellency? some sub in the secret police, eh? So zealous in his work?' queried Markelov, and a faint smile of pleasure quivered on his pale lips.

Kallomyetsev, with a hiss of anger, was stamping. . . But the governor stopped him.

'It's your own fault, Semyon Petrovitch. Why do you interfere in what's not your business?'

'Not my business! . . . I should say it's the public business . . . of all us noblemen! . . .'

Markelov scanned Kallomyetsev with a cold, prolonged gaze, as though it were for the last time, and turned a little towards Sipyagin. 'And since you, brother-in-law, want me to explain my views to you, here you are. I recognise that the peasants had the right to arrest me and give me up if they didn't like what I said to them. They were free to do that. I had come to them; not they to me. And the government, if it sends me to Siberia . . . I'm not going to grumble—though I don't regard myself as guilty. It's doing its own work, for it's guarding itself. Is that enough for you?'

Sipyagin flung up his hands.

'Enough! What a thing to say! That's not the question, and it's not for us to criticise the action of the government; what I want to know is, do you feel . . . do you, dear Sergei, feel'—(Sipyagin resolved to try an appeal to the feelings)—'the senselessness, the madness of your attempt? are you prepared to prove your repentance in act? and can I answer, to a certain extent answer, for you, Sergei?'

Markelov knitted his bushy brows.

'I have said my say . . . and I don't want to repeat it.'

'But repentance! What of your repentance?'

Suddenly Markelov grew restive.

'Ah, let me alone with your "repentance"! Do you want to crawl inside my soul? Leave that at least to me.'

Sipyagin shrugged his shoulders.

'There, you are always like that; you will never listen to the voice of reason! You have still a possibility of extricating yourself without scandal or dishonour.'

'Without scandal or dishonour . . .' Markelov repeated grimly. 'We know those phrases! They are always used to suggest a man's doing something scoundrelly. That's what they mean!'

'We sympathise with you,' Sipyagin continued to exhort Markelov, 'and you hate us.'

'A nice sort of sympathy! You pack us off to Siberia to hard labour; that's how you show your sympathy for us! Ah, let me alone . . . let me alone, for mercy's sake!'

And Markelov's head sank on his breast. There was great confusion in his soul, quiet as he was outwardly. More than all he was fretted and tortured by the thought that he had been betrayed by none other than Eremey of Goloplyok! Eremey in whom he had believed so blindly! That Mendely, the Sulker, had not followed him had not really surprised him. . . . Mendely had been drunk and was frightened. But Eremey! To Markelov, Eremey was a sort of personification of the Russian peasantry.. . . And he had deceived him. Then, was all Markelov had been toiling for, was it all wrong, a mistake? And was Kislyakov a liar, and were Vassily Nikolaevitch's orders folly, and were all the articles and books, works of socialists and thinkers, every letter of which had seemed to him something beyond doubt, beyond attack—was all that too rubbish? Could it be? And that splendid simile of the swollen abscess, ready for the stroke of the lancet, was that too a mere phrase? 'No! no!' he murmured to himself, and over his bronzed cheeks flitted a faint tinge of brickdust colour; 'no; it's all true; all . . . it is, I am to blame, I didn't understand, I didn't say the right thing, I didn't go the right way to work! I ought simply to have given orders, and if any one had tried to hinder or resist, put a bullet through his head! what's the use of explanations here? Any one not with us has no right to live . . . spies are killed like dogs, worse than dogs!'

And all the details of his capture passed before Markelov's mind.. . . First the silence, the leers, the shouts at the back of the crowd. Then one fellow comes up sideways as if to salute him. Then that sudden rush! And how they had flung him down! . . . 'Lads . . . lads! . . . what are you about?' And they, 'Give us a belt here! Tie him!' . . . The shaking of his bones . . . and helpless wrath . . . and the stinking dust in his mouth, in his nostrils. . . . 'Toss him . . . toss him into the cart.' Some one guffawing thickly . . . ugh!

'I didn't go the right way—the right way to work!' That was just what fretted and tormented him; that he himself had fallen under the wheel was his personal misfortune: it had no bearing on the cause in general; that he could bear . . . but Eremey! Eremey!

While Markelov stood, his head sunk on his breast, Sipyagin drew the governor aside and began talking to him in undertones, with slight gesticulations and a shake of two fingers on his forehead, as though he would suggest that the poor fellow was not quite right in that region, and would try altogether to arouse, if not sympathy, at least indulgence for the crazy creature. And the governor shrugged his shoulders, turned up and then half-closed his eyes, regretted his own helplessness in the matter, but gave some vague promises.. . . 'Tous les égards . . . certainement, tous les égards' . . . the delicately lisped words were heard softly uttered through his scented moustaches. . . 'But you know, dear boy, the law!' 'Of course—the law!' Sipyagin assented with a sort of stoical submissiveness.

While they were conversing in this way in the corner, Kallomyetsev simply could not stand still; he moved up and down, cleared his throat, hummed and hawed, exhibiting every sign of impatience. At last he went up to Sipyagin, and hurriedly remarked: 'Vous oubliez l'autre!'

'Ah, yes!' said Sipyagin aloud. 'Merci de me l'avoir rappelé. I must lay the following fact before your Excellency,' he said, turning to the governor.. . . (He used this formal address to his dear Voldemar intentionally, not to compromise the prestige of authority before a revolutionist.) 'I have good grounds for supposing that my beau-frère's mad attempt has certain ramifications; and that one of those branches, that is, one of the suspected persons, is at no great distance from this town. Send,' he added, in an undertone, 'for the man . . . there, in your drawing-room. . . . I brought him with me.'

The governor glanced at Sipyagin, thought with reverence, 'What a fellow!' and gave the necessary order. A minute later, the 'servant of God,' Sila Paklin, stood before him.

Sila Paklin was beginning to make a low bow to the governor; but catching sight of Markelov he did not complete his salutation—he remained as he was, bent in half, twisting his cap about in his hands. Markelov cast a heedless glance in his direction, but can hardly have recognised him; for he sank again into thought.

'Is this—the branch?' queried the governor, pointing at Paklin with a large white finger adorned with a turquoise.

'Oh, no!' responded Sipyagin with a halfsmile. 'However,' he added, after a moment's thought, 'here, your Excellency,' he began again aloud, 'before you is one Mr. Paklin. He is, to the best of my belief, a resident in Petersburg, and an intimate friend of a certain person who filled the position of tutor in my family, and left my house, taking with him—I blush to add—a young girl, a relative of my own.'

'Ah! oui, oui,' muttered the governor, and he flung up his head; 'I had heard something . . . the Countess was telling me. . .'

Sipyagin raised his voice.

'That person is a certain Mr. Nezhdanov, strongly suspected by me of perverted ideas and theories . . .'

'Un rouge à tous crins,' put in Kallomyetsev.

'Of perverted ideas and theories,' repeated Sipyagin still more distinctly, 'and is certainly not without a share in all this propaganda; he is . . . in hiding, as I have been informed by Mr. Paklin, in the factory of the merchant Faleyev . . .'

At the words 'I have been informed,' Markelov glanced a second time at Paklin, but only smiled, slowly and indifferently.

'Excuse me, excuse me, your Excellency,' cried Paklin, 'and you, Mr. Sipyagin; I never . . . never.. . .'

'You say the merchant Faleyev?' said the governor, addressing Sipyagin, and merely twirling his fingers in Paklin's direction, as much as to say, 'Silence there, my good man.' 'What's coming to them, our respectable bearded shop-keepers? Yesterday they caught another one about the same business. You may have heard his name—Golushkin, a rich man. But there, he'll never make a revolution. He's grovelling on his knees now.'

'The merchant Faleyev does not come into the affair,' Sipyagin struck off; 'I know nothing of his views; I am speaking only of his factory, in which, according to Mr. Paklin's story, Mr. Nezhdanov may be found at this moment.'

'I didn't say so!' Paklin wailed again. 'It was you said so!'

'Excuse me, Mr. Paklin,' Sipyagin went on, uttering every word with the same relentless distinctness. 'I respect the sentiment of friendship which inspires your denial.' ('Why—he's a regular Guizot!' the governor was thinking to himself.) 'But I will venture to put myself before you as an example. Do you suppose the sentiment of kinship is less strong in me than your feeling of friendship? But there is another feeling, sir, which is stronger still, and which ought to be our guide in all our deeds and actions—the feeling of duty!

'Le sentiment du devoir,' Kallomyetsev explained.

Markelov scanned both the speakers.

'Mr. Governor,' he observed, 'I repeat my request: order me, if you please, to be removed from these chatterers.'

But here the governor lost patience a little.

'Mr. Markelov!' he exclaimed, 'I should advise you, in your position, to show more restraint in your language, and more respect for your superiors . . . especially when they are expressing patriotic sentiments such as you have just heard from the lips of your beau-frère. I shall be very happy, my dear Boris,' added the governor, turning to Sipyagin, 'to bring your noble action before the notice of the minister. But where precisely is this Mr. Nezhdanov to be found—in this factory?'

Sipyagin knit his brows.

'He is with a certain Mr. Solomin, the overseer of the machinery there—so this Mr. Paklin has informed me.'

It seemed to afford Sipyagin a peculiar satisfaction to torment poor Sila; he was making him pay now for the cigar he had given him in the carriage, and the familiarity of his behaviour, and even some little flattery wasted on him.

'And this Solomin,' put in Kallomyetsev, 'is an unmistakable radical and republican, and it would be quite as well for your Excellency to turn your attention to him too.'

'Do you know these people . . . Solomin . . . and what's his name—Nezhdanov?' the governor questioned Markelov in a rather authoritative nasal.

Markelov's nostrils dilated vindictively.

'And do you, your Excellency, know Confucius and Livy?'

The governor turned away.

'Il n'y a pas moyen de causer avec cet homme,' he observed, shrugging his shoulders. 'Baron, here, please!'

The adjutant darted up to him; and Paklin, seizing the opportunity, limped hobbling up to Sipyagin.

'What are you doing?' he whispered; 'do you want to ruin your own niece? Why, she's with him, with Nezhdanov! . . .'

'I am ruining no one, sir,' Sipyagin responded aloud; 'I am obeying the dictates of my conscience, and———'

'And your wife, my sister, who keeps you under her thumb?' Markelov put in quite as loudly.

Sipyagin, at the phrase, did not turn a hair. . . . It was too much beneath him!

'Listen,' Paklin continued, whispering—his whole body was shaking with excitement and possibly with fear—and his eyes glittered with hate and the tears made a lump in his throat; tears of pity for the others, and anger with himself; 'listen, I told you she was married—that's not true—I told you a lie!—but this marriage must take place now—and if you prevent this, if the police make a raid on them, there will be a stain on your conscience which nothing can wipe off, and you———'

'The fact you have communicated,' Sipyagin interrupted still louder, 'if only it is true, which I have good reason to doubt, can only hasten the measure I should think it necessary to take; and as to the purity of my conscience, sir, I will ask you not to concern yourself about it.'

'It's polished, brother,' Markelov put in again; 'there's a coat of Petersburg varnish laid on it; nothing will touch it! Ah, Mr. Paklin, you may whisper as you will, you'll never whisper your way out of this business, no fear!'

The governor thought it needful to cut short these recriminations.

'I presume,' he began, 'that you have said all you need to, gentlemen; and so, my dear baron, you may remove Mr. Markelov. N'est-ce pas, Boris, you have no further need . . .?'

Sipyagin made a deprecating gesture.

I have said all I could!'

'Very well.. . . My dear baron . . .'

The adjutant approached Markelov, clinked his spurs, made a horizontal motion with his arm.. . . 'If you please!' Markelov turned and went out. Paklin—only in imagination, it must be owned, but with bitter sympathy and pity—shook his hand.

'And we'll send our fellows to the factory,' pursued the governor. 'Only there's one thing, Boris; I fancy—this gentleman'—(he indicated Paklin with a turn of his chin)—'gave you some information about your young relation. . . Possibly she is there, in the factory. . . . If so . . .'

'She could not be arrested in any case,' observed Sipyagin profoundly; 'possibly she will come to her senses and return. If you will permit it, I will write her a little note.'

'I shall be obliged if you will. And, of course, you may rest assured.. . . Nous coffrerons le quidam . . . mais nous sommes galants avec les dames . . . et avec celle-là donc!'

'But you are taking no measures with regard to that Solomin!' Kallomyetsev exclaimed, plaintively. He had been all the while on the alert trying to catch the governor's remarks a little aside to Sipyagin. 'I assure you, he's the ringleader! I've an instinct in these things . . . a perfect instinct!'

'Pas trop de zèle, dear Semyon Petrovitch,' observed the governor with a smirk. 'Remember Talleyrand! If there's anything amiss, he won't escape us either. You'd much better devote your thoughts to your . . .' The governor made a gesture suggesting a noose round the neck. . . . 'And by the way,' he turned again to Sipyagin—'et ce gaillard-là' (he again indicated Paklin by a turn of his chin), 'qu'en ferons-nous? He doesn't look formidable.'

'Let him go,' said Sipyagin softly, and he added in German: 'Lass den Lumpen laufen!'

He imagined, for some unknown reason, that he was making a quotation from Goethe, from Götz von Berlichingen.

'You can go, sir!' observed the governor aloud. 'We have no further need of you! Good-bye, till we meet again.'

Paklin made a general bow and went out into the street, utterly crushed and humiliated. Good God! this contempt annihilated him!

'What am I?' he thought in unutterable despair; 'both coward and informer? Oh, no . . . no; I'm an honest man, gentlemen, and I'm not quite devoid of all manliness!'

But what was this familiar figure standing on the steps of the governor's house, gazing at him with dejected eyes, full of reproach? Why, it was Markelov's old servant. He had, seemingly, come to the town after his master, and would not move away from his prison.. . . But why did he look like that at Paklin? It was not he who had betrayed Markelov!

'And what induced me to go poking my nose where I was no manner of use?' he thought again in desperation. 'Why couldn't I have kept quiet and minded my own business? And now they'll talk, and most likely write: "A certain Mr. Paklin has told of everything, he has betrayed them . . . his friends, betrayed them to the enemy!"' He recalled at this point the glance Markelov had flung at him, he recalled his last words: 'You'll never whisper your way out, no fear!'—and then those aged, dejected, despairing eyes! And as it is written in the scriptures, 'he wept bitterly,' and made his way to the oasis, to Fomushka and Fimushka, to Snanduliya. . . .