On the Eve

I

On one of the hottest days of the summer of 1853, in the shade of a tall lime-tree on the bank of the river Moskva, not far from Kuntsovo, two young men were lying on the grass. One, who looked about twenty-three, tall and swarthy, with a sharp and rather crooked nose, a high forehead, and a restrained smile on his wide mouth, was lying on his back and gazing meditatively into the distance, his small grey eyes half closed. The other was lying on his chest, his curly, fair head propped on his two hands; he, too, was looking away into the distance. He was three years older than his companion, but seemed much younger. His moustache was only just growing, and his chin was covered with a light curly down. There was something childishly pretty, something attractively delicate, in the small features of his fresh round face, in his soft brown eyes, lovely pouting lips, and little white hands. Everything about him was suggestive of the happy lightheartedness of perfect health and youth—the carelessness, conceit, self-indulgence, and charm of youth. He used his eyes, and smiled and leaned his head as boys do who know that people look at them admiringly. He wore a loose white coat, made like a blouse, a blue kerchief wrapped his slender throat, and a battered straw hat had been flung on the grass beside him.

His companion seemed elderly in comparison with him; and no one would have supposed, from his angular figure, that he too was happy and enjoying himself. He lay in an awkward attitude; his large head—wide at the crown and narrower at the base—hung awkwardly on his long neck; awkwardness was expressed in the very pose of his hands, of his body, tightly clothed in a short black coat, and of his long legs with their knees raised, like the hind-legs of a grasshopper. For all that, it was impossible not to recognise that he was a man of good education; the whole of his clumsy person bore the stamp of good-breeding; and his face, plain and even a little ridiculous as it was, showed a kindly nature and a thoughtful habit. His name was Andrei Petrovitch Bersenyev; his companion, the fair-haired young man, was called Pavel Yakovlitch Shubin.

“Why don’t you lie on your face, like me?” began Shubin. “It’s ever so much nicer so; especially when you kick up your heels and clap them together—like this. You have the grass under your nose; when you’re sick of staring at the landscape you can watch a fat beetle crawling on a blade of grass, or an ant fussing about. It’s really much nicer. But you’ve taken up a pseudo-classical pose, for all the world like a ballet-dancer, when she reclines upon a rock of pasteboard. You should remember you have a perfect right to take a rest now. It’s no joking matter to come out third! Take your ease, sir; give up all exertion, and rest your weary limbs!”

Shubin delivered this speech through his nose in a half-lazy, half-joking voice (spoilt children speak so to friends of the house who bring them sweetmeats), and without waiting for an answer he went on:

“What strikes me most forcibly in the ants and beetles and other worthy insects is their astounding seriousness. They run to and fro with such a solemn air, as though their life were something of such importance! A man the lord of creation, the highest being, stares at them, if you please, and they pay no attention to him. Why, a gnat will even settle on the lord of creation’s nose, and make use of him for food. It’s most offensive. And, on the other hand, how is their life inferior to ours? And why shouldn’t they take themselves seriously, if we are to be allowed to take ourselves seriously? There now, philosopher, solve that problem for me! Why don’t you speak? Eh?”

“What?” said Bersenyev, starting.

“What!” repeated Shubin. “Your friend lays his deepest thoughts before you, and you don’t listen to him.”

“I was admiring the view. Look how hot and bright those fields are in the sun.” Bersenyev spoke with a slight lisp.

“There’s some fine colour laid on there,” observed Shubin. “Nature’s a good hand at it, that’s the fact!”

Bersenyev shook his head.

“You ought to be even more ecstatic over it than I. It’s in your line: you’re an artist.”

“No; it’s not in my line,” rejoined Shubin, putting his hat on the back of his head. “Flesh is my line; my work’s with flesh—modelling flesh, shoulders, legs, and arms, and here there’s no form, no finish; it’s all over the place. … Catch it if you can.”

“But there is beauty here, too,” remarked Bersenyev.—“By the way, have you finished your bas-relief?”

“Which one?”

The Boy with the Goat.

“Hang it! Hang it! Hang it!” cried Shubin, drawling—“I looked at the genuine old things, the antiques, and I smashed my rubbish to pieces. You point to nature, and say ‘there’s beauty here, too.’ Of course, there’s beauty in everything, even in your nose there’s beauty; but you can’t try after all kinds of beauty. The ancients, they didn’t try after it; beauty came down of itself upon their creations from somewhere or other—from heaven, I suppose. The whole world belonged to them; it’s not for us to be so large in our reach; our arms are short. We drop our hook into one little pool, and keep watch over it. If we get a bite, so much the better, if not—”

Shubin put out his tongue.

“Stop, stop,” said Bensenyev, “that’s a paradox. If you have no sympathy for beauty, if you do not love beauty wherever you meet it, it will not come to you even in your art. If a beautiful view, if beautiful music does not touch your heart; I mean, if you are not sympathetic—”

“Ah, you are a confirmed sympathetic!” broke in Shubin, laughing at the new title he had coined, while Bersenyev sank into thought.

“No, my dear fellow,” Shubin went on, “you’re a clever person, a philosopher, third graduate of the Moscow University; it’s dreadful arguing with you, especially for an ignoramus like me, but I tell you what; besides my art, the only beauty I love is in women … in girls, and even that’s recently.”

He turned over on to his back and clasped his hands behind his head.

A few instants passed by in silence. The hush of the noonday heat lay upon the drowsy, blazing fields.

“Speaking of women,” Shubin began again, “how is it no one looks after Stahov? Did you see him in Moscow?”

“No.”

“The old fellow’s gone clean off his head. He sits for whole days together at his Augustina Christianovna’s, he’s bored to death, but still he sits there. They gaze at one another so stupidly. … It’s positively disgusting to see them. Man’s a strange animal. A man with such a home; but no, he must have his Augustina Christianovna! I don’t know anything more repulsive than her face, just like a duck’s! The other day I modelled a caricature of her in the style of Dantan. It wasn’t half bad. I will show it you.”

“And Elena Nikolaevna’s bust?” inquired Bersenyev, “is it getting on?”

“No, my dear boy, it’s not getting on. That face is enough to drive one to despair. The lines are pure, severe, correct; one would think there would be no difficulty in catching a likeness. It’s not as easy as one would think though. It’s like a treasure in a fairytale—you can’t get hold of it. Have you ever noticed how she listens? There’s not a single feature different, but the whole expression of the eyes is constantly changing, and with that the whole face changes. What is a sculptor—and a poor one too—to do with such a face? She’s a wonderful creature—a strange creature,” he added after a brief pause.

“Yes; she is a wonderful girl,” Bersenyev repeated after him.

“And she the daughter of Nikolai Artemyevitch Stahov! And after that people talk about blood, about stock! The amusing part of it is that she really is his daughter, like him, as well as like her mother, Anna Vassilyevna. I respect Anna Vassilyevna from the depths of my heart, she’s been awfully good to me; but she’s no better than a hen. Where did Elena get that soul of hers? Who kindled that fire in her? There’s another problem for you, philosopher!”

But as before, the “philosopher” made no reply. Bersenyev did not in general err on the side of talkativeness, and when he did speak, he expressed himself awkwardly, with hesitation, and unnecessary gesticulation. And at this time a kind of special stillness had fallen on his soul, a stillness akin to lassitude and melancholy. He had not long come from town after prolonged hard work, which had absorbed him for many hours every day. The inactivity, the softness and purity of the air, the consciousness of having attained his object, the whimsical and careless talk of his friend, and the image—so suddenly called up—of one dear to him, all these impressions different—yet at the same time in a way akin—were mingled in him into a single vague emotion, which at once soothed and excited him, and robbed him of his power. He was a very highly strung young man.

It was cool and peaceful under the lime-tree; the flies and bees seemed to hum more softly as they flitted within its circle of shade. The fresh fine grass, of purest emerald green, without a tinge of gold, did not quiver, the tall flower stalks stood motionless, as though enchanted. On the lower twigs of the lime-tree the little bunches of yellow flowers hung still as death. At every breath a sweet fragrance made its way to the very depths of the lungs, and eagerly the lungs inhaled it. Beyond the river in the distance, right up to the horizon, all was bright and glowing. At times a slight breeze passed over, breaking up the landscape and intensifying the brightness; a sunlit vapour hung over the fields. No sound came from the birds; they do not sing in the heat of noonday; but the grasshoppers were chirping everywhere, and it was pleasant as they sat in the cool and quietness, to hear that hot, eager sound of life; it disposed to slumber and inclined the heart to reveries.

“Have you noticed,” began Bersenyev, eking out his words with gesticulations, “what a strange feeling nature produces in us? Everything in nature is so complete, so defined, I mean to say, so content with itself, and we understand that and admire it, and at the same time, in me at least, it always excites a kind of restlessness, a kind of uneasiness, even melancholy. What is the meaning of it? Is it that in the face of nature we are more vividly conscious of all our incompleteness, our indefiniteness, or have we little of that content with which nature is satisfied, but something else—I mean to say, what we need, nature has not?”