Virgin Soil (Volume 1)/Chapter 6

by Ivan Turgenev

VI

I beg your pardon, Valentina Mihalovna', she said, going towards Madame Sipyagin; I was busy and I lingered.'

Then she bowed to Kallomyetsev, and, moving a little aside, seated herself on a small ottoman near the parrot, who had begun flapping his wings and craning towards her directly he caught sight of her.

'Why are you sitting so far away, Marianna?' observed Madame Sipyagin, following her with her eyes to the ottoman. 'Do you want to be close to your little friend? Only fancy, Semyon Petrovitch,' she turned to Kallomyetsev, ' that parrot's simply in love with dear Marianna.'

'That does not astonish me!'

'And me he can't endure.'

'Well, that is astonishing! You tease him, I suppose?'

'Never; quite the contrary. I give him sugar. But he will take nothing from me. No . . . it's a case of sympathy . . . and antipathy.'

Marianna glanced up from under her eyelids at Madame Sipyagin . . . and Madame Sipyagin glanced at her.

These two women did not like each other. In comparison with her aunt, Marianna might almost have been called 'a plain little thing.' She had a round face, a large hawk nose, grey eyes, also large and very clear, thin eyebrows, thin lips. She had cropped her thick dark-brown hair, and she looked unsociable. But about her whole personality there was something vigorous and bold, something stirring and passionate. Her feet and hands were tiny; her strongly knit, supple little body recalled the Florentine statuettes of the sixteenth century; she moved lightly and gracefully.

Marianna's position in the Sipyagins' household was a rather difficult one. Her father, a very clever and energetic man of half-Polish extraction, gained the rank of a general, but was suddenly ruined by being detected in a gigantic fraud on the government; he was brought to trial . . . condemned, deprived of his rank and his nobility, and sent to Siberia. Afterwards he was pardoned . . . and brought back; but he did not succeed in climbing up again, and died in extreme poverty. His wife, Sipyagin's sister, the mother of Marianna (she had no other children), could not endure the blow which had demolished all her prosperity, and died soon after her husband. Sipyagin gave his niece a home in his own house; but she was sick of a life of dependence; she strove towards freedom with all the force of her uncompromising nature, and between her and her aunt there raged a constant though hidden warfare. Madame Sipyagin considered her a nihilist and an atheist; Marianna, for her part, hated Madame Sipyagin, as her unconscious oppressor. Her uncle she held aloof from, as she did, indeed, from every one else. She simply held aloof from them; she was not afraid of them; she had not a timid temper.

'Antipathy,' repeated Kallomyetsev; 'yes, that's a strange thing. Every one is aware, for instance, that I'm a deeply religious man, orthodox in the fullest sense of the word; but a priest's flowing locks─his mane─I can't look at with equanimity; I have a sensation of positive nausea.'

And Kallomyetsev, with a reiterated wave of his clenched fist, tried to express his sensations of nausea.

'Hair in general seems rather to worry you, Semyon Petrovitch,' observed Marianna; 'I am sure you can't look at any one with equanimity whose hair is cropped like mine.'

Madame Sipyagin slowly raised her eyebrows and bent her head, as though amazed at the free and easy way in which young girls nowadays enter into conversation; while Kallomyetsev gave a condescending simper.

'Of course,' he replied, 'I cannot but feel regret for lovely curls like yours, Marianna Vikentyevna, which have fallen beneath the remorseless scissors; but I have no feeling of antipathy; and, in any case, . . . your example would have . . . would have . . . proselytised me!'

Kallomyetsev could not find the Russian word, and did not want to speak French after his hostess's observations.

'Thank goodness, dear Marianna does not wear spectacles yet,' put in Madame Sipyagin, 'and has not parted with cuffs and collars, though she does study natural science, to my sincere regret; and is interested in the woman question too . . . Aren't you, Marianna?'

This was all said with the object of embarrassing Marianna; but she was not embarrassed.

'Yes, auntie,' she answered, ' I read everything that's written about it; I try to understand exactly what the question is.'

'That's what it is to be young!'─Madame Sipyagin turned to Kallomyetsev; 'you and I don't care about these things now─eh?'

Kallomyetsev smiled sympathetically; he was bound to bear with the lady's jesting humour.

'Marianna Vikentyevna,' he began, 'is filled with the idealism . . . the romanticism of youth . . . which in time . . .'

'But I am slandering myself,' Madame Sipyagin interrupted: 'I take an interest in such questions too. I'm not quite elderly yet, you know.'

'And I take an interest in all such subjects,' Kallomyetsev exclaimed hurriedly; 'only I would forbid talking about it.'

'You would forbid talking about it?' Marianna repeated inquiringly.

'Yes! I would say to the public: I don't hinder your taking an interest . . . but as for talking . . . hush!'─he put his finger to his lips 'any way, talking in print─I would prohibit─unconditionally!'

Madame Sipyagin laughed.

'What? You would have a commission appointed in some department to decide the question, wouldn't you?'

'And why not a commission? Do you think we should decide the question worse than all the hungry penny-a-liners, who can never see beyond their noses, and fancy they are . . . geniuses of the first rank? We would appoint Boris Andreevitch president.'

Madame Sipyagin laughed more than ever.

'You must take care; Boris Andreevitch is sometimes such a Jacobin———'

'Jackó, jackó, jackó,' called the parrot.

Valentina Mihalovna shook her handkerchief at him.

'Don't prevent sensible people from talking! . . . Marianna, quiet him.'

Marianna turned to the cage and began scratching the parrot's neck, which he offered her at once.

'Yes', Madame Sipyagin continued, 'Boris Andreevitch sometimes astonishes me. He has something . . . something . . . of the tribune in him.'

'Cest parce qu'il est orateur!' Kallomyetsev interposed hotly in French. 'Your husband has the gift of words, as no else has; he's accustomed to success, too . . . ses propres paroles le grisent . . . add to that a liking for popularity . . . But he's a little off all that, isn't he? Il boude?─eh?'

Madame Sipyagin glanced towards Marianna.

'I have not noticed it,' she replied after a brief silence.

'Yes', Kallomyetsev pursued in a pensive tone; 'he has been overlooked a little.'

Madame Sipyagin again indicated Marianna with a significant glance.

Kallomyetsev smiled and grimaced, as much as to say, 'I understand.'

'Marianna Vikentyevna! ' he exclaimed suddenly, in a voice unnecessarily loud, 'are you intending to give lessons in the school again this year?'

Marianna turned round from the cage.

'And does that, too, interest you, Semyon Petrovitch?'

'To be sure; indeed it interests me very much.'

'You would not prohibit that?'

'I would prohibit Nihilists from even thinking about schools; but, under clerical guidance, and with supervision of the clergy, I would found schools myself!'

'Really, now? Well, I don't know what I am going to do this year. Everything turned out so badly last year. Besides, there's no school in summer-time.'

When Marianna talked, her colour gradually deepened as though her words cost her an effort, as though she were forcing herself to go on. There was still a great deal of self-consciousness about her.

'You are not sufficiently prepared?' inquired Madame Sipyagin with a quiver of irony in her voice.

'Perhaps not.'

'What?' Kallomyetsev exclaimed again. 'What do I hear? Merciful heavens! is preparation needed to teach the little peasant wenches their A B C?'

But at that instant Kolya ran into the drawing-room shouting: 'Mamma! mamma! papa is coming!' and after him there came rolling in on her fat little feet a grey-haired lady in a cap and yellow shawl, and she too announced that dear Boris would be here directly! This lady was Sipyagin's aunt, Anna Zaharovna by name. All the persons who were in the drawing-room jumped up from their places and rushed into the anteroom, and from there down the stairs out to the principal entrance. A long avenue of lopped fir-trees led from the highroad straight to this entrance; already a carriage was dashing along it, drawn by four horses. Valentina Mihalovna, standing in front of all, waved her handkerchief, Kolya uttered a piercing shout; the coachman deftly drew up the heated horses, the groom flew headlong from the box and almost tore the carriage door off, lock, hinges, and all; and, with an amiable smile on his lips, in his eyes, over his whole face, Boris Andreevitch alighted, flinging his cloak off with a single easy gesture. Quickly and gracefully Valentina Mihalovna flung both arms about his neck, and kissed him three times. Kolya was stamping and tugging at his father's coat-tails behind . . . but he first kissed Anna Zaharovna, taking off his very uncomfortable and hideous Scotch travelling cap as a preliminary; then he exchanged greetings with Marianna and Kallomyetsev, who had also come out on the doorstep (he gave Kallomyetsev a vigorous English 'shake-hands,' working his arm up and down, as though he were tugging at a bell-rope) and only then turned to his son; he took him under his arms, lifted him up, and drew him close to his face.

While all this was taking place, Nezhdanov crept stealthily with a guilty air out of the carriage and stood near the front wheel, keeping his cap on and looking up from under his brows. . . . Valentina Mihalovna, as she embraced her husband, glanced sharply over his shoulder at this new figure; Sipyagin had told her beforehand that he was bringing a tutor along with him.

The whole party, still exchanging welcomes and shaking hands with the newly arrived master, moved up the steps, along both sides of which were ranged the principal men- and maid-servants. They did not kiss his hand─that 'Asiaticism' had long been abandoned─but merely bowed respectfully; and Sipyagin responded to their salutations with a motion more of the nose and brows than of the head.

Nezhdanov too moved slowly up the broad steps. Directly he entered the anteroom, Sipyagin, who had been already on the lookout for him, presented him to his wife, Anna Zaharovna and Marianna; while to Kolya he said, 'This is your tutor, mind you obey him! give him your hand!' Kolya timidly stretched out his hand to Nezhdanov, then stared at him; but apparently finding nothing in him striking or attractive, clung again to his 'papa.' Nezhdanov felt ill at ease just as he had that time at the theatre. He had on an old, rather ugly great-coat; his face and hands were covered with the dust of the road. Valentina Mihalovna said something affable to him; but he did not quite catch her words and made no response; he only noticed that she gazed with peculiar brightness and affection at her husband and kept close to his side. He did not like Kolya's befrizzed, pomaded head of hair; at the sight of Kallomyetsev he thought, 'What a smug little phiz!' and to the others he paid no attention whatever. Sipyagin twice turned his head with dignity as though looking round at his household gods, a position which threw his long hanging whiskers and rather round little head into striking relief. Then he called to one of the footmen in his powerful resonant voice, which showed no trace of the fatigues of the journey: 'Ivan! take this gentleman to the green room and carry his trunk up there,' and informed Nezhdanov that he could rest now, unpack, and set himself to rights, and dinner would be ready at five o'clock precisely. Nezhdanov bowed, and followed Ivan into the 'green room', which was on the second storey.

The whole party passed into the drawing-room. There words of welcome were repeated once more; a half-blind old nurse came in with a courtesy. From regard for her years, she was allowed by Sipyagin to kiss his hand, and then, with apologies to Kallomyetsev, he retired to his own room, escorted by his wife.